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	<title>Asset Run Blog &#187; Uncategorized</title>
	<link>http://www.assetrun.com</link>
	<description>Just another Blog By Arash Kardan</description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:00:51 +0000</pubDate>
	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3</generator>
	<language>en</language>
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		<title>Building Review Sites with Star Ratings</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/21/building-review-sites-with-star-ratings/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/21/building-review-sites-with-star-ratings/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:00:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Kwan</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4972</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[




While not everyone feels comfortable pumping out a 700 word review of a product, most people feel inclined to rate just about everything. They&#8217;ll hop onto Facebook and rate movies using one of the applications. They&#8217;ll go to Amazon and have their say with a product that they just purchased. You ever wonder if you [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Building Review Sites with Star Ratings", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/21/building-review-sites-with-star-ratings/" });</script>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/wpreview-header.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<div>

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<p>While not everyone feels comfortable pumping out a 700 word review of a product, most people feel inclined to rate just about everything. They&#8217;ll hop onto Facebook and rate movies using one of the applications. They&#8217;ll go to Amazon and have their say with a product that they just purchased. You ever wonder if you can offer the same functionality on a website of your own?</p>
<p>As it turns out, all you need to convert your WordPress blog into a fully functional review site is the appropriately named <a href="http://www.wpreviewsite.com/">WP Review Site</a> WordPress plug-in. To make matters slightly more ironic, this is my <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/go/reviewme.php">review</a> of the WP Review Site plug-in. Maybe I should have activated it for this post only?</p>
<p><strong>The Strength of User Generated Content</strong></p>
<p>For the purposes of making money online, the best kinds of websites are those that are able to run themselves. That&#8217;s partly why there are so many forums on the &#8216;net. The owners of those forums don&#8217;t really have to do anything, other than hire a couple of moderators and ensure that the site stays up and running.</p>
<p>The same can be said about review sites that are powered by the <a href="http://www.wpreviewsite.com/">WP Review Site</a> plug-in. You&#8217;ll need to generate some traffic at first, but the idea is that you will soon able to put together the briefest of posts and have the comments come flooding in. Aside from the comments themselves, each user is able to give a &#8220;star&#8221; rating on a scale of one to five. </p>
<p>In addition to the overall rating, you can also define additional categories for your site visitors to use. If your site reviews computer hardware, for instance, you can set up ratings for performance, build quality, and price/value. These star ratings can either be displayed horizontally or vertically. For more information, check out the <a href="http://www.wpreviewsite.com/features">features page</a>.</p>
<p><strong>A Look at the Options</strong></p>
<p>Converting your regular WordPress blog into a <a href="http://www.wpreviewsite.com/">fully functional review site</a> is as easy as installing a plug-in. When you <a href="https://www.wpreviewsite.com/buy">buy this product</a>, you will be provided with a zip file. Unzip that, find the plug-in folder, and upload as normal. Activate the plug-in in WordPress and then you&#8217;ll find the configuration under the Options tab.</p>
<p>There are three sections to the options area:</p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/wpreview-settings1.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>In the first section, you can add and remove rating categories. If you find that there is demand for an additional category, like &#8220;support&#8221; or &#8220;appearance&#8221;, you can add those here.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/wpreview-settings2.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The second section is for the automatic embedding of the star ratings in your posts, pages, and comments. You can shoose to use either tables or lists for the ratings display. Unfortunately, the plug-in does not allow you to automatically choose whether the ratings only show up in posts and not pages, for example. To do that, you need to edit your theme files.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/wpreview-settings3.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The final section is for adjusting the CSS of the ratings widgets. You&#8217;ll want them to blend in with your site, after all.</p>
<p><strong>Weighted Average Listing</strong></p>
<p>A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it&#8217;s much more valuable to see a product in action. <a href="http://www.awardwinninghosts.com/">Award Winning Hosts</a> is a website that was designed and run by the same people that created the <a href="http://www.wpreviewsite.com/">WP Review Site</a> plug-in. The site, as you can imagine, is partly powered by that plug-in.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/wpreview-example.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Along with the individual reviews (and comments) for each of the web hosting companies, you&#8217;ll also notice that there is a list of all the web hosts along the right side. This list is not chronological or alphabetical. Instead, the list is based on the user ratings. Better still, this <a href="http://www.wpreviewsite.com/">WordPress plug-in</a> uses a <em>weighted</em> average to prevent a single five-star rating from ousting 40 four-star ratings.</p>
<p><strong>Great for Affiliate Links</strong></p>
<p>As you can imagine, WP Review Site was designed with affiliate marketing in mind. For each and every product (or service) reviewed on one of these websites, you can easily integrate some affiliate links. This way, any site visitor that comes to your site for information will get redirected to the vendor <em>via your affiliate link</em>. It&#8217;s important to get that &#8220;last cookie&#8221;, so to speak.</p>
<p>In case you&#8217;re wondering, the rating system becomes completely integrated with the comment system on your blog. This means that the ratings can still be moderated, marked as spam, and so on.</p>
<p><strong>Pricing and Bonuses</strong></p>
<p>For all intents and purposes, <a href="http://www.wpreviewsite.com/">WP Review Site</a> looks like it could be a valuable addition to any review or shopping site. Allowing users to have their say through star ratings is very appealing. That said, I did find that it was lacking in one major area: You still need to have some basic PHP and CSS knowledge to fully integrate this plug-in. If it&#8217;s supposed to be easy (and newbie-friendly), this shouldn&#8217;t be the case. You should be able to adjust these basic settings through the control panel. </p>
<p>WP Review Site is currently <a href="https://www.wpreviewsite.com/buy">priced at $97</a>. That includes the plug-in, a &#8220;free&#8221; review-minded WordPress theme, and some affiliate marketing features.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.wpreviewsite.com/buy">CLICK HERE TO BUY WP REVIEW SITE&lt;/a</strong>
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		<title>Mom! What Were You Thinking?</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/20/mom-what-were-you-thinking/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/20/mom-what-were-you-thinking/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:11:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Chow</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4974</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[



Being in Toronto and hanging out with family has made this trip really great. The one thing that it has reminded me of was all the fun times my family and I have gone through ever since I was a little boy. My relatives have always wondered what I do for a living and some [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Mom! What Were You Thinking?", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/20/mom-what-were-you-thinking/" });</script>]]></description>
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<p>Being in Toronto and hanging out with family has made this trip really great. The one thing that it has reminded me of was all the fun times my family and I have gone through ever since I was a little boy. My relatives have always wondered what I do for a living and some times it was hard for them to understand. Until now! </p>
<p>One of my relatives told me of a contest they&#8217;ve entered to blackmail one of their kids in the future (see, evilness runs rampant in my family). Actually, this contest is just a regular photo upload contest that is hosted by Family.com. It&#8217;s called <a href="http://family.go.com/mom-what-were-you-thinking-contest/">&quot;Mom! What were you thinking&quot;</a> and they&#8217;re basically trying to see which mom had the nerve to dress up their kids in the worst possible fashions! Normally, I wouldn&#8217;t enter these kind of contests but I couldn&#8217;t pass up the prizes up for grabs.</p>
<div><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/familyprize.jpg" alt="" width="154" height="154" /></div>
<ul>
<li>Macbook Pro</li>
<li>16GB iPod Touch</li>
<li>Speaker with built in Dock</li>
<li>Printer/Scanner</li>
<li>Laptop Case</li>
</ul>
<p>To spice this contest up a little bit, I want to challenge all bloggers to post their own messed up childhood pictures. I tried asking my mom for any pictures of myself as a younger boy so I can be a good sport and play along, but &quot;unfortunately&quot; my mom said she didn&#8217;t have any pictures that I could use. So, I&#8217;m putting up Greg Morgan&#8217;s baby picture to show you what you can use to participate. </p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/greg.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="640" /></p>
<p><strong>The Rules Are Simple</strong></p>
<p>Just post your messed up childhood picture on your blog or a messed up picture of your own kid. Then write a little blurb about what the hell your mom was thinking or what you were thinking.</p>
<p>Since Family.com forgot to add a very important item to their prize package - <strong>I will be giving away a new Flip Mivo and 20&quot; Monitor to the best/worst/funniest post I notice in my Google Alert</strong>.  </p>
<p>The winner will be announced through an email blast to my newsletter subscribers, so if you want to know who wins this thing in September, you&#8217;ll want to subscribe to my newsletter. Sign up here:</p>
<p>By the way, if I find any pictures from bloggers that are just too great to pass up, I&#8217;ll do a recap post to highlight some of these great bloggers, while I keep looking for my own messed up picture!</p>

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		<title>How I Broke 29,000 RSS Readers</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/20/how-i-broke-29000-rss-readers/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/20/how-i-broke-29000-rss-readers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:45:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Chow</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4960</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[



I noticed today the blog hit a new milestone and broke pass the 29,000 RSS reader mark. Right now, the FeedBurner chicklet is showing 29,177 readers. At this rate of growth, I should pass the 30K reader mark next month. I&#8217;ve written many posts in the past on how to increase RSS subscriptions. Here&#8217;s a [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "How I Broke 29,000 RSS Readers", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/20/how-i-broke-29000-rss-readers/" });</script>]]></description>
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<p>I noticed today the blog hit a new milestone and broke pass the 29,000 RSS reader mark. Right now, the FeedBurner chicklet is showing 29,177 readers. At this rate of growth, I should pass the 30K reader mark next month. I&#8217;ve written many posts in the past on how to increase RSS subscriptions. Here&#8217;s a recap on my top four methods plus why RSS is important. </p>
<p><strong>Why RSS Is Important</strong></p>
<p>Building the RSS readership is my number one priority for the blog and it should be your number one priority as well. A RSS reader is far more important than a reader who drops by from a search engine or a link from another site. If you think of your blog as a magazine, your RSS readers are like the magazine subscribers and people who drop by your site from other sources are like newsstand sales.</p>
<p>Magazine subscriptions are far more valuable than newsstand sales. Ad rates are based on how many subscribers a magazine has and not how many issues are sold at the newsstands. Newsstand sales, like traffic from Google and other sources, can be very inconsistent. By contrast, subscriptions are like money in the bank. If you want to see how important subscriptions are to a magazine, let one of your magazine subscriptions run out and watch how hard the magazine will try to get you back.</p>
<p>Having a big RSS reader base protects you from the unpredictable nature of the Internet. Google can like you one day and hate you the next. If most of your traffic comes from Google, then you better start building your RSS readership. The main reason I am unaffected by anything that Google does to me is because of my base of RSS readers.</p>
<p><strong>Make It Easy for The Reader Subscribe</strong></p>
<p>You should never assume that your readers are smart enough to find the <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/JohnChowDotCom">URL to your RSS feed</a>. Shoemoney <a href="http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/07/23/dont-be-a-dick-errr-a-shoemoney/">made that mistake</a> when he removed his FeedBurner button. He just assumed that his readers would be smart enough to find his RSS link. </p>
<blockquote><p>So one day I decided just to remove it. Then I started getting emails that there was no possible way for people to sign up for my feed… I thought to myself, “whatever, people can figure it out if they really want to” (which is the lazy way out).</p>
<p>So yesterday I was looking at my Feedburner stats and pretty surprised to see they look to have completely plateaued at around 16,500 readers since I took the little counter off.</p></blockquote>
<p>Now that Shoe has realized his mistake and put the FeedBurner button back, his RSS count has passed 18,000. This may sound mean, but you&#8217;ll go a lot further if you assume that your readers are the dumbest people on earth and need everything spelled out for them. </p>
<p>That means displaying your RSS button in a very easy to find location and offering multiple ways to subscribes. You might even consider making a page to <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/video-rss-in-plain-english/">explain what RSS is</a> and linking to it. You&#8217;ll be amazed at the number of people who still don&#8217;t know what it is and how it benefits them.</p>
<p><strong>Don&#8217;t Display Your Feed Count If It&#8217;s Less Than 100</strong></p>
<p>The FeedBurner chicklet that displays the number of subscribers you have serves as social proof but it can also work against you. People in general are like sheep - they never want to be the first to do anything. If your chicklet is displaying a big zero, chances are it will stay a zero. It&#8217;s a lot easier for a big blog to get more subscribers because people see this huge RSS number and want to be part of it. </p>
<p>I do not recommend displaying your feed count until you&#8217;ve reach at least 100 subscribers. I feel that displaying a feed count of under 100 is a deterrent for people to sign up. Another don&#8217;t is don&#8217;t to fake a feed count by displaying a chicklet from another blog. This is very easy to detect and will affect your credibility.</p>
<p><strong>Use The FeedSmith Wordpress Plugin</strong></p>
<p>The FeedBurner <a href="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/products/feedburner_feedsmith_plugin_2.3.zip">FeedSmith plugin</a> will detect all the ways a reader can access your feed (http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well.</p>
<p>Without the plugin, readers subscribed to your blog using http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php (or whatever) are not counted. FeedBurner only counts readers subscribed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourBlog. What the plugin does is redirect all feed URLs to your <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/JohnChowDotCom">FeedBurner feed URL</a> so everyone is counted. This saves you the need to plead with your readers to update their feed URL. If they&#8217;re already getting your posts with the old feed URL, chances are very few will bother to update just so you can increase your feed count. </p>
<p><strong>Turn On Aweber Blog Broadcast</strong></p>
<p>If you&#8217;re an <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/go/aweber.php">Aweber</a> user, you should turn on the <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/how-to-do-an-aweber-blog-broadcast/">Blog Broadcast</a> feature. Not only will this give you additional content for your newsletter, it will add all your newsletter subscribers to your FeedBurner counter because Aweber reports subscription info to FeedBurner. </p>
<p>Even if Aweber doesn&#8217;t increase your RSS count, you should <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/go/aweber.php">sign up for the service</a> anyway. A newsletter is something every successful blog needs and works hand in hand with RSS as a great marketing tool.
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		<title>Winner of The Market Leverage Cashinator Cash</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/19/winner-of-the-market-leverage-cashinator-cash/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/19/winner-of-the-market-leverage-cashinator-cash/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2008 06:50:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Chow</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4953</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[



Congrats goes out to ZK of WebTrafficROI.com for winning all the cash from the Market Leverage Cashinator. Thanks to Market Leverage and my ability to grab cash money, ZK is now $27 richer!   
A big thanks to everyone who entered the contest. I can&#8217;t believe I got over 170 comments for only $27. [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Winner of The Market Leverage Cashinator Cash", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/19/winner-of-the-market-leverage-cashinator-cash/" });</script>]]></description>
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<p>Congrats goes out to ZK of <a href="http://WebTrafficROI.com">WebTrafficROI.com</a> for winning all the cash from the <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/affiliate-summit-east-win-cash-money/">Market Leverage Cashinator</a>. Thanks to <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/go/marketleverage.php">Market Leverage</a> and my ability to grab cash money, ZK is now $27 richer!  <img src='http://www.johnchow.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif' alt='' /> </p>
<p>A big thanks to everyone who entered the contest. I can&#8217;t believe I got over 170 comments for only $27. Now, if you want to win a lot more, Market Leverage and I still have the <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/john-chow-market-leverage-affiliate-challenge/">affiliate challenge</a> happening. </p>
<p>We&#8217;re giving away an iPod Touch and a $200 ML Amex Reward Card to the contestant who makes the most money using Market Leverage. If you haven&#8217;t entered yet, better <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/john-chow-market-leverage-affiliate-challenge/">do so now</a>. You also have a chance to win a Flip Mino just by blogging about it. Deadline for entries is end of this month. Good luck!
<p><strong> This Post Was Brought To You By</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.tnx.net/?p=119574980">Still Selling SiteWide Links? That Means You Are Losing LOTS OF MONEY!</a> Replace your sitewide links by TNX.net code and generate 10x times more income by selling different links from every single page of your website or blog!</p>
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		<title>Toronto Meet Ups</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/18/toronto-meet-ups/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/18/toronto-meet-ups/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:25:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Chow</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4946</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[



Live With John Chow &#38; Yaro Starak
Join myself and fellow blogger Yaro Starak for our first Toronto meetup this Thursday, August 21 at the Live Organic Food Bar, 264 Dupont Street, Toronto, ON. The get together beings at at 7PM. 
Live is a raw organic food restaurant. There are some cooked meals too, but everything [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Toronto Meet Ups", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/18/toronto-meet-ups/" });</script>]]></description>
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<p><strong>Live With John Chow &#38; Yaro Starak</strong></p>
<p>Join myself and fellow blogger <a href="http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com">Yaro Starak</a> for our first Toronto meetup this <strong>Thursday, August 21</strong> at the <a href="http://www.livefoodbar.com/contact.html">Live Organic Food Bar</a>, 264 Dupont Street, Toronto, ON. The get together beings at at 7PM. </p>
<p>Live is a raw organic food restaurant. There are some cooked meals too, but everything is vegetarian, which is kinda scary for a hardcore carnivore like myself. There is an Irish Pub down the road we are going to use in the event of rain or if too many people show up.</p>
<p>We would love to see you join us for our Live meet up. Please <a href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=24673968029">RSVP here</a> if you plan to come.</p>
<p><strong>Dot Com Pho Toronto</strong></p>
<p>The famous Dot Com Pho comes to Toronto for the very first time. We will be meeting at Vietnam Noodle Star this <strong>Saturday, August 23 at 12:30PM</strong>. The address is <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&#38;q=4188%20Finch%20Ave.%20East%2C%20Scarborough&#38;um=1&#38;ie=UTF-8&#38;sa=N&#38;tab=wl">unit 2 - 4188 Finch Ave. East, Scarborough, ON</a>.</p>
<p>If you always wanted to be in a Dot Com Pho video, this is your chance. I might have some prizes to give away too! Please <a href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=23272223577">RSVP to Dot Com Pho Toronto here</a>.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m looking forward to meeting my Toronto readers at Live or Dot Com Pho or both.</p>
<p><strong> This Post Was Brought To You By</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bankaholic.com/credit-cards/">Best Credit Card Offers</a> Get up to $250 or even FREE round-trip plane tickets by signing up for hot credit card offers and bank deals! </p>

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		<title>Affiliate Marketing with T3leads.com</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/18/affiliate-marketing-with-t3leadscom/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/18/affiliate-marketing-with-t3leadscom/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:50:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Kwan</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4893</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[




Back in the early days of the Internet, you could just throw up a CPM banner and work on increasing the number of impressions. Google AdSense came along and forced publishers to put a little more focus on increasing the click-thru rate. With the arrival of affiliate marketing, the focus is taken even further. You [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Affiliate Marketing with T3leads.com", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/18/affiliate-marketing-with-t3leadscom/" });</script>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://t3leads.com/reg?referal=michaelkwan"><img src="http://t3leads.com/images/t3leads.gif" border="0" /></a></p>
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<p>Back in the early days of the Internet, you could just throw up a CPM banner and work on increasing the number of impressions. Google AdSense came along and forced publishers to put a little more focus on increasing the click-thru rate. With the arrival of affiliate marketing, the focus is taken even further. You not only need your visitors to notice and click on the ads, you need them to complete a certain action.</p>
<p>As its name implies, <a href="https://t3leads.com/reg?referal=michaelkwan">T3leads.com</a> is one such pay-per-lead affiliate program. In its own words, T3leads.com sells &#8220;generated leads through a unique auction system that allows our affiliates to make maximum profits.&#8221; I like money.</p>
<p><strong>Why Work with T3leads.com?</strong></p>
<p>On the surface, it was hard to find anything that really set this <a href="https://t3leads.com/reg?referal=michaelkwan">affiliate program</a> apart from the rest of the crowd. On the main page, T3leads.com boasts that it has the highest per lead payouts in the industry, highest traffic conversion rates, real-time reporting, and quick bi-weekly payouts.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/t3leads-payment.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;ll discuss the high payouts and the conversion rates in a moment, but the one major thing that I appreciate about T3leads.com is the the bi-weekly payout schedule. This means that you don&#8217;t have to too long to get your money from <a href="https://t3leads.com/reg?referal=michaelkwan">T3leads.com</a>. Contrast this to other networks that only pay out once every 30, 45, or 60 days. It&#8217;s also useful that T3leads.com offers a wide variety of payment options, as shown above.</p>
<p><strong>Control Panel and Creatives</strong></p>
<p>Logging into the control panel, you are immediately faced with news from the network, both in Russian and in English. Despite its Russian slant, T3leads.com says that it only accepts American traffic. That can be a little confining, given the international nature of the Internet.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/t3leads-home.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>You are able to navigate through the different sections by way of the menu bar at the top of the screen. The websites tab displays the sites that are currently advertising through <a href="https://t3leads.com/reg?referal=michaelkwan">T3leads.com</a>, broken down based on category. Common categories include home insurance, debt relief, and payday loans.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/t3leads-sites.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Other useful areas in the control panel include the T3forum (accessed under Info), Promo (for banners), and Statistics. There are four different kinds of reports available.</p>
<p><strong>Advertiser and Payout Information</strong></p>
<p>Unlike other affiliate programs, T3 does not appear to make any specific mention about how many each advertiser pays when you send a qualified lead their way. A lead is considered generated when a site visitor fills out an &#8220;express application&#8221; form. This typically consists of a first and last name, email address, state, and zip code.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/t3leads-app.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Going through the different websites and ad creatives, you won&#8217;t find any numbers regarding how much each lead is worth. How am I supposed to know that T3leads.com is offering the <a href="https://t3leads.com/reg?referal=michaelkwan">best payouts</a> in the industry? That&#8217;s a claim that every affiliate network makes and it&#8217;s starting to get awfully cliche. That said, there is one sentence on the main page that says we can earn &#8220;from $5 up to $150 per lead.&#8221; </p>
<p>Digging a little deeper, I found that the payout is <a href="http://forum.t3leads.com/index.php?showtopic=5">based on a number of factors</a>: &#8220;Age of the customer, his state, credit score, etc.&#8221; Advertisers must bid for the lead, and that&#8217;s where the &#8220;auction&#8221; part of the equation comes into play. Going through the <a href="https://t3leads.com/faqs.html">FAQ</a>, I wasn&#8217;t able to find any specific information about the T3leads.com referral program. Is it a flat payout for referring a new publisher? A percentage of their earned commissions? Just a pat on the back?</p>
<p><strong>Signing Up with T3leads.com</strong></p>
<p>From a logistics point of view, I don&#8217;t have too many complaints about <a href="https://t3leads.com/reg?referal=michaelkwan">T3leads.com</a>. It looks like nearly any other affiliate network and you have a good selection of payment options, each with a different minimum threshold. All of these come with bi-weekly payouts, assuming you meet the threshold.</p>
<p>Where I do have complaints about T3leads.com is in its transparency. I have no idea how much each lead is generating and there is virtually no information about the individual advertisers. I need to know whether advertiser X is potentially more lucrative than advertiser Y. There is quite a bit of difference between promoting something that pays a $0.01/lead and something that pays $150/lead. What about incentivization? T3leads.com needs to provide publishers with this kind of information.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://t3leads.com/reg?referal=michaelkwan">CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP WITH T3LEADS.COM</a></strong></p>
<p><strong> This Post Was Brought To You By</strong></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.tnx.net/?p=119574980">Still Selling SiteWide Links? That Means You Are Losing LOTS OF MONEY!</a> Replace your sitewide links by TNX.net code and generate 10x times more income by selling different links from every single page of your website or blog!</p>

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		<title>How To Find The RSS Readership of Any Site</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/16/how-to-find-the-rss-readership-of-any-site/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/16/how-to-find-the-rss-readership-of-any-site/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:00:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Chow</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4933</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[



This post was guest blogged by Trevor Mauch of REI Brain, a blog that focuses on real estate investing and education.
Okay, I&#8217;ve heard a ton of people writing about the importance of gathering RSS subscribers on your blog in addition to email subscribers.  I agree&#8230; both are hugely important and each have their own [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "How To Find The RSS Readership of Any Site", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/16/how-to-find-the-rss-readership-of-any-site/" });</script>]]></description>
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<p><em>This post was guest blogged by <a href="http://www.trevormauch.com/">Trevor Mauch</a> of <a href="http://www.thereibrain.com">REI Brain</a>, a blog that focuses on real estate investing and education.</em></p>
<p>Okay, I&#8217;ve heard a ton of people writing about the importance of gathering RSS subscribers on your blog in addition to email subscribers.  I agree&#8230; both are hugely important and each have their own pros and cons.</p>
<p>However, have you ever wondered how many RSS subscribers a website has?  Yes, of course many sites have the Feeburner icon that shows you exactly how many people are subscribed to their feed.</p>
<p>For instance, here are some popular RSS feed counts from bloggers you know that list their RSS feed stats on their websites (as of 8/16):</p>
<ul>
<li>John Chow: 28,102</li>
<li>Shoemoney: 16,585</li>
<li>Problogger: 50,590</li>
<li>Tyler Cruz: 1,679</li>
<li>Zac Johnson: 3,623</li>
</ul>
<p>However, for those of us who are curious&#8230; we tend to want to know even more when a website hides their RSS reader count from the world.  It&#8217;s that whole thing that we feel cooler when we know something that most other poeple don&#8217;t know.</p>
<p><strong>Here&#8217;s How To Find Hidden Feedburner RSS Readerships</strong></p>
<p>Want to find out what the RSS readership is for ANY website using Feedburner?  Simple&#8230; head over to <a href="http://www.feedcompare.com">Feedcompare.com</a> and give it a go.</p>
<p>For instance, I&#8217;ve always been curious (as have a ton of other people) about how many RSS readers Seth Godin has.  Seth doesn&#8217;t openly publish his feed count&#8230; why, I&#8217;m not sure.  Maybe he wants to be the &#8220;purple cow&#8221; and stand out by going against the grain (which is a good strategy). Or&#8230; maybe it&#8217;s the idea that if he doesn&#8217;t publish it that people (like me) will wonder&#8230; and come to conclusions on how many RSS readers they THINK he has.  Who knows&#8230; maybe he really doesn&#8217;t care about it and hasn&#8217;t given it much thought. Anyhow, I was curious so I headed over to feedcompare.com and typed in Seths RSS feed address&#8230; here&#8217;s what I got:</p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/2008-08-13_0828.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>As of 8/13, Seth has 290,440 RSS subscribers&#8230; not too shabby at all&#8230; especially for a marketing blog.  You&#8217;ll see tech, celebrity, or political blogs well up into the high 6 or low 7 figures&#8230; but for a marketing blog that is stellar.</p>
<p>However, I was somewhat disappointed because for some reason I was thinking that Seth has much more RSS readers than that&#8230; I was expecting upwards of 400k.  That&#8217;s one reason leaving it a mystery can be a good thing&#8230; people will often estimate higher than the actual number giving you a &#8220;boost&#8221; in the mind of the reader.</p>
<p><strong>How You Can Use This Tool For Your Online Biz</strong></p>
<p>While looking at peoples RSS readership stats is fun (for about 5 minutes)&#8230; it&#8217;s really just a novelty unless you use it to help you build your own business. Here are a few ways you can use feedcompare.com for good&#8230; rather than from a voyeuristic standpoint:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Track the RSS readership trend of your competitors:</strong><br />
From this you can see if your competition is growing, staying stagnant, or declining.  Then, you can head over to their website and match up the content they post with spikes and valleys in the RSS trend line.  Also, if your competition is on a heavy upward trend&#8230; study their website to see why&#8230; and also leave comments on their blog to drive traffic back to your site.</li>
<li><strong>Compare your feed and/or the feeds of your competitors:</strong><br />
With feedcompare.com you can compare up to 4 feeds on the same graph.  This is pretty cool if you want to see right there on the screen how you are doing against your competitors.  If you both have spikes and/or valleys in readership at the same time&#8230; you should then look at the news/market to find out why.  Sometimes the spikes/valleys can simply be a glitch in Feedburner&#8230; but often you can get great market intelligence out of these anomalies so you can better prepare for the future.</li>
<li><strong>See what days people are reading your content via RSS the most:</strong><br />
I think this one is huge&#8230; and it is pretty darn interesting too.  Just like with email, people tend to read RSS more on some days of the week than others.  In email marketing Tuesdays and Thursdays have traditionally been the best times to send out emails because email open rates are better.  There are several reasons for this&#8230; but in essence, on Tuesday people have had a chance to get back in &#8220;work mode&#8221; and cleared out their inbox from the weekend&#8230; on Thursday people try to get their email inbox cleared out before they head off for the weekend on Friday.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Looking for Trends</strong></p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/2008-08-13_0852.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>I was looking at the RSS stats for Shoemoney and he has the highest RSS readership on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well&#8230; with Friday and Saturday being the lowest days. You can see that he has a spike on 7/29 which is a Tuesday.  The next spike is on 8/5 which is also a Tuesday, and yet the last spike on the chart (actually it&#8217;s not on this one&#8230; I accidentally cut it off), is on 8/12&#8230; yet another Tuesday.  As for the huge valley in the middle&#8230; that&#8217;s on a Friday.</p>
<p>By reading this you can see that the most important content should be posted on Tuesdays to increase the readership of the content. Knowing your market is a vital part of running a successful blog or website.  Head over to feedcompare.com and check out your chart and the charts of your competitors.  Then, use that information to get more mileage with your articles and to see what your competitors are doing right.  A bit of legwork does magic!
<p><strong> This Post Was Brought To You By</strong></p>
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		<title>Google Offers AdSense for RSS Feeds</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/16/google-offers-adsense-for-rss-feeds/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/16/google-offers-adsense-for-rss-feeds/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:48:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Chow</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4928</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[



If you tried to setup a new Google ad in your AdSense control panel today, you may have a noticed a new feature call AdSense for Feeds. It seems Google is finally starting to capitalize on its purchase of FeedBurner. 
AdSense for Feeds allows Google to send AdSense ads into your RSS feed, provided your [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Google Offers AdSense for RSS Feeds", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/16/google-offers-adsense-for-rss-feeds/" });</script>]]></description>
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<p>If you tried to setup a new Google ad in your AdSense control panel today, you may have a noticed a new feature call AdSense for Feeds. It seems Google is finally starting to capitalize on its purchase of FeedBurner. </p>
<p>AdSense for Feeds allows Google to send AdSense ads into your RSS feed, provided your RSS feed is powered by FeedBurner. FeedBurner has its own ad network call FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN) but it sucks. I have over 28,000 RSS readers and the FAN ads make less than $5 per month. With that kind of dismal results, it&#8217;s no wonder Google killed it. Hopefully, AdSense in the RSS will perform a lot better than FAN ads.</p>
<p><strong>Migrating FeedBurner to Google</strong></p>
<p>To turn on AdSense for RSS, you need to migrate your FeedBurner account into your Google Account. To migrate all of your feeds, and your account from feeds.feedburner.com to Google, email adsense-support-aff@google.com and provide the following information:</p>
<ul>
<li>Your FeedBurner account username</li>
<li>The Google Account email address you use to sign in to AdSense</li>
</ul>
<p>Google will migrate your account and contact you with specific steps for you to follow once migration is complete.</p>
<p><strong>Setting Up AdSense for Feeds</strong></p>
<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/adsensefeed1.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>Setting up AdSense for Feeds is pretty straight forward. Google offers a lot of options to customize the look and feel of the ads. Ad sizes are 468&#215;60 or 300&#215;250 and is selected automatically by the system. You can choose if you want image ads, text or both, ad frequency, position, post length, colors and a channel to track performance. There&#8217;s even an option to make your feed a targetable placement so advertisers can buy ads directly on the feed.</p>
<p>I see this as a logical progressive step for Google. They&#8217;ve already taken over advertising on websites. It&#8217;s time to take over advertising on RSS as well. Look for Google ads in your mobile phone next. Oh wait. They&#8217;ve started that already. I just noticed the &#8220;AdSense for Mobile Content&#8221; in my AdSense control panel.
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		<item>
		<title>Wordpress 2.6.1 Available for Download</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/15/wordpress-261-available-for-download/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/15/wordpress-261-available-for-download/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:33:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Chow</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4923</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[



For those who like to wait until a &#8220;dot one&#8221; version is released before upgrading Wordpress, now is your time. Wordpress has made version 2.6.1 available for download. With 2.6.1, Wordpress continues their trend of releasing a maintenance update shortly after a major release in order to fix bugs that always follow a “dot zero” [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Wordpress 2.6.1 Available for Download", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/15/wordpress-261-available-for-download/" });</script>]]></description>
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<p>For those who like to wait until a &#8220;dot one&#8221; version is released before upgrading Wordpress, now is your time. Wordpress has made version <a href="http://wordpress.org/download/">2.6.1 available for download</a>. With 2.6.1, Wordpress continues their trend of releasing a maintenance update shortly after a major release in order to fix bugs that always follow a “dot zero” release.  This is not a security release. Upgrading is optional. If you’re happy with 2.6, you can keep on using it.</p>
<p>I had only one bug with my 2.6 Wordpress. With Firefox (I haven&#8217;t tested the problem with any other browser), Wordpress would log me out of the control panel after a certain time. This problem seems to be fixed with the new release. Check out the full <a href="http://trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&#38;milestone=2.6.1&#38;resolution=fixed&#38;order=priority">list of over 60 fixes</a> to see if 2.6.1 has something to offer you.</p>
<p>My advice. If 2.6 is working fine for you, then continue to use it. However, you&#8217;ll have to put up with that nag notice in the control panel. If you&#8217;re still using Wordpress 2.5 because you were waiting for the dot one release of 2.6, then now is the time to upgrade.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordpress.org/download/">Download Wordpress 2.6.1</a></strong>
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		<title>Off To Toronto</title>
		<link>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/14/off-to-toronto/</link>
		<comments>http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/14/off-to-toronto/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:00:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Chow</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.johnchow.com/?p=4916</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[




It&#8217;s time to say goodbye to Boston and hello to Toronto. Boston is a great city but I&#8217;m really looking forward to heading back to Canada. Instead of flying home to Vancouver, we decided to fly to Toronto instead. I have family members who live in Toronto and since we&#8217;re already on the East Coast, [...]<script type="text/javascript">SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Off To Toronto", url: "http://www.assetrun.com/2008/08/14/off-to-toronto/" });</script>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.johnchow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/toronto.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<div>

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<p>It&#8217;s time to say goodbye to <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/checking-out-boston/">Boston</a> and hello to Toronto. Boston is a great city but I&#8217;m really looking forward to heading back to Canada. Instead of flying home to Vancouver, we decided to fly to Toronto instead. I have family members who live in Toronto and since we&#8217;re already on the East Coast, it made a lot of sense.</p>
<p>While in Toronto, I&#8217;ll be visiting a few ad networks who have their headquarters there. I know I have quite a few readers in Toronto. If there&#8217;s enough interest from them, I may set up a Dot Com Pho meet up. <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/contact/">Send me an email</a> if you want to get together. It doesn&#8217;t matter to me whether it&#8217;s one on one or as a group. I love meeting readers. </p>
<p>Speaking of readers, I want to send a shout out to Alex of <a href="http://www.guruofsales.com/">Guru of Sales</a>. Alex took a 3.5 hour bus ride from New Jersey to the Affiliate Summit in Boston just to meet me for 15 minutes. He then got back on the bus for another 3.5 hour ride home. Now that&#8217;s a dedicated reader! I gave Alex a <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/go/marketleverage.php">Market Leverage</a> bag of stuff for going so far out of his way to just meet.</p>
<p>I will be in Toronto until August 25th. It&#8217;s times like these that I&#8217;m really glad that I can run my business from anywhere in the world. You got to love that <a href="http://www.johnchow.com/the-dot-com-lifestyle/">Dot Com Lifestyle</a>!
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