It is no secret that I really like Advaliant and everything they are about. I got the chance to interview Mr. Jivan Manhas, who is the President of Advaliant. Here is a little background info taken from Advaliant.com:

“Jivan Manhas is a Founder, and President of Advaliant, Inc., MediaTrust’s performance affiliate network. Both a seasoned executive and experienced entrepreneur, Mr. Manhas possesses diverse business experience, a fundamental understanding of how to leverage cutting-edge technologies within online media, and valuable strategic and operational experience in creating new ventures. Prior to co-founding Advaliant, Mr. Manhas was a co-founder of three Internet consulting companies, ViaCentrix, Digital Bytes and Consultica.“

Thanks again to Mr. Manhas, and my AM Geofferson for helping me get this set up!

Could you explain what initially got you started in the affiliate marketing business?
[Manhas] In late ’98 I was hired as the ecommerce Marketing Manager for a company called MGI Software based in Toronto.  As part of my responsibilities, I was to look into the best affiliate marketing program to partner up with and the two main choices were Commission Junction and Be Free.  As I started doing my research into this relatively young online marketing method it peaked my curiosity and interest in the field.
 
What do you think sets Advaliant apart from the rest of the CPA networks out there?
[Manhas] Besides the usual jargon espoused by most other networks (high payouts, timely payments, etc.) we really pride ourselves on making honesty, integrity and great customer service a part of our company culture.  As one of our team members likes to say, “ask us why we’re the same and you’ll understand why we’re different.”
 
Were you surprised at all by winning Best Affiliate Marketing Campaign of 2007 at ad:Tech San Francisco last year?
[Manhas] We were confident that we had built a strong campaign with Playphone but we were up against a number of brands that had been in the marketplace longer than Advaliant and Playphone so making top three for us was a great achievement.  Winning was amazing and validated the approach we take with our advertisers which is centered around long term relationships built upon honesty, integrity and very much of an agency approach.  Our approach with advertisers is to work with them to make their campaign as successful as possible within the Advaliant affiliate network.  That includes using our experience as well as affiliate feedback and our technology to make their campaign not only successful for the advertiser but for our affiliates and publishers as well.   We worked very closely with Playphone to understand their long term strategic business goals and built a program to help them achieve them.  Winning the Best Affiliate Marketing Campaign of 2007 was a great validation of our core strengths of building relationships based upon honesty and integrity in helping our clients achieve their goals. 
 

I have heard of a new tracking system being released for Advaliant soon, could you explain more about it?
[Manhas] Without giving away too much detail (we need to keep some things a surprise for the launch), we are currently developing out a new Advaliant affiliate marketing technology that will put us in a leadership position amongst performance marketing networks.  We are taking advantage of various different social feature sets, semantic A.I. programming as well as a large amount of feedback from our affiliates and advertisers to build out a cutting edge, industry leading technology that will allow us to evolve into the premier online brand for performance marketing.  I realize that is a bold statement but unfortunately affiliate marketing is seen as the ugly step child of the marketing world by many companies and if we want to survive as an industry we all need to take our industry up a few notches and start attracting the big dollars from the Fortune 100 companies.  This is our intent and as we continue to grow as an organization we’ve been fortunate enough to attract some top industry talent which will allow us grow our network in a direction that is consistent with our core beliefs.
 
From a CEO’s standpoint, where do you see affiliate marketing in 5 years?
[Manhas] As stated earlier, the industry as a whole needs to evolve and grow beyond where it is today.  I believe a handful of performance networks will have positioned themselves as Tier 1 brand networks to attract the Fortune 100 ad budgets, will rule the industry.  These networks will be more than just CPA networks and will have integrated ecosystems that offer various performance services across various different platforms such as web, search video, WAP, as well as offline.  More importantly, these networks will have taken a very professional,  ethical and transparent approach to  the way they do business and will also incorporate a strong “human element” into their business model to ensure their clients get the best service possible.  Those networks that do not have proprietary technology with strong professional and creative services teams will either have gone out of business, or fight over a smaller piece of the CPA pie.  I also believe some of the larger agencies will start acquiring some of the more successful performance networks over the course of the next few years in order to compete in the digital marketplace.  Keep in mind that even though performance or affiliate marketing has been around for quite a few years, it has never been the “hot” buzzword amongst venture capitalists and once it does, it will result in a lot of investment money coming into our space, a wave of consolidation and as stated above, a lift for the entire industry in a positive way.  Those with the bigger vision will build the bigger networks, bigger brands and become the industry leaders.

If you are not with Advaliant yet, get signed up! Click on one of the banners/links here and I will help you get approved ASAP.

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Popularity: 100% [?]

In all honesty, I am no programmer…no designer what so ever! I know how to edit my landing pages in Dreamweaver, and crop photos in Photoshop Elements (The very first version…..LOL). I am saying this because I want to start a blog network, and am wondering if you guys think I am nuts….

It is going to be a huge project for me, and I have been planning it for a few months. The entire network will be housed under a company I am starting, Bernie Media LLC. The thing that worries me the most is the content, as for the first 30 days I am going to build the content myself on each blog. I said this was a huge project, but it is only huge on my end, there will only be 5 blogs in the network, all in the typical niches you would see. Sports, tech, celebrity, clothing/fashion, and SEO. So really it is a very small blog network. Hopefully one day, I would break out into smaller more targeted niches.

I will be using Wordpress as my blogging platform, and Dreamhost as my server hosting. I am thinking for the first month, use one of Dreamhost’s new features called Dreamhost PS. Visit www.dreamhostps.com for more info on that.

As far as ads go, I am going to go with Pepperjam, Advaliant, and Adsense for all my ads. I am going to use Rubicon to sell all my unsold inventory. The Rubicon Project is an amazing service, and it is making things for me 100% easier!

Am I going with a custom designed theme? No, however a variety of premium magazine style themes. Advertising for the first month will be limited to $500 per blog, and am thinking of going with Enhance for $.03 clicks, along with all the free social media. Submitting to digg, stumble, all of em’.

So tell me what you think. Is the network to small? Am I doing something wrong?

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Popularity: 86% [?]

I love contests, and I have been reading alot about how people think these contests are a waste of time. Why? People are giving things away, writing a blog post about it will take like 15 minutes and it is free stuff!

Anyways, there is a forum merger taking place! Webmaster-talk.com and Earnersforums.com are merging, and to celebrate this merger they are holding an insane contest worth $25,000!

Here is what 5 lucky winners will receive:

1. A beautiful new Macbook Air laptop from ClickBooth valued at $1,800.00!

2. A Copy of Interspire Shopping Cart (Professional Edition) valued at $995!

3. $500 cash in a Max Bounty affiliate network account awaits you!

4. Another $500 in the form of a Text Link Ads gift certificate should help with your marketing efforts!

5. How about another Apple product, the iPod Touch from Rocket Profit….wow!

6. Another $250 cash in a Pepperjam Network account will make you smile!

7. Sure would be nice to have some custom T-shirts printed for your headline website, right? Well, Ndesigns is going to do that for you! This is 24 Custom Printed Shirts (color T’s, 3-4 color printing, one-sided).

8. The hottest new camera for blogging, The Flip, is provided by Advaliant!

9. Speaking of blogs, the MOST AMAZING paid theme ever is now yours from Revolution Theme and it isn’t just one, but the complete multi-pack!

10. To help you relax that hard working brain of yours, we close the package out with a Nintendo DS Lite from RevResponse!

Popularity: 96% [?]

I recently got the chance to interview Gyutae Park of WinningTheWeb.com. His blog is great, and he is a really smart marketer. You may remember his last contest which was insane! Tons of prizes were given away and the total of all the stuff given away was almost $15,000. Thanks again to Gyutae for doing this interview!

 What initially got you started in blogging?
[Gyutae] I’ve always enjoyed the concept of blogging and started on the web in the mid 90’s through Geocities and Angelfire pages (remember those?).  I later moved on to things like Xanga and Blogspot, although I never really monetized anything until about 4 years ago.  Winning the Web was started in October of 2007 as a means for me to share some of my experiences in Internet marketing and SEO.  Of course I can’t say that I’m not doing it for the money, but I really do enjoy it and am in it for the long haul.

What got me started?  Some knowledge about a topic that I’m passionate about and a drive to succeed.  That’s really all that’s needed to grow a blog.  Everything else you can learn along the way.
 

How long have you been a professional SEO?
[Gyutae] Technically I’ve been involved in SEO since I started my first real website in 2004, Drum Set Connect.  The main way for me to gain traffic back then was through SEO so I spent countless hours optimizing and building links for the site.  It’s definitely paid off as I’m now ranking pretty well for some competitive keywords.

I later got a job as an SEO for a big collectibles firm and am now an SEO for a top 10 SEO agency in New York City.

So to answer your question, I’ve been involved in SEO for quite some time now but have been consulting “professionally” for the past 2 years.

I read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book back when it was an ebook and that helped me tremendously to get started in the industry.  I recommend everyone sign up.
 

You hold many contests at Winning The Web, how has this last contest helped your blog?
[Gyutae] Contests are great for increasing your readership and attracting people to your blog.  The last contest that I held, labeled as the Craziest Internet Marketing Contest You’ve Ever Seen has seen tremendous success - almost to the point where it was all very overwhelming.  I doubled my RSS subscriber readership to over 850 and gained some new fans and supporters in the process.

One word of advice to everyone thinking of running a blog contest. A contest is only a form of marketing and you still need great content to make people want to stay on for the long haul.
 

Are you into affiliate marketing at all?
[Gyutae] I’ve dabbled in PPC affiliate marketing but haven’t really hit my jackpot yet.  I still test some offers and landing pages now and then but my main focus is really SEO and building lasting online real estate that provides value to the end users.
 

Could you explain more about your company, Teaguy Media?
[Gyutae] Teaguy is simply a anagram for my first name Gyutae.  The company exists only to house all of my web properties.
 

Any big plans for Teaguy Media?
[Gyutae] A lot of new projects on the way that I’m very excited about.  If you’re interested, be sure to subscribe to the Winning the Web RSS feed.  I’ll be announcing future releases on there.
 

In your opinion, what is the best way to jump start a blog? Major advertising, contests, buying reviews?
[Gyutae] In order to jump start a blog, you really have to have your content down first.  Focus on creating quality articles that provide value to readers.  This in itself will attract links and people to the blog organically.  Once you have that foundation down I recommend you invest in blog reviews on the biggest influencer sites in your niche.

Other than that, network with other bloggers and help others.  It’s much easier to be noticed if you have a large network of supporters.

Thanks again Mr. Park for taking the time out to do this interview. If you haven’t heard of Winning The Web yet, run over and subscribe! Very useful information every day!

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Popularity: 88% [?]

I remember back when I started affiliate marketing, there were no huge blogs about how to get started in affiliate marketing, what to do etc. Basically, I just guessed on everything and if it worked I kept doing it if not I stopped.

Along the way I have noticed one thing, smaller less popular affiliate networks actually want your business. They actually want you to make money because if you don’t make money neither do they. They are more willing to help! I think this is why I like Advaliant so much, they are a decent sized network and treat all their affiliates the same big or small!

I know it sounds like I am an idiot here, larger networks want your business too, but they don’t really NEED a brand new affiliate. They have plenty of super affiliates who are making them plenty of money, and are going to keep making them plenty of money.

So here is some simple advice, if you are struggling getting into affiliate marketing, and want some help and support from your affiliate network, sign up with the smaller networks! They usually only have one or two AM’s who actually know what they are talking about, and are actually affiliate marketers themselves. Networks like Azoogle and Neverblue have a ton of affiliates and a good bit of managers, who may or may not know anything about what they are talking about! You don’t get a “good” manager usually on these type of networks until you are cranking in big money!

 So if you want to sign up with a smaller network, try out:

Adreporting.com

Linkvalu.com

Fluxads.com

Three great networks that have alot of great unique offers that no one else has!

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Popularity: 33% [?]

Been slacking on posts again, however am at a loss right now as to what to write about. Tell me what you would like to see! Who would you like to see interviewed? I have a few more great interviews lined up with some very cool people! Very excited to get those posted next week!

I won something in the insane Winning The Web contest. Three months of free advertising(worth $100) on AndyBeard.eu, an amazing internet marketing blog! Everyone should def. check out his blog, some great content.

I am going to attempt to start a blog network, and just registered the domains yesterday and got Wordpress 2.5 installed on all the domains. Thankfully, Dreamhost has 1 click installs. I will start posting alot about building that company, however right now it is in its very early stages! If you are a blogger and are interested in blogging for the network in the future, visit the contact page and send me some samples of your work and what topics you enjoy blogging about.

Advertising is available, so visit the advertising page for pricing and if you are interested contact me! 

All for now…

Popularity: 30% [?]

I came across a new search engine beta. I signed up just to check it out, and wow this search engine is really cool. It is called SearchMe Visual search. It is such an original idea, and works great. Check out this screenshot:

You scroll through the search results really similarly to an ipod touch or an iPhone. There are alot of other features that are similar to google, such as a blog search option and a children safe feature.

SearchMe.com is still in Beta, and they are accepting everyone into their beta, as it is just instant approval. Obviously no one will take out Google, but at least SearchMe is something different and unique, and not just the same thing over and over with a different logo….

Check SearchMe out and tell me what you think!

Popularity: 31% [?]

Blogs are everywhere, and aren’t going away anytime soon. My question to those who currently aren’t blogging is, what are you waiting for? Why don’t you have a blog?

Blogs are more than just a place where you can “express” your thoughts about what you do or pretty much anything. They are something that is now essential for your business. Even if your business is offline, having a blog to update certain specials or deals going on within your business can help a great deal. If you are an affiliate marketer, having a blog really helps with networks finding you. The only reason I started this blog was because I always wanted to own my name in a domain name. I wasn’t using it so I just decided to throw wordpress on it. Even though this blog is not that popular, I still enjoy blogging and it gives me something to do in-between building/modifying campaigns.

A few months back, I interviewed Jim Kukral, and I love this quote by him:

“Do you think blogging is having a good effect on internet marketing?
[Jim] Absolutely. I’ve been blogging since 2001, and I’ve seen it grow from a handful of grass roots bloggers, to millions of people using it. Blogs have become a must strategy when discussing a successful internet marketing campaign. Frankly, if you don’t have a blog now, people are going to wonder why not. It wasn’t that way a few years ago.“

So why don’t you have a blog? You have a Facebook/Myspace, what is holding you back?

Popularity: 35% [?]

Tracking202 is amazing. I just interviewed their CEO, Wes, and use their free PPC affiliate tracking tool on all my campaigns now. I remember there was alot of talk going around that the only reason they created the software was to steal everyones data and become billionaires. This is not the case! Even “if” they took your data, I mean do you really think two people are going to dent your stack? Doubt it. On top of that, their servers are top of the line and if you check out their blog you can see them actually taking the servers to the data center and installing them. (I do however understand that some people just don’t want to put their data out there, or simply don’t trust anyone elses servers but their own, and that’s fine.) Also, I must say the support is amazing and I find myself bothering the hell out of them with questions, and they dont seem to mind. Even if for some rare strange reason I can’t get ahold of them, I can always post on the their affiliate marketing forum.

Besides Tracking202, they have some amazing new stuff coming out so subscribe to their  affiliate marketing blog so you stay up to date. AND they just released Export202that is now in Beta. This tool is great! You can take a campaign from Adwords and then import it into adCenter or Yahoo. Should save a ton of time and be a great tool for scaling campaigns.

Anyways, the point of this post is to tell you about a great contest they are running. You can win a Nintendo Wii, and a fresh Tracking202 t-shirt. All you have to do is write a blog post about the contest and you get your entry!

Here are the rules taken straight from the post:

RULES

1. The contest is only valid if we get 100 or more linkbacks aka participants.

2. Contest will end at Midnight PST on April 15th, 2008 (Tax Day). Winner will be announced within a week. IF for any reason we do not reach our goal of 100+ participants due to the short contest date, we may extend this to give more people a chance to enter but we may not so don’t count on this.

3. You must complete the requirement for the Bonus entries to count (more on bonus entries below).

4. Contest is open to everyone WorldWide so we’ll ship anywhere. However if there is a duty fee or tax fee for your country if you live outside of the US, you’re on your own. We will ship it as a gift in situations such as this and help alleviate any fees you might have to pay as much as possible.

And, here are the official requirements to enter the contest:

REQUIREMENTS

1. All you have to do is write a short blog post about this blog contest describing as best as you can the rules and requirements and the prize giveaway. The review must be a minimum of 250 words which isn’t hard if you include these rules. You must link to our homepage using the anchor text Free PPC Affiliate Tracking Tool, our blog using the anchor text Affiliate Marketing Blog, our blog contest using the anchor text Free Nintendo Wii, and our forum using the anchor text Affiliate Marketing Forum as shown here. Be creative on what you have to say. Do this and you’ll automatically get 5 entries to the prize drawing. Once you’ve completed the above, leave a comment on this blog entry with a URL to your post so we can verify your entry (this is important otherwise you will not get credit for the drawing; do not email us or send us the link on AIM).

2. Your blog must be at least 90 days old and have a minimum of 30 blog posts at the time of this contest. If you do not meet this requirement, we’re sorry, you can not participate. The main reason for this rule is because we want to weed out people making extra blogs just to get extra entries and we feel it’s only fair to link to those who have been active with their blogs. If you fall under this category but feel you should be qualified to enter, shoot me an email at steven@tracking202.com or contact me on AIM at T202Stevenand I will review over it with you. We will be checking whois to verify domain age as well.

Plus, there are a few ways to get yourself some bonus entries. Here they are taken straight from the post:

BONUS ENTRIES

You can earn bonus entries to increase your chance of winning. Here are some ways you can get additional entries:

1. If you were one of the people who signed up for Tracking202 early on prior to this contest and have been “ACTIVE”, you automatically get a bonus entry in our appreciation for being a user. This is merely a way for us to thank those who put faith in our services. (Keep in mind all bonus entries are only valid if you follow the requirements above; please contact me if you’ve entered with your blog so I can verify your username and bonus entry).

2. If you subscribe to our newsletter, blog RSS, or Stumble, Reddit, and Digg our site, we will add 2 additional entry for each of those earning you potentially 10 bonus entries. Just send us a screenshot proving your RSS subscription (feed and/or email), Stumble, Reddit, and Digg (and email us your user name for each) and the email used for verification of newsletter subscription, and you’ll get your additional entries. If you are already subscribed, we’ll count those entries too (If you unsubscribe, the entry goes away; please send all screenshot, emails, etc to steven@tracking202.com ).

3. Leave a comment! Please note leaving your post URL and following the above contest rules do not apply. By leaving an actual blog comment, we will include 1 extra free entry to the drawing as a bonus. Multiple comments will not earn you multiple extra entries.

There are some great blog contests running online right now, so write up a post and enter!

Popularity: 40% [?]

The contests over at WinningTheWeb.com just keep getting better and better. This time, Gyutae is really pulling out the big guns. He is running what he calls the “Craziest Internet Marketing You’ve Ever Seen“, and it sure is a big one. He is giving away $5348 in cash and prizes. Taken straight from the blog, here are the prizes you can win:

Prizes Recap - $5,348 Total

• $650 Cash from Azoogle Ads
• $500 Cash from PepperJam Network
• $250 Cash from NeverblueAds
• $200 Cash from BidVertiser
• 1 Full Conference Pass to Affiliate Summit East ($949 value)
• 3 Month Membership to Aaron Wall’s SEO Training Program ($300 value)
• 6 Month Membership to SEOmoz Pro ($249 value)
• 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan from Purple Internet Marketing ($800 value)
• Autographed Copy of Kris’ Jones Upcoming Book on SEO ($20 value)
• 8 PSD Custom Banner Designs from Banners Mall ($275 value)
• 2 Exclusive Blog Themes from Unique Blog Designs (2 winners - $100 value each)
• 2 Revolution Wordpress Blog Themes from Brian Gardner (2 winners -$80 value each)
• 1 Year Swamp Plan Web Hosting from Host Gator ($150 value)
• 1 Hour Blog Optimization Consulting from Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips ($175 value)
• 3 Month 125×125 Banner Ad on AndyBeard.eu ($100 value)
• 1 Month Text Link Ad on Ades Blog ($90 value)
• 1 Paid Review on Winning the Web - sponsored by 1 Cool File ($100 value)
• 20 Winning the Web T-shirts (20 winners - $9 value each)

Very nice stuff eh? also taken straight from the post, here is how you can enter:

How to Gain Entries

• Sign up for the mailing list (required) - 1 entry
• Blog about this contest and link to this post - 10 entries
• Every 5 comments on WTW (now until March 31 with 5 comments per day limit) - 1 entry
• Subscribe to the feed and stay tuned for more opportunities to gain entries

There are a total of 39 prizes, plus 20 winners get a free t-shirt with the most entries. One catch is you must be a member of some of the sponsors products. For instance, if you want to win the $650 from Azoogle, you have to be a registered publisher. Personally I was one of the winners of the contest with him and Tyler Cruz, so lets hope my luck continues!

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Popularity: 38% [?]