Recommended Resources

Below is a list of some of the various ad networks and online services that I personally use. Since I use them myself, I can naturally recommend each and every one of them. While some of the links do contain my referral link, there is nothing listed below that I haven’t personally used.

I made this resource section on my blog to share these valuable resources with you readers, as well as to help lessen the amount of e-mails I get requesting to know who designed my logo or what tools and services I use.

(I apologize for the excessive use of linking. I’m using a Wordpress plugin which automatically links certain words and have no control over unlinking certain iterations of words.)

Affiliate Networks

  • MarketLeverage – Market Leverage has been a fantastic revenue source for me. In the month of November 2008 alone, my referrals generated me over $5,500 in commissions. In addition, I generated over $11,000 with them in 2008 through my PPC affiliate marketing efforts. Their customer support is unparalleled and they even treated me to the best steak dinner I ever had in Vegas. I can’t recommend Market Leverage enough.
  • Neverblue – This is another top-notch affiliate network which I highly recommend. They don’t use DirectTrack and instead have their own custom tracking and reporting software. I’ve used other networks with custom software, but none come close to the clean and easy-to-use system Neverblue has. In addition, they have high payouts and a wide selection of campaigns and offers to choose from. I like them so much that I actually visited their headquarters early in 2008.

PPC Tools

  • Tracking202 Pro – T202Pro allows you to see which keywords are making you money in PPC affiliate marketing and which keywords are losing you money. If I could only choose one tool or service to use for my PPC affiliate marketing, it would undoubtedly be Tracking202 Pro. I simply cannot recommend this service enough. Tracking your keywords (and landing pages, ad copy, etc.) is the single most important thing to creating a profitable campaign with PPC affiliate marketing.  I personally do not know of a single super affiliate that isn’t tracking his keywords. It is absolutely ESSENTIAL to making big money from PPC affiliate marketing. You can read my detailed review of T202Pro, including a screencast, for more information. I also have a special 10% discount for TylerCruz.com readers. After using my referral link, simply enter the promo/coupon code: TYLERCRUZ to get your special discount.
  • EfficientPPC and SpeedPPC – are separate software tools that helps you generate thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of keywords and ads for your campaigns within seconds. It will create highly targeted longtail keywords and ads built upon a set of predefined lists that you create. They are both very similar with only small differences which is why I’m recommending both of them here. I’ve used both and enjoy both equally. The main difference between the two is that Efficient PPC offers multiple file exporting which makes for easier importing into AdWords, as well as and the ability to use up to 5 keyword lists as opposed to the 3 lists Speed PPC allows. However, Efficient PPC does not have a Yahoo exporting feature which Speed PPC does. If you’re struggling with keyword generation for your campaigns then I highly recommend purchasing either EfficientPPC or SpeedPPC. They’re not exactly cheap, but will pay for themselves in no time. Watch my detailed screencast review of EfficientPPC (which also compares it to SpeedPPC) for more information.
  • WordZe – WordZe is a extremely powerful and useful keyword generation and analysis tool for anyone who does affiliate marketing, PPC arbitrage, or anyone who uses PPC advertising such as AdWords. They also have a very lucrative affiliate program which pays 30% for life and 5% for 2nd tier.

Ad Networks

  • Casale Media – Casale is my favourite ad network for many reasons: they pay out 70%, have a good advertiser base, a great control panel, high-advertiser payout’s, and a referral program which pays out for life. I’d highly recommend them if you can get accepted into them.
  • Tribal Fusion – Tribal Fusion is a great ad network for high volume sites due to the high quality publishers they attract. By requiring their publishers to have high quality, large traffic sites, they are able to attract big brand advertisers and in turn offer high payouts.

Blogging Tools

  • Wordpress.org – I use the free blogging software Wordpress for my blog. Wordpress is great because it’s a free open-source software which is heavily supported by developers offering free plugins. Wordpress releases new versions with new features and improvements regularly, and is theme-based meaning you can easily customize your own theme or download one of the thousands of free themes available.
  • Windows Live Writer – I don’t use Wordpress to write and publish my blog posts. Instead, I have been using the free blogging editor software Windows Live Writer (made by Microsoft), for well over a year now. I always find formatting posts with Wordpress to be a real pain which is why I started using WLW. In addition, WLW has a plethora of features and tools including: built-in image cropping and watermarking, spell-checking, auto-linking, word count, and tabs for easy view switching. WLW also works with a number of different blogging platforms including Wordpress, Blogger, Live Journal, and TypePad to name a few.

SEO Tools

  • SEOintelligence – SEOintelligence is a monthly subscription-based service which provides you with a wide selection of SEO and website analysis tools. Priced at $39.95/month, you can add up to 5 different sites to your account. My personal favourite feature they offer is their Web Stats tool. It’s similar to Google Analytics but is in a lot of ways superior. For example, it has a live spy feature to watch what the traffic is doing on your site live, as well as providing up-to-the-second stats (as opposed to only getting updates once every 24-hours with Google Analytics). Check out my ridiculously detailed screencast review of SEOintelligence (it’s one hour long!) to see a behind-the-scenes look at all the features they offer. They also offer a 2-week free trial so you can try them out and see if you like them.

Graphic Design

  • SOSFactory – Sergio from SOSFactory.com is the talent behind my mascot, and has done a few for me now. Without hyperbole, I can confidently say that Sergio is a world-class artist, especially when it comes to mascots. He charges $600 per logo, and while that may sound expensive, it’s really not. In fact, it’s quite cheap considering the sheer quality of it. In addition, Sergio will provide you with the PSD and any other sources (such as fonts) used in high resolution so that you can print offline material such as business cards, posters, or T-Shirts with your mascot. He also guarantees his work – he’ll provide you with early sketches and revisions along the way to make sure you’re happy with the way it’s taking shape. If not, he’ll do it until you are. In addition to mascots and logos, Sergio also does traditional print, web, and stationery design.
  • 4Design.tv – 4Design is one of those hidden resource gems that isn’t marketed and linked everywhere but rather spread through word of mouth. In fact, that is how I found out about them – through a friend. 4Design is a small but great design company from Belgium run by husband and wife.  Check out their portfolio to see examples of their work. They do pretty much anything graphic-related including: website design, banners, logos, business cards, etc. They offer very unique and creative design, a fast turnaround, free revisions, are very affordable, and give the source files (PSDs, fonts, etc.). I highly recommend them, especially for banner work.
  • VBSkins – Probably the best vBulletin design company you can get for quality and price. They did 4 of my forum skins, and I’ll definitely be using them again the next time I need another custom skin. In addition to custom skins, they also sell pre-made skins, and have over 100 free ones to choose from. Read my review of them for a very good overview of their service. (Update: Unfortunately, they main designer left and they don’t offer custom design work anymore, but the free and cheap pre-made skins are still there).
  • TheLogoCompany – One of the best logo design companies around for the price, yet not widely known. They did my logo and stationary for my corporation Merendi Networks Inc. as well as the business cards for my blog TylerCruz.com. They only charge $149 per logo, give you unlimited revisions, and even offer a 100% money back guarantee. While they’re great for logos, I wasn’t as impressed with their business card design services, so I’d recommend them for logo work only. Read my detailed post on them here.

Programming

  • Interberry – Interberry is a programming company I recently came across and have been quite happy with. Since hiring them, I’ve already given them a steady new stack of work since things have been going so well. Being a perfectionist and having a lot of experience with developing websites and outsourcing, I can be very demanding. Interberry impressed me in that not once did they complain or hesitate to do anything I requested. That’s saying a lot because I’d often send 2-3 e-mails per day with lists of new things to add or other changes and they wouldn’t complain at all, they’d just get it done. You can contact them at Interberry.com, e-mail them at quote@interberry.com, phone them at +1-646-217-4788 (during 9:30 am to 6:30 pm Indian Standard Time), or if you’re like me you’ll want to talk to them via Skype chat. Add cheb.iberry to your Skype contacts for that. For more information I recommend reading my full review of them on my post: The Programmers Behind PublisherChallenge.

Outsourcing Websites

  • Elance – Elance.com is pretty much the biggest and leading authority for outsourcing web development related work online. I’ve personally used them since 2004 to find programmers for my various projects. Basically the way it works is you post a project with a description, your requirements, and budget, and programming companies will bid on your project. You can then choose one of those companies or freelancers (although you’re not obligated to choose anyone) and proceed from there. It’s usually quite safe doing this as everyone has a past project history that works similar to eBay’s feedback system, and payment is done via their in-house escrow system. Elance is huge with close to 80,000 professionals to hire, and you can hire professionals in almost any field relating to business including: programming, design, writing, admin support, accounting, and even legal!
  • oDesk – oDesk.com is my second choice for outsourcing websites, although it comes close to Elance. In fact, when I post a project I usually post it on both sites simultaneously since there is no requirement of awarding the project to a provider. oDesk is pretty much similar to Elance, the main difference being that it’s newer and has a larger userbase. oDesk is a bit more user-friendly and offers some nice features, but the main drawback compared to Elance is that there is no private message board to talk to the providers with. This can be a pain if you need to interview dozens of providers as there is no organized area on the site in which will track all of your messages like on Elance. That is the only drawback though. Again, it compensates for that fact with a sleeker look.

E-mail List Management

  • AWeber – AWeber is an e-mail list management service. I currently use it for my blog newsletter, after hearing others rave about it. Starting at only $19/month, it’s pretty affordable. AWeber is very popular because they are an extremely “whitehat” company. They are very strict in how their users conduct their e-mail lists such as all e-mail list subscriptions having to be confirmed and opted-in, and having a zero-tolerance policy for using their services for spamming of any kind. This strictness is actually a very good thing as it establishes themselves as a respected company and are therefore often safelisted (as opposed to blacklisted!) on many ISP’s and servers. List building is very important and something I’m just beginning to understand. In the long run, the $19/month charge is a low cost for such a reputable e-mail list management service

Web Hosting

  • DreamHost – I first started using DreamHost back in 2002. Since then, Dream Host has grown to be one of the largest and most-respected affordable hosting providers. I stopped using them and moved to ThePlanet 6 years ago since I outgrew them and required my own dedicated servers. DreamHost offers virtual servers, not dedicated servers. Their prices are ridiculously cheap. For only $10.95 a month, (or cheaper the longer you pre-pay for) you get unlimited disk storage and bandwidth as well as all the features and services you could ask for such as MySQL, PHP, Shell access, POP3 e-mails, etc. If for some reason you outgrow their basic hosting package you can upgrade to their premium private servers. They also offer a lucrative referral program, paying either 10% for life or a CPA of $97, with a 2nd-tier program as well.
  • ThePlanet – I’ve been with ThePlanet for 6 years now ever since moving from DreamHost. ThePlanet is the largest dedicated server company ever since merging with RackShack a couple years ago. I have had some hardware issues with them, and their prices aren’t the cheapest, but because their size is unparalleled I still recommend them. With such a huge company that hosts millions (if not billions) of websites, you don’t have to worry about them ever shutting down or disappearing from thin air overnight. They have a massive support team, huge datacenters, and many servers and options to choose from. I currently have two dedicated servers with them and two backup plans.

Domain Registrars

  • GoDaddy – Go Daddy is the largest and most popular domain registrar these days, and nearly every webmaster I know uses GoDaddy. Their site is extremely ad heavy and you are bombarded with offer after offer, but once you get used to them you quickly learn to ignore them. GoDaddy has absolute fantastic support and offers a number of features including paid parking and cheap membership services which dramatically cuts down the prices of domains for people with a larger domain portfolio like myself. To give you an idea of just how great their support is: on two separate occasions I accidentally registered domains with an accidental typo. Both times I contacted support and they kindly refunded my money within minutes and wished me a good day.
  • NameCheap – While I mainly use Go Daddy, I also use NameCheap since it’s a very popular registrar and many domainers use it. The best part about NameCheap is that domain transfers from other NameCheap members are instant. This is why it’s so popular with people who regularly buy and sell domains.