I am always skeptical when I read about the various make money online systems that appear in my inbox every day. But one program that caught my eye is called the Empower Network, by David Wood and David Sharpe. This is because it was recommended to me by someone I trust, so I decided to sign up and check it out it for myself.

On a basic level, the Empower Network is a viral blogging platform. But if you dig down deeper, it is actually more than that. And if you have the ability to promote it properly, it really has the potential to make you a lot of money. Of course you are still pretty skeptical about what I am talking about, so let me explain how it all works in my Empower Network review.

What Is The Empower Network

The Empower Network launched on October 31, 2011 and in the 53 days since it launched it has attracted over 13,000 paying members and paid out over $2 million in commissions. According to Alexa, Empowernetwork.com is already the 324th largest site in the US. Pretty impressive, right? You will see why after I explain the setup.

A basic membership to the Empower Network gets you access to the viral blogging platform and it will cost you $25 a month. Essentially, it is a hosted platform for you to blog on, similar to WordPress.com or Hubpages.com. It fact it uses WordPress on the backend, so it should be familiar to most of you already.

To see it in action, you can take a look at my own Empower Network blog here:
http://empowernetwork.com/joshkotsay

How Will Empower Network Make You Money?

To see why it is considered a viral blogging platform, check out my Empower Network blog more closely. Notice the ad in the header, the sidebar ad, and the banner ad on the bottom of the page. It utilizes the Facebook comments system (which is viral in nature) and it has social sharing button everywhere. So if anyone clicks through any of the ads on the page, they get sent through the sales funnel and your affiliate id is cookie’d.

Ok, that’s great. But why should you care?

Because if anyone signs up via your link, you get 100% commissions, sent instantly and directly to your bank account. So if someone you refer purchases a basic membership you will get $25 a month recurring commissions.

Not only that, but the Empower Network uses a tiered commission structure.

You see, the first sale you make goes to you, but the 2nd, 4th, 6th and every 5th sale after that goes to your Empower Network sponsor (the person who referred you). As you recruit more people to join under you, and these people recruit their own people, you will continually be taking a cut from all the people under you. Over time, this means a lot of money for you.

And it actually gets better…

There are also a couple of upsell products that people can buy. First, there is the Empower Network Inner Circle, which is a set of audio interviews from members who are already making 6 figures a year. This is a $100 a month. Then there is the Costa Rica intensive training program which is a $3000 seminar that David Wood presented this year. This is an additional $500 one time fee.

If someone you refer purchases all these upsells, then you can potentially earn $625 up front, and $125 a month recurring commissions. And that’s just the products they offer now. There are other products in the pipeline as well which will only increase your commissions.

Now here’s the ingenious part of the system.

You can only get those upsell commissions if you purchase those products yourself. If you haven’t bought the product yet and someone buys it through your link then that commission goes up to your sponsor. So essentially you are heavily incentivised to buy all the upsells yourself for maximum commissions.

Empower Network Blogging Platform

That’s all well and good, but if the blogging platform doesn’t work, then everything else don’t matter.

What really made me interested in joining the Empower Network was the possibility of using it as a powerful Web 2.0 link building property ala Hubpages.com.

Not too long ago, Hubpages was my favorite Web 2.0 property because I could write articles on it with a link back to my site. Google loved these hubs, and I had several hubs ranking #1 for several keywords.

Now post Google Panda, Hubpages.com is no longer very affiliate friendly. They discourage the use of affiliate links and some of my hubs were taken down because they talked about topics they didn’t like anymore (like article spinning for example).

With my EmpowerNetwork blog, I think I have found my replacement. It is completely affiliate friendly and you can pretty much post whatever you like on your blog. You can promote other products or just use the link juice it provides to help your other sites rank better as well.

I mentioned earlier that Empowernetwork.com already ranks as the 324th most visited site according to Alexa. By the same measure, Hubpages.com is ranked #207. In less than 2 months, EmpowerNetwork.com has quickly climbed up to become one of the most powerful sites on the internet.

Empower Network Blogging Results

I’ve only been a member for a short period of time now, but I am already encouraged by the results I have seen so far.

Here is an example of one post I have written:

http://www.empowernetwork.com/joshkotsay/blog/articleranks-vs-traffickaboom/

Almost immediately after posting, it ranks #1 in Google for the keywords:

ArticleRanks vs TrafficKaboom
TrafficKaboom vs ArticleRanks

Sure, it’s not the most competitive keyword, but they are targeted, buying keywords that will help me earn some additional commissions. But more importantly it tells me that Google already sees EmpowerNetwork.com as an authority site. And it’s easy to see why.

In the Empower Network training, they tell you, you have write a post to your blog every day. So in theory, every member is doing this and building links to their content and trying to get their posts ranked higher. And as more and more links are being built, the EmpowerNetwork.com becomes more and more of an authority site.

As I continue to write more posts on my blog, I will be sure to keep this Empower Network review updated with my latest results.

Empower Network Quick Tip

Here’s a quick tip for you to try. Before even joining, take one of the Empower Network banners and stick it on any of the sites you own and track how many people click on it. If you are seeing a decent number of clicks per day, then there is a good possibility you can make money with it.

Empower Network Final Thoughts

With all the hype you see written about it, you may think that the Empower Network is a scam. But from what I’ve seen so far, I think it seems legit to me. The blogging platform is good, the training is useful and the system as I understand it appears viable.

While I am still a new member of the Empower Network, I am pretty excited about the possibilities. If you already are an influential person, with a loyal following already then I can see you making a ton of money with it right away. Just show people how you make money with it, and you can easily get your followers excited to sign up under you.

If you are just a regular guy like myself, then seeing results might take a little more time. But I think with a little bit of work, the Empower Network has the potential to make you some serious money if you can promote it right.

I’ve also put together a nice Empower Network bonus package for anyone who joins our team. Not only will I personally help you to learn my link building system, you will get a bunch of other exclusive goodies as well.

Ready to get started with the Empower Network?

1. Watch the sales video and pay close attention to how well their sales funnel works.
2. Check out my Empower Network Bonus.
3. Join my team and start your blog.
4. Receive your bonuses and let me help you start making money.

If you have any questions about the Empower Network, please leave your comments below.

I just saw the announcement by David Ford he’s rebranding PPVPlaybook and changing its name to AffPlaybook.

PPVPlaybook has been one of my favorite membership sites since it started around January 2010. It’s been the best source of PPV information since it launched, and it has really grown in the almost 2 years since then. Some of the case studies and follow along campaigns on the forums are the best I’ve seen anywhere.

Over time, the site has really evolved quite a bit. As the site has grown, new sections have been added for PPC, SEO, Media Buys, Email Marketing and Mobile. That’s why the new AffPlaybook name makes a lot of sense and I think it has the potential to become the premier paid forum for affiliate marketing in general.

Along with the name change, it looks like David is planning to bring some awesome new changes to the forums. Once the switch is made, I will update this post with a fully updated and revised AffPlaybook review.

The following is a guest post by Codrut Turcanu.

For Affiliate marketers and bloggers who want to make money online and are worried about the latest Google Farmer (aka Panda update) changes…

Discover how this ranking algorithm shift affects bloggers and site owners who are trying to make an honest living on the Internet, so you know for sure what to do and what to avoid.

When you understand the rules of the game, your chance to make money online actually increases. Today you can be one step closer to achieving top Google rankings; it is so easy when you know HOW.

If your site or blog depends heavily on Google, then you cannot afford to miss these Google ranking tips. For bloggers and companies that rely heavily on their rankings, positioning in Google’s search results can be a life-or-death issue.

CNN, the Los Angeles Times and other sites wrote on the issue, sharing survey findings, case studies and statistics. My understanding after reviewing this information is that the Google algorithm is not perfect and for a short period might even affect sites that have nothing to do with “content farms” or “spam” at all.

What got my attention though was the SISTRIX VisibilityIndex – an index value calculated from traffic on keywords, ranking and click-through rate on specific ranking positions.

Their data show how sites such EzineArticles, HubPages, Mahalo, AssociatedContent and many others were losing up to 80% of their Google traffic rankings & keywords after the Panda update.

If 80%+ of your traffic is coming from Google, and this update cuts your traffic into half, then this would be a problem, right? But if you rely on less than 30% of your traffic from Google (like most affiliate/bloggers do), then perhaps things aren’t so bad– and there’s something you could do to maintain and raise your Google rankings.

Google Farmer (Panda) Tip #1

Build High-Quality Sites and Get Rewarded

In their quest to find high-quality sites, the Panda update was a major ranking-algorithmic improvement, a change impacting 11.8% of the queries as stated on the official Google blog:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

What does a high-quality site mean? Google gives us some insights:

A high-quality site consists of original content and information (e.g. research, in depth reports, etc.) What Google requires is nothing new. And to be honest, I have always emphasized that new and veteran bloggers should start with (and continue) writing unique articles and avoid scraping content. That’s smart business and it reflects how much you care about your visitors.

Original content exposed:

Whenever people hear “original content” they think they need to write on topics that have not been covered yet, but that’s not always true, unless you are talking about a brand-new technology, book release or money-making opportunity.

Google and your readers are actually looking for two key elements:

1. They want you to share what’s new and what’s hot in your niche (read books & magazines, write product reviews, get the scoop on your industry, analyze the latest trends, be the first to publish your findings)

2. They prefer you share your unique perspective on red-hot topics and content people want to read, not what you think they want to read (that’s what “original” content is.)

A good starting point to finding what people want to read or buy is to check out Google Adword’s free keyword research tool. It enables you see exactly what key terms and phrases real people are using to find your site and related information.

Google Farmer (Panda) Tip #2

Make Friends with Google or Die

Up to 40% (and growing) of my traffic comes from Google, and I just started to optimize by blog content and posts proactively. I guess I got away with other stuff. Anyway, today is the day to make friends with Google. They’re depending on people like you and me to create content that helps others, not waste their time and energy.

“Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

Years ago I jealously looked at Google and how they sent a ton of traffic to my competitors’ blogs. Instead, now I “team up” with my (indirect) competitors to: run interviews, exchange or publish content (in form of guest posts) and write product reviews. Original content Google loves.

The question is: are you still doing what you’ve always did hoping to get better results? It won’t work. Shift your strategy: turn “me-too” content into remarkable. Think long-term.

I am positive this update (and many others to come) will not only scare lazy bloggers, spammers and “black hat” site optimizers, but enforce them to think “creatively”. It helps push our limits to deliver awesome content and out-smart ourselves more often.

Put yourself into the shoes of your readers and potential customers…

You are your best customer. You want to find exactly what you’re looking for (quickly)! Two clicks of a mouse, if possible. You and I are both sick and tired of browsing a ton of listing pages, landing on the wrong sites that have nothing to do with what we’re searching for and containing nothing but blocks of ads and irrelevant content/links.

Matt Cutts (Google’s anti-spam team leader) says it best:

“Our primary goal is to make sure we return the best websites we can”

Google not only wants your site to rank and succeed but also convert as many views into clicks. Just recently they created a software add-on for the Chrome browser, enabling their users to block sites they don’t like or find (totally) irrelevant.

You can tell that Google now has a bird-eye view on what real people like finding on sites of their interest and what they think about bad sites or content farms. Cutts says that about 84% of those reported sites where affected by the Panda update. No matter how often the Google algorithm improves, there will always be people trying to game the system and change the search results for their own benefit.

Nowadays you are required to step up and change your site’s content to the benefit of Google’s users and for the interest of your readers. The future of your business relies on making users and visitors happy, not on SEO tricks or irrelevant back-links.

Stop going with the herd and do what works. Make friends with Google or competition will eat you.

Google Farmer (Panda) Tip #3

Play the WIN-WIN-WIN Game

We now know what Google wants. But what does your reader really want?

Consider your reader as your main target audience. Someone you can identify as a person with specific needs, wants and challenges; someone representing the vast majority of your website’s visitors and potential customers.

For example: you and I both want to find the best products to buy online, the best information on our subject of interest; or, maybe we need to solve a major issue as fast as possible. We have no time to waste. When we reach a site we like, then we want “instant” access to whatever it is we’re looking for – no tricks, no gimmicks.

We are not really interested to browse a dozen or so pages. No lists to join. No hoops. Just what we’re looking for, nothing more, nothing less!

Your readers are no different. Most of them prefer a clean layout, fast loading site, and quick access to links and articles of their interest. Ads and other irrelevant content is just a distraction, sure to leave them with a bad taste in their mouth.

Do you think if you help your readers find what they’re looking for, they will visit your site a second time and probably return often?

You bet. Don’t get me wrong. I am still a big believer in capturing your visitors’ email address and following-up with amazing content and emails of interest.  I still use squeeze pages nowadays and will continue so for many years to come. However, Google’s recent changes help us understand the “secret” to visitor conversion and why it is KEY to aim for a high visitor-return ratio, and a low bounce rate.

We can trick visitors to leave their email once, but we cannot get them to come back a second time if our content sucks or is irrelevant to their personal wants, needs and challenges.

That’s why whenever I write an article, blog post or email, I make sure to perform in depth keyword research, competitive analysis and relevant content digging. This way I know for sure what problems, wants and needs to focus on in order to help the reader get what they crave for.

I don’t guess. In fact, I invest a minimum of 3 hours, even if I have to write a short email or whatever – that’s how important RESEARCH is to me.

Here are a few quick tweaks you could perform on your site/blog to please visitors and get them return often:

• Add relevant content in your sidebar like for e.g. latest articles/posts, related content links.
• Remove the clutter (things that you think are cool, but mean nothing for your visitor like a calendars, traffic-stats boasting widgets, screaming ads).
• Embed your Adsense ads somewhere in the middle of your content and/or at the bottom (it might get you less clicks, but your content will rank higher on the page and visitors will like that and stick longer)

The Google Panda algorithm change affects low-quality sites and blogs that are full of ads and irrelevant information rather then the helpful content that your visitors are looking for. I prefer this ratio: 80% relevant, red-hot, useful content and 20% ads or affiliate links. What about you?

Codrut Turcanu (the most productive Internet Marketing copywriter) shares free affiliate marketing tips and product review templates on his super affiliate marketing blog to help affiliates looking for the best ways to earn money online.

Most marketers I talk to seem to use Google Analytics (GA) on their sites to track their stats And why not? It’s free, it’s powerful and it works well. I used to have Google Analytics on all my sites too, but over the past few months, I’ve started to explore other Google analytics alternatives. Why? Mostly, because I wanted to have real-time traffic stats instead of them being updated just once per day.

There are also a couple of other drawbacks to using Google Analytics as well. For one, Google already knows too much about me and my sites. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but why give them even more data about my sites to track? They may or may not be using this data, but I’d rather not give them this opportunity if there are other alternatives out there.

And second, Google Analytics leaves a big footprint which people can use to link together your sites. All you need is their Google Analytics UA code. Anyone can view the source of your webpage, grab your UA code and use a site like reverseinternet.com to find out a list of your other sites.

In my search for the best Google Analytics alternatives, I’ve tested the following 4 analytics services: Piwik, GetClicky, Woopra and Mint. Below are my pros and cons for each.

Piwik

Piwik is an open source, self hosted tracking solution. This means you need to upload the Piwik code to your own server and access the dashboard from there. You can track as many sites as you want with it, and if your combined traffic isn’t too high, you can track your stats in real-time.

However, if your sites start getting a lot of traffic, then Piwik’s performance becomes more and more sluggish. To combat this, you have to setup a cron job and use the Piwik auto archiving feature. This makes performance faster, but now your stats are only updated every certain time interval (depending on what you set it to). Piwik also has the same footprint issues as GA, although I don’t know of a tool off-hand that will detect Piwik sites like there is for Google Analytics.

The Piwik Dashboard is nicely laid out, displaying various widgets that show things like the keywords visitors are using to come to your site, what entry pages they are coming in to and more. You can add whatever widgets you want, and use the drag and drop interface to lay out the widgets exactly how you like them.

Piwik also supports Goal tracking, for tracking things like sales and email opt-ins which can help you better optimize your sales process. Like I said, it’s free and it’s constantly being updated which is very nice. All in all, Piwik is certainly a viable Google Analytics alternative and I would certainly recommend it.

Click Here To Try Piwik

Clicky

Clicky is a paid analytics service. It offers real-time stats, with a simple, but functional interface. The dashboard is nicely laid out so you can see all of your important site’s stats on the front page, although it is not customizable like Piwik is. It’s also quite fast to navigate around, compared to some of the other services.

What I really like about Clicky, is that next to each statistic, it compares its current value with what it was at during the same point the previous day. For example, I can look at my visitors right now and see that 256 visitors have visited my site at this point today, which is down 9% compared with the same time yesterday.

Another feature I like, is the ability to drill down into the stats of each page of my site. Clicky then shows me exactly what organic search terms people used who visited a particular page. This is a great way to discover new long tail keywords that I am ranking for, and helps me further optimize my SEO efforts.

Clicky also supports visitor segmentation. So I can do cool things like see how many of my US visitors searched for a particular keyword, and how their engagement stats (like Actions, Total Time spent on site) compare with other users.

If you only have a single site with under 3,000 daily views, then you can use the Clicky Free plan. The Clicky Pro supports 10 sites, 30,000 daily views for about $9.99 a month, and there are also additional plans as well.

Click Here Get Clicky

Woopra

Woopra is another paid analytics service that’s still in beta. I’ve seen it recommended by a lot of others, but honestly, I have not been super impressed with it. It also offers real-time stat tracking, but I find it a little slow, and I don’t like their Dashboard as much as Clicky’s. I’ve also noticed, that it doesn’t seem to be able to retrieve stats from my workplace, as it seems to be blocked here for some reason.

One unique feature of Woopra is the real-time chat feature. This lets you chat with your visitors live over IM. This is especially useful if you have some sort of ecommerce site, and could help you close more sales.

Woopra does seem to have a better pricing structure than Clicky does. Their Free basic plan doesn’t have a site limit, and it supports up to 30,000 monthly pageviews. This means for many people, using the Woopra free plan is all you really need.

Click Here To Try Woopra

Mint

Mint is another polished looking analytics service I’ve used. Unlike Clicky and Woopra, it’s self hosted and a license fee of $30 (one-time) is required for each site you want to put it on. Stats are real-time, although the default views are pretty basic. However, Mint makes uses of plugins (called Peppers) that lets you customize what data you want to include in your dashboard.

The problem I have with Mint though, is that doesn’t seem very cost effective if you have many sites (like I do). Lets say you wanted to track 10 sites with Mint. That’s a $300 up-front one time payment. If I’m using the Clicky Pro plan, then I’d have to use it for 30 months before Mint starts becoming worth it.

Plus, there’s no central dashboard where you can check the stats of all your sites in one place like the others. Instead, you have to login to each individual site you’ve installed Mint on to see their stats. To me, that’s too much trouble to do frequently and I personally like having a single dashboard where I can see all my sites in one place.

Click Here To Try Mint

Conclusion

A lot of what web analytics service to use comes down to your own personal preference. For me, after testing these Google Analytics alternatives on my own sites, I have finally settled on using a combination of Piwik and Clicky for my sites. I like Clicky’s interface the most, but I don’t really need it installed on all my sites- just my most important ones. So I’m currently using the Clicky Pro plan which lets me track 10 sites. Then for the rest of my sites, I have Piwik installed on them.

No matter what analytics service you choose, make sure you use something. With the many free options out there, you really have no excuse not the be tracking your stats.

Do you have your own favorite web analytics service? Let me know in the comments.

There are plenty of link cloaking scripts out there, and most of them seem to work the same way. Basically they allow you to take an ugly affiliate link like http://joshkotsay.com/recommends/ghosturl/#a_aid=xx&a_bid=yy and convert it to something nicer looking like http://joshkotsay.com/recommends/ghosturl.

That’s all well and good, and while the latter is an improvement, many of your visitors can still tell that it is an affiliate link. Because of this, you will no doubt be losing out on a certain percentage of potential affiliate commissions. Especially in the IM space where people are much more savvy about clicking on affiliate links.

So what if there was a link cloaker that could hide your affiliate links completely? Your link will look like a normal product url, but when a user clicks on the link itself, it will use your affiliate link. Well with GhostURL you can. GhostURL is a relatively new wordpress plugin that allows you to easily create truly cloaked urls, and allow you to start earning all the affiliate commissions you deserve.

How it works

Ghost URL is really simple to use. After installing, you will see a new GhostURL menu in your WordPress control panel. To add a new link, just click on the Add New link. The two required things you need to enter is the Display URL and your Affiliate URL. Affiliate URL is self explanatory, but the Display URL is what gets displayed in your visitor’s browser when they hover over your link. Normally you want to set it to your affiliate product’s homepage url.

Now, any link to your site that uses this exact Display URL will automatically redirect to your affiliate url when the user clicks on it.

Optionally, you can also input in one or more keyword phrases, and GhostURL will automatically link each of these phrases on your site, and cloak it using the specified display and affiliate url.

GhostURL In Action

Here it is in action. I’ve specified my Display URL as http://joshkotsay.com/recommends/ghosturl and input my own Ghost URL affiliate link.

Now look what happens when I link the keyword GhostURL.

When you hover over the link, it displays the regular GhostURL homepage address in your browser window. But when you click on the link, it goes through my GhostURL affiliate link. If you purchase the product, then I get the commission. Cool, huh?

Ghost URL Limitations

The link cloaking aspect of GhostURL works very well in my tests, and it does exactly what I expected it to do. Still, there are a couple of minor limitations to be aware of when using it.

First off, your visitors will need to have Javascript turned on for GhostURL to work. If it is turned off for whatever reason, then clicking on your GhostURL link will just send them to the normal display url (and not your affiliate url). Javascript is turned on by default on most browsers, so this is not really an issue in practice.

Second, the analytics portion of GhostURL is pretty barebones at the moment compared to some other link cloaking products. Right now, it will just track your total clicks and unique clicks for each link. There are no graphs to see daily click trends or anything like that. There also doesn’t seem to be a way to reset your link stats which I think could be useful.

Conclusion

GhostURL currently sells for $47, and purchasing a license entitles you to use it on all of your sites. You’ll get access to the WordPress plugin, and there is also a hosted version which you can use for non-Wordpress sites as well. Support is excellent, and the plugin has already been updated a few times since I first bought it.

Losing out on affiliate commissions because of obvious looking affiliate links is definitely a huge problem for affiliate marketers. Link cloaking is one way to address this problem, and GhostURL is the first solution I’ve seen that really offers “true” link cloaking. If you have any type of site that uses affiliate links to make money, then I think you will find GhostURL to be very useful. Check it out, as I think it can boost your sales quite a bit.

Using a good link cloaking product is absolutely essential for any internet marketer. You can use them to create more presentable affiliate links, and they should provide tracking so you can better optimize your campaigns. I’ve tried several different tracking solutions, but I’ve recently been testing out a link cloaking and tracking system called LinkTrackr based on a recommendation from a buddy of mine. It’s pretty cool, so let me show you how it works.

LinkTracker 2.0 was just recently released it contains a bunch of new features like split testing, conversion tracking, and some really nice stat tracking analytics that make it well suited for paid traffic campaigns (Adwords, Facebook PPC, PPV, etc). I’ve also found it really nice for optimizing my email opt-in pages and achieving better conversions with them.

How It Works

Let me demonstrate some of the LinkTrackr features using an email marketing campaign I just setup a few hours ago. The goal is to figure which of the two email opt-in landing pages I created converts the best and gets me the most subscribers.

When you sign up to LinkTracker, you will first be asked to pick a username to create an account with. So if I picked joshkotsay as my username, my LinkTrackr links will be in the format http://joshkotsay.linktracker.com/xyz. If you go with any of the paid LinkTrackr plans, you will have the option of using your own domain name for your links if you like.

For simple link cloaking, it is super easy to do as you can see here.

Split testing and conversion tracking is where LinkTrackr really shines though.

LinkTrackr allows you to do split testing with any number of landing pages you create, but for doing a simple A/B split test, I have two different email opt-in landing pages to start out with. All I need to do is put in my two landing page urls and set the weights to 50% so they will be rotated evenly and shown approximately the same number of times.

Tracking conversions is just as easy. You just need to enable it, choose a name, and set value for the conversion. Since I don’t have the subscriber lifetime value number for my email list yet, I just set the value to $1.00.

Once you save your link, it will give you your tracking conversion code (a snippet of Javascript code) which you need to copy and paste to your converting page. For an email marketing campaign like mine, this would be the Thank You page that the visitors is sent to after he inputs in his email.

Now that your LinkTrackr link is setup, it’s just a matter of using it and tracking the results. Stat-tracking is done real time, so you can see conversions as they happen. Pretty cool right?

By tracking my split test results to my email opt-in pages, I can see which LP gets the higher conversion rate, and more easily figure out which page works best for my traffic. How many clicks should you test with? Use the free SplitTester.com tool to figure that out.

And I am not going to stop there either. Campaign optimization is a continuous process, and by using a service like LinkTrackr, I can drill down deeper and keep split testing various elements of my winning opt-in page (like headlines, colors, graphics, layout, etc) to further increase my conversion rates.

Final Thoughts

I’m currently using the LinkTrackr Xtreme plan, which costs $27/mo and gives me unlimited links and access to the entire LinkTrackr feature set. There are also the Pro ($17/mo), Basic ($9/mo) and Free plan as well. If LinkTrackr looks like something you would be interested in, I’d suggest giving the Free plan a try to see how it works for you.

As you can see LinkTrackr is a pretty interesting service, especially if you are trying to build your own email list, or selling your own product. That said, it’s not quite as useful for tracking affiliate products since it’s not as easy to add your javascript tracking code to 3rd party pages.

All in all, LinkTrackr is a pretty robust link cloaking solution. The interface is slick, and it is quite easy to use. Don’t hesitate to give them a try if you are looking for a quality link cloaking service.

It’s not too often that I come across a product that’s really exciting and gets me thinking. But that’s what happened when I came across a short $1.97 report on the WarriorForum. It took me about 15 minutes to finish reading it, and it really got me thinking about how best to incorporate it into my online business.

You see, as an affiliate, we’re often stuck doing the same things that everyone else is doing. Take a look at your inbox, and see how many emails a day you’re getting from affiliates trying to promote the latest guru launches. Looking at my own inbox, I seem to get about 20-30 of these types of emails a day, most of which I ignore and move to the trash.

The problem is, very few marketers are going to be successful using this strategy. Unless you have a decent sized, targeted list, you’re not going to make many sales at all (if any). It’s really difficult to compete with the big name marketers who are offering huge bonuses that you could never put together yourself.

That’s what made this report I read really interesting as it shows a method that almost any affiliate can take advantage of. I’m going to summarize the report below but you can purchase the report yourself from the WSO thread here. (As I said, it’s only $1.97 and I guarantee you’ll get something from it.)

What I Learned

Here’s the basic idea: Find the best affiliate programs to promote, similar to Amazon, that pay you commissions for products that you didn’t even promote.

Say you wrote an iPad review, and included your Amazon affiliate link. If a visitors clicks through your link and buys a Macbook Air instead, you’d still get the commission! And since Amazon is such a big name in online shopping, you’ll often have visitors purchase multiple products and you would get credit for each one. Pretty cool right?

Unfortunately, there are several problems with promoting Amazon products. First off, the commissions are super low (usually starting at 6%), which means you’d have to sell a ton of products to make good money. And second, their affiliate cookie only lasts for 24 hours. So if someone doesn’t buy within a day of clicking your link, you’ll miss out on the commission.

Ok… So Now What?

Fortunately, there’s actually quite a few product owners out there that offer affiliate programs that are similar to Amazon, which we can take advantage of. That is, for each lead we send over to their sales funnel, we will get credit for every purchase that lead makes on any of their current and future products. This could be next week, next year, or even 5 years from now. Are you seeing the power of promoting these types of affiliates?

However, for this to work, these product owners need to meet some specific requirements:

• Already has several HIGH QUALITY, PROVEN products in their product-line, with more to come in the pipeline.
• Offers commissions on ALL future sales for any leads you send.
• Knows how to cross-sell their products across their product-lines.

If you find an affiliate program like this, it’s like finding pure gold. Just a simple review post on your blog, tweet to your followers, or email to your list can go a long way to providing you with an amazing, lifetime income stream.

Sounds great right? Now you’re asking yourself, where can I find these affiliate programs? Well, if you can scrape up the $1.79 to read the report I am referring to in this post, you’ll find one such vendor.

I’ve also done some research of my own after reading the report and I was able to find a couple more good ones as well. One of the best affiliate programs I found is even paying 200% up-front commissions on every sale!

Now, I don’t want to post them here and have to compete with everyone else. (I like being helpful, but I want to make some money too, right?) So if you want to see the results of my research, you’ll have to sign up using the form below.

Once you do, I’ll show you how to get started promoting these Lifetime Affiliate Commission programs plus I’ll share with you the other vendors I’ve found that meet these requirements. And you will also be the first to know for any future ones I find as well.

Instead of promoting every affiliate product out there, why not concentrate your effort on some of the best affiliate programs instead?

When most people think about ‘autoblogging’ the idea in most people’s minds in that you install some auto content posting script, post some ads on the site, and watch the money roll in. Unfortunately, while this may have worked in the past, it no longer works now. You need to follow a system, and that’s what Auto Blog Blueprint by Mike Johnson offers.

The first things to say about Auto Blog Blueprint is it’s not a get rich overnight system. It’s actually a very comprehensive course on autoblogging, that Mike has developed over the past couple of years. And what’s really impressed me most about it, is that a lot of the concepts he teaches apply to regular niche affiliate sites as well, and not just autoblogging.

Auto Blog Blueprint Features

The Auto Blog Blueprint is broken into 4 modules, with a total of 16 steps to follow Each step has video instruction from Mike, along with a written guide for each part. The course covers:

• Effective Auto Blog Strategy – Niche Research, best product for domains and hosting, etc.
• Auto Blog Search Engine Optimization – Blog Installation, base Setting, base Plugins, themes and essential Pages
• How to make the Auto Blogs Profitable – Indexing and classification, tagging, advanced plugins, advanced Monetization and auto Blogging Techniques
• Backlinking blueprint and Social Media.

Inside the Auto Blog Blueprint Members Area

Another nice feature, is the Auto Blog Blueprint “Installer”. Basically, it’s a couple of files you upload to your server, which will install a copy of WordPress on your domain that contains all the plugins with the correct settings that Mike recommends for his system. With it, you can setup each autoblog up at no time all.

Auto Blog Blueprint Pros

Structured and Organized Information. Instructions on the Auto Blog Blueprint course are very well organized. Auto Blog Blueprint will show you how to build a profitable search engine optimized blog through a 16-step program and approximately 40 instructional videos.

One-Stop Source. By using the Auto Blog Blueprint you will know everything you need to know to build a successful auto blog empire, from a proven system of setting up money-making auto blogs, to internet marketing products that you can use. With all the internet marketing products out there, Mike Johnson will tell you what product works (tried and tested).

Auto Blog Recommendation

The product lives up to its name “Auto Blog Blueprint”; it really is a step by step formula for setting up profitable autoblogs. I really learned a lot from it, and there’s stuff in there I can apply to other aspects of my business as well. Things like web hosting for autoblogs, is a topic you might not normally think is that important, but you realize that it really is after Mike goes into detail about it.

Whether you are a newbie or an advanced autoblogger, you will find the information in this course extremely helpful. For newbies, with limited knowledge of auto blogging, the course will guide you by the hand, to get your auto blogs up and running. Advanced auto bloggers will appreciate the fact that they will find strategies and products they have not heard of.

I always set aside a small part of my day to check out my favorite internet marketing forums as there is always good discussions going on to learn from. Of course there’s a lot of misinformation as well, but you learn to filter out the bad stuff over time. A lot of the internet marketing tools and strategies I’ve tried have come as a result of recommendations I’ve read about on various forums. Plus, if you build up a good reputation on a particular forum, you will find they are a great way to make connections and even market your own products as well. So below is a list of some of the best Internet Marketing forums I check out everyday.

Vita Vee’s Forum – Unlike other self-professed gurus, I consider Vita Vee the current godfather of dominating the search engines. Check out any affiliate marketing product launch these days and you will see his student’s sites dominate the first page of the results. His forum has both public and private sections, but I highly recommend trying to get into his ‘From 0 to Profits’ course to study his SEO secrets. *HINT* He is a big fan of SENuke and SEOLinkVine.

Warrior Forum – This is one of the most well known internet marketing forums and it gets a ton of traffic. There’s always some interesting discussions going on, although you do have to filter out some of the useless info. Regardless, you should establish some sort of presence here as this is one of the best places to market your own product or service.

PPV Playbook Forum - The PPV Playbook Forum is hands-down the best PPV/CPV forum around. It’s a paid membership site run by David Ford that’s worth it’s weight in gold. On the forums you’ll find a number of case studies, landing page reviews, and some great discussion on various PPV techniques and strategies. The site is expanding rapidly, and it’s attracted a ton of A-list marketers to the site like Mr Green, Ryan Eagle, Jonathan Volk and Barman among others.

PPC Coach – This is easily the best forum for PPC coaching. This is another paid membership site that has been going strong for more than 2 years now. It has a very large and active membership base, and is where all the best pay-per-click marketers are hanging out. Great for newbies wanting to get their feet wet with PPC.

BlackHat World – Not only can you learn a lot, the forums is a really good place to find stuff…

These are just some of my favorite internet marketing forums to hang out at. What are some of your favorites?

Wealthy Affiliate University, owned by Kyle and Carson, is an online source for training, education, tools and resources for internet marketing. The course guide is designed to appeal to even the most novice of all novices and the most expert of all experts in affiliate marketing.

It also boasts of support from other members, one-on-one coaching and expert training. Services such as web hosting and website building are also offered, along with other internet marketing tools.

Wealthy Affiliate University Benefits

Wealthy Affiliate University’s services do not come free. However, for a monthly fee of $97 you get…

• One-on-one coaching from experiences members
• More than 500 tutorials and courses – i.e. Article Marketing, Pay-per-Click Marketing, Niche Research, Optimization Tactics and Website Development, among others
• Unlimited web sites and hosting
• Comprehensive getting-started course
• Unlimited keyword searches
• Free access to internet marketing tools
• Instant access to community forum

Wealthy Affiliate University Pros

With the features you get from the money you pay, the big question is—is it worth it? Features are just features. Until you get a good understanding on how you can benefit from them, they are basically about as useful as a fishing pole to a hunter. With that said, here is my own personal take on why I think some of the features are ingenious.

Full 8-Week Action Plan. For a beginner, this is invaluable. You can start on the basic level and work your way up to more advanced topics and techniques. This course is a huge deal, in my own honest opinion. Sure, you can find a lot of free information online, but what makes this feature great is it is very structured. It guides you through a step-by-step process of building a money-earning business.

Site Rubix and Other Tools. If website design is a conundrum to you, then you will appreciate Site Rubix. Site Rubix is just one of the many tools available at Wealthy Affiliate. It helps you create your own profitable website in a snap, unlimited websites—that is. Other tools which comes with membership are Keyword Tool, Clickbank Research Tool and WordPress Express. Why is this a big deal? Some of these tools actually do not come cheap. However, with the membership, they are inclusive.

Unlimited Free Hosting. This is another feature dominating the top of the favorite features list. After you have created your website through Site Rubix, you can host your website on Wealthy Affiliate for free. Isn’t that great or what?

User Forum. Perhaps the cherry on top, is the Community Forum. This feature is where you get to interact with other members. The user forum is truly a valuable source of information on building successful campaigns and everything under the “internet marketing sun”. You can also get one-on-one attention from a seasoned internet marketer.

Wealthy Affiliate University Cons

Some Questions are Unanswered . Although rare, there are instances when you may not receive a response to your question from the owners, Kyle and Carson or from other experienced members. The trick to getting your questions answered is to avoid asking vague ones. Be as detailed as you can.

Information Overload. As much as the amazing amount of resources available at Wealthy Affiliate University is their strength, it is also their weakness too. It is easy for beginners to be lost and overwhelmed. On the bright side, that’s what the forum is for; all you have to do is ask.

Price. The current membership fee is $97 per month or $797 per year. The amount is definitely a big chunk, and will definitely make anyone think twice. However, going through the free tools, the education, website building, hosting, forums and other resources, it is worth it.

Recommend or Not Recommend?

Wealthy Affiliate is highly recommended. This site is a breed of its own and is perhaps one of the few sites where you get what you pay for. The membership fee is definitely worth the complete training, support and tools you get.