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Custom Short URLs with D95

Long URLs can be a major pain in the you-know-what, especially when you are confined to just 140 characters in Twitter. As a result, several new URL shortening services have jumped onto the scene, helping you share your blog posts and other random Internet findings in a much more efficient manner.

When John sent this review request over to my e-mail inbox, I automatically assumed that the D95.com URL shortening website was just like all the others out there. What is it about D95 that will make you choose that service over some of the more established and recognized URL shorteners?

Choose Your Own Shortened URL

Yes, there are a lot of URL shorteners out there. If you make use of a Twitter client like Twhirl, you’re probably pretty familiar with these already. Instead of sending over a URL that takes up the entirety of your 140 characters, it’s much easier to send a link that is only 20-25 characters, right? The thing with most of these services is that the shortened URL is automatically generated. You have no real control.

When you make a short URL with D95, you have the opportunity to define your own shortened URL. Other services follow their main domain with a nonsensical string of letters and numbers. Doesn’t it make more sense to have something like http://d95.com/johnchow? It’s just like the redirects that you may use for affiliate links on your website or blog. This is much more personalized.

Completely Masked URLs Too

The other major D95.com feature that you will not find with most other URL shortening websites is that you are able to completely mask the URL. Normally, when you click through on one of those other shortened URLs, you are redirected to another site with the “real” URL in full display. You can still do this with D95, but it’s also possible to keep the shortened URL in the address bar too.

Here is a screenshot of what happens when you go to http://d95.com/btr. You still get directed over to my blog, but the URL in the address bar stays as the D95 shortened one. This stays true even as you navigate around on my blog, checking out different posts and so on.

As you can imagine, this can be pretty useful for affiliate marketers. I can’t say for sure, but I believe that this URL masking works by using an iframe. That seems like it would be the simplest solution.

User Interface, Advertising, and Expansion

When you go to the main homepage for the D95 URL shortening website, you are immediately offered the very simple user interface for shortening just about any URL that you’d like. The only restriction is that you cannot use D95 for “spamming or illegal purposes.” Go ahead and tread that fine line between affiliate marketing and spamming.

As you can see, you first enter the URL that you would like to see shortened. Next, you can enter the custom URL that you would like to use for the D95 shortened URL. This is based on availability, of course, so I imagine that all the single and double-letter URLs will be snatched up pretty quickly. Third, you can choose either to mask or not mask the URL. There is an optional field for your e-mail, but there is no real incentive to using this.

If you would like to offer the D95 URL shortener on your own blog, you can use this web tool code. This might be handy, but I think that D95 would be better off getting a deal with the Twitterific and Twhirl people so that it can be integrated into those Twitter clients.

I’m also not all too sure how D95 can best monetize its free URL shortening website. As it stands, there is a simple 468×60 Google AdSense banner on the main page and that’s about it. It would not be appropriate to have an interstitial ad for all the redirects, because people would get annoyed with that pretty quickly, opting to use a different service instead. If you have any ideas as to how to make money by shortening URLs, let D95 know through the comments below.

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Written by Michael Kwan on July 24th, 2008 with no comments.
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Top Five Market Leverage Offers

If you’ve entered the John Chow Market Leverage Challenge and you’re wondering what offers to promote, then this video featuring the top five money making offers from ML should help you out.

Market Leverage is one of the very few affiliate networks to do weekly video posts. As a matter of fact, I think they’re the only one that does it. No doubt other affiliate networks will follow. After all, video is the future of the Web. In addition to the weekly top five, the videos feature interviews and tips to increase your income from affiliate marketing. They’re quite entertaining to watch and the production quality is very good.

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Written by John Chow on July 24th, 2008 with no comments.
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Young Entrepreneur In Iceland

Some off you knew I had booked a short trip away, others didn’t. My trip to Iceland was great fun and I will definitely be visiting Iceland again soon!

Day 1 – Arrival, Tourist Board and Booked Trips, Caruso

Our stay began with a really slow bus ride to our 1930’s Hotel. The Hotel Borg is staffed with very attentive and conscientious people who each speak at least 7 languages.

Day 2 – Whale Watching, Afternoon Shopping, Café du Paris, The Real Italian Food Restaurant

To start our trip of adventures we decided to go out into the North Atlantic ocean to see wales, dolphins and puffins.

Day 3 – Halleif tour guide: 8 glaciers, snowmobiled over one, golden falls, oldest parliament, 9:00 -6:30 Caruso’s again

On Saturday we decided to to hire a tour guide to show us around Iceland, this is the car he turned up in!

We were heading to a glacier around a 3 hour drive away, on route we stopped and saw the oldest parliament buildings in the world. When driving there, there was almost nothing but lava rocks and mountains.When we returned to the car there was a dog walking around, it appears that for the first hour the driver had his dog in a cage in the boot. Being a dog lover we invited the dog to come sit with us for the whole day!

When we arrived at the Glacier we got kitted up and started making our way to the top of it on our Snowmobiles, I managed to get up to 57 k/hour which was very fast for the conditions. Here is a picture of me when we got to the top of the Glacier

Here is a picture of me on my Snowmobile, rock on!

On the way back we stopped for lunch and to see Golden Falls:

Day 4 – Hot Water Spring 1 ½ Hour Hike Straight Up, Quad Bikes, Great Restaurant

In the morning we had planned a 1 ½ hour hike straight up in to the mountains, when we got to there we found a hot water spring which we could go in and bathe. We spent around a hour in it as it was hotter than having a bath! It was great!

On the way back I was speaking to the driver about how we had a few hours to spare and what did he recommend. He suggested quad-biking, which sounded fun to me. He rang up his friends to organise this trip for us and we where taken privately around mountains and lava rock on some fast quad bikes. I managed to get 82k/h on my quad bike on the way back which I was very impressed with. The friend I was with didn’t drive so fast so I didn’t get to do as much as I wanted but our guide said I could go off and do some jumps and just said “Be Careful”, this is something they would definitely not of been allowed in the UK or America due to safety.

Here is a picture of at half way:

Day 5 – Departure, Blue Lagoon

We decided that we would relax before our flight back to the UK, we decided to go to a spa which beats all other spa’s! Guests enjoy bathing and relaxing in Blue Lagoon geothermal seawater, known for its positive effects on the skin. A visit to the spa promotes harmony between body, mind and spirit, and enables one to soak away the stresses of modern life. The spa’s guests rekindle their relationship with nature, soak up the scenic beauty and enjoy breathing the clean, fresh air.

Tomorrow I will be doing a write up on 7 things that Iceland taught me about being a better entrepreneur.

Written by Michael on July 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
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Why Your Blog Needs a Newsletter

In Yaro’s video post about Conversion Blogging, he talked about the importance of setting up an email or newsletter list to maximize blogging profits.

With the rise of RSS, the newsletter list has kinda taken a backseat. However, if done correctly, the blog newsletter could be one of your most profitable streams of income. Like RSS, a newsletter allows you to keep in constant contact with your readership. Unlike the RSS, you can use the newsletter to send more than just your blog posts. In Yaro’s video example, he used his newsletter list to make over $6,000 from a promotion with John Reese. That’s not bad for just one mail out! Now you see why you need a newsletter list? Here’s how to build one.

Aweber - The List Server of Choice

The first thing you need to do is set up an account with Aweber. They are the newsletter service provider of choice for bloggers and email marketers. I’ve been using Aweber to handle my newsletter lists and have nothing but good things to say about them. Their pricing and feature set is among the best in the business.

Depending on how many subscribers you have, prices start at $19 per month and goes up from there. The service is extremely easy to use and offers a lot of customization. For example, I only ask for the name and email of my readers, but you can add as many custom fields as you like to get more demographic information. Aweber allows you to create an unlimited number of list and auto responders.

My favorite function of Aweber is the Blog Broadcast feature. This feature lets Aweber take the contents of your RSS feed and automatically turn it into a newsletter. If you’ve ever received an email newsletter from me summarizing my last 15 blog posts, that was created using Aweber’s Blog Broadcast. Here’s the real kicker. Aweber Blog Broadcast counts towards your FeedBurner counter. If you already have an Aweber account with a few thousand subscribers, turning on Blog Broadcast will add those subscribers to your FeedBruner RSS chicklet.

Make It Easy for Readers to Subscribe

Now that you’ve set up your Aweber account, the next step is to get readers to subscribe. The easiest way to do that is to prominently display your newsletter sign up box.

Subscribe to my newsletter and get my ebook on making money online FREE!

You can put it in the body of your post like I did in this example but the best way is to add it to a highly visible part of your blog. My newsletter sign up box is at the most visible part of my blog for a reason. I want readers to subscribe! Aweber provides simple copy and paste HTML codes to insert the sign up box into your blog.

Offer an Incentive to Subscribe

You can greatly increase your subscription rate by offering a free incentive. In my case, I use my eBook, Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com. Readers can download the book for free by signing up to my newsletter. You don’t need a 54 page eBook like my one in order to get people to subscribes. I’ve seen blogs used “special reports” that are less than 10 pages to get people to sign up. If you really want to be lazy, you can offer a Private Label Rights (PLR) ebook. However, I wouldn’t recommend that.

You can also use the OptIn Comments Wordpress Plugin. This plugin emails new readers who made a comment on your blog to say thank you and ask them to subscribe to your newsletter. If they hit the confirm link, the plugin adds them to your Aweber list. The plugin cost $97 (John chow dot Com readers can get it for $57) but it’s well worth it. OptIn comment is adding an average of 30 to 40 new sign ups per day for me.

Another thing you can try is to offer a newsletter only contest. Give away a nice prize but say the winner will be announced in the newsletter. The only way for readers to find out if they won or not is by subscribing.

Monetizing The Newsletter

At this time, my newsletter is not monetized. Right now, I’m working on building the subscription base. However, when the time comes, there are many ways the newsletter can make money for you. For bloggers like Yaro, the newsletter accounts for a significant part of their blogging income.

I estimate that if I go balls to the wall and monetize my newsletter, I can add another $5,000 per month to total blog revenue. However, it’s not time to monetize the newsletter yet. By not making money from it now, I’ll be able to make a lot more from it later. The newsletter is part of my strategy to push past the $40K per month barrier.

If your blog doesn’t have a newsletter, it’s time to get one.

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Written by John Chow on July 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
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How To Do Conversion Blogging

My friend Yaro Starak has put up a new video on how to do conversion blogging. The first question you’ll probably have is what heck is conversion blogging? Conversion blogging uses an email list and blog to maximize profits.

You can watch the first video absolutely free. However, to watch the second video, you’ll need to download it by entering your name and email address. Don’t worry. I’ve met Yaro face to face and he is an honest guy. He’ll never sell your name or spam you. As a matter of fact, I think this is conversion blogging at work.

In addition to running his blog, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, Yaro also runs Blog Mastermind, a mentoring and coaching program that helps new blogger go from zero figure blogging to six figure blogging. Conversion blogging is part of the Blog Mastermind series and is definitely work checking out.

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Written by John Chow on July 22nd, 2008 with no comments.
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Meet Me At The Following Events

A big part of my success as a blogger comes from networking with other like minded people. The old saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” really is true. I attend a ton of industry related events not so much for the knowledge these events offer. I attend so I can meet and network with the top people in the industry. If you’re really serious about making money online, then you need to get out there and network. Here are the events I’ll be at in the next few months. I hope to meet you at a few of them.

July 29: Vancouver Bloggers Meetup

I’ve attended a few of these in the past and the mixture of people was enough to make it wroth my while. The Vancouver Blogger Meetup takes place at the The Black Water Cafe on 280 Carrall Sttreet, Vancouver. Start time is 7PM and cost is $1.50. What the $1.50 covers, I’m not really sure. RVSP for the event here.

August 10-12: Affiliate Summit East

The eastern leg of the Affiliate Summit takes place in Boston at the Boston Seaport Hotel. The Affiliate Summit is the biggest affiliate marketing show in the world, attracting over 4,000 attendees. Not only can you meet a bunch of affiliate networks but you’ll be able to network with some of the biggest affiliate marketers in the world.

Cost of the Affiliate Summit range from $199 for a exhibit hall pass to $1,449 for a full conference pass. If you can get a group of five or more together, you can save some money. I plan to stay in Boston for a few extra days to check out the sites and kill some lobsters.

September 11-13: IZEAFest

IZEAFest takes place in sunny Orlando Florida at the Grand Bohemian Hotel. The event caters to bloggers and includes a first rate list of speakers. Myself and Shoemoney are both speaking at IZEAFest.

The best part about IZEAFest is the price. It’s only $65 for the entire three days. Give them $85 and they’ll toss in tickets for a blogger takeover day at Universal Orlando. In terms of bang for the buck, it doesn’t get much better than IZEAFest.

September 20-21: Blog World Expo

If you’re a blogger and can only attend one big event each year, then Blog World Expo is your best bet. Taking place at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Blog World Expo is the ultimate place to learn about blogging and network with other bloggers.

Tomorrow is the last day for early bird pricing. An exhibit only pass cost $75 ($150 if you want to attend the opening night party) and a full access pass cost $300.

I will be speaking on two panels at Blog World Expo. One with Zac Johnson and one with Rick Calvert, the founder of Blog World Expo.

How To Attend The Major Shows for Free

Not everyone can pay $300 to attend a Blog World Expo or $1,449 to attend an Affiliate Summit. Once you add in the cost of travel and hotel, the cost of attending a major trade show could top many thousands of dollars. However, there is a way to get into most major trade shows for free.

Apply for a Media Pass.

If your blog is big enough, you may qualify for a media pass which will grant you full access to the show at zero cost. That could add up to a significant saving. Both Affiliate Summit and Blog World Expo offer free passes to media that meet their requirements. What are those requirements? Generally, your blog topic needs to be along the same theme as the trade show and your blog needs to have “significant” readership.

How many readers does it take to have significant readership? That’s up to the sole discretion of show management. Your best bet is to just apply for the media pass. The worst thing that can happen is they say no. You can still get a normal pass if they say no. However, they might say yes.

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Written by John Chow on July 22nd, 2008 with no comments.
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John Chow Market Leverage Affiliate Challenge

John Chow dot Com and Market Leverage is pleased to bring you another fun and exciting contest. This time we’re doing our version of the Top Affiliate Challenge. The challenge is pretty simple. Whoever makes the most money with Market Leverage in a month will win an iPod Touch and a $200 ML Amex Reward Card.

To enter the challenge, simply sign up for Market Leverage using the special link Market Leverage gave me. This will allow me to track who is making what. The challenge starts today and goes until the end of August. I’ll have a by-weekly “Leader Board” report so you can see where you’re at. This challenge is open to new Market Leverage publishers only. If you’re already a Market Leverage publisher, then you can’t enter. However, keep reading. I have something else for you.

Make $10 and Win a 2GB Market Leverage USB Pen

The first ten Market Leverage affiliates who enter the challenge and make $10 will win a nice 2GB USB pen. This looks like a pen but it’s really a USB flash drive. And all you need to do is be one of the first 10 people to generate $10 in affiliate commissions and the pen is yours! Sign up today and start affiliate marketing.

But Wait, There’s More! Win a Flip Mino!

If you’re already a Market Leverage affiliate (or don’t want to enter the challenge), you still have a chance to win a Flip Mino! The Flip Mino is the update to the Flip Ultra and I love it because it’s so small and it works with my Mac!

To enter for a chance to win a Flip Mino, all you have to do is reply to this post. Easy, right? I’ll give you one entry for simply replying. If you make a blog post about the challenge and send a trackback, I’ll credit you with five entries. Your post should link to Market Leverage and this is contest post. If the trackback doesn’t work, enter the URL to the post in the comments.

All the winners will be selected on August 31st. Good luck!

Enter The Challenge and Sign Up for Market Leverage

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Written by John Chow on July 21st, 2008 with no comments.
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Fatten Your Wallet By Helping Others Lose Weight

Now that summer has arrived, have you managed to get yourself in shape for the beach? Are you comfortable being seen in public wearing just your bathing suit? Is your midsection better described as a six-pack or as a keg? Maybe it’s time that you consider going on a diet and overcoming the battle of the bulge. Better still, you can even try and make a few bucks along the way.

Well, that’s not completely true. The target of this review isn’t so much about getting you in shape as much as it is about you selling other people on eDiets Online Diet Plans. This is a make money online blog, after all, and not a healthy living blog.

Shave Inches, Fatten Wallet with eDiets.com

When you sign up for the affiliate program through eDiets, you are granted access to their full library of online diet plans and meal delivery plans. eDiets.com is a trusted name in the online dieting industry, having sold more than 2.5 subscriptions since 1997.

At this time, you will find 18 different diet plans offered through eDiets, including well-known weight loss programs like the Atkins Diet, Glycemic Impact Diet, and Heart Smart Plan. Each of these come in at a slightly different price and individuals will be drawn to different diet plans according to their needs and lifestyle choices.

The people who sign up for eDiets through you may be looking to lose a few inches around their respective waists, but you could be fattening your wallet in the process. Better still, affiliates can link to specific diet plans, targeting specific demographics and their preferences.

Signing Up Through Commission Junction

The eDiets.com Affiliate Program is managed through Commission Junction. If you already have an account with CJ, you just need to go to the offer page to sign up and get started. If you are not already a member of Commission Junction, you are encouraged to sign up through this link instead.

The first part of the registration form involves selecting your language, country, and functional currency. This last part establishes the currency to be used to calculate and display all the financial content in your new Commission Junction account. On the second page of the registration form, you’ll need to provide some information about your website, your promotional methods, your contact information, company information, and payment information.

Special John Chow Payout Levels

The standard payout schedule for the eDiets.com Affiliate Program is based on the sales volume that you bring in. On the first tier, which is comprised of the first 40 sales you make in a month, you earn $15 per signup. This escalates up to the fourth tier (200 sales or more), where you earn $30 per sale. There is also the eDiets Express tier where you get $50 per sale. But that’s for regular people.

A special offer has been extended to John Chow dot Com readers. The Online Diet Plan Commission schedule is outlined below, representing a minimum $25 payout per sale. If you get someone to sign up for a meal delivery plan, you earn $70 for that sale. That’s some pretty decent coin.

These increased commission rates are good through August 31st. If you are able to send in more than 15 sales between now and the end of August, you will be able to keep these increased rates through to the end of the year.

In order to receive these better rates for the eDiets.com Affiliate Program, you will want to send an email to eDietsAffiliates@imarketingltd.com with your Commission Junction CID, mentioning that you would like to take advantage of the increased payouts as mentioned on John Chow dot Com. Sending an email to that address will also expedite your affiliate application.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR EDIETS.COM AFFILIATE PROGRAM

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Written by Michael Kwan on July 21st, 2008 with no comments.
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Great Ideas For Startups Today

Start-up Ideas

Just come across this great article by Paul Graham called Start up Ideas We’d Like to Fund - well worth a read I suggest, especially for those of us interested in using New Technology for Older Ideas.

Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund presents 30 ideas that they think is cool - I have to say one or two surprised me, but then when I read Paul’s reasoning, it did make perfect sense.

For example:

Auctions.

Online auctions have more potential than most people currently realize. Auctions seem boring now because EBay is doing a bad job, but is still powerful enough that they have a de facto monopoly. Result: stagnation. But I suspect EBay could now be attacked on its home territory, and that this territory would, in the hands of a successful invader, turn out to be more valuable than it currently appears. As with dating, however, a startup that wants to do this has to expend more effort on their strategy for cracking the monopoly than on how their auction site will work.

AND

Dating.

Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants to start a dating start up has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you’re going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don’t focus on the novel take on dating that you’re going to offer. That’s the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem.

They also include an old favourite of mine - Better video chat.

Skype and Tokbox are just the beginning. There’s going to be a lot of evolution in this area, especially on mobile devices.

Talking of mobile devices I did find a link to http://www.heysan.com on their website. Apparently, Heysan! is a mobile web based service that lets you use your MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and GTalk accounts in your mobile phone - for free! It doesn’t matter where in the world you are, what network or phone model you use, their patent pending technology works no matter what.

The theory is good, I like it, but a challenge for me was that I could not see any obvious way to sign-up / join (but hey, maybe I did not look hard enough) - I can see how I am supposed to sign-in to MSN etc, but really I did not fancy just offering up my username and password just like that, especially when it was not even on a secure page.

So I am guessing this is one of the Start-ups that Y Combinator are still in process of funding? Getting launched?

According to their home page - Y Combinator is a new kind of venture firm specializing in funding early stage startups. We help startups through what is for many the hardest step, from idea to company.

We invest mostly in software and web services. And because we are ourselves technology people, we prefer groups with a lot of technical depth. We care more about how smart you are than how old you are, and more about the quality of your ideas than whether you have a formal business plan.

Written by Michael on July 20th, 2008 with no comments.
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Dot Com Fusion Fest

Surrey Fusion Festival

After Dot Com Pho at Pho Lan Restaurant, which was attended by only 7 people because of a Dot Com split, We headed across the Alex Fraser bridge and into city of Surrey for the first ever Dot Com Fusion Festival.

The Surrey Fusion Festival is Surrey’s largest 3-day multicultural celebration with 40 international pavilions celebrating music, food and culture. This is the event’s first year and it looks like a big hit.

The festival is held at the new Holland Park located at King George Highway and Old Yale Road. This is the largest multicultural event in Surrey’s history as over 60,000 people are projected to attend this free outdoor festival.

Unlike the United States, which tries to be a melting pot, Canada celebrates its diversity. The Surrey Fusion Festival brings together many distinct cultural heritages represented by ethnic and community groups hosting pavilions to present the music, food, costume and dance of their country of origin. Fusion Festival started yesterday and goes until tomorrow. It’s worth checking out.