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Believe it or not, even today, it’s possible to make a website TODAY, that will someday compete with Facebook, YouTube, etc.

As you have probably have heard multiple times, there is no secret formula to the success of these huge sites. However, there are a few common characteristics of their founders and stories. An idea is the starting point, but a unique idea that makes your site better than another person’s is the idea that will succeed. Then, executing the idea takes persistence and patience. The part that many people often leave out is timing, timing is everything. What makes the web so special and unique, is that it is constantly changing. Whatever is successful today, may not be successful tomorrow. Emerging technology forces web companies to code newer and more efficient tools on the web. The time that your startup site enters the web is crucial to it success because of these new tools, making or breaking a success story. This is unlike other industries/careers, such as doctors and lawyers because for the most part, the tools that made you a successful lawyer ten years ago, will most likely make you a successful lawyer today. (Not saying that lawyers or doctors aren’t great professions, that’s not true, they are very dedicated people.)

Back on the “Big” website idea, basically, if you focus on strategy (long term) instead of tactics (easily mastered in short term), then you will have a higher probability of developing successful website. Having a passion for your idea will allow you to outlast your competitors when they get bored. But ultimately, the reality is that it takes years for sites to go “big”. If it really is that idea that has been brewing inside your head for months, that idea that you know will take you to great heights, just don’t have you or the idea saying: “Please, please, don’t leave me.”

This post was inspired by Seth Godin’s post on  The Secret of the Web.

With the rise of people  being more connected to their own media, the youth in our society are becoming most responsiver to marketing that tells a story about themselves.

Graham Brown illustrates this best in his newly released slideshow on slideshare.net:

First of all, if you aren’t reading Fred Wilson’s blog (one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world, partner in Union Square Ventures) then you are really missing out on the insights from a man who knows the territory very well.

Anyway,  he posted a quote in his blog about a week ago on an article about Twitter changing the way we live, from Time magazine.

When we talk about innovation and global competitiveness, we tend to fall back on the easy metric of patents and Ph.D.s. It turns out the U.S. share of both has been in steady decline since peaking in the early ’70s. (In 1970, more than 50% of the world’s graduate degrees in science and engineering were issued by U.S. universities.) Since the mid-’80s, a long progression of doomsayers have warned that our declining market share in the patents-and-Ph.D.s business augurs dark times for American innovation. The specific threats have changed. It was the Japanese who would destroy us in the ’80s; now it’s China and India.

But what actually happened to American innovation during that period? We came up with America Online, Netscape, Amazon, Google, Blogger, Wikipedia, Craigslist, TiVo, Netflix, eBay, the iPod and iPhone, Xbox, Facebook and Twitter itself. Sure, we didn’t build the Prius or the Wii, but if you measure global innovation in terms of actual lifestyle-changing hit products and not just grad students, the U.S. has been lapping the field for the past 20 years.

Think back 10 years, and think of the ways that products in America have changed the way you live. We are innovators, no longer inventors.

Wilson also did a recent interview on the current trends on the internet, and what he expects to see in 2010:

Fred Wilson – Venture Capitalist Speaks On Future Web Trends

Okay, take a look-

This is what I saw when I logged into my Facebook news stream twenty minutes ago. An advertiser/affiliate spamming Facebook users with a trojan horse script.

I realize that the majority of affiliates do not participate in malicious behavior when promoting offers. On the other hand, there is a bad bunch of affiliates out there, with way to much time on their hands, making lame attempts at trying to spam consumers throughout the web, trying to convert their product.

This behavior really is hurting the industry as a whole, from advertisers, to networks, to affiliates, it effects everyone.

So, the next time you email your overseas programmer to create a script that spams blogs, Facebook, Twitter, whatever…, STOP.

Instead, take a walk outside, enjoy the beautiful June weather and only promote offers through the channels advertisers allow.

Many online marketers have built up strong profiles in the social web, and there are plenty of great reasons why they are doing so. Meanwhile, many smart companies are building their profiles online too. Either way, if you are in this socialsphere for more than just fun, (aka business) then you probably wonder everyday about how much the profiles have an influence on the people interacting with them. This is called social metrics/analytics. In the recession there are many people turning to the social web to launch new marketing strategies because the costs are way more efficient compared to traditional advertising. So, many people are told to take “stock” in their brand and see how much awareness their brand has, before spending money on more advertising.

How many of you online marketers and business owners actually know your brand’s equity online? Not too many… Why? Outside of large specialized online analytics agencies, there really have not been many affordable tools to measure your brand’s influence online.

The first step to measuring brand influence in the social web is by defining your success metrics, and knowing what goals you want to accomplish with each campaign. But first, Yong Fook, a social web developer said:

“filter out the noise” and “be strict and choose metrics that actually translate into a business context for your organization… ignore meaningless metrics like ‘number of followers‘. A successful campaign is about more than just getting attention.”

Then you measure your campaigns qualitative returns, or quantitative returns. To do this, I highly recommend you use this newly released social metrics software called Peashoot. I signed up just this week for a month long subscription for $15. Peashoot is developed by Yong Fook and Egg Co.. He built the app specifically to measure social media campaigns, which are built and measured through your own custom Peashoot domain and url shortener. Personally I have not seen any free or paid software that comes even close to this app, making it worth every penny. Plus Yong Fook is most definitely an experienced professional internet developer and marketer, he delivers a top notch product.

Highlights of the Peashoot App include:

• Real time stats tracking.
• Geographic overlay of all campaign clicks.
• Custom goal setting such as blogs, tweets, clicks, etc..
• Google Analytics integration.
• Multiple members for each account, allowing easy data sharing.

With each new social campaign you launch, I know you’ve heard it thousands of times over and over again: Test, test, and keep testing to create the most efficent and optomized campaign possible.

If you are not already measuring your social campaigns, then you need to start doing so! Whatever tool you use, just make sure that your campaigns are developing your brand’s equity online and ultimately more ROI for buisness.

Many successful business owners often are striving to:

1) Grow relationships with customers.

and

2) Be innovative in their industry.

I believe that ideally the most successful business’s combine the two areas.  If you can continually have better relationships with your customers or partners, then trust builds over time and your customers will be more likely to do business with you. Combine that with your business striving to be the most efficient tool for your customers and bingo, you are growing your business better than the competition.

For instance, Convert2Media has always been one of my favorite affiliate networks. Why? C2M has dedicated countless hours towards their affiliates, helping them be better marketers and make more money. I haven’t seen any other online business be more upfront and personal than C2M. Especially Ruck, he’s the man, offering a guaranteed response to any question in their new coaching forum. They continually grow relationships with publishers, while initiating the first affiliate network coaching forums and podcasting sessions.

Most affiliate networks leave the personal side for affiliate managers to handle. Many publishers have developed relationships that grow their business, but this is not nearly enough to maximize the potential to establish undeniable trust between networks.

Also, another shameless plug goes out to MediaTrust. Without a doubt, their affiliate managers know how to grow business through relationships. On top that, their weekly news show Relevantly Speaking and newly released platform for publishers are top-notch.

Even if its not all that much, the extra effort goes a long way. Get personal.

This post was inspired by Adam Singer’s post named “What If?“.

To everyone who uses Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, Flickr, and/or other social websites: What do you do you use these tools for?

I use social media…?

For innovation.

For social causes.

For collaboration.

For transparency.

For feedback.

For education.

For connecting.

For pursuing your passion.

For simplicity.

For brand-equity.

For talking with your customers.

For sharing.

For marketing.

For finding a job.

For better business.

For curiosity.

For relationships.

For knowledge.

For news.

For fun.

For making things happen.

For achieving your dreams.

Embrace these early years of social media for future success and prosperity.

If you have ideas on other uses for social media, feel free to leave a comment.

There is always a time and place for everything, but c’mon now, are affiliate links about to enter into Twitter for high volume profit? Mitch Joel wrote a post today on how poor of a choice it is to market on Twitter, here: Affiliate Links In Twitter Will Sink Marketing To A New Low

For sure, there are now thousands of mainstream Twitter users thanks to Oprah, Barbara Walters, etc. All of these new mainstream users are susceptible to being marketed traditional products they would see ads for anywhere else on the web. Please keep it real, Twitter is a place to converse via public messages. Twitter is one of the strongest platforms to speak and connect to the world. It is not a place that needs to be infected by a few dozen users who are looking to make a quick buck. So, please prove me wrong, affiliate links on Twitter are abuse, not an opportunity to spam more people.

In an earlier blog entry, Joel said:

And here’s the kicker: we really are speaking to each other, and that is way more powerful than marketers telling customers what they want them to hear.

Across the web there are countless platforms that enable “paid” media. In other words, you pay for the exposure of a brand/product that you want to be promoted. The problem is that it is harder to achieve earned-media, due to authentic time and effort, but the rewards are much greater if executed right. Earning your media has become a more popular marketing strategy for brands because it’s very cost effective compared to paid media. Recent innovations such as Twitter, Facebook, and other social media properties give a stronger leverage point for brands to earn their media.

When I read marketing news sites, I usually see something like “Advertising Revenue Predicted To Decline”. Yes, this is correct. Meanwhile, I continually see headlines such as “Social Media Advertising Revenue Increases Amid Recession”. Advertising agencies face the challenge of switching from traditional paid media, to “earned” media. So, with the marketing industry flipped upside down, only handful of agencies have been able to make money with this new marketing mentality. One of which is Crispin Porter + Bogusky, they were the master minds behind Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice” Facebook un-friending campaign.

Now, all of that is great for major advertising agencies and marketing executives to know, but how can that trickle down into affiliate marketing? If the appropriate social media/crowd-sourcing tools are used, a long term affiliate campaign can be successful with earned-media. Just take a look at already successful earned-media campaigns, and build your own from their. Just be aware that a lot of the time earned-media is involved with offline marketing strategies, so campaigns with strictly online actions would work most efficiently. Get started now with an earned-media affiliate campaign, performance pays!

Since the inception of virtual goods on Facebook, in Februrary 2007, the demand has rapidly increased. Facebook apps users play many of the thousands of apps available. Often the games that the users play are games that have shops that require points to purchase virtual goods. Why do the users want points? Simply to have something that will make the game more enjoyable, or enable them to attain a higher score. Why do app owners/developers offer virtual goods? The apps make money solely from either advertisements, or the better monetezation method: virtual goods.

Plus, users love virtual goods since many times in-game advertisements are eliminated, making a more user-friendly experience. Thus, users are happier, and more likely to engage in the virtual offers presented to them.  Virtual goods are becoming the preferred way to monetize social network applications. This is awesome news, considering that just last month (April) Facebook reached an astounding mark of 200 million active users.

So great, another growing opportunity to advertise online, but why is this important? The most important part is that the virtual goods/offers are largely coming from performance marketing advertisers. The same offers that are offered in Facebook apps are being published by affiliates elsewhere on the web.  However, most affiliates are unaware of this new trend or don’t see the volume. Performance marketing is already there, now just find your publishing spot in this growing market!

An example of virtual offers in the Are YOU Interested? Facebook application-

Down the road-

“The virtual goods economy faces hurdles. For starters, many of the offers themselves reek of scams — like ringtone sellers who don’t tell users that their mobile phones are going to be billed every month even if they don’t buy more ringtones. A longer-term risk is that people who take offers now might not want to take them later. There are only so many credit card offers that any one person is going to want.

But the dynamic at play — incorporating payments and offers into games — looks like it’s here to stay. For users, offers can be a win-win. I might think that getting a new pistol in Mob Wars will make my friends think I’m cool, and help me beat them at the game, so any way I can get that pistol is potentially good for me. If getting that pistol means signing up for some Netflix rentals at the same time — and if I already want to rent some movies anyway, then so much the better that I do it in the process of getting the pistol. More advertisers are looking at offer-based advertising, and if these companies can really nail the consumer-goods market, you can see how offers might get a lot more valuable. Teenagers might re-up on acne medication as they re-up on ammo, one day.”    – Eric Eldon of VentureBeat.com

I hope that isn’t too sententious, but really get involved with virtual offers in apps now, because they are serious money and a viable performance marketing opportunity.

Oh and by the way, “Facebook Money” is now the #2 Trending Topic on Twitter right now.