The BookmarkMoney Blog

First off, I’d like to extend congratulations to Ruck, at Cash Tactics. This week he announced that his first daughter was born. It sounds like everything is going well, so I’d like to welcome him to a new world of concern. As the old saying goes: If you have a son you only need to worry about one prick. If you have a daughter, you need to worry about every prick in town. My daughter is only 17 months old, and already the boys her age are giving her the eye. I fear that it will only get worse from here.

Now, on to the goodies.

Affiliate Marketing

For those just getting started in affiliate marketing, Sean at the Warrior Blog has a tutorial that takes you through all of the steps - researching, locating, and then finally cashing the checks. I wish I had known about this when I had first started out. Your First Clickbank Sale.

Build a Niche Store (BANS) is something I’ve been looking into for a while. When my wife goes back to work, I may just break down and purchase it, since I’ve heard noting but good things about it. Affiliate Confession has a 7 part series on setting up and using BANS. A very good place to start if you want an easier entry into affiliate marketing.

Build A Niche Store Tutorials Overview - Parts 1-7
Part 1 - What BANS Does And Does Not Do
Part 2 - Niche Brainstorming And Getting A Domain Name
Part 3 - Installing And Setting Up Your BANS Affiliate Store
Part 4 - Tweaking Your eBay Affiliate Store
Part 5 - Adding Some Content To Your eBay Store
Part 6 - Article Marketing And Getting Links
Part 7 - Using USFreeAds.com For Traffic And Getting More Links

Article Marketing

The Warrior Blog has a tutorial on Article Marketing for promotional purposes. I know that a lot of people recommend doing article marketing, but it seems like a lot of work, that I’d be better off channeling elsewhere.

Mashups

Although it’s over a year old, Paul O’Brien’s list of Mashups created with Yahoo! Pipes is still a pretty good read to help inspire ideas for your own mashup.

I’m not sure of the date on this one, but SEO Book had a nice roundup of specific Pipes.

If you’ve been dying to create a mashup, but can’t program and can’t afford a program, Open Kapow may be for you. Using their simple tools, literally anyone can create a mashup in minutes just by pointing and clicking. Extremely useful if you want to use data from sites that don’t provide an Application Programming Interface (API) or Ready Site Syndication (RSS) feed.

Black Hat

If you have a Wordpress Blog, then Jimmy at Seeds for Wealth has a technique for raping Digg’s traffic. At best this trick is grey hat, at worst it’s black hat, but getting links from Digg is never a bad thing.

Continuing along the path to the Dark Side, Jimmy has tips on getting big trafic from BlogCatalog, and another one for using your avatar as visitor bait.

If you’ve been wondering how certain sellers always rank so high on eBay’s Pulse page, someone placed them under the magnifying glass, and found out that there’s a lot of cheating going on behind the scenes. estreet at Watched Item watched some top sellers on eBay Pulse, and gathered some compelling evidence that there is rampant cheating going on.

Datafeeds

5 Star Affiliate Programs has a pretty extensive list of affiliate datafeeds ready for integration into your website. Affiliate Datafeeds are great, because they help generate a lot of content for search engines to spider, as well as helping to monetize your website.

Extensive Squidoo Lens on Datafeeds

Tools

Marc Ghosh at Weblog Tools Collection posted this week introducing us to Zemanta. Zemanta is a contextual content suggestion engine that works with Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, Typepad.com, and self-hosted WordPress installations.Zemanta is a simple FireFox extension that creates a little AJAX box on the side of your write panel in WordPress, and makes real-time suggestions for related news stories, Wikipedia articles, and Flickr photos. I’m very excited to start using this. You can also keep up to date with the latest happenings at Zemanta’s Blog.

WordPress Plugins

Jeffro2pt0 at Weblog Tools Collection rounded up 10 WP plugins that fight comment spam. I personally use WP Spam Free from Hybrid 6, and have no complaints with it. I do disable it every so often to see how much it actually stops, and It’s amazing how much of a difference it makes.

Freebies

Since I like free stuff, here’s my link to Robbing Craigslist. If you want a free copy, just link to it from your blog too.

Emarket Scout tipped me off the the following: Freebies for Writers, Authors, and Screenwriters., Self Growth Freebies, and Free stuff for Windows Power Users.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Datafeeds, Gurus, Internet Marketing, Link Building, Mashups, Plugins, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools, Traffic, Viral Marketing, WordPress by Jotun
3 Comments »

Productivity

Alicia Forest at Solo E has written an article entitled When Doing Less is More in Your Business, and reminds us that sometimes you shouldn’t do things just because you can. If your energy is being misdirected into ventures that are beneath your skill level, you’re wasting time, money, and effort. This short list will help you refocus and see that sometimes doing less is more.

Tools

SEO 4 Expert has a roundup of 40 Unusual Websites for you to visit. To paraphrase, this page lists “under the radar web services that are original, unique, unusual, useful, free, and of the must-be bookmarked type.” Some of the sites listed are built around some very unique ideas.

Traffic / Link Building

Via HomeBiz Marketing Tips: Jonathan Leger shares with us his 4 Legged Approach to Link Building. Although I’ve seen these tips floating around in various forms, it never hurts to return to the basics. An excellent reminder to avoid putting all of your eggs in one basket.

Tags: Blogging, Gurus, Link Building, Linkdump, Tools, Traffic by Jotun
No Comments »

Monday night I had the pleasure of seeing the Swedish heavy metal band Soilwork live in concert. The venue was a 200 person club that was probably about the size of my basement, which isn’t saying much at all. While I had fun, the experience reminds me why I don’t really go to club shows anymore.

My wife and I arrived at 7pm when the doors opened. The bouncer verified my online ticket purchase, and my wife and I nabbed our seat for the evening. We watched the other patrons trickle in, small groups of two and three, mostly young, mostly dressed in black. As I grow older I continue to become more painfully aware of how I’m becoming the old guy at shows, even though I’m only 29.

After about a half hour, an old friend of mine joined us and we caught up on old times. We’ve both dropped pretty completely off of each others’ radar, and catching up was nice. We chatted for about an hour when the first band took the stage.

Hailing from Iowa City, IA, was Destrophy (WWW | MySpace). I’ve followed this band for about 4 years now, and am continually amazed that they have yet to be picked up by a major label. The lead singer is quite photogenic, can growl like a demon or hit the high notes like an opera singer, and plays the guitar with amazing skill. He is obviously the driving force of the band. The bassist is the only other original member of the band, which has undergone 4-5 personnel changes in the last 2 years, but he’s quite good, and has an excellent stage presence. The secondary guitar player used to play in Stone Sour, and joined Destrophy last fall. The drummer is also better than competent, but I’m not sure who he is, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen him.

This band is amazing live. They have such energy, and some of the most passionate fans I’ve ever seen. Their set lasted 30-35 minutes, and it really set the audience on fire. Ever since they lost their keyboard player in 2005 they’ve used a backing track, which while it does the job, it doesn’t have the impact that live keyboards provide. As Destrophy was tearing down my wife professed her new-found appreciation for the band, which is high praise indeed, since she mainly listens to country/western (ugh). She had also developed a crush on the lead singer.

After a brief interlude Eddie Buzzard took to the stage. I went into their set cold, but with an open mind. The only thing I knew about them was one of my co-workers at a previous job had played with them for a while before deciding that working was more important. It turned out that they were a rather uninspired thrash/grindcore band, that while having some potential, hadn’t really developed it. Their songs were basically cookie monster vocals screamed over chugging, detuned guitars. The problem was, all of their songs sounded the same. The only bright spot was their drummer, who was way too talented for the band. The way he worked his kit put me in mind of the drummers from In Flames or the Children of Bodom. He had a double bass drum setup, and he just annihilated us with them.

About three songs into Eddie Buzzard’s set, I wandered back to the merchandise area, and got the two CD’s my wife had bought from Destrophy autographed. The guys from the band were cool, and I think I’m going to take my digital camera when I go see them again in two weeks. After about 10 minutes of chatting with them, I had to excuse myself, since my wife isn’t really equipped to defend herself with a mosh pit going on around her. Girl just can’t take a punch

After I got back Eddie Buzzard chugged through another three songs, and then made way for Soilwork.

When they entered the club to take the stage, the members of Soilwork walked through the crowd, about three feet in front of me. Those guys were big. Not muscular big, but tall big. I swear the shortest one was about 6′ 3″. With long hair and beards, half of the band looked reminiscent of the Vikings that were their forebears. The rest of the band favored the more practical shaved head.

From the first chords, Soilwork came to rape our women and burn our villiage, musically speaking.The guitars were soaring and urgent, the drums thunderous, and the keyboards injected swirling harmonies that wrapped around the other instruments and enhanced them at the same time. The last concert where I was witness to such awe inspiring musicianship was when I saw the Children of Bodom two years ago.

The first song was off of their new album, but I’m not familiar with the title. Their second song was the single off of their last album “Stabbing the Drama.” Four more songs followed, all new material, all impressive. Unfortunately by that point I had been up for 17 hours straight, my wife for 15, and the beer was taking its toll on her, as the smoke was on me. Reluctantly we left, but not before being witness to a unique experience - that of sonic Vikings conquering our sleepy town.

Destrophy - Why I Hate Goodbye

YouTube

Tags: Music, Reviews by Jotun
No Comments »

Affiliate Marketing

Looking to save to some money on your Google AdWords? According to Online Money Dot.com your bids may actually be cheaper at night.

Jay at Online Opportunity has a pretty good tutorial on how to split test ads.

Y! Store Tutorials has a “dummies” guide to building landing pages. If you can’t build a landing page after reading this, then abandon all hope.

Blogging / Writing

If you’ve been writing an ebook, or just thinking about it, Hendry Chang has a laundry list of 18 reasons to give it away. If you’ve been waffling about the fate of your ebook, then this might just push you over the edge on pricing.

Traffic / Search Engine Optimization

The eBusiness Banter Blog has posted a three part tutorial on building traffic to your blog.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Software Marketing Secrets has a good article explaining why you should be building brands for your products.

Tags: Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Internet Marketing, Linkdump, List Building, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Site News, Tools by Jotun
No Comments »

Michael Martine of Remarkablogger shares his tips at Pure Blogging on how to make your tutorials must have resources.

Online Opportunity lets us know how to pick the subject when writing an ebook. I came across this about halfway through writing my own ebook. It wouldn’t have helped me choose my subject, but writing tips are always appreciated.

Finally, although it’s not a a writing tip per se, I had to include this: Six Revisions rounds up a list of 10 AJAX effects to sexy up your website. There’s a lot of cool stuff there, but I fear they wouldn’t be dialup friendly. Half of writing is in the presentation.

Tags: Blogging by Jotun
No Comments »

I’ve updated the “Do Follow” list. Firstly I seperated Forums from Blogs. I also added the following Blogs tonight:

Page Rank 7:

http://everything.typepad.com/

Page Rank 6:

http://www.gadgetell.com/
http://www.blogherald.com/
http://foolswisdom.com/
http://lifelearningtoday.com/

http://lifelearningtoday.com
http://mobilesociety.typepad.com
http://adamboulton.typepad.com
http://alexanderstreet.typepad.com

I’ll keep updating on as often as possible. I have at least 250 blogs to add, minimum, but the most difficult part is working up the ambition to start transcribing a list of that size. Hope the list comes in handy!

Tags: Site News by Jotun
No Comments »

Blogging

Aseem Kishore from Online Tech Tips guest posted this week on Pro Blogger. His article on why in order to survive, mimicry is key was quite spot-on.

Cash Marble reveals how to generate traffic as you surf.

E-Mailing

The Marketing Tips Blog keys us in on four proven subject lines to use in email.

Computer Geek Stuff

If you’re interested in tunneling through SSH, I ran across an awesome tutorial. Although it seems to be directed at Internet Explorer, I don’t see why it couldn’t be adapted to any web browser. I’m also totally in love with his WordPress Theme.

Tags: Blogging, Entrecard, Psychology, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by Jotun
No Comments »

Tools

Icon Interactive has Four Free Tools for your use: Link Popularity, Search Engine Submitter, Keyword Suggestion, and Word Cloud. Of them, I found the Link Popularity to be the most informative, whereas the Search Engine Submitter and Keyword Suggestion tools kept breaking on me. I guess you get what you pay for.

Wordpress

Via Weblog Tools Collection: Blueprint Design Studio graces us with a list of their Top 10 Essential Plugins for Wordpress. I’ve used a lot of the plugins on this list, but TinyMCE always was a pain in the arse to get working properly. Subscribe2 is what all of the big boys use on their sites, but for some reason PlugInstaller breaks it, so I’m out of the loop on that one too. Finally, CFormsII seems to be powerful in the right hands, which are obviously not mine - I’ve never had any joy in getting it to work.

Performancing has a great article on using WordPress to build a web directory which is centered around two plugins; Alex Tang’s Link Directory plugin, and Links Back’s plugin WP Directory. I’m interested in trying this out, but according to Mr. Dash they’re both broken in WordPress 2.3.2, which means they’re probably just going to frustrate me. Still, something I’m going to keep on the back burner.

Search Engine Optimization / Link Building

Blogging Mix has a two part tutorial on how to get Google to crawl your website. They’re full of great ideas, and you’re probably already doing them, but a refresher course never hurts. The one tip that I always do that isn’t on this list, is adding your website feed to iGoogle. I remember reading somewhere that if you add your RSS to iGoogle it helps bump up your place in the queue. If your feed is provided by FeedBurner (a division of Google) then you should be doubly covered, right? Part 1 | Part 2

Build a Blog asks the question “To promote using blog directories, or not?”

Thanks to the post above, I was introduced to Skelliwag’s tutorial on Hansel and Gretel Link Building which is a straight forward guide to getting quality incoming sites.

Do Follow Directory is a directory of sites that have “do follow” enabled.

Info Doorway has a large list of “do follow” sites and forums arranged by Page Rank.

Eric Mitz tells us how he uses forums for backlinks.

Courtney Tuttle has a list of 102 ways to make your site a backlink superstar.

Micro Persuasion opines that we’re like a million monkeys on treadmills. Odd title aside, it’s a thought provoking discussion on channels and internet trends of the past few years.

Affiliate Marketing

Squidoo Lens on using Squidoo for Affiliate Marketing

My Web 2.0 has 5 tips for creating powerful text ads.

AffiliateSeeking.com is a directory of the various programs by which you can become an affiliate marketer.

Paul updated his Affiliate Marketing Guide. Awesome advice from somebody who is making 6 figures a month.

This post has been a week in the making, so I hope it’s not a total deluge. I plan on adding a lot of these links to the main site as time permits this week.

Tuesday I go see a specialist for my hernia and see when they want to perform surgery. I’m praying that it won’t be until after my wife returns to work. I’ve been dealing with this for several months now, another one shouldn’t hurt as long as I take it easy. A little Alieve generally keeps me on my feet, and that’s all I need. If I do have to go in fo surgery, expect posting to pick up dramatically.

I’m currently hatching several mini e-books, and when I finally hatch them, you’ll be the first to know.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Linkdump, Plugins, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools, WordPress by Jotun
No Comments »

Hey all.

I know I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet as of late, and I apologize for that. Life has blown up around here, and even getting 10 minutes at the computer is an accomplishment.

The time change this weekend has completely thrown my 16 month old daughter off of her schedule, and she’s making it hell on everybody. Thankfully my wife is laid off, so I can go to bed at a reasonable time. Otherwise, I’d be greatly increasing my chances of running my hand into some heavy machinery at work.

I went into the doctor yesterday to have a pain that I’ve been experiencing for the last 4-5 months. It turns out that I have the beginnings of a hernia. I see a specialist on Tuesday to see if operation is necessary. I hope not, since I’m not preparred mentally for two weeks off of work. *sigh*

I’ve been trying to reformulate my affiliate marketing strategy, since my current efforts have basically stalled out. The last sale I made was two weeks ago, and nothing since. I finally shut off AdWords last week rather than throwing my money down a hole. I was hoping that I’d be able to replace my wife’s lost revenue, but I’m apparently doing something wrong.

Anyway, this weekend the wife and kid are out of town, so I should be able to blast out a linkstorm along the lines of what has come previously. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick back up on blogging, or just move to a more specific schedule.

Tags: Site News by Jotun
No Comments »

6 Ideas for viral marketing

10 Free Ebooks on Earning Money Online/Blogging

More Free Eebooks on Blogging

Affiliate Toolbox - Free ebook debuting friday | Posted!

3 common mistakes to avoid as an affiliate

Great primer on how to write a headline

How Cisco Leveraged Web 2.0 to launch a new product

An advertising designer weighs on headline writing

Google Checkout Trends

How to use Wordpress as a Membership directory

Product Datafeeds for Affiliates 101

CaRP/WP: Include RSS Feeds inside Wordpress Posts

Affiliate X posts his thoughts: The Death of Crap. This rant inspired Vishen at Mind Valley Labs to post his own thoughts: How Internet Marketing Gurus are Screwing The Public and Making it Increasingly Harder for Newbies to Gain Guidance.

Via Affiliate Toolbox - 100 Landing Page Tips and Tricks

That Blog Site has yet another Affiliate Link Cloaking Tutorial

Tags: Linkdump by Jotun
No Comments »