Ad.ly vs. Sponsored Tweets: Twitter Advertising Showdown

You want to make money from Twitter. You joined all 12 networks mentioned in this blog post and see that you’ll get the highest paying offers from Ad.ly or Sponsored Tweets. Here’s a comparison and my recommendation on which one you should use.

Both sites insist on disclaimers in each advertising tweet. Each Ad.ly tweet will usually have a “(Ad)”, while the disclaimer from Sponsored Tweets are customizable, with tags like “#spon”, “ad” or “sponsored”.  This is the same for the tweet too, where Sponsored Tweets will allow you to customize the message (allowing it to be approved by the advertiser) that are tweeted. Yes, some people disagree to tweeting ads, but

You can cash out to PayPal when you reach $50 on both networks, but only Ad.ly offers a cheque option.

Ad.ly – So far I’ve made $152
Ad.ly is the latest Twitter Advertising network, having just launched on the 22nd of September. Similar to Sponsored Tweets below, this service mostly caters to high end advertisers (my two advertisers were Microsoft and NBC) wanting to connect with medium to high-end Twitter users. In fact, founder and CEO Sean Rad says that he wants Ad.ly to be the Federated Media for Twitter. They have an impressive list of high-profile celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Brooke Burke, Nicole Richie, Brody Jenner, Dr. Drew and Samantha Ronson. ad.ly also allows you to donate a portion of your earnings to a charity of your choice. Their launch party video is shown below:

Sponsored Tweets – So far I’ve made $315.18
Sponsored Tweets is IZEA’s brand new advertising network. IZEA is a social media marketing company and the world leader in sponsored conversations. IZEA operates a network of over 250000 bloggers and 25000 advertisers. Izea has numerous sponsored advertising networks prior to SponsoredTweets, including PayPerPost and SocialSpark. This being said, SponsoredTweets is geared more towards Web Celebrities like John Chow and Shoemoney, although smaller tweeters will still get opportunities.

Yes. I’ve made more from Sponsored Tweets than Ad.ly. But Ad.ly is a newer network, without the backing of a parent advertising company with an expertise in Internet Marketing (yet).

Here’s the conclusion. Sign up for both Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets. But look out for Ad.ly, which are backed by large advertisers like Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, NBC, Nestle and Microsoft. A bigger company will usually mean a bigger advertising budget, and thus more offers available to you. For example, my advertisers are NBC and Microsoft. Ad.ly also has these “limited time” offers, where you’ll have to accept the ad within 24 hours. Check your email often!

Sign Up for Ad.ly

Sign Up for Sponsored Tweets

To Your Success,
Josh Lam

Have you made anything from Ad.ly or Sponsored Tweets? Which one do you prefer? Comment below.

Spotify Invites: I Have Loads!

UPDATE 2: NO INVITE REQUIRED. You’ll need a Dutch IP address. Get a Dutch web proxy or VPN. If you need a Dutch based IP address VPN, use mine: (if you don’t know how to set it up, just google it. sorry there’s too many OS’es to cover all the instructions)

PPTP VPN
address: vpn.joshlam.com
username: joshlam1 to joshlam10
password: joshlamvpn

Alright, once you’ve connected, hit up this website.  Under “1. Choose a product”, select “Open, It’s free!”. Fill in your account details and  submit. Now, connect to the Dutch VPN every 2 weeks when your Spotify client does a location check. Hope that helps everyone!

This doesn’t work anymore, see above for update. UPDATE: You don’t need an invite anymore. Here’s how you get Spotify without an invite:  Use this web proxy with a French IP address and  enter this URL: https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/. Click yes to the warning and sign up using the Zip Code “69008″. Download the Spotify client and sign in. Done.

This isn’t Entrepreneurial at all. But in case you didn’t know, Spotify is the best free music streaming service ever. In my words:

It’s like having your whole iTunes library (but more), without the GB’s on your hard drive. And you can take it anywhere. It’s free and legal too, unlike your LimeWire music collection.

Eww, streaming. I hate streaming. That’s what I thought. But once you try Spotify, you’ll never to back to listening to YouTube videos. Period.

So why isn’t everyone using Spotify if it’s so great then?
1. Because you have to in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, France or Spain. I sorted that excuse out for you already. Read this blog post “How To: Access Spotify from Anywhere!“.

2. You need to be invited.
Leave a comment below (enter your real email address in the email box) and I’ll send you an Invite within 24 hours. Excuse gone too. Don’t worry if I run out. I have loads (i.e. 100+) to giveaway.

I wrote this blog post after a bunch of Finnish people kept asking me for Spotify invites. Direct quote from one of them: “you are somekind of legend here cause my friend told about you and that you can help ”.

In Finnish: Kirjoitin tämän artikkelin jälkeen joukko Suomen kansan kysyi minulta Spotify kutsuu. Suora lainaus yhdeltä heistä: “Olet somekind tarujen tässä syy ystäväni kertoi sinusta ja että voit auttaa ”. No, haluan antaa kaikille Spotify kutsuu. Niin jätä kommentti, ja lähetän sinulle yhden.

Swine Flu!

Swine Flu was officially confirmed by Chief Executive Donald Tsang at around 8:50.

My Wi-Fi Driver Problem (And How I Fixed It!)

I recently got an old laptop from my dad. The first thing I realized was that the the Wi-Fi wasn’t working really well, if working at all. At first, I thought that it was just acting up, and it’ll be fine after a restart. Not happening. The laptop was as stubborn as hell. I could see my Wireless Network, but I could never connect to it at all.

So then I thought that there could be a problem with an outdated driver, or worst, a corrupted driver. Of course, being a Compaq laptop, I headed straight to HP.com to download the latest drivers. I downloaded them and hoped for the best. But luck wasn’t on my side. The Wi-Fi problem was still there. The driver had to be outdated on HP’s website, especially considering how old the laptop was (It’s the Compaq Presario B1900 shown above, in case you wanted to know).

Secondly, I searched and combed all over Broadcom’s website for Driver downloads. There wasn’t any downloads for my specific wireless card. Broadcom is more an OEM parts (i.e. Wireless Cards) manufacturer, thus I’m guessing they provide the downloads straight to the Computer Hardware brands like Dell, HP, lenovo etc. So, back to square one.
I was stuck. I googled the web for “Broadcom drivers”. Trust me, that was completely useless. Third party sites either had the outdated driver as well, or only had it for a specific Operating System (except for mine).

I guess all that googling led me to UniBlue. I used to use their RegistryBooster and knew I could trust them. They’re not your typical Internet Software scam, claiming to give you a “new computer” whilst the software did nothing. I knew their software actually worked.
I found out that they released a new product called DriverScanner and downloaded it RIGHT away. A quick scan of my drivers showed that I had numerous outdated drivers. And guess what? I saw that my Wireless Card was on that list!
Like I mentioned, I knew I could trust UniBlue from my previous experiences with their software. I went straight to their website and purchased DriverScanner 2009 with the little money I had in my PayPal balance. I then got the full version, which actually allowed me to download the Drivers.

I know what you’re going to say right now – “I bet that still didn’t work” or “back to square one”. Well, for once, you’re wrong. After the driver installed (The latest version was 4.170.77.3, while I had 3.xxx.xx, which was pretty outdated in terms of version number), I re-entered the Wireless settings and waited patiently for the dreaded Connecting dialog box in Windows XP. “Connected!” it finally read! I was so happy, as it meant I could take the laptop to school, as the only way to connect is Wi-Fi there. As I bonus, I downloaded the Bluetooth drivers as well, as to my surprised, the Bluetooth started working as well! (I previously thought there wasn’t any Bluetooth on the laptop)

Disclaimer: This is a true story. I truly, from my heart, recommend UniBlue 100%. If you have any driver problems, I suggest you download DriverScanner first to check how outdated your drivers are, then buy the program if necessary.


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I am Now Publishing on AddsYou.com

http://www.addsyou.com
username=MjAwOC0xMS0yOSAwMDozMDoyOQ==

Amazon’s Give 1, Get 1 OLPC XO program now live

You know the drill: for $399 you buy one OLPC XO laptop and a second is sent to a child somewhere in the developing world. Same deal as last year only now with the help of Amazon’s powerful retail reach. Devices begin shipping in about 30 days — a bit longer outside the US. Naturally you can also just gift the $199 laptop direct to a kid of OLPC’s choosing. About the quickest way to become a donor short of meeting a hotel stranger in possession of roofies and a bathtub full of ice. 
Read US site


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5 Basic Things Windows 7 still Can’t get right

While I’m generally pleased with Windows 7 so far , I’ve found myself shaking my head every now and then. In some instances it’s obvious that Microsoft has been paying attention. Other times, not so much.

I’ve noticed five issues so far that, though minor, leave me wondering if Microsoft is going to be able to pull off a really great OS by its projected mid-2009 release.

.ZIP Files
Windows 7 still takes forever to extract files from a zip archive, which leaves me dumbfounded. An 18.4mb zip containing only two files took me almost 23 seconds to extract using the right-click context menu’s extract all option. Using 7zip’s context menu extraction, the same operation took less than three seconds.

Zip files have been supported natively since Windows XP. Seven years later, there’s still no improvement. Third party applications are so much better at handling .zip files it makes me wonder why Microsoft bothered adding support in the first place.
FTP Support
Is it really too much to ask that a Network Place I’ve created actually behave like a local drive? Plenty of free applications that I use can do it with no problem, so why not Windows? When I tried to edit a text file on my FTP server, Windows 7 tried to open it in Internet Explorer – which instantly had a fit of colossal proportions. Multiple windows spawned and re-spawned when I closed them. Ultimately, killing the iexplore.exe process put a stop to it. 

Shouldn’t an FTP location behave like any other network place, such as an SMB share? If Windows can’t handle that, maybe FTP shouldn’t be an option.

Adjusting the Clock
This used to be so easy, and now it’s not. Now when I double click, the pretty little calendar/clock applet appears and hides. Why? I understand that my clock is supposed to synchronize automatically, but what if it doesn’t? With XP, double clicking the time took me directly to a screen that allowed me to change it. Now it takes a right click, left click, and then a click on another button.

Well, at least the UAC prompt is gone. Yay.

Network Connection Repair
Once again, this was such a simple operation in XP. Right click the system tray icon, choose repair, and wait a few seconds. It worked well, too. Vista introduced the god-awful diagnose and repair system. It takes forever and it hasn’t solved any additional issues for me – and Windows 7′s version is just as bad.

If diagnose is here to stay, maybe the solution is to present both options right up front. I for one would be quite happy to just have the old repair option back.

Managing Network Connections
The connect to menu in XP is configurable, and I like being able to expand it. Vista dropped that option, and it’s still gone in Window 7. I also can’t right click a system tray icon and view all connections like I could in XP. I’ve got to go through the network and sharing center first.

It’s needlessly overcomplicated. Getting rid of little conveniences like this is no way to improve an operating system.

Am I alone in this? If you’re running Windows 7 do these things – or other little things – frustrate you, too? Share with your fellow readers in the comments!

Windows 7 Will Only Have One ‘Ready’ Sticker

Unlike Windows Vista’s Four stickers, Windows 7 will just have one “Ready” sticker. After receiving endless flak for their silly tiered Vista Compatibility scheme, Microsoft has decided to issue a single “Windows 7 Capable” sticker for hardware that works with the new OS. That means no more “Windows Home Basic”, “Windows Ready”, “Certified for Windows” and “Windows Vista Capable” labels on every piece of hardware in the computer aisle at your local shop.

Epic Android bug inteprets your typing as system commands

The philosophy goes something like this: the great thing about Linux is that it’s secure, and the great thing about open-source software is that it’s thoroughly and constantly vetted for robustness. So to that end, Android should be pretty rock solid, right? Perhaps, but the overwhelming enormity of this particular bug definitely gives us pause. It turns out that G1 firmware revisions RC29 and earlier literally interpret everything you type as command-line operations, so if you happen across a legit command, it’s going to get executed — with superuser permissions, no less. No, seriously. Just go to the messaging app, the browser, or anywhere else a text box is convenient, type “reboot,” press the enter key, and watch magic happen. We’ve tested this on two G1s, both with RC29 firmware, and have gotten this to consistently work on one of the two, so your mileage may vary — but either way, this needed to get patched on the double. Fortunately, Google’s been quick about it, rolling a fix into the RC30 build that’s being rapidly pushed to users as we speak, but man… how did that get through?

6 Steps For Building Successful Websites

Web design isn’t art. It involves a whole collection of different skills — from copywriting and typography to layout and art — all fused together to create an interface that not only features a pleasant aesthetic but that communicates function and facilitates easy access to its content.

But in order to combine all these elements of Web design together and achieve successful results you must have a clear direction, a direction that will guide each and every aspect of your design towards common goals. You must think strategically.

What is strategic design?

Strategic design is the fusion of your organizational goals with every aspect of your design process. You aren’t simply designing a user interface that looks good and is usable and accessible. You’re designing an interface that will help you accomplish your organization’s objectives.

There are many websites out there that look fantastic and sport the latest trends in design yet often fail miserably in their intended function. Design trends are, of course, important because they give you fresh inspiration and new techniques, but the implementation of those techniques and styles needs to be intelligent and focused. For example, a blog isn’t a marketing brochure; you should focus on usability and readability rather than style. Similarly, a promotional website for a computer game should feature graphics and styles that portray a specific feel and style; the aesthetic is very important here.

When the designer simply implements a look and feel that is fashionable at the moment (think Web 2.0 trends) without any thought of how they fit the function of the website or the business behind it, the end result is unlikely to be very effective.

Web design is all about crafting an interface that communicates function, is usable and accessible and exudes the right emotion and feeling. Effective Web design needs all of these elements to be in tune with the goals of your website and in sync with the organizational objectives behind the website. Strategic design is all about identifying those goals and using them to guide your design.

Implementing Strategic Design

Let’s take a look at how we can use six steps to think strategically about a Web design project:

1. Establish your goals

One of the first things you need to do before starting work on a Web design project is to be clear about your client or organization’s goals. What are you trying to achieve with the new website or redesign? What is the website’s main purpose? Ask your client, your manager or yourself what those are. If they or you don’t know yet, then they should be discussed and agreed upon. A clear direction is essential if you want your design to have a purpose.

Remember that a website isn’t a piece of art; it’s an interface that serves a function. That function may be to sell products, to deliver informational content, to entertain, to inform or to provide access to a service. Whatever that function is, your design must focus on fulfilling it. Goals are also important, especially if you’re doing a redesign. Ask why you are doing the redesign: are you looking to grow the number of sign-ups, decrease the bounce rate or maybe increase user participation?

Take a look at the design of the New York Times website above. Its function is to deliver informational content. The minimalist interface serves this function beautifully by fading into the background.

In contrast to the New York Times, AdaptD is a Web design studio, so the goal is not to deliver a lot of content but to impress visitors with its design, showcase a gallery and advertise the company’s services. The visuals are very important here, and AdaptD delivers a browsing experience with beautiful imagery and strong colors.

2. Identify your audience

Who your audience is will play a big role in how your website should look and function. There are many demographics here that can influence your design, ones like age, gender, profession andtechnical competency. A computer game website for a younger audience needs a different style than that of a serious business journal. Usability should play a bigger role for older and less technically savvy audiences.

Who your audience is will not only influence the general aesthetic of the website but will also determine a lot of smaller details, like font sizes, so make sure you’re clear about who will be using your website.

This is the unsuccessful jQuery rock-star redesign. The designer went too far in trying to create excitement and so failed to cater to the more serious, techy audience. Since then, the rock-star graphic has been replaced with a more conservative look.

Disney’s target audience is kids. The intent is to entertain and involve this young audience, and the design does it by wrapping the content in a fun, colorful interface with a lot of visual and interactive elements.

3. Determine your brand image

A lot of designers tend to get a little too inspired by the latest trends and then implement them without thinking first about what sort of image they really should be conveying. Glossy buttons, gradients and reflective floors may work for some websites, but they may not be right for your brand.

Think about color. Think about the feel you want to achieve and emotions you wish to elicit. Your design should embody the personality and character of your brand. Everything has a brand; even if you don’t sell a product or service — for example, if you run a blog — your website still has a certain feel that makes an impression on your visitors. Decide what that impression should be.

Carbonica is a website aimed at helping people reduce their carbon emissions. The environmentally friendly image of the website is crafted using a lot of recycled paper images and textures, as well as earthy green and brown tones.

Restaurantica is a restaurant reviews website. Its design illustrates this by taking on the look and feel of an actual menu you would see in a restaurant.

4. Goal-driven design direction

You’ve established the purpose of your website, set some goals you want to achieve, identified your audience and determined your brand image. You can now proceed to implement it. So how do youmake design decisions sync with your strategy? Let me illustrate this with a likely example.

Suppose your main objective is to increase the number of subscribers to your Web service. How can your design help accomplish this goal? I can see at least three things here that will make a difference:

• Make the “About” snippet on your landing page as clear and concise as possible. Your visitors must not have any confusion about the function of your website.
• Use color and contrast to make the registration button or link stand out. If people can’t find it, then you won’t get many sign-ups.
• Streamline the registration process by removing unnecessary and optional elements; people can fill those out later. If the form looks long, people may be put off of filling it in.

These are just three ways you can lead your design towards accomplishing the goal of increasing the number of sign-ups to your service. Your goals may vary, but the strategy is the same: shape and focus all the design elements towards meeting those goals.

The same strategy applies to your brand and audience: design the aesthetic that best suits it. If your website’s focus is entertainment, then create an “experience.” You are free to use a lot of color and imagery to shape that experience. On the other hand, if you’re designing a website that is focused on information consumption, for example, a blog or a magazine, then focus on usability and readability. Create an interface that fades away and doesn’t distract the user from accessing the content.

Stubmatic is an online box-office application. Their external website has two purposes: explain what the service does and get people to sign up. New visitors may only remain on your website for a few seconds, so if you don’t want to lose them you must be concise. You can do this by:

• Using large imagery and diagrams to illustrate the function of your product or service.
• Showing screenshots of your application. People will want to see what it looks like before they commit to a download or sign up.
• Providing a tour, using descriptive examples of how your service can help them solve a problem. Show a video if you can; the less effort people need to make to understand how your app works the better.
• Having the sign-up link accessible from all pages.

To succeed, the website must make the best use of the very limited amount of attention visitors will be giving it by not only informing but educating them about what your product does, and selling thebenefits it provides. Stubmatic uses design elements effectively to pursue those goals.

TechCrunch is one of the more popular tech blogs. Its new design removes every single unnecessary graphical element from the page. What’s left is just the content, advertising and navigation. Subtle lines and grey shades give the page structure, yet the interface is almost invisible and places content straight into the front row. For a blog that posts several new articles a day, this format is ideal because it facilitates fast and easy access to the content.

5. Measure results

Once you’ve designed and deployed your website, it’s time to measure your success. This is just as important as the first two steps because until you test how well your design performs, you won’t know whether or not it is effective in fulfilling your goals.

If your goal is to increase the number of sign-ups to your service, measure it and see if your changes are making a positive impact. If you want to increase the number of subscribers to your blog, check your RSS stats. If you want to increase user involvement, see if you get more comments or more forum posts or whatever else is relevant in your context.

You can, of course, also ask people for their feedback, and this is a very good way to check if you’re on the right track. Be careful though not to implement every suggestion people make. Everyone has different tastes and wants, so everyone is going to have a different opinion about what your website should look like. If you do collect feedback, look for patterns; see if there are common issues that crop up and deal with those.

Measuring various website metrics is a whole science unto itself and is beyond the scope of this article. But however in-depth your analytics are at this stage doesn’t really matter; the important thing is that at the very least you have some way of measuring your key objectives. You can use this information to see if you’re moving in the right direction with your design and with any future changes you or your client make.

Even if you’re on a tight budget, you can use free tools like Google Analytics to get a lot of data on how your website is being used, including overlays of your pages to see what links people click on most as well as the ability to track conversion funnels.

6. Kaizen

There is a Japanese philosophy called “Kaizen,” which focuses on continuous improvement usingsmall steps. When you work on your website, you should be thinking of Kaizen because the version you’ve just published is not the final version. There doesn’t even have to be a final version.

You can always make improvements, and the very nature of a website will allow you to introduce these at any time. This is because a website isn’t a magazine that you print and sell: once a magazine copy is out of your hands, you cannot make any changes or fix any spelling mistakes or errors. A website, however, sits on your server: if you find a mistake, you can fix it right away. In the same vein, you can introduce gradual improvements and updates to make your website more effective inserving its function.

Using the results of your measurements, you can identify problem areas. Perhaps your visitors cannot find the RSS feed link, or your bounce rate is too high or an important page on your website isn’t getting enough visits. Whatever the problem is, there will always be a way to improve things.

Conclusion

The main gist of strategic design is simply common sense: you’re making something for a specific purpose, so of course it should fulfill that purpose through its design. But it is actually very easy to lose track of your goals and end up with something that is beautiful but ultimately doesn’t work in its context. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of implementing the latest design trends just because they look attractive or shaping a section of your website to resemble another website that you really like without first thinking about why you are doing it or how it fits in with the purpose of your project.

Avoid falling into these traps by thinking through every design decision you make. Why is this button this color? Why are we using tabs? Why should we use icons here? Once you get into the habit of questioning your every design decision, the whole process will become much more focused. Think about the product or organization you’re representing. Think about the target audience and your brand. What will work in this context? What is expected? How can you use design to best fulfill the website’s purpose? Don’t just build a beautiful website: make a website that really works.