The ‘priority’ emails get shown on the top of your page with the rest sorted below. As with other features with Google’s Gmail, you can apply filters to the Priority Inbox such as how many items to show on the top of the page as well as read or unread items and more.

Here’s a funny little video by Google that explains it. Do you use Gmail and if so, have you tried Priority Inbox yet? Let me know in the comments below:

Philly has denied generating a tax specifically on bloggers, rather as explained previously what they are working on is drawing from the Business Privilege Tax and classifying blogs and websites as a “business” mainly because of advertising income (no matter how tiny the income might end up being).

As you could just imagine, this “blog tax” has put a bad taste in the mouths of writers and bloggers who happen to reside in Philadelphia. This has additionally started debate over the web for bloggers that do not actually live in the city. Performing a Google search for the keyword “Philadelphia Tax Blog” under the Blog option query turns up over 200,000 posts dedicated to the topic.

Freelance authors experienced a similar issue several years back and are required to pay the Business Privilege Tax if they wish to write and be paid for it. Bloggers may possibly end up heading down the exact same road. The Business Tax would likely be $300 for a life time ‘privilege’ as compared to $50 a year for a ‘limited privilege’. This would be in addition to the regular federal government and state tax levies which will be imposed towards any kind of net earnings.

My Take: We’ll see how this pans out but it looks pretty obvious that Philly is searching for any way they can to generate more revenue. I think it would be hard for the city impose this tax on every blog/website in the city…even the ones that do not generate income. But the ones that merely have ads on them (even if they make close to zero $$…which are many) would be squarely in the crosshairs.

I stumbled (hehe) across a brief video interview here with Matt Cutts of Google where he discusses this very subject.

Now, there is much more to developing rankings than what is discussed here in the video, but this will give you an overall basic idea of seo. Matt is very straightforward…check it out.

As some of you have been asking, I will writing more on this subject in depth very soon so keep on the lookout. K

I haven’t had anything relevant to say so I don’t want to post and blow smoke just for the sake of it.

Having said that, I may have something soon.

K

Yes, Pay Per Click advertising has been around for awhile now but don’t think for a minute that it’s ’saturated’.

Far from it! We are just seeing the infancy of advertising and marketing on the internet.

And if you want to learn how to do Pay Per Click properly without losing your ‘bootie’, check out Perry’s FREE 5-day mini course on Google Adwords HERE. I’ve bought alot of his stuff, and it’s the best.

P.S.  Listen CAREFULLY to what he says.

-Kenneth

Now, if you’re not sure what that is, it is simply attracting local businesses as a client so you can do things like SEO, Pay Per Click Ads, Email Marketing, Social Media, etc…

In other words, helping a local business get online and helping them get visibility and business from it.

Local Lead Marketing has become the hot buzz word lately with some pretty expensive courses floating around teaching it.

I am inclined to agree with Ian’s assessment on the video that LLM is a little tougher than what is being talked about and personally speaking, I’m not too sure (actually I am) it’s ‘The Future’ as some proclaim it to be…at least not in the near-term.

Let me give you a brief personal example:

I had a client who owns a bar who wanted to get more visibility on the internet and wanted to leverage Social Media by way of Facebook, Twitter, etc….

So we struck an agreement where I would build a targeted Twitter and Facebook following, as well as building a link campaign to his bar’s website.

What happened almost immediately was the client did not cooperate almost from the get-go…he would not change the website for SEO purposes (it was in Flash) and as I busted my rump building him a pretty good sized Twitter following he ‘decided’ that his sister would build his Facebook page (who knew nothing about Internet Marketing of course).

After paying me once he never returned my calls or emails again and never paid me.

The client did not understand in the slightest the business of Online Visibility and Social Media awareness. He wanted instant results but did not want to cooperate with an expert to get them.

This is very common with ‘Offline’ clients who want to get ‘Online’.

Now this doesn’t mean you can’t find local businesses that will understand what it takes to build brand awareness on the web.

But it is harder than some out there are making it out to be.  And you have to communicate this to your potential client.

It reminds me of that ‘Intuit’ commercial where they say something like ‘a few clicks of your mouse to build your website with our simple tools, click ‘publish’ and get found’!

Have you seen it?

Yeah right…it’s that easy.

My point:  Don’t think that everything is changing to the ‘local’ rage if that’s what you’ve been hearing.

It isn’t.  At least not anytime soon.

And if you get a local business who wants to ‘get found’ on the internet lay it out for them in no uncertain terms.  It’s gonna take time.  It’s gonna take commitment.

Don’t let the client steer you into what their ideas are for getting seen online.

Because they DO NOT know what they are doing.

You’re there to show them how it’s done.

-Kenneth

It is through the efforts and bravery of others that we are allowed to engage in not only our passion of Online Marketing but all of our other pursuits.

With that in mind, while you are BBQ’ing some burgers and dogs in the backyard, leave a place in your hearts for the true heroes in our country; our soldiers.

Please remember: ‘We will never forget’.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone. Remember, do not forget what this holiday is truly about.

-Kenneth

Here’s a blurb (great word!) from Google on the move:

AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide. This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites. The remaining portion that we keep reflects Google’s costs for our continued investment in AdSense — including the development of new technologies, products and features that help maximize the earnings you generate from these ads. It also reflects the costs we incur in building products and features that enable our AdWords advertisers to serve ads on our AdSense partner sites. Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed.

We pay our AdSense for search partners a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations. As with AdSense for content, the proportion of revenue that we keep reflects our costs, including the significant expense, research and development involved in building and enhancing our core search and AdWords technologies. The AdSense for search revenue share has remained the same since 2005, when we increased it.
(http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/adsense-revenue-share.html)

It’s so nice of Google to release this information to help all the publishers out there get some hard figure insights on their revenue share.

It’s not nice. They obviously felt they had to.

Google doesn’t give out closely guarded information willingly, believe me. They are preparing for something that made them have to do this.

Could it be an ad partnership with Twitter? It will be interesting.

Thoughts?

-Kenneth

My old blog (can’t we think of a new name besides ‘blog’? I think it’s worn out!) because she was showing up late for work and I just had to let her go.

So…I hired a new one. She’s alot cleaner and more productive (so far!).

So yes, I am back to take on some new challenges and clients (we’ll see about just how many clients) and get some good teaching out there to the people who are really ready to take not only their biz but their life to the next level.

I’m looking forward to it…hope you are too!

Let’s roll!

-Kenneth