As web publishers, many of us sink our teeth into tasty affiliate offers only to find they’re not the perfect fit for our audience. The network we’re on may give us a demographic but if we don’t create leads, then we’re out of the game, so to speak. Motive Interactive created an affiliate network that takes a lot of the guesswork out of which offer to push and which we should just pass over. The Advent 2.0 system was developed from the ground up to keep up with industry changes and publisher friendliness.

The Advent 2.0 Interface

When you log into your Motive Interactive account, you’ll be introduced to many of the publisher offers through a spotlight feature. You’ll also notice the graph showing your account’s performance metrics, like the number of clicks, conversions, the rate at which you convert, and more, like the amount of revenue you’ve earned to date.

The site breaks down the offers so you can search for four different types like CPA, CPL, CPS, and CPS%. Each offer has an associated distribution type, like email or banner ads. By narrowing down your search criteria you can find the offer that works for your method of affiliate marketing. This means less of a time sink for finding those ads that work for you, and more time generating leads and creating revenue.

The Advent 2.0 dashboard greets you with a lot of AJAX, allowing for on-screen changes and quick searches of existing offers. The affiliate network really shines with the various tracking features. I would say the campaigns should be broken down into user-generated campaigns. If I push a product through my emailed newsletter then I would want to see specific performance metrics related to that campaign. Right now the system only allows for an overall view of every campaign you run. This waters down the feature somewhat, but for those interested in only doing one type of campaign, like banner ads, then this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Reporting Features

The reporting features gives you what you would expect. You can select a specific time period to view the conversions, and you can narrow down the results to the different types of offers you’re running. Although the same limitations on custom campaigns exist here too. The reports can be downloaded in Excel format with the click of a button. It’s a nice feature many publishers would probably use frequently.

Referral Program

Motive Interactive’s referral earnings program is 5.5% lifetimes referral earnings. That’s a pretty good chunk if you happen to refer someone who makes a decent amount through the network. Imagine sending 20 people who each make around a $100 a month. That could add up month after month. You have to remain active as a publisher with no lapse greater than 12 calendar months to continue receiving your referral income. The referral system is accompanied by the rewards program they have in place as well.

The rewards program gives users a tiered bonus type of reward system, similar to the one Amazon affiliates enjoy. The rewards program pays out according to how well you do within their system. The tiers are based on how well you’re doing with their offers and the like. So if you want to make more of an impact, you’ll push their offers more. The tiers for the reward program look like the following:

Commissions – Rewards
$1,000 – $10
$2,500 – $25
$5,000 – $50
$10,000 – $100
$15,000 – $150
$20,000 – $200
$25,000 – $250
$30,000 – $300
$50,000 – $500
$100,000 – $1,250
$150,000 – $2,000
$200,000 – $3,000
$500,000 – $10,000
$1,000,000 – $20,000
$1,250,000 – $25,000

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and work towards that 25K reward!

Conclusions

Overall the Motive Interactive Advent 2.0 site offers publishers and marketers a great place to find decent types of offers. The site caters to publishers of many types, like those who may own a good email list or website. Every user has access to slick features, like the stat tracking and decent reporting. What about the payout? You can choose to receive payment through a number of methods, including check, bank wire or Paypal. They pay out after you’ve earned $50, which isn’t too bad and shouldn’t be too hard with the number of offers they have available to each and every publisher. If you’re interested in trying out a new affiliate network, then I suggest you watch the video that follows. It should help to give a good view of the network and introduce you to Advent 2.0.

Motive Interactive: Advent 2.0 Review from Jason Boom dot com

The NESW Sports site claims to be the best sports news anywhere. A very, very bold tagline. Their browser title says The Best Sports Videos, which is maybe a little more apt. I’m no ESPN jockey, but they do some fairly serious reporting. My first bit of advice for the owner would be to cut the hyperbole and get down to the nitty-gritty — what does the blog provide? (Sports Videos from Every Direction — just an idea.)

The NESW Sports site does provide sports videos with a bit of historic background. The current post (as of writing this) shows the Carl Lewis National Anthem from 1993. The bit of text leading into the video provides a clear idea of what you’re about to see. Each post has a relaxed and informative feel to it, which will help gain readers and with search engines ranking.

There’s no archive in the sidebar, but it appears, according to Alexa, the site’s been around since March of this year. Since that time the site has been posting sports videos, or videos related to the sports world on at least a daily basis, if not two or three times a day. This is no small achievement, and fans of the blog should high five the blogger. Keep it up.

Template and Layout Problems

I would say there are some problems with the appearance of the blog, mainly due to the header. The image in the header doesn’t look right. It should cover the whole of the page or at least be balanced with an RSS subscription callout or something to the right, and the main banner should not look like a scanned in photo. The Live banner below the header image appears to be the secondary title of the site. Not a good thing by any measure. There’s also some prime real estate on the right side of the blog being used by…white space.

You’ll also notice the post title scrunched up to the Join Now banner. It’s hardly noticeable with no margin. Pull the ad, or give it a margin, then people will see the post title much more clearly. The navigation does quite well on the right. There’s quick access to subscribe to the feed, recent posts, and categories. The only thing missing is the archive.

The RSS feed is supported by Feedburner and includes the option to sign up via email. It shows the videos perfectly inside the feed, so A+ in that respect.

Does All This Negative Talk Mean the Site Sucks?

Not at all. The site has really good content. If the header were to be cleaned up, some key advertising moved around, and a few navigation elements added, then the blog would be really, very nice. Could it use some professional design touches? Absolutely.

I would start with the header and work my way down. The majority of the design flaws on the site could be fixed in a matter of an hour or two. The more laborious things would be sorting out the main header with advertisements.

All in all I would say the site’s a good one, but could use some tweaking. The right changes and with the current content, the site will definitely pick up readers and continue to move forward.

Powderkeg Review: The NESW Sports Site from Jason Boom dot com

I recently bought a Microsoft Zune. I know what you’re thinking, why? Well, maybe not. I bought the Zune for research. I had an article to write about connecting the Zune to other applications. Of course, to do the work I bought the device. I’ve been very pleased with it so far. The best part of the Zune? I can carry podcasts with me wherever I go. To facilitate my thirst for fresh, exciting podcasts I’ve turned to the topic of today’s Powder Keg Review, PodcastKicks.com.

What is Podcast Kicks.com?

I received an email from a friend, Si Philps, a little while ago. He’s been hard at work creating PodcastKicks.com. Some of you may remember Si from his comments on this blog or the fact he’s helped me fix some troublesome issues throughout the life of my blog. Either way, when he told me he built a site, I fired up his site and started playing around with it.

Podcast Kicks allows users to create submissions for their favorite podcasts. It’s a community driven site similar to Digg, in that each user can “Tune In” to a podcast, effectively kicking it up. The more kicks a podcast receives, the higher it goes towards the site’s frontpage.

The Site Features

The site has many features common to community driven sites. As a user, you can post a link to your podcast, and watch as you rise in the ranks as more and more people listen to your podcast. The site holds a lot of promise for those looking to introduce their podcast to a wider audience and for the aural podcast junkie like me.

The site does differ from Digg though, as a listener might spend 10 to 60 minutes listening to a podcast. If they’re ADD they may forget to come back and vote up the podcast. It’d be good to see voting capabilities directly on the podcast owner’s blog or website, as well as a custom podcast player with built in Kicking ability. Of course, these are just ideas to keep listeners voting.

Everyone should go check out PodcastKicks.com! Give the site some love, links, posts, stumbles, diggs, or sign up and use the service. If you have any suggestions for the site, leave them in the comments.

Powder Keg Review: PodcastKicks.com from Jason Boom dot com

What better way to come back from a reprieve than with a Powder Keg Review? So without further ado, I give you the Small Fish Big Money site.

SFBM owner, Fabien, wrote a dazzling review of the Jason Boom.com site a while back. Damien’s blog takes him to many different topics, discussing money making strategies, blog writing, web design, and more.

“Entrepeneurship, Writing, Blogging, and Web Design” is his tag line. He writes in-depth reviews of utilities and blogging methods for the everyday user. Oh, and did I mention he’s 16? That’s right. A pup in the eyes of the world, but a big dog when it comes to blogging.

A Taste of SFBM

Fabien has written some top notch material over his blogs lifespan. He captured my attention with his post titled 5 1/2 Writing Tips on Good Writing. I’m not sure how you get half a tip, but the fundamentals resounded. He’s a quality writer, with content to back it up.

If you want money making content, he shows you some sites to make money writing articles, divulges information on pay per click providers, and also info on pay per action services.

The Design

The design fits the SFBM site. You would expect a site about fish to be a sea blue color. The sketched logo also fits well. The large header of the site pulls the readers attention to important parts of the site, like the RSS subscription and the free eBook. You only need to sign up to receive your free copy.

I love seeing free ebooks on sites, as I know it takes quite a bit of time and energy to build this kind of content. It shows dedication. The Terrific Traffic ebook features some useful information for newbies and online professionals. Fabien talks about resources that can help build your site’s traffic, and also features content focused on public relations. It’s a good read, and best of all it’s free. What’s not to like about that?

Conclusion

Fabien puts a lot of energy into his content. He’s always providing useful information for internet marketers, bloggers, and professionals. What’s not to like? The kid has a bright future. Help him out by visiting his site and subscribing to his feed.

Powder Keg Review: Small Fish Big Money Site from Jason Boom dot com

This edition of the Powder Keg Review series examines the impNERD web site’s explosiveness. The name for the site makes me think of little green men running around with black framed glasses. After reviewing the About page, I realized “imp” is an acronym for “Internet Marketing and Publishing.” So you won’t be getting your hands on little impish men, but on some quality Internet Marketing and Publishing content.

Gary Hess runs the impNERD site. The archives date back to October 2005, but Gary didn’t start blogging prolifically until September of 2007. Since then, the posts have focused on information any blogger or website owner should know about. The content contains helpful information on using Wordpress, monetizing your site, joining affiliate networks, and the ins-and-outs of social networks. It’s packed full of content relevant to today’s bloggers. From the latest post, it appears Gary will be reining in the posts published per week to focus attention on marketing the blog, and to give each post a chance to breath. Not a bad idea at all.

The impNERD site houses Wordpress plugins as well. Gary gives back to the WP community through his unique creations. He offers the following plugins on his site:

1. Keyword Snatcher
2. Random Ads
3. Featured Posts
4. SEO Tip of the Day

I’m planning to install the Keyword Snatcher plugin. It shows you the keyword density of any article inside the administrative area of Wordpress. This a great tool for SEO writing itself. The best part — it’s free. The other plugins look good as well. I encourage you to check them out for your own blogs.

The Layout
I like the subtle grays and the easy-to-read site text. impNERD also makes good use of their own creation — the Feature plugin — on the frontpage, which right now illuminates the Keyword Snatcher plugin. The wide adspace along the right compliments the two columns below. This valuable ad space should be a steal for the price he’s asking. Be sure to grab the $15 dollar spot for quality exposure.

I especially like the header where you can find more information about impNERD, see the popular posts on the site, view the available Wordpress plugins, and subscribe to the blog. I only have one complaint. I could not find the search feature. I wanted to search for a keyword to see if anything was written about the topic, but couldn’t find it. I think this is crucial to blogs as they grow in size. The more content we have — the more options we should offer to find that content.

Conclusion
I think it’s safe to say the impNERD site will continue to grow with quality content for bloggers, site owners, and affiliates. Gary’s contributions to the WP community, his insightful commentary on social media, Internet marketing, and web development should carry the site through the coming months and years. I have subscribed to his feed. How about you?

Powder Keg Review: The impNERD Website from Jason Boom dot com

This edition of the Powder Keg Review series looks at the Yimto Affiliate Marketing Blog.

I actually have a little history with this blog. I ran across it before my own blog came into creation. The Big Bang was yet a twinkle in the Blogosphere’s eye. What captured my attention with Tim, the creator of Yimto, was his honesty on his about page. He details his story from University student to marketing journeyman.

The Yimto Story
Tim knows affiliate marketing. He details the relevant services on the market, including those that have been around for a while, for us beginners. He constantly shares with his readers the new information he learns along his journey to financial independence. For instance, he recently talked about an affiliate marketing ebook, and I walked away from the review feeling like he explained its benefits clearly.

His posts have a candor not common to Internet marketing blogs. He tells you straight up he might not be the best at certain practices, but he’s learning. He captures the journeyman voice quite well. And his posts somehow carry an authority to them, even though he claims to only be learning. I think he balances teaching and learning quite well in his posts.

The Yimto Site
The site utilizes a two column right sidebar layout. The theme, while minimal, presents the information quite well. I love the stylish logo, the dark tone, and the easy to read text. The whole theme works, down to the sparse use of widgets in the sidebar to the curling vegetation at either end of the inner column.

Like many bloggers, Tim is very active in blog communities like Entrecard, MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog. The Yimto site sports widgets from these blogging communities.

The Yimto site lacks one thing, though. Ads. There are none on the site. You will find the Entrecard widget on his site, but no advertising, not even Adsense. I’m surprised — pleasantly, of course — as most affiliate marketers riddle their site with ads.

Yimto Reviews
If you visit Yimto, then you know he does reviews on sites and ebooks relevant to affiliate marketers. While many sites claim to give valid reviews of ebooks, I have a feeling that Yimto’s reviews carry more than just the slapped on sticker value. For instance, only one ebook had a rating of “Golden Opportunity.”

One ebook review fell into the lowest category — in the red. Before too long, I imagine more ebooks will find their way to that bottom category. (Maybe that’s my cynical outlook on marketing ebooks though.) I can rest assured that Yimto’s take on a specific affiliate marketing method will be honest, and not an attempt to drain my wallet for a quick buck.

Conclusion
I jumped over to Technorati after seeing Yimto’s authority listed on his site. He has a whopping 351 at the time of writing this. Tim started this blog in October of 2007. I’m sure if he continues to engage his audience with compelling blog posts on affiliate marketing his blog will continue to explode on the internet. His site is a definite powder keg.

Do you know of a site, service, blogging tool, widget, plugin, or advertising opportunity that has gunpowder spilling from its barrel? Write us a quick message to let us light the fuse.

Powder Keg Review: Yimto Affiliate Marketing Blog from Jason Boom dot com

Have you heard of the TNX.net site? The text link advertising site may be just the thing your blog needs. Are you looking to boost back-links, drive traffic to your site, or become a publisher with the chance to make money? The TNX.net site offers web publishers and advertisers a unique service that I’ll take the time to discuss in this Powder Keg Review.

How Does TNX.net Work?
Most everyone should be familiar with text link advertising. The TNX.net text link advertising system works on a simple scale for upcoming blogs to gain momentum and earn credits. For instance, a publisher can join the TNX community for free, and then begin displaying the text link ads on their site. This earns the publisher credit, which they can use to purchase text links on other sites or withdraw for some cold hard cash.

Are you looking to monetize your site? TNX can help you make money by buying back the credits you’ve earned on your site. The payout scale works like this: 1000 TNX credits equal $0.74. Five dollars is the minimum payout. This seems like a great opportunity for sites with quality traffic to earn some extra money.

The TNX System
The TNX site greets users with an easy to sign up process and a pleasing design. Once you login to the member’s area, you can instantly find the areas dedicated to publishers or advertisers. As a blogger, you may wish to check out both to know how everything works. We are a curious lot. Publishers and advertisers can register for free at the TNX.net site.

How Flexible Is the System?
I signed up for the program, and it literally took me two minutes. No big deal. I thought it would be a long registration process, but it wasn’t at all. I was happy about that. The price for text links can’t be beat either. The system enables advertisers to target specific keywords on a large volume of sites in a matter of minutes. For those with a specific online service, the advertising a specific keyword across many blogs may be just the marketing boost needed.

Advantages for Publishers
As we mentioned previously, the system allows web publishers to integrate the text link advertising system throughout a site. This means specific keywords on your posts could be bought by someone and used to link to their site. The editorial process at TNX ensures keywords are relevant to your site, and don’t conflict with their terms of service.

Once a publisher logs into the system, they will be greeted with various options, including getting the code to have the links working on your site. Your site’s host must support PHP and Perl, which most hosts do.

After the webmaster has placed the code in the site’s template, he or she can return to the TNX dashboard to activate the site. This can only be done after the site’s code is in place.

A site with the code in place should begin seeing credits rather quickly. This all depends on your own site’s traffic. Once you accrue enough credits you can sell them to other members or back to TNX.

Advantages for Advertisers
The TNX system enables advertisers to quickly and easily setup keyword campaigns within thousands of sites. This means your non-reciprocal links will be widespread on the internet in a matter of minutes. The system can be used to target specific keywords, helping you reach the frontpage or number one position for a keyword if used properly. The folks at TNX have put together a free tool to help links look natural to Google.

TNX makes no guarantee on how well the keywords will boost search rankings, but it should be known that this practice should not hurt your site’s search results.

TNX’s Ad wizard makes creating ad campaigns simple and intuitive. You choose the site’s performance criteria related to: website categories, geo-location, number of Yahoo Backlinks (YB) and Google Page Rank. After choosing a category and rankings of the site, you then create the link to be displayed. The link does have a keyword, but it also contains a lead-in and lead-out. This means the keyword is surrounded by text. I presume this method makes the link more viable and less conspicuous to search engines.

All in all the process doesn’t take more than five minutes. You can be up and running in less than fifteen minutes with a well constructed keyword campaign.

Conclusion

I think the TNX link site definitely has a lot to offer advertisers and publishers alike. It will be exploding on the internet in the coming months. I’m sure we all will be hearing the name TNX.net over the next few years.

If you’re still questioning whether to sign up or not, you can always take advantage of the 5,000 free link promotion going on now. I’m sure that would help any blog explode across the internet. For blog owners, you can introduce others to the TNX.net site to make some extra cash. Simply join their affiliate program today.

Powder Keg Review: TNX Text Link Advertising Site from Jason Boom dot com

Can you remember when you first saw a good brand online? In the past few months, I’ve seen a turnip, a droopy eyed character, and a suave, dark haired boy. That suave, dark haired boy was none other than Mr. Javo. I think I first ran across Mr. Javo through Entrecard. I noticed his business card and was intrigued. I visited his site and after only a few minutes, decided to subscribe.

The design of Mr Javo dot com certainly helped make that decision to subscribe to his RSS feed. I’m often times surprised by how casually we overlook the theme of our site. The Mr Javo dot com site exudes the kind of professionalism a make money blogger should display. The logo and brand work well. The clean and crisp typography of the site works. The layout of the theme works. You can easily find out more about Mr. Javo and his mission by flipping through the various pages of his site. For money making blogs, he keeps his content to the right topics.

Mr Javo dot com caters to bloggers trying to make money online. He has ‘Young Internet Marketing’ as his tagline. According to his about page, Javier is a young marketer from Venezuela. He started his blog to help other bloggers make money.

Mr. Javo dot Com is a authentic blog with online marketing information. I make money online and I help to other bloggers to explode their potential, because like me, you can earn money online with your blog.

You know I love anyone who claims to explode others’ potential.

What Can You Expect from Mr Javo dot com

I’ve been an RSS subscriber to Mr Javo dot com for at least three weeks. While I haven’t seen every post of his, the ones I have read detail good practices for bloggers to monetize their blog and to get the word out about their blog. He does writes reviews, tutorials on increasing your blog traffic, web design, and sometimes writes about Wordpress.

If you are like me, then you plug your blog in multiple arenas online. It seems every new site I find, Mr Javo has already been a member and networked with bloggers there. I admire his persistence and dedication. So if you haven’t checked out Mr Javo dot com, why wait?

Do you know of a site, service, blogging tool, widget, plugin, or advertising opportunity that has gunpowder spilling from its barrel? Write us a quick message to let us light the fuse.

Powder Keg Review: Mr. Javo dot com from Jason Boom dot com

In our first installment of the powder keg series, where we take a look at a new upcoming site that can help ease our blogging woes, we take a look at a unique rss related site. The powder keg review site should have a lot of potential for blowing up across the blogosphere. We better take this seriously. We don’t want to get burned.

rssHugger.com
The deep RSS orange of the site coupled with a dark grey makes this site visually appealing. The cutsie factor aside, the logo does the site justice. The only thing that struck me as odd — no RSS icon anywhere on their main page. Not sure why the rssHugger site wouldn’t have an RSS icon, but I’ll leave that to the graphical gods to determine a punishment.

 

rssHugger intends to bring bloggers and readers closer together. Oh, I’ll just lay it out there from their site. Here’s their blurb:

rssHugger is a unique website that aims to bring bloggers and readers together. rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader. rssHugger aims to help visitors be able to easily find blogs that write about subjects they are interested in. These subjects include: internet marketing, making money online, charity, sports, gambling, and many more. If the visitors find a blog that they had not previously heard about, they can easily add it to their RSS readers or bookmark it.

So it apparently works like this: you submit your RSS feed to their site, they enter you into a category, and finally they list your most current blog titles under your feed name on their site. Sure this build backlinks for your site, but will this really benefit your site that much? They could at least use the MSN Safari thumbnail creator to pull in an image of your site.

The rssHugger site comes to you from the creators of wordHugger, a seemingly pointless buy a word for $60 page. The wordHugger site seems to offer you one word that you monopolize on their site (or phrase) like “make money online” or “memory foam“. The two sites seem to mirror each other, except rssHugger costs less and offers a free way to enter. Overall, I think both sites have more flash than bang.

Conclusion
I’ve asked non-bloggers what RSS feeds they read. The most common answer? What’s an RSS feed? The biggest hurdle for rssHugger seems to be attracting readers aside from bloggers. As soon as RSS feeds become like radio stations, then the internet will be jumping with sites like this. For now, it seems the site will be pandering to the same crowd, with a few perks. Not too much to get excited over just yet. In their defense, they may be adding more functionality in the coming months. We’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

Do you know of a site, service, blogging tool, widget, plugin, or advertising opportunity that has gunpowder spilling from its barrel? Write us a quick message to let us light the fuse.

First Ever Powder Keg Review: rssHugger.com Site from Jason Boom dot com