If I’m not mistaken, I haven’t written a Traffic Method since January. Let’s continue, shall we?

Everyone knows that their messages, from marketing and advertising messages to mission statements and mantras, should be memorable. But few are the brands that take this to the nth level, making their memorable message viral as well.

So how do you do that? It’s easy.

Make it so memorable that everyone who see it is compelled to share it.

Like Bonnie says “let’s give them something to talk about.” You want to do something SO bold that other people will want to tell more people about it.

You want to say something SO unique that it makes folks do a double take.

You want to make an ad so funny that people who see it can’t wait to tell their friends.

The photo I took above is from a sign at a Kinko’s store. If you can’t quite make that out it says:

Thank you for staring at this banner. Your stares are subliminally making other customers want to buy a banner from us.

The first thing I did was jab my poor fiancee in the ribs and tell him to read the banner. (Sweetie, if you’re reading this, I promise to stop jabbing you. Promise!)

He laughed and we talked about a banner he wants to put up at the Austin Convention Center where the Toros play.

(< tangent >He has four courtside seats for the season, so if you’re ever in town during basketball season, look me up. There’s only two ways to watch live basketball. From those corporate box seats and courtside. Do it at least once in your life if you have even a slight interest in hoops. < /tangent >)

I had no clue that Kinkos even sold banners. It makes sense now that I think of it, but that just wasn’t where I would go. Now, I know, and I’ve told all my friends about the banner. And some of you will tell your friends about this blog post. And so on.

And really, the banner isn’t THAT remarkable. Note that in the picture, it was behind another banner. So, realize, you don’t even have to do this perfectly for it to work.

You’ve got some crazy idea rattling around in that brain of yours to get people to talk about your product. Go ahead and do it.

PS- I love you Kinkos. You’ll never be FedEx Office to me…. does anyone know, by the way, why Fed Ex is trying to fix something that isn’t broken? How much is this huge mistake going to cost, by the way?

Is it me or is Technorati working especially well lately? I have blogs in all different kinds of format, and on all of them, they’ve really been on time these past few weeks, even with Blogger. I mean, I hope I’m not jinxing it or anything, but it seems like they’re doing a great job right now.

Okay. I have to stop and do the rest of this later. The video for Sade’s Cherish the Day is on. Life must come to a screeching halt for four minutes.

*Edit* Okay, I’m back. I was wondering how everyone else is finding Technorati. The next video I’m going to add to the Blog Optimization Package is about tricks to getting more traffic out of Technorati. There’s so much about the site that people don’t notice, or don’t know because it’s not on the FAQ. I think I just have traffic-colored glasses on half the time – stuff that seems obvious to me, cats tell me is some amazing discovery.

I’ll do an abridged version of the video for Traffic Reality too.

So, again, tell me what YOU think – how is Technorati doin’ right now? Are they picking up your blog? Do they always? Please be a dear and give us a link.

Search Engine Giving Away $5 Million in Advertising

The first money I made online was really non-marketing.

I was around in the days when you could build a really good site, build up its content, and host banners for other people, filling your remnant space with non-exclusive ads from companies that had good run-of-network CPM payouts. I cashed in on impressions only for our main sites back then. $300 – $600 ( See an archive of the main site my various partners and I ran from before we changed the domain name.)

We were also briefly part of About.com’s network of poetry sites. Ah, those were the days. Shortly after about two years of constant checks from advertising, rates dropped and the money wasn’t worth the quality difference for our visitors to continue to display banner ads. Around that time, I started looking for alternatives.

Can you still make money from advertising? Sure, but until you build up to at least a mlliion page views per month, don’t expect to make thousands of dollars from it. But if you read that last article, you know that the key is to “spend less than you earn”.

Still, the money is out there. You just need to do your research, increase your traffic so that you’ll start getting accepted to the existing programs, test different formats and placements, track the results, and turn the whole thing into a system.

(And if you build a list at the same time, you can either charge for the ezine itself, or run advertising in each issue. But that’s really for another day.)

So where can you find advertising to run on your site? Obviously the preference is to have a mix of advertisers that will pay you per impression, as well as per click.

To earn money from clicked ads, I find that Google AdSense is easy to set up, and after you learn how to work with the system, can pay enough so that they’ll actually send you checks (the threshold before they’ll go out is $100). We’re going to feature a site that teaches many of the tricks of the AdSense trade tomorrow on Google Tuesdays, as well as the reason I think you should really sign up for AdSense today, whether or not you think you’re going to make any money from it.

Another program, that pays you via paypal once your account balance hits $5 is TextAds.Biz.

You display text ads on your site – advertisers can run ads just at your site, or throughout the Network.

But what I like even better is that you can place filler ads on your own site advertising whatever you want – rotating text ads for your audience on your own site, free. Great for Affiliate products.

Pretty much everyone and their great grandmother is blogging, though I’m pretty sure that few people blog well. I’m still in the process of redesigning my blog, and deciding if adding advertising banners is worth the trade-off in the feel of this space. So far, I’m leaning towards a “no” – but that doens’t take into account how much I’d stand to lose, versus the gain of the current layout.

That’s for another day though.

Another bit of news I’ve discovered at InternetNews.com ponders whether the blog revolution – re-energized by the marketing potential of blog feeds – is an effective enough tool to eliminate corporate marketing departments. Definitely a chin-stroker….

Since we’re talking about radio, you should know, there are Millions of public radio fans out there. And their advertising space is really inexpensive…. but you probably already knew that.

But did you know that if you decide to buy this advertisement, it doesn’t have to be in your city?

Power 88 in nearby Las Vegas may not have the prettiest site on the web, but don’t let that fool you. Their influence on local communities is a force to be reckoned with. They actually compete in the same market as the public radio stations and still reach a sizeable audience. In April, I heard they were offering underwriting for $10 a spot. Not bad for the ability to reach up to 11,000 people in an hour.

But you didn’t hear about that price from me.

I didn’t think it was a big deal at the time, then one day, I became conscious of how many friends I had who listened to the radio at their workstations, who often grabbed an extra minute on their lunch break to visit the site they’d just heard about on the radio. This kind of project would take careful planning and a study of demographics.

Even better, if you’d like to do your own radio show, but don’t have the time, sometimes the next best thing is to get on someone else’s show. A local public radio station is your best shot. Most of the areas I live in have a business chat somewhere on their public station. You’re in business – there’s got to be some way you can get in that door, even if you don’t directly publicize your business.

I’ll be back with more for offline publicity day in a moment.

Before you advertise anything online, especially via email, be aware of the FTC Guidleines.

I’m a little busy today with a client’s site, but I couldn’t let you guys down and have no posts at all. So today, I’m going to hit you off with some of the extras that are in my site library.

#1 – The Two Free Ebooks that bring me the most exposure – The Free Google Optimization Guide, and Free Advertising for Life in 9 minutes a Day.

If your advertising budget is a little tight this summer, you’ll want to read both of these.