How to make money using the Internet

Ingrid Riley — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:15:53 +0000

I saw this and had to share it. And if you’ve been reading this blog enough you know I think very, very highly of Seth, in fact I am writing this from my desk which has all of the five books I’ve ought and read by Seth Godin. But check this post. It’s rich!! He says- Make money: not by building an internet company, but by using the net as a tool to create value and get paid. Use the internet as a tool, not as an end. Do it when you are part of a big organization or do it as a soloist. The dramatic leverage of the net more than overcomes the downs of the current economy.

The essence is this: connect.

Connect the disconnected to each other and you create value.

Connect advertisers to people who want to be advertised to.
Connect job hunters with jobs.
Connect information seekers with information.
Connect teams to each other.
Connect those seeking similar.
Connect to partners and those that can leverage your work.
Connect people who are proximate geographically.
Connect organizations spending money with ways to save money.
Connect like-minded people into a movement.
Connect people buying with people who are selling.

Some examples? I think it’s worth delineating these so you can see that the opportunity can be big, if that’s your taste, or small if you don’t want to invest heavily just yet.
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Jamaica Gleaner launches consumer info site gleanericonsumer.com

Ingrid Riley — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:52:17 +0000

With people minds on their money and how to make more and save more money on their minds, the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper has launched a micro site called iconsumer. The site gives how to advice on saving money, smarter shopping and budget advice covering topics ranging from technology, entertaining and house and home. The content is right now kinda thin and some of the top of the site links lead nowhere. So we’ll see where they take this one. They had previously launched sportscaribe.com for Olympics this year.It’s interesting to see the company repurposing and decentralising their content to these microsites.

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Herrd.com a suspected Malware site ?

Ingrid Riley — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:49:36 +0000

I’ve written about and have been using Herrd.com for many moons now and this week I’ve been getting this malware warning when I surf on over there. What’s up with that?

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Google’s New Search-Based Keyword Tool Tells You What Keywords You’re Missing

Ingrid Riley — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:39:13 +0000

Google released a new keyword last tonight, named the Search-Based Keyword Tool. This tool goes beyond what the other Google tools provide and tells you what keywords you are currently missing out on based on search query data from your site’s content.
I spoke with Google’s Baris Gultekin, Business Product Manager about the tool. Baris explained that the value in this tool is that it gives advertisers a look at keywords that they are currently not advertising for, that might bring in a positive ROI. For example, a site that sells watches can use this tool to find a popular model or brand that they are currently not advertising for.
Beyond the advertisers point of view, you can use this as a nice competitive analysis tool. You can see data about which keywords are relevant to any site on the Internet — so, if you are getting into a new line of business and want keyword data, just plug in the site’s domain and click go. More

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Mobile Messaging Reaches Record Numbers Worldwide

Ingrid Riley — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:09:16 +0000

Mobile messaging is experiencing a period of record growth, according to some figures released from VeriSign earlier this week. Looking at the numbers more closely, some interesting trends emerge. Those include the use of messaging for social and political change, marketing, such as that done by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s mobile campaign, and the use of mobile messaging for charitable donations.
Other sectors experiencing significant increases are the enterprise and financial institutions. In those two areas alone, mobile messaging has seen a 115% increase in only a year’s time, and much of that is thanks to the financial industry’s adoption of the medium for business to consumer communication.
According to new numbers being released by VeriSign, Inc., mobile messaging is a fast-growing trend worldwide. The medium experienced a surge here in the U.S. thanks to the recent presidential elections as Obama utilized the platform for making announcements, but that isn’t the only reason for the growth. More

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Just another Jamaican entertainment news site

Ingrid Riley — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:18:30 +0000

If I see one more Jamaican entertainment news site or blog with the same news, same pics and same music videos I’m going to scream! All of them are focused on the covering the same events, the same artists, the same music- I can’t find a single site with a fresh angle that’s engaging, compelling and will have longevity. Maybe I am yet to be told about it, yet surf on over to find it and if so, someone please help me buy a clue here.

Now while I’ll never have an issue with the continuous energy bubbling online and individuals getting in the know of and using blogging, open source and templates as tools to publish, I’d like to encourage them to do some homework to see how they can distinguish themselves in the market, attract readers and build an audience and maybe even advertising outside of the easy fall back guy Google Adwords. Well that’s if that’s what they want to do, because it’s certainly open season for dabblers, but as Seth Godin says and I’m a believer too- the market will only reward its attention to the ones that are remarkable. This is a challenge to us all.

So what inspired this rant… todiworld.com

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My LinkedIn Success Stories

Ingrid Riley — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:35:23 +0000

I had a bit of an email banter with a friend of mine about the benefits of sites such as linkedin.com and now a Caribbean version caribaxispro.com. She said, “You’re going to have to convince me of the benefit in signing up. It requires so much detail which I don’t know why I’d want to store in a public place and for what now?

Good question. Why bother? But if you are having an issue buying into why sites such as linkedin.com is of any use, just ask yourself this one question: Do you see any value in networking with Caribbean and global professionals, within and outside of your industry for the purposes of say - consulting offers, new ventures, expertise requests, business deals, networking, building a reputation in your company and industry?

I personally think that any self-respecting professional and entrepreneur should sign up and work the facilities of sites linkedin.com and Caribaxispro.com. While caribaxispro.com is young and not as heavy with members as yet as linkedin.com, using Linkedin.com can you some great practice and some early success, like I’ve had. . I went in and created a full profile, well 70% complete and because of that I got the opportunity to create, write and edit CaribbeanStartupBlog.com which is a part of a large and fast growing blog network focuses on startups and venture capital with over 100k unique readers monthly. Then I also met Gerd Leonhard who is a very influential blogger and has his own blog mediafuturist.com. And how we found me was by doing a search on LinkedIn.com for Trinidad, which is where he went for a speaking engagement about a few weeks ago, and my named popped up, he checked out this blog siliconcaribe.com emailed me to say how he found me, that he saw we were doing similar things, he emailed to make a connection. I can now move on to grow this relationship in any way I want to. I’ve so bought into Linkedin.com’s tag line- Relationships Matter.

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Are Tagged Photos on Facebook a New Source of Marketing Spam?

Ingrid Riley — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:48:05 +0000

My answer to this headline was a quick yes and I have been “victim” of this. Check this post from ReadWriteWeb.com. Has this happened to you? You receive a message on Facebook that you’ve been tagged in a photo, but when you go to look at the photo you discover that it wasn’t you at all, but some sort of product, service, or cause that a marketer is trying to promote. According to news from AdAge, this is the latest in guerrilla marketing efforts making its way through Facebook right now. It’s so slimy, we hesitate to even mention it here, lest we give anyone ideas. More

So, how does this work? Basically, a marketer looking to promote something tags a photo with several of their most influential friends’ names. Those “friends” aren’t necessarily supporting the given cause, they’ve just had their name hijacked for this purpose. That tagged photo ends up in the news feeds of the friends of those influentials as if it was a photo of them. After people click through to view it, they discover that it’s not actually a picture of their friend at all, but a message in support of some cause, product, or service. More

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Amuso’s Competition Platform Introduces Miss World To The Web

Ingrid Riley — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:23:33 +0000

Miss World is going digital. While many American readers may not be familiar with the competition (it isn’t the one owned by Donald Trump - that’s Miss Universe), Miss World is one of the world’s most popular televised events, and has a huge international audience. This year the competition has partnered with Amuso, a New York based media platform that specializes in contests, to bring the popularity of Miss World to the web. The competition’s portal at MissWorld.com will now offer a social network centered around the Miss World competitors, allowing users to send them messages, view photos, read about their interests, and vote on their favorite candidate. More

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Even Brilliant People Need The Right Opportunities

David Mullings — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:14:43 +0000

Entrepreneurs love to point to the success of “self-made” people like Bill Gates as proof that hard work, solid ideas and solid execution are the most important factors for success. But is that really true?

Malcolm Gladwell, the famous author of The Tipping Point and Blink, has a new book on the way called Outliers and it seeks to explain that opportunities due to your environment have more to do with your success than just your smarts.

In a recent interview for New York Magazine titled Geek Pop Star, he pointed out the advantages Bill Gates had because of his family and location: Gladwell cites a body of research finding that the “magic number for true expertise” is 10,000 hours of practice. “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good,” Gladwell writes.

“It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” Gladwell shows how Gates accumulated his 10,000 hours while in middle and high school in Seattle thanks to a series of nine incredibly fortunate opportunities—ranging from the fact that his private school had a computer club with access to (and money for) a sophisticated computer, to his childhood home’s proximity to the University of Washington, where he had access to an even more sophisticated computer.

“By the time Gates dropped out of Harvard after his sophomore year to try his hand at his own computer software company,” Gladwell writes, “he’d been programming practically nonstop for seven consecutive years. He was way past 10,000 hours.” Yes, Gates is obviously brilliant, Gladwell concludes, but without the lucky breaks he had as a kid, he never could have had the opportunity to fulfill the true potential of that brilliance.

How many similarly brilliant people never get that opportunity? I repeat the last question: How many similarly brilliant people never get that opportunity?

Success is not due to just yourself, but the environment and people you surround yourself with. That is why networking is so integral - who you know, who knows you and who you can raise capital from. Your environment can play a real role in making things easier. Of course, that does not mean that one should look at their surroundings and resign themselves to failure. Nothing worth having is easy to achieve.

If your current environment is not the best for your venture, it just means that you work harder and smarter, while finding ways to alter your surroundings to improve your chances of success.

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IrieCity.com another social network spun from Jamaican culture

Ingrid Riley — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:01:50 +0000

Iriecity.com is yet another social network born from the Jamaican culture. I like the sizzle that they seek to sell though…here’s their homepage pitch “ Irie can be described as being at total peace with your current state of being. The way you feel when you have no worries. But will it fly just based on that angle. Will there be enough of a buy in to make it a cool place for “users of all backgrounds can form friendships, chat, share ideas, photos and much more” as they say. There are so many Caribbean spun social networks I’ve written about a few over the past three years. Let’ see which ones people take on, which ones becomes leaders and which ones become a real money spinning business and that’s I that latter one a goal of theirs.

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