I was catching up on Sunday’s newspaper – and it’s only Monday! Progress! There were a few things from Sunday’s paper I don’t want to forget so I’m blogging them.

Selling an old cell phone resources:
www.cellforcash.com
www.sellyouroldcellphone.com
www.greenphone.com
www.casholdphone.com.
Check sites to see best selling price. The best time to sell a cell phone is phones between 1 and 2 years old. To learn how to erase your phone’s memory: www.wirelessrecycling.com.

Telephone Excise Tax Refund
Speaking of phones, did you know you can get between $30-$60 refunded on your taxes this year only, without having to show proof?? If you pay a lot of long distance taxes you can go through your records and possibly get more. The time period is between March 2003 to July 2006. I don’t know if it’s cell phones or just land lines. It’s called the “Telephone Excise Tax Refund“. Businesses, individuals, and non-profits can request it. The link has a lot of information about the specifics.

Hope this helps more than just me…

For several months I’ve been thinking about subscription sites, how to create them and what makes them work. If you know any resources so I can get more educated on this, please let me know. The only subscription site I worked on was at Ancestry.com but it was not in marketing. I see subscription sites as a way to organize communities and increase their value. Harley Davidson does something akin to this. I’m talking about the kind of sites Jon F. is doing at Wickedfire. Is there software? What tools are there? Thanks for your input.

I ran across Debbie Allen’s web site. She is a public speaker on sales and marketing. She is a serial entrepreneur. She has a video about her speaking and an affiliate marketing program. Pretty impressive.

I love finding women who are serial entrepreneurs (like the CEO of Podfitness, Teri Sundh).

Just when I’m feeling overly conservative I hear Molly Ivins died yesterday and listened to taped interviews about her on NPR. Please enjoy some quote in honor of a true original woman with a lot of wit and guts. I always wanted to go hear her speak with my neighbors across the street but that was when I was too broke to afford it.

Her first newspaper job was in the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle. Now that’s funny and quite a precursor. She also wrote for the Minneapolis Tribune, a very cold state that could harden anyone. She was also the first woman police reporter there. She also worked for The New York Times. She worked at the Observer for the past 30 years. She died of breast cancer and was just 62.

It’s no accident that I call myself newspapergrl. I have a fascination with reporting and love to write. In college I set out to be an environmental journalist. Then I heard about the hours and pay. I love what I do now. But there is a part of me that still wants to be a reporter. Maybe when I’m an old lady someone will give me a job covering the police beat or local politics.

Please enjoy some Molly Ivins quotes. She called us opinion-mongers…

“Television, radio and newspapers are all cutting staff, while the bloggers of the Internet either do not have the size or the interest to go out and gather news. Bloggers are not news-gatherers, but opinion-mongers. I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter.”

There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity — like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule — that’s what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.

This is a great post by Hitwise about the search terms people enter into search engines and why. MySpace has just taken off, even when you thought it was already popular.

It’s important to note that people use a search engine much like a navigation bar in a browser. So if you’re optimizing your web site or doing paid search, be sure to include search terms like: yoursitename.com (no www), www.yoursitename.com (www and .com) http://www.yoursitename.com (the whole thing), yoursitename (no spaces), and your site name (spaces between words), etc.

Notice the comments, one from a Firefox enthusiast, and one from Craig of Craiglist (always a favorite).

Dave Taylor of AskDaveTaylor.com answered an SEO question recently that I think is worth commenting on. It is very straightforward. I know a lot of companies get confused because they hear different takes on SEO from different people.

I like how Dave explains SEO. You want people to be able to find your company when they search on terms relating to your business. He explains it so clearly. I’m with him in that large companies are often leaving a lot on the table while small companies often get too caught up in the minute details.

Big companies are doing too little, and many small companies are too focused on SEO at the price of good content production. The magic bullet is just to produce lots of good, fresh unique content, not to play SEO games and trick people into linking to you…

MarketingSherpa released a great report about online marketing. They had marketers at Ad:tech rate their results and say what is ahead. Paid search, email marketing to your own list, and SEO are strong and growing. However, affiliate marketing is dropping or stagnating. ROI dropped only slightly from 29% to 25%. Only 14% said they plan to increase their affiliate marketing budgets.

Exciting to me is that more plan to add RSS feeds and blogs to their online strategies. Blogging and social media is experiencing a huge surge right now. For good reason too. Blogs are a great way to do SEO and connect with customers. Here’s another report on bloggers from Forrester (reported by blogger Charlene Li).

I think the paid search affiliates have a strong position in the marketplace right now. I’m not sure about the other types. I’m curious how social media affiliates are doing (Adam Veiner?). Are they making money?

I heard this on the radio today, plus in MarketingVox. The marketers planted circuit boards around big cities, which set off terror alerts. This viral marketing stunt could bring jail time for the people who staged it:

“Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said whoever planted the objects could face “two to five” years in prison for each device.” The scare cost the city of Boston between $500,000 and $750,000. And here is the article about their conviction (that was fast! they plead not guilty). Look at those dreads!

Now there is more reasonable talk of going after Turner Broadcasting instead of the marketers, whew. Turner Broadcasting apologized to the city of Boston and took responsibility for the mishap.

At Affiliate Summit TaxBrain’s viral campaign bothered me. They staged a Nascar type event in which a car gets stolen. It was gray because they never actually said it was real, It definitely left people to assume it was though. A bit unethical and not something we could take away and copy. I’m a fan of bicycle rallies and things that interrupt to get attention, as long as they are ethical.

There’s a trend for marketers to do outrageous things to get attention. Some of it is in fun. Like my friend Paul who is on a 100% juice diet for the next year. He did his research to balance things so his health will be improved not destroyed. So if you take him to lunch (and you should), it best be at a juice bar. However, there are times when, in trying to outdo themselves or get attention, things go too far.

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing had a great tip on adding audio testimonials to your site or blog with Audio Generator. Basically you create a custom link to email your customers and they call a 1-800 number and easily create a testimonial that you can then post on your site. They can put their picture with their testimonials. Affiliates can add these to sites, landing pages, and/or sales pages.

LinkedIn needs to allow this functionality for recommendations. You can hear expression and sincerity in voice better than writing. You pick up on tone. Thanks for this great idea! Tip for John: SEO your URLs.

[tags] affiliate marketers, Duct Tape Marketing, LinkedIn, testimonials, Internet marketing [/tags]