A quick heads up to all our readers out there, big time affiliate marketer and friend of ours Jonathan Volk posted our interview this morning with some pretty extensive questions for all of us.  If you want to learn more about us, the faces behind SuperAffiliateTwins.com, check it out!

The combination of being easily amused and somewhat geeky has me tickled to death about the free Internet that can be found in airports across the country sponsored by Google.  Maybe it’s the many frustrating attempts to find wireless in various airports before and the refusal to pay for wifi makes me appreciate Google’s holiday gift more than the average person.  As I read the sign above I literally smiled and thought of how my wasted time in concourse C was going to be that much more enjoyable as I monitored campaigns, browsed on AffBuzz, and etc.

A couple of ideas popped into my head as I saw this sign though.  How much was Google actually spending for this type of gift and for what purpose? This kind of thing is exactly why Google’s brand is loved by so many people.  They are providing something that wouldn’t normally be free and they are spending mega bucks letting people know about it.  There was one of the pictured displays above every 200 feet in the Jacksonville airport and same with the Charlotte airport along with other various sizes of signs.  Instead of advertising on websites, Google spends their marketing dollars less frequently but I’m assuming more expensive ways.   I can spot a lot of people using their laptops out right now and I could guess I’m one of the many that consider this complimentary Internet a great luxury.

The part that doesn’t make sense to me is that after you accept the Google agreement to not do illegal stuff with their connection is that you are redirected to a page about their photo contest.   My twin brother, Robert, asked why wouldn’t they just plug Google Chrome or some advertisement for the Android. Hell, if they said that I had to install and use Google Chrome for free wifi, I would definitely do it and I bet the majority of people in here would do it too.  That type of requirement would allow users to find another browser that probably would be a lot faster than their current one.  I know Chrome is faster on my Macbook Pro but only cause I read nerdy comments on Digg about browser arguments; most people have no idea what it is nor that Google is connected to it.

After checking out the site that they provide, I’m a little late since they’ve been offering this since November 10th but it’s interesting how the biggest company in the world goes about a lot of their business.  It’s starting to make sense why all these Google books and news articles are being published with the “What Would Google Do?” philosophy.  The only thing that I still find looming over me as I browse the Internet is what kind of information is Google collecting and what are they doing with it…?

(Taken from the website):

Q. What kind of information are you collecting about users with the networks?

The network operators collect the information they need to run the network. Google will have access to some aggregate, non-personally identifiable information.

Anyone can set goals for the New Year but the real trick is actually following them. I can admit, I never really set goals last year. I mean sure I mapped it out in my head how much money I wanted to make and how I wanted to diversify my traffic more but I soon forgot those goals in a couple of weeks which hurt my motivation. You can drastically increase your chances of meeting your goals by mapping them out specifically and reminding yourself of them daily.

By mapping them out, I don’t mean just writing an eight word sentence and then moving to the next bullet. You need to elaborate on your goal: how you plan to do it, and why you want to do it by relating it to what you’ve done in the past. Here’s the format I strongly recommend that you use for completing your 2010 resolution list:

#. List your goal.

How are you going to meet this goal? Be specific, give yourself multiple, reasonable methods to meeting this goal.

Why is this one of your goals? How has not meeting this goal hurt you in the past?

Here’s an example of part of my list.

1. To be more organized.

How?

Option 1: Order a moleskin notebook and start to write down my agenda.

Option 2: Sync MobileMe and iCal and start updating that to iPhone so I will have it everywhere.

Vow to update it every Sunday and sync it if going with option 2.

Why?

It cost us a lot of money in the past by overlooking IO dates with our affiliate marketing campaigns specifically. It also cost me some vital points for some of my classes because I turned in assignments late.

Notice how I gave myself two ways of completing my goal in a reasonable way. I know I can do both of them for sure because I’ve done it in the past but just gotten lazy. I’m looking at what it cost us by looking at how much money we’ve lost directly from renewing IO’s for media buys late and by doing calculations of what late assignments have cost my grades. Now that I have my list complete in this format I’m going to print it out on post it on my wall right next to my desk. I’m not going to add it to a stack of papers that will soon be buried and forgotten.

If you really want to help your progress then you can add a notes section where you can post progress. Knocking off one item at a time will help your motivation as well especially if you can put a big checkmark next to it. Happy New Year’s, everybody, and good luck with your resolutions!

Like I had mentioned in my previous post, Working From The Virgin Islands, I visited the Virgin Islands to blow off some steam from the semester.  I was fried both work wise and school wise after exams and I needed at least a couple of days without having to use my brain.  After about 3-4 days I got back online and now I feel very refreshed.  I’m striving more to become productive and I’m definitely not burnt out anymore so I consider it a very successful trip.  If you want to check out the few pictures I have from the trip, check out our gallery.  I didn’t get many good ones but I put up all the ones that I had.  They may take a while to load because of high resolution so be patient, they are worth it!  To make things that much sweeter, I was in 90 degree weather while Ryan and Rich along with everyone else in WV was getting 22 inches of snow poured on them, heh.  Luckily, a cancelled flight was rescheduled for that same night and I wasn’t even delayed.

I stayed in a timeshare villa that overlooks the ocean as you can see from my video.  The island is St. John is about 20 minutes away from St. Thomas.  It was an incredible location and the temperature stays around 85 to 90 degrees year-round! Talk about paradise… The cost of living was a little higher than I expected but the food was much better than I’m used to.  (Or was it? Maybe that was my imagination…) The worst aspect of this island was the road system. They were the steepest roads I’ve ever seen and our rental car Jeep could barely make it up them and still dodge all the potholes. They were bearable though with beautiful views of the scenery every once in a while but a couple of mornings of travel to the beach when I was hungover nearly pushed me to throwing up, haha.   Here’s the amazing view we had:

This Doesn't EVEN Do It Justice

This past Friday I made attempted the drive home for the Holidays. Once I was 20 miles away from where my family lives, snow began to come down faster than I’ve ever seen it before. With my new car being rear wheel drive, with racing tires, I didn’t stand a chance on the treacherous roads! Since my car wouldn’t go, I had to pull over on the side of the Interstate and call Mercedes Benz roadside assistance which informed me it was going to be 3 hours before I could get towed off the road! I eventually “wiggled” my way off the Interstate into a parking lot where my car would sit for the next 2 days and be covered with more than 25 inches of snow! Since then, I’ve moved it to another parking lot, but there is still no getting it home until the roads get clear! What a hassle to the beginning of my Holiday week!

That being said, the Holidays can be a weird time for conversions on your affiliate campaigns. Some campaigns perform better, some perform worse, some stop all together. It is important to keep a close eye on things as if you try to go on “auto pilot” you may be surprised at the losses you can incur. We’ve set some of our campaigns on pause and have scaled up some others.

In another interesting note, I recently made the transition from my old Dell laptop to a MacBook Pro. For those of you who are using a Mac you understand how much better my life is! At first, it was certainly a change, as the simplest task of using a FTP client was hard. But once I continued to work with things I realized that my new Mac was a lot faster and easier to use than my old Dell! I definitely recommend it!

If you’re traveling this Holiday season, I encourage you to check the weather and plan ahead so you don’t get stuck in a situation similar to mine. There is nothing more powerless than not being able to drive!  Please be safe and remember to keep check on your campaigns!

Copeac sure does know how to treat their affiliates!  This fall they took us to Atlantic City and treated us to a luxurious trip with five-star accommodations.  Anytime we’re in New York City we’re always taken to the finest restaurants the city has to offer.  Well, this week, a box full goodies arrived in the mail.  It included everything we need to make pomegranate martinis!

* One fifth Grey Goose vodka

* One bottle Cinzano vermouth

* Simple Pomegranate Martini mix

* Pomegranate rimmer (for the glasses)

* One jar of olives

* Shaker cup (to chill)

* Box of chocolates

Everything was presented on a nice tray, which unfortunately, suffered a little bit of damage during shipping (my girlfriend Brianna is working on gluing it back together).  So to Michael, Danielle, Stephen, Matt, and the rest of the Copeac/Intermark Media team THANK YOU and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

There hasn’t been much activity over here from me because I’m working in the Virgin Islands this past week, well not really working but checking my email every once in a while…  St. John is the island we are on to be exact and it’s been a great little area.  More pictures will follow!  You do need to have a passport to come here but it is part of the United States.  (You just need it to come back into the States)  This is the view from our pool:

My beach reader has been Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.  I was a little hesitant about the title since it seems kind of cheesy but it’s really a great book.  It values experience over money and the author really has gotten his money worth.  He’s a world class tango dancer, fighter, motorcycle racers and fluent in like 4 languages among other things.  I strongly recommend the book for those out there trying to minimize their workload, he is definitely an inspiration!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  We are all (trying) to take a day off from the computer and spend time with our families but I can’t help but sneak on a few times to see how bad the damage is over the holidays.  Yes, we are noticing some negative effects from the holidays but as Jonathan Volk said in his blog post, it is to be expected in all of our businesses so we aren’t panicing yet.

After the holiday is over, if you aren’t fighting the crowds all day on Black Friday, you better be getting ready for the Christmas/New Year’s holiday season because that’s where the big bucks are to be made.   New Year’s resolution niches will be hot so use your days off from work wisely!

I’m back from Dallas an engaged man! I asked my fiancée Kara to marry me on Friday night, she said yes and we celebrated the weekend in Dallas, Texas. It was a great trip highlighted by the Washington Redskins falling to my Dallas Cowboys on Sunday afternoon. The game would have been boring to watch on television (with the final score 7-6), but it was an unreal experience being in the stadium. I highly recommend checking out Cowboys Stadium even if you are just a casual football fan. The building is the nicest sports complex I’ve ever visited and is absolutely massive.

We arrived at Dallas Ft. Worth International Airport on Saturday and took the cab ride to the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek in downtown Dallas. The Mansion is the only five star, five diamond hotel in Texas and is a really nice place. The staff-to-guest ratio is two to one and the service was immaculate. I’d heard a lot of people say The Mansion was one of the nicest, if not the nicest hotel in the country but I wouldn’t go that far. The place was well decorated, clean and highlighted by excellent service but their hot tub and pool facility left a lot to be desired.

Saturday night Kara and I had a wonderful fine dining experience at The Mansion Restaurant in our hotel. The place wasn’t easy on the wallet and they didn’t hook us up with any freebies even though we were celebrating our engagement. Nonetheless I highly recommend the food, especially the shrimp cocktail which was one of the best I’ve ever had. We capped the night off in the Mansion Bar with live entertainment and a champagne celebration. The third bottle was a bad idea, but it was a very special night!

On Sunday we made the trip to Arlington to Cowboys Stadium. Our taxi cab driver was not much of a fan as he explained to me why he thought “Tony Romo was bullshit.” It was hilarious listening to why he didn’t like our quarterback. Prior to the game we visited the Dallas Cowboys Pro Shop which was packed full of people with 18 cash registers going nonstop. We had great seats for the game, only six rows up from the field right in front of Emmitt Smith’s box. I didn’t see number 22 but was told by a season ticket holder that’s where he normally sits. I got chills during the pre-game stuff; it was surreal watching Cowboys cornerback Mike Jenkins pray on the star in the endzone in front of us. There’s not much to say about the game other than we eked out a win at the last minute.

Monday was our most relaxing day as we slept late and took a trip to the Northpark Mall in Dallas. We spent the entire afternoon there and I experienced an order of cheeseburger tacos for the first time. The Northpark Mall was beautiful and one of the nicest malls I’ve ever visited. They had every store you could imagine from Burberry and Tiffany’s to American Eagle and Aéropostale. I didn’t do much shopping, but Kara bought some nice things to wear to upcoming parties relating to our forthcoming wedding.

The Monday afternoon highlight was randomly seeing Dallas Mavericks Power Forward Dirk Nowitzki in traffic driving his Cadillac Escalade. We were heading back to our hotel from the mall and I randomly looked out the window at a red light to see this:

Our best dinner of the trip was Monday night where we went to Nick & Sam’s in Dallas. I told the restaurant we were celebrating our engagement and they went all out to accommodate us for a very romantic experience. They covered our table in roses and brought us two free glasses of champagne to celebrate. I ordered the gourmet deviled eggs as our appetizer which were topped with variations of caviar, avocado and tuna tartar. The ones with tuna tartar were my favorite, but Kara didn’t care much for them. The restaurant offers complimentary caviar and toast points to all their guests which was very good. Next up was their award winning Caesar salad and bread which was delicious. For my entrée I had their rib eye cooked medium-rare with a crab stuffed potato. Kara had their filet minion and a regular baked potato. We ordered a bottle of white wine with our dinner but they brought us complimentary glasses of red wine with our red meat. I can honestly say it was one of the best steaks I’ve ever had, ranking right up there with Porterhouse in New York. We didn’t want dessert, but they brought us out a complimentary dessert liquor to cap off the evening. I was shocked with all the free stuff we got because we were celebrating our engagement. If you are ever in the Dallas area, go out of your way to eat and Nick & Sam’s. Great atmosphere for a romantic date and outstanding food; it’s also not as expensive as you would think and well worth the price.

After dinner our hotel limousine was running a little late so we went to a hotel across the street to have a drink and enjoy the city. We capped the night off at the Mansion Bar with just one drink and called it an early night. Overall it was a wonderful trip with great memories. I couldn’t have asked for more for an engagement celebration. I arrived back home in West Virginia yesterday evening and went right back to work. Once I finish typing this, it’s off to spend time with our families for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Have a great holiday everyone!

Without a doubt Billy Mays will be remembered as a legend in the direct response marketing industry.  Billy had the look and was an excellent pitchman.  Just like a Super Affiliate, Billy drove a $200,000 Bentley and lived in a 8,000 square foot mansion.  He’s someone I personally will always remember and look up to for the things he did in the industry.  Working in the direct response marketing industry online, I thought what a better way to honor Billy than to dress up as him for my Halloween costume.

After hours of searching online, no company made a costume, so I had to get creative.  It took about a week, but I grew out my beard and canceled my monthly haircut appointment.  I then went out, bought a blue button up shirt, printed off an Oxi Clean logo, and made my own costume.   Check it out for yourself:

We’re going to head out to some Halloween parties and I’m going to try to sell this bottle of Acai.  Let’s see how well I can ‘pitch it’!

Happy Halloween everyone – have a safe evening!