Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: 'We know your dark secrets. We know everything.'

I had a chance to interview Reddit CEO Steve Huffman at our conference last week, which was interesting and a lot of fun. And when I asked Steve about monetization, or simply 'making money' he replied with what I thought was just a funny statement: We know all of your interests. Not only just your interests you are willing to declare publicly on Facebook – we know your dark secrets, we know everything… The community at Reddit was a bit more critical, and surprised, and the video of the interview quickly reached the #1 spot on the Reddit homepage and collected…

This story continues at The Next Web

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6 Simple Tricks To Make More Money From Your Blog

Are you getting traffic to your blog, but still struggling to make a good income?

Blogging is a great career option but only if you do it the right way. Of course, everything starts with providing great content to your readers and steadily growing your traffic. Once you have decent traffic to your blog and a loyal audience, it's time to focus on the revenue.

You may have heard a lot of people say that your blog revenue is directly proportional to the traffic coming in, but that's not really true. It's all about executing the money-making ideas in the right way.

So here are six marketing tips to make more money from your blog:

1. Place your ads better

Placing ads on your website is not enough, you have to place ads where your readers are more likely to click on them.

Before placing an advertisement, ask yourself why the readers are here and where exactly you should place the ads so that they don't hamper the user experience and yet, are starkly visible.

Here are a few ideas for ad placement for a better click-through-rate:

• Sidebar banner


• Above a blog post title


• Right below the post title


• Between different sections of your post


• At the end of your post, above the author bio

But, of course, every website is different, and that is why I would recommend checking your website's heat map which could tell you where exactly your users tend to click more, and that is where you should place the majority of your ads.

I also recommend checking Google's ad placement policies at regular intervals so you can stay on top of any changes. Also, it's in Google's best interests to make sure the user experience isn't affected, so you won't have to worry about bothering your readers either if you follow their guidelines.

Here is an image that depicts the best places to put ads, the darker the orange the better the placement;

Image Source: Shout Me Loud

2. Go beyond AdSense

Yes, Google AdSense generates the most intuitive ads for your readers, since Google already knows what the readers have been searching and surfing. But, with a minimum payout threshold of $100 and a difficult approval process, it doesn't hurt to look at some other options as well.

Here a few ad platforms you should definitely consider (all of them work alongside AdSense):

Infolinks

With in-text and in-frame ads, Infolinks can monetize your blog in a completely different way. Getting approval on Infolinks is extremely easy and there is a minimum payout of $50 through PayPal.

BuySellAds

This is one of the premier ad platforms which gets you direct advertisements from clients and takes a 25% commission charge. With a minimum payout of $20, the only downside to BuySellAds is that it's not that easy to get approved.

Viglink

What Viglink does is, it monetizes your outbound links. It turns your ordinary links into affiliate links, so when a reader clicks on your link and buys something, you get a commission through it. This brings the power of affiliate marketing to natural link building.

3. Explore native languages

With so many languages in the world, why should you only focus on English? Google AdSense now supports over 35 languages, and this gives you no reason to ignore native languages.

While English might be one of the most popular languages on the internet, there is an array of readers looking for blogs in their regional languages and you can be the first few to exploit that market.

I launched my blog's Hindi version, ShoutMeHindi, back in June 2015 and I've been getting great feedback ever since.

You don't need to make it exclusively in your local language – you can mix and match English terms, as people tend to be familiar with the digital marketing terminology in English.

4. Collaborate with brands for sponsored posts and reviews

This is the quickest way to earn some good cash, but at the same time, you have to be very cautious about it.

Sponsored posts are where you talk about a product in general, or you try to incorporate something associated with the product naturally into your content. Sponsored reviews are when the company pays you to write reviews about their products.

Sponsored posts should only be done when you can talk about products or brands that your readers would be interested in. I don't need to tell you that when you attempt blatant advertising, readers' trust evaporates.

Now, sponsored reviews are a very sensitive ground. You might be getting paid by the company, but you don't have to completely sell the product. It's important to be unbiased and write your honest thoughts about the products.

Test the product extensively, and then list down all the pros and cons. Be sure to let the company know beforehand that you would be writing an honest review.

To connect with brands, you can create a media kit explaining what advertisers can expect from sponsored posts and reviews and how much you would be charging them.

Suggested networks;

• Famebit (Popular among Youtubers but not limited to it)


• Tapinfluence


• Fango.me


• Blogmint (Popular brand to get sponsored posts for blogs & social media channels.)

5. Implement affiliate programs

Affiliate marketing, in a nutshell, is where you refer your readers a product and when they buy it through your recommendation, you get a commission out of it.

Our very own Jeff described affiliate marketing as one of the top ways to make money by blogging in 2016. Every affiliate program has a different commission rate and minimum payout. But the reason why it's so popular among bloggers is because you only have to set it up once and you can get paid from all your posts, whether they are old or new.

Even the traffic doesn't matter so much, because it all depends upon the readers buying products through your recommendation.

There are many different kinds of affiliate programs available, and you can select the ones that relate the most to your blog niche.

6. Write an impressive Ebook

One of the best ways to get revenue from your blog is by developing premium content for your readers. Creating ebooks are cheap, and they also make you a niche expert, which can drive in more business later.

You can also build up your subscriber list with an ebook by providing the book – or the first few chapters, depending on your inclination and the worth of the information – free of charge for every subscriber.

But, there is a burning question plaguing every blogger who creates an ebook – should you sell it on your blog or Amazon?

Well, the answer is not as simple as you would want it to be. To make the right decision, you should definitely check out this post by Jeff.

Your turn

Now that you have some amazing tips for how to make more money from your blog, it's your turn to implement them. Remember that what might not work for some, might work for you. You need to be patient, monitor your analytics and keep a track of all the revenue being generated by every method.

What are the techniques you currently use to increase blog revenue? Please share in the comments.

Guest Author: Harsh Agrawal, a blog scientist and CEO of ShoutDreams Media, started blogging in 2008 and since then has written numerous posts on Blogging, SEO, Social media, Technology, Affiliate Marketing and more. He has also partnered with various international companies, helping them promote their online businesses. His blog ShoutMeLoud has more than 832K subscribers and receives 1 million Pageviews per month.

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Twitter investors were sharply divided over Jack Dorsey's stock plan

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While Twitter's shareholders approved CEO Jack Dorsey's plan to give his stock to employees last week, an unusually large number of investors voted against the plan hinting at the continued divisions over the company's leadership.

Twitter revealed the vote totals from its annual shareholders meeting in a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission on Friday. While there were four items on which shareholders were asked to vote on this past Wednesday, the most notable on the list was a plan Dorsey announced last fall when he returned to the company as CEO.

At the time, Dorsey said he would return 6.8 million shares to the Twitter stock employee pool to be given out over time to employees old and new. It was gesture intended to show the deep faith Dorsey had in the future of Twitter at a time when many on Wall Street were questioning its future and there was large turnover in the executive ranks.

Turns out, it wasn't a slam dunk with investors.

According to the filing, 223,121,744 shares of stock were voted in favor of the proposal, while 123,907,045 shares voted to “withhold” their approval. Another 1,847,614 shares abstained from voting, and there 202,867,909 shares held by brokers who were not authorized by the shareholders to vote on any proxy matters.

Approval of the plan required the affirmative votes of a majority of the votes cast. The abstentions were counted as a vote against, while the non-votes were not counted.

While it wasn't exactly a nail-biter, the level of opposition was clearly high. In general, it's highly unusual for corporate shareholders to buck the recommendations of a company's board or executive team on any proxy vote.

Compare those results on the stock issue, for instance, on another proxy matter: The appointment of the company's accounting firm. There were 544 million shares voted in favor, and only 4.5 million voted against. That lopsided vote total is more typical of proxy matters.

Twitter signaled that some shareholders were restless about Dorsey's proposal in a previous filing on May 20. The company said it had agreed to change the terms of the plan to prohibit the price of the options from being repriced, something that could affect the value and also trigger some potential tax issues.

“We appreciate the stockholder feedback we have received on our proposal to approve the Twitter, Inc. 2016 Equity Incentive Plan at our 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders,” the company said in a filing. “Based on discussions with our stockholders, we have committed to amend the 2016 Plan after the Annual Meeting to prohibit the repricing of stock options, including through an option exchange program or cash buyout, without the consent of Twitter's stockholders. We recognize the importance of protecting the value of your investment in Twitter and we also endeavor to be responsive to stockholder feedback on our compensation programs.”

That apparently was enough to win the necessary approval this past week. Still, the fact that Dorsey was working so hard until the final minutes to sway votes shows that investors are not ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

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Twitter has paid security researchers over $300,000 in 2 years

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As services like Twitter have become critical infrastructure for people to communicate and share ideas, maintaining security and uptime is essential. But these companies can't do it themselves and some have turned to bug bounty programs to solicit the help from the public. For Twitter, it has found its program to be “an invaluable resource for finding and fixing security vulnerabilities.”

The company announced today that in the past two years, it has not only received 5,171 bug submissions from 1,662 researchers, but also paid a total of $322,420 in rewards. From this payout, the average amount was $835 and the highest was $12,040. In honor of its history, Twitter pays in multiples of 140. It was noted that last year, a single researcher received more than $54,000 in rewards for reporting vulnerabilities.

Started in 2014, Twitter enlisted the help of HackerOne to manage its bug bounty program. The minimum payout is $140 and the company is looking for any possible vulnerabilities relating with remote code execution, authentication issues, cross site scripting, cross site request forgery, and more. And it's not just with Twitter's core service, but also with Vine, Periscope, Fabric, MoPub, ZeroPush, and its mobile apps.

Above: Chart displaying the trend of bug bounty submissions and payouts by Twitter from 2014-2015.

Image Credit: Twitter

Twitter's bug bounty program isn't unique as other companies like Facebook and Google also offer ways for researchers to inform them of vulnerabilities. However, Twitter's payout isn't exactly the most that one can receive. In January, Google revealed that it had paid security researchers over $6 million over the past six years - in 2015, more than 300 different researchers received over $2 million after finding 750 bugs.

Facebook shared that it has paid out more than $3 million since it started its bug bounty program in 2011, with $1.3 million given out in 2014 to just 321 researchers worldwide. The average amount received was $1,788.

While there's a difference in payouts among these three companies, the likely reason is because Facebook and Google are more diverse in their services and have hundreds of millions of more users than Twitter that there's a greater chance of having a vulnerability be exposed.

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New Twitter Update Coming Soon: How Marketers Will be Able to Maximize All 140 Characters

What was once a rumor that Twitter would update its 140 character count guidelines is now official in the social media sphere:

In the coming months, we're introducing new ways for you to express even more with a Tweet: https://t.co/l1sWRvXWqr http://pic.twitter.com/zzhWpRcABs

- Twitter (@twitter) May 24, 2016

Twitter announced Tuesday morning that within the next few months, usernames, quoted tweets, photos, and other media attachments will no longer count against the tweet's 140-character limit.

Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey told the BBC that “It doesn't make sense to anyone. People have had to work around it. That just looks ugly, and it's confusing.”

This big, new Twitter update will surely change the way people use Twitter personally and how social media marketers use Twitter for business.

Now that it's imminent, let's jump into what the newest Twitter update will mean moving forward and how marketers can maximize those 140 characters for your business or brand.

We've come a long way over the past 10 years! What began as a simple 140-character text message has evolved into a medium that allows people and businesses to express themselves with everything from photos and videos to polls to animated GIFs.

just setting up my twttr

- Jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

So what exactly will be featured in this newest Twitter update?

Media Attachments in Tweets

How many times have you written what feels like the perfect Twitter update and the second you add the obligatory animated gif of a puppy doing adorable puppy things, the character count falls to -1? If you're anything like me, it happens nearly every single time.

Twitter's recent announcement details that when your tweet includes attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your tweet!

Every single character in a tweet is super important, especially when you only have 140 characters to work with. Being able to add highly engaging media attachments in tweets without having to sacrifice any characters at all means that we'll soon be able to use the full 140 characters to craft the best updates that we possibly can, with more context than ever – this feels like a massive win for social media marketers everywhere!

@Replies on Twitter

When replying to a tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. For now, we want to emphasize the word 'replying' here since we know that those will definitely be free characters. However, when it comes to the initial @name tweet, there are some conflicting reports on how Twitter will be counting those characters – most seem to believe that those will indeed count against your allotted 140 characters.

For marketers, this will make having conversations on Twitter so much easier, especially when replying to several people at once. It's not uncommon for a Twitter conversation to pick up so many usernames that it makes having an actual conversation nearly impossible (Hello, Twitter canoe!). This change in @replies will allow marketers to continue that conversation without sacrificing the quality of the tweet due to a rapidly shrinking character count.

Goodbye to .@replies

Twitter is aiming to simplify the rules around tweets that start with a username. Currently, if you want to broadcast a tweet to all of your followers that starts with a @username, beginning the message with a period is the common practice. Without the initial period, only people who follow both you and the person you're tweeting at will be able to see the message in their feed.

With this change, all new Tweets that begin with a username will now reach all of your followers. This means that you'll be able to drop that first period at the start of the tweet and have it reach all of your followers, despite it being directed at a single user. Bonus tip: you can use that extra character to add a happy face emoji to your tweet

7 Content Marketing Tools You Need To Be Successful

Did you know that 59% of B2C marketers and 55% of B2B marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend this year?

Content marketing has become an extremely competitive arena now. Businesses are vying to develop their strategies with an eye on engaging their audience with interesting content, that encourages profitable behaviors of the target clientele.

In today's competitive market, you have to invest wisely to make your brand hog the limelight. It's equally important to judge how well your content marketing strategies are performing against the industry standards. That makes planning your content marketing strategy a vital element in your business success.

Ideally, your strategy should have one simple tenet at its heart – to deliver unique, fresh and informative content that entices your target audience, taps into their interests and drives them to engage with your brand.

For this, you need to understand the buyer's journey. It's interesting to note that 70% of the buyer's journey gets complete before they even reach out to a sales rep.

So focusing just on sales would make you miss out on a major part of the buyer's journey.

With marketing automation tools, you can influence this journey at different stages:

• Awareness: This is the start of the buyer's journey, where your buyer is probably unaware of your business and that they have a need. At this stage, you should focus on creating awareness for your business and offerings so that your buyers start to understand what you do, and how you can help them address their needs/overcome their pain points.


• Consideration: Buyers now have already shortlisted a few companies and start to do deeper research to arrive at a decision. You should use your marketing automation tools to keep track of their growing interest and adjust your content so that they see what can influence their decision in your favor.


• Decision: Buyers are ready to make a purchase and start thinking and comparing about implementation, costs, customer support etc, which will decide the company they'll finally buy from. This is the time to get brand-specific with your content. You can use customer testimonials and case studies to brag about how others have had a positive experience with your offerings.

Let's have a look at some tools that will help you experience content marketing success, and nurture buyer's all the way along this journey:

1. BuzzSumo for research

This tool lets you find what works in your niche, for the competition and who to promote your content to for optimal exposure.

From finding hot and trending content around a topic, viral pages on competitor sites, content to share and curate, quality guest posting targets and influencers in a niche. To locating target placements for your infographics and promoting your content on Twitter, you can do it all with this tool.

Without a doubt you can boost your content marketing ROI with BuzzSumo.

BuzzSumo's available plans are:

• Pro at $99/month – the starter plan for small teams and bloggers.


• Agency at $299/month – Agency teams can opt for it where they will get the Facebook Analyzer along with all Pro features.


• Enterprise at $999/month – This the best bet for brands and publishers that need advanced functionality for large teams.

Where is it used?

When referred to a number of instances where business owners and webmasters use this tool, it is seen that most of them use it either to find influencers within their industry, or writers who can contribute to their blogs.

Richard Moynihan, Social Media Editor at the Telegraph, and Jimi Smoot, an entrepreneur, use BuzzSumo to search influencers in their respective fields. Whereas, AJ Ghergich, of Ghergich & Co. uses BuzzSumo to track which content is performing well and then outreach and contact bloggers and writers to write for their website.

2. CoSchedule for organization

Managing the content on your website or blog is a breeze with this editorial calendar. With Co-Schedule, you can now keep your content as fresh, consistent and engaging as possible. This will help you fortify your web presence and grow your readership.

Thanks to its great layout, CoSchedule lays out all your scheduled posts with ease. You can even see all your scheduled social media posts in one place. It's drag-and-drop feature, seamless integration with WordPress, easy scheduling of social media posts, rescheduling an old post (after checking from the dashboard how many times it has been shared and from where it has received the most traffic) are other features that make your content marketing job that much easier.

You can even use asks and comments on posts to create workflows for your team without emails. Some other features of CoSchedule are:

• Manage Google Docs Content


• Convert Google Docs & Evernote Content to WordPress


• Manage Evernote Content


• Several integrations to simplify your content marketing tasks

CoSchedule plans available are:

• “Solo Standard” at $15/month (per calendar billed annually) or $19 month-to-month for a single user, 5 social profiles; it's suitable when you start building your audience.


• When you plan to use premium integrations and custom workflows to save time and publish even faster, “Solo Marketing” for a single user, 10 social profiles is suitable. It's available at $39 month-to-month or $30/month (per calendar billed annually).


• “Solo Automation” is fit for those aiming to work smarter with auto-pilot publishing, robust social automation and data driven intelligence. This plan is available at $79 month-to-month or $60/month (per calendar billed annually).

Where is it used?

CoSchedule is a widely used editorial calendar that helps keep content fresh, consistent and engaging. Webmasters and site owners have claimed that they have seen a considerable growth in readership after they started using CoSchedule.

Arienne Holland, the Director of Marketing and Customer Experience at Raven said that their marketing team had to send about 75 fewer emails than before.

3. Crazy Egg for optimization

Apart from a heat map, Crazy Egg offers scroll maps, overlay maps and the confetti report. All these together help you get valuable insight into how your content is performing.

The heat map report displays actual clicks of your visitors to let you know how they engage with your website. Scroll maps gives you insight into time spent by visitors in viewing particular sections of your page.

You can use Crazy Egg to re-prioritize your vital content to areas of your more popular pages. The overlay displays a bunch of little colored markers, attached to every section that has been clicked.

To get more information about a particular section, you just need to open the relevant marker attached to it. Extensive information about each click is given by the confetti report. So, you can categorize clicks by country, browser, referrals and devices used to check how your content is doing and make adjustments where needed.

Available plans for Crazy Egg are:

• The Basic plan at $9/month for starting out. This plan provides daily reports for 10 active pages and 10,000 visits per month.


• Growing businesses should use the Standard plan at an annual fee of $19/month. This plan provides daily reports for 20 active pages and 25,000 visits per month.


• Plus at $49/month is Crazy Egg's most popular plan. It offers hourly reports for 50 active pages and 100,000 visits per month. It also comes with mobile heat maps, advanced filtering and priority email support.


• To get all that you need, Pro at $99/month is your best bet. It offers hourly reports for 100 active pages and 250,000 visits per month. Other features are same as the Plus plan.

Where is it used?

When researched about the areas and reasons people used Crazy Egg for, it is seen that many use it to increase conversions, a few use it for improving their website design, while others use it for Local SEO.

Softmedia and Conversion Rate Experts saw a rise in conversion by about 51% and 25.9% respectively. Pagely used this tool to identify Design Flaws, while Local Visibility System used it for improving their Local SEO.

4. ConvertPlug for increasing email subscriptions

This is touted as the best WordPress subscription plugin currently available. Apart from bringing back your abandoning visitors, this tool can help you gain more leads and subscribers. So, if you are struggling to get subscribers for your newsletter, whitepapers or other content, ConvertPlug can help.

With it, you can;

• Build a robust email list


• Promote videos


• Drive traffic to your site/blog


• Share updates with your subscribers


• Get useful insight from analytics to fine tune your content to boost visitor engagement


• Offer coupons and special deals to bring back those visitors that were previously abandoning your web pages.


• Capture more leads and boost ROI

You can start using ConvertPlug at an unbelievable price of $21. This price tag includes QC by Envato, lifetime future updates and 6 months support. You can also pay just an additional amount of $6.30 to extend the support period to 12 months.

Where is it used?

ConvertPlug is being widely used to build effective email lists and hold back abandoning visitors. Ivailo Durmonski, in his case study posted on http://www.narrowem.com recently, said he experienced about 412% rise in email subscribers within a week of using ConvertPlug.

5. MailChimp for email marketing

Email marketing plays a key role in a business's overall content marketing strategy. You can use MailChimp to automate your emails and send them to different audiences.

This tool lets you:

• Create your own newsletter or leverage one of its several elegant templates.


• Target different audiences by segmenting your mailing list based on preferences, behavior and previous sales.


• Send out your newsletter every time you update your blog, thanks to its RSS-to-email option.


• Know how well your marketing campaigns are doing by sending reports detailing who's opening your newsletters or sharing them on social networks. With hundreds of app integrations for apps you already use, importing content from other sources and tracking your campaigns' performance is made easy.

MailChimp also has apps that facilitate work on the move from iPhones and Androids.

Pricing plans for MailChimp:

• Free: If you have less than 2,000 subscribers, you can send a maximum of 12,000 emails every month for free.


• Growing businesses: Businesses with varying subscribers (from 1,001 – 1,500; 1,501 – 2,000; 2,001 to 2,500 and 2,501 – 2,600) can take their pick from plans costing $20, $25, $30 and $35 respectively.


• Pro Marketer: This enterprise-level package is suitable for 1,001 – 1,500 subscribers to 2,501 – 2,600 subscribers. Pricing varies from $20 to $35.

Where is it used?

The average open rate for emails is usually seen to hover around 20%. But, with the use of the automation feature of MailChimp, it was seen that the open rate was doubled instantly.

6. Buffer for social media scheduling

For busy business owners, managing their social media accounts and keeping them updated with fresh posts is an ordeal. Buffer brings a great solution by automating the process.

With Buffer, you can:

• Manage multiple Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn Accounts


• Set up your own updating schedule


• Add/Change/Delete updates Easily


• Use Buffer with different browsers, leveraging its many extensions, apps and extras

Pricing for individuals:

• Individual for Free: For 1 user, 1 social profile per platform and 10 scheduled posts.


• Awesome at $10: For 1 user, 10 social profiles per platform and 100 scheduled posts.

Teams and agencies can choose from three plans namely Small ($99), Medium ($199) and Large ($399).

Where is it used?

When you think of promoting your business on social media – time, consistency, statistics and analysis are among a few things you need to think of. Buffer is an effective tool that has been helping a number of companies and businesses spread across social media. In a case study that speaks about Campaign Monitor using Buffer, it is seen that using the right features for the right purpose will help triple social media shares.

7. Google Analytics for tracking traffic

Gaining insight into which content your users are engaging with the most, as well as what works and what doesn't, can help your content marketing strategy significantly.

With Google Analytics, you can:

• Find out your most popular web pages


• Find out your most popular/most shared blog posts


• Spot the type of content users are looking for on your website (with the site search functionality)


• See the clickable page elements your visitors interact with the most (using In-Page Analytics Reports within the Google Analytics' Behavior section)


• Leverage UTM parameters to attach additional information to links that point to your website, thus collecting more in-depth data about the clicks leading visitors to your website


• Determine the location of visitors who make up the major chunk of your web traffic


• Detect the online campaigns that bring the most traffic and conversions.

Where is it used?

Google Analytics is a trusted tool that can be used to track the performance of all your marketing efforts.

Companies like Panasonic have used Google Analytics to improve the Return on Investment (ROI) obtained through their digital marketing campaigns. While tracking the performance and sharing it with various media tools, they managed to increase ROI by about 30%.

Wrap

Content marketing isn't just about framing what to write and how to write. It's much more than that. You not only need to create interesting, precise and engaging content, but have to ensure that it reaches your target audience and is shared by them across various social networking platforms.

It's an uphill task but with the tools mentioned above, you can automate a sizable chunk of the job and get useful insights to fine tune your content to make it work.

Wooing your visitors and keeping your existing and potential customers happy with tailor-made content was never this easy!

Guest Author: Soumya Nair. Dedication, timely efforts and passion are the key protocols that keep me succeeding as an outstanding Digital Marketer, blogger and trainer. I love what I do. My main target is to get conversions. Believe in learning and exploring digital marketing.  Thanks for reading  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Soumya_M_Nair

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The Pirate Bay cofounder on Facebook: 'From a democracy standpoint, Mark Zuckerberg is a dictator'

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The Pirate Bay cofounder Peter Sunde is not a fan of Facebook's online domination. Specifically, he argues CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg has too much power.

“People in the tech industry have a lot of responsibilities but they never really discuss these things … Facebook is the biggest nation in the world and we have a dictator, if you look at it from a democracy standpoint, Mark Zuckerberg is a dictator. I did not elect him. He sets the rules,” Sunde told CNBC. “And really you can't opt out of Facebook. I'm not on Facebook but there are a lot of drawbacks in my offline world. No party invitations, no updates from my friends, people stop talking to you, because you're not on Facebook. So it has real life implications.”

The latest numbers from Facebook show the social network has 1.65 billion monthly active users. This is more people than in all of China, the most populous country on the planet with some 1.38 billion people.

While it's certainly true that none of these users voted for Mark Zuckerberg to be CEO of Facebook, the reality is he does not make every decision at the social network. Like any major tech giant, the company has teams for every little functionality, and they set the rules.

But Sunde wasn't done there. He also referenced the time when German Chancellor Angela Merkel confronted Zuckerberg at a United Nations meeting about anti-immigration posts on Facebook.

“That's kind of what it comes to. We send major leaders of Europe to ask him to stop interfering with our local culture,” Sunde told CNBC. “How did we end up in a situation like this? If politicians were a little bit more hard-core and actually believe in this they would be able to fix it. If we say Facebook doesn't agree with our rules in our country we are going to stop Facebook in our country. We censor a lot of things, why not censor Facebook?”

The obvious problem with this line of thinking is that censoring Facebook would not stop “anti-immigration posts” on the Internet. If you block hate speech or any sort of commentary in one place, it will simply move to another platform.

At the end of the day, Facebook provides multiple services that users value. The only way to truly diminish its power is to offer something better. Given that the company makes the larger majority of its money from advertising, it will continue to grow as long as its users continue choosing its services.

Speaking of ads by the way, Sunde is hoping to disrupt the Internet's dependence on the revenue source. In March 2010, along with Linus Olsson, he cofounded Flattr, a content-funding tool that lets people donate real money to show their appreciation for what they consume online.

The next step was revealed just last month: Flattr Plus, aa partnership with Adblock Plus to make the process automatic. If successful, the project could indirectly impact Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's bottom line.

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The 7 Best Ways to Fight Banner Blindness

A few days ago I received a call from a friend of mine, a marketing manager at an e-commerce company.

It's a story I've heard all too often these days: He'd purchased banner ad space - unfortunately, the results didn't meet his expectations.

To say the least, he was very frustrated. He needed to get the word out about his company and their products. But the networks he was using weren't delivering.

Frankly, he didn't know what to do.

The problem he was facing is called banner blindness.

After our conversation ended, I thought to myself, is banner blindness killing the ad industry? And perhaps more importantly, what can we do to beat banner blindness?

After some thought… I felt compelled to share my thoughts with you.

The ad industry isn't going anywhere. On the contrary, it's more effective than ever thanks to online advertising. And in this blog post, I'm going to share with you how to beat banner blindness.

But first, what is it?

What is banner blindness?

Banner blindness happens when people ignore banner ads.

Think of yourself for a second. You probably saw a few banners today. Do you recall any of them or their offers?

Many studies have shown that online users ignore banner ads and the messages they contain. In fact, only 14% of consumers remember the last ad they saw and the company or product it promoted. Even with today's sophisticated targeting technology, relevance remains a key challenge – only 2.8% of online browsers think ads are relevant.

To sum up the research: Banner blindness especially affects savvy online users, who look for something specific on a website and ignore banner ads as unimportant. Over the years, people have become conditioned to ignore traditional banner ads and have stopped noticing them almost completely.

It's true, banner blindness exists and it's one of the advertising industry's biggest challenges.

Marketers and publishers need to take note and take the necessary steps to improve the ecosystem.

So how do you fight banner blindness?

Here are the 7 best ways to beat banner blindness, and increase your traffic and cash flow.

1. Check your ad placement

People disregard the routine, the usual, the cliché. And that's even more true when it comes to advertising.

So try to place your ads in unconventional places, including:

• Above the fold where it'll get more visibility. (This is at the top of the page)


• In the text or right after it. Most people start reading a page at the top and give it more attention.


• Within your blog - for example, between the posts in your blog.

Remember, your ad can be beautiful, interactive, surprising. To improve your click-through-rate (CTR), experiment as much as you can with elements that attract attention like social media buttons and video.

Pro Tip: Google Adwords allows you to test your ads performance. Also, try native advertising leader Infolinks – who conducted a banner blindness study and developed anti-banner blindness ads. For example, Infolinks' InFold ads appear in a unique, above-the-fold location.

Try Infolinks today

2. Use relevant content

As an advertiser, you should understand your audience's needs and be able to offer a relevant solution.

Avoid being irrelevant and ignored:

• Don't deliver ads without first identifying what your visitors want.


• Use relevant content, including the keywords that reflect the interests of your primary audience.


• Choose the right ad network so you're linking your audience to publishers who are relevant to your audience and your specific focus.


• Use cookies to create relevant personal ads – which will help your site identify people who've previously visited your site.

If you make sure your site offer ads that are targeted, useful, relevant and delightful, then your visitors will respond more positively.

Pro Tip: Amazon reports that contextual links within blog posts work best. Taboola and Outbrain are good platforms to test this out on.

3. Try non-standard sizes, colors, and ad formats

Seeing the same thing over and over again gets boring – and can decrease the performance of your ads.

• When creating ad space, choose non-traditional and memorable locations to improve user recall. Non-standard formats and designs will also help you avoid being overlooked.


• Create your banner as a part of the page, not as an outer ad.


• Use unusual colors and brand personality, extraordinary ideas, animated banner ads and even 3D design. In addition, applying motion effects could also be a method of increasing interaction.

Pro Tip: Make sure your banner ads have a compelling story and an emotional hook to get people's attention. Try Canva or Infolinks.

4. Optimize for mobile

Nowadays, in order to keep up with today's younger, smartphone audience; you need to have a mobile and social presence. When you do, consider:

• Using video for your mobile banner ads


• Activating your Facebook campaigns


• Including a 'Call Now' button in your ads

Note: A key benefit of online advertising is that you can easily track the effectiveness of your banner ads, including how many people are seeing it, how many people click on it, and much more.

Pro Tip: Make sure your site is mobile-friendly. You can test your site to see what you need to do to make your site look as good as possible on smaller screens. You'll be glad you did!

To make sure people can view your content on the small screen of a smartphone, it's especially important to decrease clutter by serving fewer ads. Publishers who reduce clutter on their pages will attract advertisers who will pay more for premium, uncluttered space.

5. Participate in affiliate programs

Affiliate programs allow you to partner with other companies who share the same audience. By showing your ads on an affiliated publisher's site, you can easily combat banner blindness.

Pro Tip: Infolinks' publisher referral program is one of the most beneficial programs in the industry today. It pays 10% out of the referred publishers' revenue during the first 12 months of your referral!

6. Follow your passion

To attract and keep an engaged audience, you'll want to publish content that people love. In my experience, the best way to do this is to create content about something you're passionate about. Whether it's nature, biking or technology – you can write blogs about it, share photos of it and build a strong community around it.

Find what you really love and transform your site by featuring that passion!

Pro tip: Many terrific blogs create a community of loyal followers by linking to other, related sites. Do you link your site to sites that you admire? Also, give your visitors relevant links within your blogs. For instance, the Infolinks' blog offers the best form of native advertising, giving your audience information that interests them – and you can make money, too!

Try Infolinks today

7. Experiment

Last – but definitely not least – if you're not getting the performance you want, experiment.

Consider each of the previous six recommendations – ad placement, relevant content, non-standard design elements, optimizing for mobile, affiliate programs and following your passion.

How can you transform the content you already have, including your site design and content calendar, to reinvigorate your visitors?

Pro tip: To re-energize your site and overcome banner blindness, consider experimenting with your site design.

If you're using WordPress, there are lots of custom templates you can choose from. When you do, see if you can come up with unexpected content like an interview, a gallery of photos from a trip, something totally different.

Remember, when you put your imagination to work, you can create amazing experiences for your followers.

A final word

What does it all add up to? More money for you!

Let's be honest: Banners are ads.

And they are a useful way for advertisers and publishers to spread the word about their site.

When ads are well thought out and provide the right information, they give your site visitors valuable information about products and services they may not be aware of.

To overcome banner blindness, create better ads. How? By concentrating on what your visitors are interested in. It's about their needs, not yours!

With the right ad network, placing compelling ads in the right locations will increase your traffic and your cash flow.

There are a lot of companies that can help you beat banner blindness. For many bloggers and site owners, you've probably tried many solutions. I've used them all too. Today, I'm here to highly recommend Infolinks. See why now

Plus, Infolinks is regularly introducing new features – including the recently announced AdShop. AdShop is a self-service advertising platform that allows you to advertise globally. Now, you can reach high-quality, targeted users with your ads, and only pay entry-level prices. Sign up to AdShop by Infolinks now

Do you have additional ways to beat banner blindness? Share your story below.

The post The 7 Best Ways to Fight Banner Blindness appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

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The 7 Best Ways to Fight Banner Blindness