Daniel over at DailyBlogTips.com has come up with a great idea to get the word out about RSS. Only about 5-6% of internet users even know what RSS is, which is pretty surprising. It’s a really great way to stay up to date with your favorite websites, without having to visit each one.

Personally, I just started using RSS feeds a few months ago with Google Reader, and I’m really glad I did. I get to read a lot more interesting articles from many sites that I probably would have missed. It actually saves a lot of time too; even though theoretically you may be reading more posts, it makes it much easier to find articles worth reading.

It’s almost like reading the newspaper in the morning with your cup of coffee; just open up your RSS reader, and get caught up with what’s new. I highly suggest you give it a shot, and I’m sure you’ll like it. You can always add my RSS feed as your first subscription

Also, if you’re a blogger, and want to help spread the word about RSS, visit DailyBlogTips.com and read more about this cool awareness day. Daniel is giving away prizes to help promote this new “holiday”, so there’s a little extra incentive to open your readers’ eyes to the joys of RSS!

You’ve probably heard of Affiliate Elite before; it was another highly publicized release by Brad Callen, the same guy who released the extremely popular Keyword Elite and SEO Elite software. This new product was released quite some time ago, but since I received a special deal in my email, I decided to finally give it a try. Luckily I can pass this deal onto you as well

Affiliate Elite boasts quite a few features, mainly the ability to sort through the Clickbank and PayDotCom marketplaces, to analyze your competition, and to find super affiliates to mimic, or contact if you are a merchant. Check out the sales page to read all about what they promise etc.

Read more to see if Affiliate Elite makes the grade

The software itself is broken down into 4 main project types, which I’ll talk about separately.

Project type 1: Clickbank/PayDotCom Market Research

I’m sure you’ve been to these marketplaces before, and you probably know that they are far from being search friendly. With over 30,000 products listed in the clickbank marketplace, and 2,000 in PayDotCom, not having a detailed search option really hinders your ability to find the best possible offer for your affiliate marketing campaign.

Affiliate Elite takes care of that, it has a huge database of all the products that are now filterable by category, subcategory, rank, earning %, earning $, gravity, and days in the system. This last filter is great, it allows you to find NEW products that are getting a lot of sales. This gives you a head start, and allows you to be one of the first people to promote a product that could very well rise to the top rankings.

Now you can easily be the first to dominate SEO terms related to these “rising stars”, as well as get cheap PPC clicks while it’s still fresh, therefore solidifying your position at the top of the PPC ladder.

Project type 2: Reverse Google Search

Here, you basically enter in a domain, and the software will fetch all the organic and paid results from Google for that domain.

Well, at least in theory…

I don’t think this feature works very well to be honest. Take these two tests for example.

I entered in my own domain, yimto.com, and ran the search. I’m not paying for any clicks, so I have no PPC rankings, but I have plenty of organic rankings for sure. The software only finds 4 keywords for my domain in Google… way off. Now I don’t really know how they are doing this, as it took like 5 seconds to complete the search, but it obviously isn’t accurate.

In my next test, I chose a random domain from my spy results at Hexatrack for an ad that was ranking for more than one keyword. Here it worked a bit better, finding most of the results, but still some were not there. I guess this can be semi useful in figuring how which sites are advertising a lot, and hence must be doing something right.

Project type 3: Analyze Adwords Competition

This is definitely supposed to be one of the bigger features of Affiliate Elite. Here you can enter keywords, and it will grab all the ads being displayed. You can do this multiple days, and eventually see which ads are running for a long time, and probably making money.

It works ok, but honestly, after trying Hexatrack, this seems like a crappier version of a keyword spy. The data you get from the system is not well displayed, and very hard to analyze. You can export the data to html, but even that looks bad. That’s my main complaint really, I mean it works fine, but it’s really hard to dissect.

Project type 4: Find Super Affiliates

This is supposed to be the bread and butter of this software. What it does is you can find super affiliates on the Clickbank, PayDotCom, and Commission Junction affiliate networks, and “spy” on them; meaning you can mimic their strategies and hopefully earn money like they do.

Now once again, I don’t think this feature is working all that well. Based on what I know for sure, I plugged in my own affiliate ID to let the system to find all of the products I was promoting. Of course, as it’s my own affiliate ID, I’ll know if it’s right

It returned some of the weirdest results… 46 results that were just a random sampling of odd sites I’ve never seen before, and a few sites with my website link on them, NOT my affiliate link. In fact, it didn’t find a single instance of my affiliate link.

I do generally cloak my links, so that could be a reason, but if so then there is a serious flaw. Because everyone cloaks their links! (or at least, they should!) If the software can’t pick that up, then what good is it.

Then I tried an affiliate ID of an affiliate I know, and it found nothing… but after loading a saved project I had tried earlier, results finally showed up, which was weird… Anyways, it did bring back some information, but the only thing is that unless I already knew this guy was a super affiliate, I would never know this data meant anything.

The software also lets you find super affiliates themselves by merchant ID, meaning which affiliates are selling that product. The only problem is that it finds more than just super affiliates. You’ll get hundreds of results, many from scrapper sites that list every product in the affiliate network databases over and over again. Even so, you wouldn’t really know which were which.

I tried a merchant I have promoted, and no I didn’t pop up here either. I use cloaked links here as well, so again, could be possible it does not pick up on cloaked links.

Tutorials & Forum

There is a very detailed video tutorial series, as well as an awesome manual, which is good. Of course, I’m sure you won’t have that much trouble figuring out this software on your own.

The forums though, are practically deserted. I mean, for such a hyped up top seller, I would assume the forums would be booming with people talking about this software, but really there’s barely anyone. It looks like there hasn’t been an update of the software since December 2007 either…

Price & Conclusion

Right now they have a special trial offer where you can try Affiliate Elite for a month for only $4.95 That was the main reason I tried it out, and is actually worth giving it a shot for that price. Even though my review is a tad harsh, you really can’t go wrong giving it a shot at only 5$. If you don’t like it, you can very easily cancel. I sent a request myself, and they canceled my subscription very promptly.

I may have kept the subscription, but I already have other tools that do the same functions. If you think any of the functions I described above would be useful to you, then it will probably be worth it to you to check this software out.

Pros:
- Lots of features
- Can Save/Load Projects
- Great manual and help videos
- Fast customer support

Cons:
- Some features seem buggy
- Expensive Subscription
- Mixed results
- Lack of updates, low participation forums

The Yimto Verdict: Breaking Even.

Check out Affiliate Elite and try it out for yourself for just 5 bucks.

After being frustrated yet again by blog-style functionality that just isn’t available with Drupal, I’ve decided to take the plunge and switch over to Wordpress. I love Drupal, I’ve been using it ever since I built my first site over a year ago, but for serious blogging, it just doesn’t make the cut. It’s a CMS at heart, and I really don’t need all that functionality for this blog.

Wordpress is definitely the blog specialist, and has a lot of great features I want to use. Of course after developing this blog in Drupal for over 6 months, it’s not an easy move at all, but I feel it’s necessary.

I’ve found a few really great resources that perhaps will help you someday as well:

http://www.darcynorman.net/2007/05/15/how-to-migrate-from-drupal-5-to-wordpress-2/
Fantastic Drupal to Wordpress migration post with an SQL script that works quite well. You need to migrate to Wordpress 2.0 for it to work.

http://keyboardsamurais.de/2007/03/01/how-to-migrate-from-drupal-to-wordpress-and-clean-up-all-the-nasty-leftovers/
Great information about how to set up 301 redirects to your new Wordpress posts. Contains SQL to grab all Drupal URL aliases.

http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/powerfull-list-of-wordpress-lifesavers-plugin.html
This post probably saved me hours of searching for Wordpress plugins. Just an amazing list! I’ve downloaded over 40 of them!

http://mashable.com/2007/07/24/wordpress-comments/
Here’s a cool top 30 comment plugins list.

http://wpthemesplugin.com/30-spam-fighting-wordpress-plugins/
And a top 30 spam protection plugins list.

So, over the next few days I’ll be working my butt off to get this done, and I’ll add links should I find anything extraordinary to report. Wish me luck

A few weeks ago, in a post about a really cool video and report about getting cheap Adwords clicks, I mentioned a service called Hexatrack. It’s a very nice PPC research tool that combines keyword spying and conversion tracking.

I had been experimenting with the free version for quite a while, until recently when they unveiled that they were planning to release many PPC strategy guides and tutorials for Pro version subscribers, most notably one called PPC 2.0, which refers to advertising with many different social networks. Apparently, they have some pretty interesting techniques in store, and since these are relatively new PPC systems, they may really be effective at gaining a huge advantage.

Read more about this cool new PPC tool, as well as a special offer, after the jump!

So I upgraded to Hexatrack Pro, and so far I am quite pleased. You can have up to 16 spying projects going on, as opposed to 4 with the free version, and up to 80 conversion tracking projects, compared to 10 with free. I know that these kinds of services (as I had been researching many products) generally cost a lot more than the $47 monthly fee they charge (+$50 initial). So far it seems like a huge bargain, also knowing about all the PPC training coming out later.

Now I’m not ready to review Hexatrack Pro just yet, but the reason I am writing this post is because once they release their PPC Training 2.0 guide, their price will “increase sharply”.

Just to give you an idea of the value of these guides, check out some PPC training they already produced available to you for free!

http://www.thenewppc.com/blog/ (See top left corner, videos 1-4)

You can also check out the Hexatrack blog for some instructional videos about Hexatrack itself, as well as a video about a campaign they discovered and created that generated $45k in 2 days! ($20k profit!)

http://www.hexatrack.com/blog/

You will notice though, that there is quite a bit of negativity in the blog comments, and a lot of naysayers, which was quite surprising to me. Honestly, they are complaining about a service that can be used for free! Gimme a break, I doubt half of these people even signed up.

There was one comment that was extremely on point, and caught my attention, as well as the attention of the Hexatrack founders. Read it here: http://www.hexatrack.com/blog/ppc/new-video-45k-in-2-days-hexatrack-pro-proof-positive/#comment-56

Anyways, I definitely suggest you check out Hexatrack if you are interested in PPC, you can try it for free! I would hurry to experiment, and hopefully get into pro and lock in your low monthly rate before the big price increase they have been talking about. I’m sure it will be well worth it! That’s why I joined

Now, for an experiment of my own. If you sign up to Hexatrack Pro through my affiliate link, I will give you one month’s free advertising on my blog in the form of a 125×125 ad when my redesign is complete (should hopefully be by next week). Just send me an email through my contact form!

Making money online is a lot more complicated than most people think, and when a new marketer begins the quest to make money online, they may soon realize that there is a lot more to it than expected. Then, they are bombarded with tons of offers for infoproducts, membership programs, tools, services, coaching… all to help them make money.

Sure, I totally recommend you get help, and if that costs money, so be it. A lot of these things can greatly speed up your learning process, or even become quintessential in your online affiliate marketing endeavors. But, while most tools do help, we don’t always need them.

I’m sure you frequently get tempted, and probably indulge, in many internet marketing related purchases, but ask yourself, do you really need this?

Read more tips, and where to look for money drains after the jump!

It’s quite simple really, to prevent bleeding money, ask yourself a series of questions to determine your actual need for a product or service:

• Does this product help me with something I am having trouble with NOW?
• Will I USE this product to it’s full extent?
• Do I have TIME to apply this product?
• Is this product within my BUDGET?

This is just a sample list; you need to analyze what your priorities and needs are, and decide according to those.

Now, a simple reminder like this gets the picture across really fast. Preventing frivolous spending in this field can be pretty easy. And, if not, then just avoid any offer being made to you

A bit harder to eliminate in my opinion are pre-existing money bleeds. These frequently come in the form of memberships and services. That’s because once you get over that initial spending hurdle, it’s much easier to just let technology take over and rebill you at will.

Heck, I’ve taken part in a few money bleeds myself, and it’s the worst looking back and realizing how much you’ve wasted over months. But of course, when things only cost 10-20$ a month, they don’t seem so bad at the time, when you are due for a rebill.

Here are a couple of common sources that may be costing you hundreds a year in useless spending:

Web hosting

I really hope you are using web hosting and building sites, and if so then obviously this isn’t wasted. But the problem is, that sometimes you could be paying for multiple web hosting plans, and may not even be using them all to their full extent.

I actually have 4 hosting plans over 3 different companies right now >< 2 are on GoDaddy, from way back when I first started online marketing, which only cater to one site; but luckily they did pull in enough money to pay for themselves. Another is from HostGator, which I use every day and love.

But there is one rogue web hosting plan, that I sort of thought I needed, so I let a $100 year long charge go through… Big mistake. The sites hosted on that plan aren’t doing anything, and I’ve pretty much completely lost interest in them.

Of course I’m going to cancel this before another rebill, but if it were for say $7 a month, I might forget, since it’s such a small figure.

Autoresponder

Autoresponders are great, but ONLY if you use them to their full potential! I’ve had a membership to AWeber for months now, and while I constantly renew because I always want to build a list, I have not yet done so.

I guess I’m an optimist

What I should have done (and will now do), is just cancel the service until it is absolutely needed. Not in the pre-build phases of a website, or in the planning stages; only at the exact time needed.

Membership Programs

Are you in a membership program? How important is it for you? I know a long time ago, I won a subscription to a membership service for 6 months, and I barely visited.

You might be lured by knowing one day, something useful may be offered to members, but really until that happens, perhaps you shouldn’t be paying them.

So these are just a few common money drains I’ve noticed, what have you seen? Have you had many money bleeding experiences? Leave a comment so that others can hopefully avoid the same situations!