I wanted to hold off on this post until after the June Birthday Bash had come to a close. This week, I received my very own care package from the guys at Market Leverage as a belated-birthday present. The ML team has done a fantastic job showering bloggers in the ‘make money online’ niche with praise and gifts… showing once again, why it pays to be a blogger.

I wanted to shoot a nice video displaying everything that they gave me, as I was completely stunned. As mentioned in the clip, I have only made about $20 with Market Leverage thus far… so it is a bit amazing they felt the need to shower me with generosity this week. As unexpected as the package was altogether, I was most impressed by the hand-written card and the fact that they bought Penn State clothing and accessories. Clearly, they are reading up on the websites and projects of all of their clients. They know more about me than I do!

In the realm of affiliate marketing, the bottom line is that all of the companies competing do much the same thing. There really isn’t a whole lot of room to bend in terms of costs, so most websites use the exact same offers with the exact same payouts and the exact same system. Most of these companies like NeverBlueAds and ClickBooth do a pretty stellar job with customer service… but Market Leverage blows them away. To think that a blogger like myself could get such an appreciation for the little-to-no work I have done for the company to this day is almost laughable, and is reason enough to do business with them.

I’m sticking with Market Leverage as my primary and recommended affiliate network because they have high payouts, a low $25 cashout value and the most unbeatable & friendly support you will find. Best of all, everything in your account is 100% free, so you can start making money today just by signing up with them and trying out their services. Even if you don’t end up hitting pay-dirt, you’ll find your experience well worth the effort.

To go along with the video, I’ve gone ahead and taken some snapshots of the care package and what was inside. Here is an entire list of what was given to me:

• Flip Mino Camera w. carrying case and tripod
• 2GB USB flash drive pen
• Penn State (Nike) sweatshirt hoodie
• Nike duffle bag
• Nike professional golf shirt
• Market Leverage T-Shirt
• Market Leverage Hat
• Penn State Mousepad

With the new camera, I am going to be doing a lot more video blogging in the future. It’s definitely high-quality, and you’ve already heard me rave about the updated model on this blog. I hope to shoot you guys some weekly stock picks each week along with the Sunday Link Love as an added video bonus. I’m not sure how much of the standard video-posting I’ll be doing, but I will definitely be trying out some new ideas. Overall, it should be a pretty fun experience that will add a new dimension to The Net Fool dot com!

Bottom Line: MarketLeverage clearly beats the pants off of other affiliate networks when it comes to customer care, so why not give them a try? What do you have to lose? They were very generous to me, and I’m sure you’ll find your experience similar.

-The Net Fool

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It’s been a great two-week competition here at theNetFool.com! I’m giving away a brand new Flip Video Mino camera as well as a $50 MarketLeverage Rewards Card this month, and the winners are finally in! A big thanks to the guys down at Market Leverage for donating the prizes. Here’s the official results video:

Congratulations to the winners! This contest was a big success for this blog, as our RSS subscribers have really grown over the past two weeks to pass the 300-level for the first time… continuing upwards toward the famed 500-subscriber RSS status.

Not a video-watching person? Don’t worry, we’ve got the winners of the Flip Mino and the $50 ML Rewards card listed below… just wanted to make sure that you guys had a little suspense.

Using Random.org’s number generator in combination with an Excel spreadsheet that I composed for the 713 entries in this contest, I was able to draw two completely random winners to make things fair and square for you all. Everyone had an equal opportunity to win, though some received more entries through submitting videos and blog posts among other things.

And without further ado, the winners:

$50 ML Rewards Card: ClickUserName (YouTube Submission)

Flip Mino: reid@reidjones.ca (Email RSS Subscriber)

Congratulations to both of you! I want to thank everyone that entered this month’s contest brought to you exclusively by theNetFool.com and Market Leverage. Go ahead sign up for a free account to make some money online with Market Leverage. I am an active member, and absolutely love their services. You’ll see in tomorrows post just how much they care about individual clients!

Stay tuned for more contests coming up!
-The Net Fool

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It’s Sunday… and you know exactly what that means, time for a weekly run-down and some good old fashioned link love!

First and foremost, I’m writing this post from sunny Connecticut, where I spent my weekend catching some rays and recharging the batteries at the beach. My apologies for missing out on a post yesterday, but I can only do so much research on a dial-up connection. I’m not going to sacrifice quality for the sake of posting, and I definitely don’t want you wasting time on fluff posts that don’t help you out… which should be the entire purpose of blogging in the first place.

The Net Fool dot com confidently bumped into 300+ RSS subscriber territory this week, fueled by The Net Fool’s June Birthday Bash which ends this Wednesday, June 25^th. Still time to enter this easy-to-win contest that can land you a brand new Flip Mino or a $50 Market Leverage debit card, so get on those entries! Before I get too off track, let’s weed out the best of the best for the week ending June 21^st, 2008.

• The Blog Entrepreneur - Google Is Guilty of Discrimination
• Court’s IM School - How to Move On from “Make Money Online”
• Zac Johnson - Are Zip and Email Offers Worth It?
• Click Consultants - Researching Keywords Doesn’t Have to Suck!
• The University Kid - How To Make Websites Sell

As much as I felt that this week contained a lot of “personal” postings, there were still quite a few notable posts to be found. I can totally understand the relatively light week, as I got out of town myself, but I prefer to take the route of refraining from posting if I have nothing to say. I want to congratulate my buddy Collin from Mixed Market Arts, who is going to be competing in the Top Affiliate Challenge in a few weeks. Other than that notable win, I loved Zac Johnson’s analysis of zip & email submit offers… where he offered a view that pretty much matches exactly with mine. Great stuff coming from these five blogs this week that’s worth a look!

Stock Market
Another bumpy week in the stock market, filled with more bad news from the Financial stocks. Nobody can seem to rid the problems of the credit market, and I can’t help but say I told you so. It seems that one good week can have people forget about the lingering problems, brushing them off with temporary gains. After a horrific close to the week when the Dow dropped over 200 points, investors got a reminder that the trend in Financials is downward as problems with credit defaults aren’t as close to over as we would like to hope.

As for my portfolio, things looked about as sunny as the overall market. With NVidia (NYSE: NVDA) shedding 10-15% over the last two weeks, I have had to reconsider my position in the stock. Fortunately, I feel that their drop was unjustified, and I recommend buying shares around $20 of this fantastically unappreciated company. My two long-term recommendations continue to be L-3 Communications (NYSE: LLL) and Deere and Co. (NYSE: DE), which are both two industry powerhouses that have been down on their luck for no good reason. Both located in thriving sub-industries (defense and agriculture, respectively), I would love to see you take a look at buying while cheap.

Keep your head up if you are an investor. I feel that we are currently oversold and will see a nice week approaching. A day in the red Monday would be a solid buying point.

Blogosphere
This week in the blogging world, we saw the conclusion to action of the John Cow v. Garry Conn blogging competition. No more action is allowed as both blogs are now up for sale and out of the owners hands. I think that with the beginning of summer and the end of many school’s years, a lot of people decided to take it easy this weekend which caused a casual blogging week.

One thing that I feel is more notable in the blogging universe is the continued proactive campaigning by Market Leverage. I love the fact that they are going out and securing the prime time blog real estate to promote their affiliate network, but I feel that their growth is going to be hindered if they are throwing uncanny amounts of cash at these websites that simply can not and will not return their investment. But hey, it’s not my problem… so more power to them, eh?

The Week in Focus
This week, I’ll be wrapping up the ongoing Birthday Bash contest and posting some ways for you to make money online. I’ve got some great ideas that I think can put you on the fast track to success… so stay tuned! I had to postpone a posting this week all about coal, clean-coal technology, and how to play the trend in the stock market. Even if you don’t invest, it’s interesting stuff that you should know.

Also, I decided to run my “Creating A Blog” series to part 8, which will cover a sort of conclusion and follow up to keep you running a well-trafficked blog. Why? Well honestly, I thought that 7 was sort of an odd number to end it on.

This week was a great boost in traffic numbers all around, and I feel things are starting to click here at theNetFool.com, so I am definitely excited about the future. In addition, I’m still on a high after snagging Penn State student section football tickets for the upcoming season… especially after getting shut-out last year on an error from TicketMaster.com. Stay bullish on the net!

-The Net Fool

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Happy Sunday!

This week, I was really busy trying to keep up with posting to the blog, but managed to keep on top of things. I am currently in the process of getting licensed in Life & Heath for the purpose of selling insurance. This studying in combination with a two-day sales conference really tied me back from posting… but this week ended up being very productive despite all that.

After a great run down of an interesting money making scheme using lead-based affiliate programs, as well as a compelling discussion between myself and John Cow on the subject of brown-nosing for potential clients, I did see a good amount of interaction from you readers on an otherwise ordinary week. But enough about me, let’s shine some light on five interesting posts from the week ending June 14th, 2008.

• Zac Johnson - The Rise and Fall of Public Internet Ad Companies
• Blog About Your Blog - How To Sell Your Blog
• Money Bites - Alternative Networks and Earning from Social Media
• John Cow - Standing above the Crowd to Find JV Partners
• Click Consultants - Should You Use World-Wide Affiliate Offers World-Wide?

Stock Market News
Wild ride this week. The U.S. Dollar had its best week in nearly three years as it rose big time against the Euro and Yen. We had a couple of big down days, but Friday was a strong finish as things rebounded on stronger than expected retail sales reports. In addition to this, inflationary concerns were temporarily put to rest as the Consumer Price Index came in better than expected.

With a strong day on Friday, a lot of analysts are now calling for a good week coming up. One investor in particular, Jim Cramer, demonstrated that the market was dramatically oversold (meaning there will be value, and thus buyers, this week) using a market oscillator from Standard and Poor’s. This report alone got me excited, as I could really use a good week to recoup some of my losses from last week. I’m still keeping Yamana Gold (NYSE: AUY) my largest holding for safety’s sake, but my other holdings have seemed to hang on.

Blogosphere News
This week was definitely interesting. I had to miss out on a lot of the action, but it would seem that a lot of bloggers in the niche went ahead and ran Question & Answer segments on their blogs this week. I think it’s pretty interesting to get user input and give your guests answers they have been searching for, so I am anticipating running one of my own sometime this week.

I had a fun time arguing with John Cow over the subject of brown-nosing. We both took the offensive with no regard for human life on the subject of brown-nosing v. sticking to your guns. I defended maintaining your dignity to secure reliable traffic, even if you need to be a bit arrogant. John on the other hand, preferred to ask politely for help periodically from the big guys, and recommended doing some favors to score a link back. Both sides are fine on this, and I was honestly just doing it because I was bored and like to play devils advocate… but it was definitely interesting to get a conversation going that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Contest Update
My birthday’s a thing of the past, but The Net Fool’s June Birthday Bash rolls on in full force! If you haven’t registered to win already, you can get a free brand new Flip Mino worth $180 to record some high-quality video with or even a $50 Market Leverage Rewards card. Entering is completely free and only takes a few seconds, so check out the ways to win and register for email updates from TNF so you don’t miss a beat!

I’ve had some great entries so far, including one YouTube video which I really liked. The prizes to be won here are fantastic, and you’ll have a great shot at winning since my RSS subscriber pool is small… and my email subscriber pool is even smaller. Increase your odds by blogging my contest or making a video, and win a prize!

The Week In Focus
This week, I am going to try and pump out another brilliant strategy for you guys to make money online, since that seems to be an attractive focus. I am anticipating wrapping up the popular “Creating A Blog” series this week as well and compiling the entries into a nice eBook for you all to use and share 100% free of cost.

Traffic around here has been steadily on the rise, and my Alexa.com ranking is really strengthening as of late… so that is always exciting. With any luck, I’ll see a nice bounce in my 45n5 Top 100 Blogs ranking after the new stats are factored in. That’s it for this weeks Sunday update… stay bullish on the net!

-The Net Fool

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Good afternoon TNF readers!

Another week in the books here at theNetFool.com, and I got to tell you it was rough to keep up. This week, I was out of electricity at my house probably 4 out of 7 days, including last night (which is why this post is a tad late), which significantly strained my production. However, I was able to keep pace in posting every day of the week, so no harm done.

The winners of The Net Fool’s Outrageous Blog Contest have been announced and emailed their prize information. If you haven’t received contact information, please feel free to contact me about that and I’ll get them to penny up. But enough talk, let’s get you some great articles from the week ending June 07, 2008.

• Garry Conn - Monetizing Your WordPress Blog for Mobile Users
• Court’s IM School - 2 Deep Linking Strategies to Grow Your Google Presence
• The Blog Entrepreneur - Starting Your Own Mailing List
• The Internet Entrepreneur Diary - Entrecard: Should It Stay or Should It Go?
• WordPress Theme Designer - Blue Block Theme

We had some pretty interesting posts this week, and I would actually rate this week above average in post quality. The WP Theme Designer released a new “Blue Block Theme” which is entirely free and very nice. Other than that, a lot of great posts about growing your traffic with deep linking, mailing lists and mobile phone optimization.

Stock Market
Oh No! It’s panic time on Wall Street. Just when you thought oil was safely falling back to its normal levels, things exploded in our face this week on top of a worse-than-expected unemployment report to close out the week Friday with one of the worst drop-offs in quite some time. But The Net Fool isn’t scared. As revealed yesterday, I am using this opportunity to get a discounted buying point on some otherwise great stocks.

My portfolio actually outperformed the benchmark because of my largest holding being Yamana Gold (NYSE: AUY), a gold stock that is correlated to the rise in oil. I’m actually considering buying a solar company now that people are counting them out of the race. I feel like its a good alternative energy play if I can’t find a properly valued wind energy play, which I would actually prefer. Regardless, I am going to be looking at power/energy stocks (namely oil, natural gas, solar, wind or infrastructure/energy efficient technology) because I think they hold the most potential.

Blogosphere
I feel like the most recent trend has been a return to quality work, and away from sponsored reviews. There is still a maddening amount of blog contests floating around in the mix. Something which I have already voiced my concern toward. Other than that, I am still planning out my stock market blog. I would have loved to have it out by now, but unfortunately my web designers simply aren’t working with me… no communication. I really don’t understand this, as I am a paying customer. They should logically be coming to me, right?

John Cow v. Garry Conn is raging on. I really think that both of their projects are great to learn from, as I feel that they know what they are doing. With John Cow declaring victory based on the statistics thus far, Garry Conn is quietly building up his debt consolidation blog with the hope of sneaking under the radar. I feel like John Cow will indeed win, but anything could happen and it’s great to track both of their websites’ progress.

TNF Updates and News
This week, I am going to try and round out the “Creating A Blog” series and get a fresh idea out for you to make some money online. I am going to have to try very hard to keep this blog updated, as I am in the thick of things going to sales school this week to get licensed to sell life & health insurance. Now that’s something you don’t hear from most “make money online” bloggers.

Getting back on track, my Alexa statistics have absolutely soared as of late… and I am seeing steady improvement in traffic with unique visits holding constant over 200 daily. I am hoping on seeing a nice bounce in RSS subscriber numbers through exposure, and will hopefully be increasing this through advertising campaigns on various blogs in my niche area. Stay tuned for more updates!

-The Net Fool

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