Is Web 2.0 A Silly Waste of Time?

From a letter from Brad Fallon, Free IQ CEO:

"Web 2.0: Serious Business Tool or Silly Waste of Time? That was the title of a recent E-Commerce Times article. And it is a legitimate question. The technology is terrific, but what good comes out of it? As business executive Kevin Walker points out "Web 2.0 is a waste of time...a lot of people killing time watching inane videos. A lot of people killing time with dumb-dumb blog entries. A lot of people killing time complaining about their stay at some random Holiday Inn."

"There is a lot of technologically advanced time-wasting going on out there. And that’s where Free IQ steps in with important content. Free IQ empowers people to get better at the things they care about. Free IQ has the first mover advantage in the online video space for people who want to make more money, get a great travel deal on their next vacation, become a better golfer, learn to give a more dynamic business presentation, and any one of thousands upon thousands of skills they need.

"Whether you’re focus is on delivering traffic as an Affiliate or you’re a Premium Content Provider (or hopefully both) your association with Free IQ uniquely positions you to profit. You’ll prosper along with Free IQ as people move from using Web 2.0 tools for nothing but fluff to realizing what tremendous tools they are for learning and information distribution.

"Let’s all do something meaningful together, something that can deliver value to millions of internet users. Let’s get busy creating the next wave of Web 2.0 at Free IQ."

Grabbing the "BEST" Affiliate Links

In the case of Free IQ, affiliate links are like domain names - the "BEST" ones are the most valuable. Whoever had the forethought - and luck! - to grab the domain name "www.AffiliateMarketing.com" is probably doing very well in search.

Within Free IQ, affiliate links (and Author Pages) are whatever you want them to be. Every content listing has a "Get Affiliate Link" button that allows you to name the link to that content. If I find content I like, say about CBmall, an affiliate mall that I can make money with, I then click the "Get Link" button and type whatever I want, such as "cbmall". As long as it isn't already taken, my affiliate link to that page is now "www.freeiq.com/cbmall". If I send someone to that link, I am automatically tracked as the referring affiliate - which means I get my affiliate cut if there is a sale anytime within the next year.

The key phrase there was "as long as it's not already taken".

Your Author Page, the free home page you get, works similarly. If I am clever (and lucky!) enough to grab "selling" (I was), then my Author Page is: http://www.freeiq.com/selling. I can now use that link to send someone to my Free IQ page.

Links within Free IQ resolve as written, so they are indexed and searchable by the search engines. Not only can I promote www.freeiq.com/selling, but it will get indexed and be findable all on it's own!

Needless to say, some of the obvious one's are already gone i.e. affiliatemarketing, internetsales, etc. However, if you like, Free IQ will automatically append the next available number so you might still get affiliatemarketing1 for instance. Still, there is obvious advantage to the former.

And while many of the sales & marketing keywords are taken, most category-specific keywords are not. Have a medical billing system? I believe medicalbilling is still available. Piano? learnpiano is wide open.... You get the idea. If Free IQ takes off like many of us are betting it will, those choice keywords will become scarcer and scarcer!

Taking advantage of ReviewRank™

By all accounts, Amazon is a revolutionary company. Many of the Web 2.0 concepts that we now take for granted on the Web were either invented at Amazon, or "re-made" to the point of being commonplace. Perhaps the most practical (and visible) is the re-invention of user reviews into social interaction. When I shop at Amazon, I always read what others have to say, often skipping editorial reviews altogether. Often, reviewers create a running dialog, commenting on a review, then on the review of the review, etc. This is important because it highlights the fundamental flaw of user reviews - anyone can say anything. And it is not uncommon to see the user reviews being gamed; authors writing glowing reviews of their own pieces under different names.

This is where Free IQ has taken a revolutionary step.

When you search on Free IQ for whatever topic you’re interested in, the results show all of the free content in the main area, and paid content to the right. And it’s ranked according to the reviews of other users who are also interested in that topic, with the most valuable and popular free content at the top.

Even the reviews are reviewed and ranked. Reviews that are rated more helpful by other Free IQ users simply count more. Free IQ calls this ReviewRank™. The key is that there are many other factors at play in how they rank the content search results. For example, how long was a video watched before it was stopped. The more people who decide that the content is worth watching, for a longer period of time, the higher that content will be ranked. And they are all based on the quality of the free content. This creates a far more reliable review system.

Ok, great feature. That's not the point of the post however. The point it this: early in the game, you have the opportunity leverage the momentum of Free IQ. Simply put, with fewer reviewers and products in the beginning, reviews of great content has much greater leverage than they do while the 'pie' is still small.

Take advantage of this diminishing advantage; get your content up as soon as you can!

PS- Watch for the beta launch of Planet Free IQ tomorrow!

User Generated Content (UCG)

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

"User Generated Content" (UGC) is a term you will be hearing a lot of in the coming year. It's not just funny clips on YouTube anymore. Real people from every walk of life have important information that has real value to others.

When you put it online and offer it to the world, you're a producer.

That is the essence of Free IQ? We all have something to add to the
world's information. Sure, our latest podcast might not be as popular as a
famous author's latest tome or the lecture of a renowned academic. But it
can be just as highly rated by those who want that specific information.

Added together, our collective content increases the likelihood that a
consumer can find exactly what they need, just when they need it.

Now, in a minute, I'm going to give you a link to one of the most valuable
videos you can possibly watch this year.

It's that important -- for several reasons -- not to mention that without it,
Free IQ wouldn't exist.

The video above - which took less time to embed on this blog than it took to write the headline - proves the point that you don't need slick, professional studio quality video to provide high quality content that truly makes a difference. (How to embed video on your site).

You just need good, valuable information!

Watch the video. Your head will spin for hours. Days probably.

PS - Watch for Planet Free IQ - launching tomorrow!

Video the "Old-Fashioned Way"

One of the fundamental functions of FreeIQ is content hosting - free content hosting to be precise - and using this hosted content as a marketing tool. We've already discussed the value of "Moving the free line" by making as much quality content available as possible.

Of course, selling content is another of the underlying concepts of FreeIQ. Regardless, the message is: content is king (yep, that's me; I coined that one...!) The "content" for our purposes is primarily video, audio, and PDF's. We spoke a little about PDFs, and we'll be re-visiting that topic often. Today however, I want to begin focusing more on video. In an earlier post I mentioned "screen-capture" videos using Camtasia. But what about regular, "old-fashioned" video?

Video is one of the most powerful of all mediums. It's TV. And it used to be a fairly involved proposition. Well we know we can now easily create videos by narrating screen activity. But lets not overlook the power of regular video.

If you don't already have video, it is a simple matter to create quality content. You can set up an inexpensive camcorder or digicam on a tripod and go. Some possibilities include videotaping a sales presentation, a training session, or a product demonstration.

Once you have the raw footage, it is now a simple matter to create quality content. One company, MuVee, makes a nifty product, AutoProducer, that takes care of making you look good. Along with the mechanics of cutting or editing,and converting between formats, AutoProducer comes with a zillion templates that give you a polished, professionally produced video with almost no effort. You simply select the template style, add titles, captions, and voice-over narration as desired, and upload it to FreeIQ. Now you have Quality Content!

AutoProducer is priced at$129, and there is even a "lite" version, suitable for most applications, for $49. Best of all, both versions have download-able free trials - now thats moving the free line!

My advice: you can't start building your content library soon enough!

Content as Marketing - Using PDF's

Earlier I talked about "Moving the Free line", meaning giving away more to attract more business. Now I'm not talking about giving away your primary products, I'm talking about enhancing your marketing, increasing your reach, widening your funnel, relationship-building, and differentiation. "Free Samples" work, even if they aren't product samples. Basically, the more you free value you offer, the better off you are all around.

And since FreeIQ will host your free content for free, why not take advantage of the opportunity? While you don't want to tarnish your image with trash, there is no doubt you have LOADS of valuable content that would improve your prospecting and marketing efforts.

Adobe invented the PDF (Portable Document Format) as a way to make documents portable between computers, OS's, applications, and printers. Since nearly every computer already has a PDF reader or plug-in, you can distribute any type of text & graphics document: text, spreadsheet, slide presentation, etc. And making PDF's is a breeze - many programs can save directly to PDF, and in not, there are freely-available PDF converters available every word processor, spreadsheet, slide-show program, drawing & drafting software - you get the point.

Take a look at Template Zone - they have terrific templates that you can literally paste your stuff into, and it spits out beautiful, professional-looking PDF's ready for upload. Their software is inexpensive and has over 500 ready-made templates for everything from single-page flyers to entire manuals.

So gather your material - your white papers, product reviews, seminar scripts, marketing brochures, customer testimonials, spec sheets, product documentation, instructional material, competitive benefit reports - and convert them to PDF's. Then upload them to FreeIQ. You can group them by product, topic, purpose; now you've begun to Turbo-Charge your marketing!

Selling Services - Move the "Free" line

If you sell services of any type, consulting, programming, graphic design, psychic - anything, than FreeIQ can be a boon to your business! The concept we're going to discuss is "moving the 'free' line.

What is the "free line"? It's what you'll do for free in order to attract business, win over prospects, upsell existing customers, etc. Examples might include free demonstrations, initial free consultation, free reading, even writing a proposal. You do this to further the sales cycle and build your funnel. The more you can "give away", the more valuable you are providing. So where does FreeIQ come in?

FreeIQ will host your content - video, audio, pdf's, etc. for free, nicely presented on a professional looking page. So you post your 'free' content, and refer prospects, link it to your site, etc.

Now here's the key: Every business knows things that are valuable to their customers. This could be in the form of a training manual, promotional video, white paper, sample work, etc. By uploading your content to FreeIQ, you create and name a page with a legitimate, searchable link such as "www.freeiq.com/smithassociatestrainingvideo". You can point people there, or include your contact info or a link.

Here's the "moving the free line" part: you all have valuable content, why not make it available for free? This has the tremendous synergistic effect of prospecting, pre-selling, rising above competition.

If you think about it, there's probably TONS of stuff: word documents such as sales brochures, white papers, price lists, FAQ's, manuals, etc.

TIP: You can easily convert Microsoft Word documents directly into downloadable pdf's from within Word.

Taped a seminar? A conference call? These make ideal free content. Why not host them on FreeIQ? There's no better sales & prospecting tool!

FreeIQ - How to actually MAKE MONEY? Part I

An interesting thing happened to me tonight: I did a Google search on FreeIQ blogs. Well, of course I found FreeIQ Marketing. But, I also found quite a few others, and the majority of them all had the same thing: "FreeIQ - it's great, sign up!" But nobody is talking about how to MAKE MONEY with FreeIQ! Well, FreeIQ Marketing is about using FreeIQ to make money. Lets begin with...

Lesson #1 - CONTENT!

This one's easy: Marketing! Ok, well exactly how do I go about it? The main draw of FreeIQ is Content. If you want to use FreeIQ for marketing, you need content. But where does the content come from?

One of the tag lines for FreeIQ is: "Everybody knows something worthwhile". Perhaps the easiest way to use FreeIQ for marketing is to create some content, linked to your site, blog, product page, etc. and post it!

Ok, sounds good, but... I'll answer your question before you ask it: You can create content simply by walking through your stuff on screen, whether it's your web site, PowerPoint presentation, software application, and record the screen while narrating over it! This is your content! Upload it, link it, Wham! Web 2.0 marketing done right!

One of the really cool tools to come along lately is Camtasia (here is a link for a free trial). This nifty program will let you do stuff on your computer and talk through what you're doing while the whole thing is recorded as a Flash video - then simply upload it to FreeIQ (you can upload content here), and you're now miles ahead of the pack!

FreeIQ.com - The NEXT BIG THING - Really!!!

The New World of Internet Marketing!
Welcome to FreeIQ Marketing, the blog for marketing with FreeIQ! First things first:If you don't already have a FreeIQ account, take a moment and Sign-Up right now - it's free!

Internet Marketing Meets Web 2.0
What is FreeIQ? It is nothing less than the evolution of Internet information and marketing! FreeIQ is a Web 2.0 site, search engine, and host for video, audio, pdf, and every other type of information.

Imagine YouTube, but instead of cheesy kid pranks and grainy cel-phone videos, a repository of the highest-quality content, all in one place, search-able, and of course, free. Using a proprietary Ranking System, FreeIQ insures that only the best content floats to the top!

Now think MySpace - but in place of all those horrific MySpace profiles are high-quality, readable "Author Pages". And speaking of Author Pages, grab yours now! For a short while, FreeIQ is literally a "Land Grab"!

Add your own content
FreeIQ will host unlimited Video, Audio, PDFs, and Web Pages. You simply login and upload your content to their servers. It is now avaliable to anyone, anywhere!

Earn Some Cash
One of the brilliant features of FreeIQ is that you can make your content available for purchase - FreeIQ handles all of the payment backend. You simply upload your stuff and set a price. Anyone can visit the site and purchase your content; FreeIQ handles the rest! You can also embed a video from the website into your existing webpage and if someone watches the video and then goes on to buy a product you get paid a nice commission.

Affiliate Marketing
Perhaps the most astounding feature of FreeIQ is that you can refer anyone to the Web site, and get a commission on anything they purchase - your or anyone else's! You simply give them a link to the page and FreeIQ automatically track it. If they purchase anytime within a year, you get paid! Sign-up for the Affiliate Program - it's free and easy!

FreeIQ - The Next Big Thing
Head over to FreeIQ and browse the incredible and vast array of Video, Audio, and PDF files. You will be astonished! It is truly The Next Big Thing!