CPA Networks Explained

Sam HarrelsonAffiliate Programs, Contextual Ads, Daily Fortune Cookies, Hacks, Payouts, Podcasts, Search, Tips, Tools, Tricks 4 Comments »

explain.jpgEpisode 9: CPA Networks, Email Marketing, Arbitrage and PPC (about 22 mins / 22 mb’s)

Download the MP3 File

Show Notes

- Zac Johnson’s PPC Posts
- CPA Networks
- Finding Them
- Joining Them
- Getting to Know Them
- Don’t Judge Book by Its Cover
- How to Pick Ads
- Shopping Around
- ClickZ on CPA Networks
- Great Place to Find CPA Networks: DigitalMoses Confidential

Music by Daveski

Image courtesy (of course) of the great Hugh McLeod

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For Some Reason, I Talk Alot About Social Media Today

Sam HarrelsonAffiliate Lifestyle, Daily Fortune Cookies, Design, Hacks, Podcasts, Stats and Analytics, Tips, Tools, Tricks, web2.0 2 Comments »

lemmings.jpgEpisode 7: Evidently, it’s social media day since that’s mostly what I talked about. I’m not even a huge “social media marketing” person. I also talk a bit about how I podcast. Give it a listen. (about 22 mins / 22mb’s)

Download the MP3 File

Show Notes

- Logitech Headset: BestBuy
- Tata’s Mini Car: Engadget
- 40+ Social Media Sites: Dosh Dosh
- Twitter as a Business Tool: BobAngus.com
- Getting Your Feet Wet in Social Media: Ignite Blog
- Star Wars Design Presenation: Brian Oberkirch

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Hacks: Desktop AdSense Widget (Mac Only)

Sam HarrelsonGoogle, Hacks, Widgets, web2.0 No Comments »

Nifty widget to keep track of your AdSense earnings:

MacAdSense 0.5 - Widget displays AdSense earnings, click count, eCPM values and more. (Free): “

MacAdSense 0.5

MacAdSense shows your AdSense earnings, click count, eCPM values for the current month, and the extrapolated earnings for the whole month (by using a very simple rule of three method) on your Dashboard. All values are updated every 20 minutes.

(Via MacUpdate - Mac OS X.)

Hacks: PageRank Evolution

Sam HarrelsonGoogle, Hacks, Search No Comments »

PageRank is the all-important (or at least it was the all-important) ranking mechanism for bloggers and website owners. Having a high pagerank meant a life of relative ease and riches while having a low pagerank of 1 or 2 meant a life of shoveling coal in an unsafe mine. Or something like that.

Nevertheless, understanding pagerank has never been an easy endeavor, but this post lays out some nice fundamentals:

Put another way, the more links to a page, the more ‘votes’ it gets and the higher its PageRank. Adding more complexity to that idea, the votes are weighted by the PageRank of each linking page and tempered by the amount of links that referring page has.

As Si Fiskin expertly points out, there were some critical limitations to this early PageRank model. The final equation documented in the research paper includes adjustments to correct the limitations, as you will understand by reading this post. Let me warn you that this post gets quite mathematical. Brace yourself!

SEOmoz - Two Important Adjustments to the Early PageRank Model

Hacks: How Does Google Work?

Sam HarrelsonGoogle, Hacks, Search No Comments »

This isn’t an in depth report or work of astonishing research… but it is a fun animated explanation of the Google basics…

Business Interactive Features - Diagrams - Illustrations - Portfolio.com

Hacks: PopShops’ WordPress Widget

Sam HarrelsonAffiliate Programs, Blogs, Hacks, Widgets, web2.0 No Comments »

For those of you who run affiliate blogs using the awesome Wordpress solution, here’s a nifty new service from the innovators at PopShops…

If you’re not familiar with PopShops, it’s an easy to use affiliate showcase tool, where you can quickly generate code to feature products for affiliate sites.

The PopShops plugin for WordPress enables affiliates to add PopShops shops as widgets, as well as popping in products within blog posts.

PopShops WordPress Widget Euphoria at Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

Hacks: Affiliate Window Widgets

Sam HarrelsonAffiliate Programs, Contextual Ads, Hacks, Widgets, web2.0 No Comments »

Widgets are the new black in the affiliate networks space because of their ease of use, flexibility and server side advantages of not having to rely on content publishers to update creatives.  Fraser has a nice write up on Affiliate Window’s beta test of its widget platform…

Affiliate Window are beta testing a nice little tool to create widgets which are very easy to include on your site. I think this is the start of easy to use solutions that have come from the time and energy Affiliate Window have invested in standardising all their merchant data feeds.

Affiliate Window Widgets - Fraser?s Affiliate Marketing Blog

Tips: Pay-For-Visit Advertising as a Future Model?

Sam HarrelsonAffiliate Programs, Hacks, Stats and Analytics, Tools, Video No Comments »

There’s no doubt that we’re entering an age where mobile, web browsing, and video are all meshing together. Being able to monetize that sort of experience is one of the difficult issues facing marketers today.

Thanks to Jeff Doak for passing along this interesting piece which hints at a possible model for the future… 

“US patent office documents released Thursday show that a startup named Pelago is seeking a patent covering Pay-For-Visit Advertising, which uses GPS, Bluetooth, or RFID on your mobile devices to track your travels to see if you wander into a place of business that appeared in an ad shown earlier on your cellphone, PDA, or laptop. To maximize ad revenue, phone calls are also tracked to see if you dial a number associated with an ad, and financial transactions are examined to see if you make a purchase from an advertiser. The application goes on to note that the system may be of interest to government agencies. Pelago just raised $7.4M from the likes of KPCB and Jeff Bezos.”

Slashdot | Pay-For-Visit Advertising

Hacks: del.icio.us Opens for the Search Bots

Sam HarrelsonGoogle, Hacks, Search No Comments »

My favorite bookmarking site (and steady traffic source), del.icio.us has opened up it’s robot.txt file to allow in Google, Yahoo and Ask spiders. 

What does this mean for affiliates?  Could be a nice traffic source if you play smartly… 

After denying search engines from indexing the millions of bookmarks stored on its servers for so long, del.icio.us has finally lifted the entry barrier but selectively.

 According to the robots.txt of del.icio.us, only spiders from Yahoo!, Google and Ask search engines are allowed to crawl and index the content of del.icio.us - all other bots are banned including msnbot of the Microsoft Live search engine.

What does this mean for sites / URLs that are popular on del.icio.us - you could see a surge in search engine traffic but getting listed on del.icio.us won’t add any link authority or google juice since all links on delicious are marked with nofollow, very similar to Wikipedia.

del.icio.us Opens Flood Gates But Only for Google, Yahoo! & Ask.com at Digital Inspiration Technology Guide

Hacks: Japanese Mobile Blogging and Monetization Service

Sam HarrelsonHacks, Tools, web2.0 No Comments »

Sometimes, I wish I lived in Japan so that I could take part in the mobile revolution that is happening there.  We’re so behind in mobile, and that’s going to come back to lick us if we don’t start playing catch up (both in terms of devices and monetization strategies)… 

Mobile Affiliate and RSS Marketing have launched a new mobile based blog service. (click for Japanese article). The service is called ?PockeBlo? (http://p269.mobi only available from mobile phone) and was launched on Aug 3, 2007.

Since Mobile Affiliate is an affiliate network provider, I am guessing that the blog service will be integrated with their affiliate tracking system to allow bloggers to earn revenue from their blog. It?s still not clear if affiliate ads will be limited to those offered on the Mobile Affiliate Network or if bloggers will be allowed to place ads from competing networks.

Mobile Affiliate and RSS Marketing link up for new mobile blog service « MediaScope - Keeping an eye on the Japanese Affiliate Marketing Industry

Hacks: Google Testing New AdSense Format??

Sam HarrelsonContextual Ads, Google, Hacks 1 Comment »

Brian Caldwell just post a tweet that he noticed a new kink in AdSense. Has anyone else seen this in the wild? 

mySkitch + Skitch = fast and fun screen capture and image sharing.

Hacks: Avoid (Real) Cookies

Sam HarrelsonAffiliate Lifestyle, Hacks, Research No Comments »

canihasfood.jpeg

Jason Calacanis not only can provoke SEO’s to take up arms, but he’s also good at making fat bloggers take action as well. Jason recently started a “fatblogging” meme in the tech geek world, aimed at cataloguing his and others’ experiences of losing weight with Weight Watchers like inspiration from fellow bloggers.

While you don’t have to convert to fatblogging-ism officially, it’s always a good thing to keep an eye on what you put into your mouth. As computer slaves, it becomes very easy for affiliates to fall into the trap of sloth and poor eating. I speak from expert experience.

So, here’s a great article from Men’s Health (applicable to everyone) on how to plan out meals for a week and then not have to rely on the pizza delivery person every night during a long coding session. My wife is a physician, so I basically eat like a bachelor due to her hectic schedule and my inability to plan ahead. But, I’m heading to the grocery store this evening to give this a try!

Thankfully, we have a culinary solution that’ll perfectly fit your budget, schedule, and diet. The plan: Set aside 20 minutes on Sunday to fulfill our 16-item shopping list, then forget about your wallet — and collection of takeout menus — for the rest of the workweek. By following our 5-day menu, you’ll have the precise number of ingredients to create 10 fast, flavorful meals, all of which are designed to help you build muscle and melt fat while saving you money. (The average price of 10 meals eaten out: $85; the total price of our meals: $47.96.) Each night, you’ll simply prepare a quick and easy dinner, and then creatively use the leftovers to assemble the next day’s lunch. Call it the mixologist’s guide to eating. The best part? While the other guys are stuck on hold in drive-thrus, you’ll be rolling through the express line with your next 10 meals in tow.

Shop Once, Eat For A Week - Men’s Health

Hacks: Affiliates4u Widgets

Sam HarrelsonAffiliate Lifestyle, Forums, Hacks, Tools, Widgets, web2.0 No Comments »

Keith has info on how to grab the new Affiliates4u widgets if you have a presence on that forum and social network…

If your blog feed is included in the new blogs area on Affiliates4u you may be interested in the new back me widget that they have introduced.

Bloggers Grab Your Affiliates4u Widgets - Keith’s Affiliate Marketing Blog