Earnings are in for MySpace (owned by NewsCorp), interCLICK, and Answers Corporation. The three advertising revenue-based companies had mixed results.

NewsCorp reported that Fox Interactive Media, of which MySpace is the primary web property, saw a 17% gain. However, that’s still a 57% drop from the previous quarter. NewsCorp president Rupert Murdoch isn’t confident about the future of online advertising and expects to see a decline in revenues for the company as a whole going forward.

interCLICK’s ability to hang onto their client roster is the reason why they posted a 23.2% increase in revenues. They also saw a drop in their operating losses. They’re projecting 60% growth in 2009, which seems a bit ambitious considering the economy at large.

Answers Corp., which owns WikiAnswers.com and Answers.com, saw a revenue increase of 19% quarter-over-quarter and 61% year-over-year. However, their net losses are increasing.

Overall, it looks like these companies are hanging on, but the future looks to be in a range from uncertain to bleak.

New data released by Rubicon Consulting shows that online reviews are second only to word of mouth when it comes to influencing consumer purchasing decisions.

Here’s other key points from the survey:

• The Web is the #2 resource for customer support information, after user manuals. It ranks ahead of calling the manufacturer or asking a dealer.
• Website categories that get the most daily usage are search, social communities like MySpace and Facebook, general news websites like CNN.com and NYTimes.com, and online banking.
• The websites that Americans value most are (in order), Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook. Although Yahoo’s financial challenges have generated a lot of press attention, it continues to have a very large and loyal following.
• Young people (age 22 and under) are much noisier online than their elders. They account for about half of all the content and comments posted online.
• Facebook appears to be ahead of MySpace in terms of number of users in the US, and perceived value of the site.
• Despite extensive publicity, the community sites SecondLife and Twitter reach only a few percent of US Internet users.
• Democrats are more active online than Republicans. Democrats are more likely to participate in online communities, and say they are more heavily influenced in their voting decisions by information they find online.

Harry Max, a principal at Rubicon Consulting said, “Many companies downplay the importance of online communities because only a few percent of all Internet users contribute to them heavily. What they don’t understand is that most other Internet users read those reviews and rely on them heavily when making purchase decisions. Taking good care of online communities can be a huge money-saver for companies trying to get more marketing impact from limited budgets.”

I disagree. I think a lot of companies are interested in online communities but aren’t always sure how to engage consumers with them. However, with the economy the way it is, many companies are likely to cut social media first, as we saw in data released just the other day.

The biggest key to making sure you get good online reviews is to have a solid product or service. So, while you’re making those efficiencies in order to survive the slow economic times, make sure your products don’t suffer. Better yet, create efficient products and services and just watch those positive reviews come in.

To get the ball rolling, you might try pitching a few bloggers - especially mom bloggers if you have a product or service related to them.

Related Reading:
How to Bury Negative Online Mentions of You - Intermediate Level Tactics
Constructive feedback on online reputation management
SEO for Brand Reputation Management
Pssst. People are Talking… About Your Business!

In the first chapter, I explained to you what the concept of Web 2.0 was. Now in the above I am talking to you about site traffic and converting sales. So you are probably wondering what the correlation between the two are. Well one of the best ways to market your website and do so for virtually free is to utilize Web 2.0 websites.

There are various types of Web 2.0 websites on the World Wide Web. Each different type of site has its own marketing potential for your website. The following will give a brief overview of the different types of Web 2.0 sites there are and how you can utilize them for some marketing potential. We will get into a more in depth understanding on how to use them further into this E-book but for right now it is important to give you an outline that you can see. This way you can start to visualize a little more what you will be doing, when using Web 2.0 sites to market your very own website.

Blogs offer you away to create teasers that get people interested and to your site to learn more. Web 2.0 blogs are different from the traditional blogs. I will get into the details on that later. Right now, I want to give you an overview of what the blogs can do for you. See blogs allow you to add separate entries like a diary online for everyone to see. All you have to do is create your entries to show case your product or your service and point them all back to your website. Your entries can showcase a product by talking about its features, how it is useful and why your readers would want it. If you are offering services, then talk about your service. Blog about your experience in that field. Just make sure that no matter what you blog about, you get their interest and you point them back to your website. Later on in this E-book, I will show you how I personally have made blogs work for me.

Social networking sites such as Myspace allow you to create a company profile or if you are an individual a personal profile about yourself. It is so much easier to land that sale or gain a new client for your services if people can see you as more than just a company. While your website may tell about you in a business sense, social networking sites can let potential customers and clients see the human side of you. Networking can drive traffic to your website and the more traffic you get the more sales you will get.

Social videos sites allow you to create and upload creative videos about your website or product to get more traffic to your website. These  videos can be done in a variety of ways. The main point to gain name recognition and product or service interest. With the ability for other users to leave comments, you will see better how your video is being perceived by the public, which will help you in your marketing. Further on in this E-book I will explain how to make this work for you, as there are several ways that you can use social video submission sites. There are also different ways that you can create the videos.

When it comes to trying to dominate the Web 2.0 market social bookmarking sites are a personal favorite of mine. They require so little marketing effort on your part and yet yield such a nice return.  We all want something for nothing, which is just human nature. Well this type of Web 2.0 gives us almost that.

When you create an account on social bookmarking sites such a Digg, or StumbleUpon, you then have the freedom of bookmarking your website on their website. Once your website has been bookmarked it is there for everyone to see. It usually takes me about two minutes tops to sign in and bookmark a site on any of the social bookmarking sites. I put in very little effort and yet my traffic from them has been fairly high. I will explain these as well a little later on.

As you can see with the above outline the purpose it to allow other users on the website to get to know you, your product or your service with teasers or a personal bio. You do not want to give it all away on one of these sites, because then they will not have much reason to come to your website if you do that. Build up some hype and such and get them drooling so that they move from the Web 2.0 site that you are using and on to your website. Your website is going to be where you close the deal, so make sure your website is designed to close the deal.

One of the definitions that I came across when I first started looking into Web 2.0 was that is was a term to characterize design patterns in what they called a constellation of a new generation of web applications. They went on to speak of infrastructures and new and improved collaborations. The further I read on the more confused I became. The only thing that I was able to gather from what the writer of that page was talking about was that; Web 2.0 was a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004. Understanding who coined the phrase was not going to help me to understand how this new generation of web applications was going to benefit me.

The only way I figured I was going to learn what this was all about was to jump in headfirst and start using these sites to my advantage. With no real understanding of these sites true purpose and the workings of the sites, I was leery for some time. After utilizing different variations of Web 2.0 sites, I have now figured out what this is all about, once you remove the confusing tech talk. Is it not about time though for the average person to understand what this concept is? Well hold on because I am getting ready to explain this concept to you in easy to understand plain English.

Web 2.0 websites are user generated content sites. Visitors to the sites sign up and then start contributing their own content to the site. MySpace is a user generated Web 2.0 social networking site. Users create their own profiles, add pictures, and upload videos and even music to the site. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg allow users to submit links to stories, videos and website that they like along with their own review of the pictures, videos and websites in general. Thus, the majority or whole content of these sites is that of contributions from users just like you.

The way this concept differs from what we know as traditional sites or Web 1.0 sites that the traditional sites are sites that are more static. In this, the webmaster generates all the content for the site and shares this content with you. You have no say in the content that is on this site nor do you usually have a chance to leave your own opinion of what you have seen on the site. Now some traditional sites do have areas for comments but this should not be confused with the broad user generated content sharing of a Web 2.0 website.

Take the blog site Tblog.com for example; this site is a Web 2.0 blog that is comprised of thousands of users creating individual blogs on a variety of subjects. All the information that you find on this site is all user contributed. The same concept applies with YouTube, which has tons of videos that you can watch. All of these videos are all user contributed to add a lot of diverse content to the website.

Now you can see in plain English a simpler explanation of what a Web 2.0 site is. Once you take all the technical talk and industry jargon out of the equation, it starts really to make sense.  User generated content sites means marketing potential for you.  One of the rewards of Web 2.0 marketing is that it is virtually free to use.

You just how to know how to successfully utilize these sites and that is what you will learn how to do in this E-book. After all, I have already been down that road and went through my trial and errors on what marketing with Web 2.0 sites can and cannot do for you and your business. So read on and let me take some of the guesswork out of this for you.