I get asked this question at least three times a day, but I finally decided to answer one fellows e-mail as a blog post to save myself from having to e-mail back on all of them.  Chris C. From Ohio writes:
“  I’m just starting out making my own sites.  I’m past the basics, and I understand all the 101 stuff of how everything works.  What I need now is a focused idea.  Can you make a suggestion of an affiliate site(s) that I can create?  I’d really love some direction, and if I take it and make money I’ll send you a consulting fee!…;-)  ”

The one thing I dislike about CJ is that they do not give the total amount paid in a foreign currency.  I’m in the USA, but get paid in Euros, have been for years now.  The rate the Euro increases against the dollar exceeds U.S. interest, so it makes sense to take the funds in that currency.  The problem is that you need to either keep the currency in the Euro (which is what I do, because I do not spend my CJ paychecks, instead I let them accumulate interest in a foreign bank account, and watch as the Euro slides ever further away from the dollar.) Otherwise you need to convert them into the U.S. Dollar, a task that costs money (even at global banks like Wells Fargo).  The problem that arises come tax time, is that the amount you were paid, and the amount you convert is often quite a bit different, especially if you’re making over $20,000.

Sick of wading through thousands of programs in Commission Junction, Linkshare, ShareaSale, etc?  I’ve got a solution for you, one that many people I talk to never think about.  Say you’re in the market for a water fountain, a high end product, ranging from perhaps $1000-$4500.  You search and find a company XYZ Fountains, they have the best prices, promise free FedEx Delivery, and had great customer support. (You did call them to talk to them, it is a $3500 purchase, after all.)  You may have even ordered over the phone.

If you know the ID number of the YouTube video that has been deleted Simply visit DeluTube and enter the ID number. This will allow you to play the video. If the video is too large, you can simply download it to your desktop.

P.S. Glad to be home from Vacation!

I’ve been meaning to get a little information out there on the iPhone being released by Apple soon. The phone has been extremely well hyped, and I’m interested in seeing how well the phone does.

I’ve been using SaS for a couple of month’s now, and I have to say, I’m very impressed. ShareaSale has an excellent selection of smaller advertisers, companies I really like to work with in the marketing realm. Smaller businesses really have an excellent selling position, and are almost always less competitive in the affiliate marketing realm.

Their only real problem I see right now is the lack of functionality in the reporting tools. The “Today’s Stats” for previous days only lists a few advertisers, not all of them. This is not a difficult problem to remedy, and should have been done before the tool was even released.

Adding on to my assortment of affiliate related Firefox extensions, GreaseMonkey is a Firefox extension that allows the user to customize the look and usability of a set of specific websites.  I use it mostly for my Gmail account, color coding the labels, setting up different themes, and more, but it also plays a useful role at Commission Junction.  This script requires you to have a Firefox browser, with the GreaseMonkey extension installed.  Then you simply download and install the CJ Enhancer and you’re off and running.

You know eBay makes money.  Million dollar affiliates, million dollar super sellers, million dollar  baby.. wait, the last one was a movie.  eBay is known for the easy money it has to offer, if you know what your doing…and we do.  JDSign Interactive pulled in 82k in February commissions from eBay, and its always growing.

The first thing you need to focus on is the PPC engines, products that sell well on eBay, but don’t charge a ton for PPC bids.  (*Who reads this blog, here is a tip.. Tooth Whitening, USB Memory, CDs, Label Printers).. Thats my members tip for now.  If you are reading this, test these products, but I bet you don’t pass it along to friends.

I was recently checking out a search for PayPal and noticed something interesting, www.paypal.com was listed twice as the URL of a domain in the first page. The first was the correct address, which directed you to paypal.com, the second sent you off to another domain.  Not only did they make the page displayed as paypal.com, but they also are top ten for a fairly high trafficked keyword.  Imagine if someone did this for banks, trading websites, and even eBay, etc….

This allows the website owner to display a URL that is not owned by them in the URL information location in Google’s results page. I also noticed that Yahoo and MSN do not have this result in their top 10, only Google. Tracking it down, I realized this exploit is really not that difficult, and is something Google really needs to fix immediately. Talk about your ultimate phishing opportunity, my goodness!

As I was writing an email to one of my new clients, I realized this would be a good bit of information to share with anyone who runs a real world business.  This is a landscaping company, but the model, blog marketing plan, and roll out methods all work in just about every other business.

“I don’t know how into the Internet you are, or promoting your business online, but there are a lot of different approaches when dealing with a company that already exists and has a substantial revenue stream already in place.