Internet Marketing and eCommerce Expert – Nigel Burke's Blog

There are currently rumours floating around the Internet that Google may introduce a payment system for paid content.

What is Newspass
Newspass will be a micropayments system for viewing premium content. This premium content listing in the search engine result pages will be indicated with a Newspass icon. When you click on the link, your Newspass account will have the cost deducted from it.

The answer is GIMP!

GIMP is a free graphics program which is comparable to Adobe Photoshop. GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

I am often asked what graphic programs are good to use for basic graphic design. GIMP is a pretty good candidate for this. It can even save files in Photoshop format.

Here is a list of videos that are on YouTube and Vimeo that are quickly gaining popularity.

#1 – Nike Football – Write the future – 16,000,000 views

What is a conversion tracker?
A conversion tracker is a piece of code that enables advertisers track the number of people who take a specific action.

How is this related to Facebook advertising?
When someone clicks on your ad on Facebook and you have installed the new tracking code on your website, you will now get the results of how many people took a particular action.

Split testing is a method used by search engine marketers to measure the effectiveness of changes to their campaigns.

A simple example would be running two ads with a different titles. The campaign may run for a week and the campaign manager will look at the results of the two ads including impressions, click through rate, conversions and cost per acquisition.

Google announced today this it has rolled out the biggest change in it’s search engine history. Fresh content will now be displayed much faster than ever before.

The project named Google Caffeine which was mentioned in August ’09 is now powering the world’s largest search engine – Google.

Microsoft has lanuched a new television campaign for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) in the US.

We all hear about online scams but don’t think that tradition scams would get us. Having a brick and mortar office gives a business creditability. Does your website have your brick and mortar address? Maybe just a phone number? Maybe no contacts at all?!?!?

StumbleUpon brings channel surfing to the Internet! StumbleUpon can be a fantastic website but it can also be one of the big time wasters.

This month, StumbleUpon reached 10,000,000 users. This is a huge milestone for these guys and they are celebrating with a party in San Francisco later this month. Unfortunately for people in Australia, we won’t be able to attend unless you’re in USA on the west coast.

Internet advertising is proving to be one of the most effective and best returns on investment for advertisers – if you know what you are doing!

Internet advertising is easy to setup, maintain and measure it’s effectiveness. Every dollar is accounted for and every lead is followed.

You are able to setup test campaigns and measure every interaction very closely. You can setup micro campaigns that target very specific areas.

The advertising inventory is huge as well. If you have a large budget, you can easily spend that budget and reach everyone.

Facebook was launched to Harvard-only students on February 4, 2004.

Today, Facebook is used by over 400 million people and employs over 900.

Here is a visual chart to show you Facebook’s growth and events over the past 6 years.

Mobile commerce allows consumers to browse, buy, transact and deal with a company using their mobile phone or device.

Magento is at the forefront for shopping cart software innovation with their new mobile storefront solution.

The Online Retail Expo is fast approaching. The expo and conference is on 6 to 9 July, 2010 at Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.

2010 ONLINE RETAIL INDUSTRY AWARDS FINALISTS:

1. Best Pure-Play Online Retailer
Deals Direct | www.dealsdirect.com.au
Appliances Online | www.appliancesonline.com.au
Little Dance Invitations | www.littledanceinvitations.com.au
Trixan Body | www.trixanbody.com.au

Businesses advertise their domain name to promote their website. Without a domain name, people cannot get to your website or send you emails. It’s a requirement for any business on the Internet.

Emails and text messages are often misunderstood and a break down in communication can happen very easily. But what would happen if your domain name could be easily misunderstood?

What is Skype?
Skype has been used for cheap or free phone calls between friends for a number of years now.

How do I use Skype?
You need to download the Skype software which is free. You can download it here -

If you add your friends to your Skype account, you can call them from your Skype account to their Skype account for free. They can be located anywhere in the world.

Imagine if there was a way where you could find out if someone mentioned your name, business name, product or service on the Internet.

Now you can with Google Alerts!

Why do you need to know?
Before I tell you how to setup a Google Alert, I need to let you know why it is so important to monitor this kind of activity.

It’s an exciting time because Adobe have just released the latest website authoring tools that most website designers and developers use everyday.

I cannot think of day when I do not use Photoshop or Dreamweaver. As I write this post, they are both open.

The industry standard for web design is Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver. For over 10 years, web developers have used Dreamweaver to build all sorts of web pages.

Google Place Listings is the results box when you even a search query that may be location specific.

There is no hard rule for when the business listings will be displayed but it usually appears when a keyword is about a location or the type of keyword would be loacation specific.

If you entered pizza into Google, it would then show the business listings. The same would happen for accomomdation, hotel or motel.

These listings can be a very powerful tool that you can use to list your business above everyone else. Managed right and you will be up the top. Do the wrong thing, and you will be removed very quickly – within hours!

The iPad has now been released in Australia. Some iPads have been circulating around in Australia which were imported from the US. It has now been launched in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

In Sydney, eager customers waited overnight to be one of the first people to purchase an iPad in Australia. Most Apple stores sold out of the iPad within the first day of release.