That title was my attempt at humor, but seriously- it took Hostgator a long time to get with the program and make Wordpress 2.5 available for Fantastico.

I must say, though -- it was worth the wait. There are a few new features I really like, but since I'm so behind the times, I won't bother mentioning them.

Instead, I'll give you an update on my life at current-

First, if you'd like to know what's been keeping me so busy, I've been working on a couple of Facebook applications. One of them is out (the first version anyway) and it's called Blobs (click to add this application).

This app is far less complex than the other but still makes me happy. The gist is that you get to upgrade your blob to battle other blobs in hopes that you can be the best amongst your friends. The affiliate marketing angle (duh, of course) is generally the same as other games. To get gold, you fill out offers. Easy enough.

Second, I started exercising more. I've been riding a bike to work and I'm pretty happy about that. The only down-side is that I'm riding a cruiser bike for now, until I do some research and find a decent road bike. The upside to riding a cruiser like any other bike is that I depend solely on my leg muscles and they burn more often. Needless to say, I highly recommend riding a bike instead of driving a car (if you're able); it saves money and keeps you fitter.

Anyway, so I'm devoting more time to those things. Meanwhile, I have my campaigns on a sort of auto-pilot for now. I use the term auto-pilot loosely, as I check them daily and make small adjustments here and there. But for the most part, they're running strong by themselves.

I'll be writing more posts soon, so stay tuned.

Popularity: 67% [?]

Man am I lazy lately. And rightfully so. Things are going well with the biz and things are highly busy at work, so I'm procrastinating a bit with blog posts.

It's not without pain though. My Alexa ranking just jumped up to 126,038. Ouch. That means a bunch of people stopped visiting that normally do. My bad.

Don't worry, I'll get my second wind soon.

In other news, my research with the offer I'm going to divulge to you is going well. I say 'research' like I'm out in the field with binoculars, but that's hardly what I'm doing. I'm just letting the ads run and tweaking them to see what works best.

I'll post on it soon.

Scott

Popularity: 78% [?]

So like I was saying, lately I've been testing the content network out on a few campaigns. And to my surprise, the profit margin isn't actually that bad. I mean, I'm not unhappy with any profit margin but so far, it's been around 25% for the ones I've been running.

What does that mean for you? Keep an eye out, because I'm going to be telling you what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. That's right, boys and girls. I've been conducting this experiment for you people.

Why? Because I like you and because there's plenty of love (money) to go around on this one. So keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for my how-to post on content-based campaigns. It's going to rock your socks, my newbie friends.

Anyway,  I'm pretty happy about all this because I can afford to pump some decent money into these little offers before I hand them over to you fine people.

For now, I'll see how they scale.

Popularity: 73% [?]

Lately, my peeve has been people who are ruining the good image of internet marketers. Everyone knows we are a highly respected bunch. Hey, I kid, I kid.

But seriously -- as far as internet marketing goes, the people who want to "get rich quick" make the rest of us look even worse. So my advice to you is: put some effort into it.

I'd venture to guess that most of those who just throw up some crappy site in hopes of  wrangling in some extra bucks don't end up making the kind of money that people like my friends and I do. That's because they end up getting Google Slapped or some business like that or their site gets swiped because it's so simple.

And the worst part about it- in the past, it's caused Google to crack down on sites that are low in quality or even slightly low in quality. A good analogy would be to relate it to the real estate market. One site goes down and because that was closely related to another, the sites around it get penalized for having similar qualities, even if they are technically within guidelines.

My point is simple: create quality and you most likely won't get slapped. The side benefit is that your minimum bids will get lowered for more competitive terms and you'll be able to compete with the big boys.

To create quality, I recommend writing articles or having articles written for you on the topic you're marketing. Additionally, you should provide a contact page and ideally, a blog to house the aforementioned articles. (Note: You may want to turn comments off). This will get your site indexed a little more thoroughly. On top of that, it's good to have things like a terms of service document as well as a privacy notice (if you collect information). This will help in a few ways: Google likes sites with more pages, Users trust sites with more pages and it's just a better way of doing business.

Remember: it is an actual business, so things like this matter.

Popularity: 72% [?]

Hey boys and girls, the numbers are in for last month and they are looking delicious.

• Affiliate Sales - $100.00
• Google AdSense - $49.98
• Private Ad Sales - $22.56
• Aweber Signups - $7.98
• Referrals - $6.42
• Adtoll - $2.59
• Amazon Book Commission - $0.08

For a grand total of $189.61!

Looks like I can quit my job and buy a mansion. No, but seriously .. this month has been a good one despite the recent sparsity of posts. One thing you'll notice is that we more than tripled last month's total -- AGAIN. That's right, baby.

This just goes to show -- if you stay dedicated and push through the low times, your work can start to pay off. Also, it shows that John Chow is right when he says you don't necessarily need a ton of traffic to increase revenue, you just need to monetize the traffic you already have.

And here's the graph you've grown to love-

FusionCharts Graph

Fantastic.

Scott

Popularity: 78% [?]

Well, I'm 25 now. Yesterday was my quarter-century mark and I am realizing how little time I've had for this blog in the past couple weeks and it's annoying the hell out of me, so I thought I'd post.

Lately, what's been on my mind has been the B.S. posts that people keep spewing out to keep people interested (you know who you are). Those posts aren't fooling anyone. They're trite and boring.

So let's cut straight to the chase with this one. What people ask most often .. the number one question .. the big cheese of questions is: how do I choose offers? Well, how about I choose for you? That's right, for those of you just getting started, I'm just going to pick an offer I'm trying right now or that I have tried and I will tell you all about it. Sure, it might get a bit more saturated as a result, you might have even tried it already, but remember- my intentions are to benefit you. My only catch is that I want you to report when you try it, if you do, and let us know how you're doing. It helps inspire people and plus, I get more comments that way which makes me happy inside.

Beach Bum Systems (2236 on Neverblue)
I've been running this for a long while now using email to promote it. I recommend you do the same. The conversion rate is above 1% and, as I always say, e-mail conversions are free after you've paid the first time. So take advantage. The best crowd this converts for (for me) is the make-money-online crowd but you might try another angle.

Anyway, let me know how it works out if you do try it or even if you have tried it.  Good luck.

Popularity: 74% [?]