Niche Web Marketing and Viral Concepts by Tony Rocks

In my last post, I gave away some cool Hertz Rental Car Coupon Codes, which I might add are coupon codes for 2010.  Since yesterday a few people asked me what the heck is an online coupon code.  Well if you don’t know then you are seriously missing out on some great chances to save some cash.

I’ve decided to repurpose/repost a previous article explaining what online coupon codes are and how they actually work. 

Just last month my wife had mentioned to me that she had just spent a certain amount of money for a shirt online, but was angry because her girlfriend had told her that she had coupon code to use for the website, which would have saved my wife 20% on the purchase. I thought to myself, oh cool! "Where did she get a coupon code?", I asked. She told me that there is a cool website that posts coupons codes to all sorts of products.

Since my job is to know about online marketing, the first thing that came to mind was "HEY! Coupons and rebate codes? Sounds like some kind of affiliate program!" She then showed me the site and then low-and-behold, the links on the coupon code and rebates sites where for stores and products that had actually promoted in the past from Commission Junction and Linksynergy!

Clicking on the store links from the rebate and coupon code website revealed the all-too-familiar cj.com and linksynergy "hop links." Immediately I felt that my wife and her friend had been tricked by a shady affiliate marketer. I searched around for more coupon and rebate websites and found pleny more. Most are community and forum based. ALL with affiliate links. I even went over to cj.com and searched a few links and found that almost all of my affiliated vendors had coupon codes that you could pass out.

I never really knew what to do with those things, but thanks to my wife, my mind has been opened and I’ve been exploring new ideas in affiliate marketing.

If you’re not too familiar with affiliate marketing, briefly explained it is like this: Many commercial companies (Target, Walmart, Eddie Bauer and others) reach out to online marketing and promotion companies to drum up business. Websites such as Commission Junction, Linksynergy and others act as an intermediary for affiliate marketers and commercial companies.

The premise is this: The big company says "If you promote our products, we will give you a percentage of the sale." All the affiliate marketer has to do is use the provided promotional items provided by the affiliate intermediary, tied in with their assigned affiliate id. The promotional items can be anything from text ads, email campaigns, banners, and YES, coupon, rebate and promotional codes.

The next step is for the savvy online marketing dude to start a website that says "HEY! I’ve got coupon codes for the stuff you are looking for!" When in actuality, the codes are simply promotional incentives provided by the company in the first place. Some people may think they are getting a deal by discovery a super kept online promotional code and rebate website when really it is there for anyone to use. Like many people, the fact that there is a coupon code will really entice you to purchase items you may not have purchased in the first place. So the natural flow is this:

1. Big Company provides the Affiliate Marketing Person with awesome, hard to find coupon and rebate codes
2. Affiliate Marketing Person tells his users of the new code
3. User goes wild, uses the promotional code and purchases the product
4. Big company gets a sale, affiliate gets a percentage of the sale users feels like they made a good decision :)

So there you have it, in a nutshell, coupon and rebates websites exposed. I’m not saying they are scams….coupons are good! But don’t think you have to buy something just because you have a coupon or promotional code! :)

The magnetic lasso tool in Photoshop has to be one of the greatest features ever added to a paint program.  It is amazing how snappy and precise the tool is out of the box.  Go ahead and try it for yourself.  Simply click the icon and start tracing an area of your image and watch how cool it works. 

What is also cool about it is that you can click on a point if the magnetic lasso tool is missing a particular detail.  I’ve been using this tool to do some really creative photo manipulations.

Recently a friend of mine has been inspired to create a new work of art using the magnetic lasso tool to perform some really kick-butt photo manipulations.  Below is what he sent…what do you think?

At one time or another, we all seemed tasked at creating a great PowerPoint presentation.  Out of the box, you can be pretty creative with your first PowerPoint presentation.  However, you’ve got to be careful to not put too much stuff in it.  You’ll bore your audience and make a mockery of what designers hold dearly…good design.  

Here is a great video presentation of how to make better PowerPoint presentations.  After watching the video, you’ll walk a way with a sense of “Oh crap, I do that all the time when making PowerPoint presentations!”

The question always comes up when building websites for mobile applications…what will the mobile website navigation look like?  Before you even design your mobile navigation, it is important to look at the web enabled devices to target. 

Building the best mobile website navigation will involve the traditional ideas of architecture, design, browser capabilities and so on.  For my next post I will give a little more direction on how to build your mobile website navigation.

By default, Windows Vista doesn’t give you any way to mount an ISO file as a DVD.  I still have yet to see something for Windows 7 either, but still, there is an easy and free workaround.

I like to use Virtual Clone Drive to mount ISO images.  This is great for when you want to install something from MSDN or another downloaded image (maybe something from uTorrent? ;) ) and works flawlessly in Vista and Windows 7.

The first thing you need to do is download and install Virtual Clone Drive, then to add a virtual drive (mount your ISO), start the Virtual Clone Drive, then select the number of drives you want to mount.  You can pick as many or as little as you’d like.

So now you are ready to go.  When you double click an ISO image on your Vista machine, it will mount automatically and become available as a DVD drive.

You can easily unmount your DVD ISO by clicking on the drive and then selecting Unmount.  Simple as that…not bad for a free program!