Saving money is like making money. So, it’s always useful to practice frugality, even in online business. Here are some money-saving links and resources for you:

• 10 Money Saving Ideas
• Money Saving Tips for Business Owners
• How to Save Money
• Simply Thrifty
• 15 Money Saving Tips for Business Travelers
• Frugal Money Saving Tips for Small Business Owners
• Practical Money Saving Tips for Small Businesses

Tags: online business, resources, saving money, small business

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As marketers, we see it all the time… BIG RED LETTERS on landing pages to grab our attention. Different colors make people act differently. RED is usually seen as a “danger” or “warning” color… while BLUE or GREEN is more “soothing” and “trusted“. An excellent example of this was how in Star Wars, Darth Maul is RED and BLACK (representing his evil), and Yoda was GREEN… showing his “stability” and “safety”.

In today’s post I wanted to focus on all of the main colors and how they should be represented in your advertising efforts. Believe it or not, the colors you place on your landing pages or web sites can drastically change your overall conversions and the user’s thinking process. Below is a break down from HP, on the main colors we use for marketing and how they are often looked at by others.

Primary Colors:

Red

Red is a very emotionally charged color. It tends to increase the respiration rate and can even raise your blood pressure. It creates excitement and can be associated with danger, war, power, strength passion, desire and love. It can even increase your appetite.

Yellow

Yellow is the happy color… it is the color of sunshine. It creates a sense of cheerfulness and helps to stimulate mental activity. When yellow is very bright, it can attract attention. It can also provide a very sharp contrast to dark colors. Yellow can have the appearance of being brighter than white if over used and can be disturbing if used too much.

Blue

Blue is a trusted color. It can provide a sense of tranquility and security. It tends to symbolize loyalty, wisdom, trust, faith, confidence, and intelligence. While red can help to increase the appetite, blue tends to have the opposite affect and can actually suppress the appetite.

Secondary Colors:

Orange

Orange is the combination of the happiness of yellow and the energy and strength of red. It symbolizes creativity, determination, enthusiasm and success. In addition orange indicates affordability. Because of its similarity to red, it is great to promote food.

Green

Green tends to suggest endurance and stability. It represents harmony, growth and freshness. Green indicates safety. Obviously, it is associated with money and wealth. With the interest in “green” products, it is the only color that can promote organic foods and products effectively.

Violet

Violet or purple combines the energy and strength of red with the stability of blue. It represents nobility, ambition, power and luxury. It symbolizes extravagance and wealth and is often associated with dignity, independence, wisdom and magic.

Others:

White

White is purity, goodness, light and innocence. It is considered perfection. White is generally positive and simple. Often it is the color of charitable organizations, low-fat foods and dairy products.

Black

Black is elegant, powerful and formal, but can also be associated with death. In marketing, it is dignified. In certain contexts, black is very negative (blacklist, black humor, etc). It can also denote prestige.

Next time you are working on your landing page or new web site, step back and look at your color scheme and see how your colors are targeting your audience.

Don’t forget to visit www.ZacJohnson.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

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I like motivating people. I’m no Tony Robbins, but when I get on stage or in a room of people I really enjoy getting people revved up and inspired to be successful.

So I decided to have a guy on the Daily Flip by the name of Noah St. John. from Successclinic.com. He’s a motivational guy that helps people get their foot off the brake and lose the fear holding them back.

We talked about a bunch of topics, like fear of success and motivational tips and “secrets”. Also about how to reduce stress and a bunch of other things. This podcast should motivate you, please enjoy!

Oh, and feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you thought of the podcast and how you’ve overcome your fears.

If you’re an online entrepreneur who wish to:

• Sell digital and tangible products using a web-based online shopping cart;
• Create affiliate programmes to help you sell your products; and/or
• Join affiliate programmes to make money by promoting other people’s products.

Then, E-junkie might be the online merchant solution that you’re looking for. They allow you to create a shopping cart and/or ‘Buy Now’ buttons to sell downloadable products (such as software, ebooks, photos, etc) on your websites or blogs. Even MySpace, Craigslist, Facebook, and other sites. You can use various online payment systems such as Paypal, TrialPay, and Google Checkout, among others.

E-junkie has no transaction limit, no bandwidth limit, no setup fee and no transaction fee. However, they do charge a monthly subscription fee, depending on the number of products that you’re selling. Charges start from US$5/month (10 products, with 50MB allowance), up to $125/month (999 products, with 999MB).

Some of E-junkie’s features include (from the site):

• Easy to use, centrally managed service
• Digital storage & delivery for files & codes
• Supports multiple payment processors
• Copy-paste Buy Now and Shopping Cart buttons
• Supports variants for tangible products
• Shipping and packaging calculator
• Sales tax and VAT calculator
• Packaged products
• Inventory management
• Product promotion
• Discount codes
• Affiliate management
• Autoresponder, updates & newsletters
• Sales tracking, built in support for Google Analytics
• Customization
• Download link renewals
• Easy integration with 3rd party and custom services
• Logs & e-mail notifications
• Globalized
• … and more.

If you do not wish to sell any products, you can still make money from E-junkie by signing up as an affiliate in 2 ways:

1) Be an E-junkie Affiliate for Sellers. You can then promote E-junkie sellers’ products and earn commissions. One issue, I find, however with this, is that E-junkie doesn’t pay you your commission. You have to rely on the seller to pay you. And, if the seller doesn’t pay you, you have to go after the seller, as E-junkie doesn’t get involved in such affiliate transactions.

2) Be an E-junkie Affiliate. Promote E-junkie and recruit sellers & buyers in general. This particular programme is directly involved with E-junkie.

Of course, you can sign up for both types of affiliate programmes.

If you’re interested, Sign Up with E-junkie now. Then, tell me what you think of it!

If you’re already an E-junkie seller/affiliate, we’d love to get your feedback too.

Tags: affiliate, Affiliate Programs, Programs

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Over the past several months, I’ve found myself working on new projects and focusing my efforts elsewhere… and slightly moving away from what I know makes the most money and what I should be working on. It’s not completely a matter of being lazy… it’s more about where I would much rather spend my time, and lately, that’s been playing 2-4 hours of basketball several days a week. While it’s great to get out and occasionally set yourself apart from your business, you need to keep things in perspective, and do what’s necessary.

My average day is waking up sometime between 8am and 10am, then working on the computer till around 3pm. Around 3-4pm I usually head over to the gym and run basketball til around 6:30pm. If I don’t hit the gym up that day, then I will probably be working online til around 6… so the week evens out a bit.

It really is quite amazing how much time you can spend online, and how little work you can get done. Between keeping an eye on Twitter, chatting with others on AIM, looking at stats reports and going over new ideas… some days just fly by and it feels like you have accomplished nothing. All too often we hear from others, that they get so much more work done when they simply turn everything off and just work!

In addition to better time management, when you are focusing your full efforts on work, make sure you are working on what matters and what will actually make you money. I’m sure when you are spending time setting up new FaceBook campaigns, or setting up landing pages for a new ppc campaign, it’s probably not top priority on your list of fun things to do… but it will make you money and give you more time down the road to do whatever you want.

Not only am I possibly preaching to the choir, but I am also preaching to myself. I must better self manage my time and efforts in the right areas. I have a lot of ideas and project that I want to work on, and that have become half completed and “sitting” projects for months or even years. Focus your efforts on your main income producing ideas and you will succeed that much more.

Are you currently making money online, and know you could make “that much more” if you just started to focus your full efforts in one area… and not half ass everything?

Don’t forget to visit www.ZacJohnson.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

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One of the things I love to do is speak to a room full of people. I really enjoy it. Assuming I’m speaking about something I actually know about. :) So I talked with Dr. Ric Morgan, professional speaker who has over 35 years of experience speaking about how to be a professional speaker for a living.

Hey, this guy got paid $30k for an hour once. $30k!!!!!! He talks about that in the podcast below.

He gives us stories about how he got started speaking, and how you can too. He also offers very helpful and smart tips that you can use in your speaking presentations to make them better. This was a great interview and I really learned a lot from Dr. Ric. You will too. Enjoy.

Here are the show notes.

I wear yellow and black as “my” corporate colors
How do I get my first gig speaking today? Placed an ad in the paper. Who am I and why I can speak. Call me.
Join the national speakers association, don’t need an agent.
Get involved with Toastmasters.
Do you have to be dynamic to be a good speaker?
Never start with a joke, put it in the middle. Start with a line to get attention. Startling!
You’re the actor, writer, producer, director. Be prepared.
Over time you begin to gather material.
Take core messages and adjust it to a theme. Example: “Diving Into the Future”
How much can I expect to get paid?
Got paid 30k once for an hour.
Talk about 3 things. More than 3 things overwhelms the audience.
Speaking is a business. Run it like one.
Incorporate the expenses into the speaking fee before giving rate.
Get paid before you even leave for the event. No checks. Paypal payments are great.
Emergency speaking services. I’ll come last-minute to speak for you.
Never speak anywhere for free without a contract! It opens up legal issues.
What if it rains? Do I still get paid? Contract!
Can do smaller group meetings, many in one day.

Servant of Chaos tipped me about a VERY good, but long, video that talks about how Youtube was created and how it “exists” as a community. His post is called: YouTube and the Context of “Being Social”.

I’ve included the video below. I HIGHLY suggest you take an hour to watch it. I just did and it was fascinating to see how Youtube has grown and how people interact with it, and each other. There was a lot of other great thoughts and stats and ideas that came out of the presentation as well. Watch this.

As an anthropologist, Michael Wesch is providing a fascinating analysis of the shifts in society and culture that are already underway. In this video he shows how user generated content + user generated filtering + user generated distribution is reinventing the way in which we create, find and share branded and unbranded material via the web. This potent mix is ignited with a final piece, which Michael calls “user generated commentary” — ie blogs — however, I feel this is better represented as user generated CONTEXT. When blog authors share content with their readers, they create a context into which the content becomes more accessible and digestible for their particular audience. It is this final piece which is an essential part of any digital strategy.

There’s a new affiliate forum that has launched at Affspot.com. It’s being run by friend Sam Harrelson with support by a bunch of other highly credible affiliate marketers who have years of experience in the industry.

Here’s my video talking about it. Shawn Collins has another post about it here.

Why have another forum? Why now? Well, here’s a video of Sam talking about it.

DirectTrack has been the powerhouse management software behind many successful affiliate networks since 1997. The software now powers over 300 ad networks and serves over 12.5 BILLION ads each month. With such a strong following and numbers crushing any competition in management software, why have some affiliates and networks moved away from the DirectTrack system. Let’s take a look at a few of the networks currently running off DirectTrack, which networks have their own platforms and other opinions of DirectTrack in the affiliate space.

First, let’s take a look at a number of well known affiliate networks currently running off the DirectTrack system.

MarketLeverage	Rextopia
Copeac	ClickBooth
CPA Empire	OfferForge

As you can see from the list above, some of the best networks out there are currently using DirectTrack to manage their company. With such a following of networks running the DirectTrack system, it not only makes it convient for networks to swap and share offers between each other and manage their own system, but it also cuts down the learning curve for new affiliates. As affiliates join any of these networks, and learn the system, they will have a good understanding of how to run all the same reports and processes across other DirectTrack run networks.

In addition to networks running off the DirectTrack system, let’s note some big networks which took their management systems into their own hands.

NeverBlueAds	HydraNetwork
Advaliant	RocketProfit
PepperJam	AzoogleAds

A comparison between the two lists, clearly shows that running your network with DirectTrack or with your own management system, it will not “make or break” your network. In both lists we see some of the best and largest affiliate networks out there. Now let’s take a look at some of the PROS and CONS to running your network off DirectTrack vs. a custom backend.

PROS to Using DirectTrack:
- From a network standpoint, the ability to go live and setup your own network is relatively “cheap” ($10k+ area) and everything is already available to you.
- The DirectTrack affiliate interface has become somewhat of a standard among affiliates to get used to.
- Limitations on customizations for your own network.

CONS to Using DirectTrack:
- Once you login to a network using the DirectTrack system, it’s pretty obvious. While some networks have done a lot more than others to make it look custom, it’s always easy to tell which are running the DirectTrack system.
- SUBID tracking is poor and annoying. Instead of having to submit a sub id, click submit then get a new code, you should have the ability to just enter a sub id and it will go at the end of the url. Many networks not running DirectTrack (like NeverBlueAds and Hydra Network), make SUBID tracking very simple.
- Usually when a network is run off their own management system, they will have a lot more to offer. Better tracking options, reports/charts and offer layouts.
- Self reliant on the DirectTrack system, while paying their monthly hosting/management costs.
- Others have discussed their complaints around the internet on Direct Track as well.

Whether you like DirectTrack, or hate them… they are one of the prime reasons why there are so many affiliate networks today. Never before was it so easy to throw some cash together and have the ability to go live with your own affiliate network. Since their release of the software in the late 90s, the company has since teamed up Digital River and continues to power a great majority of ad networks today.

I laid out the foundation, but I want to hear your opinion. What are your thoughts and comments on the DirectTrack system and networks running it?

[This post is covering part one of the “Five Reasons Your Affiliate Program Sucks” series, and is focusing on “Networks Running Off DirectTrack“.]

Don’t forget to visit www.ZacJohnson.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

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Hi, there. This is just a quick reminder to vote in our poll of the month, if you haven’t done so yet. It’s all about the affiliate program that you use the most (or your most favourite).

Will be closing the poll in the next few days. After closing, I’ll be collating the data and sharing the results.

Tags: Affiliate Programs, polls

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