Internet Marketing Resource #1 - Personal Home Page

Let's start simple, shall we?

When you open your browser, which hopefully is Firefox, what is your home page? If you are still using AOL, go ahead and stop reading. None of this will help you until you get rid of AOL and join the 21st Century (Dad).

Now, seriously, is your home page Google, Yahoo News, MSN or a local news site, like TBO.com? If so, that's ok, but there's a way to combine that and become much more efficient while you work online. I do like the customized Google Home page and I have friends (Angie) who swear by it. What I found a few years ago is Protopage.com. The home page allows me to categorize links just like a Bookmark funtion would do but without the drop down box. I like to see all of my link options and be able to click onto a site immediately.

As an affiliate, I cluster all of my network dashboards in one box and all my resource links in another box. I can add a news RSS feed or hundreds of other widgets to dress up the page and use it as a one stop perfect "Home Page". Even better, this page belongs to you and you can open it on any computer. It can be password protected and no one will ever know what your favorite links are.



I'll let them do the sales pitch:

Protopage is your own personal page that you can use for quick access to everything on the web that you go to most. You can use it to:

• Read news from your favorite news sites and blogs
• Keep bookmarks to your most frequently accessed web sites
• Organize your day with to-do lists and sticky notes
• Create web pages, group pages, and intranets
• And much more!

Creating your page is easy and fun - simply drag and drop from our directory of hundreds of widgets containing everything from news headlines to sports scores to puzzle games.

You can keep your page private, make it public, or even set a group password so that you can share parts of it with specific friends or colleagues.

Set your Protopage as your personal start page, and it will appear every time you open your web browser! Join now: www.protopage.com

Best Resources for Internet Marketing

I'm starting a new series here on the blog. The best resources an online marketing needs or could use to be organized, well-equipped and overall successful at making money online. This will include web based tools, forums, blogs, websites, networks, affiliate programs, widgets, applications and anything else I can throw in there. I want the list to be a must-have for affiliates, affiliate managers, ppc and seo managers, analytics managers, multi-variate landing page hackers and/or anyone that touches email marketing from content to distribution.

This is going to be a work in progress as this page serving as the updated link list to each new resource or idea. Feel free to comment or argue amongst yourselves if you don't agree with me. And if there is a specific resource missing from the list after I publish the top 10, there's probably a pretty good reason it's not published.

So let me sleep on it and I'll start the list asap.

Currently out of the office, please leave a reply

1. I am currently out of the office at a job interview and will reply
to you if I fail to get the position. Please be prepared for my mood.

2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of
the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received
anything at all.

3. Sorry to have missed you, but I'm at the doctor's having my brain
and heart removed so I can be promoted to our management team.

4. I will be unable to delete all the emails you send me until I return
from vacation. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the
order it was received.

5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99
for the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your
message.

6. The email server is unable to verify your server connection. Your
message has not been delivered. Please restart your computer and try
sending again.
(The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see who did this
over and over and over...)

7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing
system.
You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in
approximately 19 weeks.

8. Hi, I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your
PC for my response.

9. I've run away to join a different circus.

10. I will be out of the office for the next two weeks for medical
reasons. When I return, please refer to me as 'Lucille' instead of
Steve.

Two Days Left to Join Microsoft adCenter from my links

That's right folks, the wise Microsoft product managers have decided to cancel the newly launched adCenter program. Just when it was getting into a groove and affiliates like Zac Johnson and others were starting to drive users to the platform. I'll be pulling down the adCenter banner on the left sidebar and replacing it with a WebsitePros banner on Friday.

So click now if you want $50 in free clicks from adCenter.

CONGRATULATION: YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS HAS JUST WON A PRIZE.

If anyone wants to help me with this, I'll split the winnings. :-)
Can you believe emails like this are still sent?

Dear Winner,
Winning Notification
This is to notify you that you have won £250,000.00 in
our online email lottery in which e-mail addresses are
picked randomly by computerised balloting, powered
by the Internet. Your email address was amongst
those chosen for this year bonnanza.
Ref: LSUK/2031/8161/04
Batch: R3/A312-59
Winning number: 08.11.21.32.35.42. {47}
Draw #1055)
To claim your prize, please contact:
Fiduciary Agent Mr.Brender Williams
Email: claimsdept_news@hotmail.com with your
Name,Full Address,Country,Age,Gender,Occupation,Phone.
Tell: +447045 7644 23
Sincerely,
MRS.KIMBERLY M. DULLE.

Rachel Honoway, Lisa Caraffi and Barry Boone at Affiliate Summit West 08

My two favorite woman of the affiliate marketing industry, Rachel Honoway and Lisa Caraffi.



And here Lisa and my favorite affiliate, Barry Boone of Dealhunting.com

Media General Announces Agreement to Acquire Coupon and Shopping Site DealTaker.com

Neal, Congrats buddy!

RICHMOND, Va. – Media General (NYSE: MEG) announced today that it has signed an agreement with NARAE Enterprises, Inc. of Plano, Texas, to acquire DealTaker.com (www.DealTaker.com), an online social shopping portal that offers consumers a broad array of bargain hunting, posting and comparison opportunities. The transaction, which is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2008, is expected to be slightly accretive to Media General’s 2008 earnings. Terms were not disclosed.

DealTaker.com was founded in 2004 and has more than 100,000 registered members as well as relationships with 1,500 affiliated retail businesses. The Web site provides coupons, rebates and bargains, many of them exclusive to DealTaker.com. It currently has more than 400,000 unique visitors per month and offers a number of active community forums where users and moderators share bargain and deal-oriented shopping opportunities in an efficient and trusted environment. In addition, the site offers a proprietary price search engine that compares more than 15 million products.

“This acquisition marks another meaningful step in our acceleration of Media General’s revenue and audience growth by expanding our portfolio of interactive advertising and marketing solutions. DealTaker.com is profitable and has strong margins,” said Kirk Read, president of Media General’s Interactive Media Division. “DealTaker.com has a performance-based revenue model and quality relationships with brand-loyal users, national retailers and top-level affiliate marketing companies. It will add a platform for community-based commerce to our local sites and will provide non-traditional online revenue for Media General.”

“We’re excited to join the Media General family and believe this relationship will immediately drive growth for our business in new and innovative ways,” said Neal Rapoport, founder of DealTaker.com. “Combining forces with Media General’s stable of newspaper, broadcast and online businesses adds immediate and long-term value for our affiliates and business.”

Why spend thousands on a sophisticated website?

Just doing a little web hosting industry research. I think it's time to put together a few affiliate sites for some of my favorite advertisers like Boca Java. Website Pros looks like it has what I'm looking for.

Back to Twitter

I started posting on Twitter.com again today. Took a 30-day break. I guess it gets a little annoying after so many months of hearing from the same small group of people and what they are doing tha exact moment in time. My strategy now is to expand who I'm following to get some variety. Not just focusing on affiliate or SEM industry folk.

Let's see who else is using Twitter that can entertain me.

Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/akagorilla

Reader Comments on Local News Sites Crack Me Up!

We've all been entertained, inspired, enraged or whatever by published opinions by the masses on the internet. If it isn't Twitter, Facebook, Myspace or blogs, its forums that we've followed interesting threads or postings. But my favorite new social interaction is reading the comments on news stories in the Tampa Tribune's tbo.com.

It's the feature stories that attract the best comments. I don't really care what anyone thinks about Ralph Nader running for President again. But I do want to see what is said about a gator that gets trapped in a local pond...

Some people just don't get journalism. They don't think some of these stories are news and they ignorantly chastise the editors for publishing the story. I usually jump in and defend the editors. It's stories like this that make tbo.com interesting, not just a headline delivery service. It's called local flavor!!! Whether it's a story about socialites that are offended during local festivities or a nuisance gator bothering little Johnny, this is what makes up our community.

It could be worse, when I worked for the Rome News Tribune in Northwest Georgia, they published the weekend police blotter. Talk about non-news, but this is what people read. "Mr. George Wortham was arrested for destroying a mailbox on Goober Holler Road." If the Tampa Tribune published police blotter stories, I can only imagine the uproar. First, the comments would be hilarious, second, the arguments about whether or not its news would be even more entertaining.

The point is...for newspapers to survive, they need to let their guard down a bit. And the comments on tbo.com is certainly a way to keep the interest going.

Upright Piano For Sale

Upright Piano, Primrose, a product of Sohmer Model 1323 #P. Professionally tuned within last 6 months. Perfect for kids piano lessons or home entertainment.

Make an offer today on Craigslist.


If restored, this is what it could look like!

Say Hello to Lisa Caraffi at Affiliate Summit

Dear Friends and Affiliates,

Please stop by the Kowabunga booths (202 and 204) at Affiliate Summit this week in Las Vegas and look for Lisa Caraffi. She is positively the best affiliate manager at the company and she has a wealth of knowledge regarding all of the merchants in the system.

If you are an affiliate, you've probably talked to her at some point in the last eight months. She's a go-getter in this business and customer service is number one in her book. That was the one thing lacking when Lisa started at Kowabunga, no one cared about the affiliates. She single handedly took over the care and nurturing of old and new affiliates using the Kolimbo platform. No one on the affiliate team can even come close to her knowledge or attitude.

So stop by and say hello, or just stand across from the booth and watch her in action with the affiliates. She's a superstar. Oh, and by the way, she's my best friend, so I'm a little biased.

Docstoc is a community of users sharing their professional documents

I get requests by email every once in a while to review a book or a new product. I've been a little busy lately so I'm just posting this one about docstoc.com. Enjoy:

Docstoc is a community of users sharing their professional documents, and we have thousands of legal and business documents that can be downloaded for free.

In case you aren't familiar with us, here are some highlights about docstoc:

· 85,000+ free legal forms, business documents, excel templates, free real estate forms, sample business plans.

· Backed by the co-founders/investors of MySpace, Baidu, Mp3.com, and Lowermybills.com.

· Launched about three months ago and have 30,000+ registered members and are ranked by Alexa.com in the top 14,000 most visited sites.

· Selected as one the presenting companies and most promising start ups for the TechCrunch40 conference by www.TechCrunch.com. (Selected out of 700+ applying startups)

· The premier online community for professional content

For additional information feel free to check out these links:

Short Form Press Kit

How to Promote Yourself

Bloggers have also found our embed feature very helpful - you can embed documents into your blog after uploading them to docstoc. You can read more about it at our post here:

Buy My House in Seminole, Florida

Look for a video soon! My house is for sale in Seminole, Florida... here is a Google map of my neighborhood --- 13864 Bermuda Drive

A great family home in a fantastic neighborhood. This house is part of the Seminole School District, arguably the finest in Pinellas County, and is within walking distance of Oakhurst Elementary. House is minutes from the Gulf of Mexico and surrounded by local eateries and supermarkets. Designed with an open concept, the home easily flows with 1450 square feet of living space. Large L-Shaped Living Room and Dining Room opens into Florida Room and leads to Bedroom 3. Outside, the home is well landscaped with two orange trees and one large tangerine tree. Neatly trimmed palm trees in front and back accent the house with a tropical look and feel. The backyard is large enough for a pool and lanai with lots of room left over.

Visit my blog for selling my house - Seminole House.

And the winner is....not me.

1 Carat Diamond Stud Earring Giveaway

And the winner is... Chris from A Million Readers in About 365 Days or So! Congratulations Chris.

I thought for sure this one was in the bag.

Affiliate Commissions and Uncle Sam

I certainly want to thank Shawn Collins for answering my question today about commissions and taxes. I've owned my own Public Relations business in the past and I understand how quarterly taxes are paid. But that was pumping all the money into a business, and usually large retainers at that.

These checks I'm getting from Linkshare are small but are starting to add up. I also have checks on the way from Azoogle and CJ so I just need a system to keep track of them before I cash them and use the proceeds at my favorite local Mexican or Cuban restaurants. I don't want to wake up at the end of the year and realize that I crossed the $600 threshold with one network, but not another.

So thanks, Shawn, I will work with my accountant and let her deal with it.

Finding the Right Tampa Polygrah Examiner

A quick little plug for my father's business. Bruce Hoffman, owner of Hoffman & Associates, retired after 27 years of service as a District Captain from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. He has seven years experience with private investigations and served a total of three years consulting for the U.S. Department of Labor and the Tampa Port Authority. Hoffman is an active member of the National Association of Legal Investigators, National Association of Investigative Specialists and the Florida Association of Licensed Investigators.

He also brings more than 20 years experience as a certified polygraph examiner with numerous advanced courses including the FBI. Hoffman is qualified as an expert witness in Federal Court, is certified as a Post Conviction Sex Offender Examiner and is an active member of the American Polygraph Association and the Florida Polygraph Association.

If you are in the Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater area, and you need a polygraph examiner, contact my dad at his Tampa Polygraph site.

Free $50 Coupon - Microsoft adCenter

Click banner above to receive your free $50 coupon to use Microsoft adCenter.

I'm happy to announce that I can now offer Microsoft adCenter to enhance paid search campaigns. I've used adCenter in the past when I was managing the Cafe Belmondo paid search campaigns. It was easy to use and our coffee competitors had not started using it yet, so the keyword selection was very inexpensive and the conversions were high.

Our vendor at the time was Tampa's Traffic Strategies, now a Linkshare company. They managed (and did a great job in my opinion) paid search and SEO for Thompson Cigar, Linensource and Casual Living. Cafe Belmondo was a small piece of their workload so I took it off their hands and made it a pet project. Within 90 days, Cafe Belmondo showed a 340% increase in non-trademark paid search revenue. My use of adCenter certainly helped those numbers.

Gorilla Greg Shops his Resume

It's time to put on the Gorilla suit and tape another resume to a Krispy Kreme box. Just kidding. The last time I did that, I made some waves in the affiliate industry and was quite pleased with the publicity. Even if I was blacklisted on ABestWeb.com because of my self promotion... I was quite proud of myself.

I'm looking for a Marketing / Public Relations position in the Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater area. But working virtual is a definite possibility with frequent travel. My resume is quite thorough ranging from my PR experience to my affiliate marketing life.

Let me know if you can think of any open outsourced manager positions or project work I can pick up. It looks like I'll be giving up lots of things for Lent if I don't find what I need. :-)

It's time to Vote for ME!

I wanted to remind you that voting for the earring giveaway opens today and runs through the 9th.

Read my soon to be winning video and post here: Buying Jewelry Online

The poll is at: Goldsmith Jewelry

Think Partnership Changes its name to Kowabunga!

Think Partnership Announces the Intention to Change Its Name to Kowabunga!
Leading Provider of Performance and Technology Advertising Solutions to Adopt Name of Its Popular Affiliate Marketing Brand

Well it's about time they finally got around to making that change. It's been an idea for months now and everyone seemed to like it. I'm glad the company is going to be known as a brand now, not just an innocuous corporate umbrella. Scott Mitchell is a good leader and he has a great C-level team to help him take this company to the next level.

I keep telling my father and uncle not to sell their THK stock. This is just another step the company is taking to actually become the leading provider of interactive performance-based advertising networks and technology platforms. All I have to say is, go Tech Team! I'm not an employee anymore but I'll be an affiliate for a long time. And I want my dad and uncle to make some money on the stocks this year...

Back to the life as an affiliate

The donuts only lasted so long at Kowabunga. Once my affiliate industry idle, Rachel Honoway, left the company to return home and work for Affiliate Classroom, it was only a matter of time before politics got me.

So it's back to being an affiliate for me. I've cleaned up my CJ and Performics accounts and started working with Azoogle on a daily basis. If you know me, Linkshare is a given. They are the best built affiliate network out there, in my opinion. I'll also kindly ask my friends back at Kowabunga to allow me to start a new account for Microsoft adCenter so I can use my videos and posts to start making commissions instead of recruiting affiliates.

I was also approved this week to join the new Pepperjam affiliate network so I'll see what Kris can offer me. And I'll check out Share-A-Sale to see what programs I can match up with my sites. So, Brian Littleton - expect a phone call today...

Besides Rachel, my other favorite industry gurus are still out there and I'll keep taking their advice and see I can come out on top again. Thanks Sam Harrelson, Jim Kukral and Shawn Collins. Let's see, who else - Zac Johnson - keep kicking butt with the adCenter offer. Barry Boone - glad you are feeling better. Lisa Caraffi, affiliate manager extraordinaire - keep your chin up. You have a great job and they will reward you for your hard work.