Yahoo’s Ultimate Connection Contest is now closed to entries. The deadline to submit essays passed at 11:59 Pacific Time, last night, May 30. The essays are being read and the five finalists will be announced in June. Voting is set to begin June 14.

Good luck to all our participants!

—The Team

PayPal option offers publishers flexibility and a lower payment threshold

Before we get started, let’s do “full disclosure.” A long, long time ago, back when the Web was just a toddler and I was a shave-tail assistant editor at a new magazine called Business 2.0, there was any number of Internet funny-money schemes out there, all trying to get covered in the press.

I ignored most of them.

Then the boys from PayPal rang up. I knew right away that PayPal was something different, but I was still skeptical. So instead of a feature story, I wrote a little blurb for the front of the magazine. PayPal, of course, has become one of the Web’s great success stories. In fact, I use it all the time.

PayPal for Our Publisher Pals
Today at Yahoo! Publisher Network we’re pleased, and I mean pleased, to announce that publishers in our network now have the option to be paid via PayPal, rather than by check or by electronic funds transfer.

In addition to the greater flexibility and convenience offered by PayPal, publishers who opt in will enjoy a reduced payment threshold, from $100 to just $50.

For more information, please read our FAQs. To sign up for PayPal, log in to your account.

Not only should I have written that PayPal feature story, I should have invested. Ouch.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor

Ultimate Connection Entry Deadline next Wednesday, May 30 

If you’re like me you’re always waiting until the last minute. In fact, if I hadn’t spent so much time straightening my paper clips and refilling my Swingline stapler, I’d have posted this blog entry two hours ago and could’ve gone home early.

Sadly, the deadline for entries for the Ultimate Connection Contest is not as flexible as my deadline for getting this post live. You remember the Ultimate Connection, right? That’s where you could be one of three lucky small business owners who will win:

• An executive meeting with Ivanka Trump
• A $25,000 Yahoo! Search Marketing budget
• A power lunch with your marketing mentor in New York City
• Access to your marketing mentor and a Yahoo! Search marketing mentor throughout the year
• A web site makeover from Yahoo! Small Business and FastPivot

The deadline for your 500-word essay on what your business needs to succeed and how the Ultimate Connection can help you achieve it is May 30, 2007 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. So, unless you want your life to feel like a scene in “Little Miss Sunshine,” you might want to think about getting started on your essay now.

For more details, check out the Ultimate Connection website.

—The Team

Danny Sullivan’s SMX Advanced conference looks to raise the bar

Long-time search engine guru and former Search Engine Watch editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan has been working the panels at SES for as long as anyone can remember. (Which, in Internet time, translates to about five years.) With his new ventures, Search Engine Land and Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Danny’s working to bring himself, and—by proxy—your search knowledge, to the next level. It’s good for publishers as well as advertisers.

Next month, Danny kicks off his first SMX confab, SMX Advanced, in Seattle, June 4 and 5. Don’t let the “expo” in SMX fool you… SMX Advanced promises to be one tight little summit, where attendees will have direct access to some of the best minds in the search world.

Session highlights include:

Monday, June 4
Paid Search Roundtable
Get the latest direct from the major paid search providers, and then grill them mercilessly in an extended discussion period. Stewart Easterby VP, Sales Operations, Yahoo! Search Marketing, will be on hand.

SEO, Meet SMM
Danny Sullivan moderates this panel on the new phenom, SMM, or “social media marketing.” Getting your content into social media can help generate links or provide rankings that you might not be able to tap into with your own site. Among the panelists is linkbaiting champ and sometime YPN Blog contributor, Rand Fishkin.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Networking Reception
The drinks and nosh are on us, but it’s strictly BYOI—”bring your own ideas.”

Tuesday, June 5
Pump Up Your Paid Search!
Learn tips and techniques designed to help pros like you get more out of their paid search campaigns.

Paid Search: The Giant Focus Group
Now’s your chance to tell representatives from the major search ad providers what they should fix, what new features they should provide, and so forth. Come share your ideas with John C. Kim, Senior Director, Advertiser Product Marketing, Yahoo! Search Marketing, among others.

Give It Up!
In this session, a panel of noted SEOs, including occasional YPN blog contributor Jen Slegg, share some of their favorite and largely overlooked SEO tips. Shhh! No blogging allowed from this session!

Finally, be sure to visit us at the Yahoo! Search Marketing team at booth number 23. Hope to see you there!

—Michael Mattis. Blogonator

Yahoo! apps nominated for the Webware 100

The CNET blog, Webware, just announced that 11 Yahoo! apps and services made the finalist list for its Webware 100 Awards, out of almost 2,000 nominations. The 100 winners—the ten best in ten different categories—will be chosen by popular vote. Voting began today at noon, Pacific Time and will close June 11 at 9:00 a.m.

The Yahoo! finalists are:

Bix
del.icio.us
Flickr
Jumpcut
MyBlogLog
My Yahoo!
Yahoo! Pipes
Upcoming
Widgets
Yahoo! Maps
Yahoo! Search

To vote for (or against) any of these Yahoo! apps, click on the app name. Keep in mind that some Yahoo! apps are actually competing with others in the same categories, so pick your favorites carefully!

—The Team

Mash Like Mad at the Yahoo! Apps Gallery

Yahoos and Yahoo! Publishers alike have shown that they go mental for for mash-ups, those delightfully kludgy apps that merge web apps together to create whole new ones. In fact, when Yahoo! has held regular Hack Days for some time now, propeller-heads both inside and outside Yahoo! let their techno-ivity soar.

Every day is Hack Day at the Yahoo! Application Gallery, a web site where you can browse and download others’ mash-ups made using Yahoo! technologies—including Maps, Flickr, Yahoo! Music Engine and Search—and share your own.

Check out:

Splashr
A Flickr-based photo album app

CityRes’s Map-based Hotel Booking
CityRes has created several apps that allow user to book hotel through the Yahoo! Maps API

BruteSearch
A cool search bar tool that helps you organize your searches

Answers All-Over-the-World
This work-in progress gathers Yahoo! Answers from all over the world in near-real time

Yahoo! Messenger Flight Planner
Two Messenger users can search for, find, choose and book flights—together

Flogr
A highly customizable photo blogging app that you can use without hacking blog software

Be sure to visit the Yahoo! Application Gallery for more mash-ups.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor

Barry Schwartz offers tips and tricks on driving traffic via social media

Getting the right traffic to your blog or site is the key to your success. Social media’s all the rage these days, and there are dozens of services out there. How can you use these services to help drive traffic?

We asked the advice of Barry Schwartz, one of the big guns over at Search Engine Round Table, which gets about 250,000 unique visitors each month. His advice is delicious. We think you’ll dig it.

Michael Mattis (M2): What social media sites do you use most often? Why?

Barry Schwartz: I use Twitter big time. I have downloaded this little application to my Mac, named Twitterrific, which helps me stay on top of my twittering.

Twitter is this fun little site where you basically type, in 140 characters or fewer, what you are doing at any given moment. For example, right before I began this interview, I twittered that I am doing an interview (here is that twitter, if you are interested). Twitter is fun and also keeps me up with those I have befriended. If you want to “follow” me on Twitter, just visit and add me.

You can set up a Twitter account for your blog or blogs. For example, I set one up for the Search Engine Roundtable at: http://twitter.com/seroundtable, and if you follow seroundtable on Twitter, you will find a link to all recent posts, within a ten-minute time period. My friend Danny Sullivan does it for Search Engine Land, TechCrunch has one, and heck, even the New York Times!

M2: Any others?

Barry: OK, let’s talk about Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit and Techmeme.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not who you are. It’s who you know

That’s how the old truism goes, and rarely has a truer truism been spoken, especially in business. Don’t get us wrong. Hard work, inspiration, dedication, passion and all that are vital. But making the right connections can make the difference between success and Success! And it’s as true for small business people as it is for major corporate execs.

Yahoo! Ultimate Connection Contest
If you could have a power lunch with anyone in business you wanted, who would you put on the guest list? Someone famous, like, I don’t know, Merv Griffin? Perhaps you’d prefer a table full of up-and-coming entrepreneurs like yourself with whom you could talk shop and swap tips. Maybe you’d like both.

Well, win the Yahoo! Ultimate Connection Contest and that’s what you’ll get, and a lot more. Additionally, Ivanka Trump, Trump Organization development leader and daughter of Donald Trump, will participate in the contest and help select the finalists.
 
The prize package includes:

• An “Ultimate Connection” power lunch in New York City with the up-and-coming entrepreneur winners and top-ranking marketing stars 
• A $25,000 budget from Yahoo! Search Marketing to use toward a keyword ad campaign
• Mentoring from a legendary marketing expert throughout the year
• Access to a Yahoo! Search Marketing expert throughout the year
• A website makeover, courtesy of Yahoo! Small Business and Web site development firm FastPivot.

Pencils Down
To win, submit a 500-word essay focusing on what your business needs to be successful, and how winning the “Ultimate Connection” contest can help you achieve that success.

The deadline to submit essay entries is May 30, 2007. Yahoo! will select five finalists from the entries. Members of the Yahoo! community will be invited to vote for their favorites beginning on June 11, and contest winners will be announced in July.

For more information and to submit your entry, go to the Ultimate Connection Contest web site.

—The Team

Reducing design clutter can make your blog or website more attractive and more engaging
 

Editor’s Note: Design matters, even for blogs. It’s an important part of optimizing your home page. Clean, crisp design appeals to your visitors’ aesthetic sensibilities, helping ensure that they come back. In this, the 4th installment in our ongoing series on good design, Yahoo! user experience design manager Eric Thomason tells you how to tidy things up.  

You notice it, even if you never really think about why you do: Some blogs are easy to scan and read. Some have an almost calming effect and seem to encourage you to spend time on them…and some just don’t.

Your content is what keeps readers coming back, for sure, but the extra polish that some blogs and websites have gives them an air of respectability, maybe even credibility. Here are a few simple guidelines that can help your own blog shine.

1. Color and Contrast
The best advice for the novice designer is to keep it simple. Contrast and legibility is arguably more important than the flare and flavor that color provides, so it is a good idea for the background that your copy sits on has a light color. The copy itself should be a well contrasting black, dark gray or other dark color.

It is also possible to go the other way and use a dark background with light copy, but it isn’t as easy to read, plus it may be a little over-used. One thing to try to avoid is a middle value (not light enough nor dark enough). This will probably not provide enough contrast for your copy, and may make your site appear muddy and difficult to read.

Color is subjective and can be a very complicated aspect of design. A failsafe method is to choose only one color and use it with grays and white and maybe a little bit of black. If you use this approach, your colors will never clash.

A slightly more advanced method is to choose one main color with one or two accent colors for your design. Most blog templates take this approach. When in doubt, remember that simple is generally better.

2. Type
As with color, the best practice when choosing type styles is to use the fewest number of variations possible. It is also a good idea to create rules for when you will use them. By type style, I mean the font face (Helvetica, Times, etc.), weight (bold, normal), treatment (italic, underline etc.) and size (12pt or “medium” etc.)

Generally you will need at least two styles and maybe as many as five (excluding link styles), but you will seldom need more than that. For example, the two styles you will almost always need are Headline and Body copy.

Here is an example of rules for usage of five type styles:

Headline: Always use as the title of an article or post.
Subhead: Use for sub-headers and for section titles within an article or post.
Body copy: Use for all main articles.
Small Head: Use for side rail titles and comment titles.
Small Body: Use for side rail content, time and date stamps.

3. Alignment
When placing new content on your page, whether it is a headline, photo or body copy, try to imagine an invisible line running up and down the length of the page. Line up as much as possible to that line. If you want to place something off of the imaginary line, make sure that it is far enough off the first line to make the placement appear intentional. Going forward, you should try to line up everything to one of the two lines.

Designers call these imaginary lines grid lines. You should try to maintain the fewest grid lines necessary on your page. One thing that will make this easier is to avoid centered or right-aligned text when possible. Centered and right-aligned text, when not implemented by a skilled designer, usually leads to a cluttered page.

By keeping your site’s colors, fonts and alignments as simple as possible, your site will appear crisp and “clean,” which will always reflect better on your content.

View the other articles in this series:

The Web 2.0 Style

Publishing with the User in Mind

Chips off the ‘Ol Block

—Eric Thomason, Manager, User Experience Design

Cat Seda’s new book offers a blueprint for Web marketing success

We’ve known Catherine “Cat” Seda for some time. A local gal who’s made good here in the San Fernando Valley, Cat has been an ocassional adviser to Yahoo! She’s also a veteran search marketer, author, columnist for Entrepreneur magazine, one-time skeleton racer and self professed “speed freak” whose ready smile can be seen just about anywhere search marketers, web publishers and other Internet entrepreneurs gather.

In her first book, Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (New Rider, 2004; $22.99), Cat detailed the ins and outs of paid search advertising, a work that, three years later, still stands the test of Internet time. In her new book, How to Win Sales and Influence Spiders: Boosting your Business & Buzz on the Web, Cat takes on the whole gamut of Web marketing and PR, from optimizing your pages for organic search to using social media to re-invent yourself as a guru in whatever field you choose to delve.

Pithily written and with copious, real-world examples (not anonymous case studies) How to Win Sales and Influence Spiders is a fast-paced yet comprehensive jaunt into the art of business promotion on the Web. Tightly organized and accessible, the book offers actionable information on every one of the book’s 240 pages.

I found Chapter 4, “Networking in Social Media” most intriguing, perhaps because it’s so new a phenomenon, but also because of the way Seda uses it to strengthen her main thesis. Namely, that every expression you make online or off should be a marketing expression that promotes your business or brand. Even something as simple an online profile created for a social media site like del.icio.us or MySpace can and should be an integral part of your overall marketing effort, and Seda shows how to create an effective one: Choosing a marketable URL, customizing your profile page design, creating compelling content, setting a friendly tone and, not least, leaving a “link trail” and more.

True, some experienced search marketers and publishers may find some of the basics old hat. But these offer the necessary grounding and a springboard for the gems that come later. If you think SEO and paid search are the be-all and end-all strategies of getting noticed on the Web, you need to be set straight. And this is the book to do it.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor