A long time ago, at a motivational event that I can no longer remember, the speaker got us to write a letter to ourselves. This was a real letter, not an email – the internet hasn’t hit mainstream yet. The lesson that day was about being accountable to one’s word. Our assignment was to write a letter, addressed to ourselves, and state where we are six months from now. The letter was to be written in the present tense because we won’t be seeing it again until six months later.

The speaker took all the letters and stored them for half a year. By this time we have all forgotten about it. Then six months later, I check my mailbox and there was a letter addressed to me from me. After reading what I have wrote to myself I became completely disgusted and ripped the letter to pieces. I have not done one thing I had stated in the letter to myself. I felt like a complete failure. And it was the worst kind of failure as well. It’s one thing for someone else to tell you to do something and you fail. It’s something else entirely when that someone is you. I never forgot the lessons from that letter. It helped me to refocus myself and get back on the right track.

Now I would like to offer you the same lesson. Thanks to a service call FutureMe.org you can now send an email to yourself to be received at a future date. So, I would like you to write an email to yourself. In the email, state the following:

• What are you doing now?
• How much are you making?
• Are you married?
• Do you have any kids?
• Where are you living?
• Anything else you want to add.

Set FutureMe to send you your email six months from today. If you’re like me, you’ll forget about this within a week or two. Then in six months, you’ll receive the shock of your life. I challenge everyone to do this. I know it can be very scary to actually write down one’s goals but it’s something you have to do if you wish to be accountable to yourself.

Where will you be six months from today? This is your chance to tell it to yourself. And don’t worry if you fail at what you tell yourself. The path to success is paved by a string of failures.

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I guess you can call this part three of my post on how I run my business from a web browser (read part two here). Being able to access my blog, docs, photos and emails from any computer is cool, but how about files stored on my home computer? How do I access those files from another computer or a web browser? The answer is Dropbox.

Dropbox is my favorite online storage service. Dropbox allows me to access my home computer files from any computer, anywhere in the world. Dropbox acts just like a network drive in the cloud. Drag a file from your computer to Dropbox and it’ll transfer to the Dropbox online storage service. Any updates to the file will auto update the file on Dropbox. You can access your Dropbox from any computer where you have Dropbox installed. If you’re on a public computer, you can log into your Dropbox account from a web browser. There is also a Dropbox iPhone app so you can access your files from an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Dropbox offers 2GB of secured online storage for free. If you need more space than that, they have a Pro50 account with 50GB of storage for $9.99 per month and a Pro100 with 100GB of storage for $19.99 per month. The video below explains Dropbox in plain english.

Access Your Files From Any Computer with Dropbox

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The F5 EXPO and Malcolm Gladwell, author of Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, & What the Dog Saw are coming to Vancouver on April 7. If you’re in the area, then you should make plans to attend. F5 EXPO is a forward thinking resource meant to jump start businesses into “the know” on future trends within the online space.

The event converges interactive exhibits, peer idea-collaboration amongst fellow Owners, Executives and Buyers, and edge-of-your-seat conferences into one explosive day. The focus is on refreshing business strategies through captivating content and storytelling with an “AHA” factor on such topics as mobile apps, search marketing, business blogs/webinars, social media, web 2.0, etc.

In addition to Malcolm’s keynote, you’ll be able to join me for a workshop on Blogging for Profit. A pass to F5 EXPO range from zero for a trade show only pass to $360 for an all inclusive pass. I hope to see you there!

F5 EXPO Vancouver Convention Centre, Canada Place

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On my post about how I run my business from a web browser, I showed a screen shot (see above) of Gmail that got quite a few comments and emails. The most common question was how I was able to add the task manager on the right. Gmail does have a task manager but it doesn’t dock itself and it’s not a complete solution like what I run.

How To Always Remember The Milk

The task manager I use come from a service call Remember The Milk. The service was created so that you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. Remember The Milk makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience. The best feature of Remember The Milk (RTM) is how it integrates with various services and apps.

Remember The Milk for Gmail is the browser extension I use to put the RTM task list on my Gmail. The extension is available for Google Chrome and FireFox. Having the task list next to my Gmail makes it extremely easy to keep track of what I need to do. Gmail is among the first thing I check in the morning and seeing the task bar gives me a quick look at my duties for the day.

No matter where I go, Remember The Milk is with me because they also have an iPhone app. Since the service is in the cloud, an update from my iPhone will update the RTM on my Gmail. Since I started using RTM, I’ve been a lot more organized and get projects done a lot sooner than without a task manager. The RTM service is free. Give it a try and watch your productivity increase.

Bonus Google Trick – Add Google Calendar and Docs To Gmail

In addition to running RTM with Gmail, I also have previews of my Google Calendar and Google Doc on there as well. You can add a bunch of stuff to your Gmail by clicking your Gmail “Settings” link and then choosing “Labs.” From there, you’ll be able to enable a previews for Calendar and Docs (and other stuff).

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Unless you’ve decided to hide in a cave for the last ten years, there’s a good chance you know about this whole Internet poker phenomenon. It’s not like poker is a new game, per se, but it has rapidly grown in popularity thanks to televised events like the World Poker Tour.

How can you cash in (no pun intended) on this growing industry? Well, as you’ll learn from this review, Full Tilt Poker actually has one of the most lucrative affiliate programs on the web today.

Affiliate with Full Tilt Poker

With big names like John Juanda and Gus Hansen, you already have a highly recognizable brand on your hands. Full Tilt Poker is one of the most popular online poker rooms, offering a wide range of different poker games and formats, but it also gives you an opportunity to “play with the pros.”

Even if you don’t play poker yourself, you can still make money with Full Tilt Poker.

That’s where the affiliate program comes into play. You can make affiliate income by referring new players to the site who go on to play for real money. It doesn’t matter if they choose to play cash games or tournaments; you get paid both ways.

From what I can see, registration requires filling out a short form and submitting it online. There does not appear to be an approval process, so you can start earning your commissions right away.

Choose from Two Payment Plans

When you sign up for the Full Tilt Poker affiliate program, you can choose from two different payment schemes. These are mutually exclusive, so you can’t double-dip on your earnings.

The first payment plan is CPA, so you are paid a one-time commission for each new player that you refer. This is based on the number of qualified referrals each month and you can earn a bonus if they are particularly active on the site. These payouts range from $75 to $215 per player.

The second payment plan is a percentage revenue plan, giving you a percentage of the money Full Tilt earns each month from your referred players. This is on an ongoing basis with commissions ranging from 20% to 35%, depending on the net revenue generated by the players you refer.

You can’t really say that one payment plan is more lucrative than the other, because it depends on the behavior of the players you refer to the site. If you send people who play regularly and spend lots of money, the PRP is probably better. If you send people who may not play as much, the CPA model may be in your best interest.

The Importance of Full Tilt Points

You’ll notice that the way Full Tilt “qualifies” a referral is based on the number of “FTPS” that the player earns. These Full Tilt Points are earned by players for participating in ring games and in tournaments.

For the former, each dollar raked from a pot results in one point being given to every player dealt into the hand (to a maximum of three points). For the latter, seven points are given for every dollar paid in multi-table and sit & go tournaments (with no maximum).

Make Money by Referring More Affiliates

What if you have an audience like John Chow dot Com where there are more people interested in Internet marketing than in Texas Hold’em? You can make money there too.

The referral program rewards you for referring other affiliates too. It seems that the “sub-affiliate” system only runs one level deep, but you can earn either 3% of net revenue or a $5 fixed CPA, depending on the payment plan you chose.

Put on Your Poker Face

You don’t have to have a website to promote Full Tilt Poker. They welcome other forms of marketing too (like ordering reviews on popular blogs). You can also remind your readers that Full Tilt offers an automatic 100% initial deposit match (up to $600) for new accounts.

What about getting paid by the affiliate program? Instead of sending your earnings via PayPal or sending you a cheque, Full Tilt deposits the money into your Full Tilt Poker player account. They want you to put the cash back on the table, you see.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR FULL TILT POKER AFFILIATE PROGRAM

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I had to take my car into North Shore Acura today to get it service and change out the winter tires. Since I was going to be stuck at the dealership for a couple of hours, I figure I would just blog from there. After all, I’ve been blogging from all over the city lately so why not a car dealership? North shore Acura was actually a pretty good place to work from. They had a nice table for me to set up my blogging gears and a coffee machine that made a great Cafe Mocha. However, their wireless Internet was pretty slow.

I decided to use my time at North Shore to do a video featuring all the stuff in my laptop bag. These are the gears which allow me to run my business from anywhere in the world. My mobile blogging setup has scaled down a lot since I showed it in China. This had a lot to do with new flight restrictions the United States imposed after that failed underwear bombing attempt.

The entire video was filmed, processed and uploaded to YouTube while at North Shore Acura. The staff were pretty cool and didn’t seem to mind me making a home for myself. One of the salesmen even recognized who I was.

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It was great to see all the positive reaction to yesterday’s Clickbank post. I’ve received a ton positive comments and emails. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback. My article was very long and detailed but it was still just an overview of the business model and only scratched the surface. For many of you, it will be enough to move forward on. However, others will need a little more handholding.

Paul Walker is the creator of Clickbank Cash Supreme, an online training course for making money with Clickbank. Paul is a huge Clickbank affiliate. He has made over $1 million promoting Clickbank products. If you’re looking for a course that breaks down my Clickbank model into easy to follow detail steps, Clickbank Cash Supreme will do just that.

Clickbank Cash Supreme includes a step by step blueprint and over 15 training videos. There’s also template packages and PLR products that you can just stick your name on and sell immediately for 100% profit. Normally, Paul sells his course for $147 but he has it on sale for only $47 right now. That makes it pretty much an impulse purchase. Go get it.

Download Clickbank Cash Supreme

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The following is the business model I use to make thousands of dollars every week with Clickbank. This is going to be long and detail post (over 2,300 words). I encourage you to read though the whole thing because this model works and has been proven over and over by myself and other affiliate marketers. While this model shows how to make money with Clickbank, the model can be applied to any other affiliate network or product (even a blog). I just happen to like Clickbank because information is one of the easiest products to promote and sell on the Internet.

Hit And Run Marketing Doesn’t Work

Most new affiliate marketers getting into the business do what I call hit and run affiliate marketing. It’s the model they’re all familiar with because it’s the one they hear about the most. The hit and run marketing steps goes something like this.

1. Select a Clickbank (or any affiliate) product to promote
2. Send traffic to the landing page with PPC/PPV
3. PROFIT!

I’m sure you’ve all heard stories of affiliate marketers spending $10K a day to make $20K? It sounds great doesn’t it? The only problem is there are not many affiliate marketers who can do that. Also, those who are making a profit using the hit and run model are leaving a ton of money on the table.

Spending money on advertising to get one customer that you will never see again is one of the dumbest business move you can make. That’s like Best Buy spending $50K on a front page ad on the Wall Street Journal to have those customers buy one item and then never visit the store again. They’re go under in less than six months if that’s the case!

Another problem with the hit and run model is it’s not very stable. You have to keep spending money on advertising or the sales stop. You risk the chance of Google slapping your landing page because of a low quality score, you may run out of money tweaking the ads/keywords/landing pages, competition can drive up bids to the point where you can’t make a profit, the advertiser may pull the offer, etc.

Real Businesses Are Built On Repeat Customers

Too many people think of Internet marketing as a game. It’s not. It’s a real business and real businesses are built on repeat customers. A restaurant can’t survive with first time customers only. The Apple Store, or any retail store, would go under in a few months if their customers visit the store once and never visit again.

If someone buys one Apple product, then he is likely to buy another product from Apple. The same thing holds true for affiliate marketing. If someone buys a Clickbank product from you, he is likely to buy another one. But that will never happen if all you do is hit and run marketing because you’ll never see that person again.

Repeat business is the key. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to market to a repeat customer than it is to acquire a new one. In fact, the average business spend seven times more in marketing cost to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. When you’re doing hit and run affiliate marketing, what you are in fact doing is spending that 7X more money to acquire a customer for SOMEONE ELSE! Can you see now why most hit and run affiliate marketers don’t make money?

A Clickbank Affiliate Model That Works

My Clickbank business model is more complex than the hit and run model. It will require more work on your part but unlike the the hit and run model, you will make way more money with it. Here are the steps.

1. Choose a series of Clickbank products in the same niche to promote
2. Create a free eBook about the niche to give away
3. Create a squeeze page offering the free ebook
4. Send traffic to the squeeze page
5. Capture the lead coming to the squeeze page
6. Deploy email auto responders with the Clickbank products
7. Watch the money rack up in your Clickbank account

The main difference between my model and the hit and run model is I’m building a customer base. Instead of sending leads directly to the Clickbank landing page to buy the product and never see them again, I send them to my squeeze page to capture their emails so I can market products to them for weeks, months and years to come. This is a far more powerful marketing method.

The Money Is In The List

I’ve said many times before that the money is in the list but it bears repeating. The money really is in the list. Look at all the really big affiliate marketers. Guys like Frank Kern, John Reese, Shoemoney, etc. They all have huge mailing lists. And because they have huge lists, they don’t have to spend hundreds of thousands per month on advertising. John Reese refers to his list as his ATM. He just goes to it whenever he needs to make a withdraw.

When Shoe launched Shoemoney System on Clickbank, he built a prelaunch list of over 100,000 names. While Shoe did well with his system, that list he built is worth an extra $1 million a year in additional revenue because he’ll be able to use the list to promote other related products.

If you want to become a big Clickbank affiliate marketer (or blogger), you absolutely need an email list. That is your customer base. Without one, you’ll just be another hit and run affiliate marketer working for peanuts. Stop building other people’s customer base and start building your own.

Step 1 – Choose a Series of Clickbank Products

The first step to making money from Clickbank is to decide on the niche you want to target. Ideally, the niche should be a niche that you have a knowledge of and a passion for. If that’s not the case, then you can still make money with it but you wouldn’t have as much fun and to me, having fun is even more important than making the money.

The Clickbank Marketplace list thousands of products for you to promote. You can sort search results based on commission, sales, popularity and a bunch of other criteria. I like to get a copy of the product before deciding on whether to promote it. You can either email the advertiser for a copy or buy it from them and then refund it if you don’t want to promote it. All Clickbank products are covered by a 60 day money back policy.

Step 2 – Create a Free eBook

The best way to make people give you their email address is to offer them something they find valuable for free. This is where the eBook comes in. You can write it yourself or hire Michael Kwan to write it. If you’re really cheap, you can use a PLR eBook. They’re just like PLR articles but in eBook size. Personally, I recommend you write it yourself or hire out the writing. The quality of PLR leaves a lot to be desired.

The free eBook doesn’t have to be very big, 20 to 60 pages should do, but it does need to cover the same niche as the Clickbank products you plan to promote. This is why I said you should have a knowledge of the niche you plan to deal in.

Step 3 – Create a Squeeze Page To Promote The eBook

A squeeze page is a special kind of landing page that is created solely to act as an opt in for information – primarily email addresses – from potential subscribers. When people visit my blog, I want them to subscribe to my email list. However, because there is so much to see and read, the number of sign ups isn’t as high as it could be. By creating a separate squeeze page, the email sign up rate can skyrocket. While I can capture maybe 5% of people visiting my blog, I have seen squeeze pages with conversion rate has high as 60%!

The above screen shot is the squeeze page Jonathan Volk used to capture emails. By offering his Affiliate Marketing 101 guide for free, Jonathan was able to get 50% of the people visiting that page to opt into his email list.

The easiest way to create a squeeze page is with Squeeze Theme by Unique Blog Designs. Squeeze Theme is powered by WordPress and will allow you to create custom squeeze pages in minutes. Jonathan and I both use Squeeze Theme to create all our squeeze pages.

To use Squeeze Theme, all you need to do is choose the theme you want to run, add the text, photo or video, your Aweber email codes and let Squeeze Theme do the rest. Before Squeeze Theme came along, I had a designer do all my squeeze pages. Now, Squeeze Theme does it for me in just a few minutes.

Step 4 – Send Traffic To The Squeeze Page

Once the squeeze page has been created, you need to send traffic to it. The quickest way to do that is to use pay per click or pay per view advertising. However, that’s also the most expensive way. There are tons of lower cost or free methods for traffic generation. A little creatively can go a long way.

Try to think outside the box when it comes to traffic building. Look at what Jonathan did for his eBook. Instead of using PPC to send traffic to his squeeze page, he set up a contest to give away three Apple iPads. Two iPads will go to the top two affiliates who send the most referrals. However, the the 3rd iPad will be awarded to a random affiliate on a draw based on one entry per referral. By referring a friend to download Jonathan’s eBook, you earn an entry. Refer two friends and earn two entries and so on.

The three iPads will cost Jonathan about $1,800. Not cheap but not out of the budget for someone who want to build a real affiliate marketing business. So far, Jonathan’s promotion has worked extremely well and he should have a list of over 10,000 names before the contest is over. If 100,000 names are worth $1 million a year, 10,000 names would be worth $100,000 a year. That’s not a bad return on $1,800!

Step 5 – Capture The Lead

Lead capturing is the most important part of affiliate marketing. Your business is built around your list. Anything you can do to increase its size means more money for you. During the Affiliate Marketing 101 contest, Jonathan offered a 27″ iMac to anyone who can take over my 1st place spot in seven days. Nobody was able to beat me but you can bet a lot of people tried and Jonathan’s list benefited as a result.

While a squeeze page maybe the best way to get someone to give you his email address, you still need a system to handle and host the list. My recommended email service is Aweber. I’ve been using them for years and they are by far the best in the business. Aweber works seamlessly with Squeeze Theme and its web interface allows you to access it from any computer, anywhere in the world.

Aweber offers a $1 trial account for all new customers. The account is just like a normal Aweber account and includes unlimited email campaigns, newsletter, broadcasts and follow ups. It’s a great way to test drive Aweber to see what it can do for you. Your satisfaction is guaranteed. If you find that email marketing is not for you, contact Aweber within 30 days and they’ll give you the $1 back.

Step 6 – Deploy Auto Responders

Auto responders are emails that go out at a set date and interval. When someone subscribe to my blog, they are sent a series of auto responder emails. These emails are design to do three things.

1. Build a relationship with the subscriber
2. Promote my blog and brand
3. Recommend products and services that help solve the reader’s problem

Setting up the auto responder is extremely easy and is no different than sending out a normal email. If you’re using Aweber, all you have to do is click “Follow Up” in the Message tab. This will allow you to create a follow up message to be sent to your new subscriber at a later date. Aweber allows you to set up an unlimited number of auto responders.

If you check the screen shot above, you’ll see that my first auto responder email goes out the instant someone signs up to my list. The second follow up email out goes out four days after the first and the rest goes out in one week intervals until there are no more follow ups.

This is also known as a sales funnel. The first few emails helps build your relationship with the subscriber. Later emails in the funnel are used to promote the Clickbank products. This setup works far better than any hit and run system. Research has shown that most prospect won’t buy on the first visit or email. They need to be hit over and over again. This is where the auto responder comes in. The sooner you set it up, the faster you’ll be in the money.

Step 7 – Watch The Money Rack Up In The Clickbank Account

This step is optional but I really enjoy it.

You now have the formula to a make massive amounts of money with Clickbank (or any other affiliate network). It takes more work than the hit and run model but the payoffs are much higher. I hope you enjoy this post and I hope it opened your eyes to what it really takes to make money with Clickbank. Your comments are welcome. If you felt I’ve left anything out and you have a question, please post it.

Sign up for Clickbank | Aweber | Squeeze Theme

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Choosing the affiliate marketing model that works for your site or blog can be tough. If you’re a publisher, you will need to weight pros and cons of CPM vs CPC vs CPA models to find which one will work for you and provide the best return for your site ad space. If you’re an advertiser, you’ll need to figure out which model will work for the type of product you’re trying to promote.

Each affiliate marketing business model offers different benefits and drawbacks. To help you decide which model will work best for you, Ace Affiliate has created the following handy “Affiliate Marketing: Choosing The Best Model For You” infographic.

You may remember Ace Affiliate from their two previous infographics. They were the ones who created the interactive Affiliate Review Report Card and Affiliate Marketing in Plain English chart. Affiliate Marketing: Choosing The Best Model For You completes the “trilogy.”

The newest infographic is very easy to understand and breaks down the pros and cons from both a publisher and advertiser’s standpoint. Hopefully, it will help you choose the best affiliate marketing model for your blog.

Copy and paste the HTML code below to embed the infographic onto your blog.

<a href=”http://www.aceaffiliates.com/affiliate-education/affiliate-marketing-best-payment-models.html” title=”Affiliate Marketing: Choosing The Best Model For You”><img src=”http://www.aceaffiliates.com/affiliate-education/images/affiliate-marketing-best-models-thumb.jpg” alt=”Affiliate Marketing: Choosing The Best Model For You”/></a>

Dot Com Pho returns to Happy Pho for another excitement filled episode. This time we had seven people showed up to dine on a variety of Pho dishes (mostly consumed by Chef Aaron Koo AKA the new Stephen Fung). To makes thing even more happy, Michael Yurechko discovered that Happy Pho had wireless Internet access (not in the restaurant but nearby).

This episode of Dot Com Pho celebrates the heroes of entrepreneurship. Evan Carmichael came up a great idea for trading cards featuring famous entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs were selected by 33 famous bloggers (of which I am one). The bloggers were asked to name their favorite entrepreneur. That entrepreneur is featured on the front of the card and the blogger who selected him is featured on the back.

All process from the the sales of Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards goes to Kiva. They will use the money to help entrepreneurs in third world countries. The Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards goes on sale in April. Pre-order your packs today and save 20% off the regular price – only $3.95 per pack of 5 cards instead of $4.95. There’s free shipping if you order three packs or more. In addition, you’ll receive a limited edition hologram gold Steve Jobs or Woz card for every three pack pre-order. There’s also a chance to win a baseball signed by the Woz. Watch the episode and then go buy some cards!

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The online auction is nothing new. If you’re looking to score a deal on a new Nintendo Wii or maybe a used digital camera, heading to a place like eBay isn’t such a bad idea.

One of the newer developments in recent years is the penny auction, giving you the opportunity to buy an iPod for pennies on the dollar. Quite literally.

Taking a slightly different approach to this concept is Bid on Cash, the website that serves as the subject of today’s review. As its name implies, you actually bid on cash prizes.

Getting into the Game

Getting started with Bid on Cash is a very quick and painless process. First, you’ll need to fill out the user registration form, which really only asks for a username, email address, and password.

From there, you’ll need to confirm your email address and you’re pretty much ready to go. There is a section to fill out the rest of your personal profile, but you don’t have to do this right away. You will, however, need to spend a little cash to buy some bids.

So, How Does It Work?

In case you’re not familiar with the penny auction system, you need to buy bids (a dollar each) that you can subsequently spend on the various auctions. Each time that a new bid is placed on a prize, the cost of the auction goes up by a penny and the countdown timer goes up for a set amount of time.

As you can imagine, the auction ends when the timer runs out. The key, then, is to get in the last bid, hoping that no one else puts down another bid after you. The difference with Bid on Cash is that you are, well, bidding on a cash prize of varying value.

The prizes seem to start at $30 on the low end, all the way up to about $400 on the high end. If you figure that each dollar spent on a bid results in one extra penny in the value of the auction, then Bid on Cash needs to get at least 30 bids ($0.30 value) to break even on a $30 auction.

Look at the list of closed auctions, it seems that they’re currently falling pretty far behind on that goal. Most auctions are ending at below the break-even mark; I saw a $100 auction end at 11 cents. In effect, Bid on Cash lost $89 there, not including the other costs involved in running the site.

BidJames is Your Automated Sniper

While you could spend hours on end staring at the main page of Bid on Cash, eyeing the auctions that are soon drawing to a close, you can set up an automated solution instead. That solution is called BidJames.

This virtual assistant, so to speak, will automatically bid on the auctions on your behalf. You activate his services, tell him the bid range and the number of bids to use, and he’ll do the rest. As you can imagine, you can burn through the bids pretty quickly using a system like this.

Getting Extra Free Bids

You can buy additional bids for the site in packs of 20, 30, 50, or 100, but there is no incentive to buy the larger bundles. It always works out to a dollar a bid and, from a business standpoint, I recommend Bid on Cash provide more of an incentive to “players” to buy the larger bundles.

If you don’t want to buy more bids, you can earn some free bids by referring your friends. When someone signs up and buys a bid package using a referral link, you get 10 free bids and the referral gets one free bid.

The Penny Auction for Cash

You probably shouldn’t expect to get rich from Bid on Cash. It can be a fun game, perhaps, but it can get very expensive at a dollar a bid. Also, like all the other penny auctions on the Internet, you do run into the possibility of fraud and deceit. I received five free bids to do this review and, well, I was always outbid. I saw others win auctions at much lower totals.

CLICK HERE TO BID ON CASH

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The wonder tablet from Apple went up for pre-order this morning. Did you get your order in or are you going to wait until it ships on April 3? I am getting four iPads but I had to get them from the US Apple site because that’s the only place that is taking orders. I have a fairly good idea on what Apple’s plans are for the new iPad and it’s not what you might think.

I see the iPad as Apple’s entry into the online book market, which is worth $4.5 billion a year. By comparison, online music does $2.3 billion a year, most of which is controlled by Apple iTunes. If Apple can do for books what it did for music, they will revolutionize another industry, put the fear God into Amazon.com and most importantly, create another huge cash cow for themselves.

I like the new iPad so much and what it means that in addition to the four iPads, I purchased a large block of Apple stocks today. What about you? Is an iPad in your future?

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If you missed last night’s PPV Webinar with Jonathan Volk, David Ford and Corey Bornmann, then you missed out big time. It was one of the best webinar I’ve ever attended. David and Corey held nothing back and even showed how they have earned $27,287.50 in affiliate commissions in only 8 days using PPV traffic. That is serious money! It was one of the very few webinars I’ve attended where I actually took notes.

For those who were not able to make the webinar, Jonathan has made the entire PPV session available for download. Trust me, you will want to download this! The information David and Corey present was simply awesome. I’m sure readers who were at the Webinar will be chiming in the comments about its awesomeness.

The PPV Webinar download is only available to people who downloaded Jonathan’s new Affiliate Marketing 101 guide. If you have the guide, then you should have received an email from Jonathan with the webinar download link. If you don’t have the guide yet, then go sign up for it and Jonathan will send you Affiliate Marketing 101 and the PPV Webinar.

Download Affiliate Marketing 101 and PPV Webinar

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

A few years ago, I used to say I can run my business from anywhere in the world as long as I have my laptop with me. This was because all my information and the programs I used to run my business were stored on my laptop. I never really liked that setup because if something were to happen to my laptop, I would be pretty screwed. There was also the hassle of syncing the laptop with the desktops. Oftentimes, I never brother to do it and ended up not having files that I needed.

Today, I no longer need my laptop to run my business. I just need access to a Web browser. The Web browser can be on my laptop, my iPhone or a public computer at the library (or an Apple Store), it doesn’t matter. I never have to worry about syncing or missing any files. All my datas are stored in the cloud using the latest security and backup technologies.

I have replaced all the programs I used to run on my comp with Web browser based programs. I’ve done it to the point where there are almost no programs installed on my Macbook Pro other than what came with OSX. With the exception of iMovie 09, every other program I use to run my online business runs from a Web browser. This has completely liberated me from having to carry around my laptop when I go on trips. Sure, I still bring the Macbook but it’s nice to know that should something happen to it, I can just swing by any Apple Store, buy another Macbook and I’m back in business with nothing lost. Here are all the browser based programs I use to run this blog.

Blogging Software: WordPress

John Chow dot Com is powered by WordPress, which runs from any web browser. I can log into my blog from anywhere in the world as long as I have access to a web browser. Before blogging came along I created content sites using MS FrontPage. I would create the page on my computer using FrontPage and then upload it to the web server using a FTP program. That tied me down to one machine. With WordPress, I can access my blog from any machine, anywhere in the world.

Email Software: Gmail

In the old days, I used MS Outlook to handle my emails. I would never brother to sync the emails between the laptop and desktop. This caused all kinds of problem because I had different emails on different machines. Then there was the time I reformatted the computer and forgot to backup my emails.

Moving my email to Gmail has been one of the best moves I’ve ever made. Gmail has one of the best spam filters in the business and I never have to worry about having different emails on different machines. Gmail also makes a good backup service. Because each account has 8GB of storage, you can use it to backup your WordPress database. Just make an email address for your WordPress database, then use the WordPress database backup plugin to email a copy of your DB to the Gmail account once a day. Should something happen to your database, just log into the DB Gmail account and recover it.

Newsletter Software: Aweber

My blog newsletter is handle by Aweber. Their interface is all browser based and can be used from any computer. With Aweber, I can quickly create sign up forms and auto responders. Every money making blog needs a mailing list and Aweber is by far the best in the business. My list is the main reason the blog makes the income that it does. If your blog doesn’t have a list, get one now!

Aweber offers a $1 trial account for all new customers. The account is just like a normal Aweber account and includes unlimited email campaigns, newsletter, broadcasts and follow ups. It’s a great way to test drive Aweber to see what it can do for your blog. Your satisfaction is guaranteed. If you find that email marketing is not for you, contact Aweber within 30 days and they’ll give you the $1 back.

Documents Software: Google Docs and ZOHO

Forget Microsoft Office. You don’t need it anymore. All my documents are handle by Google Docs. Why pay for Office and have it take up space in your computer when you don’t have to? One of the best features of Google Docs is sharing and collaboration. If I’m working on a project with other people, I can give them access to my docs so they can work on it as well.

If you prefer the look and feel of MS Office, then you can use ZOHO, which as far as I can tell, is pretty much MS Office on the Web. I’m shocked Microsoft hasn’t sued them out of business yet.

Time Management: Google Calendar

I used to use Outlook to handle all my appointments and reminders. I now use Google Calendar to do the same thing. I like how I can share my calendar with others so they know what I’m up to and can even schedule themselves in.

Twitter Software: Hootsuite

Before I discovered Hootsuite, I used TweetDeck to handle my Twitter account. Hootsuite is the best Twitter client I’ve used to date. It has many advantages over Tweetdeck, the most important of which is that it’s browser based. I can use HootSuite from any computer and not just my own. HootSuite also uses way less resources than TweetDeck but offers additional features like timestamp tweeting and stats so you can find out how many people clicked on your links.

With HootSuite, you can manage all your Twitter followers and accounts in a single application. You can create as many columns as you want in order to separate your followers into groups. You can add new tabs to track keywords or other Twitter accounts. Add your Ping.fm application key (and a Group, if desired) to send new tweets from HootSuite to your Ping.fm account. Add your blog RSS so it sends out a new tweet when you have a new blog post. HootSuite even allows you to add editors in case you don’t want to write the tweets yourself. I can only see celebrities and the President of the United States using that feature.

Instant Messaging: Meebo

Meebo allows me to run all my Instant Messengers from one browser window. Before Meebo, I was using Adium and I still prefer Adium over Meebo. When I am on my Macbook, I will use Adium. When I’m on a public computer I will check my IM with Meebo.

Image Storage: Flickr

I used to store all my images on my local comp. Now I store them all on Flickr. Flickr allows you to store up to 200 photos for free. Go beyond that and they will want you to upgrade to a Pro account, which gives you unlimited storage. A Pro account cost $24.95 a year ($47.99 for two years). That to me is a no brainer. I have lost photos before because of a hard drive crash and I didn’t have a backup. Those are memories that I can’t recover. While there is always a chance that Flickr might experience some kind of failure, I know their backup systems are far better than what I use.

Flickr integrates with WordPress if you run the Flickr Photo Album for WordPress. This plugin allows you to pull in your Flickr photosets and display them as photo albums on your blog. The plugin provides a very simple template that is fully customizable. Since all my blog photos are pulled from Flickr, I save money on bandwidth cost.

Image Editor: Pixlr

Most of the time, the only thing I need to do with an image is resize it. For that, the built in Preview program in my Macbook can do it. However, there are times when I need to edit a photo before uploading to Flickr. For example, I might need to add a watermark or blank out some sensitive information (like in the Meebo screenshot). For those occasions, I rely on Pixlr. Pixlr looks and works just like a Web based version of Photoshop. With the exception of the really advanced stuff, pretty much anything you can do in Photoshop, you can do in Pixlr. And it’s free!

Video Storage: YouTube

I used to store all my videos on Vimeo until YouTube started allowing me to embed HD videos. Now, I’ve stop uploading my videos to Vimeo and I’m going to let my Vimeo Pro account expire. Why pay for HD when you can get it for free with YouTube?

Editing videos is pretty much the only thing I do that is not browser based. However, because iMovie comes with OSX, I can easily work on my videos from any Mac. If I’m on a PC, then I’ll have to settle for Windows Movie Maker but I wouldn’t wish Movie Maker on my worst enemy.

It’s Better Living In The Cloud

Many people feel unsecured about keeping their information in the cloud. For me, I actually feel more secure by having it there. I have lost information before when things were stored locally. I have yet to lose a single item from the cloud. Plus the freedom it gives you is unmatched. A few days ago, I walked into an Apple store, used their Macbook for an hour, accessed all my information, set up an email marketing campaign and made $1,500. By having all my programs running from a Web browser, I can make money from any computer, anywhere in the world.

The above Web browser based programs are what I use to run John Chow dot Com. For affiliate marketing, I use a bunch of other browser based programs. But that’s for another day.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

OK, so there are a million and one different resources out there explaining how to make money online. Many of them are vague and repeat some mantra similar to “Follow your passion.” That’s all well and good, but that’s not very specific. I know the real trick, and I’m willing to share it with you. I’m going to break it down into 10 easy steps. Here they are:

1. Pick a niche that you’re knowledgeable about.

Some people might say this is your passion, but I say it’s just something you know a lot about. If you like it – that’s a bonus. If you know a lot about accounting, but want to be a pro pool player, you can blog about both. If you suck at pool, blog about accounting until you get better at pool.

2. Build content for that niche.

I find that this formula works really well:

1. Write ten (well written) articles that focus on that niche. Make insightful posts (especially ones that are controversial). Controversial posts get a lot of readers and inbound links.
2. Write two articles about your self and why you’re an expert in that niche. This will connect your readers to you. I find that if you put a photo of yourself on those posts, the traffic is much higher too.
3. Write four guest posts similar to the original ten articles you wrote for the niche. It really helps if you ’sum up’ the original ten articles across the four guest posts and link back to them.

3. Make a space online to publish that content.

This space can come in many forms (Facebook fan pages, Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress, etc). I prefer Wordpress, but you aren’t limited to just that platform. If you don’t know anything about making websites, just start a website at Wordpress.com and start publishing content. When you build that space, please, please, please change the default theme to something your readers will enjoy.

4. Schedule content for release.

The twelve articles you already wrote should be scheduled to come out on a regular basis: 3 a week for four weeks. It’s important to remember that these will not be your only posts, but they will make up the meat of your content. You can always post what you had for dinner last night, or some breaking news. Those ad-hoc posts are what give your blog a personality.

5. Drive traffic to your blog from related niche sites and blogs.

You should send you guest posts out to everyone in your niche once a week, so you have one guest post each week for four weeks. Those guest posts will be INSTRUMENTAL in generating traffic to your website. Make sure you also regularly comment on those peoples’ blogs as well. If they have a top commentators widget for their blog that doesn’t have “nofollow” attached to it, try to make it onto that list.

6. Use social media to build a following.

Use the following social media sites to drive traffic and build a following.

1. I recommend you start a twitter account specifically for the blog. This will allow you to monitor that blog’s specific following as opposed to mixing them in with your main account. Use your main account to promote the blog if you have enough followers. You want to build your twitter followers as much as possible so that when you release new content on your blog, they’re getting it in their twitter feed.
2. Start a Facebook fan page and promote the site to all of your friends. Use the same principles as you did with Twitter. Facebook’s traffic is much higher quality that Twitter, but a much lower volume. It’s harder to get fans, but when you do, they convert well.
3. Submit every article that you write to Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Be sure to try and get them dugg as many times as possible, so ask all of your friends to digg/redd/stumble it.

7. Interact with your users.

Be sure to comment on your blog and respond to every @reply on Twitter" style="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmouseover="self.status='Follow John Chow on Twitter';return true;" onmouseout="self.status=''">twitter. Engaging users keeps them interested and makes them feel important (because they are!). Whenever someone comments on your blog, respond to them immediately – especially if they have something insightful to say.

8. Monetize.

Most people want to monetize their blog right away, but that’s a really bad idea. Ads tend to drive people away when they’re right there in their faces. My number one rule about monetization is: keep advertising off the site until 1000 unique hits a day. While you’re working your way up to 1000 uniques a day, try some LIGHT contextual advertising with affiliate links to products you talk about. Definitely do not do more than one affiliate link per post. That may even be too much, depending on your audience. Don’t do step 9 until you reach this point.

9. Get sponsors and have a contest.

Why did I say “don’t do step 9 until you reach [1000 uniques a day]“? Because you’ll have almost no chance of getting sponsors until you reach this point anyways. You can also host your own contests and eat the cost, but if you do, your investment and risk increases significantly. Do contests for other blog posts about your blog, comment contests, Twittertwitter contests, etc.

10. Repeat steps 2-10 once a month until you can move on to your true passion.

Using this method, you can usually spend about 2-3 days at the beginning of each month writing your posts that really build the meat of your blog. You can the slow release that content over time to give you a little more freedom. Be sure to fill in some of your posts with bleeding edge current news throughout the week.

Conclusion

This guide is a really basic way to make money from a blog, starting at concept, all the way through success. Many of these steps are expounded upon on my blog. There are definitely some great advanced concepts for driving traffic and building incredible blog posts. Write what you know about, give value, and be responsive. Notice that I didn’t even mention making money until step 8. If you jump the gun, you’ll piss off your readers, and your site will never take off. Have any questions? Put them in the comments or email me.

This has been a guest post by James Thompson of jtGraphic.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

This is a reminder post. The free PPV webinar with Super Affiliate Jonathan Volk starts tonight at 10PM EST (7PM PST). If you haven’t registered for it, I highly recommend you do so now. The seating limit of the webinar software is 1,000 and we’re pretty close to that number now.

Jonathan’s guests include PPV experts David Ford and Corey Bornmann. Corey is the owner of AffPortal, an invaluable toolset that literally has changed the way people build their PPV Campaigns. David is the owner PPVPlaybook’s Coaching Forums and has helped hundreds (maybe thousands) of students learn how to become masters of affiliate marketing with PPV.

This webinar will include more information about PPV, how to use it, and will even have time for Q&A. Free Q&A with the gurus of PPV is worth it alone. They will also be going over the following:

1. What is PPV Marketing?
2. What are the benefits of PPV traffic?
3. Where can you find PPV traffic?
4. What is the potential of PPV?
5. What is Automatic Niche Research and how can you benefit?
6. What makes a good PPV landing page?
7. How can PPV campaign building be automated?
8. How can you learn more about using Pay Per View Traffic?

The webinar is open to anyone who has downloaded Jonatha’s new Affiliate Marketing 101 guide. If you have the guide, you’ll be receiving an email with the webinar information. If you haven’t downloaded the guide yet, then you can get it here.

Even if you can’t attend tonight’s webinar you should still download Affiliate Marketing 101. It’s one of the best affiliate marketing guide I’ve ever read. And it’s FREE!

I hope to see you at the webinar tonight. Make to sure to say hi if you see me!

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Viral marketing is the art of getting others to spread your message for free. Whether it’s a tell a friend script or some kind of contest, viral marketing is something every blogger should learn. When done correctly, it’s one of the best ways to generate traffic and sales. Someone who can help you with viral marketing is Glen Allsopp of ViperChill.com.

Who Is Glen Allsopp?

Glen is a 20 year old successful blogger and affiliate marketer but spend as much time as he can genuinely helping people to make a living online. He built the 10th biggest personal development blog online in just 12 months and recently sold it for mid five-figures. Glen has also worked as the social media manager for companies like Land Rover and Hewlett Packard. Right now, Glen is living the Dot Com Lifestyle by traveling the globe and making five-figure monthly income from his affiliate websites.

Glen In The Guardian Newspaper

ViperChill – Great Blog That Makes No Money

Glen’s blog, ViperChill, is unique in two ways. The first is the blog makes no money. Now, you might be asking, “What’s so unique about that? My blog makes no money!” This by choice and not by design. ViperChill has nearly 5,000 RSS readers and each post has over 50 comments in them. The blog gets enough traffic to make thousands per month but Glen has chosen to not monetize it.

Welcome to ViperChill. I’m Glen – one of the few people who makes a living online without doing it by teaching you how to make a living online. Because of that, you’ll find no ads and no affiliate links here. It’s all about the content and helping you as much as possible. As it should be.

The second thing that make ViperChill unique is the size of Glen’s blog posts. Most articles are 2,000 to 3,000 words in length and extremely detailed. Because of the size of the posts, Glen updates ViperChill only one or two times per week. Some of the more noteworthy posts include:

• How I Really Build a Blog with 6,500 Subscribers
• Cloud Jacking: 7 Steps to Dominate Your Niche
• How I Wrote a $30,000 eBook (And You Can Too)
• 7 Life Lessons I Apply to Internet Marketing
• Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide
• 28 Resources from my Internet Marketing Toolbox
• Building a $1,000,000 Website in 12 Months

Living In The Cloud

Want to live in the cloud like Glen? You can start by reading all his post from the ViperChill Base. If that doesn’t get your juices flowing and you want more step-by-step instructions, then you can buy Glen’s eBook, Cloud Living (It’s the eBook he made $30,000 with).

Cloud Living includes a 176-page eBook, six video tutorials, a free affiliate website template, 8-page documentation guide and free email support from Glen. Not a bad deal for $37. You can find out more about Cloud Living here.

It’s OK To Make Money

While I don’t have a problem with Glen not monetizing ViperChill, I feel it’s a poor use of resources. I was making money online long before John Chow dot Com came along. The main reason I monetized the blog was to show money can be made by blogging, but another reason was I don’t like seeing sites that could be making a ton of money not making it.

Yes, it sounds good to say you’re not making money off the blog because you want to provide pure information. However, from a business point of view, leaving money on the table isn’t so smart. If Glen doesn’t need any income from ViperChill, I think he can actually increase his brand by monetizing the blog and giving the money away to charity. What sounds better? I don’t make money from this blog or I donate every dollar this blog makes? Whether Glen makes money from ViperChill or not, I’ll still be reading it.

ViperChill : Viral Marketing

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Famous Internet marketer, Frank Kern, is giving away his Four Day Cash Machine for free as part of his pre-launch for his new course. The Four Day Cash Machine was originally included in Frank Kern’s legendary $2,000 Mass Control system…and now you can have it free!

The Four Day Cash Machine is a DONE-FOR-YOU marketing campaign that works like crazy! One person pulled in $7,455 in just four days from a tiny list of only 200 people. Another person got a 16.5% conversion rate. And one lady used it to pull in $79,060.00 in just four days. Pretty amazing stuff.

The Four Day Cash Machine works really well in all kinds of niches. Plus, Frank is giving you everything you need to use it, including:

• All the email templates
• The web page template
• A video walk-through showing you how it works (and why)

Frank made a video to explain what the Four Day Cash Machine is and how it works. Give it a watch and then go download your own cash machine!

Get the Four Day Cash Machine

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

I had to take my wife to a doctor’s appointment today and decided to hit up the Apple Store in Oakridge Centre since it’s just across the street from the doctor’s office. I generally enjoy going to an Apple Store. It alway amazes me that Apple would need such a big store to sell such a small line of products. The formula seems to work however. Apple stores are the most profitable stores in the world, with average sales per square foot of $4,500. The flagship store in New York does almost $1 million a day.

The best thing I like about the Apple Store is you’re free to stay and fool around with the Macs, iPhones and iPods for as long as you want. They even have nice “One to One” tables where you can sit your butt down in front of a Macbook Pro and work away, which is exactly what I did.

During my hour at the Apple Store, I tweeted on Twitter, check my Gmail, chatted on Instant Messenger, changed all the Mac homepages to John Chow dot Com, added my RSS to all the Safari browsers, sent out 46,000 emails and made $1,500. And then it hit me. This truly is the Dot Com Lifestyle. As long as I have access to a computer and the Internet, I really can make money from anywhere in the world.

In many ways, making money from the Apple Store is even better than making it from the office at home. For one thing, the Apple Store has blazing fast Internet!

Another bonus of running your business from the Apple Store is you get to make fun of all the “geniuses” at the Genius Bar. Don’t ask them what the stock symbol for Apple is. They don’t know.

*In case Apple is reading this. I did not used your Macs or store network to send out 46,000 emails. I just used your Mac to connect to my Aweber account. Please don’t ban me from the stores!

My friend Jonathan Volk is hosting a free PPV (Pay Per View) webinar this Wednesday night for all the people who downloaded his new Affiliate Marketing 101 guide. If you have the guide, you’ll be receiving an email with the time and URL to the webinar room sometime today or tomorrow.

If you haven’t downloaded Affiliate Marketing 101 yet, you’re missing out big time. The guide contains 17 sections of pure content. It even comes with a warning declaimer that states, “Your brain might explode from awesome information.” Not only is the guide free but it might win you a brand new Apple iPad as well!

Learn the techniques I have used to personally generate over $4,000,000 in affiliate commissions!

In this guide I go over the who, what, where, when, and why of affiliate marketing. I then take you step by step to learn Pay per click affiliate marketing, Pay per view (cost per view) affiliate marketing, social media marketing (facebook ads), and finally media buying.

Download Affiliate Marketing 101

I have been getting more and more into PPV marketing. In many ways, it’s better than PPC marketing and has more potential. Johnathon Van Clute used PPV to win the Top Affiliate Challenge. He was generating over $4,000 per day in affiliate commission with PPV.

This is one webinar you will not want to miss. Jonathan promises to reveal a bunch of great tips and inside secrets on how to really make money with PPV marketing. Ensure your spot now by downloading Jonathan’s free guide. See you at the Webinar!

Download Affiliate Marketing 101 by Jonathan Volk

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!