Shopping Faceoff: Amazon vs. eBay vs. Craigslist

Wow, check out the Mashable Polls for the past 33weeks, with amazing results, very indicative! You can join the poll for the next week as well: Amazon, eBay or Craiglist.

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Last week, as part of our Web Faceoff series, we asked which you preferred:Google TV or Boxee?

Google TV trounced Boxee with 600 votes, or 51%. Boxee garnered 395 votes to take 33% of the poll, while neither votes made up 16% of last week’s poll (188 votes).

It’s a new week, so it’s time for a new faceoff. This week, we turn to a new topic: shopping.

While there are many websites for buying or trading your things, three stand out with completely different models: Amazon,eBay, and Craigslist.

Which do you prefer the most: the straightforwardness of Amazon, the auctions of eBay, or the classifieds of Craigslist? Cast your vote in the poll below by Thursday, June 24 at 12:00 PT and let us know your rationale in the comments.

Which do you prefer: Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist?

Amazon
eBay
Craigslist
Tie: I don't have a preference out of the three

View Results
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Faceoff Series: Overall Results

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Week 1:
- Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome
- WINNER: Firefox, 4600 votes (Chrome: 3310 votes, Tie: 911 votes)

Week 2:
- Tumblr vs. Posterous
- WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
- Pandora vs. Last.fm
- WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
- Twitter vs. Facebook
- WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
- WordPress vs. Typepad
- WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
- Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
- WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
- TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
- WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Week 8:
- Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs
- WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)

Week 9:
- Apple iPhone vs. Google Android
- WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)

Week 10:
- AT&T vs. Verizon
- WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)

Week 11:
- Google vs. Bing
- WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)

Week 12:
- iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP
- WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)

Week 13:
- Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon
- WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)

Week 14:
- Old versus new Twitter retweets
- WINNER: Old style retweets, 1625 votes (New style retweets: 699 votes, Tie: 227 votes)

Week 15:
- Gmail vs. Outlook
- WINNER: Gmail, 3684 votes (Outlook: 980 votes, Tie: 590 votes)

Week 16:
- Boxee vs. Hulu
- WINNER: Hulu, 626 votes (Boxee: 591 votes, Tie: 106 votes)

Week 17:
- Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS
- WINNER: Nexus One, 6743 votes (iPhone 3GS: 2818 votes, Tie: 592 votes)

Week 18:
- Foursquare vs. Yelp vs. Gowalla
- WINNER: Foursquare, 1182 votes, (Yelp: 661 votes, Gowalla: 509 votes, Tie: 143 votes)

Week 19:
- AIM vs. GTalk vs. FbChat
- WINNER: GTalk, 2189 votes, (AIM: 1257 votes, FbChat: 511 votes, Tie: 203 votes)

Week 20:
- Music Ownership vs. Music Subscription
- WINNER: Ownership, 533 votes (Subscription: 299 votes, Tie: 237)

Week 21:
- Match.com vs. PlentyofFish
- WINNER: Plenty of Fish, 430 votes (Match.com: 334 votes, Tie: 187 votes)

Week 21:
- Google Buzz vs. Facebook Vs. Twitter
- WINNER: Facebook, 3353 votes (Twitter: 1828 votes, Google Buzz: 1298 votes, Tie: 651 votes)

Week 22:
- HTML5 vs. Adobe Flash
- WINNER: HTML5, 3892 votes (Adobe Flash: 1779 votes, Tie: 660 votes)

Week 23:
- Project Natal vs. PlayStation Move
- WINNER: Project Natal, 1268 votes (PlayStation Move: 668 votes, None: I don’t like motion controllers: 170 votes, None: I prefer the Wii: 150 votes)

Week 24:
- Chatroulette vs. Hot or Not
- WINNER: Chatroulette, 742 votes (Hot or Not: 281 votes, Tie: 99 votes)

Week 25:
- iPad vs. Netbooks
- WINNER: iPad, 3098 votes (Netbook: 1969 votes, Tie: 605 votes)

Week 26:
- Amazon Kindle vs. Apple iBooks
- WINNER: Apple iBooks, 1227 votes (Amazon Kindle: 928 votes, Tie: 118 votes, Neither: 276 votes)

Week 27:
- Next-gen iPhone vs. Droid Incredible
- WINNER: iPhone 4G, 9765 votes (Droid Incredible: 8175 votes, Tie: 1318 votes)

Week 28:
- Facebook “Like” vs. “Become a Fan”
- WINNER: “Become a Fan”, 3161 votes (“Like:” 1634 votes, Indifferent: 719 votes)

Week 29:
- Physical keyboards vs. Virtual keyboards
- WINNER: Physical QWERTY keyboard, 2563 votes (Virtual keyboard: 2010 votes, Prefer T9 typing: 176 votes, Tie: 346 votes)

Week 30:
- Google TV vs. Apple TV
- WINNER: Google TV, 1674 votes (Apple TV: 617 votes, Neither: 341 votes, Both: 242 votes)

Week 31:
- Twitter vs. Newspapers
- WINNER: Twitter, 1005 votes (Newspapers: 418 votes, Neither: 282, Equal: 211)

Week 32:
- HTC EVO 4G vs. iPhone 4
- WINNER: HTC EVO 4G, 5091 votes (iPhone 4: 3,680 votes, Tie: 556)

Week 33:
- Google TV vs. Boxee
- WINNER: Google TV, 600 votes (Boxee: 395 votes, Neither: 188)

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Google Voice Now Available to Everyone in U.S.

Google Voice is now available for everyone (provided you have a U.S. phone number).

The service, which started life out as GrandCentral, acts as a unified phone number. It can be used to make free calls to the U.S. and Canada, to send free text messages and more. Its voicemail system can even be checked by e-mail.

Now, after more than fifteen months of testing with invite-only accounts, Google Voice is ready for the masses.

As great as the service is, it hasn’t existed without controversy. Last summer, Apple was criticized when the company barred the Google Voice iPhone app from its App Store. The battle over Google Voice was arguably the first shot in the current Apple-Google war.

And earlier today, Business Week reported that Frontier Communications is suing Google over alleged patent violations within the Google Voice service.

For many users however, Google Voice is a wonderful solution to the increasingly complex web of communication profiles. Instead of having to try to maintain separate phone numbers, users can just have one central number forwarded to different devices based on time of day or location.

What do you think of Google Voice?

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5 Killer SEO Tips to Get Backlinks

The same, from a clickbank blog, this article is about getting backlicks, hope you find it helpful.

"Posted by: Steven Clayton, Guest Blogger

Anyone who pays attention to SEO techniques knows that getting high quality, “do follow,” and diverse backlinks is the key to search engine optimization. The challenge, of course, is where to find places to get powerful backlinks.

Most people build their link building strategies around blog and forum postings. This makes sense and is certainly part of our plans as well. However, it stands to reason that Google also knows that most marketers who are using SEO tactics to rank their sites are doing this, and it makes sense that they will be looking for a much more diverse backlink pattern to award the highest rankings to.

With that in mind, I’m going to share the top 5 non-forum/blog backlink sources that we teach in Commission Blueprint 2.0.

1. Squidoo Lists

Squidoo.com is a great place to get links back to your site. Type the following into a Google search:

“add+to+this+list”+site:squidoo.com

You will be presented with a huge list of Squidoo lenses where you can add your site, with custom anchor text. Many of these have very high PageRank as well!

For extra credit, append +”keyword phrase” onto the end of this query, and you can target your links for relevance. For example, if you were trying to rank a fitness site you could type:

“add+to+this+list”+”fitness”+site:squidoo.com

2. Web 2.0 Profiles

Many Web 2.0 sites that allow you to create profiles and interact with others provide high PageRank, “do follow” links to the website listed in your profile. Some examples include www.linkedin.com, www.flickr.com, www.twibs.com, and www.zoominfo.com.

When creating profiles on these sites (which you could do for every niche you’re in) you’re able to list your website, which becomes a high quality backlink to your site.

3. Article Marketing for Links

Most marketers are familiar with writing articles to get traffic, but we write most of our articles for backlinks. If you’ve put a link to your site within the article (and let’s certainly hope you’re doing that!), every article that gets posted becomes a backlink (or even 2 or 3). The more articles that get posted, the more links you can build.

To get started, you simply have to write the article and submit it to a few article directories. I recommend: www.Ezinearticles.com, www.goarticles.com, and www.articledashboard.com.

There is absolutely no problem or penalty with submitting the same article to all three places (submit to Ezinearticles first, though, as they are the strictest with regard to unique content), and if you are accepted by all three and have 2 links in each article, your article will result in 6 high quality backlinks!

4. Relevant Lists and Resource Directories

There are many websites that function as a resource for people interested in a particular topic. For example, one site may maintain a list of top weight loss sites to visit. A backlink from pages like these can provide high quality, highly relevant backlinks. The relevance of backlinks is being talked about much more by Google lately, and it is assumed that relevance will play a larger role in site ranking in the near future.

The trick is to find these sites quickly and efficiently. We’ve found the following Google search queries to work very well:

“Keyword phrase” + “add url”

“Keyword phrase” + “add site”

“Keyword phrase” + “add website”

For example, if you’re looking to build backlinks to a fitness-related site, you can search for:

“fitness” + “add url”

Google will return a huge list of sites that will allow you to add your web site, creating a backlink to your site.

One thing to watch out for is that many of the sites you’ll come across will ask for a reciprocal link (i.e., we’ll link to you if you link to us). These should be avoided. It’s worth the effort to sift through these sites to find ones where you can add your link without having to place a reciprocal link on your site, because these links are less valuable for SEO purposes.

Make sure to keep a list or database of all of these great link building sites/resources that you find, so you don’t have to search for them again the next time!

5. Easy EDU Links

I’ve saved my favorite and most unique tip for last. It’s commonly accepted knowledge that .EDU and .GOV backlinks are valued very highly when Google decides on your search rank position. Some people also know the “trick” to finding blogs and forums on .EDU domains, where they can leave useful comments that link back to their sites. If you don’t, here’s a great Google query to find .EDU blogs:

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”you must be logged in”

We’re after something more valuable, though. How about a whole page on an .EDU domain where you can put an article or a whole blog post, as opposed to just a comment? All you need is a willing college student!

At many schools, college students are given web space they can use for anything they like. Of course, this web space is hosted on the .EDU domain. All we need to do is to get this college student to allow us to post our material if they like it. But how do you go about finding these students?

If you really think about it, you can’t possibly be many degrees of separation away from knowing someone who’s in college right now. Think about your circle of friends and family, and branch out from there. For example, even though I’m “older” (I have teenage children… sigh), I still have 3 cousins that are attending college right now. If I expand my reach further, friends of my parents have children in college. I’m also getting to the age where my friends are starting to have kids in college. In short, I can’t throw a rock into my personal network without hitting a college student!

All you have to do is approach these students in your network and ask for their help, or give them something in exchange, for the privilege of putting some content on their site. It’s as simple as that.

I hope these tips help you improve your search engine rankings and make you a more successful Internet Marketer!"

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5 Steps to Making Your First Sale as an Affiliate Marketer

Found this following article from a clickbank blog, very useful, so to share with you guys.

"Written by: Steven Clayton, Guest Blogger

One of the things I get asked a lot is where to begin as an affiliate marketer.

It can all be so overwhelming. There are so many different ways to get traffic, build sites, and pick products to promote (these are the three components of any affiliate marketing effort). In addition, some of these traffic and site building options can be expensive and highly technical, requiring a lot of training and expertise.

My goal in this post is to highlight a way to get started as an affiliate that’s relatively easy, risk-free, zero cost, has a great chance to make your first money online, and doesn’t require any technical knowledge or experience.

We’re going to use ClickBank for our product, a BlogSpot blog for our website, and search engine optimization to get traffic. If you’re totally new to search engine optimization and want a very quick introduction, you may want to check out this video.

Step 1 – Find 10 products you’re interested in promoting

One of the best parts of being an affiliate for ClickBank is that it’s so easy to get started because there are thousands of unique products to promote. Once you have a ClickBank account, go to the Marketplace and browse it to find products that you have an interest in and/or that you or someone you know would buy.
Make a note of the products, including their Pitch Pages and the custom HopLinks you’ll use to promote them (you’ll get these by clicking the Promote button next to the Marketplace listing). It’s a good idea to save this information in a text file on your computer.
Step 2 – Find potential keywords using Google’s keyword tool

Go to Google’s external keyword tool.
For each product you picked in Step 1, enter the most generic keyword that applies to your product. For example, if you’re promoting a product on how to cure tinnitus, use the keyword “tinnitus” and click the Get Keyword Ideas button.
Go over to the Match Type drop down box and select Phrase Match.
Sort the list in descending order of global search volume by clicking on the column Title.
Make a list of any keyword that is between 10000 and 30000 global monthly searches, and that has something to do with your product.
At the end of this step, you’ll have 10 lists. Some of these lists may be empty, as it’s possible that there won’t be any keywords that meet our criteria. We’re being very careful about selecting only the ones that will work for us, so have patience and don’t get discouraged.
Step 3 – Evaluate the competition for SEO

Now we need to see if it would be possible for us to actually rank in Google for terms that would drive traffic to the product we’re going to market. For each keyword identified in Step 2, head over to Google and type the keyword in quotes. For example, if the keyword phrase was “cure tinnitus,” you’d type “cure tinnitus” into Google.
You’ll see the search results and the words “Results 1-10 of about xx,xxx” on the right hand side. If the xx,xxx number is less than 100,000, move on to the next step. Otherwise, discard this keyword.
Do another Google search by typing inurl:”keyword phrase”. For example, for our keyword above it would be inurl:”cure tinnitus”. Take a look at the number of results again. If that number is below 1,250, this keyword is a winner. Make a note of it.

Step 4 – Pick the keyword you want to start with and build a BlogSpot blog

We’ve picked a BlogSpot blog for 2 reasons: it’s easy to build a nice-looking site quickly, and blogs rank very well in Google.
In general, pick the keyword phrase that has the highest search volume, the lowest competition numbers from step 3, and seems to be the best fit for someone looking to actually buy your product. There are really no wrong answers here, just go with your instinct using these criteria as a guide.
Build your BlogSpot blog. Sign up and watch the tutorials on how to create content like posts. When setting up your blog, make sure that the blog title is your keyword phrase.
Make sure that the blog address (URL) also contains the keyword phrase you’ve picked in some way. So in our example, best-tinnitus-cure, my-tinnitus-cure, etc., all work just fine. Dashes are fine anywhere, so with a bit of creativity you should have no trouble coming up with a name that’s not been taken.
The goal of your blog is to inform and to sell. Provide valuable content from the Pitch Page of the product, as well as outside resources. Add your HopLink to the actual product using text and possibly images. You can often get images from an affiliate page for the product, which can be found in the product’s Vendor Spotlight in the ClickBank Marketplace.
Important: Never make up any information about the product! I encourage you to buy the product or have someone you know purchase the product, so you can give a truthful and accurate opinion of it.
The exact steps to build out the site are too extensive to go into here, but an example should do the trick. Check this page out. It will give you a great idea of what we’re after.
Step 5 – Do some link building


Link building is the key to search engine optimization, and the best way to quickly get included in search engine results for the keyword you’re targeting.
The process of getting a backlink is a bit different for each option listed below, but you can’t go wrong here. The idea is to do three things: get a link to your site, use your keyword phrase in the description or tag when you’re using a bookmarking site, use your keyword phrase as the “anchor text” (the text that’s clickable…that is the actual link to your site) whenever possible. Don’t worry about getting this perfect…any link is better than a perfect link, and you can do no harm!
Blog comment posting is a popular way of getting backlinks. Here’s a nice page that explains how to do it.
Social bookmarking can be a great way to build backlinks to your site. Here’s a huge list of them! Just set up an account with them and add your site.
Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages, etc. are great places to put up a small amount of content and then to add a backlink to your site. Here’s a nice list of these types of sites.
Also take a look at this guest blog post I did previously for other ideas.

Try to build at least 5-10 backlinks every single day! This will give you the quickest results.

Conclusion

The most important part of this process is the keyword research in steps 2 and 3. If you have trouble finding the right keyword phrases for the 10 products you selected, go get 10 more and try again. Have patience. If you stick it out and find the right keywords, the rest will usually take care of itself.

After a while… it could be days, could be weeks, you should show up in the Google search results and people will click on your links to the ClickBank product and you’ll make your first money online! Best of luck in your affiliate marketing efforts."

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LOLCat King on What Makes Internet Culture Viral

Ben Huh is the CEO of The Cheezburger Network, a ring of highly lucrative websites that curate and capitalize on Internet memes and macros. During Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, he sat down to tell us all about Internet culture: what makes for a guaranteed flop online, and what elements can help content become viral.

Huh places emphasis on sharing, remixing and giving back as opposed to the top-down dictatorship of content that we typically see in pop culture. In mainstream mass media, we’re given a very strict code by gatekeepers who tell us what to wear, what to watch, what to listen to and even what to eat. But because of the way Internet culture works, with masses of users deciding what should be considered cool or funny, we get Three Wolf Moon t-shirts, David After Dentist, the Trololo guy and way too much bacon.

But Internet culture isn’t just for the Internet anymore. These days, the intersection between online and mainstream media is evermore blurry as celebrities jump onto Twitter and TV shows pull meme content into storylines. When do ad agencies and movie stars go too far in their attempts to use the web? And when do they hit a sweet spot that satisfies all parties involved? Check out Huh’s thoughts, and let us know your own opinions in the comments.

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Older Users Hear Facebook Is Bad News [STATS]

According to one study, adults ages 35 and older hear more bad news about Facebook than good. Between bugs, changes and privacy fear, uncertainty and doubt in the media, these mature folks have heard significantly more negative reports than have their younger counterparts.

Does this mean “older” people aren’t into Facebook? Hardly. It just means that they’re more aware of negatively slanted news reports, which likely has more to do with their preferred news sources than their online habits or personal opinions.

The pollsters at YouGov BrandIndex did a pulse check on adults’ perceptions of Facebook in the media using the company’s “buzz score.” They asked respondents, “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, was it positive or negative?” and calculated the score by subtracting negative buzz from positive buzz. Buzz scores range from 100 (totally positive news) to -100 (totally negative news).

Over the past six weeks, Facebook’s buzz score for adults 35 and older has slid from 26.7 to 21.2. Over the same period of time, buzz scores from folks between the ages of 18 and 34 increased from 32.8 to 44.8.

YouGov rep Drew Kerr wrote to us, “For the 35+ demo, Facebook had below zero buzz scores as recent as late 2008 and then made an impressive ascent. But as the features change and people talk among themselves, paths diverge with the younger bracket only in the past month.”

What are some of the Facebook news stories you recall hearing about lately? Did they affect your opinion of Facebook as a social network or a company at all?

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Blippy Users Streaming $1.5 Million in Purchases Per Week

Blippy, the web app that shows the world what you buy, has announced that users are sending data on $1.5 million worth of purchases each week.

Taking this as a sign that consumers want to share data about their purchases, Blippy is now opening an API for developers and, to a large extent, the brands who employ them. This type of data is incredibly valuable to brands, as it gives them insight on purchasing habits, product inventory, income, customer loyalty, gifting and more — all the better to advertise to users, of course.

Some examples of apps developers might create are, according to Blippy, “an app that tells you every recipe you can make from the ingredients currently in your kitchen… An app that knows it’s your 9th purchase from the local coffee shop and lets you know that your 10th cup is free… An app that recommends movie rentals based on what your friends have rented and what they think.” Developers are invited to apply online.

Blippy has stated that only approved developers will be permitted to access the API. After last month’s major security glitch, where users’ credit card numbers were splashed all over Google search results, security and privacy are going to have to be of the utmost importance for Blippy and its developers. After all, the information they’re handling is penultimate to a user’s real-world identity, much more so than data found on Facebook orFoursquare.

In other news, Blippy is also adding purchase-sharing capabilities for select supermarkets, so users can now share their grocery carts.

What’s your opinion: Would you let third-party Blippy applications access data about your credit card and online purchases?

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