A HUGE Thank You Goes Out To Our Friends, Readers & Subscribers

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May was a great month and June looks like it is shaping up to be even better! Our Alexa rank took a giant leap this month, it is not reflected on the Alexa badge yet, but we have almost reached into the top 200,000 – Currently, we have reached a ranking of 208,581!

Some of the things which we attribute this success to is launching our first ever contest for charity, installing Quirk’s Search Status 1.20, installing the Alexa badge, and clicking on it from every computer which we work on. We also streamlined our subscription options through Feedburner this month – although, we do not really know what to think or how Google’s acquisition of Feedburner will impact things, we felt this would make things much easier for our subscribers. If we need to make adjustments, we can always compile different subscription feeds through Yahoo! Pipes…

Regarding the contest and the fundraising for the March of Dimes, we realize that you have read about it no less than 4 times this month, as we were pushing to raise as much money as possible for the March of Dimes. So far, we have raised $357 of our original $1,000 goal. We decided to keep the little widget which is linked to our donations page at the top of our sidebar for as long as it takes to reach the goal! I guess you could chalk it up to stubbornness  Also, due to the extensive and generous giving from the members of the Bloglyne.com community, we have decided to extend the contest until June 14, 2007. We will award links to the top 3 contributors up to June 7th per the original contest, but we will also award an additional top 3 contributors from June 7th to June 14th.

Thanks so much for helping us have such a great May – Let’s strive for an even better June!

Kumiko is Pink, or Green, rather…

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Kumiko's Cash Quest

I have been following Kumiko’s Cash Quest for about the last 4 or 5 months. I mean who wouldn’t want to follow this “Cash Quest”?

On her “About” page, she answers the question on everybody’s mind:

Q: Why is your site so pink?
A: I like pink!!

Well, let’s just say that anybody who gives that much personality in 9 words or less – I am going to follow their stuff.

Her observations are also extremely relevant to those who are at the start of their online money making ventures. By focusing on how to make money online, she adds value to the affiliate community by providing her successes and failures along with fully disclosing her earnings. I really dig this approach and will continue to follow her online cash quest experiences.

Recently, we created the first contest at Bloglyne as a way to raise money for the March of Dimes. Kumiko is offering a contest which is generating links and traffic to her site through her Cash Quest Competition – something you should check out! Should we win the prize for our entry, we will donate the $100 cash portion to our “Be A Hero For Babies Day” promotion.

The Dark Side – Email Scamming

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lottery email scam

Just received an email this morning, and, of course it is a another email scam. However, when doing research on this little bad boy, I was surprised to find a number of comments on blogs which reported people had “fallen for” this dirty trick.

What was really hilarious was that I did a search on the ticket number – a seemingly 14 digit “unique” number and found about 24,300 results in Google – Thank God these “scammers” are stupid enough to keep using the same number over & over.

Here is the email for your edification – should you see something like this do NOT be fooled by it. Do NOT give your personal information out in response to these sorts of inquiries.

WINNING NOTIFICATION:

We happily announce to you the draw (#980) of the UK NATIONAL
LOTTERY,online Sweepstakes International program held on May 24 2007.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:56475600545 188 with
Serial number 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers: 14-18-29-33-37-39-47(bonus
no.), which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.ematch
5 plus bonus.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of
£516,778.00(Five hundred and Sixteen thousand,seven hundred and seventy eight
pounds
sterling only) or $921,201:00(Nine hundred and twenty one thousand two
hundred and one dollars only)in cash/check
credited to file number UK/5678/T85.

This is from a total cash prize of £3,100,673.00 shared amongst the
first six (6) lucky winners in this category i.e Prize for six balls.

To file for your claim, please kindly provide the following
informations and send it to our Fiduciary Agent who shall clear you as a
winner.(1)FULL NAMES (2)DATE OF BIRTH(3)SEX (4)MARITAL STATUS(5)CONTACT ADDRESS
(6)PHONE NUMBERS(7)OCCUPATION

MR.Peter Taylor
Email:ukgaming1111@yahoo.es

Goodluck from me and members of staff of The U.K National Lottery.

Yours faithfully,
Mrs.Marie Flyn
ONLINE SUPERVISOR
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

WINNING NOTIFICATION:

We happily announce to you the draw (#980) of the UK NATIONAL
LOTTERY,online Sweepstakes International program held on May 24 2007.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:56475600545 188 with
Serial number 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers: 14-18-29-33-37-39-47(bonus
no.), which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.ematch
5 plus bonus.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of
£516,778.00(Five hundred and Sixteen thousand,seven hundred and seventy eight
pounds
sterling only) or $921,201:00(Nine hundred and twenty one thousand two
hundred and one dollars only)in cash/check
credited to file number UK/5678/T85.

This is from a total cash prize of £3,100,673.00 shared amongst the
first six (6) lucky winners in this category i.e Prize for six balls.

To file for your claim, please kindly provide the following
informations and send it to our Fiduciary Agent who shall clear you as a
winner.(1)FULL NAMES (2)DATE OF BIRTH(3)SEX (4)MARITAL STATUS(5)CONTACT ADDRESS
(6)PHONE NUMBERS(7)OCCUPATION

MR.Peter Taylor
Email:ukgaming1111@yahoo.es

Goodluck from me and members of staff of The U.K National Lottery.

Yours faithfully,
Mrs.Marie Flyn
ONLINE SUPERVISOR
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Search Arbitrage 101 – Kris Jones On What It Is & Why Should Affiliates Care

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[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKLNspObGXw[/video]I am constantly amazed at how much there is to learn about affiliate marketing. People that we should recognize and get to know, listen to and benefit from. I recently came across an excellent video by Kristopher Jones, President & CEO of Pepperjamsearch.com on Search Arbitrage – NOT AdSense Arbitrage, a term which seems to be tossed around so much as if nobody cares what the real meaning is.

Although the video is a couple of months old, it serves as a great resource where Kris goes over his experiences relating to his contribution as a panelist at the Search Engine Strategies Conference held in New York in 2007. Kris served on the Search Arbitrage Issues panel, along with David Szetela (CEO – Clix Marketing), Tim Daly (VP of Marketing Strategy – Sendtec), Frank Watson (Head Search Marketing, FXCM) & Nick Fox (Group Business Product Manager, Ads Quality, Google Inc.) Some of the most interesting comments Kris makes during the video have to do with his conversations with Nick Fox from Google.

Search Engine Strategies 2007 - Search Arbitrage Issues

I encourage you to check this video out and comment about your thoughts and ideas.

Currently, I do not participate in any search arbitrage; I am working on placing in the search engines organically. If you are interested in learning about Search Arbitrage 101, this is the video for you.

Joost & Tips About Reporting Bugs

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Joost

Thanks go to Simon Barker of Zath.co.uk for hooking me up with a Joost Beta invite. If you would like an invite, drop me a line and if you are nice I will hook you up! The quality of the player is amazing, but remember that this is still beta level software.

Many people seem to think that when they get into a trial like this, the software is supposed to run seamlessly, or, that it may have a few minor issues. The fact is, any beta release will more than likely have many minor issues and a few MAJOR issues. If you want your issues resolved, you must report them in a way that will allow the developer to reproduce and observe the unexpected behavior.

The folks at Joost have set up a pretty user friendly and extensive support structure with support forums and a knowledge base which is more than I have seen with other beta released software. Do yourself and the developers a favor, when you report a bug, if you want it to be addressed, give them enough information to take the report seriously.

Remember, there is absolutely NO value in hearing the following:

  • It doesn’t work
  • It broke my computer
  • Joost doesn’t run on my machine
  • Every time I blink, my machine disappears… is that because Joost screwed something up?

Standard things to include in any bug report:
Make sure you have verified the bug and have figured out the steps which must be followed to reproduce the unexpected behavior.

Make sure you include the EXACT steps to reproduce the issue when you report the bug.

For example:

  1. Launch Joost by pressing Start -> All Programs -> Joost -> Joost
  2. After Joost launches click the close button
  3. Get an error message stating “whatever the error message is”

Also include any relevant hardware information, the best way to gather this information on a Windows OS platform is to run the dxdiag from the Start -> Run command line by typing in dxdiag then after the diag has completed analyzing your system, you can click on the Save All Information button and include the resulting text file in any correspondence with the company you are reporting the bug to.

Monetize That Bloglyne!

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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…

Approved by Text-Link Ads

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Text Link Ads

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!

Business – Wicked Step Child or Your Favorite Son?

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Wicked Step Children?

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.

    2. 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

    3. 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

    4. 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

    5. 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!

SearchStatus – Click-Sharing – Are You Built To Compete?

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I have been using a FireFox Add-on called SearchStatus for the past few months. It allows the user to view the Google PageRank, Alexa Rank and with the latest update the Compete Rank.

The Add-on is simple to install and unobtrusive, you do not have to click on anything to get a PageRank, it simply displays these ranks in the lower right ‘status’ bar of the browser.

I have not been familiar with Compete prior to the update of SearchStatus; it looks like this is the brainchild of Bill Gross creator of GoTo which eventually became Overture. According to the Compete.com About page, the concept which is based on click-sharing is designed to help by notifying users about whether or not sites are ‘safe’; what traffic sites receive and how that compares to other sites; and finally, provides promotion codes which could save users money on retail sites at the time of check out.

To click-share or not to click-share, that is the question… What do you think about letting somebody, anybody monitor your clicks? Do you really believe that claims of anonymous click-sharing are really anonymous?

Increasing Alexa Rank Experiment

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I joined the “Increasing Alexa Rank – A Joint Experiment” from Everton’s site on March 27th, 2007. It has been a little over six weeks since beginning the experiment and I have noticed some very interesting and significant results.

I stopped writing weekly updates to the site, because I needed to focus on my business and updating some other affiliate sites, like www.quote-compare-save.com – Even so, with one article on Alexa rank, an Alexa category created and the sidebar widget installed, my rank improved about 100,000 from 370,000 to 274,000

It is interesting how minor changes even if you are not updating content so frequently can gain ranking… I still think that Alexa is, for the most part easily “scammed” – but, to my knowledge, I am not doing anything to scam Alexa on my site, so, I do not think that argument is as valid for my part of the experiment.

Good hunting!