Pretty straightforward really – I’m sorry to say this about OpenX because I really did like them for a number of years. Lately, they’re just shit. Yup, completely and utterly shit.

Ever since the name change to OpenX they’ve been going downhill, and I think nearly everyone in the community will agree with me – including some of their very own (former) developers.

Riddled with vulnerabilities, slow and non-required code and other problems we’ve probably all experienced with it. Not to mention no automatic optimization of your ad zones.

This past week, the final straw was picked. My OpenX installation was hacked, AFTER I had applied the latest security fix to it. Talking around to buddies, this happened to a number of people as well. I couldn’t believe it. Of course, I was venting my frustrations to one of my buddies and he told me he had recently switched from OpenX to Google DFP for the very same reasons.

I hadn’t even heard of Google DFP at the time. So, I went over to their site, logged in and got started creating my placements (websites), ad units (ad zones) and my orders (advertisers).

All I have to say is – WOW. It’s actually pretty cool. I remember the first times I was using OpenX it was quite complicated and difficult to understand how to setup the campaigns and the advertisers and ad units. Not so with DFP, just a few minutes of clicking and I figured it out.

Let’s take a look at the process for Google DFP versus OpenX shall we?

Google DFP Process:

1. Login using your existing Google or Google Applications account.
2. Click Inventory, Click Placements
3. Create a placement (eg. Sitename.com-Sidebar)
4. Click Ad Units
5. Create Ad Unit (eg. Sitename.com-Sidebar-Left-125×125)
6. Click Orders
7. Click New Order and add your advertiser, save it, then upload your image or html for the ad.
8. Click Inventory
9. Click ‘Generate Tags’ and copy the code to your page.
10. Wait 10-30 Minutes for Ads to Appear. You’re Done.

OpenX Process:

1. Buy a Domain name for OpenX
2. Buy Server Space for OpenX
3. Create OpenX Database
4. Install OpenX
5. Setup and Configure OpenX  (gfl if on windows hosting by the by)
6. Secure OpenX on your server.
7. Ensure Maintanance Mode is setup for OpenX so your ads will eventually display.
8. Now you can start setting up your ads.
9. First Click Inventory, Then click Websites & Zones
10. Add your website to OpenX
11. Add zones to your website
12. Now click back to Advertisers & Campaigns
13. Add an Advertiser
14. Add a Campaign to your new advertiser
15. Add some banners to your advertisers campaign
16. Set the zones in which your ads will appear  in banner configuration
17. Go back to Websites and Zones
18. Find your website and Zone
19. Click on it, then go to the fourth tab ‘invocation code’
20. Generate your invocation code
21. Go and paste it into your site along with any other relevant code
22. 10-60 minutes later your ads should start appearing.

As you can see OpenX requires a lot more clicks, typing and setup to get your ads and advertisers into the system. Nearly double in-fact. And it’s quite possible I’ve forgotten something here.

With Google DFP it’s actually much easier. Far fewer clicks are required and the added benefit that you can have it fall back to traditional Adsense ads if your network or in-house ads aren’t converting. As far as I understand their documentation the fallback will happen automatically if you select Adsense fallback when creating your ads.

There is one kind of major gotcha that I noticed thought. Due to Adsense terms and conditions, if you have more than 3 ad units on a page no ads will display, even if it’s just fallback to Adsense. Not too big of a deal but still something to note. I had to turn off Adsense fallback for all of my ads except one on the page and then all ads were displaying.

Bottom Line – Google DFP is quicker, easier, and probably far more secure than OpenX to use for your advertising delivery throughout your network. The only problems I’m having with it is the fact that it does sometimes crash Firefox or IE, but I haven’t had any problems with Chrome yet. I do wish they’d make a nice desktop application like they have for Adwords, but I’m sure that’s coming down the pipe.  One other thing I noticed is stats seem to take a long time to show up. As of this writing I’ve had DFP setup for two weeks and I still have no data available to create a report. I’m sure they’re still working out the last bugs in the system so this should be fixed soon.

Anyone else using DFP? What are your thoughts? Have you also migrated from OpenX? Let me know in the comments, I’m interested what others think of Google DFP vs OpenX.

What came in the file?

An executable, some text files, the license, and a pretty boring Readme file. I understand this program was made by a programmer, so documentation will by default be lackluster; however the documentation for this is pretty much nonexistent. If you don’t know what you’re doing I could see this getting a bit confusing (and, from some of the comments in the forum thread for the program, it’s apparent that it is). But, if you

First Impressions

First off, I must say the threading is incredible. It did bog down my computer a little bit when I would put it up to 100+ threads, but that’s fine if doing it overnight and nothing else is running. When running with more than 10 threads, I did experience problems in Ableton Live and Reason though, so it is something to note. Especially since I’m running on a Quad Core with 4GB of Ram.

What’s It Do?

So, what’s the program all about? Simple really, you load into it a list of your links, and optionally some spun titles, and it will run through your list and submit them to the common services out there to hopefully aid you in getting quick and relevant backlinks (depending on your titles, and submissions of course).

Does It Support Proxies?

The other great thing about this program is the option of using proxies. I used scrapebox to sort my list of proxies, and then I just loaded the same file in MegaPinger and was instantly sending my pings out through proxies instead of direct to the site from my lowly cable modem. Great stuff.

First Run

I tested it out on some small link lists, and everything worked great including the title spinning for submissions. Then I decided I should put it to the real test, and I loaded up my list of all links from the past little while (around ~4400 of them).  This told me there was about 398912 pings to be sent out, and gave me a fancy little progress bar.

Then I loaded my list of proxies into Megapinger and set it to run. These proxies are kept in a simple text file in the MegaPinger directory. Along with the failed and succeeded ping lists text file that you can refer to later.

I let this run, and kept an eye on the CPU usage and memory usage, and it was pretty constant to what this screenshot shows below.

This process took about 24 hours to run, if I kept it down at 50 threads. When I increased it I was up to about 300 pings a minute, so the time went drastically down. So far so good. Much quicker than any other pinger I’ve used and I’m sure I could have tossed it up to 500 threads and got upwards of 800 pings a minute with fast proxies, but I didn’t have time to test that much.

Problems

I did notice a slight issue, that if you pause the pinger and start it again, for some reason it would double my ‘left to be pinged’ list, and thusly re-ping all the sites it had already done. Minor annoyance since I don’t really pause MegaPinger, but something to note.

As of this writing a support ticket, and message has been sent on the forum to Mattseh without a reply (but it hasn’t been very long! ).

Overall

MegaPinger is a Great product with a great price. Aside from the small bug mentioned above I don’t see why you shouldn’t be using this to ping your links.

I’m not going to get into whether pinging is worth it or not, there are many sides to that argument, which you guys can discuss in the comments

Whether we like to admit it or not, this is a common problem among many entrepreneurs – many of us have ADD, and we’re serial entrepreneurs. We have about 100 ideas at all times and want to get something out as quick as possible, and communicate it effectively.

Enter Balsamiq.

You may have heard of this application a year or so ago when it was highlighted on Digg and Slashdot. I had too, but honestly never took the time to download it and test it out myself. I probably should have though.

In case you’re not familiar with the application, at the simplest level relates back to my Just Fucking Do It post about getting things done. This application lets you rough out your ideas super quickly, and efficiently with their pre-developed set of graphical elements to toss into your sketch.

Here’s the introduction video, which can probably explain it much quicker and more eloquently than I ever could.

What’s really cool about this application, similar to mind mapping, it lets you get your ideas out and into digital format at almost the same speed of regular pen and paper. If you’re like me, you know that using a pen and paper is the quickest way to get your ideas out but almost always ends up with a messy sheet of paper, with a bunch of things crossed out or erased and updated ideas inserted. Using Balsamiq avoids this because everything is digital so you can actually delete items and just replace them. Much like a word processor, except for your application/website/whatever ideas.

I’m planning some applications with a few groups and have been testing out this software for them over the past few days. It’s working great however I do still notice that it’s “software” and not “pen and paper”, but this is probably just something that has stuck in my head for nearly 30 years and won’t take long to get over. I imagine it would be even better if I had a tablet pc, however I don’t so I can’t comment on that.The software is definitely saving me time, and allowing me to communicate my ideas much easier than before. I tend to think fast, and the “curse of knowledge” affects me and I think that others also understand the same things I do – even if they aren’t geeks – this software helps me keep things simple and explain my ideas visually which really really helps me with my work.

I also really enjoy that it looks.. like a drawing you’d create on a napkin. Here, take a look at this screen shot for an example;

Balsamiq Mockup Image

I think this approach, keeping things simple I mean, makes this application all the better. I’ve seen other mind mapping tools like this, but they try and make everything look fancy which in my opinion makes the application harder to use, and won’t allow your brain to get past the “it’s gotta be perfect” mentality and instead into the “lets just get this shit done so we can finalize it and get it out there” mentality.

Side Note: While thinking about this post, I thought I should mention one of the mind mapping application I do like, which is slightly different than a thumbnail sketcher but along the same lines for the creative thinking aspect, is Mindjet – but that’s a whole other article in itself.

Another thing that’s pretty cool about this thumbnail sketching software, especially for me when designing landing pages or site templates is the napkee extension that’s available to take your Balsamiq creation, and export it as a html/css page. This lets me quickly map something out, even if I’m on the phone, and then quickly upload it for a client to check out – saves me lots of time, or scanning in my hand drawn notes (and often converting them in illustrator because they’re so messy). Saving time, is saving money which you can never go wrong with.

Napkee Plugin

I know these applications cost some coin, but I like to think of it this way, when I go ahead and drop the $49 on Napkee, and 79$ on Balsamiq, this is $128. Which, in my case depending on the client is about 2 hours worth of my “time billed”. Not to mention the time it saves me for my personal affiliate/internet marketing ventures that I am creating. So, saying this saves me 30 minutes in the roughing out process of every application or idea I have, that only means 4 ideas and I essentially have my money back for the expense of this product.

No, I am not an affiliate of theirs, I’m not being paid to write this post. I just wanted to show you guys other areas you can save huge amounts of time besides the automation or scripting you’re already doing. The more you streamline your whole operation, the more time you’ll have laying on the beaches of Thailand.

Thanks Balsamiq for the review copy that made this post possible and for indirectly cleaning up my desk and wallet!

WordPress Review Plugin.

Yup, turn your wordpress site into a review site in a few minutes with this baby.

If you’re already aware of the plugin or maybe even a current user you’re probably already in the know about the latest release of the WordPress Review Plugin. This past week version 3.0 was released. This rendition of the plugin includes some pretty cool new features that I’ll talk about later. But first some information about the plugins for anyone not familiar with it already.

What this plugin does, is it turns your WordPress sites into easy and highly customizable review sites in just a few minutes. I’ve been a user since the very first release and wow has it ever been impressing me every step of the way.

At first I was a little skeptical about the price that they were charging for the plugin, but once I realized that I had unlimited domain usage and the speed at which new releases and features were unleashed on us I don’t think one can really go wrong.

In the beginning, this plugin overall wasn’t very feature rich, but it worked and imported your data quite nicely, but it just wasn’t super duper professional. With the latest release of 3.0, there’s a number of new features and improved features that really make this a kickass plugin for automating review sites and creating income for a long time, all while delivering tangible and credible information to your site visitors.

This release brings full integration of Google Maps, scheduled and Cron importing of all your datafeeds or whatever it is you’re importing for the site to review. There’s also a thread on the members area of the forum where you can get customized star icons to show different types of images to your visitors depending on the niche of the site – cool!

So, what exactly have I been up to for the past couple days with this plugin? Well, first I wanted to test it out on a new site and install it from scratch. This was obviously very easy, and also was pleased to find out that 3.0.2 fixed the nasty issue of your license.txt being replaced. Thanks guys!

Installing on a new domain

I uploaded the plugin to my site, and then shamefully spent a couple days building a scraper to compliment the information the advertiser already provided for me in their datafeed. After I had my CSV file created with all my information in it, I just spent some time researching a theme for the site I was creating and then customizing it to my market. After that I just uploaded the CSV and I was ready to start building links.

Wait just a minute here. Lets look at that again, and put some times associated with it;

1. Register Domain and Point DNS – 5 minutes
2. Download Plugin – 30 Seconds
3. Create License for Site – 30 Seconds
4. Install WordPress and WFReview Plugin – 5 Minutes
5. Find Theme – ~30 Minutes
6. Scrape Data or Download Datafeed and organize – ~1hr – ~3hr
7. Theme Customizations – ~30 Minutes
8. Link Building – ~5 Minutes on Wickedfire
9. Submit to Google Sitemaps – 1 Minute

That, ladies and gentlemen is a complete site up and running in 2 hours and 17 minutes at the shorter end of things. Of course this wouldn’t be including your market research and other things that “pop up” but still, it just goes to show how quick it can be to get this plugin rocking and ready to receive the internet monies for you and you’re ready to move on to the next site. As you can probably guess, this is especially the case when you’re dealing with data feeds.

Did I mention that the latest version of the plugin also lets you schedule imports from feeds, This means you can set it to update from a csv file that’s dropped in place every few days or weeks to add new products, so your site could theoretically have an endless stream of reviewable products for the public to enjoy and purchase. Keeping the consumer happy, keeps you happy after all.

Upgrading WFReview

After getting that site finished, I thought I should try an update of the plugin. For this I decided to run it on one of my old local niche sites for business reviews. I was running the very first edition of the plugin on it, so very old. I figured I would have a tough time upgrading it and oh boy did I ever.

Yeah, I had to make 2 whole changes in my CSS file and re-import my CSV file which took a whole 5 minutes.

Gotta say guys, this was pretty impressive. Usually shit always breaks, and it takes forever for a major upgrade, not to mention across two whole product versions. Props!

You’ll see here some of the differences between the two plugins and what’s changed. I took a couple screenshots just before I upgraded the plugin.

Old Menu

And now, look at the new menu.

New Menu in 3.0

As you can see there’s a bunch more options, and it’s laid out a little more sequentially than it was before. Again, the little things are what really matters for plugins like this. Keeping things easy, streamlined and efficient is the best way to go.

And, as mentioned the sought after scheduled importing of files has arrived. Check this out.

Scheduling Posts

Pretty cool eh?

Overall WFReview Thoughts

As you can tell from my post, I’m pretty enthusiastic about this plugin and what it can handle for you. Way back when I first bought this, I was able to get about 10 sites up for a local niche I’m trying to dominate and it only took me like a week including building two scrapers to get the content I required for the site. How cool is that. Back then, I probably would have had a lot more to put into this list as a negative aspect of the plugin.

Today, there’s not much I can complain about. It would be nice if when replacing your data, you could have an option to keep comments left by site visitors, and if a kickass theme came with this plugin out of the box, but I’m sure that’s in the works for feature releases.

I’m also pretty stoked about the forthcoming release of the Featured Review plugin by the same guys who make the wordpress review plugin. I think these two things combined will be pardon the french, fucking awesome.

To buy this plugin, you should really use this link because I told you so. /waves jedi hand/

No Bullshit Review, 8/10, only because it’s missing a rad theme.

GET WFREVIEW 3.0 HERE HOMIE

During my research, I came across All-Ett bill folds a number of times. Every review I found, every site recommending wallets all had these wallets on their site, and were receiving great reviews. I was skeptical because of a name I’d never heard of, and because hearing all these reviews saying they’re so great, and no downfalls is usually unheard of for a product. Somebody out there has to have a negative review I thought.

I was wrong. So wrong.

I couldn’t find a single thing that discussed these wallets in a negative manner. I really couldn’t believe it, but they are cheap wallets so I eventually caved in and decided to order one for myself.

The wallet I ordered was the simple model, with the ID window, and two separate areas for bills and receipts.

The claim to fame of these wallets is the thinness of them, and how easily they slip into your pocket. Especially with many people wearing tighter fitting clothes these days and putting their wallet in their front pocket. We need something that’s much thinner than regular wallets, and won’t cause a big bulge in your pocket that looks bad.

Another cool thing about this particular wallet is the material it’s made from. It’s made from a fabric called Spinnaker. This material is a tightly woven polyester PU coated fabric. It’s super super light, but super durable, and also water repellent. If you’re familiar with sailing this is what many sails are made from, because of the light weight and durability. If you don’t like this kind of fabric, All-Ett also makes leather versions of their wallets so you can stick with the tried and true.

I opted for the spinnaker fabric because I wanted light weight, and something that was resistant to tearing as well as water. I know I have issues with dropping things near water, whether it be into drinks at clubs or up at my cottage so this was the best choice for myself.

The only downfall of this particular fabric is it makes a little bit of a “Crinkling paper” noise when you open and shut the wallet. But, this goes away fairly quickly (I’ve already noticed a significant decrease in the noise after just 2 weeks of use). If you’re opening the wallet in anywhere that’s somewhat noisy, you probably won’t even notice the noise it makes.

Now, you’re probably wondering why is this the best wallet for affiliate marketers? Well, let me tell you.

It’s quite simple really, this is a super thin wallet, with many versions available including international versions, travel versions, passport capable versions etc. With many of us being travelers, these wallets are a perfect match for us.

Not to mention, that these wallets force you to be super organized. There are only a few slots available for your cards and ID and whatnot, so you won’t carry around a bunch of cards that are never used. This is the ideal way to get rid of that “Female Body Inspector” card you’ve been lugging around since you were 10 years old because it’s funny.

About two weeks ago, I received my order in the thinnest envelope I’ve ever had shipped to me with something inside of it.

Here are some pictures of it.

The Envelope

I was totally surprised at the envelope. Did they really ship me something?

Side View of Envelope and Lighter

Yup, that’s a lighter next to the envelope. Isn’t that nuts?

Contents of the Envelope

That’s everything that came in the envelope. A letter, business card, carbon offset card, the receipt and the wallet itself. Unbelievable that all this could fit into such a small envelope. It was also pretty cool they sent me a carbon offset card for such a small shipment. Nice to see people doing their part.

Just the wallet and packaging.

Here’s a shot of just the packaging, and the wallet itself. Pretty cool eh? It’s not overdone with logos and sparkly shit like a lot of other wallets are. Getting excited to try it out.

Old wallet versus the new wallet, with nothing in it.

Wow. Look at the difference in size. Mind you, this is my old wallet full of stuff, and the new wallet completely empty. But, check this out.

The contents of the old wallet

That’s a lot of stuff coming out of the old wallet. Lets see what it looks like once we get it into the All-Ett wallet.

Empty old wallet versus new wallet all full

So, as you can see from the photo comparisons. The All-Ett wallet really is the worlds thinnest wallet and will carry all your cards, money and receipts snugly in your front pocket. No more back pain, or large bulge in the front or back of your pants. Plus, there’s no more need to worry about pulling out a leather wallet on rainy days, or that the leather might rip or something like that.

I have been recommending these wallets to all my friends since I got it, and 3 of them have actually purchased it and I’ll probably be picking up 3 or 4 more for Christmas because I know a bunch of people that need thinner wallets.

I don’t usually do product reviews, but I had to say something about this one from All-Ett Wallets because it really is a superior wallet that affiliate marketers will love.

Let me know in the comments if you use one too, and what you think of it.

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.

One thing to keep in mind is that self help books shouldn’t be taken literally. I think a lot of people read them looking for “the answer”, which of course they won’t find no matter how hard they look.

The key to these books is to take the information and anecdotes and form your own opinions and ideas from the book to be used in your own reality and business practices.

On to the list shall we?

Books you need to read, right now.

In Praise of Slow – Carl Honore

This book is all about how we live in fast paced times and we often need to slow down. Stop thinking about now, start thinking longer term, and for fucks sake enjoy the smell of the roses. We only have one life to live. Starts out with how people used to only wake up when the sun came up, go to bed when it was dark and then suddenly someone invited the clock and everything started going to hell. This is more of an inspirational book than learning anything business, but I think a lot of us have to step back and remember that we’re working to live, not living to work.

HEY! YOU! Slow down too.

Undercover Economist – Tim Harford

This book is pretty nuts. I’m not an economist and I’m the first to admit that I really know nothing about the subject. Tim has a great way of writing to people outside of the field and explains some intricate details about economics in plain language.

Go undercover yourself.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – John Perkins

Along the same lines as Undercover Economist but slightly different with its approach and subject. This is told from an insider’s point of view about how huge multinational corporations really control the world and how they do it. There’s a story about how they would plant microphones in baskets in tribal areas to gain their trust when people hurt themselves and shit. Some pretty eye opening tinfoil hat stuff in here, but it’s all been verified as truth, so it’s even crazier. This book will teach you all about what evil and greedy multinational corporations will do in the name of money.

Hit men are cool.

The Joy of Swearing – Mike Hunt

What. Yes, a swearing book. Why is this here? Because it’s great fun to pull out swear words from the 1700’s when you’re making fun of someone on the forums. Overall a great read and has some wicked funny stories about famous swearing episodes. Including the all too famous “Sir, you are Drunk” – “I may be drunk, but you madam are ugly, I will wake up sober tomorrow, you will still wake up Ugly”.

Fuck you, read it!

The Knack – Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlington

This book, by an Inc 500 company owner, explains subtle details about business and how things really work. He bases the book on his years of experience in various businesses. It tells stories about failures, triumphs and more. Some great ideas and tactics are explained in this book; I’ve even begun putting some of them to use for myself and modified for the various ventures I’m involved in.

Do you have the knack?

Sway – Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman

This book is very interesting. It’s all about why we make seemingly stupid decisions. They examine many incidents from current history, where it’s basically come down to cultural differences, people being scared or saying the wrong thing and that horrible things have happened. Some great tidbits of information and new ways of thinking come with this book. I would recommend this to anyone, even if they aren’t an entrepreneur.

Don’t Sway.

The Four Hour Work Week – Timothy Ferris

Okay. I know. We’ve probably all read this like 100 times or have heard of it. I don’t care, it needs to be mentioned. Tim’s story is incredible and if you are like many of us you have the “just fucking do it” attitude and this book really shows you where you can get when you apply this type of attitude to your business. Great ideas, extra downloads and everything. Comes highly recommended by just about anyone you talk to.

Work 4 Hours a Week Here

Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J Dubner

Just like 4HWW most of you have probably heard of this book too. It’s a great read and they released a new expanded version with a bunch of blog posts and other stuff in it that makes it even better than the first edition. Learn why drug dealers usually live with their parents and other crazy information this economist has put together into nicely phrased text that make you truly understand how certain parts of the economy works. This is also translatable to other areas if you know how to apply it.

Find out what freakonomics is.

Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell

One of the best books of all time; I shit you not. I think this is the only book I’ve ever read that literally made the hair on my neck stand up. Not because I was scared, well maybe, scared of how revolutionary some of the thinking in this book is. The way that Malcolm can explain things using examples and stories makes it incredibly easy to read and digest and you learn a lot about what factors contribute to a product cycle or life cycle through inception, to plateau (the tipping point) and what happens following that point.

You really need to read it.

Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

Following Blink and Tipping Point this is the latest book from Malcolm. This book isn’t so much about products and all that, but more-so some interesting statistics he was able to find out comparing things throughout history. Find out why star hockey players are stars, why Bill Gates is the richest man in the states (hint, it doesn’t have to do with Microsoft) and why families in the deep south have “turf wars” and have for years. All sorts of interesting information in these books and inspirational if you apply the same statistical analysis to your own lives and what you’ve been exposed to.

Fun reading awaits here.

Covert Persuasion – Kevin Hogan and James Speakman

This book is a bit of a newbie tutorial on persuasion. How to word things, lead conversations or writings to convince the reader to perform whatever action you want them to do. It’s not revolutionary stuff but I recommend this for anyone new to the industry or business in general as there are a few tidbits of information in here that will help. He also has some informative downloads and word lists that will help you with marketing and persuasion in day to day business activities.

You can persuade people too.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter

I just started reading this the other day and I’m about 90% done. It’s frigging awesome. The story is about two young men who had a “rich dad” and a “poor dad” to get advice from. I’ve learned a lot about money and how to manage it reading this book. The most valuable lesson that I think is talked about is to realize that you’re stupid and to hire smart people. It’s tough to admit and many can’t do it but it’s seriously one of the biggest things any business minded person can do. If you want to learn to be wealthy and avoid the traps of the middle and low class, then you should check it out too.

Turn money into a game.

Vagabonding – Rolf Potts

Lots of people in this industry travel a lot; some have even turned it into a full time thing. Rolf writes an excellent book on the subject of vagabonding. Or, travelling for life and just doing your own thing. There are some great stories in here, useful information and website lists and all sorts of other essays and letters from readers about their experience travelling for a lifetime of fun and adventure. Super informative and the information is applicable to anybody who wants to get out of the house and work on their campaigns from a beach, quite literally.

Unchain yourself from your desk too.

And one to read during downtime.

The Men who Stare at Goats – Jon Ronson

Okay, this isn’t related to business at all. Well, maybe a little bit on the psychology front, but it’s more of just a crazy read about a crazy time in the American Military. The hardest thing to wrap your head around is that this book isn’t fiction – its real life. The American government really did pay for people to sit in rooms and try and make goats drop dead using only their minds. Hardcore interviews with former military personnel, people close to the paranormal and psychic tests conducted by the military and all sorts of information. Make sure you bring a big roll of tinfoil when you read this one. There’s also a fictionalized movie being made about this too. Cool.

Go stare at some goats.

This list is by far not complete, I’ve got another 10 books or so on the go right now but this is a good start. If you have any books you really love, I’d love to see them in the comments section so I can check them out.

All of this from installing a simple plugin, that really, besides finding CSV lists of stores or businesses to import took all of 1 hour to launch each site, and then “set it and forget it”. Can’t really get much better than that kids, even if you’re a complete newb and don’t even know how to setup WordPress, you can probably get this plugin to work for you with minimal time investment.

As you probably know, WFReview saw great success and was even sold to another owner. All was quiet for a few months until it was bought back by the original owners and most of the bugs that we reported were fixed. The last update was amazing, Google maps support is a wonderful thing for these types of sites and we’re really happy they listened to all of us users and our desire for that feature.

With this latest upgrade, now many of the bugs you were seeing with WordPress 2.8 are fixed, and the rating system itself has gone through a number of changes ensuring maximum compatibility with your custom review themes for WordPress.

If you’re planning on setting up a review site for pretty much anything you can dream of – organic coffees, wallets, whatever – the WordPress Review Plugin is all you need to get your site up and running in only a few minutes, then just sit back and start your next site. Another great thing is the license is unlimited so you can setup 100 sites off the same license. Pretty great if you ask us in this day and age of products tied to one domain only.

Check out WFReview here and buy your own copy and start banking!

Overall I would recommend Affiliate Summit for any affiliate marketer, whether you are just starting out, or are a veteran in the scene there’s nothing better than putting faces to names, and discussing business ideas, opportunities or whatever in person rather than via email or telephone. Sorry to say it kids, but sometimes looking someone in the eye is better than any contract or agreement you can set in place. It’s been done this way for thousands of years and I don’t see it changing very soon.

The summit itself was spectacular, the location was right in the center of town and easily accessible to anyone, plus the name badges they handed out were huge so it was very easy to see who else was attending the conference and go up to say hi to them without fear that you were introducing yourself to someone who wasn’t involved in the show in some form.

The exhibit floors were packed with all sorts of interesting companies and service offerings for people marketing products, services or pretty much anything else they can think of. The networking opportunities seen here are rivaled by pretty much nobody else in the industry. I didn’t attend many of the sessions as I was out mingling with other internet marketing nerds, but I hear most of them were pretty well done as well. Hopefully in Vegas I will have a chance to attend a couple of these and report back on them to you, my readers.

Now, to the parties. Yes, there were parties, drinking, and more partying done at Affiliate Summit and I wouldn’t turn anyone away from these parties. They are crucial to expand your personal network of friends, business partners and other cool things. Plus everyone is a little tipsy so it’s mega easy to get introduced to people regardless of how shy of a computer nerd you are. All done at some of the top clubs in New York, this was great and thanks again to all the networks for throwing these parties.

Overall, besides the heat in New York, this trip was amazing and I would do it again in a heartbeat. See you all in Vegas in January for more fun.

Ladrón que roba a ladrón

So, Tonight I finally found the time to sit down and mostly watch Ladrón que roba a ladrón (To Rob A Thief). It’s what appears to be a made for TV movie, or at least the camera work, sounds and overall lighting don’t make it look like a theatrical release but alas I don’t live in Mexico, so I could be totally wrong on that one.  That’s not to say it “looks horrible”, but it looks like something made for the Hallmark channel, not your local cineplex. The actors seemed pretty good to me on the whole, though I don’t know the language so maybe they were emoting totally wrong, let me know in the comments if you’ve seen it too.

The movie starts out showing us Moctesuma Valdez, the infomercial king of Central America. He sells products on TV like Vince Offer or Tony Little, hawking everything from diet pills to food processors and the people watching the show are obviously eating it up as it cuts back and forth between them showing them wanting to lose weight or process food or whatever. Okay, maybe it wasn’t food processing but it was like 2 hours ago, I forget. You get the idea.

The Evil Affiliate Marketer

Fast forward a little bit, we meet an eager group of people ready to rip this guy off (the affiliates) because he was selling legitimate products to Latino immigrants. Hey, makes sense right? They were doing the same thing as him, but now wanted his money.  They’re headed by two former thieves who feel now is just the right time to pull of a big caper and steal the big one to retire. However the affiliates all chicken shit out of the plan to use day laborers, so they decide to use the real thing for extra movie time drama.

The Gang

Uh oh! Time for the hijinx to begin. What follows next is about 1.25 hours of planning, and development of how they are going to get back at this guy and steal his informercial monies. This was meant to take about 2 weeks “in real life”, and it almost felt like it in “movie life” too. I feel as though it could have been around 40 minutes shorter and still had the same effect. I was kinda bored throughout lots of it and kinda wasn’t watching while they planned out the whole shebang, because it didn’t really matter – we’d see it at the end anyway.

Anyway, the chick was kinda hot and she was spunky so that was fun to look at for most of the movie. The guy who tried to look a lot like Antonio Banderas was also funny sometimes too, in a “haha you’re lame” kinda way.

Anyways.

After the boring middle part then it gets to the “real” action. The evil affiliate marketer mentioned above had a party at his big blingin’ mansion in California and the team set to work with their fancy outfits to rob his ass. Some of them crawl through air conditioners and some of them dress as waiters, and some of them even mingle with the guests to blend in while the money is underway of being stolen. It’s a super original plot I thought.

Thiefin' money is fun

This is TV land so their plan goes off with pretty much no trouble, and there’s a crazy surprise (omg!) twist at the end, but, if you paid any attention at all you totally would see it coming anyway. The best part was what they left in the safe. The guys products. That musta stung.

Don't sell bottles or they'll rob you

I didn’t really give any spoilers away except for the pictures of the bottles. So if you feel like wasting two hours and watching something related to the industry, then go nuts. But I wouldn’t recommend planning an evening around this one folks. Save your time for more PPC guys.

Overall: 6/10

Hey! Do you know any other fictional movies about sales, affiliate marketing or internet marketing, or anything related? Let us know in the comments.