Every month for the past 4 months, Tyler and MarketLeverage have gotten together to giveaway some pretty amazing prizes for the publishers who generate the most commissions through MarketLeverage for the calendar month. November is the Affiliate Marketing Challenge 5. He is giving away over $11,000 in prizes. The top prizes are a sweet Alienware computer rig, a 52-inch HDTV, a Playstation 3, and a 16GB iPod Touch.

As you can imagine there are already some some super affiliates reeling in the big winnings. Those guys are not invulnerable though. Still, if you are just starting out, there are some prizes for first timers (like me), including some 8GB iPods and $50 Market Leverage Prepaid Rewards Card. Last I checked, the top newbie had only made $3.80 and there was nobody else even in the running.

For all the rules, check out Tyler’s blog. If you do not want to enter the contest, but still want to sign up for MarketLeverage, please feel free to use my referral link. I really appreciate it.

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Well, my excuse for not blogging here is not really that good. We moved to Mountain View… um… 5 months ago. I also broke my promise that I would start making some serious cash from affiliate marketing, since I was no longer under the rules of Valueclick. Nada.

What can I say? I have been working my tail off at VeriSign. I am responsible for marketing 3 of our SSL brands and the partner channel. Plus, there is sooooo much for me and my family to do here in No Cal. We even got to see my old team, the Modesto Nuts, play the San Jose Giants.

Blogging and making money online have had to take a back seat. Actually, that is not exactly true either. I just launched a new blog at VeriSign… Bob Angus: The Ecommerce Evangelist Blog. It is not your standard corporate sales pitch thinly veiled as a blog. The blog focuses 100% on the world of e-commerce news, trends, and best practices. Please check it out, subscribe to the feed, and join the discussion.

Since you are here, please subscribe to BobAngus.com and/or follow me on Twitter.

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The new theme is based on Stephan Miller’s More than Multiple Widgets theme. This theme is fantastic to work with and hopefully provides you with a much better experience. Plus, Stephan was very helpful in answering some questions that I had. Thank you Stephan!

All of the structural elements of the new Wordpress theme are complete. Only a few minor tweaks should be necessary over the next few weeks. Now I can spend more time writing posts!

Here are some details on what the redesign has added to the website and how I have customized a great free Wordpress theme.

New Theme

More than Multiple Widgets is a free, professional 3-column theme that is chocked full of features. I like the theme for 4 key reasons:

1. Easy to read – The large content area and white background make my verbose ramblings much easier to read. Plus, the header, sidebar, and bottom units allow for better navigation and visibility of what readers are interested in accessing.
2. Flexibility – The layout is very flexible and accommodates all the plugins, features, and links that I could ever want. I manually edited the header, sidebar, and bottom units, but Stephan has set up all of the core areas so that you can also use the drag-and-drop functionality of Wordpress Widgets.
3. Options – This theme steals a page from many Wordpress plugins by offering a complete Options tab. This is rare for themes, but can save you hours that otherwise would have been spent changing colors in the stylesheet and fiddling with Gravatar images.
4. Clear Code – The structure, style, and documentation of More than Multiple Widgets’ various PHP files are exceptionally easy to understand. This makes manual customizations a snap. It is obvious that Stephan spent a lot of extra time polishing this theme so that it could be accessible to novice bloggers.

New Plugins

I have added several new plugins and features to help you read the posts and information that you want. I have also kept fundamental parts of my old theme, like Feedburner subscriptions, New Tag Cloud, and blogger network widgets from BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. Here is a brief summary of the new elements.

• Most Popular Posts – I am using the template tags functionality of Alex King’s Popularity Contest plugin to display the most popular posts from BobAngus.com. This plugin offers an amazing set of options that allows you to calibrate each factor of the “popularity” algorithm.
• Related Posts – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin by mitcho (aka Michael Erlewine) can dramatically increase readership by adding a list of related posts at the bottom of each post or page. YARRP is the best Wordpress plugin I have found to contextually determine relevant posts and present them effectively.
• Valuable Content – I have added two common plugins Recent Posts and Recent Comments that helps you find the latest activity on the blog. Additionally, I have manually added a sidebar element called Featured Post, which highlights a post that I feel offers extraordinary information.
• Testing 1,2,3 – Redesign projects can feel like changing the tires on a car while the car is moving. No worries about exposing your new theme or any possible hiccups while tinkering thanks to Theme Test Drive by Vladimir Prelovac. Here is my previous post on this new must-have plugin.

Next Steps

Now it is time to get back to producing awesome posts and marketing tools that you can use to make money online. Some of those posts are definitely going to be about the key lessons that I learned on this redesign project and instructions on how I did it.

I have a list of about 20 minor tweaks that I plan to implement over the next few weeks. More importantly, I would greatly appreciate your feedback on the new theme… or this blog in general. After all, this website is for you.

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Voting is a habit formed when we are young, but so is not voting. Yes. Children learn about elections, democracy, and politics from many sources – schools, churches, the guy standing outside the grocery store and, of course, the media. However, parents are by far and away the biggest influence in transforming that learning into action.

The best way to teach your children about democracy and elections is to lead by example and have them go with you when you vote. My wife has taken my daughter to every single election since she was born. They love the experience. My daughter proudly shows off her “I Voted” sticker and talks about how Mom voted ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for this or that.

Today is Super Tuesday and the first time California has had their presidential primary this early in the campaign. For me, it was a much bigger day. Today was the first time that I got to vote with my daughter.

If you are interested in teaching your child about voting and elections, they are never too young to start. Here are some great resources for children of all ages.

• www.takeyourkidstovote.org
• www.kidsvotingusa.com
• www.rockthevote.org

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Thank you eTrade for reminding us how much fun we had during the tech bubble of 2000!

The early Budweiser frog advertisements are also favorites of mine. Which Super Bowl ad is your favorite?

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Since my fortunes are used for mundane things like a mortgage and not angel funding, I simply watched the demonstrations online. Here are some of the companies that I will be doing further research on or using this year:

MOLI – Moli provides a powerful social networking platform that allows you to present yourself in different ways to different people. Namely, you can have your business side completely separate from your 4am debaucheries, “OMG, I can’t believe I did that” side.

Seesmic – Any TechCrunch fanboy knows that Michael Arrington loves Seesmic. They offer video communication and community with a Twitter approach. I am going to have clean up my office if my videocam is going to come out of storage.

Review2Buy – Have you ever been about to buy something at a retail store and wished you had access to your favorite shopping comparison site or coupon/deals site? Am I overpaying? Is this model the one that will breakdown after a week? Review2Buy answers those questions.

atlaspost.com – atlaspost enhances blogs by adding the elements of a geography-based social network. Bloggers can geo-tag their posts and can identify readers and content with common locations… and likely common interests and experiences.

VisibleMeasures – As Web video ads gain momentum, tools to manage and measure video advertising are in demand. Believe it or not, measurement remains a difficult sell for technology vendors to the advertising industry. The old world brand marketing, big agency and media buy approach still rules the budget. The focus is on frequency and reach metrics and not sales. I hope this helps to finally break that down.

StandoutJobs - There are many sites that help the job seeker network and promote themselves in a social network. StandoutJobs targets the companies that are recruiting and provides the latest social media tools necessary to attract the right hires.

There are many, many more exceptional small companies from DEMO this year and previous years that you should check out. I highly recommend bookmarking DEMO to keep in the loop on emerging markets and technologies.

Image of the Week

Concept art by Tyler West for Electronic Arts’ Godfather video game. For more incredible video game concept art, see the annual collections from IntoThePixel.com.

Check out other pictures and images on my Flickr photos.

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What did I read on my first day at CJ? I read and actively tested campaigns using High Performance Affiliate Marketing by Jeremy Palmer of Quit Your Day Job. Now Jeremy is offering the ebook and his suite of spreadsheet tools for FREE.

Spreadsheets I use daily

The ZIP file you download contains the ebook PDF and four spreadsheets. Beyond the lessons that I have learned in the ebook, I have really used the spreadsheets (with my own modifications) everyday. In particular, the ROI estimator helps to build a campaign from with a bottom-up approach – which helps you see results and breakeven when factoring in conservative estimates.

The keyword tracking spreadsheet should be used by anyone who advertises using Google, Yahoo!, MSN or any paid search program. You can automatically generate your destination URLs that contain the keyword, search engine, and the SIDs. This spreadsheet will save you a lot of time.

Thank you very much Jeremy!

Download High Performance Affiliate Marketing here

I also highly recommend that you sign up for the Quit Your Day Job email list. This information is not a static process. Jeremy updates the ebook as the world of affiliate marketing evolves.

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Apply standard domain name analysis

Domain parking revenue comes 100% from type in traffic. Therefore, the domain name should have either generic keyword value, brand value, or something intangible that would lead someone to type in “atomicwarrior.”

Here is my quick analysis based each value factor (on a scale of 1-no value to 5-very valuable):

• Keyword value – 2. Each keyword is generic. However, there are two keywords combined and they are not obviously related. Plus, “atomic” is only used as a retro term.
• Brand value – 1. None at this time, unless Comedy Central develops a spoof animated series about an anti-hero, space ninja who is tasked with infiltrating Spacely Space Sprockets headquarters.
• Intangible – 1. Or maybe I can do my own YouTube video about a space ninja who takes down the Spacely Space Sprockets mega-corporation.

Past traffic is not an indicator of future traffic

A fair amount of traffic still goes to the website, even though nothing has been updated in years. Plus, the site has some backlinks which could help drive traffic initially. So, I should be able to make a small profit no matter how bad the domain name is, right?

Not likely. Even if I optimize the keywords, the people who are visiting the website are there for that exhilarating “Atomic Warrior” community experience. Additionally, the traffic is not sustainable as those backlinks are likely to dwindle over time.

The Verdict: No Parking Zone

If I were to purchase Atomic Warrior, I would not park it. The long term type in traffic is not significant and the current traffic would have a horrible click through rate. For more information on this subject, I recommend reading DomainerPro’s post, Monetizing Domain Names of Former Websites Can Be a Challenge.

The best bet to monetize a domain like AtomicWarrior.com is to develop and rejuvenate it as a video game community. That is actually something I am interested in and would have fun doing.

Or I will have to buy a ninja costume for my YouTube video.

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Find neglected websites

You have surfed to websites that have decent domain names, but that have not been updated since 2004. Many site owners have the best intentions to make money online and then let their website die on the vine when they realize it is not easy money. DMOZ.org is such a comprehensive directory that it contains thousands of links to now abandoned websites.

Simply drill down into a niche or category that interests you. Then surf to sites that have domain names that have potential. Within 30 minutes, you are bound to find 5-10 neglected websites that have decent traffic (check their Alexa statistics).

For example, I searched video game fan sites and came across Atomic Warrior. The home page displayed the latest gaming news… from July 2005. I did find a forum on the site that had traffic as recently as June 2007. So there is potential to pick up traffic again quickly if I come to the rescue.

Getting a bargain

Next you have to locate the owner of the site and make them an offer. DomainTools offers a great WHOIS service that gives you standard domain information and a nice indicator of availability for that domain name and related domains.

Contact the owner and make them an offer. Again, many of these owners have been out of the online business for awhile. So they may not be in tune with current domain name values. You can usually offer a low price to take the domain off their hands and they will be happy to sell it to you at a below market rate.

A negotiating tip

I also have an extra tip to help you avoid making a bad, non-starter bid. When evaluating the abandoned website, I like to identify other elements of the site that may factor into the negotiation.

• Did the owner spend money on software licenses like vBulletin or are they using free blogging software?
• Is there premium content which may have been purchased?
• Are they monetizing their trickle of traffic with Google AdSense?

In many cases, you will find a bare bones website. But if there is something of perceived value, then it is likely that you will need to offer more for the domain.

Hmmmmm. Now what should I offer for Atomic Warrior?

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If you are not lucky enough to break free from the keyboard, then here are a few gems worth reading.

The Philosophy of Social Markers

Hugh MacLeod is a edgy cartoonist and marketing philosopher. His blog, Gapingvoid, is a fresh read for anyone tired of the same how to make money online blogs. You must subscribe.

This week Hugh posted a thought-provoking discussion on how we humans interact through “social objects” and how good marketers can use “social markers” to initiate and engage our audience on a personal level. Here is the definition of social objects in an excerpt from the social marker – the “social object” on steroids.

The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.

The Crunchies

Tonight Michael Arrington of TechCrunch announced the winners of the Crunchies 2007. More coverage elsewhere across the blogosphere.

My personal favorite is Zazzle, who won for Best Business Model. While I can probably debate the business model point, there is no doubt that Zazzle has successfully harnessed the complex American psyche of fierce expression of our desired individuality through rampant consumption.

Image of the Week

In a country known for great food, my wife and I came across a Chinese restaurant in Siena while on our honeymoon in Italy. Needless to say, we did not eat there.

My wife has edited the original picture using Photoshop’s film grain filter (all settings dialed down to 0) to give this picture a painted feel. This version of the image has been blown up and now hangs in our bedroom.

Check out other pictures and images on my Flickr photos.

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