“Branding” is a term that seems to be thrown around more than ever these days, but it’s for good reason, especially for brick and mortar businesses. While “branding” can include a wide spectrum of different sources such as a company’s colours, theme, decor, typeface, and even things such as their political views and which celebrities they choose to have endorse them, the core element which distinguishes a company more than anything other than its name is their logo.

This is why I personally take great care when I am commissioning a logo for a new project, and why it’s always the very first thing I get done in terms of visual design. I actually build my websites around the logo, not the other way around.

LogoBee is a custom logo design company which has won multiple awards and has been in the business for just over a decade now. Like most logo design companies, LogoBee also offers other graphic design services including web and stationery design, but since they mainly do logos, this review will focus on that.

The Packages

LogoBee offers a few different logo packages which range in price from $199 to $1,199. However, the more expensive packages mainly differ by tacking on additional perks such as 500 business cards, stationery and Word design, turnaround time, etc. The actual logo you receive will be of the same quality regardless of which package you choose.

Therefore, the best two packages available also appear to be the cheapest two: the Special Package and the Silver Package.

The Special Package is currently on sale at $199 (normally $298) and offers 6 logo design samples, 5 day turnaround for initial samples, 6 revisions, and no refund.

The Silver Package is also currently on sale at $279 (normally $389) and offers 8 logo design samples, 5 day turnaround for initial samples, unlimited revisions, “full satisfaction”, and a money back guarantee.

The package states:

• For an unlimited time we will modify your logo design free of charge until you are fully satisfied.
• If for some reason, we did not match your chosen style in the initial drafts, we will give you free redraw session with 8 completely new logo design variations.

I assume the second point is referring to the “full satisfaction”.

These prices are “okay”, but certainly not bargains. The logo design industry is actually pretty competitive and there are a lot of logo design sources out there, so LogoBee may want to consider either lowering their prices or else offering more perks in order to stay competitive.

If I had to choose between the two packages, I’d personally choose the Silver as it’s hard to beat a money back guarantee – if you’re not satisfied, you simply get your money back. No risk.

Big Clients

One of the most notable things about LogoBee is the large amount of clients as well as the big  name clients they have serviced.

They have designed logos for:

• Heritage Education Funds Inc. (one of Canada’s largest Registered Education Savings Plan RESP) providers)
• Greenpeace
• Playa Del Racing (LogoBee created a team logo design which they sport on their jackets)
• Kendra Todd, winner of NBC`s hit show "The Apprentice", got a logo design services for her real estate firm (Exclusive interview with Kendra)
• Clinton Hart of the San Diego Chargers NFL team recently had a logo designed for his non-profit, The Clinton Hart Foundation.
• The TAB Boxing Championship Belt

LogoBee claims to have created logos for more than 10,000 companies, which is pretty insane.

You can also view 6 pages of customer testimonials here.

The Logos

A company can have all the testimonials and biggest clients in the world, but in the end the only thing that really matters is the quality of their work, which is usually shown in their portfolio.

When I review a company or freelancer that provides any form of graphic design, I like to go through their portfolio and choose a few of the best and worst of what they showcase and then present them to you so that you can make your own decision.

Below are 6 of the more low quality logos I found in their portfolio:

To be honest, these represented more of the average logo that can be found in LogoBee’s huge, seemingly never-ending, portfolio.

However, after a fair bit of searching, I did manage to find 6 logos that I really did like:

Each of these logos is easily worth $200-$300, which is what LogoBee’s 2 cheapest packages are priced around.

While the large majority of the logos I found were of pretty bad, to be fair, this could be largely due to the fact that most clients have poor taste in design, and so LogoBee could simply be catering to the artistic direction their clients insist on having, there’s no way to know for sure.

Referral Program

LogoBee also provides a money-making opportunity through its affiliate program. Anyone who signs up will earn a $20 referral fee for each new logo project referred. The referred clients also receive a $20 discount on their logo design purchase.

The Verdict

Overall, I have mixed feelings of LogoBee. I think that they are slightly overpriced for what they offer, although they are not too out of line with their competitors.

The majority of the logos they showcase in their portfolio are not too great, mainly due to two logo design faux pas that seem to be a recurring theme with what they produce: their lack of simplicity and the out-of-style design elements (such as many swishes and curved lines – think Nike).

While not all of their logos are overly impressive, they do showcase a few real nice ones in their portfolio (see above) that are actually very impressive.

I would therefore recommend anyone who decides to be a customer of LogoBee to purchase anything other than the “Special” Package, as it does not guarantee satisfaction. All the other packages do, including a full money back guarantee, so in that regard you really have nothing to lose – you’ll either get your money back to use elsewhere, or you’ll walk away with a fantastic logo.

Due to the (personal) success of that competition, and since it’s already been nearly a year since the last competition started, I am engaging in yet another blogging weight loss challenge.

This will come to the chagrin of many readers, as I know that a lot of you simply aren’t interested in these types of posts, but I have raised the stakes for this competition so maybe it will now be a bit more interesting than it was previously.

Some of you may ask what the hell this has to do with making money online or being an internet entrepreneur. It’s true: this is largely a personal issue. However, you’d be surprised how much your health can affect how much you make.

I’m sure nobody will contest the fact that eating well and exercising routinely has a direct and positive effect on your energy and concentration levels. I haven’t been working much lately, and I blame most of this to the fact that I’ve been so lethargic again the past few months. I’m hoping that getting back into shape will help give me energy to work and focus better.

The Challenge

This weight loss challenge is between the personal development and make money online blogger, Paul Piotrowski, and myself.

• I must lose 12 pounds within 10 weeks
• Paul must lose 13 pounds within 10 weeks

Paul needs to lose 1 more pound than me since he weighs more than me. We based these numbers off of 6% of our total body weight.

The final official weight loss will be weighed on May 21st, 2010 at 10PM Pacific Time. If one of us loses the weight earlier, that does not declare a win; it must stay off by the deadline.

Whatever each of us weighs in at on May 21st, 2010 at 10PM is what the results will be based on.

The $600 Penalty

In order to provide a bit of drama, as well as to provide true incentive for each of us to follow through with this competition, we have both agreed to pay the other person $600 should we fail.

Therefore:

• If I don’t lose 12 pounds by May 21st, 2010 at 10PM, I have to pay Paul $600.
• If Paul doesn’t lose 13 pounds by May 21st, 2010 at 10PM, he has to pay me $600.

If both Paul and I make our goals, no penalty is paid out. If neither of us make it, then we’ll essentially break even.

This latter point may sound like a way out for us, but it really isn’t. If Paul is having trouble losing weight, it’s only in my best interest to keep going as then I’ll have $600 in my pocket. Similarly, I could be out $600 if Paul ended up losing his weight at the last minute.

Paul’s starting weight is 212 pounds so he will need to weigh in at 199 pounds or less. My starting weight is 201 pounds so I’ll need to weigh in at 189 pounds or less.

Challenge Rules

Both Paul and I have agreed to the following rules for this challenge:

• We each must make an official post announcing the challenge with an overview, the rules, etc. In this post we must each post a current "before" photo of ourselves (preferably a front and side portrait). We must also post a short video clip of ourselves getting on the scale to prove our current weight at the beginning of the challenge.
• Similarly, at the end of the competition on May 21st, 2010 at 10PM, we must again post current photos and a video of getting on the scale.
• Preferably about once or twice every week, we must each make a post updating the status of the competition (current weight, things we’re doing to lose the weight, etc.) Photos and or videos here are not mandatory but would be nice.
• No weight loss pills, dietary supplements that have weight loss as their primary advertised benefit, colon cleansers (haha), starving of oneself, dehydration techniques, etc. of any kind. Must be all natural old fashioned weight loss.

Let it Begin!

Here is my official starting weigh-in video:

In the video, I actually weighed in at around 203 pounds, but I think I’ve been averaging closer to 201 so to be fair as well as push myself a bit more, I have declared 201 as my official starting weight.

Also, I made the video a couple hours before deciding to tack another pound onto the challenge with Paul, which is why I say in the video that I’m going for 190, when in actuality it is now 189.

Here is my official starting (before) photo:

Let the humility begin! Paul Piotrowski’s weigh-in post can be found here.

6% in 10 Weeks for $600

For those of you who think that losing 12-13 pounds in 10 weeks is easy, I’d like to disagree.

While it may be easy for some of you, it isn’t for me. I had to work my ASS off in the first challenge in order to just barely make the final weigh-in on the last day. By the end of the 10 weeks, I was jogging/power-walking around a lake 14KM a day.

12 pounds accounts for 6% of my total body weight, which is rather significant, and there is a $600 penalty on the line if I don’t lose the weight in time.

Effects of My Previous Competition

Some of you may be wondering why I’m back in the 200 pound range again. After all, I finished the last competition by weighing in at 195 pounds.

As I had predicted, I regained half of what I lost over the past year, which is why I’m now at 201. I was originally 206 last year, but managed to keep half off which I’m actually pretty happy with.

To be honest, I reverted to my old horrible diet and lack of exercise (my only exercise being going to badminton twice a week) which is why I have been slowly regaining some of my lost weight back.

But that’s what this new competition is for, and by mid-May I should be 189 or less which will actually put me at a normal weight (at least as far as BMI is concerned).

My Plan of Attack

I plan to do exactly what I did last year. After all, it worked. I will slowly adapt my diet by eliminating fast food entirely and then gradually cutting down on all the sugar drinks (pop, juice, sugar in coffee/tea) as well as the high calorie and sodium processed foods. I will also start eating more fruits and vegetables again.

However, diet only accounts for about 20% of my ‘technique’. I prefer to focus on exercise. I already go to badminton twice a week, but will once again start going around the 6KM circumference lake here.

I will probably start at just doing 1 circuit at 6KM, but my end goal is to break my 14KM ‘record’, as well as set a new personal best time for the first 6KM.

I’ll also be doing some daily crunches and push-ups, although I don’t like to do too many as that will just build muscle and I’m looking to lose weight here, not gain weight!

Wish me luck – this is going to suck.

At 16, I built my first ever blog. That was almost 5 years ago, and I’m still blogging to this day. Despite having recently sold the 10th biggest personal development blog in the world and gaining 2,000+ subscribers on my marketing blog in the last 4 months, I used to be a total blogging failure.

ViperChill, the site I recently relaunched, is the first blog I ran. In my naivety, I didn’t write at all for human visitors at all; I didn’t care. I simply wrote for search engines, and aimed to get as much traffic from them as I could.

Obviously this wasn’t a very good strategy, ending my first year of writing with 0 blog comments and 6 subscribers, which were probably all me on different Google reader accounts. But hey, I was getting some search engine traffic.

Thankfully, I have managed to turn that 1st year of blogging-hell into experience, and now run some very popular websites. I recently sold my biggest blog, PluginID, for a mid-five-figure fee, so I want to share the story of how I went from being a nobody in a niche to dominating a market.

The Story of PluginID

PluginID was my blog built for the personal development niche. When I started it, I was an absolutely nobody in the industry. And, if I’m totally honest, I didn’t read any blogs in the industry either. I was going through a lot of personal growth in my life after having recently moved to South Africa at 18 (where I didn’t know one single person) and decided to document my experiences.

Having been in the internet marketing space for 3 years prior to starting the site and having companies like Land Rover and Hewlett Packard receiving my services, I was confident I could make the site a success. Yet, dreams and hopes aren’t anything without taking action to make things happen.

As I had a full-time job when running the site, I would usually work on my blog from 7pm onwards, and sometimes wouldn’t stop until 2am in the morning. I really loved writing about topics like motivation, productivity and being who you want to be, so the long hours didn’t bother me.

I worked hard on the site and finally reached what I view as a respectable milestone – 500 feed subscribers – after 7 months. I say finally as with my background, I expected a little more. Little did I realise that blogging really does have a ‘hurdle’ to cross when you first start, and 5 months later the site was at 4,000 subscribers.

After 18 months of running the site I sold it to someone I know for a fair, five-figure fee. The site was making around $3,000 per month on average through selling ads and products, so it was a nice deal for both involved. I honestly never thought I would sell the site as I loved the topic so much, but I had been longing to get back into the topic of internet marketing where I had spent so much of my earlier years online.

I’m all for doing what you love, so I decided to relaunch my “baby.”

The Success of ViperChill

In October 2009, I posted a “I’m back” message on the site. I hadn’t posted on the domain for over two years, but was fortunate to start with around 2,000 subscribers, although I doubted many of them were still active. After writing that first post, I just felt really excited to start getting into the swing of things again. In fact, this was exactly how I felt when I started PluginID.

As you’re reading Tyler’s blog, you probably know of quite a few other sites in the internet marketing space. I sure did, and besides Tyler’s blog there was clear factor about most of them: they write short, dispensable, throwaway posts. For every 20 articles on most of these sites, there might be one gem that you can learn from.

Through my experience with PluginID, I knew I didn’t want to be like that. I wanted every single post I wrote to be valuable and one of the best resources on that topic you can find. In other words, I decided not to churn out 7, 500-word posts per week like a lot of these sites. Instead, I post once or twice per week and write articles that are usually over 2,000 words in length.

The result? In the last 4 months the blog has grown by over 2,000 subscribers and I’ve been mentioned frequently on some of the most popular blogs in the industry.

What this has to do with you…

I’m not sharing my story to show off or so that you think of me as some sort of guru. There are lots of other people who would prefer that kind of Ego boost or guru status. Instead, I’m sharing my story because the secret to making each of these blogs successful is simply that there are no secrets.

Sorry if that annoys you and you were looking for something to overcome your “competitors” (there are no competitors to valuable bloggers), but it’s the truth. Sure there are tweaks and tricks you can apply to get the most out of your site, and your audience, but for the most part, there’s just a few fundamentals that matter.

Here’s What I Want You To Do

I don’t have any ads or affiliate links on my site, so there’s nothing I want to sell you or convince you to do. However, I write in this space because I genuinely want to help people share their true value with the world (often in the form of blogging) and live the life that they want to live (making a living online).

Therefore, I have a few suggestions for you.

1. Stop Making Excuses

Picasso wasn’t born with a paintbrush in his hand and J.K. Rowling wasn’t possessed with some special talent that has made her over $1bn through writing. When you’re born, everyone starts on the same playing field. I understand that some people have a wealthy family or aren’t born into the best environment, but if you’re able to read this article, then you’re better off than most.

I look back on how I spent a few years online and honestly cringe. The countless hours I spent browsing Digitalpoint and buying the latest ‘make money overnight’ product could have been spent doing things that really helped me.

I am not lucky, I simply provided enough value to my audience on a regular basis and received the success I did because of that. If you do the same, your position will be the same. Get rid of your excuses right now, because they aren’t helping you progress, they’re just holding you back.

2. Stop Caring About What You Get Back

It wasn’t until I stopped focusing on monetary or subscriber rewards and started focusing on providing value to people that my websites actually became successful. It makes sense right? If you genuinely focus on helping people then things will come back your way.

Look at the top sites in this industry like Problogger, Copyblogger and Chris Brogan. They have been consistently providing value for years and now they’re being rewarded for their efforts.

The top blogs are the ones that have a core focus on helping their readers. Do you think Seth Godin needs to sell more books? Do you think he needs to blog everyday to continue to make a living? Of course not, he’s a multi-millionaire, but he just genuinely loves helping people.

Unless you run a news or some form of entertainment site, then everything you do should be around your readers and providing massive value. Again, it’s not surprise that those who give the most get the most back in return.

3. Finally, Stop Looking for the Secrets

As I mentioned earlier, there are great tips and tricks to pick up for your blog around the web. One I particularly liked was by Tim Ferriss where he found that changing his ‘Categories’ section to ‘Topics’ massively increased their click-through rate.

I love reading things like this, but they’re only going to take you so far. Having a blog with awful content that is plastered with ads isn’t going to take you very far, even if you do use the Thesis theme for Wordpress and rename that category label.

Look around at the top 100 Technorati blogs and the biggest sites in your industry. Notice how they are consistently providing massive value to their readers. They may do it in different formats (text, images, video) and they may have different posting schedules, but they’re still doing it.

The real switch happened for me when I stopped looking for the tricks and secrets to make me money, and just started building sites around the things that I loved with the aim to really help people with that topic. It’s not the same as most of the advice you read online, but most of the advice about making money is from people who only make money by teaching you.

Now, can you please promise me you’re going to share your value with the world? Because I can promise you, the world is waiting for it.

Glen Allsopp writes at ViperChill on the topic of Viral Marketing. He recently posted a guide to Wordpress SEO that you may learn a lot from.

You may also recognize his name from when we competed against each other in a weight loss challenge last year. He’s also one of my blog link partners.

Jonathan Volk is a well known name in the affiliate marketing industry as he is a true super affiliate, regularly generating around $400,000 a month. Okay sure, that’s gross, but you could still assume around $150,000 net profit each month. That’s $35,000 profit a week!

Oh yeah, and he’s only 23.

For the first time ever, Jonathan Volk has written an e-book which is a comprehensive affiliate marketing guide. It covers everything including the absolute basics (such as defining what affiliate marketing is), demographic analysis, social media, PPV, PPC, media buying, etc.

Best of all, the guide is completely free. You simply need to give your name and e-mail and the guide is completely yours.

Download it now, for free.

Since Jonathan covers all the major aspects of affiliate marketing in this guide, this is the perfect opportunity for those of you who always wanted to get started in affiliate marketing but never wanted to pay for an online course.

What’s nice, too, is that since Jonathan just wrote this guide, that means it’s up-to-date. The affiliate marketing world evolves and transitions pretty fast, so having a recently written guide is paramount to avoiding saturated sources, marketing tactics, etc.

Below is a list of the guide’s sections:

• Section 1. Introduction
• Section 2. What Is Affiliate Marketing?
• Section 3. What Is An Affiliate Network?
• Section 4. Recommended Affiliate Networks
• Section 5. How Does All This Come Together?
• Section 6. The "Pregame"
• Section 7. The "Pregame" Pt. 2 – Know Your Demographics
• Section 8. The "Pregame" Pt. 3 – Setting Up Hosting / Domain Name
• Section 9. Setting Up A Simple PHP Redirect
• Section 10. The Landing Page
• Section 11. Affiliate Marketing Methods (Basic Overview)
• Section 12. Social Media Affiliate Marketing Guide
• Section 13. Pay Per View Affiliate Marketing Guide
• Section 14. Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing Guide
• Section 15. Media Buying Affiliate Marketing Guide
• Section 16. After Your Campaigns Are Ready To Launch
• Section 17. Conclusion

Jonathan Volk is such a beast in the affiliate marketing industry that you should really hear what he has to say. The guide is free and Volk knows his stuff, so download it now and learn a thing or two

Five weeks ago, the Vice President of Infolinks, Tomer Treves, contacted me asking me to try their In-Text advertising network as a publisher.

I replied saying I wasn’t interested as I had previously used other In-Text advertising networks such as Kontera and IntelliTXT with horrible results (incredibly low payouts, irrelevant ads, etc.).

Tomer was persistent and replied by saying that “Infolinks is different”. He then offered me a rather significant up-front signing bonus if I were to run Infolinks on my network of sites for a year. His sign-up bonus offer was indeed significant and I did think about it carefully as it would have made a nice additional down payment on the house I’ll be buying.

However, I really had a strong negative disposition towards In-Text advertising networks and decided to decline his offer – after all, a year is a long time. In response, Tomer decided to buy a paid review from my blog, which was a smart move as it basically forced me to try Infolinks

Even though I was negatively biased against In-Text advertising, I tested Infolinks for my review with a fresh state of mind, even optimism.

Here than is my review of Infolinks:

Infolinks is an In-Text advertising network that pays out on a CPC basis. In-Text ads are those ads you typically see when keywords are double underlined. When hovered over with the cursor, a small ad, which is supposed to be relevant to the contextual text that is linked, will appear.

I ran Infolinks on two of my websites, CookingForums.net and Movie-Vault.com (now removed, in case you’re looking for the ads), for 2 weeks in order to get a decent amount of sample data.

Signing Up & Implementation

Unlike many ad networks, Infolinks welcomes all legitimate (obviously nothing illegal or offensive) websites, big or small. There are no minimum requirements for page views or visitors which right off the bat makes Infolinks a very desirable solution for small website owners.

Applying to Infolinks was very easy and I believe I was approved the next day, if not instantly (I really can’t remember unfortunately). However, while account approval may be quick, you will then also require separate approval for each website you add to your account.

Unfortunately, in my case, this turned out to be a bit of a hassle. I had correctly added the ad JavaScript code to my sites, which was required for verification purposes, but customer support kept telling me I didn’t add it. After several e-mails and 3 days later, they finally apologized and admitted that I was correct and had added the code correctly. Their apology was sincere and they approved my sites.

Adding Infolinks to your site is as easy as it gets, simply adding a snippet of JavaScript to the bottom of your HTML code, right before the </html> tag. Below is how my JavaScript code looks:

<script type="text/javascript">
   var infolink_pid = 69197;
   var infolink_wsid = 0;
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://resources.infolinks.com/js/infolinks_main.js"></script>

The variables are there for optional advanced customization (see below).

Customization

Infolinks offers a decent amount of customization to their ads.

First, you can decide which portions of your website you want to allow Infolinks to link. This is a vital customization feature; without it, you could have important areas such as your navigational sections turned into ads which would be extremely confusing and frustrating to your visitors.

By default, if no tags are implemented, the Infolinks ads will appear in all appropriate sections. The boundary tags are simple to implement, simply requiring either a <!–INFOLINKS_ON—> or <!–INFOLINKS_OFF—> in appropriate sections. This may be a bit of a pain to implement in certain CMS’s, however.

Another way to customize your ads is to take advantage of the Advanced Customization Wizard. The wizard, as seen below, allows you to easily customize the colours of your links, choose the underline style, set your website’s category, and set the ad saturation level you want to appear per page.

You can also customize your ads by adding and editing variables within the JavaScript code. This is nice for power users, but there appears to be no option to set the underline style through this method, so you’ll have to use the wizard if you wish to customize that.

Furthermore, making modifications to the JavaScript code by modifying the variables does not appear to update the ads instantly, while using the wizard does appear to show instant changes.

Customer Support

I already mentioned the little hiccup with customer support during the website approval above, but that was really minor and they did apologize rather sincerely.

However, I did have another run-in with customer support when my forum members on CookingForums.net were complaining about a bug. Apparently, Infolinks created a bug on CookingForums that prevented the back button in Internet Explorer from working – you had to click it 3 times in order for it to function correctly.

There was no way I was going to keep running Infolinks on my site if it caused such a severe user interface issue, so I quickly removed it from the site.

However, the next day, Tomer e-mailed me stating:

“I heard you had a bug on one of your sites so you’ve removed the Infolinks script. Despite being rare, bugs happen (especially with IE), and we’re proud of being very fast to fix anything. Recently, for example, we were the first ad network to overcome a problem that PayPal had with customers in India (you can easily Google this).

In your case, even though you didn’t approach our support (as far as I know), our monitoring team found your problem, duplicated it, and in fact fixed it already…”

While I did contact support about it, Tomer was correct and the bug was fixed very quickly so I re-added Infolinks to CookingForums the next day to proceed with the testing.

While the bug was certainly annoying, I do give them credit for fixing it so fast.

However, as is mentioned below, there was also a bug on Movie-Vault.com which I notified customer support about 10 days ago. Two days later, they replied, telling me that they “forwarded this issue to their technical team for further investigation”, but I haven’t heard anything since then (8 days ago) and the bug remains.

Therefore, I think their customer support needs work. It’s not horrible, but I think they should follow up on issues more and perhaps be a bit more proactive.

Bugs Galore

The main reason I was so antagonistic about In-Text advertising when Tomer first contacted me, apart from the historically low payouts from other similar networks, was the bugs and irrelevant ads that these networks tend to have.

Below are 3 bugs that appeared on both sites I tested Infolinks on:

Irrelevant Ads

The whole point of contextual advertising is to provide higher targeted and relevant ads which benefits everybody including the advertiser, publisher, ad network, and visitor.

While some ads were indeed relevant to the keywords they targeted, I found that 90% of them were not. The majority of them appeared to be ads for search engines or “top sites” which basically tell visitors to find more information on x keyword(s) by using their search engine or viewing the top sites for x keyword(s). This is not relevancy, and does not engage users to click on them.

Since Infolinks is a CPC network and you only get paid when visitors click on the ads, relevancy is of HUGE importance to publishers. This can not be understated.

I am listing this as a bug since Infolinks states on their front page:

“Infolinks will automatically insert highly relevant In-Text ads into your website’s content”.

Below is a screenshot of an example of the typical Infolinks ad:

No Images

While this may not technically be a bug, it certainly looks like one to visitors: I would estimate that roughly 90% of the ads don’t have images, as seen below:

In many cases, this is likely due to their system not being able to grab or cache a screenshot of the website, possibly because the page does not actually even exist until it is visited.

Whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that the majority of ads do NOT have images. This makes the ads look trashy and unprofessional. I can understand situations where a screenshot may not be dynamically possible, but there is no reason why there should be a blank “Image Not Available” placeholder graphic showing. Require a default image or simply do not show any image and just the text, but don’t show a blank placeholder image as that is just too unprofessional.

Perhaps Infolinks may even want to consider requiring advertisers to submit images with their ads ala Facebook instead of taking website screenshots dynamically. This would dramatically improve CTR in most cases anyway.

HTML Tags Showing

This one is definitely a bug. Some ads, perhaps as many as 20% in fact, show HTML tags in the description and title instead of stripping them out or implementing the actual tags, as can be seen in the screenshot below:

This is yet another thing that makes the ads look unprofessional, unenticing to click on, and just rather silly.

When you combine the 3 bugs above, it really shows that Infolinks has a lot of work to do.

Link Style Bug

This bug appeared only on my Movie-Vault.com website, not CookingForums.net, and only appeared on the front page news posts. This was somewhat odd, since when you viewed the same content on the individual news pages, the bug was not present; it was only present on the front page news posts.

Basically, the bug had the ad links incorrectly positioned. The underline links were often several pixels below where they should have been, and were sometimes directly through text.

An example is shown below:

Now, it’s possible that this is more an issue with the fact that Movie-Vault.com uses a WYSIWYG toolbar editor when staff submit news, and therefore the news posts may have more complicated and obfuscated HTML tags for the Infolinks JavaScript to parse, but that doesn’t really seem to make sense when you consider that these same news posts appear fine when on their individual pages…

Whatever the reason, this bug was never fixed, nor did I ever receive any update about the progress of it from customer support.

I should mention that the underline links appeared fine everywhere else throughout the site.

Income Analysis

Ah, the most important part. While everything I mentioned above is important, in the end the only thing that really matters in an ad network is how much money it can make you.

The reports page on Infolinks is pretty simple, but has all the basic information and date functions you need. However, one thing that is a bit of a pet peeve for me is that the reports aren’t live or even updated hourly. Instead, you can only receive stats up to the previous day.

This is obviously not a big issue, but for those who love checking their stats like me, this is a bit difficult to get used to. I don’t see why the reports can’t be made live or at least updated hourly, so it’d be nice if this would be changed in the future.

Anyway, I started receiving ad impressions on February 19th and ran Infolinks on my two sites until the end of the month, although I did remove the code for several days on CookingForums while the ‘back button’ bug was present. I also set Infolinks on both sites to show the maximum amount of ads available, in order to see the maximum I could make.

Things started off great. After only having put Infolinks on my sites for half a day, I saw a $5.72 eCPM on CookingForums.net! This is a huge eCPM and so when I saw it I was naturally quite surprised and optimistic. However, it was odd that Movie-Vault.com only had a $0.66 eCPM in comparison:

However, things quickly changed for the worse. While the following couple days saw an average of an $0.89 eCPM, the 4 days thereafter showed a combined total of $0 (for my CookingForums.net site)!

At first, I thought this was undoubtedly a bug on Infolinks end and was naturally rather annoyed, but then I remembered that Infolinks pays on a CPC basis and not CPM. Therefore, these stats could be legitimate, and I just didn’t have a single person click on an add during those 4 days.

It’s certainly possible, but it’s also uncharacteristic as my daily click average at the end of my testing phase turned out to be 5 per day. So, it’s rather strange that I didn’t receive a single click during those 4 days when statistically I should have received around 20…

This is why I believe there was some type of bug that occurred during those 4 days, although I don’t have concrete proof to back it up since my sample traffic data is quite low.

I continued to let Infolinks run uninterrupted until the end of the month, and you can see the overall results below:

While there were days with a $1.58 eCPM and a $0.99 eCPM, the average ended up being $0.49. Now, if that was the eCPM for a traditional banner, then it would be an okay rate, but I personally consider In-Text ad links such as Infolinks to be more intrusive than the typical banner since the ads are directly entrenched within your site’s text, and so I therefore expect higher rates.

I wrote the majority of this review last night, and am finishing it this morning. Out of curiosity, I decided to check yesterday’s stats a couple of minutes ago, and was surprised to find another high eCPM, akin to what occurred on the very first day.

It showed a $3.58 eCPM for Movie-Vault.com (the stats below are only for Movie-Vault.com) which is great!

Now, this could easily be explained by somehow getting a click (or two) on a very high-priced keyword or keyword phrase. After all, people have received as high as $20 CPC’s from Google AdSense before. So that is probably what happened. My average CPC is $0.27, and if we estimate that it was just 1 ‘superclick’ that occurred yesterday, then it would have paid out $2.77 for that one click.

Below are the overall stats that occurred between CookingForums.net and Movie-Vault.com during a period of 10 days (impressions didn’t begin to appear until the 19th): 

I ended up averaging only $0.49 eCPM which is too low for my liking considering the types of ads.

Referring back to my Bugs section above, if Infolinks provided actual relevant ads with working images that are bug-free, then I would expect the CTR to increase dramatically which would in turn increase the overall eCPM dramatically as well.

I should mention that I used the dotted underline style on both of my sites and the Infolinks customer support did mention the following to me:

“I would suggest that you use double underline for your highlighted links. We recommend you choose double underline as it’s considered less intrusive (since it isn’t confused with regular hyperlinks). Double-underline will get higher quality, better paying ads. Our experience shows that in general double-underline generates higher revenues than single line.”

So I wonder if that explains for my lower eCPM. But I do disagree with “it’s considered less intrusive” as double underlines to me are just so incredibly ugly.

But I’m now curious if advertisers actually pay a premium for double underlines, and/or if advertisers can bid differently depending on the underline styles. This is something I’d be interested in getting an official response on.

Summary

While I went into my review process of Infolinks with an open mind, having been admittedly biased against In-Text ad networks, my experience during the past 2-weeks only reinforced my negative disposition towards them.

While they claim high relevancy, I saw very little (almost none) during my test run. Improving the ad relevancy is the #1 thing that Infolinks should focus on. There are also many bugs that need to be ironed out, and they seem to be simple fixes so I’d like to see those eliminated or at least improved.

Customer support was a hit and miss.

Registration and ad implementation was fast and easy, and their system is very basic and simple to use. Ad customization was also simple to implement.

Earnings were rather unpredictable, with some days having fantastic eCPM’s as high as $5.50+ yet some others with as low as $0.

I gave Infolinks an honest shot, but they’re going to need to fix the bugs I wrote about and address many of the other issues I brought up in order for me to try them again.

To be fair, out of all the In-Text ad networks, I do think I like Infolinks the best. Even though their payouts weren’t too great, they did appear to pay better than their competition. But that’s not saying a whole lot…

I’d be happy to do another paid review of Infolinks if they do decide to improve and work on things.

I actually hope they do seriously heed some of my advice as I actually do want to use them. Those were some nice eCPM’s! If I could average a $5 eCPM with them I’d be extremely happy and would most likely use them on all of my sites and promote them.

I’m pretty confident I could refer 300-400 publishers to them so it’s really in their best interest to get me on board

Last week, both Microsoft and Yahoo! sent out e-mails to their search marketing advertisers, announcing that they have now received regulatory clearance to form a search alliance. So it looks like things are moving along and this merger is really going to happen.

In the announcement, they introduce us to SearchAlliance.com, which gives more information about the search marketing merger including news and answers to commonly asked questions.

On the site they state:

“Our aim is a high quality transition of advertisers and partners in at least the US prior to the 2010 holiday season. However, we may wait until 2011 if we determine this will be more effective.”

So it appears that advertisers should be able to take advantage of the merger within this year.

This makes me wonder how this merger will affect pricing, quality score, among other vital factors important to advertisers.

Also, the demographics of Yahoo! and Bing users differ a fair bit. While Yahoo users tend to mimic the behaviours closer to those Google, Bing users tend to be more business-oriented. With this merger, this could effectively hurt many existing campaigns.

Below are some key points as mentioned on SearchAlliance.com:

• Search ad inventory from Yahoo!, Microsoft, and their respective partners will be combined into a new unified search marketplace.
• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10-year license to certain Yahoo! search technologies.
• Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by AdCenter) search results.
• Full implementation of the terms of the Search Alliance is expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory clearance.
• Yahoo!’s Sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients, and Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. In addition, Microsoft AdCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.

It kind of sucks that AdCenter will be the new platform, as I really don’t like it. It’s cumbersome and awkward… I would have much preferred to use Yahoo’s, but maybe AdCenter will undergo some improvements as a result of the merger.

However, there is some good news. The following points are taken from the MSN e-mail:

• Reach up to 150 million searchers and get approximately 62% more search volume than on Yahoo! alone through a new, unified search marketplace combining the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks.
• With just one buy, you’ll reach users on Yahoo! and Microsoft sites, as well as other premium partner sites.

This will make scaling much easier, as now you will only have to work with 2 search engines traffic sources instead of 3.

Then again, the merger opens up traffic to possible competitors of yours who were only advertising on one of the networks, which could possibly raise bidded prices. I’m not really sure how the merger will affect the market in terms of whether or not traffic will be cheaper, more expensive, or stay the same, but one thing is certain: advertisers will now have access to a lot more traffic volume in one unified source.

What do you think about this merger? Share your comments.

There have been a number of interesting house hunting developments this past week, and things seem to be moving pretty fast. While I had been looking at houses online for the past few months, it was really more a type of dreaming than it was a reality.

It was only this past week or two when I actually decided to stop dreaming of selling my condo and buying a house, and actually took the steps to initiate the process.

Here are some of the recent developments:

Canadian Finance Minister Tightens Mortgages

The day after I made my House Hunting Updates post, the Canadian Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, announced some changes that are going to be put forth in April (16th, I think it was) that will basically make obtaining mortgages more difficult.

I asked my mortgage broker if this would affect me, but she didn’t seem too worried, mainly because I was already pre-approved. Plus, I’m putting down close to a 20% down payment so the new rules hopefully shouldn’t affect me.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will announce new rules Tuesday aimed at preventing homebuyers from getting into financial difficulty when mortgage rates rise, CBC News has confirmed.

“Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is set to impose new rules aimed at preventing homebuyers from getting in over their heads with mortgage debt.

Sources say the measures will discourage reckless real estate speculation, such as borrowing heavily for an investment property that is not the investor’s primary residence. Flaherty is also set to deter households from taking on more mortgage debt than they can afford to repay when interest rates rise, as they are expected to do later this year.

The finance minister is also expected to discourage people from raising cash by refinancing their homes with larger mortgages — again because they may not be able to make the payments at higher interest rates.

The Canadian Press reports that Flaherty will implement a debt affordability or income test that applicants must pass to qualify for mortgages insured by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

There has been speculation that Flaherty might raise the minimum down payment on a home — now five per cent — and lower the maximum amortization period for mortgages — currently 35 years.”

Source: CBC News

My Condo is Now On the Market

It’s futile and pointless to look at houses if my condo isn’t even for sale, so earlier this week I had an army of realtors (3) come to my place and I signed all the paperwork to put my condo on the market.

It’s now officially on the market and on MLS as well as my realtor’s and the Homes & Land website. But really, everyone just uses MLS these days…

I listed my place at $241,000, which is $1,000 lower than the other unit in my building, which is on the 1st floor, so I think that should give me an edge. It also shows that I’m a no BS seller as the other unit was originally listed at $249,000.

This is the first time I’ve ever sold a place so the process is new to me. I’m going to have to clean my place a lot more frequently now, to allow for short-notice viewings. I’m also going to have an open house if my Strata allows for it, which they may not.

It was just placed on MLS this morning though, so it will take a while to sell. The photos one of the realtors took of my place weren’t the best, so I will be cleaning my place in the next day or two and will take careful photos in order to best showcase my place.

I had to do a little bit of running around to get an extra set of keys which I keep at another house to give to the realtors, but really all I’m waiting for now is for somebody to put an offer in.

Engaging in Drive By’s

Yesterday I printed out a list of the houses on my favourites list and drove past several of them with the aid of my trendy GPS (which kept annoyingly falling down from my windshield!).

Even though I had already looked at them on Google Street View (God, could there be a better actual use for Google Street View than house hunting? I love it!), it really is a different experience to physically drive past them. You get a very good knowledge of what the neighbourhood is like, the views, traffic, etc.

I also realized something for the first time last night – I only looked at 4 houses, but all of them seemed to have been a bit too close to the other houses for my liking. I understand that the price range of the houses I’m looking at is not that much, but being fairly close to other houses almost makes me a bit claustrophobic.

But it was really neat to drive past the houses… it makes the whole process much more real. I’m not going to bother actually look at any in person until my place sells, as I think it’d just be a waste of everybody’s time.

Updated Favourites List

Here’s an updated list of some of the houses on my favourites list. House #1 on my previous list was just sold yesterday so that’s off the market. I won’t relist the other 3 I posted last time, so here are 4 others on my favourites list.

I currently have a total of 10 houses on my favourites list, with 19 on my ‘maybe’ list.

House #5:

More Photos and Info

This is by far the cheapest house on my list, but it’s pretty nice considering the price. I drove past this one last night and am not sure I like the neighbourhood… it’s kind of atop a little private hill in a little suburb area and faces a little forest of thin trees, which sounds good, but… I don’t know. I just got a bit of an eerie feeling, heh.

It’s 2,100 square feet though and on the low end of my price range though, so I could put in granite countertops and such.

House #6:

More Photos and Info

This house look ugly on the outside which is why I decided to use the yard shot, haha. This one is actually only a few blocks from house #4 above so I drove past it yesterday as well.

It’s right across from a tiny park for kids which I guess is good for resale, but I’m not sure if I’d like that as it’s just extra kid noise, but it’s probably not really a factor.

The kitchen is a bit outdated but it has a real nice office which would work well for me.

House #7:

More Photos and Info

This house is in a nice little suburban stretch of homes and has incredible mountain views. I drove past it last night at dusk which made it even more incredible. It’s a nice home, but I think it’s too small at 1,550 square feet.

House #8:

More Photos and Info

This home was only a block away from house #7 above and so I drove past it as well. It’s slightly bigger at 1,600 square feet, making it 50 square feet bigger, but it’s also $5,000 more expensive. And even at 1,600 square feet I think it might be too small. It’s a nice home though, but I think I need around 1,800+ square feet to feel like there’s enough room.

Remember, I work from home so I’m at home 90% of the time, so space is important to me.

I have had pretty low energy lately which has made working difficult, and the other day I just did not feel like working at all so I decided to play some poker. After 3-4 hours of building my $200 up to nearly $800, I started to get bored of grinding it out and lost all of it shortly thereafter after moving up limits purely out of boredom. This is always what happens.

After that, I needed something to expend energy on, and since badminton just finished and wouldn’t be available for 4 days, I decided to reinstall good old Starcraft.

Starcraft has never failed to entertain me, and within minutes I was already immersed back into the 12-year-old best game of all time. I basically spent the past 3-4 days (how long it really was I can’t remember) playing Starcraft and sleeping. I did a fair bit of sleeping. In fact, just yesterday I slept for 10 hours, got up for 1-2 hours, then had a 2-hour nap! Then I went to bed only 8-9 hours later and slept for another 7-8 hours!

I did do a tiny bit of work during the past 3-4 days, but it was mainly just writing yesterday’s blog post, and since it was about buying a house it wasn’t too labour intensive to write.

A couple hours ago I uninstalled Starcraft (after losing several games in a row which frustrated me), watched a couple of episodes of Family Guy, and then went to my computer to get back to work.

I grabbed a Red Bull, worked on trimming down some of my unanswered e-mails, and am now writing this blog post.

It was probably the Red Bull, but as I started this blog post I felt real good. Reenergized.

Although to be honest, my eyes are starting to tire right now so I’m going to need to take a bit of a break after I finish this post.

Nevertheless, the effects of my little gaming marathon over the weekend are showing. I am once again interested and somewhat excited about working again. I have a new little project I’m going to be trying with affiliate marketing which I’m curious how it will turn out, and it will feel good to get caught up with the rest of my unanswered e-mails.

Even though I felt really lethargic and hazy over the past few days, I think that avoiding work for the most part was good for me. It was certainly needed.

For those of you who don’t do this for a living and work for yourself at home, you may not realize that this is usually a 7-day, 365-days-a-year job. I work every day, in some capacity. Even when I’m on a vacation I bring my laptop and my Blackberry.

After a while this can really accumulate and have an effect on you when you’re not getting those 2 full days off work that most people get by working a ‘real’ job.