I wanted to make a quick post about a new site I started a couple of weeks ago. You may have noticed it in my sidebar under “My Network.” If you don’t check the links in My Network, then you should because I’m swapping them in and out all the time as I buy/sell/create websites. So back to Knowshon Zone… you’re probably thinking WTF kind of title is that? Well, it sticks with my current theme of college athlete fansites. I have Tebow Zone, Harvin Zone and now Knowshon Zone… appropriately named after University of Georgia superstar running back Knowshon Moreno.

Being an SEC fan, I got to witness Knowshon in action quite a few times in 2007. He was named SEC Freshman of the Year and helped lead UGA to a top 5 season. He absolutely ripped my Gators a part rushing for like 200+ yards on us. It was painful to watch. Some say he will be a Heisman candidate next season, and while that could happen if UGA goes undefeated, I think he is still a year away from contending with Tebow and Harvin for that Award. Knowshon is the real deal though. He racked up some big time yards and touchdowns last year.

My goal with this site is to make it as popular as my Tim Tebow fansite. I want to get it to page 1 of Google before football season starts. During football season, Tebow did very well for me. It brought in a couple hundred dollars a month in Adsense and Valueclick. Knowshon Moreno keywords would never drive the same traffic as Tim Tebow because Tebow has this cult following (that I am proudly a member of) that no other college athlete in history has had. But if Knowshon Zone can bring me 500+ uniques/day during football season, I know I can make it into a $200-$300/month earner with a combination of advertising methods.

It’s your basic fan site with a daily blog, videos, pictures, a bio and more. Standard stuff you see on most fan sites. But what separates my fan sites from the others is the daily blog. Because I watch Gator and Bulldog football on TV and follow SEC sports I can very easily come up with blog posts that say someone from India couldn’t.

I think though that this is the last fan site I’m going to do. Like I’ve said many times before, I’m really trying to get into affiliate marketing and PPC so I am spending most of my time on that.

TNX.net is a new text-link broker that helps publishers and advertisers buy and sell links. TNX is a relatively new player in the text-link game, but they have seen some tremendous growth in the past few months, as seen by their Alexa Rank (about 10,000). On my account dashboard I can see that they currently have 42,000 users and over 33,000,000 links in their system.

In today’s internet, publishers have to be very careful about who they link to. Some text link companies simply provide you with a piece of code to slap on your website, and you have no choice over what text links appear on your site. This is not good business. Not only can your site look unprofessional with unrelated links on it, but you can also be penalized by big search engines. With TNX, webmasters can choose their advertisers themselves, placing only links that are relevant to every page of their sites.

For example, if you run a website about Dogs and you have two subpages, one for dog food supplies and one for dog clothes… you can pick different links to appear on your pages instead of have the same links appear sitewide. You can go into the TNX system and select a dog food advertiser for your dog food page, and you can select a dog clothes advertising link for your dog clothes page. The more relevant your links, the better your site will look through the eyes of Google.

TNX isn’t just for publishers, they also have a very extensive section for advertisers. The main advantage for advertisers is the price of links, it is very reasonable and the ability to promote hundreds of keywords with just few clicks. Prices of links are the lowest on the market. For as low as $11 a month you may get up to 10,000 static links to your website.

Signing Up
Signing up with TNX is a breeze. It took me under a minute to submit my username, password and email. Unlike other companies, TNX eliminates the need for multiple accounts. Your one account will control the publishing, advertising, and affiliate aspects of the system.

While creating an account is an instant process, submitting a website to TNX isn’t. You must wait 1-3 days in order for your website to be manually reviewed by TNX team.

Once you are signed up, you will have a very easy to use dashboard to control everything (pictured below).

Link Generator Tool
TNX offers a free tool for advertisers to make paid links look natural for Google. This is an awesome tool that generate hundreds of different anchors with a click of a button. Check out a screenshot of it:

Point System
TNX operates on a Point System, instead of using actual dollars. Advertisers can purchase TNX Points and in return use those points to buy text-links on participating websites. When a link is purchased, the publisher will be paid in TNX Points, which can then be either recycled in the system to purchase more links or cashed out.

Payouts
Currently TNX will buyout your tnx-points at the rate of $0.73 per 1000pts. TNX also set a maximum of 300,000 pts./day transferred, but not more than 50% (daily limit) of all points on the account. That comes to a maximum of $200+ you can withdrawl on a daily basis. Payments are made on a monthly basis and distributed via check, Paypal, or bank wire.

Affiliate Program
While you’re making money selling text-links, you can also earn commissions through the TNX Affiliate Program. When you bring a new webmaster to the system, you will receive 13.3% of all “TNX-points”, he/she will earn in the future (a reward for referring an advertiser is also available). Interest is paid for the lifetime of the account.

Support
TNX has a couple different methods of support. They have a Live Chat and a Support Forum with over 10,000 posts. I could not find a contact email address or phone number.

TNX Special Offer:
Due to the recent launch of TNX, they are giving away up to 5,000 points that you can use to buy links from up to 5,000 websites. You can read more about their special offer here.

Summary:
TNX is a great alternative to other text link companies. The best feature they have is the ability to choose which links are displayed on your website and individual pages, rather than having the same sitewide links on all your pages. If you’re looking for a safe and effective way to monetize your site, you really need to check out TNX.net

It’s been a couple more days since I last posted about my first “true” affiliate marketing attempt. While I don’t consider it a total failure (because it did make me profit on 2 of the days), I don’t consider this first attempt successful. I ended up about even in the money because I stopped my ppc campaigns before I lost too much. It was an overall good experience though. I’m sure not many people start successful campaigns on their first try. If I’ve learned anything about affiliate marketing its ‘Test, Test and Test Again!’

After doing some research, I determined my landing page pretty much sucked. Not only that, but I was targeting an audience that really wouldn’t be interested in my offer. My target audience was probably 40-50 year old intelligent men/women, yet I was trying to get them to complete zip submit offers for a $500 gift card? Come on David! What was I thinking?

First of all, if you’re going to try and get people to fill out zip submits for free gift cards and other crap, you need to target a generally dumb audience. Let’s face it, how many of you would fill out a zip submit and actually think you’re going to win the prize? I was targeting old people. They probably think by giving out a zip code someone will steal their identity. Old people are way too cautious.

So I’ve got like $35 left in my YSM account and need to figure out what to do on my next affiliate marketing attempt. I’ve pretty much axed the zip/email submits. I’d like to try something more genuine. I don’t want to say dating/insurance because those markets are sooo freaking saturated, but I’ll definitely look at something paying a bit more the $1.50 per lead. I’m also going to revamp the way I build my landing pages. I’m not a designer, so it’s hard for me to come up with graphic designs that appeal to visitors. Worst comes to Worst, I’ll have to buy a custom landing page for $45 or something.

Well Folks… like I promised everyone, I said I would get into affiliate marketing this year and I’m proud to let you know that I’ve started. I read up a lot on Zac Johnson’s blog and Uber Affiliate, just trying to get some tips and a feel for it. Affiliate marketing is very difficult and scares the crap out of me, because unlike Adsense… you actually have to pay money on a daily basis to make money.

So I set up accounts with Yahoo Search Marketing and Adwords and began setting keywords for an offer I wanted to promote. I kept the keyword bids around 10 cents so I wouldn’t blow my profit margin. And just like all other affiliate marketers out there, I’m not going to share my keywords or landing pages to the public. If you strike gold, you’ve got to keep it a secret.

My first day was was both scary and exhilarating. I spent a total of $10 and made $18 in leads, giving me a daily profit of $8. Not bad for my first day. I decided to try some zip submit offers because it seemed a bit easier to setup and get conversions. The leads pay out $1.50 each.

Day 2, I upped my daily spending limit to $15 and made $28.50 in leads, giving me a daily profit of $13.50. At this point I really felt like I was on to something. I felt like my landing page was good and the keywords I chose were converting. Over the next two days though, that all changed.

Day 3, I kept my spending limit at $15 but it only converted to $19.50 in leads, giving me a daily profit of only $4.50. I felt like maybe this was just a down day. After all it was Saturday and maybe offers don’t convert well on weekends?

Day 4, I kept my spending limit at $15, however I only generated 4 leads for $6, giving me a loss of $9 for the day. Now, I’ve read time and time again that you will lose money while you test offers. But why such a drastic decrease? I didn’t adjust my keywords or my landing page. So why all of a sudden would it not convert?

Day 5 (today), I kept my daily spending limit at $15, but was keeping a very close eye on it. I ended up pausing my campaign this morning because I was already in the negative a few bucks again. Only got 1 lead today for $1.50 and lost about $5. UGHHH. So frustrating.

Being a newb at this, I’m still not sure what the problem is. Maybe the fact that I didn’t tweak my keywords or landing page had something to do with it? Maybe the same people are clicking my ads but since the filled out the lead on Friday, they aren’t doing it again?

You’re supposed to test a lot of factors in affiliate marketing. So I plan on either redesigning my landing page tonight or simply picking a new offer to promote. I’m not giving up though. I LOVE the rush it gave me the other day watching my spending limits and lead conversions. It’s almost like gambling or playing in the stock market. You get that same rush when you’re making money.

I still feel like making money with Adsense, Adbrite, VCM and those other companies just isn’t worth it anymore. I’m sick of seeing 3 cent clicks. Affiliate marketing has the potential to make so much more money. I’ve just got to stick with it.

The other day I got a free Schick Quattro razor packaged in with an order from Amazon. Normally I shave with a Gillette Mach 3 Turbo (which is awesome). Well, this morning I decided to test out the Schick, after all it has 4 blades compared to the 3 of the Mach 3… so how bad can it be?

Based on the title of this post, you probably already know how my review is going to turn out. Basically, to keep it short, the Schick Quattro sucks. Not only did it cut my chin and neck in several places but it left a terrible razor burn. Try to picture me scrambling around the bathroom trying to find towels to wipe all the blood off my face because it’s starting to sting.

I’m not sure if it’s all the razor’s fault or if I had such a bad reaction to it because my body was so used to the Mach that it didn’t know how to handle the Schick. Whatever the cause of the suckiness, I won’t be going back. I’ll be sticking with Gillette for the foreseeable future. After all, it’s “the best a man can get.”

Disclaimer: I know this post has nothing to do with web development and what not, but I just had to warn everyone to stay away from this razor.

The craze of national lottery is huge contributing factor in the popularity of blackjack and other gambling games. People have started confusing the lottery with games of risk.

Getting an iPhone was one of the best decisions I ever made. I had asked for it as a Christmas present from my parents and am so glad they got it for me. I’m literally on it all day. One thing I’ve been hesitant to do is jailbreak my iPhone so I can install third party applications. There are so many apps out there that do amazing things. I’m just itching to get my hands on them. However, I also want to keep my phone clean and not mess with it unless installs are official.

Yesterday, the first day of MacWorld, was a good day for iPhone users. Not only did Apple release version 1.1.3 for the iPhone, but they said we’ll see native apps by February. Apple released the Software Developers Kit to developers so they can create awesome apps that really push the power of the iPhone to the edge. Most likely these new apps will be available for download via iTunes.

Yesterday’s iPhone upgrade included the following:

• Google Maps with Location
• Webclips - website bookmarks on your home screen. Clips will remember where you zoomed/panned to, and you are able to create up to 9 of them.
• Multiple-Contact SMS

While these are all nice add-ons (especially the webclips), I really wanted to see a MMS capability added. Can you really believe that iPhones can’t send pictures via text message? I mean phones made 5 years ago could do that. I can take a picture and send it to someone’s email, but I can’t send the picture in text to another phone. So people without Blackberrys or iPhones really have no way to instantly get a picture I take to their phone. There’s no doubt in my mind MMS will be available as a downloadable app next month, I just want it now and feel it’s long overdue.

What do you think about the iPhone upgrade? What are you looking to see in the future?