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
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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
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It’s a LinkStorm(tm)

WordPress SEO Whitepaper
Free Listing at a PR5 Directory
Team Schuman: 6 Reasons TrafficJam.com is a Must-Visit
Dosh Dosh: How to Become an Authority in Your Niche
Ankit Arora: How to Write an Interesting Blog Post
Prospecting vs. Lead Generation
BlogsRating.com - Like Hot or Not for Bloggers
DotCom Mogul: These WP Plugins are the Shizzle
Josh Spaulding: Duplicate Content - It May Not Be So Bad
NoFollow Free WP Plugin Updated - About two days after I installed it.
5 Unconventional Ways to Ignite Creativity
Life Optimizer: Free Passive Income Resources

Debating whether I’m going to the day job tomorrow. Had freezing rain all day, and a couple of inches of snow. By tomorrow we’re supposed to have 3-5 inches more of the crap, with high winds anticipated. I’d rather stay home and read ‘Red Dragon.’

I turned in my request for vacation next month. Soilwork is coming through Iowa, and less than 30 miles away from me. I’m totally in. Plus, they’re playing in a 150-200 person club. I’ll be lucky if they don’t literally rock my face off. Next on my wishlist, please come back Rammstein! They came through with Slipknot and System of a Down back in 2001, but I had to miss it for a college class that had 100% mandatory attendance for the semester. To this day the fact that I missed Rammstein makes me sad inside

Speaking of Rammstein, I spent Saturday morning listening to the new album by Emigrate, a side project by one of Rammstein’s guitarists. It’s a pretty good effort, but some riffs seem almost directly transferred from existing Rammstein songs. I didn’t care much for their politics either, but I usually don’t if I’m not listening to Hardcore bands. Overall, I give it a plus, and I do plan on doing an in-depth review at some point.

I went and saw the doctor today. Bronchitis and sinus infection. Just my usual monthly infections. Working with burning metal and aerosolicized petroleum producs takes its toll on my asthma.

It sounds like next weekend I’m going to go read for a part in an indie movie they’re filming close to here. I’m probably just throwing away part of my Saturday, but I’ll be hanging out with good friends, so it’ll definitely be a laugh.

Finally, here’s a recipe for your enjoyment: Buffalo Chicken Salad.

Take 6-8 boneless/skinless chicken tenders and place in crock pot with 16oz Hot Sauce and 1 stick margarine. Cook on high for three hours.
Crush 1 handfull of original Doritos or taco chips in the bottom of a bowl.
Add Lettuce.
Shred chicken and place on salad.
Shred pepper jack cheese over everything.
Enjoy!

Tags: Cooking, Gurus, Linkdump, Music, Plugins, Reviews, Site News, WordPress by Jotun
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Saturday Morning Funnies: Only in Russia

3 Tips to Optimize Your Email Landing Pages. Pretty common sense stuff, but it’s amazing how rare ‘common’ sense is.

6 Easy Ways to Improve Your Affiliate Offer. How to make your squeeze pages sing like the big boys’.

50 Directories to Submit Your Site To. Another Directory List. All have high pagerank and don’t require reciprocal links.

Free Backlinks on Squidoo. Free is free, and backlinks are backlinks.

Backlink Creation Guide lens located on Squidoo.

Increase Technorati Authority with this link exchange program.

Top 100 Social Video Sites. There’s also a sister post Top 100 Social Networking Sites

34 Sites that Pay You to Blog.

Making Money With Youtube. Similar to this post on Cash Tactics from a few weeks ago. Great minds think alike I guess.

20 Ways to Get Massive Traffic.

DotCom Mogul has a pretty exhaustive list on CPA Networks.

Two thoughts on affiliate marketing:

Amit at Super Affiliate Mindset posts his tips on how to get started as an affiliate

Paul disagrees quite strongly.

Right now I’m doing Amit’s system, although I’ve been pressed for time and haven’t setup the backend tracking, which I realize is a mistake that I plan to rectify shortly. I definitely see Paul’s point, and understand where he’s coming from. I’ve always been happy to spend money to make money. I’m not making big bucks, but I am making sales every couple of days, and that helps me feel that I’m not wasting my time.

I’m lucky enough that I have the HTML/web design background so I’m not starting from scratch, but my copywriting skills are sorely needing to be developed.

In site news, I’ve added CommentLuv which will append the last post you make on your website underneath your comments here. So comment away!

This post has been about three hours in the making, so I’m drawing the line now. Off to enjoy some kid-free Saturday action!

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Gurus, Internet Marketing, List Building, Pay Per Click (PPC), Plugins, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), WordPress by Jotun
4 Comments »

(Cross Posted to Fascination Street )Following up on my previous post, I am starting down the path towards becoming an Internet Marketer. I have opened my AdWords account, and started my first campaign. I’m trying to remain cautiously optimistic. I’ve set a limit of $5/day, and I’m going to probably burn through $20 to $25 just testing the waters.

I don’t expect that I’m going to make a crapload of money. I’m not even expecting to make money at all. I don’t have a defeatist attitude, getting rich isn’t the point of this first campaign. The point is to start getting results. I’m eyeballing what seems to be an absolutely massive market that isn’t even remotely being tapped. The question is, how to tap into it.

Hence my first AdWords campaign. I’ve spent years now reading the latest and greatest e-books promising to teach me all of the “Insider’s Secrets” and such. The problem being is that actions are the most important thing when it comes to determining one’s future. I don’t pretend that I’m a guru, or even on the path to becoming one, but I know what my strengths are, and I intend to utilize them to the fullest.

My father is an engineer, my mother an artist. Opposites really do attract, eh? I’ve always had an innate ability to solve problems, generally thinking laterally. I am proud to say that my efforts to break the various systems that I have worked in have led to rules specifically designed to thwart my efforts. Of course, that just generally just encourages me to find new ways around my problems. I digg pissing people off. Moreso, I love to get inside of their heads and just drive them to the brink of madness. I am a psychological sadist who has the ability to observe in a detatched manner the subject I’m working on. I have the brain of a lawyer, but the heart of a used car salesman.

For all of my life I’ve had to deal with the war raging inside of me: logic versus passion. I’m very analytical in my outlook, but I tend to flip to passionate in a heartbeat. My bullshit tolerance is low as a result, and getting lower the older I get. I have a wife, a kid, and a mortgage, so I have to deal with shit, since I can’t just up and quit when I get pissed off, as I was once wont to do.

I stand out at work. I hate working. Detest it. But, the way I see it, if I’m going to be there I’m going to do as much as possible to fill the time. Once I figure out my job, I usually start coasting at about 125% of productivity. That doesn’t make me popular. The fact that I can do it using half the energy of the guy next to me who is struggling at around 80% productivity doesn’t make me many friends either. Add in that I’m a non union worker in a union shop, and it’s amazing I don’t have more “accidents.” The thing is, I’m tired of having to put forth 125% effort just to keep my mind occupied, all the while lining somebody else’s pockets. I want to fill my own pockets with my effort.

That’s why I’m embarking on this venture, so I don’t have to deal with anybody’s crap anymore.

I’ve recently become a reader of Cash Tactics. The author of the blog is “Ruck,” and two years ago he was in my place - wife, two jobs, and trying to get out. Two years later, he’s hit the big time. That’s my inspiration. The ‘only in America‘ type of success story that Ruck is enjoying. I admire his honesty. He shoots from the hip, straight from the hip. When he recommends things, he doesn’t even use affiliate links, unless he’s cloaking them some way I can’t figure out.

Recently he wrote a post entitled Stop Looking For Handouts And Start Busting Tail. Articles like this really help to keep my motivation high, and this is the second post in the space of about three days that really spoke to me. I don’t believe in coincidences, but I do believe in synchronicity - the points where everything in the universe seems to actually fit.

I notice synchronicities all the time, but by the time I squash the Woody Allen voice inside of me, the window has closed, and I’m left waiting for the next opportunity. There’s a saying in certain political circles that “Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Political views aside, that sums my life up in a nutshell.

Last Tuesday/Wednesday was one of those times, however instead of debating, I kicked my inner nebbish in the face, and decided to act on an idea that came to me out of the blue. On an impulse I registered BookMarkMoney.com, and actually paid for hosting instead of slaving it to my main hosting account. Then I went to work.

And that’s where I am today. I’m still working, behind the scenes. I’m splitting my time between backend stuff on this site, AdWords, some speculation on eBay, redesigning my brother’s website, snowblowing the damned driveway every two to three days, and my wife and kid. Plus I have an amazing idea in the pipeline, and if I can wrangle it, I’m going to install the software and play around with it this weekend.

It sounds like a lot of work. And it is. But it’s 125%, and that’s nothing new. The fact that I’m doing it for myself, now that’s new.

Tags: Gurus, Psychology, Site News by Jotun
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