www.affiliateconfession.com

EzineArticles.com has always been one of the more popular directories to submit your articles to for picking up those much needed incoming links. It has been my favorite for some time now, but recently, as of the last article I submitted a few days ago, they have become extremely picky in allowing live links in your author’s box.

I’ve never had a problem with EzineArticles.com after submitting nearly 50 articles over the last 3 years or so, but with the last one the scenario went something like this - I went through the usual process and sent in my article only to have it rejected for “linking to a website that violates our terms of service.” Since I have never had a problem I wrote to support and asked for a better explanation. The answer came back that the website I was linking to, a Build A Niche Store site, was nothing but auctions and I needed at least one page of content before they would consider it a legit site.

Obviously the noobie editor that went to my site didn’t see any of the 10 article pages featuring no auctions at all. I sent him a list of of those 10 urls, and while he thanked me, he still wouldn’t allow me to link to any auction page on the site, even though the specific one I wanted to link to had 3 paragraphs of text and an information widget. I had to link to article pages only! While this is still an good incoming link, it totally defeats the purpose of using anchor text to get a particular page quickly ranked in Google by using EzineArticles.com.

While there are plenty of other article directories to use for the intended purpose of links to very specific pages, EzineArticles.com was definitely the best in my book. I will continue to use them for many of my other niches, but not any longer for BANS related sites. Maybe it was a new editor or maybe they’ve just developed a snooty attitude towards certain types of linking.

EzineArticles.com is still a great place to work your article marketing efforts, just be warned that they’ve apparently adopted a stricter policy towards linking to BANS or eBay auction related sites.

A huge thanks goes out to every one today who is a subscriber to Affiliate Confession. After almost a year of writing, this blog has reach the 500 RSS subscriber milestone. The counter at the top may show an amount below 500 depending on when you read this (it fluctuates a bit at times), but the first time the 500 reader level was reached was on Saturday Oct. 11th.

I initially started the blog back on November 1, 2007 after several months of thinking about it and having my wife tell me that I need to write about what I do. In fact, the name Affiliate Confession was actually my wife’s idea. We we’re sitting around one day brainstorming domain names for the blog and it just suddenly popped out of her brain. I didn’t really do much writing the first month and started blogging consistently on Nov 22, 2007.

One of the catalysts for starting the blog was probably for the wrong reason when I read one of John Chow’s ridiculous income statements. I believe it was around the $23,000 per month mark at the time and I thought why not get in with the crowd and get out there and make some money. That’s not a good reason to start a blog! It has since evolved into something I enjoy doing while I chronicle and hopefully give some advice on what it takes to build a successful affiliate marketing business.

Some of the more memorable posts over the last year include:

Why I don’t Do Network Marketing Or MLM- The first and longest post here at AffiliateConfession.com going into why MLM is mostly a waste of time.

Taking The 30 Day Blogging Challenge - The most commented post here.

Build A Niche Store Review - A review of the product that maximizes earnings from the eBay Affiliate program. It is currently one of my top money makers.

Lessons In Perseverence - A 4 part series on just working through the hard times despite what may come your way.

Build A Niche Store Tutorials - A 7 part series on how to set up your BANS affiliate store and get into profitability with the eBay Partner Network.

Explaining Twitter Is Like Explainig Sex to A Virgin - The day I saw the light and became a Twitter fan. You can follow me on Twitter here.

How I won A MacBook Air- Yes, I actually won $5,000 worth of prizes in an online contest and one of those prizes was a MacBook Air. This post explains how I did it.

The Harsh Realities Of Affiliate Marketing - A 7 part series on what affiliate marketing is really like. It’s not all fun and games, it takes lots of work.

Joined PPC Coach - I’ve finally started making some money with paid search marketing and this post explains how that happened.

If you are new here at AffiliateConfession.com please subscribe to my RSS feed and if you are already a reader of this blog, I appreciate the time you take to read through my ramblings. It’s been great getting to know a lot of you and respond to your questions and comments and I’m looking forward to the continued journey.

PS - As of this writing the count at the top is showing 486 readers and my Feedburner control paned is showing zero subscribers, so I’m not sure where it will end up today.

Very shortly, probably within the next few days, our home will be turned into a construction zone. We’re having our back porch enclosed and the bedroom across from the home office redone. Once the porch is enclosed and a new window put in the bedroom, our sliding glass doors leading to the porch will be removed, half the wall knocked out, the kitchen extended a couple of feet and all new flooring will be put in the porch, bedroom and a third of the kitchen.

While my wife has been wanting to do this project for years because we don’t really have a proper dining area in our small 1,300 sq ft home, the next couple of months (at least) will be rather stressful around the LeStourgeon home. It will be great when the project is finished, but in the mean time it will be nearly impossible to get any work done with the demolition, hammering, sawing, dust and general noise that goes along with an undertaking such as this.

I’m looking forward to having all the work done as well, but in the mean time, I’m going to have to have some place to carry on my blogging and affiliate marketing duties for several hours a day where interruptions will be kept to a minimum. There are a few places around the Palm Bay, Melbourne FL area that have “free” WiFi, but at many of them you should buy at least a cup of coffee or something every hour or two so as not to be a complete bum. That can add up when you end up spending $4 to $6 a day, plus gas, just to work away from home, plus I don’t really need to be drinking coffee and rotting out my gut every day.

As I’m writing this I’m thinking of at least two places where you don’t need to buy anything and can work as long as you need. One is the local library, but the connection there slow and you keep having to log in every 20 to 30 minutes. The other is the Calvary Chapel of Melbourne cafe, but they keep it so cold in the cafe you need to buy coffee every 30 minutes to keep warm or go outside to thaw out.

It will take some adjustments and planning to work away from home for an extended period of time. I do occasionally go to one of my favorite spots 3 or 4 times a month just for a change of pace, but this is going to have to probably be at least 3 times a week for a month or longer, so that makes it a different matter.

Maybe I could just rent a corner of an office or a cubicle somewhere for a couple of months. If I could find a nice space for $100 a month or so it might be worth it. I wouldn’t save any money over the cost of coffee and those tempting macadamia nut, chocolate chip cookies at Calvary Chapel Cafe, but I’m sure the office space and my water bottle would be much healthier.

I’m open to suggestions.

We’re living through tough economic times as we watch financial markets meltdown all over the world and people lose trillions in life savings they have invested in stocks and other securities (that aren’t too secure at the moment). Gas is still outrageously expensive and it seems like every time you go to the store, something is more expensive.

Don’t despair because there is something you can do about it and it fits right in with being an affiliate marketer, but not in the traditional sense. It may take a little more physical work that building a web site but there is a big payoff. I’m talking about growing your own food and working towards self-sufficiency. Below is what our back yard looks like and where we spend most of our Saturday mornings:

Buying edible plants, digging small garden plots and putting seeds into the ground is sowing a benefit that you will reap in a few weeks for plants and a few years for something like fruit trees. Just like affiliate marketing, you hope for a payoff a bit larger than your time and sweat investment.

The benefits of gardening go far beyond just putting some grub on your table. It does take time, but you can get to the point that you are saving gas by making less trips to the store and buying vegetables that have to be shipped from California by large truck or other far away locations such as Costa Rica by ship. You can also supply your body with healthy, life giving fruits and vegetables and that can help cut your medical expenses because you are living a healthier lifestyle. It’s a much less expensive alternative to the medical model of stuffing a patient full of expensive drugs for every ailment or the much more expensive route of radical, invasive surgery. Good heavens wouldn’t that help the economy if practiced on a large scale?

Right now in our yard we are growing pineapples, lettuce, various tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, strawberries, blackberries, lemons, eggplant, onions, and various herbs. We also have banana, guava, mango and avacado trees that will take a few years to mature. We have had gardens throughout the years, but only started expanding last year and plan to continue with our expansion until the back yard is completely filled in.

Were inspired the Dervaes family in Pasedena California who grow an amazing 6,000 pounds of food a year on a scant one tenth of an acre. Depending on the season they supply from 50% to 80% of their own food, sell produce to restaurants, produce their own biodiesel fuel, use solar energy and are close to living “off grid” or in total self-sufficiency.

Wouldn’t it be great, as the rest of the world and the politicians try to figure out how to spend even more money that they don’t have, to be less dependent on that system. Honestly, the less the government does for me the better. The more they give you, the more they can take away. No thanks, I’ll take care of myself.

Gardening is just like affiliate marketing. Put in the initial work and enjoy the benefits of truly sowing good seed. At least you’ll always have plenty to eat.

What about the rules, how closely should we follow them? The slaps, algorithm changes, TOS updates and constant policy changes we’re supposed to comply with as affiliates can be a bit overwhelming at times. And we know that the mother of all rules changes is the almighty (they just think they are) Google. If you don’t comply with Google, you essentially don’t get to play the game…that is unless you look at the rules a different way.

My financial advisor told me some time back that our politician friends running the show (if you want to call it that) in DC just go about their business continuing to complicate the tax code and then people like him read it and figure out ways to get around it. It’s just a game that’s been played ever since the wicked lawmakers have inhabited the halls of Congress and state capitals. My financial advisor’s job is to look at the complicated mess and figure out a way to save us money. People pay ridiculous amounts of money to Uncle Sam when they don’t have to.

I’m beginning to learn that rather than freak out about what Google throws my way, it’s a whole lot better to just absorb it and figure out how to use it best to my advantage or what to do to get around it. One thing I’ve learned to get around lately is the big freakout about lading page quality. The only thing Google wants there is your landing page to reflect what’s in your ad and they only look at your destination url. As long as your top level destination url matches your top level display url (even when it goes through a tracking link) and there aren’t any quality problems, you are good to go. You can then set your individual keyword url to whatever you want.

You can use this to your advantage if you direct link to offers and are having a hard time getting a good quality score, don’t put in your affiliate link as the destination url, use the top level url of your offer and then use your affiliate link with a tracking code as your keyword url. This works on both Google’s search and content network. Now put on your thinking caps and brainstorm on ways you can really take advantage of this little trick and you’ll never have to worry about quality score again.

Just as a warning here though, I’m not in any way condoning purposely breaking the rules or the law. If you violate Google’s terms, you will get nailed and if you break the tax laws, you may go to jail. There is a big difference in taking advantage of what’s in the rules vs walking over them and crossing the line. If you do Adsense, there are ways to optimize your ad placements so you earn the most possible, then there are idiots who ask their friends to click on their ads and can’t figure out why they get banned.

Don’t worry about the rules, adapt and take advantage of them. Oh, I was looking for my wife when we stopped at a rest stop, so I climbed up on the planter wall.