It’s another beautiful Sunday,
Let’s start the week with a look back
…and some Link Love!

This was a packed week for me, and definitely for the global economy. We now have our new president elect in Barack Obama… who edged rival candidate John McCain in a thrilling display of America’s desire for policy change in hard times. Congratulations to Mr. Obama, and best of luck as we head into some pretty dynamic markets that are in desperate need of repair after the recent (and ongoing) economic debacle. But let’s hold off on that news, and swing back into the groove with some linkage for the best articles on the net last week:

• Tushar Dhoot – NoFollow vs. DoFollow: Back Link Study
• Mom Gadget – When you don’t know what to do…
• Cash Tactics – Pay Per Click Case Study: Stats Recap and Going Forward
• Click Consultants – Don’t Cut the Long Tail Short!
• Striking Up – The Five Mistakes People Make when Starting a Business

Some good material all around this week. Tushar Dhoot released his pretty effective NoFollow v. DoFollow case study… which was pretty effective to look at blogging preferences. I had to include this post from Mom Gadget, a blog I don’t normally track, because it is a compelling story of a lady who saved herself from financial crisis with her blog. Cash Tactics put out the sixth part of their case study on PPC marketing… something I’d definitely recommend checking out. Derek at Click Consultants talked about the mistakes people make with long-tail keywords. Finally, Striking Up (a new blogger) wrote a pretty nice article on mistakes and “semi-mistakes” that people often make when starting a business.

Stock Market News
As previously stated, this week was a historical one in terms of politics and social history. To think that America was almost completely race-segregated just a few decades ago… and now we have our first African-American president in history. A good show of democracy all around, as John McCain conceded gracefully and Barack Obama politely complimented his former competitor.

Getting back on track, the United States economy is still in the garbage can, as earnings announcements continue to come in from major firms domestically an abroad. There have been a lot of mixed results, and because of this fair share of downward pressure on stock prices. We didn’t spend much time at all basking in the glory of a successful election, and actually traded down (the two worst days since 1987) Wednesday and Thursday following Super Tuesday.

Ending the week up 2.85% on the Dow was a helpful boost coming into the weekend, but there were many weaknesses in leading indicators that came out last week. Employment readings came out very negative, as an estimated 157,000 jobs were lost in October alone (biggest decline since November 2002). This came on the back of a higher-than-expected decline in employment, now revealing an unemployment rate at 6.5%. In addition, Britain and Europe lowered their interest rates dramatically on recession fears that have been expanded after terrible U.S. retail sales numbers and a forecast for economic contraction. Back to work!

Blogosphere News and Updates
As I said last week, the second ever Blogging Idol is now under way. This contest run through DailyBlogTips.com has been successful and widely talked about in the blogging universe. Another pretty interesting event that has gone on this week was the Ad Tech conference in New York City. I don’t absolutely love conferences (or anything close), but it’s fun to check up on the industry by following these. One of my good buddies Max from MoneyBites.com has had continuing coverage of the event, so check it out!

A lot of bloggers put out their earnings releases for October this week, which was definitely interesting to see. I have yet to do so because of work constraints, but should be getting around to it early this week. This month was rough for me, as OIO Publisher crashed and I had to restart all of my blog ads… something that is never fun to do. I’m trying to re-market my advertising services in general because of this. I did, however, see things partially offset by in influx of premium blog reviews that I ran. We’ll get more into that later.

A couple of bloggers (names remain anonymous) have been focusing far too much on promoting their own affiliate products, and I feel like this is hurting the overall community. I understand doing paid reviews time and again, heck, I do them too. But really, we shouldn’t be selling each other out for a chance to make a few sales off people that fall for products you launch at them. I have no problems making a logical tie in to a product… but doing this every day is a major problem, and it begs the question… “why do i still read your blog?”

The Week In Focus
This week, I am going to put out some more interesting content. I’ve had certain posts in the draft phase for awhile, and definitely have things to address. Of course, I need to get out my earnings report so you guys can track my performance. Other than that, I’ve had a few case studies started that I simply need to complete before I am comfortable with releasing them. In jest, I have a lot of material… and simply need some more time to punch out the details so you can enjoy all I have to say.

I actually spent this weekend on a service trip (of sorts) raising money for kids with cancer. The organization is called THON (from “Dance Marathon”) and you can donate to the project if you have a few bucks on their official website THON.org. Make sure to put in that you are donating for the “Nittany Lion Fund” THON organization if you do happen to make a small donation. It’s always good to spend some time working charity events to assist those that need our help. So if you decide to drop even $1 into the collection pile, a big thank you.

Stay classy, and stay BULLISH on the net!
-Jimvesting

Another week gone by,
let’s get into that all important link love!

It’s been really busy all around for me over the past month or so, hopefully this week should present itself with a nice spot where I am free from mid-terms and available to blog. One of the most important things about this week has GOT to be the U.S. Presidential Election… so I might focus on that with a post about the two primary candidates… Barack Obama and John McCain. Before we get into all of that, let’s gear back and focus on the week gone by, ending November 1, 2008 (wow, November already!?):

• Blog Herald – Election Day 2008: The Best Blogs/Resources
• The Affiliate Toolbox – Combine Forces to Achieve More
• Suite J – Site Flipping: Hunting Down Buyers
• Terence Chang – Why Do I Like SPAM!?
• Zac Johnson – Five Ways to Cash in Big Before the New Year

Blog Herald kicks us off with a great look on multiple blogs and resources that can be used to track information about the presidential election, definitely worth checking out if you are voting. The Aff Toolbox gives us some great instruction on combining forces to boost profits. Suite J pulls out another great post, this time on finding buyers for your website flipping projects. Terence Chang wrote an interesting editorial on SPAM (and spam too!)… one of my favorite foods. And Zac Johnson wraps us up with an awesome write up on five ways you can cash in HUGE before the year is up.

Stock Market Recap
The month of October, a historically awful month on the markets, is finally over. People have really bad sentiment toward trading in October, and this month was no exception. With the S&P 500 Index down almost 25% before a late turnaround last week kicked in to recover some of our losses… a lot of investors are changing their minds about the investing environment. Yahoo Finance reports that we fell 16.9% on the month, which was apparently the 8th worst month in market history.

Something special happened last week. Despite a ton of bad news surrounding the United States GDP and other metrics of economic growth… we actually managed one of our better weeks to head things out into November. The Federal Reserve cut its target Federal Funds rate to 1%, not that it actually did anything. When you hear about a “rate cut”… it is actually just the Fed’s target. Unfortunately, we were already at 1% (or lower) prior to the rate “cut”… so it essentially did absolutely nothing. Still, markets responded nicely and we got a rally off our lows.

Blogosphere Update
The October Spectacular is still in progress, so get your entries in if you want a shot to win a Nintendo Wii, a Flip Mino or more! The top affiliate from Market Leverage who is entered will take in the first prize… so let’s get motivated and start earning some cash, eh?

We’ve got the second run of Blogging Idol off and running! This time, the big competition is all about making the most money from your blog with Google AdSense. If any of you think you are up for the challenge, I highly suggest that you go ahead and sign up for the contest… as it should be a fun time and a free opportunity for publicity if you do well. I now that applications closed as of November 1st, but you might still be able to get in if you are nice! Good luck to everyone in the competition.

The Week In Focus
I’m going to be expecting a lot of Barack Obama v. John McCain posts this week… so I might make a post myself. If I do write one, it will be supporting John McCain simply because so many bloggers out there are addicted to Obama and I don’t believe it is fair to always be hearing one side of the story.

Earnings for the month of October are going to be a bit trimmer than normal… this is mostly because I didn’t put ANY time into actively seeking out deals to make money through affiliates or whatnot. Whatever I earned this month is pretty much what I would be making with the bare minimum amount of work… so that might be interesting to see actually… haha.

Stay tuned for a jam-packed week of content… and stay BULLISH on the net!
-Jimvesting

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