In 2008, there were some of the most amazing posts on internet marketing that I have ever seen.

Affiliate marketing, internet marketing, and media buying has long been a shady, no information given, hard to understand subject for those wanting to learn. In the recent years, there has been more and more people coming out to share information freely with others.

I myself decided to start sharing tips on affiliate marketing back in 2007 and have not stopped since.

That being said, there are actually more sources now than you will be able to read or keep up with. So in order to make up for that, my good friend Tamar has compiled a list of posts from 2008: The top internet marketing posts of 2008.

This list is very complete and has some great information on it!

I feel bad because Tamar kept messaging me on AIM asking if I had any posts I wanted to include and everytime I was either gone or busy with something. So in order to make up for it (besides the link love), I wanted to post what I thought were the top posts from this last year on my blog. Because I am lazy, I am not going to organize this into any particular order... Sorry.

• Best Corporate Structure For Affiliates - This was a very detailed post about how I came to the conclusion of going with an S-Corp instead of LLC or C-Corp.
• Ask Your Affiliate Manager - The benefits to asking your affiliate manager questions.
• My Preferred Hosting Company - I have been with so many hosting companies, I decided to remove the headache you probably have experienced with some providers and tell you which I have found to be the best.
• Reverse Your Thinking - Great post that I don't really see people talk about much.
• Azoogleads Publisher Appreciation Day. - One of my favorite trips. I got to meet my awesome affiliate manager, Ryan Sessler, Shoemoney, and a lot of the really cool people that are with Azoogleads. One of my all time favorite trips.
• Find a Need, Fill it. - Another good way to think when trying to market something.
• Time Targeting - A great way to increase profit margins.
• Skydiving Pictures - Has nothing to do with affiliate marketing, but the pictures are awesome.
• Make the most of your traffic - Learn to make the most of every visitor.
• Starting is your biggest battle - Just start now... here is how.
• Google Invoicing - Enabled me to grow, grow, grow.
• Offer something of Value to visitors. - Good post on building a campaign around a value of some sort.
• Download and Reupload A Google Campaign - A How To - Many people do not know how to do this efficiently, so here is a how to.
• The How Mindset - One of my favorite posts.
• Affiliate marketing Mistakes you dont want to make Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
• Affiliates Start Here - Looking to get started in affiliate marketing? Start here!
• Affiliate Summit East 2008 Review - I had a really fun time at ASE08. Worth going to!!!
• Using Videos to your advantage - Be warned this post is a little tricky.
• Calculating Profitable Ads - An Actual formula to calculating profitable ads.
• Blogs you SHOULD subscribe to. - You want to read all of these.
• The Landing Page MUST. - Something you MUST do with your landing pages.
• Why I think you need a job to start affiliate marketing - Highly recommended.
• When I had a Record breaking month at $270,000 - Broke some serious numbers.
• Evolution of my office. - Pictures of my new office and old office.
• Convert2Media Review - Great affiliate network worth checking out.
• Characteristics of A Successful Entrepreneur - Something we all need.
• Finally, The Aha! Moments.

So, what were some of your favorite posts in 08?

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The most commonly neglected aspect of affiliate marketing is optimization of the landing page and tracking. Today, we will talk about optimization of your landing page.

What I have found to be more and more true is the necessity for making changes to your page constantly. Many newbies make a page, hit some profit, and are happy. Mention to them that they need to change something and they get white in the face because they don't want to break their seemingly well oiled machine.

You cannot be scared to modify your page.

You make one small change at a time, week by week, or if you have enough traffic, day by day. Don't be afraid, small changes usually never have a MASSIVE impact on conversion rate.

You're not going to change a sentence and then see 0 sales after having seen hundreds the day before. The way you do see significant change is when you make one change, find which converts better and then make another change on that page. Rinse and repeat. Simple enough right?

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As the new year has rolled in, I've been thinking about the direction I want to take things this year.

To me this new year brings me great excitement as I look forward to the new things that are coming. Increase.

I have many high expectations and goals for this new year and plan on hitting record figures multiple times this year as I hope many of my readers will as well.

See, the great thing about affiliate marketing is as you continue learning more and more about affiliate marketing you learn ways to make money in greater and greater amounts. Sure it's a lot of work. Sure it's tedious (at times), but it really has a huge upside. And it seems things actually start to get easier as one piece of the puzzle unfolds unto the next.

So for those who are just starting, thinking, "I cannot understand this," don't worry, it does get easier the more you do it.

For me, affiliate marketing isn't my only project and goal this year. I am branching out a bit more into the world of white labels, e-commerce stores, and becoming an advertiser. These are all areas that you don't want to venture into without a good knowledge of affiliate marketing but it's the natural progression and can lead to big income.

That being said, what are your goals? What new projects do you aspire to make / create?

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Today is the last day of 2008.

Which means for me that today is like second Christmas. Why? Because today (and yesterday) are the days I try to spend as much as possible on tax deductible items as possible.

The way I think of it is that from my profit, I have a pool of money that is going to the government. Taxes and death are the two things that everyone deals with in life.

Now the great government has created ways for us to dip our hand in their lovely lovely pool of money we have made them by purchasing / spending money on tax deductible items / services.

So I like to spend as much as possible on things that will further my business instead of just sending a giant check to the good ol' IRS. It's perfectly legal and furthers your business. Win, win!

That being said, Have a great new years eve!

Please note that this is not advice as I am not an accountant or CPA. You should talk to your accountant before doing anything.

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Happy Holidays everyone! During this busy season make sure to remember that those campaigns can wait an extra few days!!!

Many times I get so caught up in affiliate marketing that I would pass up opportunities to hang out with friends and family during holidays because I was wanting to work on campaigns that I thought would make me a decent amount of money.

Over the years however, I have learned that the time spent with friends and family is really something we should cherish and not just set aside for doing what we do ever other day of the year... work.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, And a Happy New Year.

I'm sure next year will prove to be an even better year for many!

A lot of times we sell ourselves short of what we can do in a year.

Just last December, I was hitting somewhere along the lines of $20,000 a month. Now I am hitting 10x that just a year later! Next December, I do hope to be able to hit $2,000,000 a month and continue that tradition of 10x increase (although I wouldn't complain about 20x increase ;))!

Set your goals and mindset big for this next year. Aim high!

~Jonathan

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What does facebook, myspace, and possibly digg have in common?

Well, not to long ago Facebook launched it's own pay per click advertising system. Instead of letting a place such as Google manage the advertising, they decided to have advertisers advertise direct with them. Facebook's advertising platform has made many people a lot of coin because it was different than the traditional model of advertising. Most places that you buy advertising from direct from a website either charged a flat rate fee or on a CPM (cost per 1,000 ad views) basis.

Doing the Cost per click model has really transformed marketing because now you only pay for actual traffic rather than "exposure" of an ad regardless of clicks.

After seeing the success of facebook's advertising platform, myspace jumped on board earlier this year by launching MyAds. MyAds is also a cost per click platform which allows you to advertise on myspace.

Just this morning I was reading some articles on TechCrunch, and saw that there are rumors of Digg launching their own advertising platform.

With over 58 Million+ page views a month, Digg really could become an amazing revenue source for affiliates who take advantage of this new advertising platform.

That being said, be on the lookout for when it is launched as the first people to get on the system have a good chance of making a lot of money just like what happened when facebook and myspace first launched.

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Recently there was a great post on TylerCruz's website.

The post was about the "Affiliate Thermostat."

I have really found this post to be true in my own life. I won't rehash what the guest author, Paul Piotrowski, was saying, but I will say it is worth reading if you are trying to do affiliate marketing full time.

Enjoy!

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I always like to see where and how people work so after having been in my new office for about 3 months now, I decided to take some photos of where I work nearly every day.

First, I want to post pictures from BEFORE I was in the new office.

This is my office when I had first started working full time. After doing well for a while, AzoogleAds gave my office an upgrade with a 52" LCD TV that I connected to my computer as a second monitor.

You can see this upgrade below:

This was before I cleaned the cords up.

About three months ago, I upgraded to a new office (different room). Now that I've settled in, I wanted to show it off a bit.

First, this is what you see when you walk in.

I run a custom built PC with a 22" monitor as the primary monitor and a 42" 1080P LG LCD TV (The one from AzoogleAds is now my primary Television) as the second monitor connected via a HDMI Cable. I like to watch youtube and play games (when I have the time) on the 42" monitor. It's... wow.

You'll also see a yoga ball over in the bottom right. I like to sit on this sometimes during the day as it works out your core while you work! Here is a better explanation of the yoga ball (LOL):

The next area is my sitting area. Every morning I wake up and like to just sit and read for around 30 minutes. Above is a sign with my company logo. You can't really see it very well in the photo but the sign is lit with a nice LED that makes the light shine through all the sides. I wish I could show the effect better but I just couldn't get it to show right...

The wall is a deep blue color with a mother of pearl faux finish. Again, the photo doesn't give it justice. It looks amazing in real life.

Next is the modern coffee table and end table. I ordered them online from Modernlinefurniture.com.

Here is my best attempt at capturing the sign's lighting.

Next, on the back wall is one of my favorite Watercolors from the international artist, Gary Bukovnik. He is a pretty big artist in the San Francisco area.

I think it goes nicely in the office because the blues match the wall.

Here is another shot of my desk.

The pictures on the right are of my girlfriend, Maria. We have been dating for 7+ years now. She's been called both a gold digger by a lot of the visitors here so I just wanted to say that she and I have been together since way before I ever had any money (there were times when she and I would go on a date to Sam's Club to get pizza... Yea... Enough said.) Not only that... she is about to graduate from UC Berkeley with a degree in Mass Communications... So far, straight A's. Impressive eh?

Next, there is my storage closet.

As you can tell... I REALLY like drinks. They're one of those guilty pleasures for me...

Really... Like... Drinks. Hahahaha.

Finally, one last shot of the back corner.

So that is where I spend many, many hours during the day.

I'd love to see some more posts about what your office looks like.

You can see some photos of Shoemoney's old office (before he got a building) here.
You can see some photos of Nickycakes office here.

If you have any office photos from other bigger bloggers, feel free to post them in the comments!

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Facebook is one of the best way to get traffic with the least amount of work. There is no quality score, no keyword analysis, no google, no site targeting, etc. While it takes a bit less work than google and some of the other search engines, it still is work.

Thankfully, to ease the pain of learning a new system, I found a cool little (non-affiliate) link this morning in an email that gives you a cool $25 credit to join facebook and start advertising with them!

The link is here.

A couple great places to learn about facebook advertising:

• Nickycakes.com - One of the great facebook marketers.
• NeilsWeb.com - My personal Facebook favorite. Many case studies, etc.
• JustinDupre.com - Another good one with some case studies.

If there is another place you think teaches facebook advertising really well, please feel free to comment below.

Enjoy!

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I have only recently been using Convert2Media, but I have really been impressed with how they handle business since day 1. They've actually become one of my top favorite networks right along side with AzoogleAds and Jar Media.

I have known of Ruck, the owner, for over a year now. In fact, I was a big fan of his blog while he was running it. (www.CashTactics.net - which is now being run by another talented marketer who is giving away 2 FREE Affiliate Summit West Passes [sorry... unplanned plug])

The main reason I am posting today is because just this morning Ruck made a post on ZacJohnson.com. It really has a lot of information and shows just how they actually have a unique competitive advantage over many of the affiliate networks.

A couple great snippets for your reading pleasure:

Affiliates become even more paranoid each day that a network is screwing them by shaving, scrubbing or flat out stealing their campaigns. One thing we had going for us and a part of the market share of publishers that we wanted to attack were the ones that actually were NOT working online full time. This may sound weird to some but for our publishers, they know that we have been there every step of the way for them. A day does not go by where I dont view at least a couple of dozen landing pages. It’s as simple as that. With 99% of the networks out there you have affiliates hiding their traffic sources. With us, you have affiliates asking us, showing us and ultimately trusting us that we are going to help you. We are not successful unless our publishers are successful.

Convert2Media is a great place to start your affiliate marketing journey, or try to advance it along further.

In fact, Ruck has given me several helpful hints that I think will make me a lot more money, thousands or tens of thousands.

Next quote:

This is not tough at all for us. We don’t have 45 people in our company with names like Business Development Manager, Senior Managing Consultant and things like that. Nothing against that but it is really lame when all it comes down to is taking a publisher from zero to hero. With us being a smaller and more publisher development focused network we don’t have to take 15 or 20 percent. Hell, when we make 8-10% we jump with joy but at 5-6% we are happy. That may sound odd too when you consider that we payout a 5% referral commission on anyone you refer and is accepted. At 6% we make a 1% margin which would probably make most of the larger networks pass out. We can operate that way though because we know everyone that is coming in, everyone that was referred, what they are making and this helps to operate around it.
If it was not for affiliates then this business model would not exist. Being a high volume publisher on a number of networks over the last couple of years I am completely happy taking a 1% margin over affiliates of whom I helped get the campaign profitable in the first place. A year ago I was managing my own campaigns and now we are managing almost 300 active ones. Publishers make you successful and the least you could do is offer them the most money possible.

I have really seen this to be true. Convert2Media actually offers some of the most amazing payouts in the industry! Every single network says that they offer you the highest payouts... but this one really has shown me that they do.

And lastly:

I fully encourage anyone that wants to start an affiliate network to study and talk to as many people as you can before doing so. Make sure you have a passion (and I do mean passion) for helping others. A network is a ton of work no matter how big or small. It consumes you. It works out pretty well though when all you want to do is build a bigger business. Dont ever forget that it is the people WITHIN your business that make that possible.

I like how they remember that it's the publishers that are building their business. As they help those people out, they will in turn succeed themselves.

If you're a frequent reader, you know I don't make posts like this super frequently. This is not a paid post or anything like that. If you're wanting to grow your affiliate business, this is one network I think is a must (along with Azoogleads and Jar-Media). You can join now by clicking: Convert2Media

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