In the beginning I wanted to use strictly Wordpress as my membership script since there is already a login area for it. I figured it was the best bet for my membership site. Then another idea came and wishlist could not do what I need it to do, so I bought another script. Well I think I got a good comparison with both scripts – because I think both scripts accomplish what I needed it to do!

So here is a nice write up of the comparisons of both script, Wishlist Member vs aMember!

I am going to talk about Wishlist Member because it was the first one I bought and I bought 3 licenses. I originally bought it to start my own affiliate tutorials for my current affiliates that are promoting my products. I simply just bought PLR articles and posted them within WordPress so users can access them and start learning some marketing tricks.

I also bought it because I wanted a central location for users to download my digital products. Wishlist is very versatile within Wordpress. If you want to imagine one of the best Wordpress membership platforms then Wishlist is your best bet. The reason I say this because if you have content which you want to provide to your members then this is the plugin that is needed to do just that.

The interface does take a while for you to get into, but once you get a full understanding of where things are then it is pretty easy to move around. One thing I did get confused are the options when I was writing a post they were at the bottom and I would have to chose which content belonged where. First time mistake but again it comes with the interface.

Once you get the interface the easier it is.

One thing I did like are the videos that helped me setup payment options and subscriptions via Paypal. It showed me how to quickly integrate aweber within Wishlist, so I can start collecting email addresses via my membership portal.

They have a lot of video tutorials, they want to make sure you membership site is up and ready to be used.

Wishlist does have it’s own internal email system, but I feel better having all the contacts within aweber, as I have most of my list within aweber already.

I got this system several months ago and they have been doing a great job launching and promoting their system.  I can say it is one of the bigger names now when you think about a wordpress membership system, Wishlist. I even checked out multiple other systems but I didn’t see a strong selling point to it. So I bought and upgraded (they got me on the upsell) to 3 licenses and as of right now I enjoyed the script.

It is a simple plugin that you install and it quickly integrates within Wordpress, the best part is you get free updates which notifies you when you log into your wordpress site and checking out wishlist member.

… in the next couple days I should have a write up for amember and then a full write up for both.

Thanks goes out to…

• Clickbooth
  They had a nice ass booth and took me out to lunch the next day after their exclusive VIP party they had. Thanks to Eric and Brittany for inviting me and taking me out to grab some coffee. Plus some good food.
• Ads4Dough
  Going out with Jason and meeting and getting to know his whole team was great. Especially meeting new people and connections that I would have probably not made before. The night was a definitely a great night, especially the second night out. Damn.
• GMB Direct
  The first night out was great hanging with Ads4Dough and Gene from GMB direct is a must. These guys def know how to do it and do it well. Gene is a great guy from the first time I met him at Ad Tech San Francisco!
• Pinnacle Dream
  First o all thanks to Eva for getting me a pack! …yes that email works. Great meeting up with everyone and also introducing a new Pinnacle member to the trade show environment.
• Tatto Media
  Mike is a great guy, I just wanted to thank him for having a nice private 2 story booth. Bryn, Hustler and I just relaxed at the top after such a long walk around the trade show floor. Great booth!
• Convert2Media
  Now these guys always have the goods. Beer, Ninja Optimization Shirts, and more schwag you want. They always have unique shirts that I do not mind wearing outside my home office. Hell I rocked their shirt the next day! Ninja Optimization FTW!
• Unique Leads
  Thanks to Glenn for having me at his home and having a nice private dinner. It was great meeting up with Shai and others that he invited. It was a nice clean relaxed environment where we just talked and enjoyed a good ass dinner.
• Encore Ads – Phil
  Thanks to Phil for letting us get in the cab. The capacity of the cab was 4 people and Phil had to leave which was beat cause I know Phil would have had a blast that night. Thanks again.
• Dustin Metcalf
  Great kid, I had to crash in his room at 5am in the morning being dumb tired. Showed him how to pimp a few girls and make sure to be more open. Great kid, we will def meetup at ASW

Especially with affiliate marketing you want to find the most volume possible or expand out to gather more volume but with quality leads. So you will have to know what to ask when you speak to certain people about their traffic. I personally have tested a bunch of traffic sources in the past and I still do it today.

But first lets talk about the first night at ad tech…

There was a No bull party held the night before ad tech. It was a way to gather and hangout with a lot of people in the industry and meetup. There was several parties that night but I ended up staying in one place, didn’t feel like cabing all around the city.

The party was ok, I met a couple new people and a couple new networks. Ran into great friends and just chilt. AffBuzz, Justin was there as well as Roland from Team 202.

In the end there were letting in too many dudes and a bunch of us started to hit the ‘clubs’ for more entertainment. I went with the Ads4Dough Team, Dustin, and several of their affiliates. The ride there was funny and entertaining, everyone was cool.

The next day was the actual conference and damn was the place HUGE!

There were a lot of new traffic sources and new people to talk too. I was talking to a mobile advertising network and when I asked how they determine their traffic, they could not answer, before the girl grab her other friend to help answer I just walked away.

This is why you need to know what kind of traffic you want to run. I ran mobile traffic before and wanted to see what other sources are out there. Just this one didn’t understand what I wanted to do. O well.

Another one was a network and this lady looked like she was super drunk she stumbled by their water cooler and literally had to hold herself up with the water cooler. When asking her questions about basic network stuff, she just gave me her card and told me she was a network. Wonder if she heard my question… tsk tsk

The night was even better since I had dinner with Unique Leads and my good friends Glenn. It was held at his private apartment in NY and damn his place is nice as hell. I met up with Shai, Emil from PPC Bully, Itay and several others. It was a good dinner and damn was it a good dinner!

After dinner went up and meetup with the Clickbooth team. Headed over to Pacha and chilt for a bit until Slick Rick’s Performance came on. The party turned out to be pretty interesting. I hanged out with Clickbooth and Pinnacle Dream. I was also tired as hell from trying to battle the clowns on the dance floor.

But they had some good dancers on eh floor. They had breakers, a Michael Jackson replica which she did a damn good job with the performance and at the end Slick Rick. He didn’t do one song either and bounced.

After Pacha we went out again with Ads4Dough and met up with Pinnacle to the ‘other’ bar. Now that was crazy! We were all up again till 5am and I think I saw the sun rising not sure.

The next day was just meeting up with networks and chilling. Walking around some more so my feet can hurt more and I headed home early. I didn’t want to party 3 nights in a row. Hell I am still beat from Ad Tech!

Here is a mashup video…

Again, want to expand your online business, you need to go to Ad Tech. It provides a lot of great new information and new traffic sources.

I also have one more post to do about ad tech and I am done – yea I did a lot of ish this Ad Tech.

The Javits center alone is just huge. There was a couple things that went wrong like no iPhone 3G service, I had to turn 3G off to get my phone working. But there was a lot of new traffic sources there that was worth stopping by and looking. Also it was great to meetup with everyone that is in the affiliate space and of course seeing all the networks I work with and meeting new ones.

But this post is about our booth we had at Ad-Tech. I have teamed up with Ad Hustler and Bryn Media to give you a new company that is all about buying blog ad space. Ad Hustler Bryn and I was trying to generate a lead and most gave us their business cards and felt pity for our booth, I mean it was just pure awesomeness.

We had to explain to multiple users that our equipment was because of shipment failure. I also had to make sure no one was cutting through our booth, talking or texting within our booth. I told people they had to walk around our booth and not walk through our booth. I regulated that ish!

Ad Hustler got the first lead and many users took pictures of our failed attempt to have a booth. It was def fun talking to users and explaining that our booth was missing in shipping and that our business was all about buying blog ad space.

Everyone was asking us about our ‘company’ and we just or Ad Hustler came up with the good idea of buying blog space. So we all just took it and ran with it. I was busy regulating users not walking through our booth. If you weren’t at Ad-Tech then you should have been. A lot of information and a lot of fun.

Next couple days will be a revamp of the trade show.

I arrived in Cali a couple days before Share a Sale Think Tank 09. I decided to hangout in San Diego and enjoy the sun for a couple days. I got a beach house for just the 3 days I was there and it literally was on the beach. It was amazing. The view of the beach and the sound of waves was amazing.

I would wake up and just walk down the boardwalk and have some banging breakfast at the Wave House. The wave house is really cool because its one of those auto wave machines, def wanted to try that out but there was a waiting list on it and didn’t want to wait till later in the day.

I met up with the owners of Ionizer Oasis and chilled with them for the days I was there. We played basketball and I obviously took over – well maybe after 2 games. There was too many sun. I was burning. The thing also was wow, women are beautiful there.

At night I ended up going to Gas Lamp, that is downtown San Diego. We went out and hanged out to the club and started picking up women. It was entertaining. After going to club to club and from bar to bar, I started taking pictures of bums because of their marketing tactics. I mean these guys are doing it heavy on the street.

One had a great eCommerce store, he was selling sock puppets and he made me a new one. I told him he can keep it and I took a pic of him doing his great selling. Gave him 20$ to keep doing his thing!

Another one had a great sign. If you seen those digg images of bums with marketing tactics, well I found the real Bum Marketer and his sign. I didn’t think they were all real so I actually found one and the real Bum Marketer!

Gave this guy a five. Funny part is his legs are working since he was pulling himself on his wheelchair with his legs…

It was a lot of fun in San Diego but a couple things happened that was out of my control. It was great playing ball and chilling with some marketers. Some of their tactics are funny and had crazy results the next day. Which I wouldn’t do myself. Hey ecommerce store plus a bit of affiliate marketing is giving them the life they are living.

But other than that it was entertaining. Then it was the ShareaSale Think Tank. After Think Tank I hanged out in LA.

LA traffic is the worst literally the worst. There is just 1 freeway 405 and never gain will I go to LA because of that but it is a nice place to live in. I hanged out at Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisade, saw the Hollywood signs, Santa Monica, Lil Saigon, I was everywhere.

If you weren’t following me on twitter, then you need to. I took hella pics and basically shared my experience with everyone on twitter.

I met up with my cousins in LA and toured every where. It kinda sucked that I only chilled with them just 2 days but it was enjoyable. The sun was def strong and there literally was no clouds in the sky.

Here is a mashup video:

…plus I got to get ready for Ad-Tech NY!

We walked around down town and saw some performing artists on the street. It was coolin to tour their mini office which was in the middle of down town Santa Monica.

After a quick tour and wine drinking, we went out to have dinner. We had dinner at BOA steak house which was right on the boardwalk and the beach. The food there was amazing, literally amazing! A lot of fancy plate design but the food was enjoyable.

After we ate we all talked about affiliate marketing and what affiliates need and want. Shaunti, Eleah, and Amber are awesome women! We def had fun at dinner. We all talked and just discussed about our industry and what is needed.

Later Amber drove us back to Newport and that was entertaining and Amber is very knowledgeable! Def brought me to a perspective on things about affiliate marketing, especially from the affiliate side, but also giving me the business side view from the network side.

Thanks to Eleah and AKMG for inviting me to dinner and showing me around Santa Monica and ofcourse dinner. Also, Eleah will be waiting for my decks!

Mashup Video here:

I miss the sun already. LA was fun and enjoyable and it definitely was fun. I decided to take a couple extra days early to go to San Diego and then drive up to Newport Beach to Share a Sale Think Tank. The upcoming posts will be about my stay in Cali while this one will be about the educational time I had at Think Tank.

I personally want to thank Brian Littleton and Share a Sale for inviting me. I also want to thank Jason Rubacky for inviting me to the event, great guy! I arrived to Think Tank late and met up with Logan Thompson and Jason. I also met a couple new people who were vendors and also hanged out with Facebook.

Upon arriving I saw my room and it was an amazing room. There is a beautiful  view I had from my patio and it had a great view of the golf course and a wedding chapel. Here is a couple pics I took inside the room. It was so nice I didn’t want to step it further.

The next day, Saturday, we had a group breakfast with all the affiliates, vendors, and shareasale staff. The food was amazing! The truffle mac and cheese was phenomenal!

After the breakfast we had 2 sessions which were:

• Demographic: Women
• Demographic: Men

Then we had about an hour break, I had to go back to my room and check my stats and then went back into to listen in to the next 2 sessions:

• Demographic: Education and Life Experience
• Demographic: Home and Office

Then it comes lunch, lunchtime was a time where you get to sit around with participating networks or merchants and discuss strategies over food.

I sat with Facebook and discussed with them the next upcoming tools they are coming up with. I was also trying to get into beta of their new bulk upload tool. They are also going to do some or try to get into somethings about day parting. Which would be great!! They were also giving out some good advice on the types of offers that do very well on facebook.

I am going to test somethings out with Facebook base on their advice. I was surprise to even say that some offers do better than some. So I am going to test it out and see if it does well.

Each company or vendor or merchant had their own table which you can go to and talk and discuss. I stayed with Facebook the whole time.

After lunch there was a 4 hour time from 2-6 where you can hang out with more vendors and companies and discuss how to grow yourself or your company. It was overseeing the pool and the pool was great. I visited 2 vendors and hangout with Missy and Shawn at the Affiliate Summit cabana. After that I decided to chill at the pool and cool down.

After 6 it was open to whatever we wanted to do, see the town, hangout at the pool, just chill. I hanged out with Logan Thompson and Jason Rubacky and grabbed dinner at the Pelican Hill Bar and Grill. WOW, amazing lamb! I wanted a new plate of food because the lamb was amazing. It kinda sucked that we didn’t get picked up in a Bentley, but got picked up with a gangster Kate plus 8 van!

After we ate, we hanged out with Facebook and then hit the bar and met up with Scott Jangro, Jeremy Palmer, Shawn and everyone that was at the bar. Being the night so young Jason ordered a bottle and we headed back to Facebook room and balled out. One person got so drunk cause he started ‘pumping’ the air.

The next morning, I had to leave early to tour out LA and meetup with my cousins but there was a Q&A about how to make shareasale better and it was open to everyone that attended.

Here are some pics of the resort btw:

Again I want to thank Brian Littleton, ShareaSale, and Jason Rubacky for having and inviting me. Also, make sure to check out the tweets that were happening while at Think Tank 09.

Video Mashup:

Notice what Google has suggested. Further, click on their suggestion and get this…

Worse, Google Suggest is filling your mind with unholy thoughts. Type in “nigg” and get this…

I might just be searching for the definition of niggardly– which means petty or reluctant to spend– a completely legitimate, non-racist search. But in the case of “bike thief”, Google is actively recruiting me to be a racist, even though it’s some algorithm that notices these particular terms go together. In the same way, if you look at Planet of the Apes on Walmart.com, it suggests Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream”.

Perhaps that’s collaborative filtering gone wrong, where the system tells you what items go together based on what real people are doing– no moral judgment involved, just matching user activity streams.

This is even true with PPC, where advertiser load up a bunch of keywords (called dictionary uploading) and just plug people into search.

At conferences, my old fallback was to do a Google search on “used condoms” and “nuclear weapons”– and up pops an ebay ad– “Looking for Used Condoms? Bid on Used Condoms now! Find great deals & huge selection”

In the same way that Google’s algorithms will just match user data together, PPC advertisers will just upload every word in the dictionary and bid on it– never mind how silly it looks when you apply Dynamic KeyWord Insertion into ad copy. By the way, ebay has removed a lot of my favorite demonstration searches, but “used underwear” still works. And if you search on “used condoms”, you will still see ads from local.com and RefurbDepot.com– can’t imagine what they would have to offer. They should have “used” as a negative keyword, but that’s another post on PPC tactics.

So is it really wrong if the system gives you back what you’re most likely, statistically, to want to see? After all, you can’t blame the mirror if you don’t like what you see in the reflection.

Clickbooth is hosting a contest to help out charities with a new twist to those regular affiliate contests. I am part of this contest and I am glad I am able to help out. The basis of this contest is to help out the charities of our choice, mine being PinoyKids.org.

As I write this blog content on the plane, on my way to San Diego, I am thinking about how to make this contest interesting. But first lets get into the details of this contest…

My Charity Pinoy Kids [dot] org

Since 1991, Philippine Children’s Fund of America had been working for these children through partnership with various non-profit agencies. PCFA’s programs and services continue to help more and more children and families out of poverty with educational, medical, health and nutritional components.

pinoykids.org

The title of this charity contest is Live like a Super Affiliate. Again, I am writing this post while I am on the way to San Diego to get away from the Jersey cold weather. It is fairly easy to register and start participating in this contest. We are helping to give back to the community by helping and earning to the charities of our choice.

How to participate:

• Register to be an Affiliate at Clickbooth
• Fill out the Clickbooth Registration
• When registering make sure you enter “LiveContest” in the comment field

If you do not enter “LiveContest” in the comment field then you will not be qualified to enter and participate

Contest Overview
The top names in the industry are here to help earn money to the charity of our choice

• John Chow – World Vision
• Ian Fernando (me) – Pinoy Kids
• Zac Johnson – SPCA International
• Murray Newlands: National Breast Cancer Foundation

In addition to helping raise money for the four great charities the publisher will also have the ability and win the “Live Like a Super Affiliate” prize package:

• a weekend trip to Sarasota, Florida (flight and hotel)
• Hangout with Clickbooth for the weekend, get that super affiliate treatment
• 125 * 125 Ad on JohnChow.com for a month
• Guest Post on JohnChow.com
• 30 Minute Consulting Call with Zac Johnson
• Guest Post on ZacJohnson.com
• 1 Ticket to Leads Con in Vegas
• 1 Platinum Pass to Affiliate Summit West
• An Interview with Murray Newlands.com
• Product or Service review on my Blog (IanFernando.com)
• 1 Year membership to Twit Sniper (my newest popular product)

How to Participate once Registered:

• Have and Generate the Most Revenue During the 2 Months of the Contest (40 points)
• Write a post about the contest with a Link to the Original Clickbooth Post (http://xr.com/fstd) (10 Points)
• Video of Why You want to Live Like a Super Affiliate (15 points)
• Follow JohnChow, Zac Johnson, Murray Newland, Clickbooth, and Me! (5 points)
• Tweet about this contest (I just entered @clickbooth new contest for a chance to Live Like a Super Affiliate! Check it Out! http://xr.com/fstd) (5 points)
• Become a Fan of JohnChow, Zac Johnson, Murray Newlands and Me (5 points)
• Subscribe to Clickbooths Blog (5 points)
• Stumble This Post (5 points)

Each affiliate is responsible to send an email to Eric [at] clickbooth.com stating their full name and which of the above task they have completed by December 10th 2009.

There are also two additional prizes to be given out. The all mighty Affiliate Theme by Unique Blog Designs and a 1 month featured spot on AffBuzz.com!

This starts today and ends December 21, 2009. This contest is only open to NEW publishers. Make sure you register and put in the comment “LiveContest“, if you do not do this then you will not be qualified to participate in this contest.

Please Read all the Rule and Regulations

Register to Clickbooth and Show your Spirit

Clickbooth will be donating $500 to each of the charities no matter what, however YOU have the power to help each of us earn an additional $1,000 for our charity.

The prizes are amazing and it is for a great cause too. Make sure you register via this unique link and type in “LiveContest” in the comments section.

A few months ago, I wrote a parable about how to make more money in less time by scaling yourself from a consulting business to a software business. The parable took the form of a guy who moved rocks by hand in the quarry and how he learned to use tools, trained others to use tools, and eventually implemented a system where thousands of folks learned to move rocks more efficiently. This “rock star” became quite wealthy.

I thought it was a good article…. until I looked at Google Analytics and saw the bounce rate was nearly 100% on this page.

Turns out that Google ranks that post for searches for “best tool to move rocks”, “how to get experience driving a bulldozer”, “tools to move rocks”, “what is the hourly rate for bulldozers”, and so forth. Looks like my attempt to be clever backfired, as Google took it literally.

So I changed the post’s title to “The Secret to Making More Money in Less Time“– still an interesting title, but now should no longer bring in so much rock-related traffic.

Moral of the story:

• For blog titles– use keywords you’d actually want to rank on
• You can always go back and make changes– nothing’s set in stone
• Use your analytics to guide you– in my case, a near 100% bounce rate was quite telling
• You can breathe new life into old posts with some tweaking