In the past weeks, there has been a huge amount of buzz in the internet marketing corner of the blogosphere about the new article directory Affsphere. I finally got around to checking it out and all I can say is that it is bound for greatness. If you are ready to really bring your affiliate marketing to the next level using article marketing, you need to sign up for Affsphere immediately (membership is free) and take advantage of the $5 report offered: Not Your Typical Article Marketing Report. I’ll talk more about it later, but for now I’ll just say that it is the best article marketing report I have ever read at any price.

First Impressions of AffSphere

I knew that AffSphere was a service of Affiliate Classroom. I just joined that as well, but haven’t taken a look around yet. However, the man behind Affiliate Classroom, Anik Singal, is known for his affiliate marketing expertise and his willingness to share all of it - a rare combination in Internet Marketing, I’ve found. Affsphere itself is an article directory that offers eight ways to make money.. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first let’s go through the functional basics.

If you take a look at the ad on the right, you’ll see that it describes Affsphere as the perfect Article Directory. That’s some claim, huh? Well, given the synergistic (oops…said I wouldn’t use buzz words!) nature of Affsphere, I’d say they’re definitely onto something. When you sign in, you will see exactly what you’d expect from a professionally-designed article directory: categories, newsletter sign-up, a “Getting Started” link and all those other standard elements that keep visitors coming back day after day.

How the Affsphere Article Directory Works

Buzz words like integrated marketing and viral marketing are quite appropriate for Affsphere, but I’ll try to keep my overview as buzz-word free as possible. How’s this: It’s an article directory designed for affiliate marketers. This means you can place affiliate links in your article itself (up to three) and in your resource box (up to 2). Most article directories do not allow affiliate links at all and many do not allow live links in the articles themselves.

Affsphere is based on both a credit and commission system. The eight ways you can make money are: attracting traffic, placing banner ads, Google Adsense, your downline, viral recruiting, commissions from Affiliate Classroom sales, Affilate links and sales commissions. For more about each of these, I suggest you check out the 8 Ways you Make Money from Affsphere video. Basically, the features that make Affsphere different from other article directories are the many commission and sales opportunities within the site itself. Rather than just relying on people clicking through your resource box to a landing page, you can sell various report and memberships right on the site itself. And each page hosts Adsense ads that are rotated with various publisher ids based on the credit system.

Why you Should Definitely Purchase Not your Typical Article Marketing Report

When you first log into Affsphere, you will get a pop-up offer for a $5 report entitled Not Your Typical Article Marketing Report. (If it’s not there, it there will be a banner to click on at the top of the page when you log in) I’m not usually one to jump on an upsell, but after researching Anik and discovering his reputation for over-delivering, I decided to go with this one. Also, it was only $5 and there were some nice advertised bonuses as well like extra credits for Affsphere (2000!).

Usually when you download a $5 report. you are lucky to get maybe 20 pages of regurgitated material with perhaps one or two fresh tips that you can use. The beginning and end of the report generally feature a an ad for the expensive product you really need if you want to know how to succeed with whatever is being taught. Not so with this report. I loaded it up into my Adobe Reader and the page count registered at 96. A 96-page report for $5! I was blown away. So blown away, in fact, that I printed it and read it immediately.

It turns out that Not Your Typical Article Report is, as its name suggests, the exact opposite of a typical “teaser” reports. In fact, calling it a report is almost laughable. It is actually a full-fledged, fleshed-out marketing system. For $5 bucks. In my opinion, that’s better than free because people will actually read it. I mean no offense to anyone by that, I’m guilty of this myself. I’ve downloaded literally thousands of reports and e-books that I have never read, but I have read all of the reports for which I paid money. It’s a sad fact that people just don’t put as much value on something that is given to them for free.

I have already read through this report twice and have taken copious notes. It is such a complete system that I just have to put in the work to follow it and I know I’ll make money. I’ll update you on that once I start testing it. I could go on for days about how awesome this report is, but I’ll just leave you with my top three favorite things:

• It Tells the Whole Story: So many inexpensive reports are just teasers to get you to buy into some sort of upsell to get the full secret formula. Not so with this report. Anik shares all the information you need - including formulas and scoring systems he uses at each step of his process - to reproduce his money-making system.
• It is Beneficial at Any Level: If this is the first time you have ever heard the word “article directory,” you will be able to follow along without any problems given Anik’s clear and concise overview of the basic concepts and systems about which he writes. On the other end of the spectrum, even old pros will find fresh ideas here. I have written many articles about article marketing and and I still found Anik’s process new and exciting.
• Anik is a Good Writer (or has a killer proofreader): So many ebooks out there are just so poorly written. It doesn’t matter how good the ideas are if you don’t have the writing skills to get them across. (Shameless Plug: If you need a proofreader, visit IM Proofreading - more on that later) This report is easily understood and a well-organized read from beginning to end. I didn’t find myself getting lost mid-paragraph as I do so often with information products because Anik has a smooth, conversational writing style that keeps the reader thoroughly engaged.

I’m not sure what more I can say. If you want to make money online - and I assume you do if you are reading this blog - AffSphere and the accompanying report are worth your time and money. Article marketing is one of the most powerful ways to get your income streams moving and it would be nearly impossible to read Anik’s report and not succeed as long as you follow his steps exactly. Yes, writing quality articles can be hard work, but a solid series of articles well-placed can literally bring you traffic for years.

There is no such thing as a purely passive income - at least not to start. If you put in the work, you can build income streams that will run on autopilot, but first you have to set them up or pay someone else to set them up for you. This might be one of those points where you have to ask yourself: Am I trying to be an entrepreneur or am I just trying to find a way to sit on my a$$ all day doing nothing? If the answer is entrepreneur, then head on over to Affsphere and get yourself going. If your honest answer is that you really just want to sit on your a$$ doing nothing then you’re reading the wrong blog.

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A million times I have read that the last thing you should do if you haven’t posted to your blog for awhile is to apologize and come up with a million excuses. So I won’t do that. Let me just say that I have been working on building my new business and it is coming along swimmingly. If you’d like to know more about it, head on over to I.M. Proofreading for a bit more information.

I have some great articles in the works for the next week, but for the time being I’d like to take a bit about this ad I keep seeing and getting spam about: Pedi-Paws. This is not an ad and I am not an affiliate so keep reading.

If you have cats you know what a painful experience it is (for you and them!) to trim their claws. And with indoor cats, you really have to keep them trim. I especially need to stay on top of this because one of my cats has a problem with the second nail on each of her front paws. If her nails grow too long, they will pierce her paw and begin to grow into it. It’s terrible.

On the other hand, trying to know the exact right spot to stop with the nail clippers is a big pain. There is nothing worse than when you go to far and a couple drops of blood squeeze out. I’ve only done it a few times, but each time my poor cats just look up at me and meow morosely, as if to say, “I trusted you! And look what you did!”

Okay, so this Pedi-Paws thing looks just awesome, but I’m really sick of getting 1800 spam emails a day about and seeing the commercial every time I try to watch Jon and Kate Plus Eight. The thing is, I really do want this product, but I refuse to buy it from some a$$hole spammer.

So my question is, are any of you affiliates for this product? Seriously. If i could buy Pedi-Paws from someone who is actually reading my blog, I wouldn’t be pissed off every time I used it. Otherwise I’ll be stuck with the nail clippers and sad kitties.

If you happen to be selling this particular product, just click the link below to send me an email and I’ll buy it from you:

First one to hit my inbox gets the sale. Come on, guys, Help me out!

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photo credit: *嘟*

Phew. I just spent the last few days migrating to a new PC. Actually, it’s a PC I’ve used before, but I have to return the nice Dell I borrowed from the 9 to 5 tomorrow so I’m switching back to a not-quite-as-nice Dell. It’s works fine…so far. The only things left are audio and video card installation. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that this baby can handle the video card because I’ll cry if I can’t use both my monitors. For real.


I have migrated PCs before, but never when I’ve had one that was so thoroughly customized. I didn’t want to lose anything so it took a long time to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything behind. Some applications are easy enough to reinstall, but it’s the applications with tons of settings and customizations that are the real beasts. I knew Firefox would be easy because I just had to export and import my bookmarks file. My biggest worries were Roboform and Outlook. So let me tell you how they did.

The Worst Application to Migrate: Outlook

Outlook was a pain in the ass to migrated. I have rules, multiple accounts and contacts I didn’t want to reenter. I figured just switching over the personal data file would do the trick, but it didn’t. I ended up having to do three different import operations to get everything transferred over. And I still had to do some duct-taping when it came to getting Outlook to choose the right contacts file - even though I’d told it to overwrite the default one.

I started with the Windows Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. It took forever to export and then just as long to import to the new PC. And guess what? I honestly have no idea what it did aside from totally effing up my quick launch toolbar. Seriously. I’m not sure what files and settings it transferred, but I have yet to see anything helpful.

My next step was to export all my email messages. This took forever because I made the huge mistake of not sorting through my mail before starting the export. I literally transferred about 2,000 junk mail messages to my new PC because of this oversight. Lesson learned there.

After the messages were in place, I realized that I still didn’t have my accounts set up. I read several help articles on Microsoft online (Help? LOL!) and tried to follow directions, but for some reason I couldn’t get the damn things to export. I remedied this in two steps. First, I manually entered the accounts I knew I needed right away. Second, I decided that some accounts should just be forwarded anyway. I have an admin account set up for each of my Adsense and BANS sites. I had it set up so each of those accounts went to its own folder in Outlook. The thing is, these accounts very rarely get any email so it’s kind of a waste to have them all spread out like that. So I created one account to forward all of those accounts to and got rid of a bunch of folders and confusion. In the long run, this will be much to my advantage, but it’s still annoying to have to do all of this.

After I created the accounts, I was able to successfully import all my rules. However, they weren’t working because they couldn’t find my contacts information. I was able to import my contacts at that point, but instead of replacing the default contact file, Outlook added a new one. Finally, after much rooting around through various Options and Tools, I was able to figure out how to remove the original contacts file and point to the correct one.

The upshot of this is that if you use Outlook with multiple accounts, you should be prepared for an uphill battle. I’m again considering switching to Gmail so I won’t have to deal with all of this migration bullsh!t again. Does anyone have a good method set up for using Gmail with multiple accounts? Or is there a good article I could read about it? Thanks!

The Best Application to Migrate: Roboform

I love Roboform. It is one of the few applications I have upgraded to the paid version because I lean on it so heavily. As a blogger I’m sure that, like me, you have a million and eighteen passwords. Roboform takes care of all this. On top of that, it fills forms for you. I couldn’t live without it and I was really afraid that I’d have to reenter all my information. I pictured myself sitting here with one computer sitting next to another, carefully pulling up information on one screen and then re-entering it on the other screen.

All that worrying was for nothing because migrating Roboform to the new PC literally took less than two and a half minutes. Here’s how it worked:

And that was it. My hundreds of passwords, personal information and settings were on the new PC in less time than it takes to make Top Ramen. It was unbelievable. After the Outlook debacle I was stunned by the ease of this process. I’m so attached to Roboform that I would still have used it if it had taken me a week to get it setup again, but having such an easy process for migration just made me fall in love with it even more. If you don’t have it: Download the Free Version of Roboform. It is incredibly software and very affordable.

Okay so that’s my take on the hardest and easiest applications to migrate. Who else has their favorites or least favorites? And horror stories? Is there any program that was so hard to migrate you just gave up on it? Share!

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photo credit: fleißiges Faultier

While I was on my Stumbling spree, which you will read about in the next couple of days, I discovered a post made almost two years ago by productivity guru Mark Forster. The article was entitled My Favorite Time Management Tool. Mark’s favorite time management tool is a timer.

Mark says:

This sort of structure works best when the timings are exact. Imagine you are back in school. When the bell goes, you all pile out into the playground. The last thing the teacher wants is you hanging around in the classroom during a break. But as soon as the bell goes again, you all troop back in for the next lesson.

It’s brilliantly simple, really. I’ve been reading a lot lately about “time chunking” and “mono-tasking” and all these other great ways to keep focus. When I first started proofreading and transcribing professionally, several months ago, I started using a timer. I started using the timer for billing purposes and I actually thought it would hamper my productivity. Sort of like when someone tells you to be funny - “Go!” - and you draw a complete blank. But I quickly found the exact opposite was true and started using it for non-billable tasks as well. For example, if I time my breaks I find them more refreshing and I don’t feel guilty because I know I haven’t wasted much time.

The best effect using a timer has had for me was helping to remove my bad procrastination habit. I found that by setting a time limit on how long I had to work on something there wasn’t any task that seemed that bad. Anything is bearable for fifteen minutes, right? Well, maybe not anything, but anything I have to do work-wise is. Instead of waiting until the very last minute and then hating every second of the three hours I spend finishing a task, I now work in short bursts throughout several days and have it done before the deadline even. This has the nice residual effect of making a similar task seem less daunting when I’m faced with it because I don’t have terrible memories of the last time.

The hardest part about this practice for me - still - is stopping immediately when the timer goes off. For this to have the full positive effect, that timer should rule your actions. When it rings, you stop. When you press “go” you are focused on whatever task you have appointed. Nothing else. I have the focus part down, but sometimes if I’m in the middle of something I just can’t stop immediately. I’m trying to be better about it, but it’s a struggle when I’m afraid I’ll lose my creative train of thought.

I have found two tools (free!) that help a lot with this time management practice. The first is a super simple to do list tool called Now Do This. YOu don’t have to register and there are no bells and whistles. You simply edit the list and each item pops up. When you finish it you click “Done” and you are given the next item on your list. I was surprised to find that I got a true feeling of accomplishment from planning and executing a short list of tasks.

The second tool is the ANT 4 Pizza Timer. Its name tells the whole story of the reason for its conception. The idea is you might get caught up with something and forget you put your pizza in the oven. So you set the timer on your PC so you remember to take it out. Again, simple but brilliant. It is a simple count-down timer and nothing more. There are built-in intervals, but you can customize to your heart’s content and it’s still all free.

As I have done more research into productivity, I have found that a lot of the tools designed to make you more productive just take up valuable time. There are some things I use faithfully - like my to-do lists - and some things I just can’t seem to make habits (weekly status report). However, the one practice that I started before any of the others - just using a simple timer and to-do list - has stuck. Despite how strange it seems, even to me, I find that I am much more productive with the timer on.


Do you have any special tools or methods you use to be more productive? Are you a procrastinator or do you jump in and just get it done? Share!

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I have taken a brief vacation from the Trip Around the Blogosphere, but it’s back this week. Not everything is brand new, but it’s still all worth reading. With my new found dedication to online endeavours, you can expect the Trip to publish weekly again. Enjoy!

• Brandie Kajino of Home Office Organizer wrote a great post entitledChecklists: Simply Productivity. She explains how she uses checklists to keep herself organized and how useful they can be - especially for those of us more visually-oriented types.
• Yoast (a site about Wordpress, SEO and other website tweaks) posted a great article almost a month ago (I just found Yoast this week so I’m a bit late including the post) calledB2B SEO: Marketing Strategy for Specific Niches. This article discusses the huge variation in the time it takes to convert a business-to-business sale versus a busines-to-consumer sale. This is a must-read, especially for those of you selling services to businesses.
• In the article Links are the new Lotto Ticket, Aaron Wall explains how winning inbound links as part of a contest or promotion is a great way to avoid getting slapped by Google while doing a bit less legwork than the usual link-building tactics.
• Chris Crum wrote a nice article over at Small Business Newz entitled5 Ways to Keep Abreast of What’s Happening in Your Niche. At first I thought he was just trying to get some extra attention by using the word breast in his title, but the article turned out to have some great tips in it. Sometimes we forget how important it is to know what’s going on in our market(s).
• In Paid Content - A Dying Business Model?, Andy Beard points out the multi-million dollar business of selling content. In a reply to some comments made by Michael Arrington, Andy does a great job of highlighting the extreme amount of profit there can be in selling content - particularly using the membership site model.
• In just six months, Syed Balkhi has grown his blog Balkhis: Vision for Success to over 500 subscribers and a profit of nearly $2000 a month. In his latest post, 13 Ways I Used to Promote My Blog to Success, Syed shares some of the methods he has used to reach such great success in such a short period of time. This is a killer article packed with excellent advice from someone with real experience. Read it at least twice!

And there you have it. Hopefully next week I’ll be able to pass along a bit more link love. If you’d like to be part of the Trip Around the Blogosphere just leave a comment letting me know and I’ll check out your blog or post. One last quick reminder. Sparkplugging’s SparkplugU (still not an affiliate link!) offers some great classes you ought to check out.

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