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! =)

Posted by Clint Lenard | No 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…

Posted by Clint Lenard | 1 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!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

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.

Posted by Clint Lenard | 1 Comment »

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!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

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!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

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!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

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!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

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?

Posted by Clint Lenard | 2 Comments »

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!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

In the last post we discussed, a little bit, about Social Media Marketing.

In this post, I want to further explain what Social Media Marketing can do for your Websites.

I first started learning about Social Media Marketing about a year ago, although I was very aware of Social Media sites and what they could do for a site in regards to Traffic. I have owned a couple of Social Networking Communities over the years and I’ve learned quite a bit about Social Media sites during the course of that time, as I used a few to promote my own communities. No, I did not spam - I actually followed their rules, as much as I could

I even watched the traffic flow from my own Social Networking sites into another site I owned from just a few links.

There are a lot of great Social Media sites out there that can bring you a ton of traffic if used correctly. Although I’m still learning about some of them - most of them are pretty straight forward.

Obviously, the best site would be YouTube.com… the reason being - this site brings in so much traffic, it’s almost impossible NOT to get a nice little chunk for yourselves.

To be quite honest, I’ve never even used YouTube.com for my own benefits - but I’ve helped a few others get started with the site and it helped them tremendously. I do plan to use the site in the next month as I’m planning to create a couple of Video Tutorials to, hopefully, bring in some extra Traffic to this site.

I mostly use Digg.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon, Facebook, MySpace, Technorati and various other sites (PlugIM, MarkTD, etc), but there’s a ton of Social Media sites out there…

…AND that can also be quite a task having to sign up for all of these sites and have the ability to bookmark, submit, etc. all of these sites in one shot.

A lot of people use OnlyWire.com to take care of the bookmarking (and submitting, etc), as it gives you the ability to store all of your Usernames and Passwords and even submit links all within the site… ONE TIP, THOUGH: REMEMBER THE PASSWORD IT GIVES YOU. I messed up and now I cannot figure out my password and they, for some ODD reason, do not have a Password Retrieval system in place. Why? I have no clue but it’s very annoying… and you won’t be able to contact them either. That’s why I use Web2Submitter (free with a membership to Social Power Linking) to keep track of the most important sites. I also tend to keep track of each username and password by placing them into a file I keep offline. Why I didn’t do this for OnlyWire? I do not know… !

I just mentioned Social Power Linking - and I want to tell you that the BuzzGroup is also a very useful system they have to help you create a Buzz with your link submissions. Some may say it’s cheating - I say it’s the same thing everyone else is doing!

Social Media Marketing is the “new wave” of getting traffic to your site and it can be one of the cheapest ways of getting a Flood of traffic very quickly, if used correctly.

So how do you get started with Social Media Marketing (SMM)?

First off - make sure the title of the page, as well as the description, is enticing to the potential reader. Something catchy that will grab their immediate attention and make them want to click the link. This is called “Link bait” and it has worked for many, MANY website owners, Bloggers and even Affiliates.

Second off - make sure your content is worthwhile. This is one of the biggest problems with so many sites, landing pages and even Blogs that I see on a daily basis. If you’re not giving the readers what they want - you’re going to have a major bounce rate problem (the user leaves from the original page viewed). Take, for example, sites such as Shoemoney.com … Jeremy gives his readers a TON of information and keeps them coming back. Once the reader has seen his site once, they’re more than likely to come back again…

Third — DO NOT SPAM your own links. Make sure you play by the rules and be realistic. For example, if you use StumbleUpon - make sure you stumble other sites that you believe are useful and/or valuable.

Try to give feedback to other Digg users and users of other sites. They will appreciate people who have taken their time to visit their sites and will usually return the favor, if you’ve followed the above.

Make SMM a daily habit. Take time out of your day, each and every day, to make sure you’re getting your site out there and you’re getting some traffic coming in.

Next — start signing up for Social Media Sites!

I found the following list from Prelovac.com, this is a very thorough list and thanks to Prelovac.com - it will save you a ton of time!

As you can see, the list is huge and it will take quite some time to sign up for each and every one… so try to sign up for the most important (in your opinion) sites that will help you gain some more Traffic in the near future.

Social Media Marketing is just another way to increase traffic to your website(s). In the next post, we’ll be discussing Pay Per Click Advertising and going over the basics - then we’ll dig deeper into more Advanced stuff.

I hope you enjoyed this post! Hopefully it will be useful to a few of you!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »

I see a lot of Affiliate Marketing Newbies who get stuck with paying a lot of money for hosting accounts for their Domains. This is a mistake, in my opinion, as there are much better ways to accomplish this feat and save a lot of money in the long run.

Rather than pay $5-$20 for a hosting account for 1-3 domains, you should focus on getting a Reseller account in which you can host as many domains as you wish, for MUCH cheaper in the long run. One of the Hosting companies I use is hostgator.com…and it’s better than the other companies I’ve used/use.

But there’s other companies that exist that you can good service from as well. HostRocket.com offers a reseller hosting package for a decent price, and they are great with uptime guarantees!

1an1.com is horrible… I advise you to stay away from this company, PERIOD.

You can find a lot of Reseller companies on ebay, but I do not suggest to go this route. I’ve dealt with almost every company listed on ebay and rarely do any of them have good service.

With a Reseller account - you will receive WHM (WebHostManager) or PLESK that allows you to quickly and easily setup your hosting account for your domain (each one). If you use GoDaddy for your Domains, you will be able to have your Website up and running within 30 minutes. I usually only have to wait for 10 minutes, whereas companies such as 1and1 will take up to 10 hours, minimum.

Hosting matters… hosting can make or break your Business of your site is down and you’re spending time promoting the site. Uptime is what you need to worry about, and downtime is what you should NOT have to worry about!

I hope this Tip helps you get started with your Affiliate Marketing career!

Posted by Clint Lenard | No Comments »