This is the first article written from the new Windows Live Writer interface from Microsoft’s Messenger.  Not sure what will happen with this tool, but I will run some experiments and keep you all updated.  If Bloglyne disappears in the next couple of days, you will know that it exploded because of this *grins*

Check out the video below for a review of the beta.

The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored
Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series B

Draper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors

ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators, today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company’s Series A and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms. The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”

Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than 6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos or other media. The content creators are required to disclose relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of blogs, have already earned money for their creators through PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify through a safe, managed system.

“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving paid-content arena.”

To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a new website detailing the company’s service offering at http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.

Check out the blogger directory for more information.

When I noticed this opportunity on PayPerPost I had to take it… I grew up in Washington State and we would frequently go to the beach, and rent bicycles to ride around one of the many Bays found up North. If we were lucky enough to be staying at my Grandmother’s cabin in Birch Bay, we were able to use the beach cruiser bikes which she owned. I miss those times and I have actually thought about purchasing some bikes for our family to use when we go camping down here in Texas.

I have to mention that XYZBikes.com brought back some really strong memories from my childhood which reminded me of those special times we would all ride together as a family in Washington and British Columbia. They have a catalog which is the perfect online place to purchase bicycles for family outings either at the beach or in a state park. The prices seemed reasonable to me, and the colors of the bikes are really fun – Yellow, Vanilla & Blue.

I realize this is not strictly affiliate marketing related, but, XYZBikes does have an affiliate program, if you are looking to join a program which promotes a relaxed family lifestyle, this may be the ticket for you. They offer a 5% commission and allow their affiliates to purchase the bicycles for their own use and still receive the commission on the purchase without breaking their terms of service. On their affiliate FAQ page, they confirm that they pay via Paypal after the affiliate accumulates at least $100 in commissions.

You may have noticed a few changes over the past week or so…

After getting approval to actually sell Text Link Ads and seeing my Alexa ranking continue to grow, I was inspired to add a few more money making methods to Bloglyne.com

New affiliate programs I am working with, which you may see around the site (They are all on the sidebar to the right… so unless you are as blind as a guy with a blindfold on, you cannot miss them):

PPP – Pay Per Post
InsureMe – Free Insurance Quotes, Car, Health, Life, Home & Long Term Care
Via:Talk – Broadband Phone Services
T-Mobile – Cellular Phone Services
Dreamstime – For your royalty FREE image needs

And something which really intrigues me, which I will be providing more detail on shortly, my Tumri eStore – These folks are super interesting to me… they have these little things they call AdPods which are eCommerce shopping store solutions focused on the affiliate and content that only takes up about 10 lines of script code… and less than 10 minutes to install on your site. This is powerful Web 2.0 stuff at work!

For example, I created this cell phone AdPod in about 30 seconds, and posted it here in the article in less time than that with the help of a plug-in called Adsense-Deluxe, which allows you to add script tags to any content in WordPress.

But, all of that is for another post…

FYI – I am open to any and all feedback via comments or the Bloglyne Forums – please let me know what you think of the new programs – Are they tastefully done? Do you consider the programs reputable? Do you have any personal stories working with any of the above mentioned affiliate programs?

Until next time, may the road rise to up to meet you…

Am I dreaming?

It’s a miracle!

It only took 3 months, and a special email asking them to reconsider, but the Text-Link Ad world is open to Bloglyne.com now! I’m pretty sure I should be a millionaire by the end of the month *grins*

Not everything happens overnight, right. Just keep the “faith” – Keep up with your vision regardless of what it is and work toward the approval of the affiliate programs you think will add the most value and be the best match for your site.

Ciao for now!

How do you treat you website, affiliate marketing venture or for that matter, any business that you start? Do you treat it as if it were a wicked step child, draining your resources and time with very little if any return? Or, do you treat it as your favorite son, investing time, effort and energy consistently over time to reap the largest possible return?

I have read a few articles recently about many of the “Making Money” blogs and sites which have gone under – the vast majority of these sites never make it to their 6 month milestone. I believe most folks who begin these sites have delusions of grandeur, believe they will make $10,000 per month in their first quarter.

Here are four simple, yet powerful concepts which can help you get the most from any venture you begin.

1. Set goals and create action plans to reach those goals.

One of the largest challenges most people face is that they are either too goal orientated or too action orientated – both are good, but tied together – they are the key to unlock fortunes!If you set a goal, create an action plan with specific milestones to reach the goal, that way you will have a clear roadmap to get where you are going.

2. Make yourself publicly accountable for success

Get involved with a social network that you trust, or create a “Brain Trust” or a group of advisors and share your goals and roadmaps with them. Give them permission to encourage you to keep progressing along your chosen path.

3. Find what motivates you and KEEP TRACK

Is it money? Is it clients? Is it prestige? Is it security? Whatever you choose as your motivation, it must be traceable with real measurable results. If you do not know how you are progressing, who will?

4. Be consistent over a 90 day run

Finally, remember, even though we are in a marathon and not a sprint, a 90 day run with a small break at the end is a great way to reinvigorate your passion for whatever venture you are attempting.

Sprint for your goals using your roadmap and milestones for guidance in 90 day bursts – then, at the end, take 5 days to re-evaluate your goals and roadmap while taking a much deserved breather.

If you run in 90 day bursts with a small break in between, you will be much more able to maintain a good work/life balance along with other benefits which will make themselves apparent as time goes on.

Let me know how you do – Best of success!

That is the question, isn’t it?

I have stopped using them for quite a while now, over a year…

About 2 months ago, I took a look at their products again and it was still the same ol’ crap. More “get rich quick” ebooks, along with various “free” scams. I’m not suggesting that some of the products they provide may actually have some sort of value, but, the majority are very poor quality or lend themselves to less than “ethical” ideas and practices.

It seems that a larger ‘net population is becoming aware of the lack of quality at Clickbank and it is showing at various traffic tracking sites like Alexa (see the “The Death of Clickbank” by Earnersblog)

Just like the re-affirmed decision I made a couple of months ago, I will NOT Clickbank until they provide higher quality products which I will be proud to offer to clients and have associated with my name and reputation.

While composing a comment response to a recent article by Shawn from AffiliateTip, it started to get pretty long, so, I thought I would make an article out of it. If you want to know more about the post I am responding to, please visit Shawn’s site at the links listed above.

Basically, one of the more controversial affiliate marketers who I have started to follow because they are so honest about their opinion is on a tear and mounting an attack on eBook writers & publishers.

I do not publish any eBooks, and I think his post is an interesting “comment” on the general tone of folks being fed up with poor quality “regurgitated” content.

I share the general sentiment and am extremely tired of the “carpetbagger” mentality of infomercials, eBooks, and other “get rich quick” schemes that permeate the U.S. market these days. I would love to see “scammers” removed from the marketplace in the hopes that we would be left with good value-added products to choose from, instead of having to sift through tons of garbage to find the one gem.

I think the originator makes a couple of mistakes though – the first is being addressed by his readers warning of copyright infringement which he threatens to do.

The second is his assumption that all eBooks have no value – just because he knows the strategies that work for him doesn’t mean that everybody knows those same strategies.

Also, when he says, “I’ve never once come across a single one of them offering anything valuable or new that you can’t find for free on a forum or a blog.” That is true of any cookbook, gaming manual, or other instruction booklet. Does that mean that Emril is an “asshole” because he is publishing another book on how to make crawfish Étouffée? I mean, come on… how many different ways can you cook crawfish and cayenne pepper together??? (That was sarcastic…) There is value in the accumulation and combining of relevant data which saves the buyer time.

It makes me wonder if this is a publicity stunt – perhaps he is getting ready to write his own eBook or has a partner who will release one soon which he will be “forced” to provide a “good” review because the content is so “in the face” of anything out there right now.

We’ll wait & see – I guess.

I am going to kick off an affiliate experiment here on Bloglyne.com by trying out Text Link Ads.

This looks like a decent way to buy solid back links to our site which should result in a real increase in traffic. It should also have the additional benefit of providing a simple way to begin monetizing my sites in two ways – the first by selling ad space via text links, the second by selling products and services.

Once I get the campaign kicked off, I will publish an update every couple of weeks to comment on the Advertisers Program where I sign up on for Text Link Ads on other sites to see if they are really improving my affiliate sales for products & services; I will comment on the Publisher Program to let the community know if I am being successful in selling advertising and at what prices; I will also comment on the Affiliate Program and whether or not I am successful at converting folks into the Text Link Ads program.

For all three of these programs, I will publish methods, earnings & tips. Please feel free to let me know if you would find this helpful by leaving your comments below.

FYI… I am using my affiliate link in this article (in case you haven’t noticed) to begin the experiment, so feel free to sign up and get $100 in FREE Links!