Internet Business Daily

Everyone knows eBay has been struggling lately. Between their new policies and business model shift towards sales instead of auctions, eBay is on shaky ground. This is why I cannot fathom the thought process behind banning 90% of the publishers in the ePN (eBay Partner Network).

For those who do not know what ePN is, it is eBay’s affiliate program. They give commissions on sales of items purchased by buyers affiliates refer. Each month, around the end of the month, a small portion of the partners get banned for “low quality traffic.” eBay is looking for traffic that is more engaged with their site, which just means buys multiple products. This month was different though.

A few days ago about 90% (my estimate based on eBay forum posts and friends of mine who run ePN) of the partner network had their accounts closed for this reason. I was lucky enough to escape with my account in tact, and I’m thankful because I have been using eBay’s affiliate program for almost 2 years now and it is my most successful online venture to date. Hopefully I can keep my account next time they decide to close another set of accounts. This is not the way to keep the people who make you millions upon millions of dollars happy. Get with the program, eBay.

I have finally reached the #1 position in Google for my name. My last post showed that Firefox and Safari were giving different results and I was #2 in FF. Now, I have reached the #1 position! I probably took over #1 because of the previous post. Here’s the screen shot:

A little over a year ago I made a post to try to get my name, Matthew Berman, to the number 1 position in Google for my search term. When I started I was at #7 and there were at least 3 .edu domains ahead of me. Since then I haven’t put too much effort into it but I have made the move to #2.

Today, my friend Skwerl informed me that he saw my site in position #1. When I took a look, I still saw #2. Now the first thing people will think is: sure, if you’re in different locations you are going to get different results. This is not the case since Skwerl works at the same company as I do. He is on the same IP address as me. He then sent me the screen shot shown below:

Skwerl then noticed that when he went to the search results page in Firefox, I was actually in position #2. I checked it out myself and to my surprise, Firefox was showing different results than Safari. Here is what the same exact search results page looks like in Firefox:

So basically what we see here is Google’s thought process that people who use different browsers want different search results. I wonder how they came to the conclusion that people using Safari wanted to see more of me than people using Firefox. Since I’m a die-hard Firefox user, I must say I’m a little offended.

I would just like to point out that my RSS readership (shown in the widget to the right) is at an all time high! 148 readers is amazing. To think that just under 2 years ago this blog had just a couple posts on it and 0 readers and has come so far makes me very happy. I will continue to write what I consider to be interesting and useful posts for everyone, and I hope to get feedback to help me understand what my readers want. Thanks to everyone who reads my blog. Stay tuned for more!

Just thought I’d share this:

Introduction
I have recently been trying to diversify my affiliate marketing portfolio, and to do that I have been trying different affiliate networks. Over time I will be reviewing each of them but today I want to focus on Clickbooth.com. Clickbooth has been around since 2002 and is one of the largest CPA networks in the world currently used by many of the largest super-affiliates.

Customer Service
Before I start I would like to mention that one of the most important factors to me in an affiliate network, and any company for that matter, is customer service. Customer service includes how easily and quickly I can get a question answered or request handled. I don’t care if you make $10 per day or $10,000 per day, the affiliate should be number one priority. That being said, I recently signed up for Clickbooth and shortly after they contacted me and I was approved. My affiliate manager was quick to email me a couple starter questions (how do I usually promote offers, what kind of offers do I usually like) and from that found a bunch of great looking campaigns to run. So from my experience so far Clickbooth has excellent customer service.

Reporting System
Upon entering their reporting system, I was very pleased. It is very easy to read and displays all the data in a well-formatted page. The backend itself has a very intuitive GUI, which makes my job that much easier. Although I have not been able to send a ton of traffic their way yet, they are definitely first in line for my next big campaign.

Overall
Clickbooth has great customer service, a ton of well-performing campaigns, and an intuitive GUI. One last thing I would like to mention is their ability to keep affiliates up to date with offers and news. They have an active twitter account and blog. If you plan on using Clickbooth after reading this review, please use my affiliate link:).

I kept hearing this song on the Pineapple Express trailer, and loved it. It’s some woman from France with a very catchy tune. That’s about all I know about this song and artist so if anyone knows more info please fill me in. The video is below. I seem to like the new types of music coming out of Europe, such as Adam Tensta who I mentioned a little while back.

I saw this video on Digg and just had to post it. It explains in simple terms one of the most interesting (and still not understood) properties of quantum physics. There’s no way I’ll be able to explain it, so just check it out:

The coolest part is definitely the fact that the way quantum physics behaves changes depending on if someone is measuring it (looking at it).

Someone on the WickedFire forums pointed out that Google’s Keyword External tool now had actual search volume data. Before all it had was a green bar, which didn’t give any useful information. Now it gives the actual number of searches per month (estimate), which is exponentially more valuable. Take a look:

This is definitely one of my favorite keyword/research tools and is listed in the research section of my Internet Business Guide. If you haven’t used this tool yet I highly suggest taking a look. You can get everything from keyword suggestions to CPC prices and now relatively accurate search volume.

I was just over at Neilsweb.com and found another 3 coupons for $150 in free Facebook advertising. You redeem the codes the same way as the first:

• 1. Login to Facebook.
• 2. Click “Manage Ads”
• 3. Click “Billing”
• 4. Click “Funding Sources”
• 5. Click “Enter Coupon Code”

The coupon codes are:

• T5V6-1JKV-TNH9-2MRH ($50)
• 2JXY-WTFK-72Y0-VJ6Y ($50)
• R1X5-0NH7-5FXW-5YEC ($50)

And remember to get your $100 from my previous post too! Free money!