Recently I made an upgrade to the header on my blog, and it was a BIG update at that! Not only did I enhance the looks of the most-viewed area of my blog, but I added a newsletter opt-in box which could potentially boost my subscribers tremendously.

But was my excitement premature!?

One of my readers, Rob from myTTOOS.com, pointed out the following:

Rob: “Really cool, but i bet it will be overseen a lot = bad conversion. Let us know if i am right.”

Jim: “Could be true… but then again I am not trying to spam people like typical marketers, haha”

Rob: “at least put the focus on the chalk board, put a few blinking stars around it or something lol”

Though it sounded silly at first, I started thinking about just how right he was! While I was all concerned with making the new opt-in newsletter box look at good as possible… I made it flow TOO WELL! Therefore, I needed a little something to get people to notice it (though I won’t be putting blinking stars on my header anytime soon, haha). So what did I do? I added a big ol’ floating arrow!

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I’ve been working feverishly around the clock to develop a massive and all-inclusive guide to the best stock market picks of 2009, and tonight I have finally completed my work! You can play with internet marketing all that you want, but there is simply no asset pool that will ever match the potential gains of the stock market. Imagine throwing $1,000 into a stock one day, and walking away with twice that the next… this actually happens on a regular basis in the markets… and I feel the time is right.

Considering the insane gains available in the stock market, there is always going to be downside risk. This is NOT an eBook that I have developed myself, I have worked exclusively with 10 professionally-minded mutual fund managers that specialize in every area of the market imaginable to combine only the best ideas and get you started. This work is a compilation of many efforts, and holds true investing power in forecasting what the money makers will be for 2009.

Why The Heck Would I Want to Be In Stocks Now?

Now is the wrong time to be jumping ship, it is the right time to be getting back into stocks. Ask any professional, and they will tell you that investor mindset is always wrong: we want to invest more at the peaks, and abandon ship at the troughs. Human emotion plays a big part in this, and the only way to stay ahead and actually make money is to “be greedy when others are fearful” (Warren Buffett).

Are you interested in stocks? Do you invest in your spare time? Are you managing a portfolio of your own? This publication is for you!

I’ve gathered some of the most in-depth analysis together in a professionally-rendered eBook and put it up for an insane bargain-basement reduced cost. If you signed up for a premium stock service, you would get less information for $100s a month (if you are lucky). It’s fantastic that I can offer this to you guys, as stock ideas are always great to go through and learn from.

But you haven’t heard the best part…

… I’m Giving It Away for FREE!

I decided that rather than charge for this exclusive and professional content, I would let you guys have it for free. Sure, I’ve become a financial adviser of sorts over the past few years of operation. While I cannot give you recommendations, what I can do is offer suggestions and ideas to further your wealth. The market is tough right now, so if you don’t understand the stocks you are buying… you are doomed to fail. Regardless, things are cheap right now and investing at the bottom will make money 90% of the time over the long run.

There is no guarantee of positive return with these stock picks and recommendations, however I can almost assure you that all of the carefully selected picks that appear in this publication are well researched and the investment thesis is clear. At the very least, it can be very interesting to see what possibilities lie out there.

How to Gain Access to the EXCLUSIVE Report

I am releasing this information without financial charge, however I would like to reap the rewards of doing so, in various metrics increases.

On February 6th, 2008, I will put out a blog post with the link to download the publication. However, this post will be password protected.

To get the password, you’ll need to do one of three things:

1. Refer three friends to subscribe to The Net Fool via email, and tell them to comment on this post confirming. I will check.

2. If you have a blog post with more than 50 subscribers, write a post talking about The Net Fool and link to the homepage. If you have a blog with more than 100 subscribers, give this blog a paragraph plug in one of your posts, telling people why they should visit. And if you mention the report, extra brownie points to you!

3. Sign up to The Net Fool’s brand new newsletter, and refer two friends as well. You’ll get great information on how to make more money online, but never any spam… just premium content when you want it, where you want it. Use the form below to do this, and ask your referrals to do the same. Then, tell them to comment on this post to confirm… I will also check this.

Don’t forget to let me know below what you plan on doing, and follow up on it once you are done. Of course, participation isn’t necessary… but you won’t get that secret password until you do. Again, these should be new events… not directing me to an old blog post, or referring a member that has already subscribed to my email feed or newsletter. This is a great opportunity, with a HUGE reward in clear view.

This offer closes February 6th, 2009… so let’s get started!

-The Net Fool

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Recently, I had a huge burst of traffic on tailwinds coming in from one website in particular. The website is called “Youngest Blogger,” and it is one of many ranking websites for the best bloggers on the internet. This one features a list of bloggers under the age of 18, so in general these bloggers are very much the overachiever type.

I’m not under the age of 18.

This is a disclaimer, haha, because what I decided to do was literally trick the system to see what would happen. The downside? Five seconds of my life lost, and I would probably be blocked from a list that I could never get on in the first place. The upside? My fifteen minutes of fame! Hmmm… well it doesn’t take a Quantitative Risk Analyst to understand that the upside FAR outweighs the downside risk.

What I Did to Exploit Huge Traffic

Okay, so I come across a website that is claiming to rank the “top bloggers under 18″… and it sounds like something I would be interested in. Naturally, because I am over the age of 18, this would be a website that I just passed by. However, there is in fact a manual submission system in place that allows you to enter your age and website on my own. (evil thoughts)

Hmm… so they are going to allow me to choose my own age, eh? Excellent. I think that I will be 15 years old today. This is exactly what I did after checking with the terms of service. While I am sure that Carl O’Cab (the owner) would have loved for me to only support accurate age information, the last time I checked, I am not legally bound to give away my birth date to strangers. At any rate, the worst that can happen is being banned from the website… which I could care less about if I have my link placed, right?

This system is actually still in place, and the owner Carl O’Cab obviously doesn’t check through submissions… because I submitted theNetFool.com as being my blog, run by a 15 year old. It got approved quickly, and stayed in the #1 slot for a few weeks… taking traffic and subscribers along with it. I got around 50 hits a day from this site alone (in its prime). I’m sure that the website isn’t doing as well as it was when it first came out… but traffic is traffic, and it took me 5 seconds to rake in hundreds of unique visitors.

What is Unethical, and What is Just Plain Smart?

So this entire experiment begs the question… was I being completely unethical to do something like this, or just a bit smarter than your average bear? This is debatable, but I like to think that I am a very ethical candidate. So, yes, I cheated the YoungestBlogger.com system and gained a #1 ranking despite the fact that I was nowhere near the age of 15 anytime recently. Some might applaud this, and some might frown upon it. At any rate, this is something that I knew would never hurt anyone… and at bare minimum would keep ol’ Carl on his toes so others don’t do this with malicious intent.

If I was REALLY smart, I would have done this with an affiliate blogging website to get traffic to that location fast and easy. Maybe you will go and do this after reading? But I encourage you to refrain from doing so. This was more of an experiment on my part to see whether or not a simple submission could benefit my website in a major way.

My conclusion? Always, and I mean always, shoot for the win in situations like these. If you come across a ranking system that allows for manual submissions… why not give it a shot? What’s the least that can happen. By maintaining the risk/reward understanding, you can run a much more successful blog. I’m interested to know where your stance is on the issue… was it unethical, or smart? You be the judge.

-The Net Fool

Disclaimer: This post was meant as an example case, and nothing against Carl O’Cab, who runs a terrific service which I encourage you to use ethically and legally

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If you keep up with the news at The Net Fool, you have probably heard me hinting at a new blog that I have had under wraps for about one month. This project has really been time consuming, and now that it is completed… it is going to unlock a LOT of time to doing what I do best on theNetFool.com.

Announcing the release of Bullish Bankers!

Bullish Bankers is a stock market collaboration owned by yours truly and operated with a bunch of my close friends from Penn State University. Most of these guys are also acting mutual fund managers with the Nittany Lion Fund, LLC. and really know there stuff about the stock market. We are essentially planning to be the next SeekingAlpha, TheStreet.com or TimothySykes in providing 100% free stock market analysis, opinion and research to the masses every day. Let’s have a look, shall we?

Why Bullish Bankers?
Okay so first things first, this website is basically a combination of two blogs. One that I had started, and one that my friend Santosh Sankar had planned. Since I already had the know-how to do this, we decided to collaborate and basically form one big stock market community. I am really interested in the stock market, but as you can see I am gradually shifting focus away from the markets here at theNetFool.com. Why? It simply doesn’t fit the best interests of my audience.

Now, I am going to keep with my spin on things here, informing you guys what is happening and probably still making the occasional stock market related article, but I feel that the bulk of information here is desired to be blogging tips, affiliate marketing, online entrepreneurship and making money in general… so that’s what I’m going to give you! Bullish Bankers is going to be a very large resource in my best estimates, as we already have a decent stock hold of posts. Eventually, we’ll probably be putting out 10-15 articles every single day with the sheer number of authors!

Bullish Bankers Features and Design
By now you are probably saying to yourself, wow… that is one good looking website. This one definitely took a lot of effort (like The Net Fool did), and I really wanted to make sure that everything looked as professional as possible. By the graciousness of Brian Gardener, we got a copy of his popular Revolution News theme absolutely free… which I extensively modified into what you see today. It took a LOT of editing, but it turned out great, and Brian’s theme is an awesome foundation to start from. It is fully based on the WordPress system, and even has a forum running phpBB that will go online shortly for an added level of user interaction.

Okay, so I have the website essentially divided into Equities (that’s all the stocks like Apple, Bank of America and Caterpillar that you know and love), Commodities (like crude oil, corn and gold), Market News (headlines from the economic world) and Economy (U.S. politics). Under equities, which is definitely our focus, we have it broken down neatly into each sector of the S&P 500 Index. This means that you can sort information by just Information Technology or Industrials stocks if you choose! If you are new to investing, we are throwing around investment ideas all the time here… so it would be worth your while to subscribe to our feed and get your free information.

Want To Help Spread The Word and Get A Free Text Link?
I’m looking to expand Bullish Bankers as far as I can from the get go. Knowing that a lot of you own blogs, I would be absolutely floored if you were to write up a post or review about BullishBankers.com. We are currently targeting the phrases “investing ideas,” “stock market trends,” “stock market analysis” and “stock market outlook” so if you write up a post (or blurb in another post) that is 350+ words and use one of those anchor terms to link back to http://www.bullishbankers.com, you’ll score yourself a free month long text link advertisement right here at The Net Fool. Please be sure you have at least 50 subscribers to do this!

Bottom Line: I’m really excited about the prospects behind Bullish Bankers, and I hope your are too. If you are at all interested in the stock market, I really want to encourage you to subscribe to our feed. I’m going to be running some more promotions soon to encourage you all to link to the new blog… but if you act now and offer up a post, you’ll get a free text link and some favorable feedback from me. We all like to network, so if you want to be on my good side, here’s a great way to do it! Let me know what you think of the new blog! I’d love to hear some feedback (positive or negative).

Stay Bullish (Bankers) On The Net!
-The Net Fool

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After a week of renewed hope that the U.S. dollar was going to rebound and oil would perhaps fall back down to $100/barrel levels, the market showed signs of decay this week and things look grim on the surface of things.

I was able to shrug off the positive sentiment from last week, where many investors were telling us that oil was done, which I felt was an over-reaction to one good week of trading. By keeping my favorite gold stock Yamana Gold (NYSE: AUY) my largest holding, I wasn’t hurt too badly this week when the commodity race came back with a vengeance, up $10 a barrel on Friday.

But the million dollar question remains: “can you actually make money in a lousy stock market?” Absolutely not. Yes, you just need to know where to look! Gone are the days when you could brag and look like a genius simply because you bought a small or mid cap stock then went up more than the benchmark… despite the fact that everything was headed up anyway. It’s time to get smart on stocks.

“Unless you were long oil futures, there was nothing pretty about Friday’s session, which was governed by a relatively disappointing employment report for May and a stunning rise in oil prices.” – Briefing.com June 6, 2008

The Net Fool’s Sector Run-Down:
In the 2008 stock market, it’s not which stock you pick, it’s where the stock is from. As the saying goes, you don’t want to best looking house in a bad neighborhood, you’d be much better off holding a half-rate home in a good neighborhood. Buying the best stocks in the best sectors is how you win nowadays, so you definitely want to focus on sector more than stock for the time being. While the common saying is 50% stock / 50% sector… I think that the current conditions merit 75% sector / 25% stock. Getting a well-run company is very important, but if they are getting hit with rising input costs or slow demand… there’s just not a lot they can do.

TNF Ratings (June 06, 2008):
Consumer Discretionary: Neutral
Consumer Staples: Buy
Energy: Strong Buy
Financials: Sell
Healthcare: Buy
Industrials: Buy
Information Technology: Strong Buy
Materials: Buy
Telecommunications: Neutral
Utilities: Neutral

There are gains to be had in everything except financials, a sector that I think will find trouble recovering over the next few months, despite all the ongoing headwinds that have many people smelling a bottom. Energy, namely those stocks specializing in natural gas and oil, has been soaring. I see this group continuing to work all the way to oil @ $150/barrel, where I would re-value. IT stocks were the best gainers last month, and I can see these growth prospects continuing to soar over the summer.

Hot Sub-Industries You Can Count On
While sectors may be a bubble term, you can find great growth out of companies in the same sub-industry. I have a few favorites picked out that I think will continue to fare well for the time being

Oil & Gas Drilling: Favorable industry conditions with increased capital spending overseas has the oil and gas drillers reeling from the recent run-up in the price of crude oil and natural gas. Consider Noble (NYSE: NE) and Chesapeake (NYSE: CHK)… two of my personal favorites.

Fertilizers and Ag. Chemicals: Definitely a long-term bullish prospect. The global food crisis in combination with higher demand for quality meat has these chemical and fertilizer companies pumping out seed on all cylinders. Check two of my favorites Potash (NYSE: POT) and Monsanto (NYSE: MON).

Hypermarkets & Super-Centers: This group comprises of popular recessionary winners in lower-end, bulk shopping destinations such as Walmart (NYSE: WMT) and BJ’s Wholesale (NYSE: BJ). I see sales growth continuing to be supported by a down economy, and competitive pricing initiatives present real opportunity.

Construction & Engineering: Don’t let the title scare you, the housing crisis really hasn’t been much of a turn off in 2008 for these construction companies. There is often a tie in with hot oil & gas and infrastructure markets, so this industry is ripe for the picking. Consider Jacob’s Engineering (NYSE: JEC) or Fluor (NYSE: FLR) for your portfolio.

Coal & Consumable Fuels: Coal is messy. Not doubt about it. But even with this in mind, it will probably be the cheapest and most efficient energy solution for a while… so I like to hold high-flying stars like Arch Coal (NYSE: ACI) and Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU) for a balanced portfolio with international exposure.

Opportunities exist in today’s market. I feel that the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 400 point down day on Friday has presented a fantastic buying opportunity for those interested in going long on some stocks. Don’t buy on Monday. My feeling is that the market will fall on Monday too, and start to recover only toward the end of the week. I recommend buying mid-week or whenever you see a rebound. But heck, even if you happen to miss it, if you nailed the sector down, you will probably have yourself a winner in the long run.

-The Net Fool

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