What?! PlugIM didn’t make the top 10 list? Oh, maybe that’s because we haven’t officially announced that we now support Adsense revenue sharing as well. From the post:

“Nowadays you don’t even need even need to have a site to make money with AdSense. Lots of services attract users by letting them to run their own Ads. Here is a perfect list of such projects.”

I’ll give out more specifics about our Adsense sharing program soon!

read more | digg story

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You’re into internet marketing, heck, you even have a blog where you regularly write posts about marketing online.  Sure there are tons of topics to discuss, SEO, link building, Adsense, traffic, building the all important list, or beating the sandbox.  But what’s even better about your blog, is that you’ve now discovered PlugIM!  Now, every time you make a post to your internet marketing blog, you can submit a link to that post here.  That’s right, every time!  Sounds spammy?  Well, the PlugIM community will decide that.  If they like your latest blog post, it’ll get plugged and hopefully make the front page, if not, try again tomorrow.
 
In fact it would be a total waist to submit a PlugIM story that links to the root of your blog.  That’s just one link, one story, one chance to get visitors to your blog from PlugIM.  By submitting links to each post, you’re increasing your odds of making the front page, gaining more links, and reminding people about your blog on a regular basis.
 
I hear the concern all ready and don’t worry, PlugIM will not turn into an internet marketing spam farm.  You guys also have the ability to report any stories submitted to PlugIM that you consider to be spam.  Enough reports and the story will be removed.  It’s your site fellow IM enthusiasts.

In an earlier post I told you how PlugIM is short for “Promote Internet Marketing”.  Today, I’m going to give you one idea of how to do just that.  Do you have a project related to internet marketing?  A website, a blog, a new software product for keyword research or search engine optimization?  Maybe you’ve written a great article or product review or started an excellent conversation in a thread at a popular internet marketing forum.  The first step is to visit PlugIM (create a free user account if you haven’t all ready) and post a link to your project along with a short summary of what your project is about.
 
Many Digg-like news sites, don’t allow self promotion.  So it’s a big no-no to post a link to your own site or blog post.  PlugIM is just the opposite.  That’s one of the main reasons we’re here, is so you can promote your own material.  The only thing we frown upon, is posting affiliate links.  Why?  Well say a hot new internet marketing product comes along offering a great commission.  Next thing we know, we have 30 links posted on PlugIM to the same product, only difference being the affiliate ID in the link.  Affiliate links will be promptly deleted, but if you have an affiliate program for your own product and you’d like to promote it, by all means, post a link directly to your affiliate program.
 
The next step is to get your PlugIM story as many plugs as possible.  Not only will this get your story to the front page (which in turn holds more visibility) it’ll also draw more attention if it has more plugs than other stories on the front page.  And it’ll be listed higher in the top stories section.  Also our newsletter contains the most recent top story links.  What’s the best way to get plugs?  Ask for them!  Let’s say you posted a great internet marketing blog entry.  At the bottom of the post, include a link to your PlugIM story with a note saying “Did you enjoy this story? If so, plug it for me, at PlugIM”.  Or if you have a hot discussion going on an internet marketing forum, post a link to the PlugIM story in the thread to let everyone know they should go plug the thread.  If you’re giving away a free report to your mailing list, ask them to plug it if they like it.  If you launch a new software package, ask the customers who purchase it to plug it for you if they find it useful.
 
Not only will this help you get more exposure, it’ll also help grow the PlugIM community.  And the larger the community, the more traffic you’ll get each time you post something new on PlugIM.

I’m excited, are you excited? I am… Why? Well… we’re only 12 days into our official beta launch and PlugIM is all ready averaging 55 visitors a day. And that’s with little to no promotion. I haven’t even mentioned PlugIM in any of the marketing forums I’m a member of yet.
 
Why am I not promoting more? Well, I’ve been tired! Last night I crashed out before midnight for the first time in over a month cause I just couldn’t take it any more. My engineering background is getting in the way and I’m being too uptight about the site being perfect before I start promoting it. I also wanted to make sure we had a good load of content for people to check out when they got here, so I’ve been scouring the internet for the latest and greatest internet marketing material and posting it on PlugIM.
 
At 55 visitors a day after just 2 weeks, I’m guessing marketers will see the potential to get some nice traffic to their site or article and post a link to it here. This means you Mr. or Ms. reading-my-latest-blog-entry. Go ahead, create an account, it’s free, I won’t send you spam. Then plug your site, blog, article, internet marketing product. Why not? What’s the worst that can happen? You just might be surprised and get a few extra visitors.

So I was thinking, what if a visitor stumbles upon PlugIM, maybe reads a blog post or two, and then leaves without a second thought, simply because they don’t have any idea what PlugIM is…  Hopefully they’ll at least read the ‘what is PlugIM’ section in the side bar which states:

“PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community.  Submit content, share articles, comment on projects and promote your favorites to the front page.  If it’s internet marketing related, plug it on PlugIM.”

Hopefully that gives you the general idea of what the site is all about (because it took me hours to put those two sentences together) but if not, let’s expand on the premise of PlugIM a bit.  First off PlugIM stands for “Plug Internet Marketing”.  Now, not to insult your intelligence, but rather to enlighten our foreign readers, here in the states, ‘plug’ is often used as a slang term for ‘promote’.  So when we break it down, PlugIM means: “promote internet marketing”. 
 
Now being the techy geek type that I am, I also assumed that everyone who comes to this site knows what Digg is.  Of course, if the site is as successful as I hope it’ll be, many folks surfing for internet marketing topics will have never heard of Digg.  I got the idea (stole) from Digg which is a tech news site where the users post the news and vote on their favorites.  The stories that get the most ‘diggs’ make it to the front page.  The site has over half a million members signed up and any links that make the front page get crazy amounts of traffic.
 
Internet marketing has been a hobby of mine for a couple years now.  Problem is, I’m an engineer, not a marketer… Doesn’t mean I don’t love IM, I do… I just needed an IM project with a techy twist for my engineering mind to get wrapped around.  To me, it seemed a natural fit.  Take the concept of Digg and apply it to IM.  Digg is for techy news, why not make a ‘digg’ for IM news, articles and products?  Once it starts getting good traffic, marketers will want to post their latest projects and try to get them promoted to the front page, to take advantage of the traffic.
 
That’s the idea…  I’ll handle the technical aspects of the site, you guys, the marketers, you handle driving users here and posting great IM related content.  Together, we can make something special happen; a community of marketers who decide as a group what’s worthy of front page traffic.  So drop a link to PlugIM in your newsletters.  Post a link to your latest project and ask your friends to come plug it.  Use the site as a promotional tool.  That’s what I made it for.
 
I’ve got several ideas of how to use PlugIM to promote internet marketing projects, and I’m going to do a series of blog posts that cover those ideas in the coming weeks.  But the potential is here for so much more.  I’m sure there’s plenty of ways to use the site that I haven’t even considered yet.  I can’t wait to see what happens.

Non internet marking related update for PlugIM’s techy types…  I’m continuing to work ridiculous hours tweaking and adjusting things throughout the site.  Since I don’t have much free time, I’ve been averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night (and I think my wife would argue that).  Regardless, it’s all working toward the goal, which is a solid secure site that’s intuitive and user friendly. 
 
I’d list off the changes I’ve made recently but I think that’d get fairly boring.  90% of the changes, no one would even notice, it’s just me being anal but again, I’m passionate about this project and want it to be as perfect as possible. 
 
I’m also working hard to get new content posted to the site every day.  I feel that’s primarily my responsibility until we get more regular users.  Please be sure to browse through the posts and plug those you find interesting, that way our front page keeps updating.  I have the settings configured fairly low right now, just 2 plugs within a 10 day period makes the front page.  Obviously that formula will be in flux as the site grows. 
 
If you find any bugs, or have any suggestions for changes, this is a great place to leave a comment.

Yes, today is the day the day that PlugIM’s beta officially went live.  No, I don’t have any special contests, or giveaways or prizes planned.  Actually, I’m just plain exhausted.  I didn’t get any more than 4 hours sleep one night this week because I was determined to get the site finished for September 1st.  Did I do it? Almost… Close enough for now.  It was all worth it though, I’m crazy passionate about this site and internet marketing and I can’t wait to see where this site goes in the coming months and years.
 
I’m going to bed early tonight to rest up for the 3 day weekend during which I plan to put on most of the finishing touches.  Of course the site will never be done.  I wouldn’t be much of an engineer if I could leave well enough alone…  I didn’t want to run off to bed on official beta launch day without posting a little something first though.  In the coming weeks I’ll post some ideas and visions I have about how you can make the most of PlugIM to help advance your internet marketing projects, but for now, I just want to say a quick thank you to those who helped me get this project off the ground.
 
First I’ve got to thank all the wonderful folks over at the Warrior Forum who introduced me to the world of internet marketing just about 1 year ago.  I hope the warriors make use of PlugIM because part of the reason for this site was to give something back to those who gave so much of their time and knowledge to me. 
 
Next I’ve got to thank my man Ionut over at Zeegal Design who’s responsible for the eye catching simplicity of this website template and much of its code.  It’s been a pleasure working with you Ionut, and I hope to continue a working relationship with you in the future.  If you need a Pligg template, talk to this man, but good luck.  I think you’ll be waiting a while for his services.
 
And of course, that leads me to the final thanks, and that goes out to all the people over at Pligg who are responsible for the engine this site runs on.  They donate their time to the open source software project without expecting anything in return.  Sure the software has its bugs and quirkiness, but it’s in beta after all… Any time I had a problem I couldn’t figure out on my own, they were quick to jump in and help.  I hope to return the favor to new Pligg users as they come along.