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Dosh Dosh - Making Money Online

A blog about internet marketing and social media. All substance, no fluff.

The Future of Content in the Age of Information OverloadOctober 7

The decline of newspaper popularity has been attributed to the rise of the internet and the proliferation of web-based content. With an extremely low barrier of entry and variable cost, the web allows anyone with a computer to become an independent publisher: As a result, the amount and variety of content online far exceeds print publications in most fields.

So how can newspapers survive and do well as a business in the future? Perhaps by cutting back and going more niche to provide content that features deeper analysis and investigative reporting. In an article entitled ‘The Elite Newspaper of the Future’, Philip Meyer suggests that the money and audience comes from specialized, not general media.

This particular quote explains in greater detail:

I still believe that a newspaper’s most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.

By news, I don’t mean stenographic coverage of public meetings, channeling press releases or listing unanalyzed co

How ‘Mini-Funnel’ Websites Can Help You Increase Traffic, Generate Leads and Build ExposureSeptember 15

Search engines are an excellent source of high quality web traffic. They don’t send visitors who ’stumble upon’ your website or accidently clicked on an ad banner. Instead, they send you interested visitors who type in a query while fully expecting to find what they need. They are engaged right from the start and ready to buy, browse or read.

If their desire is well fulfilled by your webpage, you may end up getting a bookmark, customer or repeat reader. Added bonus: search engine traffic is consistent and usually cost-free. Ranking well for several relevant keywords or phrases could get you a steady stream of visitors everyday. That’s why some businesses choose to hire SEO firms/consultants.

There are many factors involved in the actual ranking of a site on a search engine results page, one of them being the use of keywords in the domain name. While the use of a keyword or key phrase does not alone promise a high ranking, it does seem to be a factor to some extent, partially because the domain name is often used as the anchor text for links.

Why do I talk about this? Because one way to get more search engine traffic is to build many of what I call ‘mini-funnel’ websites for specific keyword phrase/search queries. All of these slave websites could be designed as pointers to funnel 

How ‘Surprise’ Helps Word-of-Mouth and Viral MarketingAugust 13

Emotional engagement is the key to viral marketing success. People share their everyday experiences by communicating them to others in and outside of their network. This social sharing is more rampant when the individuals develop intense feelings like fear, disgust, sadness, joy, anger and surprise.

Of all these emotions, surprise is a necessary ingredient which encourages people to pass on information they come across. Now let’s look at what surprise is and its impact on viral marketing. As partial reference, I’ll use a study from the Journal of Economic Psychology, one that examines surprise and its relationship to word-of-mouth.

What is Surprise and What Causes it?

Many researchers consider surprise a neutral and short-lived emotion that is elicited by unexpected phenomena or what is known as a ‘‘schema discrepancy’’. A schema is a theory that each person has about the na

The Key to Effective Viral Marketing is Emotional EngagementJuly 30

Viral marketing is the process of using peer-to-peer communications in order to rapidly spread information about a brand or message. The term ‘viral’ stems from the concept of a ‘virus’, a self-perpetuating phenomenon which infects whatever it comes in contact with, spreading itself in an expanding outward arc. Your message is the virus. The carriers are your audience.

People encounter specific data or ideas daily and pass it on to their friends and other people in their network. All things equal, one can say that information is shared more rapidly when the recipient has a strong emotional connection with the specific message. They adore it. They despise it. They are deeply puzzled by it. It makes them upset. It makes them happy.

Emotions are inextricably a component of social communication. As humans, we share our emotional experiences as a way to express our individuality and maintain our relationship networks. In a 2007 Indiana

How to Create Digg-Friendly Content: Cracked.com’s TemplateJuly 16

A while ago I wrote about using selective reporting to frame news, grab attention and make your content stand out from the rest of the competition. Now lets looks at creating original content specifically for a social media channel. How do you increase the chances of your article striking a nerve and spreading like wildfire within a specific community?

The answer is simple. I’ve mentioned it before. First of all, you need to start by gathering tactical knowledge on the specific website. Know your audience’s fetishes. Know what they love/hate and know what they talk about. Know what cliques exist within the community. Know what totems,  symbols, personalities and ideas are embraced by the general populace.

After knowing that, you can start to create content that is angled towards the specific audience. The mistake that most people make is not having broad appeal. A large general community has many members, each with different interests but a microscopic and overly technical focus on a small topic area may rob your content of the chance of truly