Jan
30th

Affiliate Meter – This Looks Like An Awesome Tool

I just found this site called Affiliate Meter and figured I’d let everybody know about this tool…

Here are the Features listed on the site:

Features of Affmeter

  • View of all your earnings from different affiliate networks and merchants
  • Check revenue instantly and automatically.
  • Check Google Adwords PPC campaign costs automatically.
  • Consolidated format of revenue and cost data in one table
  • Easily set up your accounts for multiple affiliate networks or Google Adwords in different channels.
  • Find top revenue generating merchants
  • Find top revenue losing merchants
  • Make comparisons in between different time periods regarding your revenue generation.
  • View your EPCs.
  • Use the Customized “Merchant Monitor” to track selected merchants’ revenue streams
  • Export reports as XLS files
  • View detailed commission reviews complete with charts
  • Easily make comparisons across time periods, affiliate networks and merchants
  • Receive email alert daily at the time of your choosing
  • View your statistics in USDs, Pounds, AUDs or Euros with the Affmeter Currency Converter.
  • Find affiliate network or merchant revenue statistics according to their share of total revenue.
  • View data from all the Major Affiliate Networks
      • Commission Junction,
      • Linkshare,
      • Performics,
      • Google Adsense,
      • Clickbank,
      • LinkMo,
      • Linktrust,
      • Zanox,
      • Affiliate Window,
      • Affiliate Future,
      • Tradedoubler,
      • Buy.at,
      • DGM Affliates,
      • Webgains,
      • Reporting.net,
      • PaidonResults,
      • Clixgalore

Affmeter will integrate more affiliate networks as time progresses. Linkconnector, Shareasale and Incentaclick are on the pipeline.

  • Get up and going quickly with an easy-to-use interface tailored to the affiliate marketer
  • Detailed review of merchant trend graphics
  • Retrieval of historical data for up to 15 days.
  • Reach of the historical data until 01.01.2007

Wow. I can imagine Affiliate Meter being a HUGE time saver for many, MANY Affiliate Marketers.

I hate having to open a new tab and check my earnings/stats through so many different websites. It’s actually quite annoying to me because I seem to forget to check certain sites and find myself hopping back online when I was half way asleep!

I think I’ll be making a new purchase on Friday! =)

Jan
30th

Is Day Job Killer Or Google Assassin Any Good?

Category: reviews | 2 Comments

Oddly enough, I just posted a blog about one irritating “Guru”, and now I’m about to explain something else…

I have gotten 7 emails over the past 3 days about Google Assassin (DJK II) and Day Job Killer (DJK I), asking me if they were worth the money.

I will say this quickly: NO.

Sure, the guy made a lot of money as an Affiliate and I do believe he’s good at what he does… but do I believe in his products? Nope! I love his Sales Letters and Copywriting ability, but I think his products are NOT worth the money. Period.

I tell people to either join Wealthy Affiliate University or to download Quit Your Day Job, although you’re going to learn A LOT more from Wealthy Affiliate due to it’s extremely helpful training program and community. Either way, you’ll save a TON of money by staying away from these other books and programs.

DJK is full of hype and disappointment, to be quite blunt. I don’t believe in half of the stuff he teaches and the rest is very, very simple information that I teach on this site…for FREE.

Why spend $97 on an ebook like that? It’s pointless.

So that’s my “review of Day Job Killer” and DJK Assassin/Google Assassin. Sorry to disappoint anyone that was hoping for a positive review of Chris McNeeny’s products, but I just can’t do it… I’m sure the guy is a nice guy and very good at Affiliate Marketing, but I feel that the products are hyped up garbage, to say the least. Affiliate Project X, DJK, Google Assassin, etc…

Jan
30th

Why I Can’t Stand Internet Marketing ‘Gurus’

Category: My Life | Leave a Comment

I’ve always had a problem with so called Internet Marketing ‘Gurus’, but they get on my nerves over and over again…

Recently, I pretty much came to the rescue of a major Keyword program offered on Clickbank. I won’t say the name – but the guy who owns it is very well known in the Internet Marketing world.

What had happened was that his Download and Registration page was showing up in the SERPS and people were abusing the system and taking advantage of his mishap… they were legally registering the program and downloading it without any problems.

Not once did this guy offer anything to me in return, not even a thanks until I became a bit irritated and wrote him back a few days later with a “you’re welcome”… I figured I at least deserved that? He replied with some junk programs that he no longer sells. I never used them, but at least “I” had the courtesy of saying thanks. Oddly enough, he wouldn’t even give me a copy of the program I saved from being taken advantage of. OK?

So the other day I noticed a pretty popular Affiliate had sent me an email to this recently big launch of this program (in November, I believe?) that was on special for only $4.95 and $39.95 each month. I figured “hmmmmm… I bet my readers would like a deal like that!”. So I contacted him and asked him what was up with getting my readers that deal… his reply was simply asking me how many people I have on my list.

Seeing as how I don’t push my list too much on this site, as well as the fact that I just now started using an opt-in form, I explained that I don’t have a 1,000+ member list, but my blog readers would more than likely be interested in the deal.

His response? Nothing…

Basically, here’s what happened. The guy wanted to sell a few more copies for dirt cheap as a favor for his Affiliate/Guru buddy who probably did him a favor in the past…but he didn’t want the link to “get out”.

I guess I’m old fashioned and believe that when someone sends you a reply, whether you like it or not, at least reply back with SOMETHING?

Now you didn’t think I wasn’t going to let this go, did you? ha ha… here’s the link – so grab it if you want it for cheap! There’s absolutely NO affiliate link with this, but please read the information!

I figure that if he didn’t want to make Sales, he shouldn’t be placing the link for buddies only, right? ;-)

I don’t dislike the guy, I’m just surprised that some people stay in Business with that type of disrespect. I get a ton of emails all day long and I’m quick to respond and my readers who ask those questions will agree. I do understand that people get busy, but too busy until it comes to a few extra bucks? Not cool.

Enjoy!

Jan
28th

Jeremy Palmer Is Giving His Ebook Away! Download It Here!

High Performance Affiliate Marketing is now free for anybody who feels like downloading it. I think this is one of the biggest gestures I’ve seen in the Affiliate Marketing community, as this book is one of my favorites!

If you don’t know who Jeremy Palmer is – he’s a Super Affiliate who has gained a lot of popularity with his project: PPC Classroom.

Download High Performance Affiliate Marketing from QuitYourDayJob.com

You can see the link under the opt-in box. I realize he’s done this in hopes that he can get more opt-ins and notify them on Updates as well as give them news on upcoming books/projects, but I feel that it’s the right thing to do by telling those who might not see the link.

Jan
27th

The Top 5 Worst Mistakes You Can Make As A Newbie Affiliate Marketer

I haven’t been blogging much lately (I’ve been extremely busy), so I figured I would create a new Blog post about the top 5 mistakes that you can make as a Newbie Affiliate Marketer.

I know how much some people hate reading long Blog posts – so I will make this straight to the point and as short as possible!

Here’s the Top 5 Affiliate Marketing Mistakes That I’ve seen and/or done:

  1. Learning Affiliate Marketing from expensive ebooks — now this may sound strange to some, but this is a big mistake to most newbies. Sure, there’s a lot of good “expensive” ebooks, but there’s a lot of ebooks that I highly suggest you STAY AWAY from. I may get some flack for this but: Day Job Killer is NOT a good book to learn Affiliate Marketing. I don’t agree with most of what Chris talks about in this book and I would never recommend it to anyone…
  2. Trying to save a few bucks and not starting an opt-in list — I see A LOT of newbies/beginners who tend to think a little backwards… they’ll go out and spend ridiculous amounts of money on junk products and then they try to save a few bucks by not signing up for a service such as aweber. Wrong! I know a lot of non-affiliates who read this blog might be thinking I’m an evil marketer, but getting people to optin to your Email lists can make some BIG money down the road. It’s like they say: “The money is in the list”… it’s very true, in most cases! Why waste money on getting people to show up at your site ONE TIME? Collect leads and send them useful information… don’t spam them – if you do, you ARE wasting money.
  3. Overlooking SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — Ughhhh… I don’t mean to be hard on beginners, but you NEED to learn SEO! This is not a suggestion – this should be a NO BRAINER. If you’re not learning and focusing on SEO – you’re losing a lot of valuable traffic. A lot of marketers might simply throw all of their time and money into a simple squeeze page or a landing page through a PPC campaign and not use SEO… BUT, you’re killing your potential! Organic results are GREAT. Use them.
  4. Not taking enough time on Landing Pages — I’ve been there… I’ve gotten lazy. I would throw up a new site in a day and be done with it. Never testing, never thinking twice… Then I realized: I WAS LOSING A LOT OF MONEY. Test and Tweak your landing pages. This not only gives you better conversions, it lowers your PPC bids! (GQS = Google Quality Score in AdWords will raise your bid prices for your keywords if your Landing Pages are not relevant to the keywords and ads…)
  5. Never letting go of a Campaign – This seems to be the biggest problem with most Affiliate Marketers. They will focus sooo hard on their campaigns and see absolutely NO results, even with rigorous testing, and they will not give up. Look, nobody wants to give up… but the fact is – there ARE times when you have to face the facts: Not every campaign is going to make money. Half of your campaigns will be absolutely worthless… come back and try again if you feel it’s necessary, but work on what is making you money and try to duplicate it. Don’t continue working on a dud…

Now there is a follow up to #5, but for the sake of a numbered theme (5), I will make this a bonus…

I also see a lot of Newbies/beginner Affiliate Marketers who don’t try hard enough. They think that just because they find a hot niche and throw up a Website, that they should see instant results. Test and Tweak and keep trying… obviously, don’t try too hard to where you know you’re working on a dud – but don’t give up without even trying!

Jan
26th

The 100 Oldest Domain Names

Category: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

I found this information from Jottings.com and thought it was pretty interesting… you always hear about how long someone has been involved on the Web…

I wonder how well they stack up to these guys? ;-)

Rank
Create date Domain name
1. 15-Mar-1985 SYMBOLICS.COM
2. 24-Apr-1985 BBN.COM
3. 24-May-1985 THINK.COM
4. 11-Jul-1985 MCC.COM
5. 30-Sep-1985 DEC.COM
6. 07-Nov-1985 NORTHROP.COM
7. 09-Jan-1986 XEROX.COM
8. 17-Jan-1986 SRI.COM
9. 03-Mar-1986 HP.COM
10. 05-Mar-1986 BELLCORE.COM
11= 19-Mar-1986 IBM.COM
11= 19-Mar-1986 SUN.COM
13= 25-Mar-1986 INTEL.COM
13= 25-Mar-1986 TI.COM
15. 25-Apr-1986 ATT.COM
16= 08-May-1986 GMR.COM
16= 08-May-1986 TEK.COM
18= 10-Jul-1986 FMC.COM
18= 10-Jul-1986 UB.COM
20= 05-Aug-1986 BELL-ATL.COM
20= 05-Aug-1986 GE.COM
20= 05-Aug-1986 GREBYN.COM
20= 05-Aug-1986 ISC.COM
20= 05-Aug-1986 NSC.COM
20= 05-Aug-1986 STARGATE.COM
26. 02-Sep-1986 BOEING.COM
27. 18-Sep-1986 ITCORP.COM
28. 29-Sep-1986 SIEMENS.COM
29. 18-Oct-1986 PYRAMID.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 ALPHACDC.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 BDM.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 FLUKE.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 INMET.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 KESMAI.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 MENTOR.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 NEC.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 RAY.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 ROSEMOUNT.COM
30= 27-Oct-1986 VORTEX.COM
40= 05-Nov-1986 ALCOA.COM
40= 05-Nov-1986 GTE.COM
42= 17-Nov-1986 ADOBE.COM
42= 17-Nov-1986 AMD.COM
42= 17-Nov-1986 DAS.COM
42= 17-Nov-1986 DATA-IO.COM
42= 17-Nov-1986 OCTOPUS.COM
42= 17-Nov-1986 PORTAL.COM
42= 17-Nov-1986 TELTONE.COM
42= 11-Dec-1986 3COM.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 AMDAHL.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 CCUR.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 CI.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 CONVERGENT.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 DG.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 PEREGRINE.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 QUAD.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 SQ.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 TANDY.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 TTI.COM
50= 11-Dec-1986 UNISYS.COM
61= 19-Jan-1987 CGI.COM
61= 19-Jan-1987 CTS.COM
61= 19-Jan-1987 SPDCC.COM
64. 19-Feb-1987 APPLE.COM
65= 04-Mar-1987 NMA.COM
65= 04-Mar-1987 PRIME.COM
67. 04-Apr-1987 PHILIPS.COM
68= 23-Apr-1987 DATACUBE.COM
68= 23-Apr-1987 KAI.COM
68= 23-Apr-1987 TIC.COM
68= 23-Apr-1987 VINE.COM
72. 30-Apr-1987 NCR.COM
73= 14-May-1987 CISCO.COM
73= 14-May-1987 RDL.COM
75. 20-May-1987 SLB.COM
76= 27-May-1987 PARCPLACE.COM
76= 27-May-1987 UTC.COM
78. 26-Jun-1987 IDE.COM
79. 09-Jul-1987 TRW.COM
80. 13-Jul-1987 UNIPRESS.COM
81= 27-Jul-1987 DUPONT.COM
81= 27-Jul-1987 LOCKHEED.COM
83. 28-Jul-1987 ROSETTA.COM
84. 18-Aug-1987 TOAD.COM
85. 31-Aug-1987 QUICK.COM
86= 03-Sep-1987 ALLIED.COM
86= 03-Sep-1987 DSC.COM
86= 03-Sep-1987 SCO.COM
89= 22-Sep-1987 GENE.COM
89= 22-Sep-1987 KCCS.COM
89= 22-Sep-1987 SPECTRA.COM
89= 22-Sep-1987 WLK.COM
93. 30-Sep-1987 MENTAT.COM
94. 14-Oct-1987 WYSE.COM
95. 02-Nov-1987 CFG.COM
96. 09-Nov-1987 MARBLE.COM
97= 16-Nov-1987 CAYMAN.COM
97= 16-Nov-1987 ENTITY.COM
99. 24-Nov-1987 KSR.COM
100. 30-Nov-1987 NYNEXST.COM

It’s pretty cool to see Northrop as #6… my dad started working for them around 1985, so I’m pretty familiar with the company. Just figured I’d share the information as it was pretty neat seeing some of the names and domains!

Jan
24th

Affiliate Marketing Tip #2

I found that it’s “almost” easy to find Niches online, even what’s called “Micro-niches”, which are very tiny sub-niches, by visiting very well known places such as the following:

Yahoo! Answers
Answers.com
Magazines.com

Ebay Pulse (but also check out products within Ebay… you might find something interesting)
Meetup.com
Yahoo! Groups
MSN Groups
Google Groups
General Forums of a Niche (example: Auto Forums which contain many different Auto Brand forums, within them — browse around and learn!)
Wikipedia
MySpace Forums (these people love to talk…learn what their problems are and you might find a GOLD mine in these forums!)
Google Hot Trends

Etc… I hope you get the point.

For forums – all you need to do is find a Niche Market and type it into google as:  niche+forum (niche being the name of the actual Niche)

There’s so many great places to find Niches and Micro-niches, but you need to find a HUNGRY crowd that is looking for a solution to fix their problems… who knows, you may find that there’s a VERY lucrative Niche that doesn’t even have a product yet! This gives YOU the opportunity to create your own and cash in on the problem, while helping others!

Google Trends is a great way to find out if a Market is hot. You can put in keywords (use plurals and NO plurals to see the difference!) and see if the trend is moving up or down.

Microsoft AdLab can also offer some great advice.

Take notes and keep your eyes peeled…and vice versa ;-)

If you feel that you’ve found a Hot Market to promote an item to – make sure there’s a product behind it – if not, create it yourself.

Obviously, you can do everything in reverse and find a Product FIRST – and then do your research using these same tools. Hungry crowds is what matters here. If the market isn’t hot – you won’t make as much money as you might like to believe.

I’ve found products, and even Niches, just by skimming through CJ.com or Clickbank.com Categories just to see what’s going on…

Again, keep your eyes open – mind open – and TAKE NOTES!

Good luck!

Jan
24th

EzineArticles.com Acting Weird…

Category: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

I’ve written about 100 articles over the course of the last 2 months and I’ve had some pretty good success with EzineArticles.com, and have always highly recommended the site…

But the last few weeks I’ve noticed some strange occurrences. A few weeks ago I wrote a Review that I rewrote for EzineArticles and everything was looking good… nothing spammy about it. I actually made sure it was less spammy than another Review of the same product on their site that was approved. End result? Not accepted… I cleaned it up a little more… NOT accepted. I gave up and submitted to GoArticles. Approved. Interesting…

Then, yesterday, I decided to change the Author Resource box of almost 20 articles (all of which were already approved!) to point to this domain, rather than the other Blog I had listed… all but 3 were approved. They said that I was pointing to too many domains… what?! ALL I did was change the Author Resource box and had the same amount of links (2) – just going to THIS blog, instead of the other.

It’s pretty annoying when you see people abusing their system and your LEGIT articles are not accepted…

I tried to respond to the emails but I have a feeling I will not receive a response back.

So frustrating!

Jan
23rd

NeverBlueAds…any good?

I was approved for NeverBlueAds.com on Saturday when my Rep called me. She was very cool and approved me pretty quickly. Easy to deal with…

I’m very impressed with the interface, payout scales and all around feel of the system. I like it a lot so far…

Have you used NeverBlueAds? What are your thoughts?

Jan
22nd

The Ultimate Website Conversion Course

The 2008 Website Conversion Course has just been released and I’ve asked the creator of the product for a deal for my readers…

Right now the product is on sale for only $97… but, even better, you can get it for an additional $30.00 off of that price with my coupon!

Basically, you get the product for only $67 through this special link and using my name in the coupon code box!

Here’s the link to the website:

http://www.websiteconversioncourse.com/clintlenard/

If you choose to purchase it (which is up to you, obviously!), all you need to do is enter my name into the Coupon Code box:

“clint lenard” (without the quotes)

But here’s the catch… the sale ends on January 25th at Midnight (PST)! So you need to decide quickly if you want to purchase the program or not.

If you know how important Conversions are – this program is an awesome product for you!