Hey guys,

It’s been a busy few days for me as Penn State knocked off #9 Ohio State on Saturday Night NCAA College Football. We’re in good position to win out the season, going undefeated and earning a spot in the BCS National Championship game assuming that either the #1 Texas or #2 Alabama teams fall. So over here at Penn State… it’s pretty much football madness. Saturday night was one of the most memorable nights I have had, so I’d love to share a video with you guys of the street riots that broke out after the game. College kids do crazy stuff when they are excited, haha.

Youtube User-Submitted Riot Videos
Penn State Collegian Riot Videos

So as we get past my weekend, let’s hop into this weeks link love, eh? I mean, that’s what you came for after all! I found some cool new blogs that I have subscribed to this week, and one of them here is a first-timer in the Net Fool run-down. Here they are, the top five articles from the week ending October 25th, 2008:

• John Cow – How to Crack Into Google’s Servers and Find Gold
• 45n5.com – Google Adsense and Analytics Get Married
• Affiliate Confession – Checking Stats: Like Watching Concrete Dry
• Ian Fernando – Twitter: Find Quick Fast Niches for Quick Fast Cash
• Cash Tactics – Free PR6 Backlink from Apple.com

Some pretty cool tips and tricks were posted this week. One of the more interesting (to me) was John Cow’s Google SEO information on how to find profitable niches using their own tools. 45n5.com had a nice press release on how Adsense and Analytics are now paired together. Affiliate Confession wrote a funny editorial on how watching your stats is a waste of time. My buddy Ian wrote a neat trick that uses Twitter to find hot niches in the marketplace. Finally, Cash Tactics had a brilliant trick to get a free Pagerank 6 link back from Apple… a must read. Great stuff this week!

Stock Market Update
Things continued their downward spiral last week in the face of more bad news amid earnings season. A lot of companies are reporting earnings in the span of about 3 weeks, so this is going to continue this week. One thing is for sure, fundamentals no longer matter. The entire market is being driven based on feeling, not on actual “worth” as would have previously held true.

This weekend, a lot of countries around the world expressed interest in bailing out their financial systems. One of the bigger names here was Kuwait’s banking troubles, as cross-Gulf regions move to rescue their own financial institutions… no longer able to rely on oil-rich land. Credit is on lock-down and nobody can get a loan, so getting any kind of free cash flow is becoming increasingly difficult.

As of today, the U.S. Fed Reserve has begun what is effectively “phase one” of the bailout plan. Dozens of American companies signed up just last week to be able to sell their short-term commercial paper ot the Fed, who has effectively pledged to buy it up at a cheap cheap cheap interest rate. You can think of commercial paper as an “IOU” of sorts, it doesn’t need to be more confusing than that. The key here is that we will get some more liquidity as the government takes some risky debt off of many company’s books.

Blogosphere Update
Big scandal came into view this week with CPA Empire. Apparently, these guys were “shaving leads” from one of their affiliate clients. This is basically when the manager (CPA Empire) is withholding profit from the customer in an attempt to juice their own numbers… effectively stealing money from their client. This was posted on WickedFire.com and was then deleted from the forum once debate got to a climax. Following this, a proof video was posted to YouTube.com. Note: The video was just removed as well

If CPA Empire was really screwing one of their clients out of his/her hard earned money, this is a huge problem that could severely hurt the internet marketing business. I do NOT have an account with CPA Empire and have never recommended them here. I cannot say fully one way or the other if this is true, but at any rate it will damage their reputation.

I had a string of guest posts go out this week, and might even get another one or two out. Luckily for me, I actually hit with an article on JohnChow.com, which was better than I could have ever asked from random “would you like a guest post?” emails that i sent out with outsourced 500 word articles. Basically, I picked up a bunch of lasting backlinks for about $3 a pop… nice. I’ll get you guys a bigger report back on this in the near future.

The Week In Focus
This week is going to be rough as I have an exam and a lot of meetings set up to take place. However, I do have a lot of posts and case studys that are in the mix. Essentially, at this point I am building up draft posts to go out. Of course, I’ll be doing the response post to my Q&A session that was held last week… and announcing the winners to that.

Jimvesting’s October Spectacular is still in full force and anyone can enter! Get a free Nintendo Wii and more just by checking out the original contest thread. It’s one of the easiest contests run so far, so it is definitely within your power to win this thing!

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

Hey guys, happy Sunday!

Time to kick off another week here at theNetFool.com with a round of Sunday Link Love to honor the best writers of the week. After Penn State railed Michigan in College Football 46-17, it’s been all laughs down here in Happy Valley. It was definitely a hectic week on Wall Street… with the S&P 500 Index recording both its single largest point gain on one day, and its single largest point loss on another day. A lot of mixed feelings around the economy followed the third and final U.S. Presidential Debate between candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. And in the blogging world, we had a couple cool things come out. But I’ll get to all that later… let’s get into that link love!

• Jim Kukral – Negativity Kills Success, Don’t Let It
• Blogging Tips – WordPress 2.7 Looks Gorgeous
• Thou Shall Blog – A to Z Blogging Guide for Beginners
• Desmond Blog – Never Underestimate Free Resources
• Garry Conn – Make Money Online Watching Infomercials

Jim Kukral fills us in with some mentally empowering material, calling for an end to negativity in your world. Blogging Tips helped unveil the new version of WordPress (2.7), and man… it looks GOOD. Thou Shall Blog put in some big effort in making an A-Z list of blogging, very nice work! Desmond blogged about the power of free stuff. As a student, free stuff is my lifeblood… so amen to that Desmond! Finally, Dr. Pain… AKA Garry Conn… wrote about making money watching infomercials, which was a pretty smart discovery!

Stock Market Update
Every week I come in here and talk about how crazy everything is, and every week we get the same insane movements in the stock market. I accurately predicted the short-term capitulation point early in the week, as Monday’s trading yielded the biggest up day in history up, with the market up 11.7%. However, this capitulation was short lived, and we ended the week down. Thursday’s trading may have been the most interesting yet, as we swung in a 9.5% range from negative to positive.

I don’t trust the markets and think things will continue to fall. The problem? Hedge funds. Basically, these big players have been liquidating their holdings… and should continue to do so. There are a lot of economics behind this, but essentially… credit strains and leveraged holdings are going to cause hedge funds to force-sell their shares to comply with new regulations of investment banks becoming bank-holding companies. No more leverage, no more fun. The jig is up on Wall Street for the time being.

People that are calling this a bottom I believe to be wrong. As always, if you are getting a tip… you should question that. If you are a new investor, or are trying to get in, I am recommending that you DON’T. Again, my target has been February of 2009 since who knows when… and I continue to think that I am correct in my logic. This is going to take a while to sort out… profits can be made in index shorts like the SIJ Industrials Double-Short ETF (my personal favorite) and the DXD ProShares UltraShort.

Jimvesting’s October Spectacular Update
Rules have changed, and now everyone can partake in Jimvesting’s October Spectacular. If you’d like to win a Nintendo Wii or other cool prizes, you should sign up and get active as a Market Leverage referral to beat out the competition. Whichever affiliate makes the most money from now until November 15th will take a prize, and there’s a lot you can win. Even if you aren’t my referral, you can get in the contest by reading the contest details and emailing Dina. The leader has less than $30, so winning is EASY!

Blogosphere Update
Alright, so nothing major happened this week on the blogosphere. One cool event that I experienced first hand was the first ever radio show done by Derek from Click Consultants. This guy makes more in a month than most make in a year from his computer, so it’s definitely one to check out! Heck, I even called in and offered my two cents to spur some conversation, so a good time.

As the U.S. Presidential election approaches, I want to encourage all of you to vote responsibly and feel free to ask me any questions you might have for a bi-partisan answer. I know and understand both sides of the debate, so it really frustrates me when I see mindless garbage like a recent Sarah Palin post on TheGermz.com. I unsubscribed from his blog as a result. Seriously folks, there is a difference between polite debate and mindless bashing.

Back into action, I wanted to mention a friend of mine’s eBook, Ryan McLean. The author of SmarterWealth.net has come out with a nice and short eBook called “Make Money Commenting” and he couldn’t quite afford to purchase a review here, so I gave him a free plug! My buddy Tyler Cruz had a pretty funny (and generous) cash giveaway from the Market Leverage “Cashinator” prize he won at a conference.

The Week Ahead
Alright, so this week I’ll hopefully dive into part 4 of my series on Google Keyword SEO. In addition, I’ll add in a nice controversial posting and maybe push through a paid review! I’ve got a lot on the docket for this week, so let’s see how things turn out. I’m making a BUY recommendation for Emerson Electric (NYSE: EMR) in the NLF Mutual Fund I help manage, so that may occupy my time from Monday-Wednesday. Other than that, it’s back to work… and time to turn time into cash!

-Jimvesting

Ask and you shall receive.

After an overwhelming response to the Net Fool’s October Spectacular, I have decided to modify the rules surrounding the contest. Specifically, things are now open to everybody! I was under the false impression that I could only track members that had been signed up under my account. I’ve been working with the guys over at Market Leverage over the past few days, and they have agreed to help me track those of you who already have accounts with Market Leverage.

What does this mean? If you are an affiliate at Market Leverage, email Dina (ML Rep) at dina@marketleverage.com and you will be automatically tracked and added to the competition. This could be no extra work on your part, and you could come out with a fantastic prize! Right now, nobody I am tracking has earned anything… so if you earn $1 to this point, you would get a brand new Nintendo Wii! Easy, eh?

The Contest Has Been Extended Until November 15th!

“But wait! Now I don’t have enough time left to earn!?” Don’t worry… I hear you! For those of you who weren’t in the competition before and now know the new rules, I want to encourage you to start getting your affiliate accounts with Market Leverage active. Those of you who haven’t signed up yet, now’s the time to register a free account with Market Leverage! I’ve even extended the ending date from the 5th to the 15th to get you guys some more time to beat out the competition.

What the heck is Market Leverage?

One of the most recession-proof industries has been internet marketing. With an affiliate network like Market Leverage, you are given a whole control panel with an arsenal of offers from interested companies and advertisers. Essentially, you are being paid to promote products and services for other companies to people you may or may not know. If you are good, you can set up pages and pay for ads off Google to get directed traffic. When someone signs up or buys a product through your affiliate link, you get commission from Market Leverage. It’s a simple process that can net you hundreds of thousands of dollars every month if done correctly. ML is the best company in the business, and if you sign up they’ll be more than happy to get you started on the right foot!

Promote the Contest… Win a Prize!

In an effort to boost marketing to Jimvesting’s October Spectacular, I would love for anyone and anyone interested to add my banner ads to their website. While I would love to give prizes to everyone, I simply can’t dilute the pool that much. So, any website that either adds a banner to their website for 30 days or anyone who makes a post about the competition linking back to the contest page and has at least 100 RSS subscribers… will get a free copy of my $15 eBook, “Work Smart Get Rich!”

A free eBook, just for filling a space on my website…. nice!

Here are some creatives to use:

• 125×125 Banner
• 468×60 Banner
• 220×205 Banner

In addition, I may throw a link or two your way in link love if you give some good press. I want to encourage a friendly competition, so now everyone can enter and earn money with Market Leverage to try to score a new Nintendo Wii, a Flip Mino, a $50 Gift Card or a copy of my eBook “Work Smart, Get Rich!”

Stay Bullish!
-Jimvesting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always… stay bullish on the net!
-Jimvesting

Welcome back folks,
It’s a LINK LOVE SUNDAY!

This week was chaotic to say the least, a lot of stuff happened in my own world, in the stock market and in the blogging world. Really, it would take multiple posts to fully explain all that went down, but let’s do our best to recap here so you can get a grip on what went down. Before we get into all of that though, let’s run through some of the best posts from the week ending September, 27 2008.

• Affiliate Confession – Myspace Ads Review and Tutorial
• ProBlogger – Launching Your Next Venture Using Social Media
• Suite J – Why Website Flipping Is Too Easy
• Blogging Tips – Do You Write Positive Paid Reviews on Your Blog?
• The University Kid – Step-by-Step Guide to Promote Your Own Product

With the launch of MySpace Ads, we have an extensive “trial run” conducted by Affiliate Confession. Check this one out to get a look at the new system in use. ProBlogger had an awesome write-up on using social media to propel a new venture. Suite J gave us some reasoning behind website flipping. Blogging Tips ran through the basics on writing positive reviews and the ethics behind it. Finally, The Uni Kid wrote up a dynamic guide on how to promote and sell your own product online.

Stock Market Update
Things were volatile again this week, as much of the news focused on the United States’ government bailout plan for poorly-financed and illiquid assets, hoping to help move these items off the books of major financial firms in America. After Congress appeared ready and willing to stand behind the plan proposed by the U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Tuesday yielded an intense Q&A round by the hostile Senate Banking Committee that made the two look downright unprepared. Now, we stand in the mix… deciding whether to compose a large-scale $700 billion plan as originally proposed, tone it down a notch, make things a bit bigger or eliminate the plan completely.

News that somehow went mostly uncovered was the failure of Washington Mutual (or “WaMu”), as they were sold off to J.P. Morgan. This is by far the largest bank failure in U.S. History, as federal regulators came in to take control… striking a deal that would sell WaMu to J.P. Morgan. What happened was very interesting. Essentially, consumers withdrew a massive $16.7 BILLION in deposits since just September 15th. When you have no money in the reserve, you break all sorts of lending laws and restrictions that I’m not even going to get into right now with all the volatility.

Let’s wait for the dust to clear and talk more about this financial crisis. What you want to take out of this week is that federal officials are still wary of this proposed bailout plan, and news is coming out literally by the hour as we face to form a deal. Other than that plan formation, we have the massive failure of yet another financial institution, WaMu, in what has been a wild ride over the past month.

Blogosphere Update
Where to start, where to start… I suppose the news that would effect most of you is that Google is now updating their PageRank metric. I know a lot of you newer bloggers are hungry for some PageRank, hungry for an upgrade to your existing ranking… or hoping not to completely fall off. It appears that Google is slapping me in the face despite record growth and handing me a PR3 for Jimvesting.com. It’s okay, I can survive. Besides, it would also seem true that Bullish Bankers is getting a PR3… so that’s good news. Stay tuned over the next few days to get a complete picture.

EntreCard is for sale!? You betcha! Everybody and their mothers were talking about this news story, as EntreCard, one of the biggest blogging destinations for traffic-exchange went up for sale this week with a minimum bid of $100,000… looking for $1 million. Not Anymore! Breaking news is that Graham (owner) came out yesterday and posted on his blog that he was indeed taking his proposal back off of the offering table. This was basically because he was bombarded with offers from people interested in buying the company… which made him second-guess his logic.

“The 48 hours that transpired since listing my site on Sitepoint have been incredible. In fact, no less than 20 people have reached out to me and gave me a phone call. Over the past two days, I’ve talked to business leaders, CEOs, advertising execs, Tony the CEO of BlogCatalog, VCs, biz dev people, a gaming company in Israel, companies in the UK, and more. I’ve been on the phone so long I’m probably developing a tumor.” – Graham, Owner of Entrecard

That’s a pretty interesting news item, and a lot of people were ready to jump on board. You can read Graham’s post here. My personal belief is that he should indeed sell it. Normally, when people get the inclination to sell something, it is because they are no longer interested the project. The same holds true for Graham, but the bump from the morale-boosting community telling him how great the thing is will change his mind in the short term. Give it a month, and he’ll be trying to ditch the site again.

The Week In Focus
We started out a look at keyword research and Google search engine rankings last week. This week, I am hoping to get into the heart of this process and teach you guys from square one how I would go about ranking higher for any keyword phrase. It’s a process that does take a bit of time, so be prepared to do your work and have to wait a bit to see the fruits of your labor. Once PageRank comes in, I can hopefully offer up a post to analyze the changes that went through and what I think of the update. I really want to post a video about the stock market, but the rate at which new news comes in is a bit unbelievable, so it is going to be a question of finding a lull in the market so I can make that post more effective.

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-Jimvesting