Jim’s posting on time this week?!?
Impossible… YES! And it’s Sunday…
…so here comes some LINK LOVE!

It’s that time of the week again, and time to recap what has happened and what is to come. I had a busy week from the start, as a contest ended and a contest started. But not only that, the stock market (once again) crashed to smithereens in the face of the highest reading on the VIX (AKA, the “fear index”) in history. So people are scared now right? Well well well… looking like a mighty fine time to get some capitulation off our lows, at least temporarily.

“What’s this talk about the stock market Jim? Spare me the jargon, and get me some link love!”

Right right, sorry. Let’s get back on track. Here are five of the best articles that I came across this week, the week ending October 11th 2008, and a few reasons to read them. Things are getting hectic, but lets settle down and run through some link love!

• Benjamin Patton – You Need a Custom Robots.txt, So Let’s Make One
• Chris Guthrie – How Much Money is an RSS Subscriber Worth?
• Uber Affiliate – The “Next Level” of Affiliate Marketing
• Ian Fernando – MySpace Ads: The First Case Study
• Suite J – Website Flipping: Outsourcing 101

Let’s kick it off with my man Big Ben, who wrote about making your own custom robots.txt. Making this file could prove an effective way to get Google to index your pages, so check it out! Chris Guthrie did a neat study where he compared blog earnings to number of RSS subscribers to see how they worked together. Uber Affiliate wrote a pretty informal post about how to bump up your affiliate marketing to the “next level.” I doubt he’ll show up to comment here (despite my efforts), so let’s just bombard him with links till he gives up, eh? One of my favorite marketers Ian Fernando gets in to MySpace advertising in a quick case study you should see. Finally, sweet Suite J gets into outsourcing your projects, and offers up some cool tips to boot. Great work this week guys, looking forward to more.

Stock Market Update
Ouch. Again. The good news this time around is that we had a nice reversal in the Dow Jones leading into the weekend… giving investors high spirits as we closed things out down just a percent and a half after falling more than 700 on Friday. In fact, the 1000-point spread between lows and highs was the largest in history! This just goes to show once again how volatile things are getting out there.

International turmoil is getting quite out of hand, and the American markets actually aren’t bad at all compared to the overseas exchanges. The dollar continued to rally (as did the Japanese Yen) in the face of a crashing market, which was quite funny. However, you have to consider how other markets are volatile. Since the U.S. Dollar is such a reliable currency, people are buying it hand over fist to maintain liquidity.

We got that international rate cut that we were looking for! Many central banks around the world lowered their rates (borrowing from bank-to-bank) in an attempt to ease credit concerns and increase buying/lending interest to fuel the globablized economy. The United States Federal Funds target is now at just 1.5%… though I feel it should be at 1% where Alan Greenspan (the former chair of the Federal Reserve) had them during the last crisis (9/11). Despite all this, the market sank that day. Fantastic. This pretty much describes the markets, eh?

What’s Happening ‘Round the Blogosphere?
As most of you know, I launched my October Spectacular contest where you can win a Nintendo Wii and a lot of other really cool things. Unfortunately, it seems that the market has been cornered and a lot of my readers are out in the cold. Because of this, I am in the process of re-negotiating terms. Perhaps I can change around the contest structure and get the rest of you on board to win one of these fabulous prizes.

What’s with all the irrelevant posts? I don’t want to name names… but there are so many people nowadays posting random stuff to their blogs… we’re talking politics, video games and poetry… that it begs the question. What were you thinking?! People like to justify these posts in the following way: “well I got a lot of traffic to those posts!” and that’s fantastic… except that random hits mean nothing. If you are running a blog for the sake of making money off it, you should go out and get a $6/hour job selling lemonade because it’s probably a better use of your time. Blogging is for leverage, not immediate profit. Therefore, unless you have visitors that are interested in your product… you aren’t getting sales. Bottom line. Your thoughts?

A pretty slow week over all from the blogging world. It would appear that the online world is becoming a more and more attractive place to try and make money online after many people have lost their jobs or are trying to secure their finances. This pans out well for bloggers! If you still don’t own a blog, you are missing out. I can hook you up with a free Blog Domination Package if you are interested.

The Week Ahead
I had planned on posting a part three of my Keyword SEO series, but have been slacking. So, I am hopefully going to have that post out sometime this week. In addition, I’ve still got that controversial article to work on. I have the idea, I just need to sit down and knock it out! This should be a fun way to gauge just how serious bloggers are about their work… but enough hints for the day. I am planning on focusing down on the financial markets this week. I feel that there will be a BIG reversal this week, and I plan to use that to sell out my stakes and jump into some double-short ETFs, which is essentially betting on a market decline.

As always… stay bullish on the net!
-Jimvesting

I still remember the first time I got a “trackback” on my first blog. I thought… “what the heck is this?” This initial reaction is exactly how 90% of bloggers view trackbacks coming from other websites to their blogs. The fact is: trackbacks can be good, trackbacks can be bad, and trackbacks can be exploited for money.

[...] I just stole your traffic! [...]

Money?! Really!?

That’s right. Hitting trackbacks is an all too common blackhat SEO method to secure lots of traffic in a small amount of time. It’s quick and effective (when done correctly), and can really leech a good portion of your traffic. Because of this, I’d like to spend the day today to explain to all of you exactly what the function of a trackback is to your blog… and how you should go about deleting or accepting them to your website.

What is a Trackback Anyway?

Trackbacks were actually originally developed for the “MovableType” blogging platform. Since then, the technology has been adapted in WordPress and Blogger blogs to increase their functionality. The original creator, SixApart, wrote: “In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, “This is something you may be interested in.” To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.”

So yeah, a trackback is essentially an alternative to commenting. Anytime you mention someone else’s post and link to it, they will receive a “trackback” notification (also called a “ping”)… basically letting the original blogger know that someone else is plugging them. This is a very useful tool, and it makes my Sunday Link Love all the more popular and useful. The only downside is that trackbacks make it quite easy to score a free link. It is an attempt to create a sort of “authenticity” to comments, but has been skewed (and even faked entirely) as a spammers tool in many cases.

The WhiteHat Use of Trackbacks

Trackbacks are the most useful thing since sliced bread, and make blogging so much more interactive than it would be ordinarily. So naturally, the WhiteHat use of trackbacks is two-fold. It is now possible that any time you write about someone else’s blog post, you will be leaving a real time link on their post back to your more recent article. The other side of the coin is that it creates a very authentic and friendly blogging atmosphere where people can get some attention where they wouldn’t ordinarily.

Say I am writing about this or that (as I do) and someone comes along and writes about my post, recommending it (or bashing it!). Because of the trackback feature, I am going to notice that you wrote about and linked to my blog. Since you helped me out, I’m likely to check out what you had to say. This is a fantastic way for smaller bloggers to reach out to the big boys and gain some media attention for free. By being a bit generous about your linking, it won’t be long before you are getting friendly linking activity from other bloggers in your niche interest area.

The BlackHat Use of Trackbacks

A little disclaimer: I don’t do this, and do not advocate you doing this either. The following methods I am about to outlay are considered BlackHat and could potentially get you banned from Google or otherwise disciplined.

This is why you come to Jimvesting, isn’t it? I am not going to pretend like everyone here is using WhiteHat trackbacks to be responsible bloggers. Not at all. In fact, there is a mass exodus of bloggers that use the functionality of pinging posts just to gain a traffic boost where it is not deserved for their sole benefit. Let’s talk about the other side of things, and how a lot of people are using trackbacks to make money.

The beauty of trackbacks is that few people actually understand how they work. This is one of the reasons I am writing this today, to inform! Since nobody knows what a “ping” is, very few bloggers actually delete the trackbacks that come in… believing whole-heartedly that someone actually enjoyed what they wrote and linked to them! What fools!

Using blog commenting to spam is out of touch, since people will always realize a spammy comment… but won’t necessarily pick up on a spammy trackback. Links created by trackbacks are two-way reciprocal links, and this is a problem that BlackHat folks have to deal with since two-way links do not hodl the same “link juice” that one-way links do. So, BlackHat’ers have had to devise a way to manufacture one-way trackback links to optimize their linkage.

The primary program used to automate the task is “Trackback Spider,” while there are some other slower tools like the manual form on Wiz Bang Blog. After you find a blog with the trackback feature enabled openly, you could potentially generate a whole slew of trackback links that are one-way pointing to your blog. This is basically, well, cheating. Which is exactly why so many people doing this get busted.

Arm Yourself With Knowledge!

Obviously, now that you know what people are doing with trackbacks, it is going to be a lot easier for you to defend your blog from these traffic leechers. There are two ways to defend your blog from ping attacks… spam guarding and completely disabling your website. Obviously, option one would be to turn off trackbacks completely… which you can do in your admin panel options settings. I don’t really recommend this unless you are getting absolutely pounded by trackbacks on a daily basis and can’t keep up with your spam protection. As was implied, the other method is to install a spam plugin to blog any potentially hazardous comment or ping that comes in. I use Akismet, which works quite well!

Bottom Line: Trackbacks can be a great blogging tool, or your worst enemy. If you are a BlackHat SEO kind of person, chances are you are using trackback pings to send big inflows of traffic to your blog for free… getting you lots of hits, which translates to lots of money in your pocket. I use trackbacks to send out link love to deserving bloggers, and I absolutely love the tool’s functionality as an emerging blogger’s best friend.

Ouch! I had to delay the link love and announcements all the way to Tuesday? Well with the contracted launch of my October Spectacular, and the promised results show for my September Hosting Bonanza… there really wasn’t too much wiggle room. Regardless, we all need to be updated and refreshed… so let’s head into the rest of the week strong!

Post quality from this past week was extremely high, and I enjoyed a lot of things that I read. After meeting a few new bloggers, and calculating my head off in the face of contests starting, stopping and everything in between, it’s time to take a look back at five of (what I felt were) the best articles for the week ending October 4th, 2008.

• Freddie Taylor – Capitalize on the Long Tail
• Linker’s Blog – What’s On Your RSS?
• CopyBlogger – Is Your Blog Ginger or Mary Ann?
• Thou Shall Blog – The Best 15 SEO Tools for Beginners
• Enkay Blog – What Advertising Can Do For You

Kicking things off with Freddie Taylor, he had a great logical step through of the “long tail.” This is a neat theory of sales and marketing that you just have to hear! Linkers’ Blog wrote an interesting run-down of what blogs he reads on the daily. Clearly, he left my name clear out of the list… but I’ll cut him some slack on that one this time. CopyBlogger had the funniest post I have read in awhile… taking a cue back to popular American television pastime “Gilligan’s Island.” Thou Shall Blog put together a brilliant list of SEO tools and Enkay offers some clever insight into the world of advertising.

Stock Market Update
Well for starters, today was a bit nuts. After seeing the biggest point drop in Dow Jones history, we had a mid-major reversal to close down 3.5%. It’s a bit amusing how 3.5% down was good news, eh? Essentially, what is happening here is that as the Dollar and Yen soar against other currencies, the world is turning to staple holdings in panic as global turmoil is destroying everyone’s market systems. Just a few hours ago, Australia announced that they would be cutting rates by 1 full percentage point. This has sent Asian markets into mixed territory, so I’ll wait to see how this effects the rest of us.

The big discussion going on now is whether we will experience a sort of universal rate cut of sorts. When you have a “rate cut,” people are usually referring to the rate at which banks borrow from each other (and from their governments). By lowering rates, you make credit easier to obtain and theoretically boost buying interest. As credit markets have become almost completely frozen, we need something like this from every government in order to escape the financial terror.

Over the weekend, in news that was dwarfed by macro-economic trends, Wachovia was reportedly “sold” to Citigroup. In this deal, Citi effectively saved Wachovia from failure in a deal backed by the FDIC. But just when things seemed set in stone, Wells Fargo stepped in and made a better offer. A day later, our government decided that it was illegal, by the contract with Citigroup, for Wachocia to have talked to Wells Fargo at all! So, now we are frozen in the balance, and the SEC actually stopped trading altogether on the company. Let’s wait and see how this one turns out!

Blogosphere Update
As the owner of a new financial community, Bullish Bankers, I have been absolutely astounded by the recent sale of financial website Bankaholic.com to BankRate.com for $15 million dollars. $12.4 million in cash up front is absolutely nuts for a blog that I quite frankly don’t think is very good. A standard design with lax posting, commenting and an insane amount of monetization shouldn’t fetch that kind of premium. Nevertheless, it seems that I’ve hit the hot niche at the right time, and thus may have a nice valuation on Bullish Bankers right now.

PageRank had an update! Yep. Not too happy about that one. I got dropped officially from a 4 to a 3, and right now I am fighting to get my old ranking back. Unfortunately, Google isn’t the most accessible bunch. Despite my valid complaint they have yet to respond and I can only hope that they do (as they haven’t ever before). You can try your hand by requesting a PageRnak reconsideration. Here are some directions on how to do that.

OIO Publisher updated to version 2.0! Now you can finally get the best monetization tool around not only for WordPress, but for any other service online. It’s totally standalone, and the features on WordPress have been optimized even more! My favorite feature is the ability for advertisers to upload their own ad to the server, cutting down on messy linkage problems once and for all. You can get $17 OFF for a limited time by using the coupon “JimvestingDEAL” at checkout!

This Week In Focus
I’ve been in a blog posting frenzy this week so far, and I already have two posts that I want to put out on the docket… ready to write. In addition, we are going to continue the series of Google Keyword optimization while I look to capitalize on the “make money online” niche with some ranking power there. Heck, maybe Google will reward me with a higher PageRank if I can pull it off.

I’m actually thinking of writing a fun, slightly controversial, post this week. However, it’s going to take some time to brainstorm it… so hopefully it will be up before the end of the week. I’m fighting for some higher traffic and the eventual breaking of that elusive 750 subscriber mark. So stick with Jimvesting, and turn your time into cash!

-Jimvesting

It’s that time again, the results are in for the Net Fool’s September HostGator Hosting Bonzanza and it’s time to announce the winners! A lot of you participated this time around, and it was definitely a fun contest with a lot of interest from all of you looking for some high-quality hosting. Before we get into that, I wanted to give a quick thanks to our host for the month of September, HostGator!

Jimvesting’s Preferred Host

HostGator is one of the top web hosting companies on the internet today, and they serve over 1.3 million domain names… including theNetFool.com! I chose to use HostGator as my preferred web host because I had heard about their superior uptime, reputation, speed and service. After purchasing premium hosting from them, I have been completely satisfied. Every time I need help, they are within a few minutes and are more than willing to help me out. The customer reps are nice, and the server has some great speed that can’t be beat. I like the security of knowing that my website will be online at all times, and HostGator allows me to stay certain that things are working.

The Results

We had a TON of entries this time around, 875 to be exact. However, a lot of you had 2, 15 or even 40 entries to the competition… so the odds were definitely in your favor. After a lot of people had written about the competition, and I received a good amount of buzz on the blogosphere… it’s time to finally announce the winners. Please check out the video below for the full live drawing, proof that we do things fair.

I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you want to watch the video to see the results. I am going to email the three winners as soon as I can, and get you guys set up with your free hosting! Scroll down if you would like to skip the video.

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AND THE WINNERS ARE:

1. Mark Sierra (“SWAMP” HOSTING PLAN)
2. HomeBiz.Bukiki.com (“BABY” HOSTING PLAN)
3. Chetan (“HATCHLING” HOSTING PLAN)

Congratulations to all of you! I want to thank everyone for entering and helping us out. Maybe next time you’ll be the lucky winner, eh? Be sure to check out this month’s October Spectacular, where you can win a new Nintendo Wii or even a Flip Mino (or more!). Another thanks to HostGator for the great contest, and until next time… stay BULLISH on the net!

-Jimvesting

Want to win a Brand New Nintendo Wii? How about a Flip Mino? Maybe some extra spending cash ($50), or a copy of my popular eBook! NOW YOU CAN. I’ve teamed up with the folks at Market Leverage to bring you Jimvesting’s October Spectacular!

No more cheesy giveaways with banner ads, consultations and paid reviews… Jimvesting is giving away REAL prizes worth over $600 to readers absolutely free! By working with Market Leverage, you can earn yourself a great prize just by beating out the competition in affiliate earnings. The bottom line is: while you rack up big money by using the Market Leverage service, you’ll be automatically in the running to win a brand new Nintendo Wii, my personal favorite gaming console, or even a Flip Mino video camera, a recording device that I use (and love) personally. Even the bronze medalist will take home a nice $50 gift card, now let’s get into the contest!

The Grand Prize: One Nintendo Wii Gaming System

You know you want it! Be the grand prize winner and you’ll win yourself a brand-spanking new Nintendo Wii delivered right to your doorstep. This thing is still sold out around the world, but I’ve got one in stock just for you. Valued at $350, this thing isn’t just the next-generation gaming console, it’s the all-generation gaming console. With fun and exciting games coming out all the time, you can’t afford to miss this!

The Runner-Up: One Flip Mino Video Camera

Fast-becoming the standard in blogging, the new Flip Mino video camera allows you to shoot crystal-clear videos on the go, and upload it to your computer with the “flip” of a switch! It’s the same camera I use for my video blogging shows, and I highly recommend it. Valued at $200, the Flip Mino is easy, fast and fun… get your hands on it today!

Third Place: One $50 American Express Rewards Card

The Market Leverage Rewards Card from American Express works just like a credit card. Our third place winner will net themselves their very own prepaid $50 debit card. With it, you can shop and order anywhere American Express is accepted.

Random Giveaways: Ten Copies of my eBook “Work Smart, Get Rich!”

Maybe you aren’t the top affiliate referral of the month? You’ll still have an awesome shot at one of ten copies of my popular eBook “Work Smart, Get Rich!” This ebook will take you through the process that I use to make thousands in the world of eBooks, with less than an hour of work! It’s lucrative and easy… so get your hands on a copy today!

How To Win

So now that I’ve got you all riled up, you probably want to know how you can win that grand prize!? It’s very simple… the participating member of Market Leverage who earns the most money, WINS!

Market Leverage is my favorite affiliate network, and you really can’t afford to use another client. I don’t want to ramble on and on about how fantastic they are, but with the best payouts, the most offers, tons of exclusive sponsors and the best customer service money can buy… I give them my highest recommendation. Just check out my review of Market Leverage for more proof!

In my account, I have a record of every member that signs up using my link. So go ahead and sign up today (it’s free), and if you earn the most in a month… you’ll win yourself a Nintendo Wii! There’s absolutely nothing to lose, as you are essentially piling a nice prize on top of the money you already earn. So be sure to use my referral link and I’ll keep you posted on who is in the lead… heck, I’ll even update the top 5 earners every day or so to keep you in the loop!

Additionally, you can win one of ten copies of my $15 eBook “Work Smart, Get Rich!” when you subscribe to theNetFool.com via email. If you are already subscribed, you are already entered to win! All of my winners, including the main prizes, are required to be subscribers. It pays to read Jimvesting!

But What If I’m Not Your Market Leverage Referral!?
The old rules had it that you would have to be my Market Leverage Referral to participate. NOT ANYMORE! Now that Market Leverage has upgraded my tracking metrics, I am able to track along with anyone who is signed up to Market Leverage… even if you are referred under someone else! This is a contest that is open to everyone, so if you would like to participate, please email Dina at: dina@marketleverage.com with the subject line: “Jimvesting Contest”… and you’ll be ready to go!

Jimvesting’s October Spectacular Recap

Okay, so let’s go back over the details to make sure everyone understands what we are doing. There will be three “main prize” winners: One Nintendo Wii, One Flip Mino and One $50 ML Rewards card in that order. The prizes will go to the top three affiliates at Market Leverage who are using my referral identification or have emailed Dina from ML for tracking. Essentially, whoever earns the most… wins!

In addition, you are required to subscribe to theNetFool.com via email in order for me to track you. From that pool, ten lucky winners will get a free copy of my popular $15 eBook “Work Smart, Get Rich!” Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, eh?

Bottom Line: A big thanks to Market Leverage for sponsoring the contest! The October Spectacular will run from NOW till November 15th at 11:59pm… so get started, and start making some money!

The October Spectacular is CLOSED!