About Me

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Hello everyone!

My name is Marc Goldstein and hopefully throughout the coming months you will get to know me a little bit better. Currently I am a senior at Towson University as well as an intern for a Baltimore based e-commerce company. My e-commerce company designs, builds, manages, and markets websites.

The purpose of this blog is to be a resource for aspiring internet marketers to check out what is Actually going on in the internet marketing world, instead of relying on their college professors, newspapers, or the Harvard Business Review.

I hope my readers find my blog not only informative, but funny as well. I like funny.

Lastly, please remember...whether in person or by e-mail, marc-goldstein@live.com, always feel comfortable talking to me about my blog, twitter account, or anything else online marketing.

Marc

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Top 15 free sites/online services you do not use. And if you did use them, you’d probably like.

1. Digsby.com – Digsby allows you to combine your Facebook, AIM, Yahoo Chat, G Chat all into one instant messaging service. You can even put up an away message on Facebook through Digsby’s service.

2. Facebook Places/Foursquare/Gowalla: These applications (Facebook Places) and sites (Foursquare & Gowalla) allow customers to “check in” themselves and their friends to the places they visit. A place can be anywhere from Newell Dining Hall to Camden Yards to Andy Samberg’s boat.
- Facebook Places is a sharing experience between friends
- Foursqaure & Gowalla combines sharing your location with friends and an incentive based game. The more times you check into certain places/stores the more rewards you can possibly obtain from those places/stores.

3. Twitter’s Earlybird – Twitter’s “deal of the day” account. Here Twitter posts major deals from major companies. Below is an example





4. Dirpy.com - I was recently at a party where the music was being chosen off of YouTube… that was terrible. And if you’ve been to a similar kind of party, you know how annoying choosing song…after song…after song on YouTube can be. Dirpy.com allows you to convert the YouTube videos into mp3s. This is great because now at a party you can actually set up a playlist instead of “YouTubing it” throughout the entire night.

5. bit.ly – Do you like posting links on your Facebook or Twitter status’? Well if you do, bit.ly allows you to track how many, and from where users have clicked on your link. bit.ly also allows you to shorten your URL (web address) so it would read something like this: http://bit.ly/RockChaSocksTwitter.

-This link directs users straight to my Twitter account.

6. Blippy.com/Swipely.com –Shopper lovers, this one is for you! Do you love comparing prices for clothing or other products? Well Blippy and Swipely allow you to do so. What you do:

- Give Blippy/Swipely access to your e-mail or credit card information, and from there they will store all of your purchases in your own personal account in their databases.

- Once the storage is complete, you can then choose to tell your friends about the great or terrible purchases you just made!

- Blippy focuses more on the price of your purchase, whereas Swipley focuses more on what you bought and your satisfaction of your purchase.

7. Last.fm – So you’re bored of you and you’re friends music collections and are looking to find some new awesome music to listen to. Well…it just so happens that Last.Fm is in business! In Last.Fm (and yes, that is how you type the website into your browser) suggested friends are called “Neighbors.” Last.Fm chooses your “Neighbors” by comparing the amount of times you listened to different artists with your potential Neighbors “listening totals.” The users that have the most similar listening habits will become your “Neighbors.”


8. Reverbnation,com – Are you in a band? If you are, know someone that is, or are interested in the music industry, check out this site. This site allows bands to submit their songs for potential festivals and concert venues.


9. w3schools.com - Your HTML and CSS online reference guide.

10. Notepad++ - Download this program, if your going to pursue a career in the internet marketing world, you should definitely brush up on your HTML and CSS skills. And while brushing up on your skills, Notepad ++ offers you an easily distinguishable text and highlighted rows.

11. LinkedIn.com – This is the future resume. Do yourself the favor and fill out your profile completely. In 5 years you will be sending potential employers your Linked In profile.

12. Wikipedia.org – Who doesn’t love proving someone wrong during an argument.

13. Twittercounter.com – For all those Twitter users, Twittercounter is a great free tracking service. Twittercounter tracks how many visits to your page, who visited your blog or website (Twittercounter generates the code for you), and how many of your “tweets” have been re-tweeted.

14. Techcrunch.com – This is the best internet marketing “online newspaper.” While reading their articles, I have come across many great up-and-coming sites.

15. Mashable's Twitter Account - This twitter account is everything you need for up to the minute social media marketing.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Facebook Ads: Awesome or Annoying?

Hello everyone! When popping onto Facebook, (I am going to guess for most of you…this happen on the daily) do you pay attention to the 3 advertisements on the side bar of Facebook’s profile pages?




If you don’t you should start taking notice. The great thing about Facebook ads is they are specifically directed towards you. The user. When liking a product, adding information to your interests section, or becoming a fan of a page, you enable Facebook to use your given data to display Ads you will most likely be interested in.

A quality example:

The other day I was on Facebook and an Ad for a 2 for 1 deal, regarding MGMT concert tickets, popped up in the advertisement’s section. Being that MGMT is one of my favorite bands (P.S. MGMT is in my interest section under favorite music section on Facebook) I decided, “Hey, I’m gonna check out this Ad.” And after checking out the website I chose to partake in the 2 tickets for the price of 1 deal.

If Facebook did not direct its Ads specifically towards my taste and interests, I would have never purchased or even known about the deal for the MGMT show at the Borgata in Atlantic City. Thank you Facebook Ads. You Are Awesome.




This leads me to ask the Question of the Week:

What do you think about advertising on Facebook?





For more information about Facebook Ads click:

Facebook Ads

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Facebook Store

So I was debating whether or not to do post this, being that the project is still in house. But I'm not giving away all of our secrets, nor will I be telling y'all the company (sorry). Gotta have my company's back. So here is the amazingness that people will become accustomed to using in the facebook future.

Over the past couple months I've been working on a Facebook fan page. During the creation of the fan page, I decided to implement a Facebook Retail Store. This store is run on the start-up Payvment's platform. BTW, the platform is great, easy to use, and free! So here are some screen shots of what you can do with a retail store on Facebook.

Click images below to enlarge