Hey everyone,

Instead of running the normal link love this week, I am going to use my time here to take a one-week break from blogging at Jimvesting. Why? I am really doing this so that I can prepare for my other ventures. Specifically, Bullish Bankers LLC., where I am currently the Chief Executive Officer, is doing a few presentations for potential investors as well as educational executives. Because of this, I am going to need some brief time off to prepare for the event.

Other than this business, I am going to be participating in a large case competition at the Smeal College of Business called “The Next CEO.” I will need to learn practically anything and everything about my randomly-selected company, Unilever, to prepare for this annual competition where I am one of ten finalists. I haven’t had a good chance to sit down and work on this yet, so it’s high time I start as the event is in mid-April.

Upcoming…

We are at a very special mark, the big 50th Sunday Link Love! While it would have been this week, I figured why not hold off a week, do it on Sunday, and make it as big as ever! In addition, right after Sunday’s Link Love I will be launching into the new blog building event where I build a blog in 30 days, using just 30 minutes a day, from the ground up.

We’ve got big things coming to the Net Fool, so stay tuned!
-Jimvesting

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

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

Wow, actually posting on a Sunday, eh?
Haha, you know what that means…

TIME FOR SOME LINK LOVE!

Things were a bit slow this week, as I used my week to get caught up on everything else. Because I didn’t want to start in with my traffic week mid-week… we are going to use THIS week to go over traffic secrets, straight from the Net Fool! Every day I’ll be giving you a new tip or trick to get more traffic to your blog, which is something that I get asked quite a bit how to do. Before we get into that, let’s have a glance at the best posts of the week:

• Click Consultants – What to Do When You Get Slapped
• Ian Fernando – Cross-Reference the Advertisers’ Landing Page!
• Desmond Blog – How I Made Almost $3,000 in Less than 10 Days
• SEM Group – 5 Reasons Why Google Should Fear (or Buy) Twitter
• Income Diary – Top Earning Websites of 2008

We start it off with Derek from CC talking about what to do after a slap, instead of having a panic attack or crying, of course. Next, Ian Fernando brings us an awesome lesson on cross-testing different web browsers to make sure your marketing campaigns work properly. Desmond Blog got out an awesome post on a recent flip for about $3k, great work Des! The Search Engine Marketing fellas bring in a nice list on the top five reasons why Twitter is poised to grow this year and take market share from some other big online destinations. Finally, my buddy Michael started up a new blog, Income Diary, and put together an awesome list of the top earning websites of 2008… check it out!

Stock Market Update

Woo Hoo! It’s rally time for the stock market! All of last week, the major indices held impressive gains with the Dow Jones up 9% and the Nasdaq up 10.6% for the week ending Friday. We had two big days of gains, and a few steady trips upward, to end the week on an up-note. With some recently downed companies coming back to life, such as GE up 70% off its lows and the financial sector up 34% as a whole, we had a reason to believe this week that everything would eventually improve.

The question now: was this rally real or fake? In fact, the other question would be whether we continue our gains this week… as many investors might use this pop as an opportunity to exit their holdings on a positive note. This next week might just hold the key to seeing if the rally was legitimate or simply another “bear market bounce.” Right now, we look overbought across the board… so it will be interesting to see what happens. While we saw some serious mean reversion, with the worst stocks on the year behaving as the best, it might be asking too much to have these names continue.

The bottom line here: we aren’t done yet, and I wouldn’t recommend getting in the markets this week if you aren’t invested because of the extreme uncertainty. In fact, the way CNBC hypes everything, you would have to expect a huge rally to continue. Sure, it MIGHT go up again, but the markets could also very well collapse… so invest with caution in the short term!

Blogosphere Update

I’m having a ball with my subscription to PPC Classroom, one of the best free resources for learning internet marketing out there. If you aren’t in, seriously consider signing up to the mailing list so that you can participate when they start up the next session… it’s been a fantastic learning experience that was (almost) completely free! Other than that, a lot of external work was completed on my end this week… as I got a huge authors portal up and running at Bullish Bankers, as well as some work done on a GPT website that’s in the mix and a clients corporate website that I have almost completed.

Some friends brought a couple of events to my attention this week. First, one of my good friends that blogs at The Weblog Zone is giving away a free WordPress blog… even the web hosting for it! Best of all… he is going to custom code it for you so that it is not just your average run-of-the-mill website. This is a great offer, and a great contest. Also, as I usually give people a shout out if they ask for it (hint!), the guys at eBusinessCorporate are having a launch party! What does this mean? Well if you own a decent blog (Pagerank 2 and up), then you will have the opportunity to win some cash and some advertising vouchers for writing about the new site.

That’s it from me, stay classy and stay bullish on the net!
-Jimvesting

It’s TRAFFIC WEEK here at Jimvesting dot com for the next week and a half. Don’t forget to keep checking back every day for a fresh new tip on how to get insane amounts of traffic to your blog or website!

Before we kick off the week, let’s take a step back and get into some link love! There was definitely some great material that came out across the blogosphere this week. I saw a few notable pieces come out from some of my regular subscriptions, so here are the best of the week:

• John Chow – Shopping in Shanghai: 40 Cent Beer and $10 Ice Cream
• Tushar Dhoot – Winning the War Against Spam Comments
• Nicky Cakes – Newb Guide Part 5: Landing Pages
• ProBlogger – How to Expand Your Blog Audience when Traffic Plateaus
• Iron Blogger – Google Adsense, SEO, Updates and Earnings

A link from John Chow? Yep. You heard right! John brings us an awesome example of just how effective it can be to benefit from currency exchange… notably from China’s standpoint where the USD is stronger. My good friend Tushar Dhoot pulls out all the stops with a great post on defeating spam commenting on your blog. Nicky Cakes rounds out his marketing guide with a nice look into landing pages and how to implement them effectively. Pro Blogger makes a second appearance after this awesome article on how to expand your reach when things seem to reach a peak. Finally, Iron Blogger announces earnings… but more importantly, talks extensively about his new niche blog and building traffic to it.

Stock Market Update

Stocks continued to hand in free-fall, as the Dow Jones fell to new all time lows, down below 6500 points to be exact. With no end in sight, investors continued to sell off their holdings and began to turn to gold as the solution. This week has been a different story entirely, and today we saw a major capitulation off of the market bottom with a 5-6% rally across the major market indices.

Around now, you are going to begin to hear predictions that the worst is over, clear skies ahead, and no news but good news. This is fine for now, but we need to put into perspective the fact that we had nothing to live for a few short days ago. Why the sudden change of heart? Every market experiences a bear market rally. Perhaps it is foolish of me to immediately squash this most recent rally as imaginary, but fundamentally speaking things are still going to be bad for an indeterminate period.

For the time being, expect an extended 10-15% upside rally. My prediction is that we covered around 1/3 of the upside today along, so we should still expect more gains on the markets. However, when all is said and done, if you can’t sell at the top… then you might be in the exact same position.

Blogosphere Update

As I mentioned earlier, there was quite a large quantity of exceptional information flowing from the major blogs this week. Additionally, we had one of my favorite websites, theBlogoholic.com, sell for $1,000 (asking price). I can imagine that same blog getting $2k in better economic times, which is not a great sign for blog flippers. On top of this, we had one of my friends who blogs over at MrJavo.com get into the semifinals of the Dell.com social responsibility competition… so be sure to check out his entry.

As I mentioned earlier, this entire week I will be listing and talking about a new traffic source every day of the week. I’ll be talking about everything from Twitter to Blog Commenting, anything that can get traffic to your website. It should be an interesting next several days… so stay tuned and stay bullish on the net!

-Jimvesting