Nagel Family Website

Reading blogs is probably the best way to find out what’s going on in the affiliate marketing industry. Here’s what’s in my reader (in semi-alphabetical order):

• Affiliate, SEO and PHP Coding Blog - OOOFF.com - Provides actual code and helpful tips. Giving some inspiration to a tracking script I’m currently writing.
• My Internet Journey - I like reading about people learning the process
• 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs - Great for industry info. Quality writing & regular updates.
• Affiliate Marketing Blog - Well, I work with Paul, so I’d better read his blog! Look closely and you’ll find some secrets that he let out of the bag.
• Affiliate Program Advice - I met Jess in Miami last summer, so this is how I keep up with her.
• Affiliate Summit Blog - GOING TO BOSTON THIS SUMMER! Looking forward to this one.
• Blue Hat SEO-Advanced SEO Tactics - It’s not white hat, not black hat, but blue hat.
• CDF Networks - Real-world examples with actual data.
• CPA AFFILIATES - Just generally a good blog to read.
• CPA Share - Harrison’s making too much money & doesn’t have time to keep his blog up. Too bad
• Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog - I work with Fraser on a few projects, and his podcasts are great!
• Google Hot Trends - If you can monetize what’s hot, get the topics delivered right to you
• Jonathan Volk - Another one that’s an overall good read. Keep on eye on this guy - he’s growing fast!
• PPC Super Affiliate Blog - Good info on Google’s quality score hooked me
• RevenueAddict.com - Shane has some good insight into what’s going on. Being from the UK, who I believe are at least a year ahead of the US market, you can get an idea of what’s up & coming.
• Royal Radande - Mentioned on UberAffiliate, has some good (real-life) examples. Just subscribed & looking forward to reading more from him.
• Share Results Blog - A network I met while in Miami
• Skills to pay the bills - Gotta read Shoemoney, or else you’ll have no idea what everyone else is talking about.
• UberAffiliate - Paul went from zero to hero in about a year - and he lives practically around the corner from me! Although highly successful, he took some time out to get some Tim Hortons w/ me one day.
• Winning the Web - It’s all about the contest now… but then what?

These are just my affiliate marketing blogs. I also read some fitness and finance blogs.

What am I missing? What other blogs should I be reading? And I’m not interesting in reading about how wonderful the Amex black card is or what John has for lunch, so don’t suggest them.

And yes, I know my blog is completely unfocused. It’s an outlet for me to write, brag and complain, and a means for my mom to know what’s going on in our house. Hopefully there will be more useful stuff as the year goes on.

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 8:16 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

If you’re running AdWords ads, I’m sure you’ve searched for your own keywords to see your ad in the live results. But in doing this, you’re increasing your impressions and lowering your CTR. Google has provided a nice feature which allows you to “preview” search results and see your actual ad on-screen, without affecting your CTR. When you’re using this preview, you’ll see:

You can’t click on any results, of course, but it’s still quite useful. Since I use this quite often, I decided to make a search plugin for Firefox & IE to make the Google preview more readily available.

Click here to install the Google Search Preview for IE & Firefox.

You’ll then find “Google Preview” in your list of available search engines.

This entry was posted by Eric on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

It’s always fun to win things, and the “Craziest Internet Marketing Contest You’ve Ever Seen” is helping out, putting up $5,348 in cash & prizes.

I wouldn’t mind winning *any* of this stuff, but I’d really like a copy of Kris Jones’ new book (signed, of course!). I’m not being greedy and looking to win all the cash, but I wouldn’t turn down the ASE ticket, either (even though I already bought mine, I can think of a few people that could use one).

In short, I’ll take anything you want to send me, short of a paper bag full of dog poop. I don’t need that. But a t-shirt, book, software - heck yeah! I wanna win!

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

UPS just delivered my new iPod Nano thanks to James over at Panda Security! This thing is tiny!!! I think this was my first ever affiliate-contest win and I’m really excited about it! While winning something was one of my goals for the year, I want to earn the prize, rather than a draw. So that’s still on my list.

However, yesterday I did register for Affiliate Summit East in Boston, so that’s going to be checked off the list. Now if I can just work on that TV thing…

The Panda Security affiliate program can be found over at Commission Junction.

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Wow - this is huge! Yahoo now earns you 5% cashback with American Express!

Yahoo! has partnered with OPEN Savings to give you an automatic 5% discount on your online search advertising with Yahoo!. This built-in card benefit is simple—there’s no need to enroll. Just use your Business Card when you sign up.

If you don’t have a Yahoo Search Marketing account yet, sign up here and get a $25 credit. Don’t have an Amex? Need help finding the right card? Click here to compare the different American Express cards.

Enjoy your $25 and 5% cash back!

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 5:33 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

I’ve heard of this trick before, but never really got to play with it until recently… if you increase your CTR (click-through rate), you’ll decrease your minimum bid price.

Recently, I found a keyword that had 0 competition so I took an offer from CJ, direct to merchant (whose landing page stunk for the keyword), and was set at minimum bids of $0.50. After day 1, I increased my budget and was able to drop my bids to only $0.15. Day 3, I went down to $0.10 and still had 0 competition.

Day 3 the clicks remained the same as day 2, but look at that drop in cost! Too bad the event I was promoting ended, so my campaign was paused. But it was a huge learning experience - hearing about this and seeing it first-hand are completely different.

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.