This is a paid plug of a unique website that I have personally looked over and liked the idea behind it. If you are interested in ordering a paid plug, please check out the Advertise page.

When 99% of blogs fail to stand out, discovering a unique blog is rare and refreshing.

RantBlogger is a good example of this. They pay their readers to write rants on whatever topics piss them off and then publish the best ones. They call it Cash for Rants and here are the details:

• Submit rants about whatever you want
• Humorous and serious rants are accepted
• No minimum or maximum length
• Wait about 1-3 days for rants to be reviewed
• PayPal payments of $5-$10 per published rant

The rants are read by a small review panel and then voted on to make sure only the best rants are paid for and published. Humorous rants are especially favored. Although a lot of the rants on
RantBlogger are great (e.g. the douchebag husband rant and the thong rant), there’s definitely room for more variety. Plenty of topics are still left to be ranted about.

And while the pay is by no means enough to live off of, who’s going to complain about getting paid to complain? More than anything, RantBlogger is a place to kickback, read some heated articles by angry people, and occasionally join in on the ranting.

OK, so this sounds like a lot of fun, but where do the owners get the money to pay for this and how are they going to monetize it?

Here’s the story: RantBlogger was started by 18-year-old Harvard freshman, Ahmed Belal, after Harvard reimbursed him for extra scholarship money that he had earned. With a couple thousand dollars and the help of a few colleagues, RantBlogger was born. Since its launch in September, RantBlogger has received over 500 rants from disgruntled users all across the web.

And the business plan behind the site? Top secret, at least for now. The RantBlogger team is building a new Web 2.0 site (not a blog) called WriteBite that they say is going to take the “get paid to write rants” concept to a whole new level. A better design, 5X bigger payouts, and a more community-driven rant site is on the horizon, with a beta scheduled to launch in the next 4-6 weeks.

Oh, and as for RantBlogger, they’re currently running a $100 comment and email subscription contest for the holidays. There’s no excuse not to check this site out.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

36 Comments »

T3Leads is a relatively new affiliate network but have started growing in popularity as more and more people find out about them.

Unlike most affiliate networks out there, T3Leads have decided to go “niche”… namely the finance niche and stuff related to it (credit cards, pay day loans, insurance and debt are some of the offers they have). This means that although you may not find some offers that you like, if you do want to try and attack the finance niche (which is hot right now, because of the recession) you have plenty of variety all in one place.

Another thing that is different about the T3Leads affiliate network is that the leads that you generate do not have a fixed payment amount, but vary between a range depending on how well you do promoting the offer and how high quality the leads you generate are. Depending on how you promote your offers, this could be a huge positive or negative for you.

You can see the range of payment amounts on their leads pricing page - for some offers, the range is quite large (the payday loan offer can pay anywhere between $5.34 to $45.45) on others, not so much.

The offers are not taken from other networks (like a few other affiliate networks get them) but by directly contacting and communicating with various high quality banks and finance related institutions.

After registering at their website (which was instant) I logged in to check out a few of their offers. Each offer has a wide variety of banners (which you can use on your blog / website to promote them) in all sizes and you get a similar affiliate link for all offers which is very easy to use. However, the interface is slightly confusing - offers are under a section called ‘Websites’ (something like Campaigns would be easier) and banners are in another location.

T3Leads claims to have some of the highest conversion ratios in the industry - I have not personally tested this as I don’t work in the finance niche anymore, but their leads pricing page lists a few offers that have a conversion ratio of 1:12 all the way to 1:4 (which is very high for targeted traffic). I’m not sure how accurate this but you could run tests with banner advertising on similar blogs or even pay per click.

One of the BEST things about T3Leads is that they have the option of paying out through Paypal (minimum payment $100). Personally, I dislike affiliate networks that pay through cheque… mainly because over here the postal system is utter shit and it’s difficult to receive mail, especially from the US (my first Google Adsense cheque of around $500 took eight months to arrive from the day it was sent). Other than Paypal, they can also do bank transfer, ePassporte, Web Money and company cheques.

They also have a forum that is pretty easy to use should you need help with your affiliate marketing efforts and they reward top performing affiliates with pretty slick prizes - I’m not sure how much they needed to earn to receive them, but bonus prizes already given out range from a Sony Vaio and Cybershot camera to music players and high quality sound systems.

In conclusion… I’d suggest you check them out, as they look a reasonable enough network to me and some of the payouts on their offers are quite high and they do have a wide variety of promo tools to work with. I have a decent idea of how to promote them that I will be trying out (buying advertising for dirt cheap on high traffic finance blogs… I will update on this when I have time).

If you have any questions about T3Leads, feel free to ask them… or you can sign up!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

15 Comments »

This is a paid review and not really influenced much by me getting paid. If you’re interested in ordering advertising on this blog, check out the advertise page.

When you think of setting up standard niche affiliate sites, it usually strikes me as a boring activity… especially if you do it yourself. Finding products, tweaking the template, getting content, just setting it up really - it can take a lot of time. When you’re starting out, it can be difficult to outsource if you want to go the bulk option, as you don’t really have the money to do so.

This is where StoreStacker comes in. StoreStacker is basically an affiliate product store script, created with the newbie in mind. No longer do you have to struggle for hours with code that you don’t get - all you need to do is use their interface and you can generate niche stores on the fly.

Claiming to have more than 10,000,000 products, StoreStacker already have the likes of Clickbank, eBay and Amazon available for integration, which means that you save time. Of course, the more time you save, the more profitable you are and the more money you can make.

It currently costs $97 for an unlimited domain license, however addons cost extra ($25 apiece). Of the addons, I’d recommend getting the Clickbank one and the article one, so even with them that’s only $150 total, and you can use it on as many sites as you want. To encourage people to purchase the addons, perhaps StoreStacker should run a promotion - buy one addon, get the second at half price / free.

What StoreStacker aims to do is help you better your affiliate experience - and they definitely do that, with you getting full control over how you want the site to look like (12 different templates), what products you want, and what kind of content you want (articles or videos, or both) that will help your stores rank easier in the search engines.

You don’t have to work on search engine optimization on your own though - the backend comes with SEO features that are important but will pass many newbies by - keyword tags, google sitemaps and so on. Get one of these on the front page of Google for a competitive term, and you’re making money.

If you want to see what it looks like before you purchase, they have a set of Camtasia videos showing you the interface - both front and backend. There are also videos instructing you exactly what to do after you purchase the product - everything from how to install it to how to tweak it so that you can get the maximum amount out of your store. Lastly, there is a member forum (which looks reasonably active) and a support centre so that you can get any problems you have sorted out, as well as ask for advice on how to best use it.

In conclusion - if you do like working with affiliate marketing, and want a simple way to generate a lot of high quality ones, StoreStacker is definitely worth the purchase. $97 is nothing for an unlimited domain license, as you could build up traffic to your sites and sell them for a hefty amount. You can purchase it here if you feel it would help grow your business.

What do you think of StoreStacker, and do you have any feedback for the creator (Scott)? Let him know through the comments section below.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

28 Comments »

This is a paid review and only a little influenced by me being paid to write it. If you are interested in ordering a review for your company, please do so through this link.

There are dozens of affiliate networks out there… some bad, some good, some great, and publishers can often find it difficult to decide on which one to use.

Motive Interactive recently gave their network an entire revamp, and ordered a paid review on this blog to let people know about it - they’re already one of the trusted affiliate networks in the industry, but with this advertising surge it looks like they’re aiming to become the best.

Dubbed Advent 2.0, Motive Interactive’s interface definitely has the futuristic look - they’ve gone for web 2.0 and its worked, with their backend one of the best I’ve ever seen. I logged in and had a look around, and they appear to have a fair amount of offers, ranging from your standard email / zip submits to offers that pay around $30 - $50.

However, I’m not here to talk about aesthetics - here’s three things that I saw in the email I got about them that YOU should be interested in, as they’re three reasons why Motive Interactive should be looked at before other affiliate networks.

Highest Payouts. Of course, all ad and affiliate networks tend to offer the ‘highest payouts’… but with Motive Interactive, this is actually true. If you find that another network is offering you a better price, all you have to do is let them know and they’ll beat it. With offers specifically hand picked for you by one of the most experienced networks in the business (they’ve been around since 2003) you should be able to make money with them if you’re willing to make a go of it.

5.5% Referral Commissions. The previous highest was around 5% from Market Leverage… however Motive Interactive offer you 5.5% commission on anyone you refer to their network, as long as they don’t go more than a year inactive. As an example, this means that if you refer someone that goes on to make $100/day, you’ll net yourself $165 per month for doing nothing.

Reliable and Negotiable payment schedule. Motive Interactive offer weekly and net-15 payments - now for the former, this is probably for top affiliates only… but the latter isn’t too bad (that’s two payments per month). Other affiliate networks tend to be net-45 or even more, and although they do make it quicker for the top affiliates, you’re not likely to be one of those starting out. Here you can invest comfortably into your affiliate marketing efforts, knowing that if you perform, payment will come to you right on time.

Those are three major things that I liked, but there are some others - they have an easily searchable interface, which you can categorize based on payouts, niche, distribution type and so on. Their rewards program starts at 1%, but raises to 2% if you do well - when you’re making that much money, the rewards don’t tend to mean much but anything extra is always nice.

The last thing (but certainly not the least important) thing that I’m going to mention is their real time tracking… something that is extremely important when you’re running pay per click campaigns or email marketing ones. Basically, your stats update in real time, that is clicks, revenue and so on - you can use this and compare it to the figures that they supply you with (like how the rest of the network on average is doing with certain offers) to supercharge your affiliate marketing efforts.

Here’s a screenshot of their offer search panel:

As you can see, using it is fairly easy. What Motive Interactive also allow is for you to ‘feature’ certain offers on your homepage of your affiliate account… so you can keep the offers you’re interested in running firmly in view.

You can watch the below seven minute video for a video tour of their backend… do let me know how sweet you think it looks

If you are interested in signing up for Motive Interactive (and I suggest you do so, as they’re a trusted network and having more options is always good) you can sign up through this link.

If you’ve got any questions or doubts, feel free to leave a comment - an employee of Motive Interactive will probably check this review from time to time and be more than willing to answer anything you want to ask them.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

25 Comments »

This is a paid review and only slightly influenced by me being paid. For more details about purchasing a paid review or advertising on this blog, check out my Advertise page.

Luckily for me, I managed to get a holiday today, due to it being the first week of Uni. Along with being able to finally write this paid review of Publisher Spot and the updates made to it, I’ll also try and get a post or two written for the next few days on here.

Publisher Spot is the project of webmaster Tyler Cruz - someone that most of you will have come across. Tyler runs an entrepreneur blog as well, and tends to order a whole host of paid reviews whenever major updates are made. To find out more about Publisher Spot, including my thoughts and ideas on how it could be improved, feel free to read its first review on this blog.

Although I’m not supposed to talk too much about what it is, and concentrate on the features, doing so is essential to the review. Basically, Publisher Spot is a place where users review affiliate and ad networks, meaning that you can go there if you’re uncertain on which one to join and check up on feedback, ratings etc. At the moment, there are forty five different networks reviewed - how’s that for variety.

Some of the new features include a member system where one username works for all - all you have to do is sign up once and you’ll be able to use your account to not just rate networks up or down and review them, but also comment on the blog and forum. However, the forum is currently dead - maybe some paid posting could be organized or a contest run so that more people would be apt to join.

Another feature added is the ability for you to advertise on Publisher Spot. Now most of you will not find advertising on there useful, however those of you that run or are involved in running affiliate / ad networks… that offers you the chance to feature your brand in front of targeted traffic that will convert. There are currently three advertising options - the banner above the fold on the front page, a network spotlight on the front page and featured network status, which puts you at the top of all browse and search pages.

The good thing about the commenting / rating system is that people have to be logged in to comment, which prevents networks going through 1,000 proxies and rating themselves 10/10 on each one. However, this also means that there is no incentive for people to sign up and rate networks - the general theory is that a person who is happy with a product or service will tell just one person, but a person that is unhappy will tell the world. This means that you could have only those with negative thoughts taking the time to sign up and rate networks. Although the feature is fairly new, there also seems to be few comments of networks - for example, the review of Pay Per Post has more than 100 users that have rated it, but zero comments.

How could this be fixed? A contest of sorts perhaps - giving out a cash or some other prize to a random person which has rated and commented about their rating on more than X networks (I’d say ten). Incentives always help getting people to participate, and once they get involved they may continue to do so even after the prizes stop being offered.

On the whole though, Publisher Spot is a valuable resource, one that Tyler has invested thousands of dollars to develop - all it needs is that bigger resolution and it’s perfect. Help him (and potential affiliates) out by checking out the site, leaving your ideas as a comment on this post on how it could be improved and what you think of it.

Other than that, if you prefer watching some video to take a look at the major improvements of Publisher Spot, there is a fifteen minute video you can check out with them all listed.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

21 Comments »