While I have been taking a break from affiliate marketing myself recently, back when I was actively running campaigns I would often log into each affiliate network separately to search for a suitable offer to promote.

This can get old fast and be a bit of a pain when you’re a member of a lot of different affiliate networks.

Jounce.com is a new site that is still in beta but now open to the public. It was officially launched at Affiliate Summit East a couple weeks ago, and they’re now spreading the word about their free service.

Basically, Jounce is a search engine where users can search for affiliate products and offers all in one place and even sync their affiliate network accounts to easily retrieve their affiliate URLs.

They currently have 60 affiliate networks in their system with plans of adding 400 more soon. Their search engine index currently spans 12 million offers and products.

Below is a 25-minute screencast review of Jounce:

(Note: You may need to visit the post directly at TylerCruz.com if you’re reading this via e-mail or RSS in order to see it.) 

Below is a short animated overview of Jounce for those with a shorter attention span:

It would be great if Jounce.com implements some of my suggestions because I think they can certainly be a viable and useful free service that I can see myself using in the future.

I’ve done many interviews, reviews, and screencasts in the past, but for the first time ever I’m doing all 3 combined in 1!

After much trial and error, I finally rigged up a system that allowed me to do this. It sounds easier to set up than it is. In fact, Ryan and I actually had to re-record the entire interview yesterday as we did the whole thing a few days ago but I messed up the audio recording and also Ryan’s power went out near the end of the recording.

It’s a very long screencast interview, at 1 hour and 20 minutes, but it’s filled with a lot of great content and is worth the watch. It’s set up so that you can see both mine and Ryan’s computer screen as we talk about Internet University, internet marketing, and making money online in general.

Again, this is the first time I’ve ever done this sort of thing, so please share your feedback in the comments below.

If the name Ryan Gray sounds familiar, it may be because he wrote a guest post on my blog last year or because he’s one of the twins from SuperAffiliateTwins.com.

The Super Affiliate Twins do upwards of $600,000+ a month using various marketing techniques, and last month they launched Internet University which is an online membership-based training school/system on how to make money online.

There is a lot covered in the interview, especially near the end, so be sure to watch the whole thing if you can.

You can watch the entire 1 hour and 20 minute screencast below:

(Note: You may need to visit the post directly at TylerCruz.com if you’re reading this via e-mail or RSS in order to see it)   

Special Discount for TylerCruz.com Readers

As Ryan explains at the end of the screencast, the normal monthly cost for Internet University is $3.22 a day ($99.95 a month). For the month of June, to celebrate Internet University’s 1-month-anniversary, they’re offering a special rate of $2.25 a day ($69.96 a month).

However, they’re offering an even better discount to TylerCruz.com readers at $59.95 a month ($1.93 a day).

Just be sure to use the the coupon code: F57B4B0113 when signing up.

As far as I’m aware, this is the cheapest discount available. I think that they’re able to give you guys an added discount on it since I’m not using an affiliate link (since this is a paid review), meaning that they can pass on some of that extra affiliate cost they’re saving onto you.

WordPress is an incredible versatile content management system. Most people seem to assume that WordPress is only good for running a blog, but it can be used for so much more than that. All you need is the right set of customizations, plugins, and themes to get the job done.

If you’ve ever wanted to run a premium buy-sell website but you have no idea how to go about coding one, you’re in luck. All you need is ClassiPress, the "first and only professional classified ads theme for WordPress”.

The newest iteration of the theme, version 3.0, was just released and it comes with a series of updates and new features. Let’s take a look at what it has to offer.

Converting WordPress to Classifieds

The great thing about ClassiPress is that you don’t need to have any coding knowledge yourself, nor do you have to go through an incredible complex installation process. If you know how to change the theme on a WordPress blog, then you’ll know how to use this classified ads theme.

Here is a sample screenshot of what a ClassiPress-customized website would look like. The color scheme being used right now is red. If you go through the admin demo, however, you’ll find that you can change the color scheme quickly and easily via a drop-down menu. In addition to red, you can have aqua, blue, green, or teal, each of which is also available with a black header instead.

The ClassiPress theme is designed to be used with a premium buy-sell website, meaning that you can charge people for posting their ads. These prices can be the same across the site or you can set different prices for the different categories. For additional monetization options, you’ll see the pre-defined space for a 468×60 ad banner in the header, among options for advertising in several other places around the site.

Navigation for site visitors is reasonably straight forward. The main page shows the different categories and subcategories, making it easy to browse through the various sections. A search box is also implemented in the sidebar if they are looking for something specific. Check out the live demo to see how a live ClassiPress site looks and feels.

Categories and Subcategories

As mentioned, the ClassiPress system is preconfigured to have several different categories and subcategories. This only makes sense, since it is being used as a classified ads site.

Interestingly, posts in the subcategories do not necessarily appear to the primary category pages. This way, you can charge an extra premium for the latter if you’d like. You can browse through the subcategories from the main category pages, however.

Each set of listings gives the site visitor a fairly large look at the thumbnail image, post title, asking price, and an excerpt from the body of the ad itself. Each classified ad is akin to a blog post, so any customizations you can do for the latter can be done to the former. For instance, the demo site is set up with social media sharing options.

The size of the individual postings on the category listing pages is a little too large for my tastes. This won’t be an issue for a smaller site, but as you gain more volume, the ads can get overwhelming very quickly. Contrast this to the incredibly minimalist approach of a site like Craigslist.

Mapping the Sellers

One of the more interesting features for individual ads is the embedded map of the seller’s location.

This can be very helpful, since potential buyers don’t have to go to a separate page to see if the seller is near them or not. In order to use this, the seller will, of course, need to reveal his or her address.

One question that I do have about these classified ads is how a buyer can go about contacting a seller. There is no built-in messaging system, like how you would find with forum software, and the contact form is to reach the site administrator.

You could create custom forms and fields in WordPress to accommodate this, but it would be nice if there was built-in email address masking, as is the case with places with Craigslist and Kijiji.

Posting Your Own Classified Ad

When someone wants to post a classified ad on a ClassiPress-powered site, they must first register for an account. After that, the form is relatively straightforward.

One small issue that I encountered with testing the demo site was that it forced me to select a state, even though I wasn’t choosing the United States as my country. This can be easily rectified by not defining the state as a required field.

After all the pertinent information is entered, including product images, the seller is then directed to the payment page. From here, you can accept posting fees via PayPal, among other services.

User Dashboard and Control Panel

The "back end" of ClassiPress is comprised of several option pages within the WordPress dashboard. Using this easy-to-understand interface, you can customize your classifieds site as you see fit.

The general settings page, for instance, lets you control the home page layout, Feedburner URL, Google Maps key, maximum images per ad, new ad message, header ad, single ad, and so forth.

The other options pages are: Pricing, Ad Packs, Gateways, Form Layouts, Custom Fields, Transactions, and System Info. As you can imagine, you can spend a great deal of time customizing the installation to best suit your preferences and needs.

The core installation process is no different than the process you’d use any other WordPress theme. You can upload the ZIP file from within the WordPress dashboard or you can upload manually via FTP and activate the theme from within the WP dashboard.

Can You Make Money from a Premium Classifieds Site?

As is the case with so many other online ventures, the ability to make money with a premium classifieds site largely lies in your own hands. Some people find great success while others do not. With ClassiPress, at least you don’t have to worry about the hard coding for the site.

Looking at the features page, the different editions of ClassiPress are largely the same. The most critical difference is the number of installations you are allowed with each license. Pricing starts at $69 for the Personal Edition (one concurrent site) and goes up to $199 for the Ultimate Edition (unlimited sites, plus WordPress MU).

All in all, ClassiPress looks like it could be a very powerful tool and it’s an easy way to get into the classified ads business. You’ll need to spend some time to customize the installation, but all the groundwork has been done for you.

“Branding” is a term that seems to be thrown around more than ever these days, but it’s for good reason, especially for brick and mortar businesses. While “branding” can include a wide spectrum of different sources such as a company’s colours, theme, decor, typeface, and even things such as their political views and which celebrities they choose to have endorse them, the core element which distinguishes a company more than anything other than its name is their logo.

This is why I personally take great care when I am commissioning a logo for a new project, and why it’s always the very first thing I get done in terms of visual design. I actually build my websites around the logo, not the other way around.

LogoBee is a custom logo design company which has won multiple awards and has been in the business for just over a decade now. Like most logo design companies, LogoBee also offers other graphic design services including web and stationery design, but since they mainly do logos, this review will focus on that.

The Packages

LogoBee offers a few different logo packages which range in price from $199 to $1,199. However, the more expensive packages mainly differ by tacking on additional perks such as 500 business cards, stationery and Word design, turnaround time, etc. The actual logo you receive will be of the same quality regardless of which package you choose.

Therefore, the best two packages available also appear to be the cheapest two: the Special Package and the Silver Package.

The Special Package is currently on sale at $199 (normally $298) and offers 6 logo design samples, 5 day turnaround for initial samples, 6 revisions, and no refund.

The Silver Package is also currently on sale at $279 (normally $389) and offers 8 logo design samples, 5 day turnaround for initial samples, unlimited revisions, “full satisfaction”, and a money back guarantee.

The package states:

• For an unlimited time we will modify your logo design free of charge until you are fully satisfied.
• If for some reason, we did not match your chosen style in the initial drafts, we will give you free redraw session with 8 completely new logo design variations.

I assume the second point is referring to the “full satisfaction”.

These prices are “okay”, but certainly not bargains. The logo design industry is actually pretty competitive and there are a lot of logo design sources out there, so LogoBee may want to consider either lowering their prices or else offering more perks in order to stay competitive.

If I had to choose between the two packages, I’d personally choose the Silver as it’s hard to beat a money back guarantee – if you’re not satisfied, you simply get your money back. No risk.

Big Clients

One of the most notable things about LogoBee is the large amount of clients as well as the big  name clients they have serviced.

They have designed logos for:

• Heritage Education Funds Inc. (one of Canada’s largest Registered Education Savings Plan RESP) providers)
• Greenpeace
• Playa Del Racing (LogoBee created a team logo design which they sport on their jackets)
• Kendra Todd, winner of NBC`s hit show "The Apprentice", got a logo design services for her real estate firm (Exclusive interview with Kendra)
• Clinton Hart of the San Diego Chargers NFL team recently had a logo designed for his non-profit, The Clinton Hart Foundation.
• The TAB Boxing Championship Belt

LogoBee claims to have created logos for more than 10,000 companies, which is pretty insane.

You can also view 6 pages of customer testimonials here.

The Logos

A company can have all the testimonials and biggest clients in the world, but in the end the only thing that really matters is the quality of their work, which is usually shown in their portfolio.

When I review a company or freelancer that provides any form of graphic design, I like to go through their portfolio and choose a few of the best and worst of what they showcase and then present them to you so that you can make your own decision.

Below are 6 of the more low quality logos I found in their portfolio:

To be honest, these represented more of the average logo that can be found in LogoBee’s huge, seemingly never-ending, portfolio.

However, after a fair bit of searching, I did manage to find 6 logos that I really did like:

Each of these logos is easily worth $200-$300, which is what LogoBee’s 2 cheapest packages are priced around.

While the large majority of the logos I found were of pretty bad, to be fair, this could be largely due to the fact that most clients have poor taste in design, and so LogoBee could simply be catering to the artistic direction their clients insist on having, there’s no way to know for sure.

Referral Program

LogoBee also provides a money-making opportunity through its affiliate program. Anyone who signs up will earn a $20 referral fee for each new logo project referred. The referred clients also receive a $20 discount on their logo design purchase.

The Verdict

Overall, I have mixed feelings of LogoBee. I think that they are slightly overpriced for what they offer, although they are not too out of line with their competitors.

The majority of the logos they showcase in their portfolio are not too great, mainly due to two logo design faux pas that seem to be a recurring theme with what they produce: their lack of simplicity and the out-of-style design elements (such as many swishes and curved lines – think Nike).

While not all of their logos are overly impressive, they do showcase a few real nice ones in their portfolio (see above) that are actually very impressive.

I would therefore recommend anyone who decides to be a customer of LogoBee to purchase anything other than the “Special” Package, as it does not guarantee satisfaction. All the other packages do, including a full money back guarantee, so in that regard you really have nothing to lose – you’ll either get your money back to use elsewhere, or you’ll walk away with a fantastic logo.

Five weeks ago, the Vice President of Infolinks, Tomer Treves, contacted me asking me to try their In-Text advertising network as a publisher.

I replied saying I wasn’t interested as I had previously used other In-Text advertising networks such as Kontera and IntelliTXT with horrible results (incredibly low payouts, irrelevant ads, etc.).

Tomer was persistent and replied by saying that “Infolinks is different”. He then offered me a rather significant up-front signing bonus if I were to run Infolinks on my network of sites for a year. His sign-up bonus offer was indeed significant and I did think about it carefully as it would have made a nice additional down payment on the house I’ll be buying.

However, I really had a strong negative disposition towards In-Text advertising networks and decided to decline his offer – after all, a year is a long time. In response, Tomer decided to buy a paid review from my blog, which was a smart move as it basically forced me to try Infolinks

Even though I was negatively biased against In-Text advertising, I tested Infolinks for my review with a fresh state of mind, even optimism.

Here than is my review of Infolinks:

Infolinks is an In-Text advertising network that pays out on a CPC basis. In-Text ads are those ads you typically see when keywords are double underlined. When hovered over with the cursor, a small ad, which is supposed to be relevant to the contextual text that is linked, will appear.

I ran Infolinks on two of my websites, CookingForums.net and Movie-Vault.com (now removed, in case you’re looking for the ads), for 2 weeks in order to get a decent amount of sample data.

Signing Up & Implementation

Unlike many ad networks, Infolinks welcomes all legitimate (obviously nothing illegal or offensive) websites, big or small. There are no minimum requirements for page views or visitors which right off the bat makes Infolinks a very desirable solution for small website owners.

Applying to Infolinks was very easy and I believe I was approved the next day, if not instantly (I really can’t remember unfortunately). However, while account approval may be quick, you will then also require separate approval for each website you add to your account.

Unfortunately, in my case, this turned out to be a bit of a hassle. I had correctly added the ad JavaScript code to my sites, which was required for verification purposes, but customer support kept telling me I didn’t add it. After several e-mails and 3 days later, they finally apologized and admitted that I was correct and had added the code correctly. Their apology was sincere and they approved my sites.

Adding Infolinks to your site is as easy as it gets, simply adding a snippet of JavaScript to the bottom of your HTML code, right before the </html> tag. Below is how my JavaScript code looks:

<script type="text/javascript">
   var infolink_pid = 69197;
   var infolink_wsid = 0;
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://resources.infolinks.com/js/infolinks_main.js"></script>

The variables are there for optional advanced customization (see below).

Customization

Infolinks offers a decent amount of customization to their ads.

First, you can decide which portions of your website you want to allow Infolinks to link. This is a vital customization feature; without it, you could have important areas such as your navigational sections turned into ads which would be extremely confusing and frustrating to your visitors.

By default, if no tags are implemented, the Infolinks ads will appear in all appropriate sections. The boundary tags are simple to implement, simply requiring either a <!–INFOLINKS_ON—> or <!–INFOLINKS_OFF—> in appropriate sections. This may be a bit of a pain to implement in certain CMS’s, however.

Another way to customize your ads is to take advantage of the Advanced Customization Wizard. The wizard, as seen below, allows you to easily customize the colours of your links, choose the underline style, set your website’s category, and set the ad saturation level you want to appear per page.

You can also customize your ads by adding and editing variables within the JavaScript code. This is nice for power users, but there appears to be no option to set the underline style through this method, so you’ll have to use the wizard if you wish to customize that.

Furthermore, making modifications to the JavaScript code by modifying the variables does not appear to update the ads instantly, while using the wizard does appear to show instant changes.

Customer Support

I already mentioned the little hiccup with customer support during the website approval above, but that was really minor and they did apologize rather sincerely.

However, I did have another run-in with customer support when my forum members on CookingForums.net were complaining about a bug. Apparently, Infolinks created a bug on CookingForums that prevented the back button in Internet Explorer from working – you had to click it 3 times in order for it to function correctly.

There was no way I was going to keep running Infolinks on my site if it caused such a severe user interface issue, so I quickly removed it from the site.

However, the next day, Tomer e-mailed me stating:

“I heard you had a bug on one of your sites so you’ve removed the Infolinks script. Despite being rare, bugs happen (especially with IE), and we’re proud of being very fast to fix anything. Recently, for example, we were the first ad network to overcome a problem that PayPal had with customers in India (you can easily Google this).

In your case, even though you didn’t approach our support (as far as I know), our monitoring team found your problem, duplicated it, and in fact fixed it already…”

While I did contact support about it, Tomer was correct and the bug was fixed very quickly so I re-added Infolinks to CookingForums the next day to proceed with the testing.

While the bug was certainly annoying, I do give them credit for fixing it so fast.

However, as is mentioned below, there was also a bug on Movie-Vault.com which I notified customer support about 10 days ago. Two days later, they replied, telling me that they “forwarded this issue to their technical team for further investigation”, but I haven’t heard anything since then (8 days ago) and the bug remains.

Therefore, I think their customer support needs work. It’s not horrible, but I think they should follow up on issues more and perhaps be a bit more proactive.

Bugs Galore

The main reason I was so antagonistic about In-Text advertising when Tomer first contacted me, apart from the historically low payouts from other similar networks, was the bugs and irrelevant ads that these networks tend to have.

Below are 3 bugs that appeared on both sites I tested Infolinks on:

Irrelevant Ads

The whole point of contextual advertising is to provide higher targeted and relevant ads which benefits everybody including the advertiser, publisher, ad network, and visitor.

While some ads were indeed relevant to the keywords they targeted, I found that 90% of them were not. The majority of them appeared to be ads for search engines or “top sites” which basically tell visitors to find more information on x keyword(s) by using their search engine or viewing the top sites for x keyword(s). This is not relevancy, and does not engage users to click on them.

Since Infolinks is a CPC network and you only get paid when visitors click on the ads, relevancy is of HUGE importance to publishers. This can not be understated.

I am listing this as a bug since Infolinks states on their front page:

“Infolinks will automatically insert highly relevant In-Text ads into your website’s content”.

Below is a screenshot of an example of the typical Infolinks ad:

No Images

While this may not technically be a bug, it certainly looks like one to visitors: I would estimate that roughly 90% of the ads don’t have images, as seen below:

In many cases, this is likely due to their system not being able to grab or cache a screenshot of the website, possibly because the page does not actually even exist until it is visited.

Whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that the majority of ads do NOT have images. This makes the ads look trashy and unprofessional. I can understand situations where a screenshot may not be dynamically possible, but there is no reason why there should be a blank “Image Not Available” placeholder graphic showing. Require a default image or simply do not show any image and just the text, but don’t show a blank placeholder image as that is just too unprofessional.

Perhaps Infolinks may even want to consider requiring advertisers to submit images with their ads ala Facebook instead of taking website screenshots dynamically. This would dramatically improve CTR in most cases anyway.

HTML Tags Showing

This one is definitely a bug. Some ads, perhaps as many as 20% in fact, show HTML tags in the description and title instead of stripping them out or implementing the actual tags, as can be seen in the screenshot below:

This is yet another thing that makes the ads look unprofessional, unenticing to click on, and just rather silly.

When you combine the 3 bugs above, it really shows that Infolinks has a lot of work to do.

Link Style Bug

This bug appeared only on my Movie-Vault.com website, not CookingForums.net, and only appeared on the front page news posts. This was somewhat odd, since when you viewed the same content on the individual news pages, the bug was not present; it was only present on the front page news posts.

Basically, the bug had the ad links incorrectly positioned. The underline links were often several pixels below where they should have been, and were sometimes directly through text.

An example is shown below:

Now, it’s possible that this is more an issue with the fact that Movie-Vault.com uses a WYSIWYG toolbar editor when staff submit news, and therefore the news posts may have more complicated and obfuscated HTML tags for the Infolinks JavaScript to parse, but that doesn’t really seem to make sense when you consider that these same news posts appear fine when on their individual pages…

Whatever the reason, this bug was never fixed, nor did I ever receive any update about the progress of it from customer support.

I should mention that the underline links appeared fine everywhere else throughout the site.

Income Analysis

Ah, the most important part. While everything I mentioned above is important, in the end the only thing that really matters in an ad network is how much money it can make you.

The reports page on Infolinks is pretty simple, but has all the basic information and date functions you need. However, one thing that is a bit of a pet peeve for me is that the reports aren’t live or even updated hourly. Instead, you can only receive stats up to the previous day.

This is obviously not a big issue, but for those who love checking their stats like me, this is a bit difficult to get used to. I don’t see why the reports can’t be made live or at least updated hourly, so it’d be nice if this would be changed in the future.

Anyway, I started receiving ad impressions on February 19th and ran Infolinks on my two sites until the end of the month, although I did remove the code for several days on CookingForums while the ‘back button’ bug was present. I also set Infolinks on both sites to show the maximum amount of ads available, in order to see the maximum I could make.

Things started off great. After only having put Infolinks on my sites for half a day, I saw a $5.72 eCPM on CookingForums.net! This is a huge eCPM and so when I saw it I was naturally quite surprised and optimistic. However, it was odd that Movie-Vault.com only had a $0.66 eCPM in comparison:

However, things quickly changed for the worse. While the following couple days saw an average of an $0.89 eCPM, the 4 days thereafter showed a combined total of $0 (for my CookingForums.net site)!

At first, I thought this was undoubtedly a bug on Infolinks end and was naturally rather annoyed, but then I remembered that Infolinks pays on a CPC basis and not CPM. Therefore, these stats could be legitimate, and I just didn’t have a single person click on an add during those 4 days.

It’s certainly possible, but it’s also uncharacteristic as my daily click average at the end of my testing phase turned out to be 5 per day. So, it’s rather strange that I didn’t receive a single click during those 4 days when statistically I should have received around 20…

This is why I believe there was some type of bug that occurred during those 4 days, although I don’t have concrete proof to back it up since my sample traffic data is quite low.

I continued to let Infolinks run uninterrupted until the end of the month, and you can see the overall results below:

While there were days with a $1.58 eCPM and a $0.99 eCPM, the average ended up being $0.49. Now, if that was the eCPM for a traditional banner, then it would be an okay rate, but I personally consider In-Text ad links such as Infolinks to be more intrusive than the typical banner since the ads are directly entrenched within your site’s text, and so I therefore expect higher rates.

I wrote the majority of this review last night, and am finishing it this morning. Out of curiosity, I decided to check yesterday’s stats a couple of minutes ago, and was surprised to find another high eCPM, akin to what occurred on the very first day.

It showed a $3.58 eCPM for Movie-Vault.com (the stats below are only for Movie-Vault.com) which is great!

Now, this could easily be explained by somehow getting a click (or two) on a very high-priced keyword or keyword phrase. After all, people have received as high as $20 CPC’s from Google AdSense before. So that is probably what happened. My average CPC is $0.27, and if we estimate that it was just 1 ‘superclick’ that occurred yesterday, then it would have paid out $2.77 for that one click.

Below are the overall stats that occurred between CookingForums.net and Movie-Vault.com during a period of 10 days (impressions didn’t begin to appear until the 19th): 

I ended up averaging only $0.49 eCPM which is too low for my liking considering the types of ads.

Referring back to my Bugs section above, if Infolinks provided actual relevant ads with working images that are bug-free, then I would expect the CTR to increase dramatically which would in turn increase the overall eCPM dramatically as well.

I should mention that I used the dotted underline style on both of my sites and the Infolinks customer support did mention the following to me:

“I would suggest that you use double underline for your highlighted links. We recommend you choose double underline as it’s considered less intrusive (since it isn’t confused with regular hyperlinks). Double-underline will get higher quality, better paying ads. Our experience shows that in general double-underline generates higher revenues than single line.”

So I wonder if that explains for my lower eCPM. But I do disagree with “it’s considered less intrusive” as double underlines to me are just so incredibly ugly.

But I’m now curious if advertisers actually pay a premium for double underlines, and/or if advertisers can bid differently depending on the underline styles. This is something I’d be interested in getting an official response on.

Summary

While I went into my review process of Infolinks with an open mind, having been admittedly biased against In-Text ad networks, my experience during the past 2-weeks only reinforced my negative disposition towards them.

While they claim high relevancy, I saw very little (almost none) during my test run. Improving the ad relevancy is the #1 thing that Infolinks should focus on. There are also many bugs that need to be ironed out, and they seem to be simple fixes so I’d like to see those eliminated or at least improved.

Customer support was a hit and miss.

Registration and ad implementation was fast and easy, and their system is very basic and simple to use. Ad customization was also simple to implement.

Earnings were rather unpredictable, with some days having fantastic eCPM’s as high as $5.50+ yet some others with as low as $0.

I gave Infolinks an honest shot, but they’re going to need to fix the bugs I wrote about and address many of the other issues I brought up in order for me to try them again.

To be fair, out of all the In-Text ad networks, I do think I like Infolinks the best. Even though their payouts weren’t too great, they did appear to pay better than their competition. But that’s not saying a whole lot…

I’d be happy to do another paid review of Infolinks if they do decide to improve and work on things.

I actually hope they do seriously heed some of my advice as I actually do want to use them. Those were some nice eCPM’s! If I could average a $5 eCPM with them I’d be extremely happy and would most likely use them on all of my sites and promote them.

I’m pretty confident I could refer 300-400 publishers to them so it’s really in their best interest to get me on board

With affiliate marketing being a multi-billion dollar business, there is no shortage of affiliate marketing training products and services out there. Some provide training via videos, some are in eBook format, while others are presented as podcasts. But what all of them have in common is one thing: they cost money, whether it be a monthly membership cost or a one-time fee.

6 Day Weekend is a video training site geared towards teaching affiliate marketing, and it is 100% free.

Whenever you hear the word free these days, it’s hard to change your immediate thoughts from scepticism. However, I can tell you that after signing up to the site and reviewing it carefully myself, that 6 Day Weekend is legitimately free without any BS.

What’s pleasantly surprising, is that there are no upsells or a myriad of ads blockading you from the content. I was able to sign-up and watch any of the 90+ videos without any hassle.

Upon purchasing this paid review, Sean Morrissy, the creator of 6 Day Weekend wrote to me:

“I am looking to create some paid products in the future, but I want to give away a ton of stuff first, hence the free videos.”

So the free videos are a way of building both credibility and awareness at the same time for those of you who are wondering why or how the videos are being given away for free.

Now, there is one small link on the site where Sean is promoting his one-on-one mentorship program, but he is in no way pushing it on you and it is only mentioned on one page.

His Story

While Sean Morrissy never directly states exactly how much he is making from affiliate marketing, from what I have gathered after listening to a number of videos, I’d estimate he’s making anywhere from around $30,000 to $100,000 a month.

He has a 15-minute video on the site which summarizes and condenses his life story well which I recommend listening to. It it told very humorously yet earnestly and some of the stories include: spies, porn, and an eBook product he created which was targeted for people who were going to jail teaching them how to prepare for going to jail, lol.

Signing Up

In order to watch the videos on the site, you’ll need to create an account.

Fortunately, signing up is painless and only requires a username and password. I managed to sign up, log in, and start watching my first video literally within about 10-12 seconds. I didn’t even need to confirm my e-mail.

It’s weird though… while I was able to log in immediately after creating my account, I received an e-mail that said:

“Before we can let you login, we want to be certain we have your permission.“

It contained an AWeber subscription link, but I never did end up clicking on it. My assumption is that it was intended for members to have to click on that link (thus subscribing to the AWeber list) in order to have their account authenticated and approved before being able to watch the videos, but if that is the case, then it does not appear to be working properly since I was able to log in without doing so.

This is something Sean and his programmer Paul might want to look into as he’ll be losing out on double opt-in AWeber leads until the glitch is fixed.

Indeed, 6 Day Weekend was just launched last week so it is likely the case that it’s just a temporary glitch.

In any case, signing up is painless and fast.

The Videos

There are currently over 90 videos available on the site, covering topics such as: Pay Per Click, Research, Social Marketing, and SEO to name a few. Each topic has a lot of videos for pertaining to that particular topic.

For example, some of the Pay Per Click topic videos include: Making Full use of your Google Conversion Code, Unleashing AdBrite Advertising, and Creating Landing Pages that Google falls in Love with.

At first, I thought that there was a total of 36 videos (3 per topic), which is already a lot of videos for free, but I was wrong. If you look at the Lessons page as shown in the screenshot below, you can see how that is an easy mistake to make:

After e-mailing Sean asking him why he told me that there were 90 videos available when I could only count 36, he replied informing that each category, or topic, was linked to more videos!

So in fact, some categories actually have over a dozen videos each (as opposed to just 3) as seen in the below screenshot!:

The average video is around 8-minutes-long which may seem short but actually isn’t too bad. There is a lot of valuable information packed into each one so you do feel that you have learned something after even only 8-minutes.

Surprisingly, even averaging only 8-minutes per video, with over 90 videos that works out to 12 hours of video content. Let me rephrase that: that’s 12 hours of free video content.

That’s pretty freaking amazing when you think about it. What 6 Day Weekend is giving away for free with virtually no upsells or sales pitches, others are charging literally hundreds (or even thousands) for. I hate to sound like a pitchman myself, but that really is amazing.

The actual content on the videos is actually quite good. They are not full of a lot of hyperbolic statements or claims that so many other products consist of, and are not done in an over-the-top greasy salesman way either. They are simple, straight-to-the-point videos without a lot of fluff.

I actually really recommend watching them. There is a lot of good information there and it’s always good to learn new things, or even relearn things you may already know but may have forgotten about.

Some of the videos are especially good such as: How to pick the best Products to Promote in which Sean explains in detail how he decides which offers to promote by comparing landing pages, traffic ranking, and market saturation.

Now, the videos don’t reveal anything ‘secret’ or never-heard-of-before marketing techniques, but that’s simply because there are no secrets. Most of the videos are common-sense business and marketing techniques, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn a thing or two from them.

I would say that for skill level, that the videos are most useful for newer or beginning affiliate marketers, but like anything there is always something that experienced marketers could learn and benefit from.

In fact, I’d be surprised if there is anyone out there who could walk away after watching all the videos without learning anything.

My Suggestions

Since this is a review, I thought I’d provide a few quick suggestions to Sean.

First, I’d recommend adding a free forum to the site. While it’s nice as it is, being very simplistic and all, one of the best ways to learn affiliate marketing is simply by discussing it with others.

Whether or not Sean decides to  provide personal help on the forum or not, it would still be handy for users to discuss what they have learned from the videos with one another.

My only other suggestion would be to make it more apparent that there are more videos available for each topic! If I managed to think that there were only 3 videos per topic then I’m sure others would too.

A simple “More Videos” link would suffice, or even better, a number in parentheses stating the total number of videos in each category (Ex. Social Marketing (13)).

Mentorship Program

As mentioned earlier, the one thing that Sean links to on the site that isn’t free is his mentorship program.

What Sean is offering is a complete one-on-one mentorship program in which he acts as your personal affiliate marketing mentor to help you make money online. He has several testimonials from others he has helped, and insinuates that the least you should be making afterwards is $5,000 a month.

It is a great idea and is presented well. In fact, I have personally played with the idea myself of getting a true super affiliate to teach me in return for me being able to promote them. But Sean Morrissy’s mentorship program, which runs for 6-months, doesn’t seem very 1-on-1 to me.

First, you only get a 30-minute Skype call with him each week. That is not very much time, and if you’re anything like me, you could talk for hours without even realizing it.

Secondly, you are given “3 emergency emails’ a week in which you can contact Sean for important questions or concerns.

Finally, students must sign a contract. What the contract consists of is unknown to the public, but it would be nice to be able to view it before considering purchasing the mentorship program (such as it being linked to in a PDF file).

I hate limits, and a true mentorship program shouldn’t have them. I understand that Sean’s time is valuable, and indeed certain limits may need to be put into place especially if there are a lot of students, but a 30-minute call a week is nothing in my opinion. I personally would want somebody who is online everyday and who could help me at least several times per week.

I’d want them to be able to connect to my computer and help me tweak my campaigns, tell me what I’m doing wrong, how I can improve, etc. A 30-minute-a-week phone call is far too detached for me.

The price for the 6-month mentorship program is $3,000. While that may seem expensive, it’s really not depending on what you get out of it as a result. If you end up making $7,500 a month, you’ve given good credit to the “teach a man to fish” adage.

My issue with Sean’s mentorship program is therefore not with the price tag, but with the amount of actual one-on-one time being offered. Doing the math, a 6-month program is 24 weeks priced at $3,000. With a 30-minute Skype call once a week, that works out to a total of 12-hours, or $250/hour.

So essentially you’re paying $250/hour.

I don’t want to rag on his mentorship program too much though. After all, I DO love the idea of it. I would just like to see it improved with more actual one-on-one time to where I’d feel like I’m really being taught well and being taken care of. After all, while $3,000 may not be a lot to a super affiliate like Sean, it’s a month’s salary for most people.

Conclusion

6 Day Weekend is an affiliate marketing video training site which is 100% free.

There is literally 12-hours (approximately) of useful video content available right at your fingertips.

I’m sure some of you have wanted to buy a lot of other products and training services out there but couldn’t afford the $59-$499 price tag they require.

Here’s your solution.

If you’ve been marketing online for a while, you’ll probably have heard the power of what Twitter can do for your enterprise or Internet venture. The simple fact is that having a large volume of followers is no different than having a targeted email list to market to, which is why just about every man and his dog have jumped on the bandwagon.

Despite this, many people are finding it hard to attain the amount of followers necessary to a successful campaign and shortly after getting started with the site, either put their Twitter efforts on the backburner, or give up altogether — this is not what you wnat to do.

The good news is that you can now buy Twitter followers with uSocial.net and we can not only offer you packages of followers between 1,000 and 100,000 followers which will be delivered to your own account, we can also target followers by interest group, niche or geo-location.

We’ve done tests with several of our clients and if marketed to correctly, each follower should be worth around $0.10 to you per month. Got 10,000 followers? That’s an extra $1,000 in marketing revenue for your online business every month. 100,000? That’s an extra $10,000 per month.

So are you ready to start tweeting for profits right now? You can get more Twitter followers within days by clicking here.

Also, we’ve just launched an affiliate program where you can earn by promoting our services. To find out more about that, head to our affiliate page which is located here.

To your Twitter success!

If you happen to be a fan of Tyler Cruz’s blog, then there is a good chance that you are interested in how to make money online. By extension, there is a good chance that you are reasonably familiar with the nature of affiliate marketing and affiliate networks. Have you ever considered working from the other side of the coin?

Rather than signing up for an affiliate network so that you can run offers on your site, have you ever thought about running your own affiliate network? It may sound like an incredibly daunting and potentially expensive endeavour, but the HasOffers platform provides "a robust tracking and management software solution with no barrier to entry." The best part? It’s free, so long as you stay under one million clicks.

Building Your Own Affiliate Network

Yes, you can create your own affiliate network. HasOffers, according to the official company website, is the "first white label affiliate network solution that gives you total control, with powerful technology, complete customization, and no startup costs or monthly fees." This is a white label solution, so your affiliate network can be branded however you would like it to be.

The signup process for HasOffers is very straightforward. After filling out the basic registration form, you will receive a confirmation email. It takes about ten to fifteen minutes for your new network to be activated, and then you’ll be able to log into your custom dashboard.

For the purposes of completing this review, I set up a "dummy" affiliate network located at tylercruz.hasoffers.com. This configuration is the default (having your network as a subdomain on hasoffers.com), but you can also have it run from your own custom domain instead.

The administration panel for a HasOffers-powered affiliate network looks almost like the dashboard you would see when you log into your affiliate account elsewhere. The "snapshot" offers an at-a-glance look at your network, getting quick links, updates, and stats. From there, you can navigate to the various other areas to customize your network as needed.

Setting Up the Fundamentals

Obviously, before you can start scouting for new affiliates to sign up with your network and before you can start populating your network with affiliate offers, you need to get the fundamentals in place.

Under the "Company" tab in the user dashboard is an option to "Customize Application." The first option on the resulting page is "Change Preferences" and it is here that you can establish the basic settings for your affiliate network.

You would have already determined the network name during the registration process, but this can be altered from this screen. Also from the preferences screen, you can adjust the support email, the requirement for a W9 form, the approval process, referral program, minimum payments, and your custom domain.

As mentioned, if you are already familiar with affiliate networks from the perspective of an affiliate or publisher, then you will already be familiar with some of these details from the perspective of the network. The difference is that you are now in control.

Creating and Managing Offers

Realistically, the single greatest thing that will differentiate one affiliate network from another is the selection of affiliate offers. When you have the fundamentals in place, you will then want to populate your affiliate network with offers.

Since HasOffers is a white label solution, they are not necessarily there to help you shop for advertisers who want to use your newly formed network. That’s up to you to determine, just as it is up to staff your company (there is a section under "Company" to manage your employees).

From what I can gather, you cannot import a database of offers into your HasOffers-powered network. Instead, you must enter each offer manually. The Create Offer form provides fields for the offer name, description, preview URL, creative URL, payout type, lead caps, cookie lifespan, conversion tracking type, and more. You can also target specific countries and browsers.

Based on this Create Offer form, I do not see an area where you can upload and supply your affiliates with ad banners, email creatives, and other marketing materials.

Customizing Your Look and Feel

Let me preface this by saying that I am neither a web designer nor a web developer, but it seems that the design elements of HasOffers are lacking.

From what I can gather, you can customize things like the logo and color scheme, but there are no obvious ways to upload information pages for your affiliates. I see an area where you can insert CSS stylesheets, but as you can see from my dummy network, there are no information pages.

How can I discuss the strengths and benefits of my network? How can I "sell" potential publishers on why they should sign up with "TC Media" over some other affiliate network? Where is the branding aside from a simple logo and customized color scheme?

And All That Administrative Stuff

HasOffers seems to offer a fairly robust administration panel where affiliate network owners (like you) can adjust and tweak their networks as needed. You can manage your offers (including offer categories and suppression lists), generate a variety of reports (including those related to your referral program), manage your affiliates and employees, deal with billing and invoices, and configure the details related to advertisers.

All of the administrative back end appears to be in place, but the front end seems to need some serious work. As I’ve already said a couple of times in this review, HasOffers is a white label solution, so it’s up to you to brand your network. However, I would have liked to see greater integration into this backend that allows for easier customization of information pages and branding.

Free for Up to One Million Clicks

HasOffers comes in two different editions.

The Pro Edition is free for up to one million clicks. With the Pro Edition, you have full access to smart tracking, live statistics, offer management, unlimited advertisers, a free subdomain, referral reports, and email support.

For $799 a month, you can upgrade to the Enterprise Edition of HasOffers. This provides you with unlimited clicks, telephone support, dedicated service resources, and a custom tracking URL. This is quite the vast discrepancy in pricing, especially when the only "main" difference is number of clicks allowed.

Should you create your own affiliate network with HasOffers? The free Pro Edition is worth giving a try, but you have to realize that is not completely free. You still have to invest in your own domain, employees, branding, and all the other things that go along with running a successful affiliate network. HasOffers only provides the software platform.

This is akin to asking if you should buy a motherboard so that you can run your eBay business. The motherboard is only one part of the puzzle, just as HasOffers is only one part of your affiliate network endeavour.