www.affiliateconfession.com

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.

I’ve been tweaking all day and adding stuff here and there and as you can see, there’s a new design to Affiliate Confession. I probably shouldn’t be messing with some of the stuff I’ve have been because I know just enough php and CSS to destroy a nice work of art. There are just a couple things more that need to be fixed and all should be well.

Some notable changes, other than the cool design, are the Most Popular Posts and the Most Commented Posts sections at the top. These sections were previously at the bottom, but how often do you scroll to the bottom of a blog? Hopefully this will make visitors more aware of the most important posts and to see what everyone else is commenting on and reading. I’ve also installed a Feedburner stats box on the upper right so you can see how many people are subscribed to Affiliate Confession.

A new Archives Page has been added as well and the monthly listed archives on the sidebar that you see on most blogs has been removed. You can now see every post on Affiliate Confession from that page and have a look at each post title to see if something catches your attention rather than having to scroll through page after page of monthly posts.

You will also notice that there are 2 more 125 x 125 advertising spots available on the sidebar and a 468 x 60 banner spot in the header. As soon as I figure out how to get the sidebar banners to rotate so you don’t always see that same ad in the same position, 3 of those spots will go up for sale as well as the top banner. The initial cost will be $25 per month for the 125’s and $50 per month for the top banner. If you are interested in advertising on Affiliate Confession, you can contact me here.

I’ll be running a contest starting sometime this week, maybe tomorrow, to officially introduce the new theme and later this week I’ll also let you know who designed the theme as well.

Sorry for the late and short post, but I’ve been at it all day trying to get it just right and it’s time to take a rest.

Please let me know what you think of the new theme.

Alan