Twas the Night before Christmas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,
not an affiliate was stirring, not even at John Chow’s.
The commission checks were hung by the chimney with care,
in hopes that the IRS would soon not be there.

The web sites were tracking all snug in their server beds,
while visions of holiday traffic danced in their heads.
And the blog in it’s wordpress, and I in my cap,
had just settled our brains for a super affiliate nap.

When out of the laptop there arose such a clatter,
went to my blog to see what was the matter.
Opened the browser, and went through my cache,
refreshed the web page, and did not see flash.

The new blog design, was something to remember,
finished in time, by Unique Blog Designs in December.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a Super Affiliate sleigh and eight blogging pioneers!

With a new blog design, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be the Super Affiliate.
More bloggers and readers, his subscribers they came,
and he whistled and shouted and called them by name:

“Now Shoemoney! Now John Chow!
Now, Shawn Collins and Jim Kukral!
On, John Cow! On, Nate Whitehill!
On, Darren Rowse and Amit Mehta!
To the top of the Alexa!
To the top of the Technorati!
Now count away! Count away!
Count away all!”

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

- Written by Zac Johnson, for ZacJohnson.com

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Facebook Users are Spending Millions on Virtual Gifts

Millions of people log onto FaceBook every day. Of the several millions, many browse through friends profiles for hours upon hours a day, while others play with applications and leave comments on their friends walls. Is anyone really making money off FaceBook and this type of behavior from their social network users? Of course! FaceBook is just the reincarnation of MySpace with more funding, a better infrastructure, less trashy and probably a lot more profitable. If you didn’t cash in on MySpace, then this is just another opportunity. Microsoft isn’t stupid, they they just recently made a $240 million equity stake in Facebook during its next round of financing, valuing the company at a whopping $15 billion. However, this post isn’t about the valuation of FaceBook, nor Microsoft partnerships… it’s about how to make more out of something that is already there.

When you first join FaceBook, you receive a “Free Virtual Gift“, which is really just a virtual image that you can send to a friend. You only get one… but you can buy and send more for
$1 each. I rarely use FaceBook, and the idea of paying a dollar to send an image to a friend seems kind of ridiculous… why not just copy, save and email it? Simply because users want other users to see they were the ones to send or receive these virtual gifts, and even more so that the value of a gift in thought and intention is worth more than the small dollar to send it. So just how many users have sent one of these virtual gifts? According to CNN, “Since they (virtual gifts) were introduced in February, Facebook says its users have purchased more than 24 million of these dollar items, which are sold in limited editions to generate more interest“. Such a small and simple idea has generated an amazing amount of money… and you know FaceBook is going to monetize the heck out of it! I just logged in today and one of the first things I saw was them pushing their Holiday Virtual Gifts. How many of these are going to be sent out this month?

As a FaceBook member, you can even browse through their virtual gifts store, where they have have 380 different gifts you can send. This has been such a hit with the social network that you can even sort by “Bestselling”, “Newest”, “Selling Out” and “Most Rare”. By offering the categories of “Selling Out” and “Most Rare“, you can be sure this will entice collect and send even more virtual gifts, as they are in limited supply.

Social networks have been around for a couple of years now and they just keep getting hotter. The “Virtual Gifts” feature is owned and run by FaceBook, however thousands of developers, web designers and more are finding new ways to make money off social networks. Some profitable methods have been creating new applications to run with these networks or creating sites with images or layouts or place on profile pages. As MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook continue to grow, so should your money making opportunities. Are you going to be one of the millions of “social network users making other people money“… or one of the few “people making money off social network users“? I know where I’ll be!

Popularity: 7% [?]

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Super Affiliate Strategies that Work

Yesterday I was contacted by Kris Jones, who I finally got to meet at Affiliate Summit East last year. Kris sent me an email asking if I was speaking at or attending Affiliate Summit West 2008 in Vegas during February. I quickly got back to him and told him that I was attending and would be blogging the event. Kris wrote me back and asked if I would like to be on his “Super Affiliates” panel and I greatly accepted his invitation. Let me tell you though… this is one killer line up for this panel. We have Kris Jones (President & CEO of PepperJam, an Inc 500 company), John Chow (Awesome blogger from JohnChow.com), Amit Mehta (ppc Master & blogger at SuperAffiliateMindset.com), and myself. This is pretty much one of the best line ups you can pull together at such an affordable price as AffiliateSummit. The panel session is called “Super Affiliate Strategies that Work“, and will be moderated by Kris Jones. There will also most likely be an open Q&A at the end of the session as well. If you are still deciding on attending AffiliateSummit West, this is just another killer reason to make the event.

Kris Jones is One of the Top Internet Marketers in the World!

John Chow is Now Earning Over $25,000 a Month through is Blog!

Amit Mehta is a Master at PPC & Spends up to $10k a day on Search Marketing!

I’m extremely excited about the knowledge and marketing experience of this panel, we all specialize in different areas and should be an amazing wealth of information and inspiration for anyone who attend the session. If you haven’t already, take a look at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, February 24-26, 2008 and see what you can do about attending the event. It will change the way you make money online forever!

Popularity: 6% [?]

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NeverBlueAds Tops Google on Gift Giving

Last week Google started the gift giving with a 2 Gig USB Flash Drive & a $100 Donation card, this week NeverBlueAds brought the gift giving to another level with an awesome gift basket full of candies, cookies, chocolates, NeverBlueAds labeled slippers, blanket, fireplace dvd and more! I work with a lot of networks and it’s always nice to see which actually take the time and effort to recognize their affiliates at the end of the year! Props to NeverBlueAds! Unless I get a load of packages this week, this year has been quite slow on gifts and cards from companies. I’m not surprised, as I’ve seen a big decrease in rewards/gifts sent out year after year. I remember when PostMasterDirect used to send out $100 Tiffany pens and huge gifts around Christmas time… I haven’t received anything from them in years! It sucks when small personable companies get bought out and become corporate, once this happens you almost lose your identity as a friend and become a number among numbers. When it comes down to business, I would rather work with people I trust and that WANT to keep in touch with me, than fool around with another network or company for a few extra bucks.

If you haven’t joined NeverBlueAds yet, why not? I’m looking forward to having an awesome record breaking year with NeverBlueAds in 2008. Next year you might just receive an awesome gift package from one of the few companies that still seems to send out quality gifts each year! It’s getting down to crunch time! I know NeverBlueAds sent out a bunch of Holiday cards to affiliates… have you received anything else this year?

Popularity: 4% [?]

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New Money Making Holiday Offers

Last week I wrote about a few "Christmas & Holiday Money Making Offers" that were available through NeverBlueAds. As we are now a week closer, it looks like NeverBlueAds has ramped up with a few new offers and a lot more holiday creatives. Here are some of their latest offers that you can take advantage of before the big day hits!

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My Christmas Crush
$6.00 Per Sale
Users receive the name of their Christmas love directly to their cell phone! Subscription service for weekly flirtation tips sent directly to the user’s cell phone. Users must be at least 18 years of age and own the cell phone. (View Landing Page)

Zac’s Marketing Tip: I’ve heard that offers like My Christmas Crush have been doing phenomenally well on social networks like MySpace and Facebook. If you have access to advertising on these sites, I recommend you act now and test this one out.
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Popular ScreenSavers (Christmas Themes)
$2.40 Per Lead
Thousands of Free Photos & Exclusive 3-D Animations! No Spyware. No Adware. All 100% Free. Converts on an install of the Fun Web Products toolbar. (View Landing Page)

Zac’s Marketing Tip: Millions of screensavers and desktops are being downloaded every day. Why not create your own screensavers / desktop web site? You can post all of the individual download screenshots from "Popular Screensavers" on your site and build up quite a directory. You will earn a commission every time someone registers for a download.
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Alot.com Recipe Toolbar
$1.50 Per Sale
Exclusive to NeverblueAds! The new Alot.com Recipe toolbar converts on a simple Toolbar installation! This one’s HOT! (View Landing Page)

Zac’s Marketing Tip: Everyone is looking for new recipes and ideas for the holidays. You can easily target your traffic to some new Egg Nog recipes with this toolbar, or if you are dedicated enough, you can try and push this offer through some pay per click marketing. You know there are going to be some massive traffic looking for new recipes to share with their families this holiday.
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MyFunCards (Christmas, Kwanzaa & Hanukkah)
$2.75 Per Lead
Hundreds of eCards to choose from. No Spyware. No Adware. All 100% Free. Converts on an install of the Fun Web Products toolbar. (View Landing Page)

Zac’s Marketing Tip: Every holiday and every day, people send a massive amount of ecards. Login to your NeverBlueAds account and you can actually pull some Christmas / Holiday ecards from their creatives area. Placing these images on your site and using your affiliate id will heavily increase your clicks and conversions. People will see the actual card that they want to send out, enticing them to join MyFunCards and earning you a commission.
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I wanted to list a bunch of other campaigns because NeverBlueAds added a ton of Christmas and Holiday banners for many general campaigns, but it would just make a mess of this post to go through them all. We are now going through the "12 days of Christmas" and all of these campaigns can make you a nice chunk of change to end the year off with. If you haven’t already, join NeverBlueAds or login to your current account and check these offers out. Have you had any success with Christmas or holiday offers this season?

Popularity: 5% [?]

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