Facebook Testing New App 'Moments'

Sharing To Get Easier And More Private

One of the criticisms lobbied most consistently against Facebook is the complicated nature of its privacy settings. No matter how many tweaks the site’s algorithm goes through, choosing who can see what you upload is frustratingly difficult. It’s nigh-on impossible to select only those on your friends list who’d appreciate that link to TheFappening your uni mates should see – it’s why my auntie won’t look me in the eye anymore. 

Fortunately, a new standalone app from Facebook HQ might be about to fix that. Codenamed ‘Moments’, the app has been described in some detail in an article on TechCrunch. Apparently, the app features a series of tiles aligned in a grid. Each square on the grid represents a different set of friends or family, so when you click it will only share whatever you post with that set of people. Naturally, this process will be much faster than fiddling with your privacy settings on a post-by-post basis.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Chances are, we’ve all experienced the horrific embarrassment of friends and family colliding over Facebook. While your friends know all the sordid little details of your time at uni (I even spoke to a girl one time. Don't tell my mum), your parents remember when you cried at an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine because you found the Fat Controller scary. The two parties should never mix, and the fear of it happening is currently agenuine reason to avoid sharing content on Facebook.

Unfortunately, we’re yet to see even the blurriest of screenshots of the app which might fix all that. In fact, apart from the description of its grid-based interface, we know pretty much nothing. All we do know is that it exists, and Facebook’s people are currently squishing its bugs. We're also told its design closely resembles Cluster, a third-party app which does pretty much the same thing.

Source: techcrunch.com

While it could be argued that those interested in the app could just switch to private messaging, some may find the chaos of a multi-user IM chat more trouble than it’s worth. Furthermore, the design of public Facebook is infinitely more pleasing than the design of its instant chats, with users able to like, share and respond to individual comments. In this sense, Moments may divide Facebook itself into dozens of little subforums, each featuring different groups of the people in your life.

While Facebook has a chequered past of app creation (I will personally give you £20 for every friend you have who uses Slingshot instead of Snapchat), they’ll hope that Moments will have sticking power. Facebook's failed attempts at app creation tried to steal market share from pre-existing, well-established apps, but Moments instead places a plaster over a problem they have with their own site.

The main Facebook app deals in content. Moments will worry about audience. 

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10 Creative Online Business Opportunities

Maintaining a steady flow of revenues as a web worker is a major challenge. Whether you’re freelancing for an ever-changing group of clients or selling products to consumers, it can be tough to know whether you’re going to make ends meet month to month. Business comes in waves, so anything you can do to make your earnings more dependable will help you sleep better at night.

We’ve already shared lists of ways you can grow your income with creative online business opportunity ideas (check our posts from April and last January), and we’re happy to present a new list of ideas to help you on your journey for scoring more online gigs.

So much of what’s touted around the web as opportunities to make money online ends up with the opposite effect. We’ve done the hard part for you and checked out the reputations of these sites and business models for you. (We still recommend keeping your guard up and watching out for scammers interacting with users on these platforms, though.) Whether you want to offer your services using a niche online marketplace or monetize your existing assets, there’s plenty you can try!

1. Sell Your Own Swag

Are you an artist, designer, illustrator or doodler? Are you working with a brand that has a strong visual identity? Got ideas for clever imagery or witty words?

All you need is an image file with decent resolution, and you can easily make it available for purchase on the internet as a tee shirt, tote bag, mug, iPhone case or whatever else you can think of. CafePress is the most famous of the sites that’ll handle the printing, processing and shipping on your behalf, but there are plenty of others that have good reputations too, including MySoti, Printfection and Zazzle.

You don’t need to pay any fees at all to the platform you choose, since they only print when there’s an order – and you’ll earn commissions on every sale. So you can get creative and promote your products on your website, with a dedicated microsite, with ads on other sites, on social media, or wherever else you think you can generate sales.

2. Menial Clicks During Spare Time

Do you enjoy mindlessly scrolling, finding images, clicking, evaluating data, dragging, writing five-word descriptions or copy-pasting in your spare time? Businesses often need help with these types of tasks, and sometimes it’s cheaper or easier to crowdsource than to write bits of code to do the work.

That’s where marketplaces like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and ShortTask come into play. Here you can take on nano-jobs that pay out a few cents each but are highly scalable and generally don’t require too much attention. Each marketplace has its own stipulations, culture and lingo, though, so be prepared for a bit of a learning curve.

3. Virtual Tutelage

Are you an expert in a niche area of knowledge? Can you teach someone to play baroque concertos on the ukulele? If someone has questions about how to store their power tools, can you give good advice on the fly?

There are dedicated web platforms where you can offer your services as an authoritative coach or tutor in exchange for money. Google’s relatively new Helpoutsis a full-on marketplace with video conferencing with customers, while Ether allows you to book paid appointments for phone consultations, with marketing handled by you offsite.

4. Drop Shipping for Risk-Free eCommerce

Drop shipping is a much-praised hybrid business model somewhere between eCommerce and affiliate marketing. Essentially, it allows you to sell other people’s products on websites that you manage, but with none of the risk. The vendor handles the billing, service and order fulfillment – all you need to do is drive the orders and you make commissions.

If you’ve built your website with Wix, you can easily add the 365 DropShip Product Catalog app to your website. There are zero costs involved, and you can earn commissions by hosting a full-on eCommerce-style shop on your site with products from several manufacturers and categories.

5. Leverage Your Social Influence

If you’ve got lots of Twitter followers who click on links you post, you can leverage this asset to make money by sending out sponsored tweets.

There are now several marketplaces where advertisers can post offers, includingTweetPeddler, ChurpChurp and SponsoredTweets. There’s a lot of volume in these directories, so you should be able to find offers to promote products that are relevant to your community of followers and won’t kill your social media credibility.

6. Niche Tourist Services

If you live somewhere that tourists flock to, you might be able to profit from the greater economic ecosystem that comes along with a robust tourism industry. While most travelers purchase solutions for lodging, transportation, eats and guided tours from mainstream, big companies, there are growing numbers of them who prefer to do business with independent locals – it’s often cheaper and more authentic.

If you don’t need your car every day you can rent it out with RelayRides. If you do regularly use your car, then you can offer people rides for money using Sidecar. You can also rent out your home, or part of it, using Airbnb, or offer quirky special interest tours of your locale on Vayable.

7. Cook and Host Dinners

Along similar lines, there are plenty of people who are interested in eating out but have grown tired with the anonymous, polished corporate flavors of restaurants. If you can cook up delicious and friendly dining experiences in your own home, it’s easier than ever to reach customers interested in joining you.

Marketplaces for home-hosted meals include EatWith, Cookening and HomeDine.

8. Sell Your Collectibles

Are your baseball cards from the 80′s collecting dust in your attic in a box next to your childhood Star Wars action figures? Are you unlikely to ever play that Santana album you have on vinyl ever again? You may have a hard time letting go of this stuff, but your life will feel lighter once you do. You can make decent money selling it, too.

Just take some photos, determine fair asking prices, post on Craigslist or eBay, and the inquiries from interested shoppers ought to come pouring in.

9. Offline Tasks via Online Marketplaces

People are posting one-off jobs in droves on platforms like Redbeacon andTaskRabbit, which means you can make extra money by running errands or performing handyman tasks for people in your spare time.

To pick up these gigs, you’ll need to pass a background check, so get started with building your profile with plenty of notice.

10. Review People’s Apps

If you’re a gadget junkie, gamer, tech tool lover or an early adopter, you’re likely to get a kick out of SoftwareJudge. Here you can get paid to try out recently launched apps and write what you think of them.

Social proof is a powerful force when it comes to app marketing, so publishers are willing to pay top dollar for your opinions – a quality review can earn you up to $50.

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The New Pinterest Analytics Tool: How To Use It for Business

Are you struggling to measure your Pinterest efforts?

Do you want an easier way to track pins and engagement?

The new Pinterest Analytics tool gives you access to a variety of data, including how potential customers interact with your pins beyond your website.

In this article I’ll share how the new Pinterest Analytics features help you get the most out of your Pinterest marketing.

Pinterest Analytics Overview

Pinterest’s original analytics tool only shared information about how users interact with the Pin It button installed on your website. Unfortunately, those stats couldn’t give you a complete picture of whether your overall Pinterest efforts were working.

The newest Analytics features give you access to quite a bit more data, such as stats on engagement beyond your Pin It button. Now you can track actions that originate from your Pinterest profile—including boards and the pins you share (whether the pins are from your own website or not).

Check out new features found in the new Pinterest Analytics.

Why is this important? Many successful pinners spend more time curating and sharing content from websites other than their own.

The updated Pinterest Analytics tool gives you the data you need to see the bigger picture and determine where to spend your time and effort to maximize your presence on Pinterest.

The Pinterest Analytics Dashboard

To gain access to Pinterest’s new analytics, you must have a Pinterest business account. When that’s in place, head over to your analytics dashboard.

Your Pinterest Analytics dashboard shows an overview of the three main categories:Your Pinterest Profile, Your Audience and Activity From (Your Website). You can click on each category to see additional details and have a better idea of how your Pinterest efforts are paying off.

New features include three categories overflowing with data.

The bottom of the page features your five Top Pin Impressions from the past 30 days. At a glance you can see how many repins, clicks and likes these pins have and whether they are rich pins.

Below I’ll go through the main analytics categories and show you what you can find in each.

#1: Your Pinterest Profile

The Your Pinterest Profile category has four sections: Impressions, Repins, Clicks and All-Time. The Impressions section shows your top 50 pin impressions and your top 20 boards with top pin impressions.

If you click over to Repins, you can see your 50 most repinned items and which of your boards have the most repins.

The Clicks section is pretty much what you’d expect: A detail of your 50 most-clicked pins and your 20 boards with the most-clicked pins. You can also see the number of repins, impressions, clicks, likes and # of pins.

Impressions metrics are easy to find.

The All-Time section is particularly helpful. Here you’ll see your 50 most repinned pins, your pins with the highest search rank and power pins (pins with a high mix of clicks, repins and more). As you review this data, note which topics people are searching for and provide more of that content.

Don’t forget to repin your top pins to different boards or group boards. It’s a good way to get that content in front of new pinners who may not have seen it the first time around. Keep that momentum going!

#2: Your Audience

It’s not often that we get a free glimpse into how consumers self-select their interests, but that’s exactly what the new Pinterest Analytics tool is giving us in the Your Audience category. For the first time, Pinterest is sharing details about the users interacting with your pins.

The Your Audience category offers an important filter option. In the top right of the page you can choose to filter data by All Audiences or Your Followers. All Audiences highlights the entire audience of Pinterest, while Your Followers focuses on just your followers.

Viewing and comparing data from both are vital to understanding how your Pinterest performance measures up to your goals (and your audience’s needs).

Compare data from All Audiences and Your Followers to see the big picture.

You can use the All Audiences and Your Followers filters on both the Demographics and Interests tabs. The Demographics tab is easy enough—it shows you basic audience data, including location, language and gender.

You may find the Interests tab a bit, well, more interesting. If you want to find out what people are talking about or looking for, this is the place to be. Definitely look at how your All Audiences data overlaps or differs from the Your Followers data. By comparing them, you can home in on the topics your audience is searching for and create content to match.

As you compare the data, ask yourself these questions: Does your content match the interests of your typical pinners? Is your content reaching the intended target audience?

Keep an eye on how your competition is using Pinterest.

Another important new feature lets you see the other brands your followers are following. Knowing which business accounts are similar to yours is extremely important on Pinterest—it’s always good to keep an eye on the competition.

#3: Activity From (Your Website)

Encouraging people to pin articles and images from your website is a key element of Pinterest success. The Activity From (Your Website) category shows your website’s 50 top pins and 20 top boards and how their impressions, repins and clicks stack up.

You also have access to three other important stats: Original Pins, All-Time and Pin It button.

Original Pins shows you the 50 newest pins shared from your website. This is valuable because you can easily tell which topics are resonating with your audience (and create similar content for even more pins).

See how effective pins from your website are.

As with the Your Pinterest Profile category, the All-Time option gives you the top 50 pins that are most repinned, rank well in search and are power pins.

Click on the Pin It button link to see how many times your website’s Pin It button has been seen on your site’s pages, how many times it’s been clicked and most importantly, how many times someone has pinned from your website.

Options Each Analytics Category Offers

You’ll notice that the main categories have some option overlap. For example, all categories allow you to export data so you can use it in your own spreadsheet and create reports as needed.

Each of the pins listed within a category is clickable and takes you directly to that pin’s page. Listed pins also show a thumbnail of the specific image users pinned. You can use those popular pins as inspiration for your own images.

Another universal feature is the ability to see how people are accessing Pinterest(e.g., via the web or a mobile device) and filter your data based on that information.

Find out how your audience accesses Pinterest and optimize your content accordingly.

In the top right corner, click Apps to see a menu of different filter options and click the one you want. For example, if you only want to see analytics for users who access Pinterest via iPad, choose iPad to filter your data.

When you’ve determined how most of your audience accesses Pinterest, turn your attention to your images and optimize them to look great on the apps your audience prefers.

Finally, on each page you have a box called Here’s a Tip. These tips are customized based on Pinterest’s evaluation of your stats.

Pinterest gives you tips on how to improve your Pinterest stats.

I strongly encourage you to take advantage of Pinterest’s free advice so you can make the most of your Pinterest marketing efforts.

Sign up for the Pinterest Business Newsletter, Pinterest Business Blog and Success Stories for even more insider tips.

Wrapping Up

Whether you just need a quick high-level overview or want to delve into specific performance factors, you’ll find everything you need in the revamped Pinterest Analytics tool. Take advantage of every feature to discover what’s popular with your audience, how they’re repinning from your boards and what the competition is up to.

What do you think? Are you using Pinterest Analytics? Which feature has been most helpful? Please let us know in the comments below.

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How To Make Money On Youtube - Videos You MUST Make To Profit Massively ...

7 Tips to Create Facebook Ads That Convert

Are you already advertising on Facebook – but not yet seeing the results you hoped for? If you want your ad spending to yield more fans, leads or sales, you might just need to tweak your strategy a little bit to start seeing a better return on investment.

Here are 7 of my favorite Facebook ad tips for tweaking your approach, so your next Facebook ad results in higher conversion rates – and more business for you.

#1 Reach More Fans Through the News Feed

The number of users accessing Facebook on mobile devices has skyrocketed in the past year – today, 60 percent of all users are visiting Facebook on their phones and tablets. This has pretty serious implications for advertisers because when users access Facebook via mobile, there is no right-hand column – which means you can’t afford not to focus at least some of your advertising on News Feed placements.

And there’s data to back that up – according to a study by SocialCode, Facebook mobile ads earn up to 2.5 times more than desktop-only ads.

To get your Facebook ads into the News Feed (specifically Page Post ads, Page Like ads and Sponsored Stories), you have to use the Power Editor. It’s different (and a little more complicated) than the ads dashboard you’re used to, but there are plenty of resources to help you learn how.

The best way to get started is by using the free Power Editor Chrome plugin.  (How to set it up: Open Chrome, install the Power Editor, and access it here. Select “all” accounts when prompted so you can access your past ads too. Facebook has created a guide to using it.) But the main feature you’ll want to pay attention to is the “Placements” feature, which enables you to take any ad (like a Page Post Ad – my favorite) and select whether you want it to go to your users’ Desktop News Feeds, Mobile-Only News Feeds, or both. When you choose one or both of these options, your ad will ONLY be seen in the News Feed and not in the right-column.

I always choose both “Desktop News Feed and Mobile-Only News Feed” to get maximum exposure in the News Feed. Why do I not choose the right-hand column as well? Since making this shift to News Feed only ads, I’ve gone from about 0.1% Click Through Rate to between 4%-7%! To put it simply, ads in the News Feed get much more engagement than ads in the right-hand column on Facebook.

The main feature you want to pay attention to in the Power Editor is the Placement feature, which enables you to take any ad for a Facebook Page, like a Sponsored Stories or Page Post Ad, and select whether you want your ad to go to your users’ desktop News Feeds, mobile-only News Feeds, or both. I always choose both for maximum exposure.

#2 Jump-Start Your Lead Generation With Facebook Offers

One of my favorite things to do is to create Offers for my fans and non-fans in order to build out my email list. Offers used to be something only available to businesses with a brick-and-mortar location, and worked a lot like emailed coupons – but now any kind of business can use them.

Rather than create an Offer to sell a big product – say, a $1,500 coaching package – what I recommend is using an Offer to promote a FREE giveaway in exchange for users’ email addresses. After all, Offers get emailed right to your users – and their inbox is where YOU want to be!

So set up a simple landing page for your giveaway that requires an email and a name, and then create an Offer (with an enticing thumbnail) that links up to the landing page. Next, turn it into a Promoted Post directly via your Page wall (or, for more targeting options, go into the ads dashboard instead). You can also try targeting non-fans – or even fans of your competitors – if the Offer is juicy enough. (But see tip #7 first.)

The best use of Facebook Offers is to create list-building opportunities like this example here from The Kickass Life Facebook Page.

If you want to try and drive sales vs. leads, try promoting the post to current fans (pin it to the top of your Wall for an extra push) and offering a specific dollar discount or free option, like this one:

When using Facebook Offers for direct sales, such as those that promote a discount or coupon, first experiment by only posting it to your current fans. If it’s well received, then test it with a targeted non-fan segment.

#3 Super-Charge Your Sales With “Custom Audiences”

 Sometimes, the conversion goal for an advertising campaign is simple: sell more.

In that case, it makes the most sense to target people who are already leads – like your email list. In the past, though, there was no convenient way to sync up your email list with your Facebook marketing.

That has since changed with the addition of the “custom audiences” feature – now you can upload your email list directly to Facebook, so that when you set up an ad, you can select them as a “custom audience” in the targeting section of the ads dashboard. Advertisers are already reporting a higher conversion rate on their ad spends (in one example cited by Facebook, an auto company saw a 24x return on their ads by using custom audiences in combination with Offers).

 #4 Save on CPC With Hyper-Targeted Advertising

If you focus most of your early marketing efforts on building a solid Facebook fan base – 5,000+ fans – you will start to see MUCH higher conversion rates right off the bat when you target fans-only in your ad campaigns. But you do need that core, solid fan base first so you have some critical mass to actually sell products or services.

How much savings can you expect? Well, as a result of targeting some of my key ads to only my own fans, I’ve paid as little as $0.07 a click – and seen FAR better conversions and sales as a result.

When you work hard to build a fan base first, you reap the rewards by getting better ad conversions…without breaking the bank!

As important as advertising is, your ability to create a thriving community – and engage them often – is the real secret sauce to getting better and better returns on your ad spending. For more tips on Facebook engagement, click here.

#5 Play by the 20-Percent Rule

Facebook recently revised their guidelines for Facebook ads that appear in the News Feed, like Promoted Posts, Offers and ads that you target to mobile Facebook users. Any image-based ad that goes out to the News Feed of users – like a still from a video advertising your next webinar, for example, or a product image offering a discount – can have a text overlay, but that text can’t take up more than 20 percent of the total ad image.

Make sure your image-based ads don’t get penalized before they get results!

What NOT to Do:

This ad will not be approved for placement in the News Feed because the ad image is more than 20% text. Instead, use ad images that are mostly graphic with minimal text.

Try This Instead:

This ad image in this Page Post Ad is a great example an image with less than 20% text. This ad would be approved for the News Feed.

#6 Get More Fans With the New “Like” Ads

To my point in tip #4, all businesses need a community first. Your ability to actual turn Facebook fans into leads and finally, paying customers is key to your business success — to the extent that you can keep those numbers engaged and genuinely interested, of course!

Which is where the new “Like Ads” come into play. These are designed mainly to help you grow your total number of fans, and are useful to anyone in the early stages of community building (or whenever you’re ready to grow your existing community). Unlike most ads, these “Like Ads” do well when they appear in the right-hand column, so I would not limit them just to the News Feed.

When non-fans see your Page Post Ad in the right-hand column on Facebook, they will have an opportunity to LIKE your Page directly from the ad.

To get new people interested and engaging with your brand, it’s important to establish trust and affinity up front. I know I talk about the power of video often, but this is one spot where you really want to think about leveraging video. It’s personal and it builds instant trust more than any product image, promotion or deal ever could. Keep it short, tease with one clear benefit and always include a call to action!

#7 Get Smarter With Promoted Posts

Promoting posts is a great way to get more eyeballs on your status updates. Whether your goal is engagement (maybe you asked a fun question you want fans to weigh in on), conversions (like driving fans to sign up for a free webinar in exchange for an email address) or sales, the fact is, Promoted Posts work best with one audience: yours. Your fans already know you, trust you, and want to engage with you.

A Promoted Post – and specifically, the “Sponsored Story” that gets automatically created with it – looks  a lot like spam to a user who has never liked your Page or interacted with your brand before. What would you do if you saw this in your feed and you’d never heard of the brand advertising it?

Between you and me, we’ve all seen these and thought they were tacky. But there’s a real danger that a user might complain that your Promoted Post is spam. So my best tip is toonly target fans with Promoted Posts. They are the most likely to engage and convert anyway, so why widen the net? And take that extra step to delete the Sponsored Story that gets automatically created (here’s how) too, to be extra safe. Just because some advertisers take advantage of Facebook doesn’t mean you should.

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6 Simple Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

As of March 2012, there were 644 million active websites. That’s more than half a billion - in other words, a lot. In this sea of content, images, videos, and social media, it’s easy, as someone with a struggling website, to feel overwhelmed. That said, there is no greater tool your business or brand can have than a website that both promotes your product or service while adding value to your readers’ experience. By generating awesome content and engaging traffic tools to expand your reach, you can boost website traffic while simultaneously establishing yourself as a trustworthy member of the digital community.

Here are 6 quick, creative, DIY ways to improve your website traffic.

1. Optimize your content for search engines

To increase the visibility of your website and boost traffic, incorporate content-rich search words that will earn your site more play in popular search engines. Since much website traffic comes from search engines like Google - especially when a user is discovering your site for the first time - you want to make sure you’re employing simple on-page SEO techniques, like consistently stellar website performance, keyword-rich text and titles, frequent content updates, etc. When incorporated organically, these are great ways to increase your presence in search results and bring more traffic to your site.

2. Improve your social media presence

Your social media outlets should function as an extension of your website. Maintain fun and active Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts that don’t only promote your content, but serve to build up your personality and profile. Become active in social communities that are relevant to your content. In addition, make sure your content is easily shareable by implementing social plugins on your website (Like, +1, and Tweet buttons) in order to increase your site’s visibility on social networks.

3. Get grabby

When sharing your content on social media or in link trades, think about creating titles for your posts and pages that will be more interesting to readers. Check out sites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed - they are experts at titles that are creative, honest, and engaging without being sensationalist. We’ve researched and collected some best practices on title length and word choices to determine what kinds of titles generate the most clicks. Think about ways you can implement these best practices to make the content you’re sharing more clickable.

4. Paid traffic

In order to generate high traffic, many websites rely on the pay per click (PPC) model, a form of internet advertising in which the advertiser pays for clicks on their ads, only paying for actual traffic driven to their website. Depending on your budget and industry, this might be a good option for you. If you do want to take your site to this level of visibility, paid content discovery platforms like Google Adwords, Facebook’s PPC platform, and Outbrain Amplify can radically extend your website’s reach and increase your traffic. These content discovery platforms can help extend your reach and bring you a whole new audience that otherwise might not have been looking for you.

5. Find your community

One of the best ways to increase website traffic is to become a hub for your industry. By connecting with other writers, bloggers, and thought-leaders in your field, and forming a virtual community, you will be positioning yourself as a trusted go-to. One way to form real and lasting connections is by prioritizing giving back - ie. employing the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” mentality. Participate in link trades with other related site owners. And don’t only wait for others to notice you: drive traffic to other websites you respect and trust, and be sure to participate in conversations in forums or on social media to establish yourself and your site as a dynamic community member.

6. Provide real value

While all the above techniques may help you to gain new readers, you also need to think about keeping the ones you have - and how to inspire those readers to tell their friends and share your content. Create useful, unique, and timely content that your readers will organically want to share with their friends, and that will inspire those who are site owners or bloggers to link to your content. These links are a great organic way to improve your SEO. Use videos and images when appropriate to provide a more dynamic reader experience. Proof your content for grammar and spelling, and reveal your unique voice, point of view, and expertise. Word-of-mouth is still one of the most trusted ways to boost website traffic, and to generate this level of engagement, your website needs to focus on providing real value - both entertainment and educational - to your audience.

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