Work From Home Carefree - Be Your Own Boss Get Rich Make Money Working From Home Weblog. Billion Dollar Industry!

It was five years ago today that I penned the final words of Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants. Just three days before, I registered the domain, AffiliateManager.net, and launched it in early 2001 as a companion to the book.

Back then, I touched on the changes we were seeing in 2000 as money was disappearing from the online advertising realm after the dot bomb. Ever the optimist, I stated that “Performance-based advertising promises to deliver increased brand awareness, lower…

When I look at the direction I was rip roaring and ready to go at this time last year, and the direction I’m looking at for 2006 - they seem polar opposites!
Direction & Goals For 2006

Product Creation. Create my own products to sell off my websites, and look at involving affiliate marketers when it’s a [...]

I got what I wanted for Christmas: an iPod! It’s the basic iPod shuffle, I just wanted one to listen to podcasts while working out on the treadmill. We did give our son an iPod nano for Christmas, and hello - I want one now!
I’ve been collecting some iPod resources because we’ve [...]

Part of my Getting Things Done master battle plan was to get control of my email.
Some of my email was being filtered, some wasn’t, and my inbox was getting a bit crazy. It took me about three hours, but I have all my domains and all my email accounts fully setup with lots of filter [...]

Not only do I get a ‘little crazy’ around the house at this time of year, I also do a lot of reflection and goal planning for the upcoming year.
Looking at my $ numbers this past year:
Good Grief - Did I Ever Learn A Lot! And do I ever have a lot more to learn!
Here [...]

The following is what Richard Kohl of MyPartyMall.com had to say in response to the question, What is the Future of Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing as we know it today, will change over the next few years. One change I see coming is a single shopping cart for the affiliate site for all merchants. Consumers will only need to use their credit card once.

More merchants presently online will start an affiliate program as more and better in-house affiliate software comes available….

According to Infozine.com, “JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), forecasts that online display and search advertising spending will grow at an average annual rate of 10% between 2005 and 2010…”

They are especially keen on “Automotive- 24% and Travel - 13%”

This is an interesting review, however, I would argue that their expectations are lower than what should be. Just from last year to this year, there was a 20+% increase in online advertising spending.

Either way, if you’re an affiliate - maybe it’s the right time to start working on some automotive and travel sites. We already know there are some great affiliate programs for both (especially for travel).

Maybe once your traffic starts, you can even sell some high priced banners and ad spots!

Another year change coming up, are your websites ready?
If you currently change your website’s copyright date manually, here’s a bit of php code that will do it for you automatically (year displayed is based on your web server time):
<?php echo “&copy; 2004 - “;
echo date(”Y”);?> SuperAff.com
Or:
&copy; [...]

If you’re looking at developing video products for marketing purposes, here are two articles you may want to check out:
Ken McCarthy - Internet Version 4.0
What is Internet Version 4.0?
It’s a lot of things, but a big piece of the puzzle is video.

I hope not. I really really hope Ken is wrong. When I’m on the [...]

I still haven’t found a perfect solution for WordPress backups (though I will report on Skippy’s plugin in a moment, which is close). But Serendipity has come out with great new backup interface - everything’s completely automatic, if your host allows, and it backs up your HTML files as well as your database. Here’s the skivvy:

Continue reading “Backup Solutions for Serendipity and WordPress blogs”