Back to work…
…but not without some Link Love!

How I got four quality posts out on a week where I was completely swamped with job-related activity, I’m really not sure! Despite the fact that I was really over-booked, we heard some good things about Alexa on Tuesday, checked out my FREE blog domination package on Thursday, worked through a review on Bryn Youngblut on Friday and rounded out the weekend with a sarcastic homage to all the generic guest posters out there. Before we set our sights ahead, let’s check out some of the coolest posts for the week ending September 20th, 2008!

• John Chow – Market Leverage Cashinator Challenge
• Click Consultants – Is Affiliate Marketing For You?
• Uber Affiliate – 5 Ways to Get Serious About Affiliate Marketing
• ProBlogger – How to Avoid the Physical Hazards of Blogging
• The Blackhat Way – Let’s Use Yahoo! Answers (Part 2)

I decided to go with some big names this week because I really enjoyed the stuff brought to the table. John Chow’s awesome video of Blog World Expo really got me motivated to blog again. Check out his clip for a change of pace! Click Consultants put out an interesting expose to find out if you are really cut out for affiliate marketing. Uber Affiliate gets serious on affiliate marketing in one of his classic run-downs. ProBlogger’s guest post talks about some ways to make your blogging environment more “healthy” and comfortable (different, but a fun read!). And finally, The Blackhat Way follows with a simple but powerful method that uses Yahoo! Answers to mine for blogging ideas.

Stock Market Update
Okay, first things first, everything has gone down the drain in the past two weeks. There is too much news to ever fit into a few paragraphs here, so I think that I am going to make a video about the chaos that has unfolded on Wall Street over the past weeks shortly. Breaking news on Sunday night was that the last two major investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, will now be “bank holding companies.” This shift is historic, and makes America looks like the Japanese in the 90s. I’m very upset about the news, but it looks like one of my colleagues, Steve Murray, accurately predicted this exact fortune on my financial blog Bullish Bankers.

Here’s what happened this week in a nutshell. We open the week with the announcement that Lehman Brothers (LEH) was filing for bankruptcy. Wow. One of the largest investment firms in history now bankrupt, despite a decent amount of liquidity, on bad loans and shorters driving the stock price down the drain. Then, Merrill Lynch (MER) announced that they had agreed to sell themselves to Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) in a hastily arranged contract that many think was overpaid. Wow. Finally, AIG was on the brink of declaring bankruptcy on capital-raising issues. AIG was then effectively bailed out by the government, who supplied them with a 1yr loan… they now control 79.9% of the company and the stock is worthless. Wow.

These are big banks. Big. Big. Companies. Collectively, the failing of these powerhouses is more catastrophic than you can probably imagine at this point in time. We’ll be feeling these effects for a long, long time. To top it all off, Dell warned of slowing demand and Best Buy disappointed on earnings. The Federal Reserve met, and didn’t change rates ( ), they sit at 2.00% currently. Finally, the government talked about creating a mortgage trust to bail out ailing banks from their bad debts and bookings… and the news sent the market upward. This rally is fake, the news is bad and the economy will stay bad for at least another quarter. Buying opportunity? I say go for it if you can stomach short-term volatility.

Blogosphere Update
What a fun week in the blogging world? Blogging World Expo had a couple of funny videos come out from the attendees. I actually ended up watching a lot of them from the likes of ShoeMoney, John Chow, Tyler Cruz and Zac Johnson. John Cow released the second John Cow TV video… this was great stuff and one of the funniest I have seen in a while. I really liked the overall “feel” to the week, and watching a few of these creative videos got me motivated to blog a bit more.

You want some comedy? I got it for you. Last week my friend over at NickyCakes.com wrote a humorous post about the top affiliate program rewards that you will never see. Unfortunately, Advaliant actually send out a “bathtub full of cash” to Nicky just a few days ago! They mailed him a replica tub with a few dollar bills stuffed inside of it, definitely a funny marketing ploy, eh?

A lot of activity in general for the blogging world. My buddy Jason at The University Kid still refuses to make an actual post (I kid, haha) and Normal Joe from IM With Joe not only forgets to post for days, but doesn’t link me at all. See the power of link love? Both of these guys are going to see that I linked them and will be back here to plead their case… so let’s hear them out before we pass judgment.

The Week In Focus
I’m going to be buckling down on my investments this week. I am thinking of doubling down on the stock market over the next two weeks now that things are so ultra-attractive. In addition, I’ve got a meeting planned almost every night this week, so hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in a post here or there.

I am switching plans and marketing “make money online” instead of “making money online.” Big step, huh? Well, I was actually on the front page of Google for “making money online” this week without doing much of anything… so I figure that I mine as well go for the gold on this one. I’ll be taking you all through my process once I start so you can follow along.

It looks like I sparked a good amount of conversation this week, with each of my posts pulling around 20 comments a piece. Things are increasingly steadily here at Jimvesting… so despite a few tough posting periods, I’m coming out on top… and I’m staying BULLISH on the net!

-Jimvesting

It’s SUNDAY!
Time for some link love and announcements.

I did a lot of what I am going to call “recon” work this week. Basically marketing and helping out my readers. I have talked extensively with a few people that came to me and I’m even helping a couple of people set up their own blogs, a service that I will be extending to all of you this week. Before I get into my progress, let’s wrap up the week with a set of the best articles from the week ending September 14, 2008.

• Internet Babel – Why Are Big Bloggers Big?
• Jim Kukral – Your Press Releases Suck. Fix Them Now!
• Money Bites – Never Be Afraid to Ask For a Paybump
• Court’s IM School – As It Turns Out, Content Is King
• The University Kid – Should You Buy Traffic For Your Blog?

Let’s talk briefly about these posts, eh? Internet Babel wrote up a great study on what exactly makes a big blogger, well, big! Jim Kukral gave a brief lecture on the finer points of making an effective press release. My buddy Mattaw (who keeps asking me for some link loving, haha) wrote up an awesome post about asking for a pay-raise on your affiliate campaigns… something I didn’t know you could do. Courtney Tuttle went back on his previous argument that content ISN’T king to say that content may be more important than he thought. Finally, Jason wrote up a nice answer to the question of buying traffic for your website that you should check out. Good stuff guys!

Stock Market Update
Wow, what a crazy week in the financial markets. The biggest news HAD to be Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac getting taken over by the government. This is something I talked about last week, but had repercussions on the stock market over the entire week. This deal really fueled speculation that Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH) might experience a similar deal as they have had major problems with liquidity and fell 77% on the week. They are currently looking for potential suitors, but have had some problems finding people that are interested. On similar news, Dow Jones component AIG fell over 45% for the week based on similar liquidity issues.

Things started out looking like another big week for the U.S. dollar; however, the rally in commodities and fear over hurricane Ike caused a reversal in the trend over the second half of the week. Even with this in mind, the European Union issued a soft economic outlook, which has really fueled the fire of the Euro’s demise against the dollar. Retail sales were bleaker than anticipated, major auto companies began a petition for loans from the government and financial stocks held on to a 0.8% gain on the week.

One thing that NOBODY is talking about is the strike at Boeing (NYSE: BA), which is absolutely hemorrhaging money form the industrial cycle. I am long Precision Castparts (NYSE: PCP), a company that supplies parts for their planes. However, the real pain is being felt in companies that support Boeing and have nearly 100% of their work sent to Boeing’s projects. Basically, this workers strike over salary and benefits is causing big damage to the markets that has been largely not reflected in the share prices of parts suppliers.

Blogosphere Updates
I thought that my post last week that dissed guest posting would slow the frequency of these posts, but they really kept coming in. I’m not so sure what it is, but while I only got out two posts this week I like to keep the quality and not waste your time with things you don’t want to hear just to adhere to a quota. At any rate, there were a lot of fantastic posts out this week. One that had me absolutely reeling was the first edition of John Cow TV, so definitely check that video post out.

I made a big purchase this week of 50 articles to flood my John McCain and Barack Obama blogs with some quality content. This was a bit of a gamble, but I want to see if it pays off for me. We’ll chalk this one up as an experiment if I don’t get my money’s worth, eh?

Nothing pressing in terms of major discrepancies or fights breaking out. Contests that are being run are currently a bit limited as Market Leverage isn’t giving out much in advance of their October events. However, Jimvesting’s Hosting Bonanza is still in high-gear as I am giving away some awesome free web hosting to the lucky winners.

The Week Ahead In Focus
I had some big success with the Best WordPress Plugins list that I put out on Wednesday. A lot of people enjoyed this and I had over 50 comments and track backs recorded. Not bad, eh? You can use lists like this if you are knowledgeable as I am in a particular area to demand a lot of link-backs to your blog and score a fair share of comments from your users. This is definitely a strategy that I have used and recommend.

This week I am planning on releasing a nice offer to get all of you that have blogs and need to improve them your much needed upgrades, as well as those new to the niche completely set up and educated. Penn State crushed Syracuse yesterday 55 to 13 in a classic route of a team that was honestly playing a bit out of their league. Irrelevant material? Maybe. But I dig Nittany Lion football and want to see my boys do well. The New York Giants will take the field tomorrow at 1pm against the St. Louis Rams in an away game that should be interesting after a long break. But enough about sports, this week I want to put out a money-making tip and start to guide you all through marketing your blogs as I am going to begin a keyword campaign for Jimvesting with the term “making money online.” I successfully ranked “investing ideas” number one for my stock market blog Bullish Bankers, and feel that after that I can set my sights higher after accomplishing this for an unranked and fresh website.

As much as I like to hate on those that over-focus on keyword optimization, it does give you a certain high to see your work land in the #1 spot on a search term for Google over websites like Forbes and Yahoo, so I am going to see if I can continue this success into the future. I am your average Joe with no experience in marketing, so this should be a good experiment. Let’s get to work… and stay bullish on the net!

-Jimvesting

You caught me… I didn’t have time to post yesterday because I put off work until the weekend and was totally swamped. Let’s wind back the clock and pretend it’s Sunday, eh?

I’ve got your top articles.
I’ve got your announcements.
I’ve got your SUNDAY MONDAY LINK LOVE!

It’s been quite a week for pretty much everything moving. The stock market is feeling the effects of one of the largest scale government bailouts of all time and the blogging world almost self-imploded from extreme amounts guest posting (seriously, where is all this coming from?). I even launched a brand new contest when I told you that I wouldn’t! Before we get into all of that, let’s wrap up some of the best posts for the week ending September 5th 2008!

• John Cow – New Look at John Cow dot com and the Reasons For It
• Garry Conn – What Are Tags and Why Are They Important In Blogging?
• Home Biz Bukiki – Adding NoFollow To Any Links Generated by WordPress
• Collin Lahay – Link Building With Podcasts
• Desmond Blog – Get Friends if You Want to Sell Your Blog for a Higher Price

I absolutely love John Cow’s new layout, and I think that it is a #1 example of how monetizing your blog and optimizing the layout can really up the ante. Check out what he did for sure. Garry Conn wrote something useful this week… good work! Haha, but seriously, check out his explanation of tagging on your blogs. It’s something that I DON’T do… but probably should. Home Biz wrote about NoFollow/DoFollow links, something I actually didn’t know how to do before reading. Collin Lahay (formerly Mixed Martial Market Arts) wrote up an awesome post about building links from podcasts, and Desmond posted a creative case study done on the recent sale of MonkeyBlogger.com.

Stock Market Update
The markets are very very volatile at this point in time, and this is basically a theme that has held steady in the third quarter. One thing that has surprised a lot of investors is the fact that the tech sector hasn’t rallied back from it’s lows as everyone naturally assumed they would. In addition, oil and other commodities have continued to sell off as the U.S. Dollar strengthened in the face of poor numbers that came out throughout the week. Construction spending fell 0.6% for the quarter, missing estimates and shaking up the industrials portfolio that I manage. Motor vehicle sales somehow came in above estimates at 10.3 million units sold. Factory orders growth came in above consensus at 1.3% on an estimate of 0.8%. Jobless claims came in Thursday above consensus at 444,000 new claims. Basically, a lot of mixed results from the statistical side of things.

The big news for the week happened on Sunday, so I would have missed it if I did do the Sunday Link Love… so there!

The U.S. Government decided to takeover mortgage giant’s Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE). The S&P 500 ended Monday up a whopping 2.1% off a late-session surge. Getting back to the bailout, the United States Treasury Department essentially determined that Fannie and Freddie did not have adequate capital to survive on their own. They have something like $5 trillion in assets on their books, and the Treasury will back them with $200 billion in tax payers money. I think that this is a bad idea, but it is up to a lot of discussion whether or not propping up failing organizations is the right thing to do. Will this solve our problem… or simply create more issues further down the road?

On the Blogosphere
Guest posts, guest posts, guest posts…. why is everyone posting so many of them? I think that this may be the theme for an additional week (as it was last week) as a lot of bloggers are in the “back-to-school” mode and don’t feel like taking the time to write up creative material like I do.

Here are the reasons that I do NOT like guest posts:

• They are never useful. Most typically they are pointless lists that reiterate things we already know
• They honestly don’t generate a lot of buzz or traffic to your blog
• They serve as a distraction from the blog’s focus, which is why we read particular blogs in the first place

I hope you’ll agree that if you are new, guest blogging is a nice way to get some free press. Otherwise, it’s somewhat useless and it trashes established blogs with pointless lists that nobody really wants to read. You might get some sympathy comments, but I feel as though the bottom line is that you are wasting our time by posting them.

Other than the guest posting craze, there have been some pretty interesting articles up this week. Marc from OneMansGoal.com actually made a video post talking about how if he were in the same spot… he would essentially pay $11,000 for the flop website all over again. Who exactly is he kidding? I’m not sure, but this was a missed opportunity to admit his over-paying that was lost. Regardless, it’s still a good video that talks about how he made money as a derivative from his blog (or didn’t)… something in which I strongly believe.

Jimvesting’s Hosting Bonanza!
Despite initial claims that I wouldn’t be hosting a contest this week… I turned around and got a deal worked out with HostGator to get you guys from free web hosting to win in a random drawing. I use HostGator for Jimvesting.com and BullishBankers.com, and absolutely love it. I definitely recommend their services, so if you’d like to get a chance to win… find out how on the official contest page!

The Week Ahead
This week, I am planning on putting out a post on how I hit in the top page on a term that I was targeting… with a brand new website. It was pretty surprising to me that I was able to do it, so stay tuned to find out how. On top of this, I’ve got a nice sponsored review in the queue to get out (I know you LOVE those)… but make sure you comment to see if the advertiser is attracted to your blog and gets you some revenue of your own. I’m hoping to put out a sort of case study later this week that should generate some solid buzz for Jimvesting on the blogosphere, and with a road game for the Penn State Nittany Lions (2-0), I might have some more time to get posting out this weekend.

That’s it for the link love, stay BULLISH on the net!
-Jimvesting

It’s Sunday, and time for another round of updates in the form of… Sunday Link Love!

This week was a bit sloppy, but I feel like I put out some decent material including some great ways to monetize your blog and techniques to build up that all important RSS subscriber base. You all probably know that I was really busy this time through, but I managed to get posts up 4 out of 6 days so things weren’t too bad. Before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s have a look at some of the best posts for the week ending August 30, 2008.

• Big Ben Patton – You NEED a 404 Error Page, So Let’s Make One
• Ian Fernando – Exit Pop-Ups: The Reason They Convert
• Jason Boom – The Future of Social Media Sites and Networks
• Blogging Tips – 3 Best Free Ways to Get Quick Visibility to Your Blog
• Desmond Blog – How I Make $20/Day Bum Marketing

Most of our blogs have built in 404 error pages, but you should make sure that this is true or even make a custom one ot add some humor… check out Ben Patton’s post for more on that. Ian Fernando explains the value behind exit pop-ups, a great analysis there. Jason Boom get’s into the future of social media bookmarking, an interesting concept post by all means; and Desmond blogs about a great way to make money in bum marketing with little work.

Stock Market Update
The big news for the weekend is centering on two things, the first of which being John McCain’s Vice President pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the first woman on a Republican ticket. The other big theme is Hurricane Gustav, called “the mother of all storms” by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin after he issued a mandatory evacuation of the city. What does weather have to do with the stock market? Surprisingly, quite a lot. For a storm that has already caused 81 deaths and is picking up speed to levels beyond which we had originally forecast, our crude oil resources in the Gulf region could be ransacked. As the supply-demand equation tells us, the lowered supply is going to send prices of gasoline toward $5 in a jiffy unless the U.S. releases their emergency oil reserves. The balance in commodity trading b/t fear of the U.S. releasing reserves and fear of the storm’s impact have caused a volatile reaction in the markets.

So that’s the look forward, let’s take a step back and see how we did this week. On low volume, the market was surprisingly jumpy… ending the week down 0.7%. This week really had everything, capped off by a huge upside surprise in second-quarter GDP readings… which was at a whopping 3.3% from 1.9%. Take that in. I’ll wait. 3.3%… and they call this a recession?

A gloomy report from Dell (NYSE: DELL), which was hit by overseas manufacturing issues, on top of a larger than expected fall in personal income really dismantled what would have been a huge week to the upside. Existing & new home sales, consumer confidence, durable goods and initial claims were all on the up and up. Really, I saw this as a pretty good week all things considering. GDP was huge, but I expect this week to be shaky and downward-spiraling because of Hurricane Gustav.

Blogosphere News and Ramblings
I like to tell you guys what I thought of the posts coming out on the week, good or bad, and I feel that this week put up some surprisingly helpful information. I spent one of my longer periods running through my RSS Reader to pick the top five posts I saw because there were a lot of interesting articles. Granted, I can’t mention them all, but I’d have a look back on your favorite blogs if you can because there was some good stuff. If nothing else, learn some grammar with my friend at Miss Write.

My friend Jason from The University Kid passed 1,000 RSS subscribers (finally!), so go congratulate him on that accomplishment. Also, apparently Normal Joe thinks that he can put up a post without a video on IMWithJoe.com, so go ahead and comment on his post telling him he needs a video.

A lot of contests just wrapped up this last week as it is the end of the month, so it’s going to be interesting to see what else pops up. I’m trying still to wrangle up some prizes and stuff, as I’m not really sure of the direction that I want to go with this one. I definitely need to start a contest though, as not doing one really is my personal mark of being lazy and losing ground as a result.

The Week In Focus
Second week of classes, now is when it gets serious, eh? Luckily, we have (in America at least) a nice three-day weekend to be as unproductive as possible!  I still have projects to finish, and haven’t really done much in the way of work on the computer as I’ve been really busy with the whole college experience. Hopefully I can wrap up the web design project I am contracted to and finish the two speculative blogs that I was planning on launching.

Assuming that I get my work done, I’m going to try to make a post this week about the crude oil market and how it effects you (think gasoline prices among other things). I don’t like it when bloggers in the MMO niche (or others) try to convince you to stage a protest against buying oil to lower the price… because that’s just foolish. I’m going to give the facts on that one. Other than that, definitely expect some posts about the projects I have finished assuming those get done. If they don’t? Well… I’ll be writing about something money-related. It’s going to be a solid week, so stay tuned for more… and stay BULLISH on the net!

-Jimvesting

It’s Sunday…
Time for some LINK LOVE!

A slow week overall, I’m going to be back in action this week as the first official week of classes kicks up at Penn State University. Hey, this week wasn’t so bad though, just a lot of side projects that I will be letting you guys know about in future posts. I had a speculative domain bet placed that I will discuss once the niche websites are prepared, designed a website for a law firm and started doing some heavy article marketing for BullishBankers.com, my stock market website.

Before I get into the news and reviews, let’s take a look at what I felt were five solid articles to round out the week ending August 23rd, 2008!

• Affiliate Confession – Harsh Reality: Don’t Count on Your Blog Making Money
• Click Consultants – Understanding the 20/80 Rule
• Garry Conn – Social Networks Steal Your Search Engine Traffic
• Net Strife – How I Make A Fortune With WordPress Themes
• The Melvin Blog – Sponsored Review’s Publishers are Retarded (Overpriced)

Despite complaints from the overall community that there weren’t many good posts this week, all of these are top-notch articles that you should read. Affiliate Confession talks about how you may be overestimating the power of blog revenue. Click Consultants talks about the all-important 20/80 rule in marketing your blog. Garry Conn brings up a humorous and somewhat depressing issue of social media networks stealing away your search engine traffic. Net Strife talks about some methods in profiting off of outsourced WordPress themes and The Melvin Blog brings up how SponsoredReview.com has advertisers that will bite on anything… which actually encouraged me to add my blog to the listings to see if I get any bites!

Stock Market Update
Stocks fared pretty well this week all things considering. It seemed that there was nothing but bad news this entire weeks, especially surrounding the Financial companies (which were the biggest drag on the markets). What exactly comprises “bad news?” The major theme had to be Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) falling off a virtual cliff after a downgrade (finally) from Moody’s Investor Service five-notches lower to just above “junk” status.This put a big strain on the overall markets, but especially the Financials, and renewed fears of the continued credit crisis.

On top of Fannie and Freddie’s hard times, producer prices jumped to the highest rate of annual increase since 1981, housing starts in July dropped off a whopping 11%, geopolitical tensions were on the rise between the United States and Russia and the 4-week average for initial claims rose to 445,750 from 438,500.

Not all the news was bad, and shares of anything but financial stocks did fine as the Dow ended the week up 1.73% on Friday, down 0.3% on the week. The S&P 500 Index was down 2.4% on the week. Keep in mind though, that these include Financials… so really the overall market was flat. I seem to have gotten a great buying point on Chesapeake Energy at $44.98 a share… close to the lowest point since March. While oil tripped on Friday, it performed well for the week, and commodity markets as a whole were solid… locking in a nice gain there. I still am very bullish on the IT sector and Healthcare, both of which have weathered the storm.

Blogosphere Update
I was definitely in a rush this week ot get some work wrapped up before returning to school, but I did manage to have a look around the blogging world and pick up on some action. I was actually “challenged” by the owner of SiteFlipU.com, who claimed he could flip 5 blogs in 24 hours for $1,000. I really don’t know why he came at me like he did, as I still believe this is an impossible task and there is no way he actually did it all in 24 hours, but check it out because he will make money regardless. You know my buddy Joe did a spin video on the challenge, it’s a funny watch so check it out.

Nothing major to report, a few contests popped up here and there that I threw some money and stuff at to get some easy sponsorship deals… but nothing mind blowing. I am looking forward to seeing if SlyVisions can get anywhere close to his 250-to-1000 subscribers in 90 days goal. Hey, even if he fails at least we’ll finally see some more content out of that blog… which was essentialyl left for dead before. But go ahead and check it out and tell him Jim from Jimvesting sent you.

The Week In Focus
Having a look at what’s to come, I got my paid reviews out of the way finishing this week with a look at Triple.com’s affiliate program. I have a lot of posts planned, but some I really can’t publish until I have finished my other projects which the posts refer toward. I’m hoping for a productive week ahead, but as classes will be starting up this week, who really knows what is in store. Bottom line: this week may be bumpy, or it may not, but after this week it’ll be clear sailing.

I’m planning on putting out a great money making technique once again to keep you guys in the loop, and if I ever get up and stop lazing about I’ll be able to put together a fun contest for you guys to steal some quick prizes that will be worth your while. I have a couple of interesting projects in the pipeline, nearing completing a bit more every day, so once those are released I’ll have a lot more time to blog and help you guys out. As always, you can get personalized help by contacting me over email or IM for free.

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-Jimvesting