My inbox 1 month ago had reached melt down point. A constant daily flow of blog comment notifications, fake bank emails, viagra,kamagra you name it my inbox contained it everyday. The time taken in removing all of these emails was taking around 10 to 15 minutes per day. A quick tally over the week takes this well over an hour spent clicking and deleting emails.

I wanted to take this opportunity to share my experiences and explain how I beat spam email. Well I say beat but perhaps the word should be “reduced” or “easily managed”.

The first step was the hosting company and the new feature Spam Zapper which provides a scalable slider on a range of 1 to 10. You can use this to increase the threashold of any potentially spam email. The higher the number the stricter the spam zapper now what is very important to remember here is genuine emails. If you are to heavy handed you run the risk of preventing genuine emails so find a balance.

WordPress is a fantastic blog tool and when you setup wordpress and activate the relevent spam comment plugins and askimet you will find your self being updated on a regular basis asking for approval on comment. One of the biggest tips I can provide is when setting up wordpress visit – Settings. Then un tick two boxes on the email me whenever.

Now the big problems are cleared but this is when the really tough part of reducing spam email arrive. The dreaded “unsubscribe” button. You need to be persistent and if needed email the websites in question if as sometimes happens and the unsubscribe button fails.

If you have any hints or tips on reducing spam then please leave you comments below and lets help clear up those in boxes.

photo credit: stev.ie

Popular search engine Yahoo! released an earnings report this week showing that online marketing revenues from paid searches have declined over the first quarter of 2011 by 19 per cent compared to 2010.

Despite the continued success of the Yahoo! platform for internet searches by the general consumer, revenues generated from its methods of online marketing and internet advertising have been steadily declining, with the company itself blaming the drop on the breakdown of their previously strong business agreement with Microsoft.

However, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land has suggested that not all of the blame for the sharp decrease in revenues for their online marketing could be blamed on one factor alone, concluding that their continued offering of conflicting excuses point towards a greater internal issue within the company.

“Even with growing traffic, search-related revenues are heading south,” he said, specifying earnings reports that have shown a steady decline in Yahoo’s internet marketing revenues since 2008.

photo credit: angela n.

In the ever competitive and evolving world of online marketing, the inception of searh engine Google’s new ‘Panda’ update has seen a number of previous front-runners in the UK Technology news site business drop down in the search engine’s rankings quite dramatically.

Designed to streamline internet advertising, Google’s Panda system has been created with the sole purpose of downgrading the rankings of sites that plagiarise content from other web pages. However, not all online marketing and internet advertising sites will be affected, with many, including Google’s own YouTube and other popular websites such as Vimeo, The Mirror and The Independent seeing a projected rise in their rankings.

Having now been rolled out to all English language countries and with further expansion in the pipeline, this new scheme will see some major demotions for previously highly ranked online advertising sites, including predicted 99 per cent-plus losses for sites such as moneypage.com and pricedash.com, with ebay.co.uk and techcrunch.com seeing estimated rises of 40 per cent or more in international rankings (statistics from elevatelocal.co.uk).

photo credit: Chi Mobile Shop

Online marketing analysts have identified the need for more reliable platforms when it comes to internet advertising for smartphones, iPads and other portable devices.

A recent report from analysts Tealeaf revealed that of 10 million smartphone users questioned worldwide, a shocking 83 per cent had experienced problems when taking advantage of offers made via online marketing.

Personalised internet marketing is becoming ever more important, and in the seemingly ever-shifting landscape of the sector, the need for reliable systems to capture the confidence of the consumer is becoming clear. This is particularly true when you consider the ever-increasing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which add a further personal dimension to online marketing and purchasing – especially with versions of both networks configured specifically for mobile devices.

Given this, the challenge is clear for IT professionals and online marketers alike – the technology must keep up with the customers’ desire for effective mobile purchasing.

photo credit: birgerking

Marketing teams across the globe are given the task of taking on social media creating traffic and exposure via Facebook and Twitter. The general come back after 3 months of working hard updating customers via Facebook of new offers and tweeting to people on a regular basis is what is the return on investment ?

Going back to the late 1990s when traffic was being purchased and poured into many third part sites. The logic being you would generate a visitor from Yahoo.co.uk and pay £0.05 p then direct that visitor to a website with relevant sponsors that would return a larger amount £0.50 for instance. The aribter systems worked for short periods for these sites but they were quickly pounced upon when exposed.

The reason I mention these old forms of traffic generation is they learnt me one important thing about generating traffic in this way which was conversions and sales would decrease as it was third party traffic. The additional page visit, the additional visit to another site of no relation in brand or appearance to the original site the user was browsing on left traffic conversions at all time lows in many cases.

So it is this logic that I placed upon Facebook and the reason it isn’t converting very well in many circumstances is because people are leaving that initial landing environment. Now the solution developers are putting forward is placing the online shops within Facebook.

Do I think Social Commerce is worthwhile ?

Yes I do think it would be a good feature and an additional form of revenue. But what will the percentages in sales conversions be in comparison to google adwords and google natural listings. Is social media something that is immune to sales will users always like to distinguish Social activity from purchasing and prefer to visit an online shop. These are all questions that remain unanswered and the use of social Ecommerce still requires a lot of research and case studies before I would recommend spending £2000 on getting one developed when the same £2000 can provide instant returns via google advertising.

Will it work then ?

Yes of course it will but will the percentages of people using the Facebook ecommerce sites ever over take the likes of google adwords and google natural listing traffic ? That remains to be seen.

Will Facebook be officially endorsing Facebook Ecommerce within its pages ? I expect to see some developments over the next 6 months.