So about a month ago when I was in a meeting with a business partner and he brought up a service called Backlink Booster… it must have been the 10th time I had heard someone talk about it over the past few months, I knew it was time to look into this and see what all of the hype was all about. So I created an account and started using it to see what it could do for some of our client’s sites that had not seen much improvement lately.

A week and a half later the first site, which had been stuck on page 2 for several months, had risen to the #5 spot! The second site, which had been stuck on page 3 for quite a while had risen to the top of page 2 and not much later it was also on page one! Those were the “test” sites and they past with flying colors!

Since I ran that little test I’ve added many more sites to the backlink booster system and there has been a significant increase in rankings for most of these sites. As someone who has been doing SEO for nearly 8 years, I can honestly say that for one very cheap service to make this much of an impact is nothing short of amazing!

I don’t do many product reviews here on the blog, but when I see these kinds of results I use any means necessary to spread the word.

What Backlink Booster Does

So you have a site, or multiple sites, that you want to get ranked in Google so you can leverage all of that free traffic. So you go submit articles to ezinearticles, submit your site(s) to web directories, social bookmarking sites, forum profiles etc. And it works… your site starts to rise in Google. The only problem is many of those backlinks are never even found by the google bot. So basically, you reap the rewards of your backlinking efforts, but only a small percentage of them!

Believe it or not, even ezinearticles doesn’t have a 100% indexing rate. Thousands of articles on their site never get indexed! And article marketing is one of the most popular forms of manual link building. The indexing rate just gets lower and lower as you go to different techniques like social bookmarking, web directories, forum profiles etc.

What backlink booster does, is it actually builds backlinks TO your backlinks and it works very well! So all of those backlinks that google didn’t find, are now found by google. But that’s not all. Not only do all of these hidden backlinks count as a result of “boosting” them with backlink booster, the authority they all possess is multiplied, which flows through to your website! So the result is more, stronger backlinks!

What I Don’t Like

This thing works… it does what it’s supposed to do, so I don’t complain! But if I were to bring up one thing with the Backlnk Booster guys, it would be to make it more user friendly. However, it’s a complex system in the backend, I can only imagine, and having alot of experience myself with web app. development, I know how it can be difficult to take something so powerful and complex, and simplify it for the users. So what I’ve done is I’ve made a video that should help clear up the confusion that I faced when I created my account, so you can get started with Backlink Booster and benefit from it ASAP.

I’ve been in touch with them over the past several weeks. They are very responsive and eager to improve the system even more, so it seems to me that this is a legitimate, long-term SEO solution that will be around for a long time to come.

–>Click Here to Get Started with Backlink Booster Right Now

Coupon Code: And use this code JS-SAVE-25-1000 to save a huge 25% on your monthly subscription! I contacted the owner of BLB personally and worked this out for you.

I Highly recommend Backlink Booster and use it on a daily basis!

I am obviously an affiliate for Backlink Booster, but if you know me you know that I don’t do product reviews to simply make money. I want to give back too. So if you order through my link above, and you have any questions about it, I would be happy to personally help you with it. Just shoot me an email to joshspaulding1 at gmail dot com and I’ll get back with you ASAP.

Case Study Results! (Update)

I just learned of an independent case study that was done. Check out the results… this is a very impressive test and I think you’ll be impressed with the results! Be sure to come back here and use the coupon code above to claim your 25% recurring discount! Click here to view the case study.

A few months ago I decided I wanted to amp up my twitter exposure. In some niches I’ve had some great results using twitter, so why not improve that exposure along with that of my other niches. There is a tool called “TweetAdder” that had heard alot about, so I checked it out and bought it.

Let me start off with an obvious disclosure statement. I am a TweetAdder affiliate and I will earn a percentage of the sale if you order through my link. Let me also state that when I write a review on this blog it’s for a reason! Mediocre or even good products do not get a review on this blog. Only the products that I emphatically recommend make it here and not even all of them make it to the blog, which is why there are only a handful.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk a little more about why I love this tool so much.

What does TweetAdder do?

In short, it fully automates every aspect of Twitter. But it not only automates it, it automates it very efficiently, which is extremely important considering there are tools that automate just about everything, but not always efficiently. There are really only two things that are important in regards to twitter marketing: getting as many targeted followers as possible and then converting those followers into traffic, loyal subscribers or anything else. The hardest part is getting enough targeted followers without spending five hours a day working on it. That’s where TweetAdder comes in.

There are basically two ways to get targeted Twitter followers:

1. Leveraging an existing customer/subscriber base, then interacting with them, which results in a natural increase in followers.
2. Finding targeted Twitter users, putting out quality tweets and following them, resulting in them following you because of the mutual interest(s) and the quality of your tweets.

Unfortunately most people don’t have that first one. And if you’re a niche marketer like me you target many different niches and having a strong following in one niche doesn’t help you for other niches, so you turn to option two.

- TweetAdder allows you to search for Twitter users by a keyword or phrase in tweets, keywords and phrases in profiles, by location, by length of time since last update, by language, by profiles with or without the default profile image, by Twitter lists, by number of updates, number of followers, number following, by distance… you can even follow those who are following a certain user or that a certain user is following. It then generates a list of users that fall into that criteria. You can then select them all to follow. You can do these searches manually whenever you want, or you can do what I do and set it up to constantly search for a few phrases that I entered and constantly follow those results on autopilot!

- It allows you to set a time frame for users that you follow to follow you back. If they don’t follow back within that time frame it automatically unfollows them for you. This is important because you only want people who follow you back. If you keep people who don’t follow you back your follow/follower ratio is going to be out of whack and will raise a red flag with Twitter.

- It protects you from getting your account banned by using proxies and allows you to set a min. and max. time between follows and unfollows, max. follows per day, and it also allows you to enter a daily time phrase to run, so it is natural. You can also set it to stop following users once your account reaches a certain following to follower rations. I use 1.2 to 1.

- It allows you to pre-write tweets and then it sends them out whenever you want, on autopilot! There is an option to randomize this as well so it looks natural. I don’t personally use this feature, but I do think it could be useful in certain situations if done correctly.

- It has a unique tweet generator, which is basically a content spinner. I do not recommend using this feature. It’s neat, but I recommend writing each of your tweets manually so that they are of max. quality! Good, quality tweets are very important!

- It allows you to automatically send out a ReTweet when a user mentions any keyword that you enter. I haven’t used this option yet, but if done correctly I could see how this feature could be EXTREMELY valuable! Think about it though and don’t use it to spam.

- It allows you to send out an auto Direct Message to everyone who follows you. I do use this feature and I’ve had mixed results. For all of my accounts I use it to tell the user about my Facebook fan page. My Internet Marketing account, for instance, has not converted real well with this, although it has increased it a bit. But by using this feature with my my Geocaching Twitter account it has increased my Facebook following quite a bit.

- It runs in the background on your system, so you just set it and forget it!

Those are the most important features in my opinion and some very powerful ones.

Why I LOVE this software!

I’ve been marketing online for over 6 years now and this is easily one of the most complete and efficient pieces of software I’ve ever owned and that’s the honest to god truth.

With many complex applications the end user (you and I) has to spend alot of aggravating time trying to figure out how it all works. TweetAdder is NOT one of those apps. There are alot of awesome features, but it is very easy to use.

My Results so Far

I’ve been using this software for a few months now. I’m using it for 4 different twitter accounts, all in different niches, although 2 of them are in similar niches. Unfortunately the following results are not 100% accurate because I have gotten followers naturally on a few accounts and from other sources as well, including a contest I ran. The increas in followers and conversion HAS increased a great deal for ALL accounts though as a direct result of using TweetAdder… I can tell you that for sure! Here are the current numbers:

Account 1 (hobby niche) Started with 891 followers, I now have (at the time of writing this) 2,325 followers and a LARGE increase in replies to my tweets and traffic to links I post. The increase in followers isn’t huge, but those new followers are so targeted that it has made a huge difference in conversions. I also went from 266 Facebook fan page friends to 652 and also a LARGE increase in likes, comments and direct traffic. This one was a HUGE success.

Account 2 (Internet Marketing niche) Started with 3,386 followers, I now have (at the time of writing this) 6,197 followers. The direct message sending them to my facebook page helped, but not much in this niche. I started at 179 facebook fans and today I have 356. However, in this niche I have not seen much of an increase in responses etc. That is typical for the IM niche though. There are MANY more spammy profiles in this niche and it is much harder to get a good response with Social Media in it without leveraging an existing customer base, which I’m going to personally start doing.

Account 3 (Adult Niche) Started with a brand new account 0 followers, I now have (at the time of writing this) 461 followers with regular replies from tweets and some steady traffic when posting links. This one hasn’t done anything crazy, but it has definitely converted and remember, TweetAdder just keeps on working, day after day after day. So I expect this one to continue to bring in steady traffic and more followers.

Account 4 (Business niche) Started with 2 followers, I now have 431 and this was a HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE success. I’m still shocked that this happened, but a few days after I set up this account on TweetAdder my sales guy actually had a phone call from a local guy who said that after I followed him (after TWEETADDER followed him) he went to our site and is interested in our services (offline internet marketing and design for small businesses.) We just closed on this account this week and it resulted in a $1,000+ sale. How AWESOME is that! All of that from a simple Twitter follow =)

** REMEMBER, these results are only after a couple months, which is what is truly great about this. TweetAdder is constantly running on autopilot, so the followers and conversions will only increase every day!

What I don’t like

I’m an affiliate for this, so I don’t want to expose all of it’s flaws, right? First, I would never do that! If a product has several flaws I would not be recommending it in the first place and even the best products typically have some kind of flaw. SO FAR I have not found aany major flaws. The only thing that has given me trouble is every time I restart my computer and have to restart TweetAdder, I have trouble getting my accounts to connect through their proxies. I just refresh the proxy list over and over and keep trying to connect and eventually they all do. You do not actually have to use proxies… there is an option to enable/disable it. I just use it to be on the safe side.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that TweetAdder is absolutely, positively one of the best software investments I’ve EVER made and it is definitely, by far the best investment I’ve made this year. If you’re not on Twitter you’re behind and you need to get this. If you are on Twitter you could be getting more followers equaling more conversions and you could be doing it on autopilot.

HIGHLY, HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommended … I wish I would have created this product because it’s a complete and total winner in every aspect. Extremely impressive! Love it!

Coupon Code

I’ve worked out a very special discount for those who order through my link below:

Order through this link: http://www.EthicalIM.com/recommends/TweetAdder using this coupon code: JOSH20 and you will get 20% off! If it doesn’t work for you for some reason let me know and I’ll get it fixed.

In case you don’t know how Intellichat works, a website owner inserts a line of code into their product’s sales page and whenever someone leaves the sales page (or any page you have the line of code on) without ordering it launches a little popup chat screen (you’ve probably seen them many times.) That chat screen is supposed to simulate a live person there to answer your questions about the product, but it’s really just a bunch of pre-written text that an Intellichat agent writes out (without even checking for grammatical errors in my case.)

So the goal is to offer the person some sort of reason to order, hence “saving” the sale. Most people offer a discount. So the “live” chat agent (robot) gives you a link to get the product for cheaper or to claim whatever the special is.

It actually didn’t sound too bad to me because although it seems kind of shady it’s actually a win/win. I’ve also seen these chat things all over the place, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. I tested it out.

Here are my Problems with Intellichat!

1. You pay them per sales page action. In my case they wanted me to pay them $3 per $1 three day trial of HotNicheSpy. So for every $1 I make, I’m paying them $3. That’s all fine and dandy because most of those legitimate trials are going to convert into monthly subscribers BUT I have NO WAY OF PROVING that Intellichat doesn’t have someone sitting there signing up for $1 trials all day. If you’re paying the $3 (or whatever they quote you) for a direct sale of anything over $3 then this issue would not be relevant. I just bring it up because it is relevant to my situation. I asked Maxwell about this and he said “We would account for ALL $1 trials as a sale.”

2. Even if they could prove that each and every sign up is legit, they aren’t “saving” all of these sales!! I don’t know the exact number, but I know MANY people do not buy products the first time they see a sales page! What does that mean? That means EVERY single one of those people who read the sales page and then come back later are going to be given whatever it is you’re offering. If it’s a discount then you can bet they’ll be using it and you’ll be paying Intellichat for that “saved” sale which isn’t saved at all. Now, not only are you losing money because you’re giving these customers a discount, you’re also losing $3 from every one because Intellichat is claiming that THEY saved the sale!

With all of that being said I do not recommend Intellichat or any similar service unless they can somehow address these issues. I’m sure #1 could be easily addressed and resolved, but I can’t imagine how anyone could accurately resolved #2.

I also did a little research after I went through this issue and I found this Intellichat Rip-off Report article.

I have seen the ripoffreport website in the past and I tend to believe it’s a legitimate site, but I really don’t know for sure whether or not their accusations are correct.

As far as I’m concerned Intellichat hasn’t proven to me that they should be considered a “Scam” but they haven’t proven that they are NOT a scam either!

My advice: Be VERY Cautious!

About 5 years ago when I started my online business I took the advice of a friend and signed up with GetResponse, an email marketing service. Since then I’ve had several problems, but most have been minor, so I sucked it up and drove on, as they say in the Army. They do get my emails in my clients inboxes (hopefully all of them, but there’s no way of knowing for sure.)

So there have been no major issues, just several minor issues. That was until a few weeks ago!

GetResponse allows it’s customers to track clickthroughs to all links in their emails. You simply check a box and Getresponse will replace your link with a custom link that is SUPPOSED to redirect to the real link, all while tracking how many people click on it.

So I’ve had this enabled for a long while now and everything has been fine. But a couple weeks ago, every time I send out an email, I started getting people contact me telling me they tried to click the link, but they got a 404 error page. This isn’t happening with EVERY link, but judging by the number of people contacting me, it’s alot of them!

So I call GetResponse and speak with a representative who assures me they will take care of the issue and get back with me. 2 days later, nothing.

I call again and speak with another representative. This time it’s a lady who seems very concerned. She fooled me. I REALLY thought she was going to get to the bottom of this. She assured me that she would get back with me ASAP. That was 2 days ago.

I ALSO contacted GetResponse via email 2 days ago. Nothing!

So I call one last time today to give them a chance to resolve this issue before I contact an attorney. I’m giving Angela a chance to get this resolved for me and any other customer who may be effected. I’ll let you all know how it turns out.

For now, if you are a GetResponse customer, login to your account, go to your campaign list, then click on the settings for each one of them, one by one, click “message settings” then uncheck “Click-through tracking”

If you’ve never enabled click tracking you’re ok! But if you have, you may be losing thousands of dollars like I believe I am!

(A big thanks to Jackie for explaining the real issue. I originally though it was specific to domain assignment, but she pointed at that it’s a much bigger problem, in the click tracking overall.)

(UDATE) From Simon Grabowski (Owner of GetResponse)

“My developers and engineers have identified this issue, found the root cause and are going to roll out the fix no later than 8 AM EST tomorrow (Feb 18th). All of the affected links will work fine from that point onwards, even for mailings that were sent in the past.

I can confirm that in less than 0.3% instances (3 out of 1,000 emails sent) a click-tracking link could have been corrupted due to a wrong checksum — as a result causing a 404 error upon a subscriber click-through. This extremely sporadic issue only occurred with less than 50 GR accounts.”

I had just started my Geocaching blog at that time (I have since sold that site) and was looking for monetization ideas. Since there are alot of different Geocaching items on eBay, I figured I would give phpBay Pro a shot and 8 months later I can say I’m glad I did.

(If you don’t know, it’s a product that allows you to easily set up small “stores” on your site that sell eBay products. It’s very easy to set up. You could have a phpBay store up in less than 5 minutes. However, this post isn’t about the mechanics of it. If you want to learn exactly what it is, just refer to the initial review, which I linked to above.)

I’ll tell you right away how much I’m making from it. I’m currently only using phpBay Pro on my Geocaching blog and it averages about $40/month.

Now, $40 a month may not sound very impressive, but it IS and I’ll tell you why. There are 2 reasons:

1. I’ve done VERY little promotion of the blog and it gets very little traffic. I’ve submitted ONE article to ezinearticles and followed a bunch of Geocachers on Twitter. The blog only gets about 20 visitors a day! In the past few weeks I have started to do some more promotion, but for the past 8 months I’ve done VERY little. You could almost say no promotion. Most of the 20 or so daily visitors is coming from Google for various related terms and Twitter. In other words, there isn’t anything special going on here.

2. phpBay Pro has outperformed both Adsense and Affiliate offers that I’ve placed on the blog. Outperformed would actually be an understatement. I had Adsense on the blog for 30 days and it earned $4.67 I removed adsense and placed some very targeted affiliate offers for one month and I made 1 sale, which resulted in a $12 commission for me. SO, I went back to PHPbay Pro and right away it was back up to $40 a month!

Now my plan is to simply start promoting it, mostly through article marketing, and get that $40/m. up to $1,000/month. I’m confident I’ll get it there in the next 6 months or so. The way I see it, if one article and a little tweeting got it to a consistant $40/month, what will 20, 30 or even 50 articles do?

Why does it outperform adsense and affiliate offers?

You know what, I honest don’t have a good answer to that, but it certainly has in this case. My initial thoughts on this was that it could be an alternative to adsense in certain niches or affiliate programs in others. But I honestly didn’t think it would be possible to earn much money, just from eBay fees. I was wrong! People find something in the phpBay Pro shop, then it seems they tend to buy multiple products, so those fees add up, which means my commissions add up each time.

This data has convinced me that this is a viable money maker for niche sites and even authority sites depending on the niche and model. After seeing the results from this blog, I’m going to be adding a phpBay Pro store to almost all of my niche niches and even a few of my authority sites.

Whether you run niche sites or authority sites, if there are products related to your niche on eBay I recommend considering this! It’s working for me and I bet it will work for you too!

If you choose to give it a shot, I worked out a discount for you.

To take advantage of the discount use the link below:
http://www.ethicalim.com/recommends/phpBay

Then use this Discount code: 2E9C2A36C9

Once you get there, you’ll have a few options:

1. phpBay Pro for WordPress – This is what I use and what I recommend to you if you use WordPress.
2. phpBay Pro API – This is what you would use if you do not use WordPress. Will yield the same result.

3. phpZon Pro for WordPress – This is just like the phpBay Pro WordPress plugin, except it uses Amazon products, instead of eBay. I haven’t used this yet, but I plan on doing some tests in the near future. It looks promising!
4. phpZon Pro API – This is just like the phpBay Pro API, except it uses Amazon products, instead of eBay. I haven’t used this yet, but I plan on doing some tests in the near future. It looks promising!

I made quite a bit of money writing articles for others, but it did take some trial and error and I could have definitely started making money with my writing much quicker than I did.

So today I’m doing a review of a product by Courtney Ramirez, who I’ve worked with several times in the past, called “The Content Chef” which is basically a guide she has put together that will help anyone who wants to get the same start I had making money online and do it quickly and correctly!

What you get

As soon as you purchase the product you receive a zip file that contains LOADS of info! You get:

1: The primary product, which is presented as 3 PDF’s. Each PDF is a different “module.”
2: A 30-day Success Guide, which offers in-depth instructions on how to get started for the complete “newbie” to content writing.
3. A “What is Internet Marketing” report for those who are completely new to Internet Marketing in general.
4. A Business Forms pack to help you stay organized.
5. A 46-item list of free web resources to help you with your new writing business.

If you already have a basic understanding of writing for money online then you’ll only really need the primary product. If you’re BRAND new to this whole thing they will all be useful and together they will help you get a profitable web writing business going fast.

First, an important note

If you think you need to be an excellent writer in order to do this you’re wrong! I’m a decent writer and I made good money when I wrote for others and I’ve seen people with HORRIBLE grammar do this and make loads of money. If you can write the English language and it makes sense, you can make money writing online!

What I like about “The Content Chef”

- The thing I like most about this product, which I knew before I even read the PDF’s, is that it comes from someone who REALLY knows what she’s talking about! TOO many products out there these days, especially electronic products, come from people with mediocre to substandard knowledge on the subject. They do it for one reason, to make money.

While I’m SURE Courtney’s goal is also to make money, this is a topic she certainly knows a great deal about! I’ve known Courtney for years and I’ve personally paid her to do writing work for me. She’s one of the best online today, so when you take the advice she offers within “Content Chef” you know you’re getting solid information!

- You’re not limited to just one type of writing job. Courtney goes into detail and shows you how to make money writing for multiple types of individuals and organizations doing multiple types of writing jobs. If you just want to write 300 word articles for people, that’s fine. If you just want to write ebooks, that’s fine too. She shows you how to make money doing ALL KINDS of different proven methods. If you want to do everything you can possibly do, that’s fine. Courtney lays it all out there!

- Not only do you learn HOW to write for money online, you also learn WHY, which for some people including myself, is an important part of any instruction. I like to know WHY I’m doing something… why people are willing to pay me to do this, what they’re using it for etc.

- Unlike ANY other product of this kind, after Courtney teaches you everything about writing for others and making money from them, she goes into how you can get started on your OWN stuff! Your own websites etc. In other words, she shows you how to get started making cash by working for others, but she also explains how you can expand from there and eventually flip the script and make money like the people who are paying you are making money!

What I don’t like

You know, I’d be a liar if I told you I don’t make money if you purchase this product. The fact is I will indeed make money if you purchase it, so any type of review of this type from anyone is going to be a little biased. But I’ll also tell you that although I can’t avoid being a little biased due to those facts, everything I said above is true!

Now it’s time to add a little negativity to add to the credibility of the review because that’s how you write a good review to get people to buy But I honestly don’t have anything bad to say about this product. I’d say Courtney is probably offering too much, that’s about it. Most people won’t need all of the bonuses. Some people won’t need any of them. But there will be a few that get something from all of them, so it’s not a bad thing.

My conclusion

I can honestly say, putting my reputation on the line, that this is an EXCELLENT product for anyone who wants to start seeing REAL money coming in from their online efforts!

I used many of these methods to make money first money online and there is no doubt in my mind that you will to if you get this product and put the advice within into action!

The Content Chef

You can grab your copy above. Highly Recommended!

So, I was speaking with my buddy, Mark Mason and he mentioned some software he had been using called “phpBay” to create stores on his sites. He sent over a few examples and I was sold. I bought a copy and set up my first store in no time flat at http://www.madcacher.com/shop/.

What is phpBay

phpBay is a very powerful PHP script, which allows anyone to create a shop, which contains various Ebay items targeted to your niche. After you install it you simply insert your Ebay affiliate ID then generate the code that will make your shop work by inserting a simple keyword or phrase. The script will generate a very professional, user friendly shop that will display only items that are related to the phrase you inserted! And of course, every sale that is generated through your shop equals money in your pocket, which is the best part!

If you want a shop on your WordPress blog you’re all set because phpBay offers an easy to use WP plugin, which is what I’m currently using on madcacher.com

But, it’s not specific to WordPress. You can use this script on any PHP based website. MOST servers are PHP based, so if you’re not sure, most likely your server can run this… the file extension just needs to end with .php instead of .html or other formats. This can be easily changed though.

How many shops can I create?

You can create an UNLIMITED amount of sites on an UNLIMITED number of sites! To me that’s very important! I don’t ant to spend money on something I’m using for a little niche site and not be able to use it on my other sites as well!

Is this only for U.S. based customers?

Nope, phpBay supports seventeen different Countries!

What I like

I really like the easy of use and the potential here. The WordPress plugin is as simple to install and integrate as any other plugin, which is incredibly easy. The income potential is great. Obviously traffic is key, but this is the easiest way I know of to get a shot up on any of your sites within minutes, with no additional work!

What I don’t like

I always try to find things I don’t like about products I’m promoting, because to be honest, it adds to credibility. What kind of a reviewer would I be if I loved everything I was reviewing? Well, this time I honestly haven’t seen anything I don’t like about phpBay. I’m sure I could find a few small things here and there, but I haven’t yet. It’s pretty cut and dry… install it, insert a few settings and your shop is up and running.

How much does it cost?

phpBay normally sells for $79, but I’ve worked out a special deal for my readers. You know I take care of you So, If you order through the link below and use the following coupon code, you’ll get a 20% discount, which is far less than what everyone else, including myself, is paying. However, after 100 orders this coupon code will no longer be valid. (If the coupon code is still there, the offer is still good)

coupon code: 6BC288DE3A
Order Link: http://ez-onlinemoney.com/recommends/phpBay

Whether you use phpBay or not, having a shop for each niche you target is an excellent idea, especially if you’re a niche marketer with several small, niche sites. A one-time investment can add a new monetization model to your entire business and unlike ads, it’s not intrusive and actually adds to the credibility of your site!

-edit- For my results with phpBay Pro 8 months later, see http://www.ethicalim.com/product-reviews/phpbay-pro-review-discount-8-months-later/

Obviously everyone and their brother is promoting this, hoping to earn some affiliate cash, and of course most of the people who are promoting this either don’t understand what article marketing is all about, or just care more about commissions than they do about preserving (or building) an honest reputation.

After going through the videos, here are my thoughts.

What is AffSphere?

AffSphere is a new “article directory,” which is more or less a creative marketing technique to upsell it’s authors into Affiliate Classroom.

It’s just like you’re typical article directory, but there are “8 ways to make money,” which I’ll go over in a minute. Most of these 8 ways are nothing new, and I predict most authors will make little money with it and those who do, could have made much more by doing good keyword research and submitting their articles to established article directories.

One thing that was mentioned over and over and over again in the prelaunch videos was the fact that others can syndicate your content from AffSphere on their own sites/newsletters etc. This is was many people believe the “real” advantage to article marketing is, but those of us who have been marketing online with articles for years know that good syndication doesn’t happen very often at all.

Articles are syndicated allllllllll the time from article directories, but they aren’t syndicated to quality sites 99% of the time; they are scraped onto splogs.

I’ve had articles syndicated to quality sites, but it doesn’t happen very often at all and when it does, it’s syndicated from an authority site like EzineArticles, not AffSphere.

AffSphere says there are “8 ways to make money”

1 “Traffic generation” – Same as all other article directories. The only problem is that AffSphere is brand new and has very little authority in the Search Engines. I’ve run several article directories in the past and I can tell you with 100% confidence, the real traffic with article directories comes from the thousands of long tail articles ranking in SE’s and that doesn’t happen over night.

Sites like EzineArticles can get our articles top 10 rankings because of years of strict quality guidelines, which equals trust with G and Y.

2 “Ad Credits” – Nothing new, usually equals very little exposure. You get double credits if you’re an Affiliate Classroom member. (upsell) You’ll be competing with every other affsphere member. How much exposure will that realistically provide?

3 “Trade credits for adsense impressions” (adsense revenue sharing) – There have been loads of revenue sharing article directories and sites pop up over time. None of them ever make it anywhere because they’re spammed with trash content from authors trying to make a quick buck. Once again, how much money will you make realistically when you’re competing with every other author? Same goes for #7 below.

4 “5 tier downline” – Good for people with decent exposure, not for the average article marketer. AffSphere promotes other products/services and your commissions for 5 tiers deep. Neat, but just anther affiliate program. If you can send exposure you can make money… do you have enough exposure to send them in order to make a decent amount of money?

5 “Viral AffSphere Recruiting” – Your affiliate link for AffSphere goes into each of your articles. Most of the traffic to your articles (if there is any) will be coming from search engines and that traffic will be targeted to the topic of your article… this will make you very little, if any money.

6 “Affiliate Classroom Commissions” – Once again, upsale for Affiliate Classroom. Your Affiliate Classroom affiliate link goes into your articles.

7 “Affiliate links in articles” – Some article directories have allowed this, but ultimately they restrict it for the same reason revenue sharing article directories never go anywhere. People submit loads of crappy, PLR content with hopes of making a quick buck.

8 “Commissions on sales” – uhm, there’s a 5 tier affiliate program, which is why there are so many stunning reviews, which are more of “I love this” than they are reviews.

My Conclusion

The above review may sound harsh. I actually have no problem at all with Anik and the overall idea is a smart one from a marketing point of view. I’m sure it will bring in loads of new clients to Affiliate Classroom.

But it’s simply not going to help my article marketing efforts, not for a long while at least. I also think Anik and his team have bitten off more than they can chew in regards to their extremely loose article acceptance guidelines. It’s A BUNCH of work to maintain standards with an article directory and unless the Author Guidelines are tightened up soon, AffSphere will never see the kind of traffic EzineArticles, Buzzle etc. see.

However, there are a couple (and I do mean a couple) people who I completely trust. Jonathan Leger is one of them. I’m very big on honesty, not only because it’s just good to be honest in life, but in this business people TRUST you when you’re honest. Honesty = Trust, and trust = Sales!

Jonathan has taken the “method” of being completely honest in this business and turned single promotions into $20,000+ literally over night!

I’ve been watching him like a hawk over the past few months and I can honestly say that he consistently teaches me something that improves my business, which in turn improves my income!

Jonathan has just recently released a new report called “Preselling Secrets,” which in a nutshell explains how to effectively “presell” by NOT shoving products in the face of your potential customers! It quite literally explains how NOT selling, selling then selling some more is much more profitable in the long run than going by the ever-so-popular “guru” method, which makes us all sick to our stomach!

The only thing I wish he would have mentioned in the report is the fact that all the facts he provides not only apply to mailing lists, but all online business models ie. blogging, static sites etc. But as long as you know that, it doesn’t matter!

If you’re interested in reading this report, which I highly recommend, go to:

http://ez-onlinemoney.com/recommends/Preselling-Secrets.html

I want to make it clear that I do profit from the sales made through that link, but I honestly believe that those who read this report and implement what they learn, can really transform their business as I have using pretty much the same techniques mentioned within!

This recommendation may be a little premature since I just signed up a few days ago, but I’ve already put in several support tickets for different issues (none that were the fault of LiquidWeb) and every one was replied to and corrected within an hour. Their support reps are very professional and they’re actually eager to help, which is a pleasant surprise dealing with a host.

They granted several requests I had, which weren’t included in the package I purchased and they were quick in doing so.

Their prices are equal to and even better than many of the other hosts I looked into.

I’ve NEVER highly recommended any host because 99% of them have poor support and I believe that the support makes or breaks a web hosting company.

I recently sold a site and did the transfer for the buyer who purchased a shared hosting plan with them. He provided all of the details to me so I worked directly with the shared hosting support and they were just as good as the dedicated support!

Outstanding host! Highly recommended!

http://www.liquidweb.com/

*edit* I am using affiliate links in this post, but I would have written the same review whether they had an affiliate program or not!