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

Have you ever come across a website promising a free prize? Maybe they just give out seemingly “free” money to you like Cash Crate or Treasure Trooper do? These websites are referred to as “Get Paid To,” or GPT, programs… and the secret is that they are very profitable for the business owner. Imagine if you had an advertiser willing to pay you $1 per sign up, and you could get 1,000 people to do it for $0.50… sounds crazy? It’s not! The Get Paid To business model is still holding up in these bad times, and I want to get you in the game.

First of all, a brief disclosure.  I am not going to encourage all of you to drop what you are doing and start a business. There are a lot of GPT websites out there because it is so profitable, so you have to be a hard-worker if this is going to work. Additionally, a bit of background information would help immensely. Tons of GPT websites are started on a daily basis… and there are really only 50 “established” websites. Because too many people get started, and then stop working and give up, the GPT line of work is something that you should be interested in before getting into it.

I want to break up this series on how to make your own GPT website into two parts. First, we will cover getting started up… including things like forming your concept and organizing paperwork. Second, we will get into the actual systems that you can use to get your dream into reality. I think that all of you have the capabilities to be entrepreneurs… and the industry absolutely thrives in bad times when people are increasingly looking for second incomes. Let’s get going!

Step One: Think Up A Brilliant Idea

Here’s the key to running a successful GPT website… are you ready for it? The key to running a successful GPT website is holding your visitors’ attention! Okay, okay… so right now you are thinking that I am wrong, right? It’s not the entertainment business, I’m not making movies here. In effect, the entire function of GPT is to make money… so who cares if it’s fun or not… right?

This is where I think that many people slip up. Having a concept that really hits it out of the ball park is more important than anyone else thinks. Why? Clicking in an out of offers is BORING! In general, people will start giving up and not frequently visiting your website like they should if there is nothing interactive about it. Visitors lose focus, and stop caring about the $0.50 light at the end of the tunnel. As a businessman, it is your job to keep your guests working on your site, and conversely bringing in more revenue for your business.

Let’s check out some examples. Treasure Trooper is the webs #1 GPT by foot traffic, and #2 on our list of the Best GPT Websites for 2009. Why? They play off of the whole “tribal adventure” theme, and everything on the site makes you feel like you are running through the jungle collecting gold coins and fighting bad guys. It sounds a bit ridiculous, but because there is an interactive storyline surrounding their service… it is very hard to leave the computer screen, and that is exactly what we want!

The moral of the story is that you need a killer idea, or “theme” if you will, in order to run a successful business. Start thinking about just how you are going to captivate your audience… and put it in motion! You should jot down a few ideas, make it a bit more fine tuned, and look for the next big idea that you think people will enjoy and keep coming back for.

Step Two: Removing the Personal Liability From Your Business

We talked last week about how to start a business. Essentially, owning a business is all about removing personal liability (at least in the way that I think of it). When you really get down to it, anyone can run a “business.” However, unless you are fully registered and protected as a legal entity, your personal assets are at 100% risk. Therefore, by registering for an LLC. (recommended) or S-Corp., you will be removing personal liability from the equation and greatly enhancing your upside.

There are a few steps to take here, and I think that you should do all of the following before you officially open up your new “get paid to” website for business:

1. Register an LLC. or S-Corp
2. Draw Up Articles of Organization
3. Protect Your Service with a Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

It might be a bit of work on the front end, but don’t think that it is not a necessary step. Trust me, you will feel a lot better being able to sleep at night when you have some kind of downside “insurance” if you will.

Step Three: Forming Partnerships with Affiliate Networks

Now comes the tricky part, you need a way to offer your customers “incentivized” offers and surveys to complete for cash. What you need, instead of going to advertisers individually, is a middleman marketer… or what we call an affiliate network. In a nutshell, this is a company that services ads from advertisers and let’s you market them for profit. Typically, you can gauge how “good” a network is based on how many offers they have and how well they pay in relation to other networks. Yes, that’s right, all affiliate networks are not equal.

Because of a recent onslaught of fraud and defaulting, many networks are a bit concerned with allowing traffic through incentivized. However, unline many would have you think, there are still quite a few willing competitors on the market to service your account. Here is a list of some of the best ones just to get you started:

• AzoogleAds
• Hydra
• CPAStorm
• MaxBounty
• IncentaClick
• Commission Junction
• ClickBooth
• Copeac

Remember, NEVER advertise a non-incentivized advertisement on your GPT website. This will result in an immediate ban from your affiliate manager. You can only use the affiliate offers as they are designated to be used, and every network will tell you this information on the main page of the affiliate offer. This is just a word of caution before you start breaking rules!

Bottom Line: Get Paid To programs are increasing in popularity as household disposable income decreases around the world. If you have an entrepreneur spirit, it’s not hard to use this to your advantage and start your own GPT business! We’ve laid the groundwork, come back tomorrow for a look at how you can set it all in motion and actually build up your GPT empire!

-Jimvesting

The following is a sponsored review of Offervault.com, and has not been affected by virtue of payment for the reviewed posting.

Chances are, if you are a website owner or an online marketer of any sort… you have stumbled across quite a few affiliate networks in your time. An affiliate network is essentially an online middleman between you, the publisher, and large advertisers looking to get their product out to interested people. By signing up with affiliate networks like Market Leverage and NeverBlueAds, you can rack in some serious cash; there are many people out there that I know personally making $100k+ annually from this alone!

Sounds great, eh? Well what’s the problem. As all of these services are free, the best of us will sign up to numerous networks. Because they all claim to have the “highest payouts in the industry,” it is necessary to register for multiple affiliate networks in order to find out who has the best deal for you on a per-offer basis. Believe me, when you are making 100s or 1000s of transactions monthly, the difference between $2.00 and $2.10 is HUGE in retrospect.

Logging in and out of multiple networks to find that sweet deal is very time-consuming… and just downright painful to have to go through over and over again. There really hasn’t been a service that can simplify it all for you… until now! The answer to your struggles is OfferVault.com, a constantly updating index of over 11 thousand affiliate and CPA offers that is fully searchable for your convenience. Let’s have a closer look!

A Look at the System:
In order to get a better feel for this website and exactly how it can help you make more money with affiliate offers, I have made this quick video run-through look at the system online. If you are thinking about signing up, why not check out this look into the system before you do to see if it is really worth your while, eh?

Clearly, there is a significant advantage to running the OfferVault system. With all of the offers in stock, you can quickly determine which network presents the most advantageous opportunity to you as an affiliate marketer. Heck, even if you aren’t a “super affiliate” you can still earn a pretty penny using OfferVault to your advantage.

The Pros and Cons of OfferVault.com
Let’s have a quick look at the upside benefits and downside issues with the system that we are looking through. I have a few things that I absolutely love about this website, but a few minor issues and things I would like to see improved.

Pros:
+ Contains a wide array of advertiser offers from dozens of networks
+ Easy to navigate and search for offers
+ FREE to sign up and use!

Cons:
- Design is not very aesthetically pleasing
- No way to search for “type” of offer
- Still a few major networks missing from the list

Bottom Line: Overall, I feel that OfferVault.com is a very interesting service that is definitely worth your while to sign up to and use. Any free service like this can be a valuable tool to use, and is simply too hard to pass up. With that, I do indeed think that OfferVault is worth your time, so check it out!

-Jimvesting

It isn’t every day that you get an spam email in your inbox… that is actually useful. When I sift through my email inbox, I typically delete the random newsletter items that come in from the likes of Best Buy and Wal-mart. However, earlier this month I got one of the most clever inbox items from one company that DID have a good Christmas retail season… Amazon.com!

Is it possible to use a message to your advantage, that was only sent out to try and get you to buy something? I thought that it was pretty amusing that Amazon.com would put out a newsletter with the “Top New Year’s Resolutions.” Essentially, this was a top ten list that went out to get consumers to buy into the latest fads that will drive 2009. For affiliate marketers, this is a virtual gold mine of information from the people that know best. Now, we can use what was once a spam message to bring in tons of affiliate marketing cash down the road.

The Top Ten Consumer Trends of 2009

I want to take this post to offer examples of how you can use a “top ten” listing in your favor to predict trends and stay ahead of the curve in affiliate marketing. There are many ways to have success in the internet marketing realm, and having the most demanded product before anyone else is a great start. Here are some trends, as predicted by Amazon.com, that should drive the consumer sector over the next year. You can follow along with the actual excerpt on the left-hand side.

1. Lose Weight
Weight loss is going to continue to be a big trend over the next year or so (at minimum), so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try out some offers here. The consumer brand is discouraging anything with sugar in it, so the fitness trend probably won’t be stopping any time soon. Try your hand at some offers in the “Diet” or “Weight Loss” niche.

2. Get Your Finances in Order
It’s tax season AND we are in a recession… sounds like a pretty good time for you to cash in on the financial services industry. I would suggest sticking to names like “Quicken” and “TaxCut” to rake in money from people filing taxes this spring. Also, you could look into the “Mortgage” or other loan niche for families looking for help online.

3. Go Greener
Many affiliate networks now have entire portions of their websites devoted to the “Green” theme that has hit the nation. You can promote products like green tea, or even the “health” realm. It’s easy to go green, and you can really promote this one many ways.

4. Curb Your Vices
Many people seek out “Self-Help” related products… looking for help to quit smoking, drinking, gambling or just bad habits. I would actually recommend using the Amazon Partner Network to promote their own self-help books, rather than using a standard affiliate network.

5. Get In Shape
Fitness and health are HUGE areas to be exploited now. Plus, many consumers have been drawn into the “Yoga” niche… and there are certainly a ton of products that can be used here. Additionally, the “Diet” area still applies to those looking to get in shape… since everyone is a sucker for a shortcut. Try making a fitness blog to promote these!

6. Relax More
This is a trend that I thought was surprising, but could definitely see picking up traction in a highly stressful world. You could use “Yoga” for this, but an even better idea might be to use actual products from the Amazon Partner Network or seek out some kind of “Music” store that specializes in classical, jazz or alternative songs.

7. Pursue a New Career
The job market is rough, so people are looking to improve themselves. You can actually create entire sites nowadays by using a “Job Board” on your website. An easier path might be to look into the “Financial” niche or try your hand at “Business Opportunities” (frequently “Biz Opps”).

8. Upgrade Your Technology
People like to have the latest gadgets and gizmos, so you can mark up a gain on this one by turning your focus to “Electronics,” “Entertainment” and even “Retail.” Cable networks like the Disk Network are hot right now, so look into that option!

9. Organize and Optimize
From file folders to feng shui, and everything in between… people love to feel organized and on top of their game. Again, this will tie into the “Tax services” niche very well right now, and “Home Related” might be the perfect fit for the more year-round trade.

10. Start a New Hobby
People always like to branch out and find a new hobby of their liking. In this area, it could be fun to tap into “Gardening”… as the barriers to entry are pretty low in my opinion. Additionally, “Travel” and “Sports” can be excellent hobbies that people will trend toward i ntheir spare time (which we have a lot of right now).

Bottom Line: When people “resolve” to do something, they will more than typically be planning on the long haul. Because of this, January through March is an excellent time to catch people that buy products to help them through their resolutions. After all, there’s nothing like having an expense on the books to motivate you to get going!

-Jimvesting

Do you write articles that tailor to what you feel are the best “keyword phrases” for your niche? Maybe you are into the school of thought that says smaller niche blogs make more money than broad-based websites. Maybe you are right, and maybe you are wrong. However, there is one time of the year that we can all capitalize off of a train of thought that exists in a majority of users on the internet and around the world. What am I talking about? People that look for things on the internet want the best, the top, the most used and well-regarded products and services available… and the new year is the perfect time to make serious money off of this trend.

One of the best ways to cash in on affiliate marketing trends is to nail those search terms that people are searching for right before making a purchase. Knowing that people nowadays never settle for second best, the start of a new year always presents a great time to cash in on new list… particularly ones that rank “top tens” or “best five” of 2009.

Is It Really That Easy?

In reality… this is actually very easy to accomplish. In fact, a post the I wrote when my blog was a virtual infant, early in 2008, is still getting me referrals to this date. While I was relatively inexperienced at the time I wrote it, and did absolutely no marketing for the keyword phrase, I am still on the top pages for terms like “top online brokers” and “top brokers 2008.” Yes, this post that I wrote on the” best” stock market brokers has gotten me great traffic, and awesome conversions to the service that I recommended as the “number one” online stock market broker, Scottrade.

Unfortunately for me, the service that I recommend (Scottrade) gives no cash for new referrals… instead lending “free trades” to my account. This is fine for me, because I like to trade stocks and they are normally $7 a trade. However, I am going to attempt this list again now that a new year has hit, and hope to target a better paying affiliate program. This is just one example that I have chosen to show you of many… and by devoting some posts in 2009 to making “top tens” or whatever you’d like to write about (with the intention of targetting affiliate offers, of course), you will find yourself in the money before you know it!

How Do I Know What To Write About?

Many internet marketers go into campaigns not exactly knowing what they will be looking for. Instead, you can simply open up an account you have somewhere, for example Commission Junction (one of my favorites, and one of the largest), and search through their offers until you find a particular niche that has some great offers. The thing is, you really only need one or two good offers. Why? Who in there right mind goes and reads an article about the “top ten widgets” and buys something that isn’t #1? That’s right… not too many people!

Step One:
First, we need to search out a niche that we think will be good all year round. For example, let’s try to do a list on online dating. Especially around Valentine’s Day, this seems to be a hot trend that has been picking up steam as we get more and more into the future. Perhaps this is a strong long-term trend that we could be targeting? Instead of thinking “online dating,” let’s give ourselves a better shot and try “online dating for women” in the title of our article. Who knows, you could still hit on Google for “online dating” with this strategy!

Step Two:
Now that we have searched around a bit and found some offers that we like… all we really need to do is to compare what the affiliate programs are offering. Additionally, I usually check out what I am looking at… just to make sure that the company isn’t a “rip off” to anyone reading. You always should aim to stay ethical in everything that you do! I like offers that give a fixed payment rather than a percentage (just a preference)… so let’s use the top offer “MatchMaker.com”.

I’ve checked things out, and this company is reputable as a dating website. So, I would form my list… perhaps name the article in WordPress “The Top Five Online Dating Websites for Women in 2009″ and put MatchMaker.com (with my affiliate link cleverly inserted) as the number one result! This should ring in some top placements from Google with a little luck, and bring in the cash for the new year!

Bottom Line: Don’t let 2009 go to waste… turn it into $2009! You really can capitalize on “best of 2009″ lists by using the method above as I have done successfully in the past. But remember, don’t turn into an article spammer and never recommend a bad product for the referral money. In the long run, stick true to your guns and recommend what you truly feel is the best product… and you will be a wealthier individual!

-Jimvesting