John MAYER: If Jennifer Aniston knows how to use BitTorrent I’ll eat my f**-ing shoe.

One of the most significant differences between us was that I was tweeting. There was a rumor that I had been dumped because I was tweeting too much. That wasn’t it, but that was a big difference.

The brunt of her success came before TMZ and Twitter. I think she’s still hoping it goes back to 1998. She saw my involvement in technology as courting distraction. And I always said,

“These are the new rules.”

John Mayer was discussing his realtaionship with Jennifer Anniston but the key statement is “These are the new rules”

Some people want to go back to the past, to the better days, but it’s done there are new rules in everyone’s industry.

You owe yourself to embrace it.

High-cost marketing techniques are not always the best options for small businesses.

You maybe struggling to keep afloat in this economy.

There are many very effective ways to market your company that cost next-to-nothing.

All it takes is a little imagination and forward thinking. If you want to start generating interest in your company, it might be time to get “down and dirty”

Here are a few low-cost marketing ideas and products.

Five of my favorite money-saving marketing ideas. Try them out yourselves. What have you got to lose?

View Them

In its bid to make TV advertising more accountable — and to sell more of it through its online auction service — Google has teamed up with TiVo, the companies are set to announce Tuesday.

TiVo will provide Google TV Ads with second-by-second viewing patterns of time-shifted programs in order to “enhance the measurement and accountability of ad impressions,” they said.

Google TV Ads is a 2-year-old initiative from the Internet search giant for auctioning off television ad inventory on a CPM basis, charging advertisers only for the ad impressions viewed.

“TiVo helps us to more finely calculate how many people are actually watching an ad. It gives us a large footprint of data,” Google spokesman Eric Obenzinger said.

Read more on the Hollywood Reporter

Want to build a great site?

Have fans and a large readership.

These tips will get you on your way.

1. Creating awareness

2. Making connections

3. Monetizing

If that’s all you read it’s still helpful.

The inspiration comes from a band Get Busy Committee. I’ve not listened to the music personally but I can relate to the marketing approach. Create awareness. It starts with creating a unique product, something that can get attention. For them is was an uzi shaped usb drive. Seth Godin had a book in a purple milk carton. What can you do? Then you get everyone you know to come check out your website and build a base. Build from that base. If you use free as model always ask for something in return. Maybe an email so you can keep contact.

Make connections with people through social media. Use as many as you can, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Flickr, etc. This allows you new fans to use the social platform of their choice. It reduces the barriers for them to share your information through their network.

Monetize in varying packages. People like options. You can have price points from $0 – $1,000,000 or more. It depends on how creative you can get. It’s the funnel technique. You start wide with a low price point and gradually move up the funnel to a higher price point. There is a package for everyone interested.

Your website is like your car. Both are significant investments that require the right features and regular and proper maintenance to ensure maximal satisfaction and performance.

Your car is a finely tuned machine. You bought it not only to get you from point A to point B but also perhaps to have some fun and look good as you go. If you purchased your car new its engine had no wear. To keep it running like the day you bought it you maintain it regularly: you change the oil every 3000 miles, you inspect its belts and hoses, you check its fluids and rotate its tires (or at least you should). Without such attention the money you spent on your car will eventually seem like a mistake as it sits idly in your garage because it won’t start.

Your investment in your website deserves the same care you give your car. While the purpose of your car is to get you from place to place, the purpose of your web site is to help you develop new business and become more successful. It doesn’t matter if your business is retail sales or professional services, your website is supposed to act as your store front on the Internet. While your website doesn’t need its oil changed or tires rotated it does require maintenance to ensure it performs as the marketing tool you intended it to be when you paid to have it developed.

Here are five things you can do to tune up or add to the marketing function of your website.

1. Fresh content

Fresh content will keep your visitors coming back to your site just like the oil and gas in your car help ensure it starts every time you put the key in the ignition. If you neglect to maintain fresh supplies of either, you’re asking for trouble. Your visitors seek fresh content. Once your visitors realize they’ve gotten all their going to get out of your site they will not return.

Add new, relevant and helpful content to your site as often as you can and you will keep your visitors happy and returning.

2. Keywords

Your keywords are the words your visitors use when they think about the products or services you provide. They are like the make and model of your car – they are what get noticed. Your visitors use keywords and phrases to perform searches at sites like Google and Yahoo! to find what they need. They recognize and respond to these words when they see them featured in search listings, advertisements and other promotional materials. Make sure you know your keyword phrases and incorporate them into the Title, Meta Tags and copy of your website.

3. Copy

The advertising copy of your web site can be likened to the amenities of your car. Your car has a stereo, cup holders and convenient storage space to address your wants and needs as you drive. The copy of your website should do the same thing. To maximize the marketing function of your website’s copy make sure it focuses on the problems, wants and concerns of your clients. Your visitors will be more likely to identify you as the solution to their problem if you demonstrate to them that you understand their needs.

4. Require Action

Just like your car requires you to step on the gas to make it go, your website requires your visitors to take the action you want them to take in order to function as an effective marketing tool. No one has to tell you to step on the gas. Your visitors need to be told what to do. Tell them to “buy now” or “request our catalog”. If you don’t they might ever know that’s what they’re supposed to do.

5. Get Contact Info

Getting contact information from you visitors is like remembering the keys to your car. If you can’t get into you car and start it, you’re not going anywhere. Likewise, if you don’t learn who your prospects are you can’t continue marketing to them. Most people who visit your website will not buy from you the first time they stop by. In most cases, it takes between six and eight marketing contacts with a prospect before they choose to purchase something. Your prospects are no different. If you acquire their contact information you will be able to repeatedly market to them.

Take the steps you need to maintain your web site and it will run smoothly and get you where you want to go.

STEP 1:Do your homework

Plan and think about your content. Think big, have a vision of at least a 100 page site. The pages should have “real content”, as opposed to link pages, resource pages, about/copyright… etc pages.

STEP 2:Buy Domain name:

Invest in an easily brandable domain. You may want “google.com” and not “mykeyword.com”. Keyword domains will go no where, whereas branding and name recognition are the in thing. The value of keywords in a domain name have never been less to Search Engines. Get them

STEP 3:Site Design:

As a rule of the thumb: develop for MS Internet Explorer. As for text content, it should out weigh the html content. Spiders are not to the point they really like eating html 4.0 and the mess that it can bring.

Use less of these heavy stuff: flash, dom, java, java script. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them – there is little reason to have them that I can see – they will rarely help a site and stand to hurt it greatly due to many factors most people don’t appreciate (search engines distaste for javascripts is just one of them).

Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit.

Don’t clutter and don’t spam your site with frivolous links like “best viewed” or other counter like junk. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability.

Visit Google.com and learn from them. Simple is retro cool – simple is what surfers want.

Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even 3-4 seconds delay until “something happens” in the browser, you are in long term trouble. That 3-4 seconds response time may vary for site destined to live in other countries than your native one. The site should respond locally within 3-4 seconds (max) to any request.

If you need help, visit http://www.xcelweb.com for the latest web design packages.

STEP 4:Check Page Size:

The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can.

STEP 5:Build Content:

Build one page of content and put online per day at 200-500 words. If you aren’t sure what you need for content, start with the Overture.com’s keyword suggestor and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters.

STEP 6:Check Keywords’ placing

Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don’t fret about it). Use good sentences and spell check it. Spell checking is becoming important as search engines are moving to auto correction during searches.

STEP 7:Cross links:

Link to on topic quality content across your site. If a page is about food, then make sure it links it to the apples and veggies page. Specifically with Google, on topic cross linking is very important for sharing your Page Rating (PR) value across your site. You do NOT want an “all star” page that out performs the rest of your site. You want 50 pages that produce 1 referral each a day and do NOT want 1 page that produces 50 referrals a day. If you do find one page that drastically out produces the rest of the site with Google, you need to off load some of that pr value to other pages by cross linking heavily.

STEP 8:Put it Online:

Make sure the site is “crawlable” by a spider. All pages should be linked to more than one other page on your site, and not more than 2 levels deep from root. Link the topic vertically as much as possible back to root. A menu that is present on every page should link to your sites main “topic index” pages (the doorways and logical navigation system down into real content).

Don’t put it online before you have a quality site to put online. It’s worse to put a “nothing” site online, than no site at all. Go for a listing in the ODP. If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo. If you don’t have the budget, then try for a freebie on Yahoo.

If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you’ll want to put some thought into how you’ll integrate them. Poor integration of ads into your website will cause visitors to click away fast. Successful integration of ads into your site can be highly profitable. Before I show you where to position ads, I want to mention a few important points about ads.

1. Ratio of ads to content

How many ads should you place on your website? There is an optimum ratio of ads to content. If your website has too high a proportion of advertising relative to content, the traffic on your website will suffer and you will lose money. If your website has too low a portion of advertising relative to content, the sales on your website will suffer and you will lose money.

What is the optimum ratio of ads to content? I can’t point to any studies, but I feel the optimum ratio is somewhere around 20 to 25 percent ads relative to content. Go much above that ratio and, despite more ads, the revenue from your site goes down. But, there are ways to exceed that ratio and still make more money.

Ads as a service

Advertisements can provide useful information, as well as content. In that case, the ads become content. Here’s an example. Rather than post ads that pay you the highest commission, post ads that provide the best value to the visitors to your website. These are ads where the value is so good you might respond to the ad yourself. This type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

Another example is ads for gifts around the holidays. People expect and are not turned off by an increase in ads around the holidays. Finding gifts for everyone on your list is difficult work, and people appreciate gift ideas. Again, this type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

You can safely exceed the normal ratio of ads to content if you hide the ads in the content. An example of this is product “reviews”. For example, computer magazines are almost 100 percent advertising posing as product reviews.

2. Repetition of ads and ad management

I have seen websites that display the exact same banner on every page. If I didn’t respond to the banner on the first page, what makes them think I will repond to it on the second, third … hundredth page?

Displaying the same banner on every page of your website is annoying to your website’s visitors, and a money losing proposition for you. Keep your ads fresh. Ads are boring enough without repeating the same ad over and over. Display a variety of ads, and use an ad management system. An example of an ad management system is a banner rotator.

3. Ad type relative to response rate

I have heard claims that text ads receive the highest response. I’m sure these results are not related to whether the ad is text or graphics, but more likely related to the fact that text ads are usually placed in the more responsive areas of a webpage. All thing being equal, a graphic ad will always get better response than a text ad.

A graphic ad will get higher response than a text ad, and an animated graphic ad will get higher response than a static graphic ad. But animation can be taken to an extreme. Some types of animation are annoying and not only does the ad get a low response, but it also causes visitors to click away from your website.

Examples of annoying animated ads are banners that flash or jiggle or do something else that distracts the visitor so they can’t read the webpage content. Those visitors that don’t click away will scroll the webpage so this type of ad goes off screen while they try to read the webpage.

A secret few advertising designers know is that the graphic that will get the most attention is a picture of a human face. People are genetically predisposed to look at a human face in their view area. Try it yourself while you’re browsing the web. If a webpage has a human face on it, that’s the first thing you will look at.

Where to position ads on your webpage

To discuss where to place ads on a webpage, we need to divide a page into five sections as listed below.

1. Header

2. Footer

3. Left Margin

4. Right Margin

5. Center column

Note: There is a sixth area of the webpage which is the popup window. There are many forms of popup windows; pop-over, pop-under, delayed, and exit. The polite way to use popup windows is the self-closing popup window. Because of popup window blockers, popup windows are much less effective today, and, from my own experience, when I tried using popup windows, the page views on my website dropped by 50 percent.

The most common position to place advertising banners is in the header section of a webpage. Web users have programmed themselves to ignore banners in this position. The response rate of banners in the header section of webpages has dropped to something like .0001 percent. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has tried to overcome this problem by defining giant (what I call “battleship size”) banners. I don’t know of any studies that show this works.

Using banners in the head section of your webpage is a waste of processor time, but most webpages still use them. Making a sale this way is a long shot. Banners in the footer section of a webpage are even less responsive.

Actually Web users have programmed themselves to ignore all advertising on the web. However, from my own experience, you can get some response from ads in the left and right margins of a webpage. Most websites are designed with the menu in the left margin and possibly ads in the right margin. This means if the user has a low resolution display, depending upon the width of the webpage, the advertising may be off the screen.

Place your menu in the right margin and use the left margin for advertising. This places the user with a low resolution display in the positon of having to scroll to view the menu. Too bad. They should get a bigger display. Website revenue comes first.

The most responsive position to put your ads is in the center column of the webpage along with the content. As visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they come upon the ad. It’s unavoidable.

If you imagine the center column of your webpage divided into three parts; top, middle, and bottom, the most responsive position for your ad will be right in the middle. As the visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they are forced to look at the ad as they continue to the lower part of the article. This might be a little annoying to the reader, but let’s hope your content is worth that slight annoyance.

I would recommend placing your ad at the bottom of the center column. As visitors read the article on the webpage, they end up looking at your ad. This is almost as effective as placing the ad in the middle of the column, and a lot less annoying to the reader.

As you can see, how you integrate advertising into your webpages has a major impact on your ability to produce revenue from your website. Poor ad integration will cause visitors to click away. Proper integration can make your website highly profitable. But, ad position is not the only determining factor, don’t forget the ratio of ads to content, ad management, and ad type relative to response rate.