A year and a half ago I warned web masters that the US Dollar would continue to slide. This year, the US Dollar weakened significantly against the Canadian Dollar.

The last time I wrote about this issue, in June, we were approaching parity with the Canadian dollar, at $1.05. Today, parity looks optimistic.

The paradox of this situation is that most Americans do not care — many of them are not even aware of it. Last time, someone thought I was an idiot for even taking the time to write about it!

Companies and entrepreneurs are shifting their focus from the United States to international markets. If you haven’t begun to look into this yet, you should. While international stock markets may be speculatively priced, international growth online represents a great value investment. Not only will it diversify you away from the dollar, you will also have the opportunity to dominate niches which are already mature in the United States.

Yeah, the dollar slide hurts. Non-US web developers feel it when they cash their checks, Americans feel it when they fill their cars up with gas. Use this as an opportunity to diversify internationally and make it a win-win scenario.

There once was a time that Myspace’s $600 million price tag was laughed at. That debate is dead. Now its not a question of a billion but how many billions. The number $15 billion was being tossed around over a year ago. Its no surprise now that Facebook now also likes that 11-digit number, Microsoft agrees.

Its the tail end of 2007 and Myspace’s traffic has peaked. But who cares? Social networking is here to stay.

Social networking sites are very powerful tools if you know how to use them. Web entrepreneurs have raked in countless millions of dollars simply by providing third party graphics and layouts. Others have used social sites to funnel growth into their own start up sites, with phenomenal success.

Its simple, social networking sites are a destination. Snuggling up to that source and you end up with a stream of visitors. How important is Google to your site? In the right markets, social networking sites can be just as powerful.

How To Do It

Unlike Google, social networking sites are not search engines. If you want to throttle their power, legally, you need to use permission marketing and viral marketing (think of it as link bait.)

Over two years ago I placed a simple Myspace button on one of my community sites — much like the RSS buttons on blogs. Visitors added our site’s profile to their friends list and it spread. Our site’s profile had plenty of graphics and links, every single one went to our site. It was a free, fast, and easy way to build a forum userbase ; It was also a passive, soft sell approach that didn’t piss anyone off.

Social networking promotion can be that simple. If your content engages your audience then a little work will take you a very long way.

Lets take this one step further. You don’t even have to try to get social networking traffic. If users are sharing your site’s links with their friends, a good percentage are going to do it through a social networking site. For a quickly growing core, social networking has replaced e-mail and instant messaging as the internet communication medium of choice.

Facebook is the next leader, catch this train now

Facebook provides a complex API you can use to build applications that interact with the site. Facebook’s owners are enthusiastic about bringing new features aboard. And yes, they are very open and accepting of commercial goals. This has opened the floodgates for aggressive Facebook API tactics. This same traffic, Facebook could sell for tens of millions of dollars. Your cost? Give people what they want.

I was a bit skeptical of Facebook at first. Their closed system means there is no graphics & layouts after market. Rumors of a non-converting audience made things look even worse. But Facebook isn’t just a bunch of bored college freshmen. The site has gone mainstream; Facebook’s astounding compounding growth rate is making Myspace look very small. And the traffic does convert.

Where you tempted to give Second Life a try? Forget it. Why build an island 10 nerds a day will see when the same effort will put you in front of 1 million? Whether you are a Fortune 500 company, Web 2.0 start up, brand marketer, or just a plain old web publisher, leave the skepticism behind: you need to be paying attention this.

Holidays present a huge opportunity for internet publisher and marketers. Consumers are online, looking for specific things, and their wallets are open. Even better, their search patterns are very predictable and reliable, year after year.

Thinking about Christmas? Go live in September. Halloween? If you are just getting your Halloween promotions live for Monday, you’ve missed half the audience.

I had a good laugh when I heard that attorney generals are calling for an extension in Microsoft’s antitrust settlement.

Right now things look grim for Microsoft on all fronts. Long ago Linux proved it ran better than Windows, now it looks better too. Internet developers prefer Linux as their web server of choice, again for performance, but also for cheap scaling.

Future growth compounds Microsoft’s problems. The developing markets, when told to stop using pirated versions of Windows instead will choose free alternatives.

Then there is the Google. Google is chasing after Microsoft’s core desktop applications with AJAX-powered web apps. Microsoft has failed miserably (so far) to enter the online advertising market. They are giving away billions attempting to catch up.

The New York group’s filing centers largely on what it calls the “indisputably resilient” monopoly that Microsoft holds in the operating system realm. The attorneys general said they were “mindful” that Windows’ approximately 90 percent market share in client operating systems is not the only test for how successful the antitrust agreement has been. But they added, “the absence of meaningful erosion in Windows’ market share is still problematic for the public interest.”

What is the public interest anyways? I build my sites on Windows, my servers run Linux. Others developers code in Ubuntu, power up OS X on their Mac to Photoshop, and then put everything together on Windows (XP, given how problematic Vista is, sticking with the trend that begin with Windows 95.) Thats not a monopoly.

If you were to have a long term illness would you be in big trouble? Or, could your employees continue to maintain & grow your business? On the more positive side, can you take a very lengthy vacation with no business contact?

I find it interesting that a company which profits from legal system exploitation (at the cost of thousands of small-time webmasters) would send unsolicited commercial e-mail spam.

I never opted in to any Getty Images e-mail list. I do not know where they got my address. That does not even matter because the email alone broke several CAN-SPAM requirements listed by the FTC, such as “commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address.”

For proof, here is the full e-mail below. Getty Images should be careful next time as well as fire whoever was responsible for a) assembling their email list and b) ensuring CAN-SPAM compliance.

Wipe the drool from your mouth. Now you can license even
rights-managed quality images for a flat rate of $49 each*.

All contents © 2007 Getty Images, Inc. All rights reserved.

Forget the security issues or the pyramid scheme accusations (MLM-tier scructure to syndication credits.) There is a fundamental problem with Blogrush that needs to be fixed if its going to have any future.

Blogrush only sends a small handful of visitors, as evidenced by multiple reports:

swollenpickles, on WickedFire.com webmaster forums — “I joined up 5 days ago, just logged into my stats and have nearly 10,000 impressions and only one click. Has anyone actually seen any traffic from using BlogRush or is it a dud?”

Via Technorati: Caroline Middlebrook did a little better, 5,800 impressions and 14 clicks. With just 384 impressions, another blogger received an unsurprising zero. HowToGeek reports 3 clicks out of 7,231 impressions.

Most telling of all is John Chow’s report: 27,293 impressions, for a whopping 91 clicks. John Chow is sitting at the top of the pyramid, ranking in the top 50 internet blogs. The post is now a few weeks old and I am sure he has received many more clicks. Whats important is John Chow’s results represent “best case scenario.” If 91 clicks gets you excited, you probably have not been in the business for long.

Is the clickthrough rate really the problem? John Reese has acknowledged it, and said they are working on it.

John writes — “…we’re also in the process of rolling out “Phase 1″ of some of our major changes — like moving to the 100% Manual Review process which is going to greatly improve the QUALITY of blogs in our network which will also raise the click-rates for everyone. (i.e. more traffic!)”

One minor problem, getting rid of the “bad players” will also drop the number of impressions. Lower impressions and high clickthrough rate hardly is a guarantee of more clicks. It could even be less, as early arrivals bail out of the system.

Take a look at this full view of Shoemoney.com.

Several have attributed bad headlines to Blogrush’s low clickthrough rate. You’ve got to be f***ing kidding me. Headlines don’t matter when no one can see them.

I did not write this to bash Blogrush, or John Reese (or Jeremy for sticking his Blogrush widget in no man’s land.) Rather the post was made to illustrate what works, what doesn’t, and why. And, most importantly, to show how simple the concepts of “working” online really are.

Want to really fix Blogrush? Here is how to do it:

Mandating that Blogrush be displayed only above the fold is not the answer. I have not used Blogrush, I do not understand exactly how their syndication credits system works. Whatever it is, syndication credits must correlate directly with outgoing clicks. Any measurement by impressions is horrendously flawed. Yes, the system will be gamed, and counter-measures will have to be put in place. No one said this would be easy.

Blogrush needs a better display system. If you have ever used Adsense you know a simple border can kill your ad clickthrough rates. The same is happening here, and then some:

Just as bad as having borders, syndicated headlines & blog names are being chopped in half. Bloggers just are not going to change their site names or headline posts to fit in with Blogrush, nor should they.

So just how should Blogrush look? I got an idea. It involves ditching that sexy Web 2.0 widget and returning to plain old text. It is not nearly as lucrative from a free branding standpoint, but it will work.

Big drumroll…

Here is how Blogrush should look:

Yes, its that simple. Users should be able to set their own font & size. Users can drive as much or as little traffic as they want — and be rewarded accordingly. This is the same way it works for big PPC syndicaters. Integrate, blend in, and drive the traffic (and it this case, receive it back, for free.)

If a blogger stuck that in their header, they could drive clickthrough rates anywhere from 5-25%+. Toss in an update for RSS subscriptions, and now you’ve got a real blogosphere pull. Beyond this is contextual & user targeting; you basically end up with an ad network.

John Reese is smart. He knows damn well what he is doing and he understands very well how things work online. I think he will figure this out, and he probably already has. But geeze, why hasn’t any of the big bloggers bothered to point this out with all the free coverage they’ve given?