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There’s a breed of individual who exists on the internet who most likely couldn’t make it in any other area of life. They’re what I call “forum experts” and they are out there every day, extending their reputation with their mighty and frequent postings. They scream “believe me” as they litter forums with their nonsense.

What constitutes being a forum expert on any subject?

• Having a lot of time on your hands
• Posting first and most often – leading in post count
• Having a spiffy signature file
• Not listening to other’s opinions based on your own high status

Of course, the primary reason is number one. Having a lot of time on your hands is what will ensure you of forum expert status above all else, because the real experts in your field won’t have the time to argue

The internet is looking inefficient to me lately as I get way too many unrelated offers. I can see this is why companies like Google are so obsessed with personalization. They’re convinced that they can target offers directly to people’s needs. It makes sense, if they track user preferences, they might have another way to sell them something they actually need.

The programs on the internet that are attempting to “blast people” really can’t work in the long run, especially when they use automated means to market to everyone. I understand the law of large numbers, but I also think conservation of energy is a good principle to follow.

I’m spending my time lately making my landing pages more specific and matching offers as much as I can. I have no patience for vague traffic.

Email marketing is incredibly effective, when done right. And one of the ways you can ensure you have it done right is by hiring an agency who specializes in email marketing. But the only way you can succeed is by being a good client.

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Here’s an interesting new buzz-phrase to become familiar with: bigseed marketing. Viral marketing is something almost every company has tried their hands at lately, most with varying degrees of success. But if they’re willing to kick-off the campaign with a “big enough seed”, their chance of failure goes down.

Standard viral marketing is based on an analogy with the spread of infectious diseases. If you start with a seed of individuals who spread the message by “infecting” their friends, the expected number of new infectious people generated by each one is called the “reproduction rate,” or R. If R is larger than 1 then you have a successful viral marketing campaign, if it is smaller than 1 then your campaign will fizzle out.

The point that the authors are making is that unlike infectious diseases marketers have a few more controls than diseases. First they can start with a much bigger seed. And with some of the new social networking/sharing tools that enable people to more easily forward messages to friends, they can also improve their message reproduction rate. And both those factors add up. Say that you have a reproduction rate of 0.5 in your campaign and that you send it to 10,000 people, then those people would pass it on to 5,000 and those would pass it on to 2,500 and so on – eventually reaching 20,000 people, twice your original seed. By having the ability to tweak both the size of the seed and the reproduction rate, you can optimize your campaigns – even when they are not totally “viral.”

If you increase either of the variables, your totals will jump through the roof. Everyone tries to capture the fire of viral marketing, but most fail. Is it because the seed they used just wan’t big enough to get the ball rolling?

Making a small change to my blog template has made the page views go up more than I would have thought. Changing from a three-column design to a two-column design has made the page views, and the number of people commenting go up.

I also made the fonts larger, so the text was a bit easier to read and the website looked a bit “more open” and friendly. All in all, the very subtle changes have added up to a lot more participation than the prior design.

This reminds me: “you can always improve something”.

One observation I’ve had that never seems to waver is that online traffic really appears to go down on the weekends. The obvious reason seems to be that people are just spending less time online. In fact, it appears the vast majority of folks go online at work.

Since companies are usually filtering the surfing habits of workers, it’s fair to say that this type of censorship ends up having a big effect on traffic and surfing habits. It’s amazing to me how many people will order personal items and the like from their jobs, but it has happened for years so I don’t think the trend is changing anytime soon. If the companies aren’t busting down on their employees and their behavior, it’s doubtful the activity will change soon.

Office workers are probably the biggest group of consumers online. If they ever formed a union, it would be a powerful one indeed, that could potentially shut down the internet. Office workers of the world unite!

Yahoo has been attempting to offer a number of different advertising options, and they’ve succeeded in extending their product line. Yahoo is offering the first major platform for mobile advertising.

The Yahoo Mobile Ad Network will include MobiTV, an early leader in delivering TV to mobile phones, Norway’s Opera, whose browser is featured on many phones in Europe and Asia, and Go2, a U.S. yellow pages service for mobile phone users. The first ads will run in the second quarter.

“We started with text search on mobile phones, then we had display ads, now we have video and in-game advertising is next,” said Marco Boerries, senior vice president of Yahoo’s Connected Life business unit. “For the first time, mobile publishers have access to a big mobile ad network.

This could be the start of something big. I would expect Google to follow suit rather quickly.

Here’s the latest in the new proxy series. Please welcome Bypass Firewall now. You can easily and quickly bypass firewalls.

Unblocking firewalls is what this new proxy does

Make sure to check it out. It should be very fast right now as it has very few users. That could change quickly, so make sure to be the first.

Here’s a decent search engine related interview that you should check out. RC Jordan interviewed by GrayWolf about Local Search. One of the first things you realize about RC Jordan, is just how long this guy has been around in search! That makes what he’s saying that much more interesting. He’s seen the changes, and comments on what he thinks the next big trend is.

It’s tough to argue with another fan of the long tail, when he says:

For many people in local search getting that trophy phrase of “widgets in Wisconsin” is all they focus on. Is that the best approach or is there a long tail for local search as well?

For those who have struggled through reading this far, it should be more than apparent that I think of the long tail first. Note, though,that I mentioned my affinity for themed pyramids and in-site linking. In the non-linear web, you’ve got to land them, then direct them as best you can. The themed pyramid seems to work for me. Of course, I try to weave the trophy phrase(s) throughout the site and, over time, I’ve seen the long tail pages push the site upwards for the trophy phrase, too. Now, whether this is on-site cause or the off-site effect, I don’t really care.

Local search and “long tail” converge? Perhaps they do. Local search promises to keep everyone on their toes for the next several years so you need to check out this interview, and the rest of GrayWolf’s series on local search.

So many trends are emerging right now, it’s an exciting time to be an internet marketer.

I guess that statement can’t really surprise anyone. Most marketing is crap, and people have come to expect it. If you go online, looking for an education in internet marketing, what you’ll find instead is people willing to sell you something.

Internet Marketing is no different from online marketing, except with a few technical considerations. But remember that people are still people and marketing is still an attempt to sell them something. So you have to be well grounded in the ways of marketing offline, at least with the basic concepts before you dive in online.

Keep a skeptical mind, and always track your results. No matter what you try, you can always determine whether your ROI was good or not. That alone should let you decide whether you’ve been effective with your online marketing or not. If you make more money, you’re doing something right.

Don’t give too much time to any effort that isn’t paying off. Switch your efforts at once to something that can pay off instead. This time of adaptability can save you a ton of money when your online marketing efforts go bad.