Hey everyone, it’s time to round up last week with another fantastic edition of LINK LOVE! We may not be getting these out on time, but we are getting them out… so stick with it!

It’s been a busy few weeks… and now that I have some daylight this week hopefully I can get all caught up and start putting out some awesome new content. One idea that I have been playing around with is setting up an entirely new blog in 30 days, and posting the progress every day so that we could all follow along with exactly what I am doing. Better yet, I feel that I could do it in just 30 minutes each day, so we could take small chunks out of building a new cash stream online that anyone could follow in their spare time before going to bed each night (or before going to work each morning!). Before I get into that, let’s bring it back for the top articles of the week:

• Dat Money – Tax Deductible Expenses for Self-Employed Online Entrepreneurs
• Real Blogging Tips – How You Can Cash in with Entrecard Explained
• Winning The Web – 6 Ways to Use Hot Trends to Explode Your Traffic
• Tyler Cruz – My 2008 Personal Income Tax Results
• Ian Fernando – Watching Oprah to Boost Your Online Income

Notice a theme in today’s posts? It’s tax time in the USA and many other prominent nations, so I figured that some of these articles might be especially useful to those of you turning in your papers. Along those lines, Jay from Dat Money wrote about some of the best expenses to use that are tax-deductible if you are in the online marketing biz. Following suite, Tyler from Tyler Cruz broke down his filings for 2008 to give you a closer look into how you should be forming your revenues and expenses. Ben from RealBloggingTips.com talked about an awesome new method that can help you cash in on Entrecard’s latest plans. Gyutae Park from Winning The Web explained 6 powerful ways to exploit trends on the internet for fast growth in another compelling article. Finally, Ian Fernando brought up a really interesting point… using Oprah to make some extra cash online!

Stock Market Update

After rallying all the way to a 21% upside from the recent bottom in the Dow Jones, we seem to be experiencing some traction up at the top. Unable to break the 8000 level on the Dow Jones, we settled Monday down over 3% to just over 7,500. The next “support” level, an area where most traders will either call it a bottom, or break down for another big down day, is around 7410… so we will have to see if we plunge past that level.

There are two sides to this story: the rally is real, or the rally is fake. The first argument would say that this period we are in now is simply minor headwinds as some investors take some quick and prudent gains off the table before rallying higher. However, the other side of the story would tell you that the entire 21% gain from the bottom was a “suckers rally” and we are going to crash all the way back down to a new low. Personally, I believe the latter (unfortunately), but would still not mind taking a small loss if that were the true bottom.

The big news of last week was that Tim Geithner and the Federal Reserve came up with a new plan to get bad assets off of the U.S. Bank’s books. This involves using some of the TARP bailout funding, combined with the private sector, to essentially buy assets off in an auction-style bid process. The hope is that investors will buy these assets based on cheap valuations, and hopes that the bad assets will actually turn profitable (by “bad,” we really just mean high-risk!). I am not satisfied with this plan, but we will have to wait and see.

Blogosphere Update

We are continuing on with traffic tips and techniques for getting a massive stream of users to your blog throughout this week, but I would like to go ahead and get some kind of plan set in stone for the week thereafter. We have already discussed above how I am planning on taking a new blog from zero to hero in 30 days, working just 30 mins every day and blogging about what I have done every day. I feel like this is a pretty good plan, but since it would take a significant amount of real estate, I would like to hear your thoughts on it!

Please vote in the poll whether or not you think this is a good plan, and if you leave a comment as well you will have a shot to win a free one-month text link! I’ll give two of these away randomly, so be sure to vote!

Fortunately for me, I was a lucky recipient of a prize in Zac Johnson’s Twitter Blog Contest. While it wasn’t anything that I am insanely excited about, I haven’t won anything in awhile… so I figured I’d give the heads up that I’m back on the winning path with a signed copy of Gary V’s “101 Wines” book. Time to get cultured, eh?

Market Leverage made good use out of this week’s promo video (they do one each week), and made it an April Fool’s edition. With jokes that made fun of everyone from Tyler Cruz to Jim Kukral, they landed one joke that made the headlines at JohnChow.com… claiming that he was their latest affiliate manager! Props to Market Leverage for a job well done, and here’s to seeing some more creative April Fools Day (April 1st) pranks across the blogging world.

On a sadder news, we have two prominent bloggers putting up their websites for sale. First off, it’s Jason P’s second run at things… as he tries to sell off TheUniversityKid.com to one lucky buyer in this re-auction being given away right now. As of this post, he is fetching $1,100… but I think that he can get more! In fact, I’ll put in my own price floor at $1,250 if nobody else bids! Along with Jason, one of my good friends over at Iron Blogger is putting yet another industry name up for grabs. Iron Blogger is a bit newer, but definitely well known in the industry… so let’s see what they end up going for, eh? I feel that now is the worst time to sell a blog… but we’ll see what they can fetch before making that call.

That’s it for this week, stay tuned for more!
-Jimvesting

Welcome back to another great tip for getting traffic to your blog, as a part of our Traffic Week here at theNetFool.com. If you’d like to find some more great tips, check out the other articles!

I’ve recently come across a very interesting new way to get traffic that exploits the difference between buying from a physical store, and buying from an online retailer. What do I mean? Imagine that you are in a book store, lets say it is a Barnes and Noble, and you want to buy a book. Your options could be to check out the cover, read the testimonials on the back, flip through the pages, and read a few paragraphs. The point is, with a physical store, and a physical book, you have your options to know whether or not you would like to buy the novel.

Much online a physical book retailer, with the online world… people aren’t always so sure of what they want to buy. You can look at the average user rating or the relative popularity of the title, but is it really for you? In today’s world, a wide majority of consumers will use user reviews to gauge whether or not they are going to want to buy it. One of the best programs for this, and a top seller of books online, is Amazon.com.

Why Amazon.com is Great for Traffic

So we have discovered first off that reviewing books is an important business that many people will rely on before making that final yes/no decision on a new title. How can you profit off of this? Become a book reviewer for Amazon.com! At Amazon, anyone can become a book reviewer, and you’ll get that review posted at the bottom of every sales page for things you have reviewed. Better yet, you will get your own unique homepage with all of your book reviews listed neatly on it, as well as a link back to your home page (what we are REALLY interested in!). Getting to the top of the reviewers page is an important trick that can net you TONS of traffic if done correctly. I know that I always read the reviews on Amazon before buying a product, and the same goes for a majority of interested shoppers.

Sounds Great, But How Do I Get Ranked?!

Much like YouTube or Digg, your ranking is going to effect how well your reviews are placed relative to other book reviewers on Amazon. The ranking system is all based upon two factors: number of reviews, and average helpfulness. One of these you can control, the other… not so much. What you CAN do is throw up a whole bunch of reviews on some top-selling books. I recommend only reviewing top ranking books because those are the links that will get you traffic over the long term. Furthermore, you should be reviewing books that are close to your niche interest. For example, if I am in finance, I won’t review books on gardening. This is mostly common sense, but the bottom line is that the more you review… the higher your ranking will be. Simply click the “Write a Review” button on the bottom of any book page, and you are on your way!

Your “helpfulness” is really nothing more than a quality ranking. If your review is especially good, you will be rewarded (hopefully) by a third party user upping your ranking here. This is weighted quite a bit more than your number of reviews, but will be significantly hard to achieve because it is entirely unpredictable. One tactic could be to write a review and have your friends mark it down as helpful themselves.

How to Eek Out the Most Traffic

Here are my top ten methods to getting the best amount of traffic from Amazon’s book review:

• Review Books in Your Niche
• Keep Your Reviews Short (100-300 words)
• Make Your “Reviewer” Page In-Depth and Interesting
• Tell People Why You Are Qualified (On Your Profile Page)
• Be Specific, Give Useful Critique
• Don’t Pump Out “Fluff” or Worthless Reviews
• Review as Much and as Often as Possible
• Encourage Others to Mark Your Review as Helpful
• Stick to Areas and Books that You Know
• Write Posts with Authority!

So there you have it, ten great ways to boost your traffic with Amazon.com Book Reviews, a method that is largely under-used in the industry… and one that should be especially noteworthy. I highly recommend that you experiment with reviewing books online, as it can actually be a huge traffic source. Better yet, if you do it correctly, everyone coming to your blog will be people that like to read, and are interested in your topic area… the perfect combination for a long-term subscriber!

-Jimvesting

Good morning foolish readers,
Are you ready for some Link Love?!

It’s been a busy few weeks around here, and as we got traffic week kicked off with an article all about building website traffic through the power of video, we had a lot of solid feedback. Also, we announced a fresh contest from the folks at Direct Agents where you can win a trip to one of five great beaches! I’ve got a few posts planned on traffic for this week, so stay tuned… but let’s get into the best articles of the week before I get side-tracked:

• Blogging United – Tagging Your Blog
• Franklin Bishop – Twitter: The Lifeline of Blogs
• Smart Bloggerz – The Content Distribution Traffic Method
• The Blogtrepreneur – WTF Is It With Site Flipping
• Winning The Web – Building Wealth Online Amidst Financial Chaos

Starting us off, Blogging United put out a fantastic article on tagging your articles for different social media networks, and how this method can really boost your traffic and search engine rankings. My buddy Franklin Bishop talked about Twitter, and how your following can really trace the performance of your website or blog long-term… definitely a good lesson on how to effectively use the system. Smart Bloggerz makes a Net Fool debut with an awesome article on getting 10x the traffic on each article that you put out, great stuff there. The Blogtrepreneur is back at it again, this time ranting about site flipping in an argument that I definitely agree with. Finally, Winning The Web talks on a more serious note on how you can amass wealth online, even in tough times.

Stock Market Update
We are having a heck of a time in the markets, with the Dow Jones rallying yesterday about 7%… the biggest rally for quite some time. We are solidly off of the bottom, and have continued to rally past 7700 on the Dow. Remember two weeks ago when I mentioned why this rally would happen? I feel that we may have gotten everything that we can out of this recent burst of trading activity… so I would have to be a bit humble and sell part of my position (across the board) at this point in time.

The United States released the official asset-bailout plan yesterday, which led the markets higher. Essentially, we are planning on using the private sector to buy troubled assets off of select banks’ balance sheets for pennies on the dollar. These assets are hard to value, so they could potentially turn profitable for the investors willing to take a risk on them. In other news, the Chinese government announced to the world that they would like to create a new currency to compete with the US Dollar. They are essentially fed up with over-reliance on the United States economy, and wish to establish a better way. We’ll have to track what happens here, as global tension seems to be escalating.

Blogosphere Update
One of the more interesting events this week, in my opinion, was Pot Pie Girl’s new book on keywork research finally being released. This big book isn’t just a typical eBook, and it is actually being published online. She talks about how odd it is to have a book in your hands that you wrote, and I’d have to feel the same!

In addition to this new publication, we had a great affiliate product come out called the Affiliate Theme. This a an awesome new product by Unique Blog Designs that is absolutely essential if you are trying to build up blogs about various niche topics. Great concept behind this product, and I have absolutely LOVED what I have seen thus far. I will let you all know if I finally decide to buy the darn thing, and will post about my experience here.

Going with the internet marketing theme, I am still working through PPC Classroom’s course on internet marketing… and plan on entering into the arena sometime in the future. A popular tool for managing affiliate campaigns has been a program called Prosper202. Now, a brand new product called Tracking202 Pro has been released by the same guys, and it looks like a great piece of work.

That’s it for this week, stay bullish on the net!
-Jimvesting

The following is a sponsored review of Direct Agent’s “Dream Getaway” contest. Nothing in this article has been modified by virtue of payment.

It’s contest madness around the affiliate scene, and when networks see a mutually-profitable opportunity… it’s tough not to offer your best earners a “dream getaway” of their own. While we’ve heard from the likes of Market Leverage, AZoogleAds and Motive Interactive, I really haven’t seen much from the folks down at Direct Agents, one of the freshest affiliate managers out there.

With the recent “dream getaway” promotion, affiliates will have the opportunity to partner up with Direct Agents and VistaPrint to rack up the big bucks and win a vacation to boot! There’s nothing more satisfying than earning $1000s with an affiliate network; that is, unless of course you are getting an exclusive beach vacation on top of it all! I’ve never recommended Direct Agents before as an affiliate network, but this is primarily due to the fact that they are new on the scene. With that being said, let’s have a closer look at the network and their latest promotion.

The Direct Agents Network

After being named America’s “fastest growing company” by Entrepreneur Inc. and USPACC, Direct Agents has really turned up the tempo by recruiting some all-star affiliates and quickly becoming one of the industry names. Working as an interactive advertising agency, they are experts in performance marketing and media-buying services. While professionals in brand name optimization and organic growth for interested businesses, they have also been delivering profitable results for their publishers (that’s you!) around the clock.

I have very much enjoyed my transactions with the company thus far, and they seem like a culture that just plain “gets it.” When you sign up with an affiliate company, something that I highly recommend you do at multiple networks, you will want to work with the team that has the most responsive agents on call… guys that think and operate just like you do. Best of all, they are entirely long-term focused, so you can rest assured that Direct Agents will be there for the long haul.

The Contest – Win a Trip to One of Five Fabulous Destinations!

Direct Agents has teamed up with VistaPrint to offer a vacation to the winner’s choice of five beautiful locations. How this works, is that through the month of March and April (ends April 15th), the affiliate that earns the most money through the Direct Agents network will win first prize, a choice of vacation. Even better, the second and third place winners will get themselves a great prize as well!

The “grand prize winner” will have their pick at five great destinations, and all of the travel expenses will be covered by VistaPrint and Direct Agents. But you won’t be alone, as the competition prize includes a stay for you and a friend! Here is the full list of locations that you can choose from if you take home the gold:

• Jamaica
• St. Lucia
• Cabo San Lucas
• The Dominican Republic
• Bahamas

Personally, I’ve never been to any of these resorts… but I have heard great things especially about Cabo San Lucas and St. Lucia, even though they might not be as well recognized as Jamaica, The Dominican Republic or the Bahamas. Certainly, you can’t go wrong here.

Second place and third place both win some great prizes as well… so you won’t be disappointed. If you are the runner-up, you’ll get your pick between a new Macbook Air or a Sony Vaio! These are two huge offers, and the prize is stated as being worth $2k, so you know you are getting one heck of a notebook!  Third place will even win a big $500 bonus in the form of an American Express gift card. Lots of prizes are up for grabs, so I highly encourage you to sign up if you are interested.

How to Enter

Just to repeat, the contest promotion will run from now until April 15th, and there are three prizes awarded for the three top affiliates for Vista Print offers in the Direct Agents network. Whoever brings in the most leads for VistaPrint will win the grand prize, a “dream vacation” from Direct Agents. Second place will win a Macbook Air or a Sony Vaio, and third place will get themselves a $500 AmEx gift card.

So how exactly do you enter? Anyone who is signed up with Direct Agents is already eligible, so all you will need to do is register a new account and you are on your way. There are currently three offers that you can promote for Vista Print, and the good news here is that they are all relatively high converting. I have advertised VistaPrint myself, and have actually used them in the past to print business cards, so it is definitely a company that is worth promoting. Better yet, because it is only VistaPrint offers that are eligible… you’ll have a huge advantage over your peers with this leveled playing field.

Got any other questions? Ask em here! Good luck to everyone that participates!
-Jimvesting

Welcome to the first of many posts, brought to you exclusively from theNetFool.com, focused on getting the maximum amount of traffic to your website or blog. You can access all of our traffic tips by checking out our traffic techniques section of the blog.

Today, I’d like to talk about one of the increasingly popular methods of funneling thousands upon thousands of unique visitors to your website or blog. Video marketing is a technique that has been historically thought of as a bit too under-developed to really work. However, over 2008 and onward into 2009, site owners have not only seen video traffic become a viable resource for new visitors, but it has become an accelerating traffic trend that has made many entrepreneurs millionaires overnight.

Why is video marketing, or even video blogging (vlogging), such a great alternative to plain ol’ text anyway? I have found that with video, not only do you have your content on your website, but you can have your thoughts, opinion and brand name spread all over the internet… we’re talking embedded on random websites and streamed from the source. Video blogging has caught some major traction as of late, and using video to market your website has become just as popular.

There are two primary means that I see as extraordinarily useful in video marketing to gain traffic: search engine optimization, and YouTube popularity. Let’s dissect each method and get you in the know.

Video Marketing for Search Engine Optimization

Many search engine optimization professionals pour hundreds of dollars into getting top-tier placements in the Google search engine for various keywords. I would have to say that one of the roots of internet marketing is in obtaining high Search Engine Results Pages (or “SERPs”), so that your website is one of the top search results for relevant common phrases that people search through on a daily basis. Gone are the days that content-rich websites rule the boards here… it’s been typical now to see videos appear as the #1 or #2 results under high-powered keyword search results.

HINT: You MUST have a link back to your site in the “description” section of all videos!

How can you use video marketing to get that high search engine result? There are plenty of ways… and I would recommend promoting your videos just like anything else that you would. This means creating articles and using article marketing to target the keywords that you think will hit for your video. Additionally, you could create some profiles on places like HubPages and Squidoo to get more links pointing to your video. There are ton’s of methods that all involve getting extra links to your video, and you always want to link up to the video using a targetted search term that both lacks competition and has plenty of search volume. Heck, if you’d like to learn a bit more about “friendly marketing,” check out the article I wrote a while back on some ordinary methods to get extraordinary traffic.

Finally, by getting enough backlinks to your video, you will start to appear on organic Google search engine results. With this, you’ll start seeing the traffic roll in! Need a hand? I actually use a program called Video Post Robot to get my video uploaded to dozens of video-upload websites (i.e. YouTube, MetaCafe, etc.) at once!

Getting Noticed Through YouTube

Yes, I have YouTube as an entirely separate entity for getting traffic to your website. Why? Well, it is really like the difference between getting a high search engine result on Google versus Yahoo or MSN… it’s the king! With over 60 million unique viewers every month, rest assured that YouTube commands something like 90-95% of the online video scene. YouTube is optimized for 18 different languages and has a large presence in the Asian marketplace… not only this, but it’s the fourth most popular website in the entire U.S! What this means is that you can get an insane amount of traffic to your website if you have a popular video on YouTube (with a link in the video’s description to your website, of course), so let’s see how we do this!

Getting lots of hits on YouTube is easiest done if you can land a video on the front page of YouTube. There is a specific algorithm that determines which videos make it, and it is largely based on the videos that gets the most views, favorites and comments. Again, getting on the front page isn’t the only way… but it certainly makes it easier!

First off, your video needs to be new and fresh. Much like any social bookmarking service like Digg.com, YouTube will give your video a higher ranking if it is brand new… because it is seen as more relevant and well-liked. Therefore, I would actually recommend re-submitting your video to YouTube if you don’t hit it off right from the start. This is an area that video has a huge advantage, because no service can track whether you are re-submitting the same video correctly… whereas re-submitting a text article to a network is caught easily.

Next, you should focus on creating a power profile. When YouTube determines which videos will appear on their front page, it is typically a function of how popular said user’s profile is. How many friends have you made on YouTube? How popular are your videos typically? It will be much easier for a consistent user to get a video on the front page of YouTube than one that just signed up… though not  impossible.

Finally, from each visitor that you get to your video, you should ask them to favorite it, comment on it, and rate it five stars. These ratings aren’t just imaginary… and they are actually used to determine the popularity and relevance of various videos. Not only will this help for the front page of YouTube.com, but it will rank you up higher in YouTube’s own video search system. Nobody knows for sure which is more heavily weighted (views, favorites, ratings or comments), so make sure that you go for all four!

How can you get traffic to your YouTube video to make it all possible? Again, there are literally hundreds of marketing methods… so it is up to you to decide. I would recommend to start by simply sharing the link with your friends. Then, you could even use a different social media website (Digg or StumbleUpon are my favorites here) to link up to the YouTube video and get a rush of traffic when you need it most.

Bottom Line: Video marketing is an increasingly popular way to get tons of traffic and popularity to your website. Even if the video isn’t originally hosted on your site, having a third party directing loads of traffic your way can be a huge boost to your daily traffic… and is typically a method that also will rank high in Google. There’s no two bits about it: the future of the internet is in interactivity and video, so get in on it while the industry is relatively young!

-Jimvesting