Yup. I said it. And on top of that I also admit that it happened to me.

Rewind about to about 2 years ago when I first got into this industry and I kept saying ‘oh, $500 a month while I sleep would be good enough for me’ and I truly meant it – at that time. People kept telling me once I reached that point I would want more, and of course I didn’t believe them.

So much I’ve learned since then.

Once I was up to $500 a month I wanted that to be $1000, then I wanted it to be $3000 and etc. Well eventually I did reach that point and boy was I on flying. I was so happy with myself, spending money left and right, not really working, and just generally having fun with life. It was honestly the best 6+ months of my life. Did way more things than I had in the past, met a lot of new people, travelled to a bunch places and events and so much more.

This all sounds well and good so what’s the problem?

Cockiness.

Once I started surpassing the amount of money I wanted to earn per month ‘while I slept’ I basically stopped working, and just partied with friends. Sure, I did a bit of work here and there but nowhere near what was required to keep things a-float.

This ended up with me spending all my profits and not re-investing them in any new or, already successful ventures. Huge fucking mistake.

Classic mistake that probably everyone makes but nobody really wants to admit. We’ve all seen the warnings in forums and on IRC but I think a lot of us refuse to believe it will ‘happen to me’. Well, I’m here to tell you that it does, and probably will.

Let’s face it, when you aren’t making any significant money and then suddenly you’re making quite a bit of money while you sleep it’s pretty fucking fantastic. This makes it very easy to lose sight of the original goal, which for me anyway, is to make enough income passively to live and have fun without having to sit at a computer all the time.

This past month it’s really hit hard, with paying bills becoming troublesome etc. And, I’m basically right back to where I didn’t want to be – grinding 60-70 hours a week at the computer just to get back to where I was originally. Had I stuck with it, I’d probably still be down around 5-7 hours of work a week to attain the same financial benefit.

All in all, great lesson learned. I wish I wouldn’t have had to learn it this way, but overall it’s probably best I did because nothing teaches like experience. Take it from me guys (and, gals) don’t get cocky when you start profiting, and keep at it, cause surer than shit something will fail and you’ll go from making thousands, to nothing, literally overnight.

Last night I was practicing my DJ’ing and at about 2AM a text message came into my phone from a phone number located in british columbia, but with no name associated with it. The text message said;

“Way to go dickwad, posting your phone number on facebook for all to see, you loser”

To which of course, I replied with

“Huh?”

And I immediately received this auto reply

“Welcome to Twilio SMS. For more information, see http://twilio.com/sms“

Maybe this is an old technique, but I’m not so sure. It looks to me like they’re scraping, or otherwise gathering information from Facebook users and spamming their cellphones. Using messages like this will surely invoke a response from most people, and apparently automatically sign them up to this Twilio service.

Brilliant? Kind of. Until they get caught.

Have you seen shit like this before?

Most of you will know a lot of these tracks, some will be new.

I might make some more of these in the future as I’ve already thought of 5 or 6 tracks that I forgot to include. Anyway, enjoy.

Here’s the tracklist;

1. Drake w/ Trey Songz & Lil’ Wayne – Successful
2. David Guetta w/ Kid Cudi – Memories
3. Dead Prez – Hip Hop
4. Rick Ross – Every Day I’m Hustlin
5. Eminem – Lose Yourself
6. Jay Z – Empire State Of Mind
7. Geto Boys – Feels Good To Be A Gangsta
8. Die Antwoord – Fish Paste
9. Gucci Mane w/ Plies – Wasted
10. Kid Cudi – Day N Nite Crookers Remix
11. Die Antwoord – Rich Bitch
12. Drake Ft Kanye West_Lil Wayne – Eminem-Forever
13. Lonely Island – I’m On A Boat (feat. T-Pain)
14. Jay-Z – Run This Town
15. MSTRKRFT (A-Trak Remix) – Bounce Ft. N.O.R.E.
16. Pitbull – Hotel Room Service
17. lil_wayne-drop_the_world_(feat._eminem)
18. Lonely Island – Like A Boss
19. YTCracker-Meganerd
20. ?? – Richie Rich Theme Song

Download Here;

• - RapidShare
• - MegaUpload

No. I wasn’t paid for this post, just got this random email from them explaining their product and to check it out – probably because OpenX has my email address or because I’m on their consultancy list with one of my other companies.

I thought I’d contact you to introduce you to Adtelligence, a new analytics application which will change the way agencies, ad networks and publishers will monitor the performance of campaigns, and report information to their advertisers, and help you reinforce the value of OpenX to your clients.

Adtelligence sits on top of OpenX (*) and offers a level of intuitiveness, customization and convenience that are unknown in ad serving and campaign reporting… and at no cost for the product currently online.

(*) Adtelligence is however compatible with the OpenX Community Download and OpenX Enterprise only. We’re not able to accommodate users of the OpenX Community Hosted product.

At a later stage, Adtelligence will also deliver inventory optimization and yield management capabilities, helping your clients and any media agencies, large publishers and ad networks make the right decisions regarding the management of their advertising inventory. Since we’re planning to charge these future applications, we will want to discuss with you at that point a model that will let you benefit financially from the commercialization of these applications to your clients.

We’d love to get your views on Adtelligence, and would therefore recommend you take a look at the product demo at www.adtelligence.net. Also feel free to start using the product with your clients, if you think the product is right for them.

Thank you for helping us gain visibility with your clients and future OpenX users. We’d be happy to speak with you over the phone, in the event you’d like to know more about our project and company.

And, here’s their video.

If I remember I’ll post an update after I check it out and what my thoughts are on it.

ASW Post is still severely late, but it’s coming I swear.

But, that’s okay because there’s something new out there that makes all of this history. I found out about these things called a “Poken”. In basic terms, these things are electronic business cards. They’re a small USB device that stores all of your key information so you can quickly transmit it to others. This means no more business card printing which is great for the environment and no chance of running out of cards to hand out – of course, if you lose the device you’re kinda screwed, but how often do you lose your keys? I assume, never.

So, why do smart marketers need one of these? Simple, it’ll cut down on your luggage if you’re bringing 1000 cards and you can keep everything organized in one spot and quickly download it to your computer or laptop when you need to. No more rummaging through napkins, post it notes or whatever else you have peoples contact information written on. Not to mention that these Pokens come in cool colors and styles – ranging from business professional to cutesy little ninjas and monsters.

So, how do they work? Just as you’d expect in today’s technology driven world – you simply walk up to anyone else with a Poken, touch them together and you’ve transferred your contact information. Could it really get any simpler? I don’t think so.

Obviously it will take some time for everyone to have these, so the transition might involve some hand writing and converting information to get it on your Poken, but in the long term I really think lots of people will start using these and it will only get better and easier as time passes.

I personally love this idea, and will definitely be picking one up to use at Affiliate Summit West, now the problem is deciding which one I want to get!

See you at ASW 2010 and I’ll even let you touch my Poken if you ask nicely!

It looks like Amazon is partnering up with Blogger, to provide automatic insertion of ads from the marketplace into your site. This sounds pretty good in theory, but also opens up the opportunity for shitloads of MFA (read, made for amazon) sites to clutter the tubes. Anyway, just thought this would be something interesting to discuss especially with the decline of EPN lately.

Here’s the letter I received;

Dear Associate,

Today we are excited to announce Amazon Associates for Blogger, a direct integration between Amazon Associates and Blogger.  This new collaboration enables Bloggers to monetize their content by adding relevant Amazon products to their blog posts without interrupting the blog editing process.  Amazon Associates for Blogger is available now available here on Associates Central. [ http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/blogger ] Amazon Associates who dont have a Google Blogger account can set up a free Blogger account with their Associates ID and start earning right away.

The new tool allows Bloggers to add links and images to their blog posts in just 2 easy steps:

1.Bloggers highlight the relevant text and the Amazon Product Finder will search Amazons millions of products and recommend the ones that are most closely associated with the text

2.Bloggers can then insert a link or image to that product which includes their Associates ID, enabling them to earn up to 15% in referral fees from Amazon

Bloggers will also be able to show dynamic content in their blog sidebar using a new set of integrated Sidebar gadgets, such as gadgets for MP3 clips from the Amazon DRM-free music store, an Amazon Deals gadget, and an Amazon Search box.

Also as part of this new integration, Bloggers who dont have a free Amazon Associates account can create one directly within Blogger so tell your friends that use Blogger how they can start earning with Amazon Associates today.

Please tell us what you think of our new Amazon Associates for Blogger feature using hashtag #AMZN4BLGR on Twitter [ http://twitter.com/ ] or contact us via the  contact form [ http://tinyurl.com/2nurmj ].  We want to hear from you!

Sincerely,
The Amazon Associates Program

Did you guys get it too? What do you think? Are you going to attempt more with amazon now? or just stick with EPN or forget them both?

I had to write this short post about a wicked contest that I participated in recently, and actually won something. The contest was sponsored by Affiliate Summit and Legacy Learning Systems. This particular contest was for the already famous Affiliate Day celebration which just launched its inaugural year this past September 14^th.

All I had to do to win was tweet a message including the affiliate day twitter hash-tag in the message, and then sit back and wait to see if I would win. A couple days later I received a direct message on Twitter confirming that I had won one of the prizes. Wow, is that cool or what. I really don’t win things very often so this was pretty exciting.

The course in the box it was shipped in.

What’s even cooler about this contest is that it was available to Canadians as well as Americans. It really seems like the contests offered by most of the networks out there only have contests that are available to the USA. The ability for Canadians to be a part of this was awesome, eh.

Affiliate Summit is the premier meeting of the minds for all Internet Marketers and Affiliate Marketers. It occurs twice a year, once on the East coast and once on the West coast. They’re a great place to meet other affiliates, networks and other people involved in the industry. I hope to see you all at Affiliate Summit West in Jan 2009 for more shenanigans.

The piano course box in it's shrink wrap, and the hand written letter that it came with. Thanks for everything Matt @ Legacy Learning!

Legacy Learning Systems, the leader in instructional material for Art and Music. Their courses are easy for newbie’s and yet still have valuable information for moderate to intermediate musicians as well. These courses are relatively simple, they are meant to enable everyone to realize their own personal dreams. They offer a number of artistic courses for different areas with a bunch of new releases planned for the future. You can currently teach yourself;

• Piano
• Guitar
• Drums
• Ballroom Dancing

When I won the contest I was given the chance to choose whichever program I wanted. I probably would have taken Ballroom Dancing because it would probably come in handy one day, but I honestly don’t see myself prancing around my office trying this out alone. So, instead I opted for the piano course. I’ve always wanted to learn how to play some piano and I don’t know if it’s stupid or not but since I’m such a fast typist I figure I have the dexterity to play the piano as well once I learn the notes.

Open Box with all the course materials.

I haven’t started the course as it just arrived in the mail today, but what I can say is I was super impressed with the construction of the box it comes in (it’s one of those nifty ones with a magnet to keep it shut, and only the corner flips over). The instructional booklet that it comes with is super well written and if looking over the people who helped contribute to the course, there was quite a few people making this a very professional job.  I’ve already read a few paragraphs and skimmed through the book and have learned some things I didn’t know. Pretty cool. I also got a shitload of DVD’s of instructional videos and CD’s full of music to play along with. This will help me a lot because I’m really a visual learner and don’t usually retain too much if I only read it, I have to play along and do something tangible to learn. If you’re like that too, one of these programs could help you too.

All in all, I’m really impressed with both Affiliate Summit and Legacy Learning Systems for giving me the opportunity to do something I’ve always wanted, and for supporting Canadian affiliate marketers.

In case you are wondering. No I was not paid to write this post. I do feel it was a requirement due to the coolness of my winning and the prize I won though.

I’ll post some of my tracks once I put this to use, so keep reading!

Disclosure: We are a professional site that receives compensation from the companies whose products we review. We test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed here are our own.

So, here goes.

I’ve been setting up a new campaign to test out in a different niche then last time. [ADHD] Speaking of niche, we were always told its knee-sh, not nitch… which is it? [/ADHD]. This time I’m running it a little differently than last time, and arguably with less work. So, let’s dissect what this one is all about aight?

Only trying one traffic source this time instead of two.

I’m not running banner ads and text ads this time. Just text ads.

I also ensured the content network was turned off from the get go on this one, instead of needlessly getting clicks from here when I wasn’t intending to test it. This is a big thing I learned from the last test.

I am running two landing pages. One with only one offer and another with two offers running side by side. The landing pages used this time are drastically different both in tone, intended reader profile and products. Keep in mind this is in the same niche, I’m just marketing differently between both niches.

Instead of writing my own copy this time, I opted to invest $40 USD in order to get a professional copywriter to re-write the copy that I had already written. He did a great job and went over all of it with a fine tooth comb while I spent my time designing. While I do think my copy is pretty rad, sometimes it’s worth it to get a professional to look yours over and provide editing services. This is what I did, and not too much was changed. However, some pretty important things were pointed out to me and modified by the writer I found on the gay webmaster forums. Even with the expense of the copy, if it leads to one sale it’s paid for itself so in my opinion this was well worth it.

This time, I also loaded in 690 keywords, instead of my measly 25-50 that I used last time. I figure this will dramatically increase data that I receive on long tails and other weird things people are searching for.

Another thing I did differently this time around was instead of only 5 ads, mainly directed at people in the “buying” frame of mind I created 12 ads of varying consumer mindsets. I feel this will give me a broader test to go with compared to last time and will give me more opportunity to lessen the CPC on this one and find converting long tail keywords.

I’m also limiting my budget significantly (50%) compared to last time. I lost too much money on my test last time with absolutely no converts so I want to spend less, and aim for more data retrieval and testing on this campaign.

So, that’s pretty much what’s been going on and of course, if I don’t end up making a googol with this campaign I’ll be sharing my results with you in a later campaign follow-up.

It’s not one of those apps that “does it all”, like so many of the others claim to be. Nor will it cook you breakfast or make you rich overnight. We don’t claim any of that.

So, what will it do?

Timed Tweeter automatically drip feeds tweets across multiple accounts, for as long as you want it to. Users can also add multiple twitter groups, and message sending methods for different times of day, month or sending frequency. What more could you need to automate your twitter marketing.

What’s this mean for you? Automatic twitter. You will save hours and hours of time, and market your product more effectively than ever before while you’re out sipping gin and juice.

Doesn’t matter if you have established Twitter accounts or are just starting out, this software will help.

Check out the website here http://timedtweeter.com and the demo here http://timedtweeter.com/demo/

We’re looking forward to hearing back from our beta testers, and unleashing this on the rest of the Internet very shortly.

Stay tuned!

I don’t get why people submitted like 7 times, with different names, all from the same IP. Do they not think I can see that shit in the WP interface? I deleted the obvious “cheating” entries, and we were left with  Mihai @ Freshome.com as the winner. Congratulations, your coupon has just been emailed out to the address you provided in your comment. Let us know if you didn’t receive it.

Look forward to more exciting contests coming soon boys and girls!