Did an interview with my good buddy Volk, it’s kind of an update of what’s been going on with my business.

I feel like everyone coming to this blog from Volk’s is looking for something good to read, so I promise I’ll write something tasty up this week for you guys to check out.

Happy Friday.

So after six seasons, LOST finally concluded last night. I started watching the show three weeks before this season, I got through all of the prior five seasons in that time. Once I started watching, it seemed to get more and more confusing but I just wanted to see how the show was going to end. I wanted all the questions that had been building up to be answered. What was I left with? …Nothing.

When I first started watching, I thought it was going to be just a shipwrecked trapped on a deserted island show…cool idea. Then they bring in polar bears, Dharma, time travel, and all sorts of crazy sci-fi elements…I was loving that. In the end, they explain none of it. At the start of Season 6 they create this “side flash” storyline. The whole season everybody is wondering what that even means, but I think all of our heads were still more curious about the island. What was the black smoke? What’s really special about the island? We’re told this last season would “reveal all”, but it seemed to just keep stringing along this side flash plot-line. This all builds up to the final episode where all they do is close out the weird side flash storyline they created. How do they close it out? Oh, they’re just all dead no big deal. WHAT??!?!?!

I’m sitting there wondering :

• What is the purpose of that black smoke?
• How did EVERYONE else die? It’s not just Jack in that church, it’s everyone who appeared to escape on the plane too.
• How did man in black turn into the smoke monster instantly after being thrown into that well, and why?
• What were all the weird symbols and markings?
• Island moving? Time travel? Yeah none of that explained.
• Dharma Initiative? They started going into that hardcore I think the second season, and then just dropped it.
• How is Richard immortal, and then why is he mortal in the end?
• WTF is the light in the center of the island?

These are just questions that are coming off the top of my head. I thought it was awful to just end the finale with a 2 and a half hour reunion only to find out that they’re all united in death. Seriously…they’re all dead?

I feel like I wasted so much time on this show, anybody saying it was a great finale has become just to emotionally attached to all the characters that anything would seem good. Even them all…being…dead.

Except for Ben, but they don’t explain that either. He’s just chilling outside the church that’s in…purgatory? Earth? Where the hell are they that once they walk into a church they get to walk into heaven or wherever that white light leads?

Seriously people…you cannot be happy about this ending. If you are, you’ve been duped hard.

I’ve scoured quite a few industry blogs and looked at the past year or so of content and was able to find some good picks. I’ve added some new categories to keep up with the times (PPV is a popular category now). The more recent articles I popped in at the top. You can view the guide here.

The Most Important Part

So, I’m sure I missed a bunch of great articles. This is where it’s your turn to add to the guide, almost like a Wiki or something. If there’s a good article relating to any of the categories of the guide, post it as a comment here and as long as it’s good, I’ll add it to the guide. Thanks!

Here’s a list of the newly added articles :

Nickycakes Newbie Guide
Free Affiliate Marketing Guide
Landing Pages And The Urgency Of Time
Mad lib form style testing results
Photoshop Guide For Affiliates
Landing Page Rotation Script
6 Seductive CTR Tips
Tuesday Tips – Improving Landing Page CTR
The 1 Penny Tip
Top 100 TrafficVance Targets
TrafficVance – Demographics & Tips
PPV Network Reviews
A Simple Way to Split Test PPV Landing Pages Without a Rotator
3 Ways to Increase Your PPV Landing Page CTR
Laser Targeting Your PPV Campaigns
Media Buying 101: Introduction To Inventory (A Step-By-Step Guide) – Part 1
Tips on Media Buying
Optimizing Google Content Campaigns
Google content network basic strategy
The Beginners Guide To Advertising On Facebook
Plenty of Fish. Plenty of Money.
Free Geo IP Javascript To Increase Conversions On Your Campaigns
Noobies Guide on How to Scrape: Part 1 – Intro & Tools
Noobies Guide on How to Scrape: Part 2 – URLs, URL Variables, and using Live HTTP Headers
Noobies Guide on How to Scrape: Part 3 – Basics of Assessing Your Target
Noobies Guide on How to Scrape: Part 4 – cURL
Noobies Guide on How to Scrape: Part 5 – A Basic Scraper
Monetizing International Traffic
Becoming An Advertiser : Part 1 (Overview)
CS1.1 – Pay Per Click Case Study Part 1
CS1.2 – Pay Per Click Case Study Part 2 – Keyword Research
CS1.3 – Pay Per Click Case Study Part 3 – Landing Pages and Tracking
CS1.4 – PPC Case Study Part 4 – Advice, Tips and Campaign Structure
CS1.5 – PPC Case Study Part 5 – Campaign Update and a Top Secret Tool
CS1.6 – Pay Per Click Case Study Part 6 – Stats Recap and Going Forward
How I Generated $1,700,000 in Auto Sales Despite a Weak Economy
Plenty of Fish Case Study – CPM Bid Effects – Results
How I made $7,144.00 using TrafficVance.
NEW Facebook Ads
Plentyoffish Self Serve Advertising.
How to Build a Profitable Campaign on a Limited Budget
Impress Your Visitors with a Graphically Dynamic Landing Page
Conquering The Google Content Network

Local Lead Plan from Chad (CDF Networks)

I’ve known Chad for a while now, I’m sure many of you guys read his blog CDF Networks. If you know anything about him from his blog/tweets, it’s that he’s a good and honest guy. He doesn’t need to tear it up on rebills and acai because he knows what he’s doing outside of that realm (ie real marketing…acai is like taking candy from a baby).

Today is the official launch of his infoproduct Local Lead Plan. He gave me a free copy and it’s actually pretty awesome. The product is all about generating affiliate like commissions, only from local businesses, not affiliate networks/global offers. This is something he’s been doing for a while now and has gotten really good at it. It’s also something that’s very easy to share because for the most part, it’s local. He’s not too worried about you stealing his campaigns because they’re where he lives and already his clients.

If I were going to do this I’d join my local Chamber of Commerce that has business events for networking local businesses. That will give you a nice variety to pick from, and from there it’s about approaching them and letting them know that you can send them a bunch of new customers if they want to set something up. You’d then build an affiliate site for them and send them online traffic and get paid based on how many customers you send them.

I see this as being nice because it’s a little extra work (instead of just grabbing an affiliate link), but in the end you get more control. I have a feeling that most businesses won’t have much idea about what you’re talking about, which makes it easier for you to dictate the rates and commissions.

I believe there’s some nice eBook price slapped on of $79 or something…but honestly it’s worth it. If you’re struggling at all with online affiliate marketing, Local Lead Plan is definitely something you can profit from. Not get rich quick, but certainly can get rich.
 

Tatto Media Bi-Annual Affiliate Survey

Tatto Media just released a survey they took with over 2,500 affiliate marketers participating. They asked some general questions about the industry and got some cool figures/graphs. Shoemoney did a blog post about it a few days ago here.

Some of the more interesting points :

• Nearly 68% of affiliates were promoting on 2-6 different networks, while approximately 22% were promoting on 7-15 different networks. Only 2% of respondents promoted on 36 or more. 50 affiliates out of every 2,500 are promoting offers on 36+ networks? Oh mama, for me it’s always been 2-6.
• 60% of respondents believe that affiliate marketing-related tradeshows and conferences are valuable to their business, with the majority, 55%, stating that Affiliate Summit is the most valuable. Found this kind of interesting, I thought it’d be higher than 60%. Trade shows like Affiliate Summit are awesome for business, if you don’t get something out of it, it’s because you’re doing something wrong…not the conference not serving it’s purpose.
• Many affiliates read various industry blogs for information, but nearly 42% said ShoeMoney was the blog they read most. NickyCakes was also popular at 35%. Not a surprise that Shoemoney came in at the #1 affiliate blog read. 35% from Cakes surprised me though, maybe it’s because he won affiliate of the year (for…what exactly? I didn’t know that referring a bunch of the original acai guys, traveling to Asia, and coming out with an overpriced product was what Shawn was looking for). Only kidding Cakes, I jus’ mad ;). My blog came in at 15% which surprised me…I haven’t been posting at all I figured it would be lower.

You can download the full report and check it out here.

On a side note, HasOffers a while ago opened up some different and paid options for their affiliate network software. If you have a product and you want affiliates on it, starting your own mini-network is a good place to begin.
 

Volk-nation Tearing It Up

When he’s not at a freakish family birthday party or hanging with his boo Mrs. Volk, JV has been taking the guru world by storm. He released his free affiliate marketing guide, and since then jumped from ~3,000 readers to almost 15,000. He posted some stats on his blogs 3 year anniversary :

# See about 1,003,980 affiliate blogs stop blogging.

…shit! That’s me.
 

Neverblue Escape

If you’re a Neverblue affiliate you may know about their Out of Bounds contest. You can win an all-expenses paid awesome trip to Vancouver Island and do a bunch of outdoor activities like jet-skiing. Neverblue is a solid network and I’ve always been a fan of networks that don’t use DT. One of the ways to win is by becoming 1 of the 7 affiliates with the highest incremental revenue gain. That means you don’t have to do ridiculous volume, you just have to show the best growth on your offer.
 

Twitter Ads

Twitter really isn’t my friend, but they are releasing an ad platform. I haven’t read too much into it, but TechCrunch reports they’re starting with a CPM model and I read on Wickedfire that these will show up in searches only. With the amount of bots performing searches this would really water down CTR and skyrocket CPC.

Maybe a blogger will find an exploit and become famous like meeeee (please understand my sarcasm in almost anything I ever say).

So now what? Some food for thought…

Oldies but Goodies

Offers like credit reports, auto insurance, dating, etc. These are the classics but they’re offers that have been running strong this entire time for a reason…they convert. Some of the very first offers I ran back in the day were all 3 of those I listed above, and all 3 were profitable. I also see Google ads as well as Facebook ads for all 3 of those, which tells me that it looks like they’re converting just like the old days.

Mobile/IQ

Mobile used to be the hot “shady” thing to do, when rebilling people for $9.99 was unethical. My oh my if we only knew we would rebill for 10x that amount and go to bed with a smile on our faces (’our’ just referring to the entire industry). Mobile offers are doing well from what I hear. I see some ads on Myspace and other teenage oriented sites, and I also hear incenting these offers on app traffic is working nicely.

Edu

If you take a closer peek at Facebook and a few other places, you’ll see a few people running education offers. These have been kind of a “sleeper” for a while now, I ran them a while ago with some success. The only thing you have to watch out for is quality, they can end up nailing you on it. But other than that it’s a nice leadgen with a good payout for just completing a form with no credit card.

Good Ole Fashioned Business

Maybe it’s time for you to take some of those rebill profits and pour them into a business idea you’ve had in your mind for the past year. Don’t forget that affiliate marketing is just one of the ways to make money online. Build a site that people want to visit every day or a service that they don’t mind paying to use. In the age of Facebook/Digg/Reddit/etc, sharing has never been easier. This makes viral sites all the more easier to go viral.

Just some things to think about in case you’re a deer in headlights now that the FTC truck is speeding at you.