Do you want to tell me what your favorite affiliate program is?

I honestly don't want to tell you what my favorite ones are, or the ones I use outside of this blog. Why? Because I don't want to create competition for myself. If I revealed the ones that work well for me, I might find you on forums promoting that same product. The ability to copy other affiliate marketers is a gift, and sort of a curse right at the same time.

I'm only trying to make a point here, its not that you're supposed to be at any loss if you don't hear about what kind of affiliate marketing I do. I can tell you that one of my niches is travel, and I use networks like ClickBank, Commission Junction, and ShareASale. I'd rather not be as specific as this made up example:

"I promote Pay Day Loan products, and I've gotten most of my leads by putting links to my website on Yahoo Answers, Google Groups, and forums where I read about people struggling financially."

Would you ever be that specific about your efforts to make money online, if they weren't your spouse or business partner? I personally don't see any good reason for it. Internet Marketing is quite competitive, and with tools that let you see your competitor's back links, and with the ability to take someone's article and spin it into something unique, it sure is easier to copy an online marketer's business model than a brick and mortar store. 

How to be unsuccessful with internet marketing

Adopt the following practices, attitudes, and beliefs to be unsuccessful with internet marketing.

Believe everything that the gurus say, and make assumptions on a regular basis. Be sure to subscribe to all of their mailing lists and buy any internet marketing tool that you can afford.

Have an attitude that its OK to spam your content to people, because its top priority for you to make money. Whether or not people get irritated and report you is their choice and not worth being concerned over. 

SEO is just a myth and its not remotely important. Put whatever content you want on your website, in any way you'd like... if the website visitor can't relate, they probably don't know any English and they're just not important. 

Don't bother having a contact form or commenting system on your website. People will probably just send you stupid messages, and people will leave spam comments. 'User generated content' doesn't contribute to SEO at all (its just a myth anyways, like I said before!)

It is fine to blog as little as once a month if you'd like. Whatever makes you feel best is fine, just live for the day and don't waste your life away with hard work.

The products are what brings in the cash, and allows you to pay bills and live your life. So make sure to put affiliate products and other offers all over your website. Make sure that they're just banner ads so that they stick out. That way, people will get bored when browsing your website and you'll generate some revenue with such a tactic. (Did you hear what I just said? Boring content + lots of ads == Success. This is the best kept secret of top internet marketers.) 

Don't bother putting images on your website. People are their to learn new things and get information. You might look like a lazy blogger if you chose to do this. 

- A few of the above tips actually apply to this blog. -

Affiliate marketers against spam

Spam and internet marketing are often confused with each other among people who know little to nothing about internet marketing. You can be any kind of internet marketer and hate spam with passion, in fact its common and I'm one of those haters of spam myself. If you spam for a living, I hope that something stops your heart from beating. I am pleased to read that Pinterest is choosing to block affiliate links. Its a step in the right direction, even though I as an affiliate could miss out on an opportunity to spam that site if I wanted. However, Pinterest doesn't seem that unique. It appears to be just another big site to share things you find on the web. But I think its good when another "big thing" comes out so that traffic is divided and the owners of these sites are forced to be more competitive - Income inequality doesn't need to get any worse. It sounds like comment spam will become an outdated tactic later if not sooner. You know, when someone writes a really short or otherwise generic comment on a blog which doesn't even address what's being discussed just so they can drop a link. Maybe site owners would be smart to not let any URL's onto their blog through comments? Well, that's how some of them handle it. I personally don't like that, because I like leaving comments on blogs with a URL, under the condition that my comment is relevant and valuable.

I found a unique way to fight email spammers and waste their time

"This page has fifty randomly generated email addresses (refresh and new ones will appear).  At the bottom of the page is a link to this page again, essentially reloading it for programs to collect more fake email addresses. Email collecting programs (spam bots) will be sent into an infinite loop by following the link at the bottom of the page and will get more and more fake email addresses stuck in their databases."

What a convenient way for such a website to get back links. Totally ethical and unspammy of them as well. As a blogger and affiliate marketer who rarely encounters email spam, the main annoyance I've seen is blogspam and spam on forums. (Blog spam is a term that's often used to describe any spammy website.) A common way of fighting blog spam would be when a moderator chooses to shadow their posts, or even shadow ban the user (they can still log on and see what others are saying, but only they can see the posts that they make). Another good technique to waste a spammer's time, although this is often used by unfair moderators, or by an unfair built in algorithm of the forum (in other words it might not be based on a decision made by a person, but instead certain keywords were detected over time etc.)

Want to buy some $1 trial offers for affiliate marketing products? Look further than ClickBank.

When you go to the ClickBank marketplace and click on a category, you'll see some options for screening and sorting different products to shop for, or become affiliates for. There is a filter for $1 trials, which should show you such offers once checked.

I clicked that and one of the sites which came up is Coffee Shop Millionaire. Like many CB products it gives a video presentation and but this one makes you watch the whole thing before giving a link to the shopping cart. It does not have a $1 trial offer, at least not anymore. So, I ended up leaving the website and I ended up having this dialogue with a "online live agent."

Angel Says:Hey Wait!! I have just been authorized to give the next 10 leaving visitors an additional $10 discount so you can get started for just $27, this discount is extremely limited so if you want to see whats generated over $21 Million online from 100% FREE traffic, just CLICK HERE

You:Hi...

Angel Says:And with our 60 day Money Back guarantee you can purchase with confidence, if you aren't satisfied then we will buy back your membership and you can KEEP all your profits! That's how sure we are the Coffee Shop Millionaire will work for you!

You:I have some questions.

You:Does this program offer a one dollar trial?

Angel Says:Once you have your list, which remember you haven't paid a Cent for, you can rent it out just like Anthony did! Usually renting it out 2-3 times a month at between $8000 to $10000 you make a Guaranteed $16,000 per month

You:Can you stop and listen to me, I have some questions...


Angel Says:Could you try rephrasing the question?

You:What's so hard to understand about the questions I'm asking?

Angel Says:I'll do my very best to assist you, please ask away:)

You:You are a bot, clearly...

Angel Says:I am a live virtual agent :)

Angel Says:So do you want to take advantage of this great limited time offer?
You:You're not human though...

Angel Says:You dont need any special technical skills to make Coffee Shop Millionaire work for you. For the LOW fee of $27 (Normally $37) we can show you how.

Angel Says:Would you like to get started? CLICK HERE

You:If the site owner is a millionaire he would probably hire humans as agents

Angel Says:It’s simple―you can use this system to make a “job-quitting” income for yourself (and to live life 100% on your terms). And if for any reason you don’t love it, just let us know within 60 days, and you get all your money back...how fair is that?

You:hehehehe Intellichat isn't so intelligent after all...

Angel Says:My intelligent chat agent software was produced by www.intellichat.com if you are interested in using my services on your website feel free to put in an application at our website.

So, its powered by a service called IntelliChat, which is meant to try and keep the visitors on the site and make a purchase. Not a bad idea, if the agent isn't human you won't be paying by the hour and it can still get a message across.

CoffeeShopMillionaire is one site which shouldn't have come up in the results that I selected, and Affiliate Cash Snipers is another one. It has a 'free trial' for the 'most advanced sniping topics', however, as seen on its order form.

Not to say its not worth browsing ClickBank products for one dollar trial periods for affiliate products, in fact it is worth it. But CB needs to fix that.

How job finding websites could improve

...not to say that they should improve.

...inconveniences are sometimes for the better...

Although only about 15% of jobs are advertised online, many people rely on sites like Monster and Career Builder to look for jobs. I'll go over how some of these sites could improve so that people could apply for jobs at a faster rate.

Career Builder has the option of applying for money jobs at once, but if you do it this way you can't send a cover letter. I used to think there should be a button to check all of the check boxes at once, but then I figured that too many people would mindlessly apply for any job and waste space in employer's inboxes (there is probably too much of that already.) Career Builder could, on the other hand, filter out jobs which you've already applied for from the list of jobs to 'Quick Apply':

Employers might automatically filter duplicate applications, not that its a big deal either way but since millions of people use these sites it could be fixed. SoloGig is a job seeking site for IT professionals and its a partner of CareerBuilder which only allows you to apply for one job at a time. In fact, most job finding websites only let you apply for one job at a time. Maybe little inconveniences like this are good for making applicants put some thought into the jobs they apply, such as not applying for jobs which they're not qualified for.

Which job finding websites do you think should improve, and how so?

Most people who get jobs these days can do so because they network with the right people. Don't rely too much on these websites.

Google Adsense: Too good to last

Adsense Publishers: Are you afraid of your account being terminated?

Google Adsense is obviously not a scam since its directly through google which everyone knows about and uses all of the time. Most valid clicks you receive through this network allow you to earn between 5 cents and $3.00. Five cents isn't common and its not to say that no valid clicks are even lower than that. I suppose its possible to earn more than $3.00 from a click but it would have to be rare. Other PPC (Pay Per Click) networks can't even compete with Google Adsense, probably because they can't really afford to pay more.

I might compare having a google adsense account to working at Target: Its easy to get hired, and easy to get fired. If it weren't for the relatively high chance of getting terminated from Google Adsense, I'd say its "pretty good" in the world of affiliate marketing. People who claim to have followed all of the rules have gotten their adsense accounts terminated. Much of the time, its probably not even a human decision, but an algorithm which stays on the lookout for invalid clicks which will assume that the google adsense publisher clicks their own ads if there is too many clicks from their geographical location, too many clicks per impression, too many people staying on the advertised site for just a second and clicking the back button, etc.

<----- Was that a run on sentence?

It sucks, but don't take it personally

Seekyt has recently lost their own Google Adsense privileges. They claim that the reason is unspecified, and the replacement at Seekyt will be InfoLinks as well as Chitika. At the same time they opened up a new website called TopicSpotter.com. This website is another Google Adsense revenue sharing website for people who submit articles (the writer keeps 70% of revenue generated from clicks on this site, while the rest goes to the website owners.) They probably started this new site because their Adsense account was terminated. A different co-owner of Seekyt / TopicSpotter would have just used their Adsense account for the revenue sharing at TopicSpotter, since its only possible to have one Adsense account (your name and social security number are required for signup.)

Have no fear, there are plenty of Cost Per Action affiliate programs to join. This is when the website fills out a form of some type, and the affiliate receives a commission on that alone (they don't even have to make a purchase for you to receive a commission.) Commissions can range from one cent all the way up to $100+ dollars (the later mentioned figure would be something like signing up for a new bank, credit card, or loan.)

Would you like to earn $20 per free debt consultation lead or $33 per call generated from your website? Learn more and sign up for CuraDebt's pay per lead affiliate program.

In the meantime, I recommend that you follow the policies of Google Adsense as much as possible, because you have a very good chance of being able to keep it as well.

Request: Better forum behavior

The personality of a forum is mainly based on interactions of users as a whole. The design and functionality of a forum is important as well, but that's the easy part. The harder part for managers of forums is keeping the posts on relevant and on topic, with users who have worthwhile things to say. I've never managed a forum before, but it doesn't take experience to accurately imagine what its like.

My request for better forum behavior is based on the endless number of posts which say junk like "cool list, thanks man" as well as people who use awful grammar, incorrect spelling, other vague responses like the example I just gave, and more.

One forum I use fairly often is Digital Point which currently has a page rank of 4, to my knowledge. I see a lot of half wits on this forum like what I described, and these people should be expunged from further use. The owners of digital point might want to ask me, "So do you have a forum or a website better than 4?" and my answer to that is, no.

Am I a nerd who is being a nitpick about a first world problem on a Saturday evening because I have nothing better to do? Basically. But it wouldn't hurt to enforce requirements that responses must be of certain length, and strikes against people who don't contribute well for the reasons which I described. Its better for the reputation of a forum to improve rather than go downhill or stay the same. This could be said about anything, but whatever.

I agree with most rules of forums which I've read, and a common one which I like is "No affiliate links!" No need to give spammers confidence in your forum. I'm an affiliate marketer myself but I'm not some overly promotional bastard who has no value to offer. No repeat threads should be a rule enforced more often, because too many topics get talked about to death.

Speaking of value, this blog could use more value with better design. Share your ideas with me in the comments section. I know there are so many things which could be done, but I'd like to implement suggestions given directly to me for once. Which CSS3 , JavaScript, or whatever properties should I add here.