Category Archives: Product

Internet Business, Product, Reviews

Xingla Pro 4 Has Arrived

4 Comments

Xingla4-Cover smI have to admit, I’m pretty excited to announce that Xingla Pro version 4 has now been officially released!

It’s been a long time coming. Xingla Pro has been rewritten to be bigger and better than ever. It has a new look and new features as well.

Xingla Pro is now completely form based, which means that you no longer need to interact with an internal web browser to build your lists, and add categories.

Also, I was able to streamline the functions so that certain convenience features are automatic.

For example, in Xingla Pro 3 there was a “Find Inactives” button that you would press to see if your list was up-to-date. If not, then Xingla Pro would find the outdated carnivals and prompt you to delete them.

Now this whole process is automatic, every time you start Xingla Pro, or open a list.

Also, the Search Filter is integrated into the list area, instead of being only visible in a popup window as in the previous version.

Carnival submissions with the Auto Submit feature are now very accurate. Xingla Pro submits the carnivals at a slower pace (roughly the time it takes to refresh a web page, for each item), to ensure 100% accuracy.

Here is a quick run down of some of the new features!

Submission Logs – You can now keep track of all your carnival submissions in the submissions logs table. Submissions are listed by many categories including Submission date & time, permalink, list name, etc.

You have the option to export your log entries to a .CSV file as well.

The most recent submission is also noted in Xingla Pro’s taskbar showing the Date & time of the last submission, plus the list name that the post was submitted to. When you mouse over the information, you will see the permalink for that submission in the tool tip.

Carnival Details – Now there’s no reason to piss off a carnival host because your list wasn’t targeted enough. Simply double click an item and a complete description of the carnival is displayed in the tool tip as shown below:

tooltipDescription

 

 

 

 

 

Remarks Column – Sometimes a carnival may require some special information from the submitter that needs to go into the remarks field. You can now add a remarks entry to your list item so that it gets submitted every time.

Drag & Drop List Building – When you start Xingla Pro, a complete list of all the blog carnivals is generated from which you can build your lists from. Use the Search Filter to narrow down your results, select the relevant carnivals, and drag them over to the adjoining table.

When you are ready, you can save the items to a new list, or add them to your currently open list.

Auto-Checking of Inactive Carnivals – Every time you start Xingla Pro, or when you open a new list, your list will be automatically purged of any dead carnivals. Blog carnivals come and go for various reasons. The auto-checking feature will ensure that you never submit to an extinct carnival.

Automatic Login to blogcarnival.com – Xingla Pro now has an integrated login field for blogcarnival.com. By default, Xingla Pro will save your login info so that you will be auto-logged in every time you start Xingla Pro. You need to be logged into your free blogcarnival.com account to auto-submit.

Here is a screen shot of Xingla Pro:

XinglaPro-Full

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To check out all the great features of Xingla Pro, you can get the Xingla Pro Help file here.

If you want to automatically build back-links, and increase traffic to your blog, you can get a copy of Xingla Pro here:

http://www.keifersoft.com/XinglaPro/

Internet Business, Product, Reviews

Say Hello to AmazingCloaker 7

5 Comments

AmazingCloaker7-box sm

Well, I’ve been hard at work in my secret lab perfecting AmazingCloaker 7. Yes, I really do have a secret lab. I bought it from grandpa Munster just before he moved back to Transylvania back in ’98.

It took awhile to clean out the bat droppings, but I decided to leave the cobwebs in place for dramatic effect and inspiration.

After getting my hair smoked by tripping on one of grandpa Munster’s old test tubes, and falling into the jacob’s ladder which was still plugged in, I had this great idea… Why not take AmazingCloaker 6 to the next level?

One thing that I really wanted to do from the start was to improve the FTP feature and make it easy to use and feature rich. Unfortunately, Adobe Air was limiting what I could do with FTP, because it really doesn’t have that much going on in that department.

As a result, I decided to rewrite AmazingCloaker in good ol’ C++, a programing language where anything’s possible. For you Mac and Linux users, not to worry, AmazingCloaker 7 is also available for you as well!

The FTP feature now has an explore feature so that you can navigate around your website if you wish. This is especially handy if you have shared web hosting, and you want to locate your homepage folder when setting up your FTP list.

I have also added a button which allows you to automatically upload your acslideup folder. Previously, if you wanted to create a slide-up capture form for your website, you had to manually upload this folder by using another FTP client such as FileZilla.

AmazingCloaker is blazing fast. The Adobe Air version was a bit sluggish in certain areas, and that always annoyed me a little. The interface also has additional tabs for the Slideup creator and Article Cloaker, so that you can easily navigate directly to them if you desire.

Speaking of easy navigation, the “Saved Sessions” list is now in the same tab window as the Cloaking fields for easy access and reference.

The slideup creator has been optimized for better performance as well. Now when you select different graphics options, those changes are reflected instantly as you mouse over the selections. Also, you can see other changes (such as picture size or slide-out times) update just by pressing Enter after making your changes.

In fact, every aspect of the AmazingCloaker has been optimized for speed and smooth performance. This is the easiest to use version to date. Here is a screenshot of AmazingCloaker 7:

If you want to get a detailed picture of what AmazingCloaker 7 is all about, you can get the help file here:

http://www.amazingcloaker.com/AmazingCloaker_help.pdf

And of course, you can find the sales page with videos and demos of some of the features here:

http://www.amazingcloaker.com

Info Products, Internet Business, Product

It’s Official – AmazingCloaker 6 is Here

8 Comments

AmazingCloaker6aWell it’s been a long time coming, but its finally here! AmazingCloaker 6 is a whole new animal. Recoded from the ground up, you can now run it on Windows, Mac OS-X, and Linux.

I initially planned to release it much earlier, but I started receiving great suggestions for improvement from my customers, especially from Steve Brown and Geoff Wiley.

They inspired me to take AmazingCloaker to a whole new level, and when you see the new features, I think that you’ll agree that it was well worth the wait.

So what else is new in AmazingCloaker 6?

For starters, AmazingCloaker 6 now has an Article Cloaker. If you’re an article marketer, you are more than likely aware that article directories such as ezinearticles.com won’t allow affiliate links, or links that point to your review page unless your review page is located on the top-level of your domain.

In other words, it has to be on your homepage. Well, this means that if you write articles for 30 different products, you will need 30 different websites if you want to refer readers from your articles… holy ouch batman!

Now with AmazingCloaker, you can cloak your website for the article directories! Simply create sub directories for your affiliate review pages, and then you can cloak your homepage to display those review pages as your homepage when the reader clicks on your specially formatted link contained within your article.

Here is a quick demo of how the article cloaker works:

I have cloaked declareyourday.com to work with article directories. Below are links for three different examples. Click on each link, and you will notice that each time your browser will show http://www.declareyourday.com in the address bar, but each link will display different content.

Example 1: Any standard link to my website, such as from a search engine displays my actual homepage: http://www.declareyourday.com

Example 2: Cloaked article link. This would be located within the body or resource box of your article:

blah, blah… you can find out more about blue widgets here: http://www.declareyourday.com?blue-widgets

The actual location is in a sub directory called blue-widgets on declareyourday.com

Example 3: Cloaked article link pointing to another sub directory on declareyourday.com:

…blah blah, find out more about Red Widgets by clicking here. (This cloaked url points to http://www.declareyourday.com?widgets&red )

The actual location is in a sub-directory two levels deep – /widgets/red on delcalareyourday.com

As you can see, the links are formatted as top-level domains. The ‘?’ and ‘&’ characters are typically used when calling variables in a server script, like when you want to track clicks or something, so they are perfectly legit to use in your articles.

Footer Slide-up Designer

The other awesome feature is the slide-up designer. AmazingCloaker now has a slideup designer that you can insert your capture code into from your autoresponder service or software (ie- AWeber, getresponse, etc).

The slide-up designer gives you 5 different themes to choose from (Signup for a free ebook, audio, video, to receive updates, and special offer). Each theme includes graphics which are auto-generated, or you can insert your own graphic.

You can also choose from thousands of combinations of background gradients & colors, and you can also time your offer to slide up (or fade in), and / or close after a specified time.

You can see a demo of the slide-up form here: http://www.amazingcloaker.com/1test.php

Improved Embedded Cookie Features

I have also improved the embedded cookie feature. You now have two options for the embedded cookie. The first is the auto-generated third-party cookie dropper, which is the same embedded cookie technique used in previous versions of AmazingCloaker.

The problem with third-party cookies is that newer web browsers have become rather unfriendly with affiliate links and third party cookies. Often times they don’t work anymore if the affiliate network uses first party cookies to set your info. Clickbank is a prime example.

Thus the reason form coming up with the second option, which is a forced redirect. When this option is enabled, the visitor will be automatically redirected out to the vendor’s website. If the visitor was expecting to read your review first, they will naturally click their back button. After they do this, they will land on your review page where they can continue reading your info.

Since they were redirected before, a first-tier cookie has been set on their machine which means that you are covered in case your link is bypassed, or they save their buying decision for later.

By default, the cookie is set to drop immediately, but now you can delay the amount of time before it is dropped by specifying any number of seconds in the timer box. You can set the timer for either type of cookie that you choose.

Format your links for tracking with Google Analytics

Now there is an option where you can have AmazingCloaker automatically format your cloaked link for Google Analytics! If you’re a GA user, this will be a nice time saver for having your links properly formatted for your tracking code.

Save your startup preferences

AmazingCloaker now allows you to save your startup preferences. Do you do all your cloaking on one website? You can save your website as a default so that you don’t need to type it in every time. You can also default AmazingCloaker to always select framed or un-framed cloaking, Google Analytics formatting, setting (or not setting) and embedded cookie, and more.

WordPress friendly…

It is now easier than ever to cloak your links, and AmazingCloaker has revised the cloaking process to be friendly with WordPress when using the embedded cookie.

The embedded cookie utilizes a JavaScript to do its magic. The thing is that WordPress isn’t overly friendly about embedding javascript. AmazingCloaker 6 has solved that problem by writing the embedded cookie code into a javascript file. This makes the embedded cookie more stealthier too.

This means that along with your cloaked link code, there is a call to a javascript file. WordPress has no problems with javascript calls, it just doesn’t like embedded code. Thus, your embedded cookie will work just fine on a WordPress site.

The Familiar Stuff…

And of course, the classic features are still there. There’s no need to relearn how to cloak your links, because the fields are laid out the same. You can still save your sessions. You now have an option to auto-save your sessions every time you cloak a link, or you can choose to manually save them only when and if you wish.

There’s an FTP uploader where you can store your website locations and easily upload your redirect pages, and test your link in the internal web browser (or you can choose to test it in your default browser).

I could go on, but why not see for yourself what it can do? You can check out the video on the AmazingCloaker website here:

http://www.amazingcloaker.com

You can also check out the AmazingCloaker help file here to learn more:

http://www.amazingcloaker.com/AmazingCloaker_help.pdf

Info Products, Internet Business, Product

Where’s Jack?

2 Comments

MilkCartonJackHello… I’m Jack’s computer. Have you seen this guy? I’ve been sitting here for weeks with not so much as the slightest tap on my keyboard. I’m getting lonely.

I suspect that he’s with that other one! You know, that other computer that has all the secret source codes to his cool products like Xingla Pro & AmazingCloaker.

One month, five days, and 14.3 hours since his last blog post, not that I’m counting or anything. I guess that since he’s nowhere to be found, I’ll write this post myself.

He promised to have the latest versions of AmazingCloaker & Xingla Pro out by June & July… Hmmmpf!… It’s almost October, so where is it?

I know some rough things have happened this summer, and if he’s out hangin’ with those other fancy pipeline computers, I guess that I can’t blame him too much.

I tapped into one of the boyz from the pipeline & managed to snag a pic of the new version of AmazingCloaker.

Check this out! 🙂

AmazingCloaker6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a shot of the pre-release of AmazingCloaker 6. It has been re-built from the ground up and special emphasis has been given to ease of use and expanded features, such as better compatability with WordPress.

Oh yeah, and both AmazingCloaker 6 and Xingla Pro 4 can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. Is that cool or what?

Jack know’s that there are a lot of Mac users out there who are a bit frustrated that all the cool internet business tools only run on Windows.

Well, there’s no sign of Jack, so I guess I’ll post this, and then turn myself off for a while. Got to keep my fan in good shape you know. It sucks when my 64-bit brain overheats. 😛

The last time that happened, everything in the room turned into Twinkies & the cat was doing the Riverdance (quite well I might add) as the room slowly faded into oblivion.

Oh by the way, rumor has it that AmazingCloaker 6 & Xingla Pro 4 are going to be released within the next few weeks….. reeeeeeally? I think it will happen this time.

Okay, off I go to silicon dreamland. Let me know if you see Jack & let him know that my keyboard is getting rusty!

–SsssLater!

Internet Business, Product

Internet Explorer is Affiliate Unfriendly

2 Comments

cookie-monster

Since the release of Internet Explorer a few years ago, third party cookie handling has slowly become more restrictive with the default security settings in Internet Explorer.

With the release of IE 8, you may have noticed that many of your affiliate links may not be giving you credit for your referrals.

I’ve noticed around the net that many affiliates have a rough time getting conversions on their products.

There’s many reasons that this can happen, & only testing can pinpoint the problem, but if your affiliate network is using third-party cookies to credit your referrals, then you may be losing sales because Internet Explorer is blocking them on your prospect’s computer.

Internet Explorer has been ramping up their safety features in each release, and IE8 will block any third-party cookies by default unless the website has a p3p privacy policy in effect.

In semi-English, this means that the original source of the cookie would have to have a p3p header reference in their web page to a compact privacy policy with another one pointing to an XML file which outlines the actual human readable privacy policy, which you also need.

If the browser determines that it is legit enough, it will allow the cookie to be set. Yeah, I know… that’s a real mouthful just to process an affiliate link.

Most product creators using their own affiliate software that rely on this type of tracking, aren’t up on the importance of a compact privacy policy, along with all the other techno-bs that goes along with it.

Fortunately, Clickbank, which is one of the most popular affiliate networks for digital products uses 1st party cookies, and are not affected. As far as I can tell, your referrals are pretty safe with them on this point.

If you’re using a link cloaker, this is much more significant, and there is a good chance that your affiliate cookies are not getting set because of this. Some link cloakers have been rendered useless, costing you precious commissions from your visitors who use Internet Explorer & Safari especially.

I suppose that you can always hope that every one of your visitors use Firefox.

…Or you can use a better tool that will get around this issue. AmazingCloaker just happens to have the feature built-in that will get around the whole third-party cookie issue.

I created AmazingCloaker because I was tired of getting shafted out of my commissions by link hi-jackers, link bypassers, & people who just plain didn’t like affiliates.

Now with Internet Explorer complicating things, I find that AmazingCloaker is more important than ever for keeping a level playing field for the affiliate.

If you’re an affiliate marketer and you don’t care whether or not you’re receiving everything that you deserve, then I would recommend that you continue on with your routine and enjoy the bliss of your ignorance.

If, on the other hand, you’re tired of working twice as hard and getting half as much, then you can check out AmazingCloaker here:

http://www.amazingcloaker.com

Internet Business, Product

A Look Ahead

14 Comments

XinglaProPicMay has been a pretty busy month for me. I’ve been so absorbed in fact, that I haven’t posted to my blog for entire month of May! Ouch.

I’ve gotten myself wrapped up into a new programming shift for my software products. XinglaPro version 4 of my blog carnival submitter is about to be released in early June and I’m pretty excited about the changes ahead.

If all goes well, AmazingCloaker 6 will be released by the end of June.

One of the major shifts in my software is that I have moved to the Adobe Air platform. This means that all my software products that you purchase will be compatible with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

No longer will Mac & Linux users be excluded, or have to use an emulator to get the benefits of using quality internet business software which would normally only be available to Windows users.

The screen shot to the left is not the finished product, so XinglaPro 4 may look slightly different in its final release.

XinglaPro 4 has many improvements to the GUI to make an already easy to use program, even more streamlined and automated. You’ll no-longer need to tab between windows when building your list, and filtering your list to your keywords is now a one-step snap.

The migration of KeiferSoft apps to the Adobe Air / Flash environment is a natural fit for creating the finest internet based applications and tools that online marketers need to be effective in today’s marketplace.

I’ll release more details on XinglaPro4 when it’s about to be released, which will be very soon. 🙂

Internet Business, Product

48 Hour Special

24-hour-special-flagIf you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you’ll know that when I launch a product, I always run a 24 hour special for my blog readers.

After this is over, the special will not be repeated, so don’t bother waiting around for another one. These normally only happen around the initial launch of my products.

This is my way of showing my appreciation to you for being on my announcements list or as a reader here on my blog.

I’ve decided to increase the length of this special to 48 hours instead of 24 since most of us are still recovering from the holidays.

This special is for the Red Hot Mini-Sites with WordPress Course. You will be given full lifetime access to the Mini-Site course.

If you haven’t gotten your online presence started yet, what are you waiting for? This course will show you how to quickly get a professional looking website up & running in no time flat.

There’s no need to shell out all that cash for that expensive website developing software that you need a college degree plus 5 years of trial & error just to figure out.

You can harness the power of WordPress, a FREE CMS (Content Management System). This blog is built on WordPress. Most people think of WordPress just for use as a blog. I’ll show you how to use it to create fantastic websites!

You can find out more information for this course in the menu on the right, but DON’T buy it from that link during this special! If you want the discount come back here and click on this link instead.

Red Hot Mini-Sites with WordPress is going to be available for the next 48 hours for an insane price of only $15.

This special will end on Sunday evening at 7:00pm EST (GMT -5). If you show up on Sunday at 7:01pm EST it will be too late.

You can grab your VIP access here:

http://www.declareyourday.com/amember/signup-rhms-special.php

Info Products, Internet Business, Product

How to Install WordPress

7 Comments

This is the first video from my new info product that I am releasing very soon. The product is called “Red Hot MiniSites With WordPress”, and teaches you step-by-step how to build a mini-site using WordPress.

In this video course, I brazenly upgrade one of my websites live on the fly to WordPress and then converting the default blog format over to a static website. Although I make it very clear in my videos that you should never do a major upgrade of your website straight off the webserver (this is stuff you should do offline), I do it here to demonstrate how easy it is to quickly create powerful, SEO friendly, and professional websites using WordPress.

The reason for upgrading PlayKillerGuitar.com in my video series is because you can use these same techniques to build your site from scratch, but I also wanted to have existing website owners looking for a better way to improve & manage their websites to see how easy it is to convert over as well.

In the past, if you wanted to build your own website without having to become an HTML guru, you had to rely on expensive website creation software and endure the learning curve of using it. WordPress makes this brain dead simple.

It’s just a matter of knowing the right techniques for using WordPress to make a static website instead of for blogging. I also take you well beyond the basics to put your website over the top.

Also, if you happen to be into website flipping or creating websites for clients, this course will give you the power to knock out high value websites in no time flat. Of course, we all know how much Google loves WordPress sites as well.

More details coming soon…

Info Products, Internet Business, Product

Protect Your Digital Products From Those Knuckleheads

3stoogesIf you’ve created a digital product such as an e-book, video, audio or even software, you know what a great feeling of accomplishment it is to complete it and share it with the world.

Okay, now when I say “share”, I’m not talking about sticking it out on some torrent site, I’m talkin’ making it available to your customers at a fair price.

After all, It’s not likely that you got into the game of internet business to be a non-profit organization.

Most anyone whose ‘been around the block’ in the world of the internet are familiar with all the websites out there hosting links to free software, e-books and everything else that’s been pilfered, or eh “shared” for all to get their mits onto.

So how do we as product creators protect our creations that we’ve poured our heart and soul into? Well firstly, there’s always going to be somebody sharing some of your stuff no matter how hard you try.

In fact, if you take it too personally, you’ll spend all your time obsessing and not enough time creating & selling. Those people weren’t going to buy from you anyway, and the more honest ones will usually buy your product if its useful to them.

With that said, we want to keep product theft down to an absolute minimum. Here are a few Do’s & Don’ts for protecting your products.

DON’T:

Use a robots.txt file to point to your directory.

One common mistake beginners usually make is to specify their unprotected download folder in the robots.txt file hoping to avoid having their download page listed in the search engines. This is the first place an experienced file thief will look.

Using obvious names for your directories & thank-you pages

Creating directory names like ‘download’ are a dead give-away. So is naming your thank-you page ‘thankyou.html’. Naming the download file after your product name is pretty dumb too. These things make it super easy to have your stuff found.

Stick your product inside an empty folder without an index page.

This makes it pretty simple to do a Google search for an intitle text for “Index.Of” on your website and get a hit. Put an index.html (or .php) in the folder that is either blank, or redirecting the visitor back to your main URL.

Include your filename or product name in your download link

Another give away for hackers. A simple inurl search can expose your download link.

DO:

Use a third party protection software

For my products, I use DLGuard (Download Guard). DLGuard is an excellent way to protect your digital products from would be thieves. You can limit your downloads as well. I have mine setup for 72 hours normally. DLGuard works as a membership site module as well. This is top notch software & I highly recommend it.

Use a hosted solution such as e-junkie

E-Junkie is an excellent digital delivery system for your digital downloads. This is a great alternative to self-hosting your own solution, and you can get started right now at a mere $5 a month!

Password protect your download folder

You can password protect your download folder or make it forbidden from being viewed. An easy way to do make it not viewable is to CHMOD the folder to 751 using your FTP client. You can password protect your folders as well by using .htaccess & .htpassword. If you’re a little tech savvy and want to try this, you can see the tutorial here.

Email the download as an attachment

Another free alternative is to simply email the download as an attachment to your customer. You should note however, that email is not the most reliable way to deliver a product. Your email may not get delivered for a number of reasons (inbox full, flagged as spam, etc), and you could have some freaked out customers with a bad first impression of your products.

If you haven’t implemented any of these or other security measures for protecting your info products, you could be losing a lot of revenue. Don’t leave your products sitting on the virtual shelf with a sign on them crying “Steal Me!!!”

Take measures now to protect your products. It only takes a minimal effort or expense which will pay for itself over and over again. It’s one of the single best investments you can make in your business.

Helpful Tips & Tricks, Internet Business, Product

Instantly Beef Up Your Affiliate Conversions

7 Comments

Affiliate Marketing Money PictureWhen I first got into the online marketing scene back in late 2005, I immediately came out of the gate with my first product.   To me, it seemed logical that having your own product line is ultimately the best way to build a business online… at least for me.

There’s tons of ways to make money online, including creating e-commerce stores, providing services to online & offline businesses, affiliate marketing, etc.

Well, in the beginning, I had no Idea how to market my product, so I stuck it on eBay & did quite well with it.  This was when they allowed digital products.

In the mean time, I was also curious about affiliate marketing.  The idea of putting up a review site with a couple affiliate links, then passively making money every month seemed very appealing.

No tech support, no dealing with refunds, none of the typical headaches that come with having your own products.

So like everyone else, I jumped onto the affiliate review sites & landing pages bandwagon.  I put up my product reviews, pointing out how great product ‘X’ was and pointing my visitor to the affiliate link where they could make the purchase.

I remember after setting up my first affiliate review page thinking that the money was going to immediately start rolling in.  I would check my email about every 10 minutes looking for that coveted “Congratulations! You Have Made a Sale” type email.  Really! No kidding, almost every 10 minutes, heh heh!

Needless to say, that first day came & went, and so did the next… and the next.  Hmmmm, maybe they don’t like the way I write?  Does the product suck?  But it’s a hot seller!  So I started testing different variations of the review page.

Hmmmm, two weeks and counting – still no sale.  Uggggh!  I had already sold dozens of my own product, but nothing from these stupid affiliate products.  Maybe affiliate marketing was just a crock.

About this time, I was ready to pitch the whole affiliate marketing thing out the window.  Around this same time, I had injured 3 of my fingers pretty badly on a Skil saw, and they were sliced up pretty good.  I had lost much of the feeling in them at the time.  Because of this, I was interested in finding some type of skin cream that could help my fingers heal faster and maybe even minimize scarring.

So I did the next natural thing.  I Googled for “best skin care for injuries” and many variations including keywords like “review”, etc.

Well, wouldn’t you know it.  Every website I came across had affiliate reviews of how great THEIR product was.  Hmmm.  I didn’t put much credibility into it because I knew that they were probably just trying to get a sale.

I searched onward…  Onward some more… and more!  I must have went through a hundred results before I finally found ONE site that didn’t appear biased.

This site pretty much had a fact sheet format which did comparisons of different skin care products for fast healing & scar reduction.  I was able to use this information to make an informed decision and I bought the product through their link.

YIKES! I suddenly had the “Duh!” moment when I realized how aggravated and frustrated I was getting, trolling hundreds of search results just to get some real info on what I needed.

I already had made my mind up that I wanted to buy, but I had to have real validation that my purchase decision was okay.  I went back to my own affiliate review page and realized that it didn’t look any different in format that those other hundred sites that did absolutely nothing for me!

This time, I changed my landing page from a fluffy, feel good review, to an informative fact sheet, modeled after the website that I had purchased through.  It wasn’t an exact copy of course, but by educating the customer in a complete non-biased fashion, using bullet points and snippets of customer reviews from other shopping sites (with credit back to them of course), I suddenly realized that this page was now an authority page, not a pre-sell.

This time I was excited again, but I didn’t check my email every 10 minutes like I did before.  The next morning while checking my email, there it was… “You Have Made A Sale!”.  I could hear the angelic music in the back ground as I clicked the email link.

I’ll never forget the excitement of my first affiliate sale and the valuable lesson I learned from that whole experience.  I started to realize right then & there not to follow the herd.  Do the opposite.  As marketers, its easy to get so focused on making a landing page, and pushing your visitors to that affiliate link, that we forget about their real needs.

I have found that the real secret is to intercept the buyers.  People who have already decided that they are going to buy.   Generally, we need to validate our decision before pulling out the credit card and that’s where you should come in.  No need for pre-sell, just the facts validating to your visitor that they had made the right decision, and now it’s time to click the link.

It’s brain dead simple.  Not something the ‘gurus’ want you to know, LOL.

From that point on, I stayed in the affiliate marketing game which ultimately inspired my next product.  That product was AmazingCloaker.   Between the fact-sheet layout and the AmazingCloaker embedded-cookie feature, my affiliate projects became a whole new ballgame!