Well it’s that time of the year again and I’m off to vacation with my wife Amber in the morning. Last year we went out to Los Angeles but this year we decided to switch it up and head to Florida. We’re actually going to Marco Island, Florida and we’ll be staying at the Hilton Marcos Island Beach Resort.

I’m really just excited to relax and hang out on the beach in some warm weather and enjoy some quality time with my wife. The last month for me has been a very long one as I’ve experienced some changes in my life that I wasn’t really expecting so I’m definitely looking forward to this time away on vacation.

I’ll be back in a week and I’ll definitely add a follow up post with some photos of the area down there. I’d better get to bed though as I’ve got to get up for a 6AM flight in a few hours.

On a side note I signed up with CX Digital this week and I’m very impressed with their affiliate network.  They’ve got an awesome interface and I’m really excited to work with them more once I get back from vacation.  So if your looking for another quality network, then I’d recommend them from my experience thus far and reviews from several others as well.

Have a good week because I know I am while I’m enjoying myself in Florida!

So I’ve got several different sites running on Wordpress and about a week ago I started upgrading all of them to version 2.5.  I really like the upgrade so far, the admin interface is taking a little bit to get used to but overall I really like it.   Now all of my sites seem to be doing fine with the upgrade with the exception of one that I noticed was having massive permalink problems.

This is actually site running of the popular wordpress ebay plugin called PhpBay and I highly recommend it for building some great niche ebay sites to make some cash.  It’s the best $49 that I’ve spent in awhile to generated some solid profits.

So I’ve got a few sites running this plugin but only one seems to be having problems with the permalink structure.  I’m really not sure what the issue is because some of the permalinks work and others that should be working are pointing to 404 errors that the post is not there.  In addition I’ve got lots of other plugins running as well and I’ve made sure they’re all compatible with 2.5, disabled them, and nothing seems to fix the problem.  At this point I’m probably going to restructure the whole site anyway to take advantage of some SEO stuff that I overlooked the first time around, but this is still very frustrating because I cannot figure out what seems to be causing this.

If anyone else has had any problems like this I’d definitely love to hear the solution that you’ve come up with.  I’m honestly just thinking that something crazy happened during the upgrade since this is the only site that it happened on.

If you don’t already know this, I’m a huge Nascar fan. I usually go to the races in Texas every year, but unfortunately I didn’t go this year because I went out to California instead. Anyways here is some footage from qualifying showing a horrific accident. This is probably the worst I’ve seen considering that he hit the wall pretty much head on at almost 200mph. Amazingly enough he walked away from this crash unhurt though. Check it our for yourself as it’s pretty amazing.

So I’ve been skeptical about signing up for Twitter of the last few months, but I decided a week ago that I’d give it a try.   So far it’s really been a pretty cool service as it’s just pretty much a way to stay up to date with people by following short updates of what they’re doing.

I know it doesn’t seem like anything groundbreaking, but I’ve enjoyed it so far.  In addition I see a whole world of marketing opportunities for that it can be used for in the future so I’m definitely excited to see how things progress with it.  So if you want sign up for Twitter and go ahead and follow me and see what I’m up to.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been doing a ton of research on the web for some different projects. During my research I’ve come across a staggering amount of sites that are running ppc ads, but when you click on that ad their site is actually down.

So lets think about this one for a minute. These advertisers are actually paying to be in the sponsored results but clearly either they aren’t monitoring your ads or haven’t made a proper investment in quality web hosting. It actually made me think of how much of this probably goes on all the time. I guess when you think about it with the mass amounts of people looking to get their business on the web, then the result is probably going to be a lot of inexperienced people trying to do it all themselves. The biggest problem here is the fact that not only have you paid for that visitor, but you’ve also lost a prospective customer that could have turned into a lifetime customer. So ultimately the overall costs can be much higher than what you pay per click when you look at the bigger overall picture.

The Simple Solution

Well here are my suggestions on how to keep from wasting money sending your prospective customers to site that’s down.

• Site Monitoring Service - Sign up with website monitoring service to monitor your site and notify at any time of any outage. I’ve used Watchmouse in the past and I’ve had great experience with them, but there are also a ton of other free or low cost site monitoring services you can use. Just do some searching out there and you’d be surprised as to what you’ll find. This is a small investment to make to ensure that your site is always online.

• Get a Reliable Webhost - Get a good company to host your website with. If your current host isn’t working out then do some searching and get some reviews of some reliable web hosting companies. I personally currently use Hostgator and I’ve had great success with them. Their support is great and I’ve always had great customer support with them and they’ve got some great pricing as well.

• Monitoring Your Pay Per Click Ads - Don’t just launch campaigns and then never check up on them. It’s pretty easy to make a mistake when launching PPC campaigns and all you’ve got to do is the monitor your campaigns and making sure that everything is just like it should be.  If you run PPC Ads then you should be monitoring them on a daily basis anyway.

So hopefully these tips can provide some helpful information for those currently running PPC ads that may be experiencing these problems.

Well I’m getting ready to head to California in the morning, I’m looking forward to the warmer weather since it’s about 10 degrees right now in Kansas City.

Anyways today is the 9 year anniversary of my wife and I getting together on top of being married almost 4 years.  I’d just like to tell her that I love her very much and cannot imagine what my life would be like without her.  I’m definitely a lucky guy and I look forward to many more years together with her.

I’m looking forward to getting back to blogging regularly once I get back from my trip, until then have a good one.

Well now since it’s been about a month since the last time I posted here I figured that I should give an update of what’s going on with me. The bottom line is that I feel like I’ve got a lot of good content that I’d like to write here but time seems to be an issue for me right now.

I’m having a lot of fun working on my different affiliate campaigns and I’ve definitely learned quite a bit over the last few months about affiliate marketing. I’d also like to mention that NeverBlueAds is one of the best affiliate marketing programs around. I’m continuing to have great success with them. I’m also in the midst of trying to learn ASP.net for my day job as me and 2 other members of my team look to build an awesome web app that will hopefully be launched later this year. It’s definitely been a challenge, but I look forward to becoming fluent in Asp.net.

I’ve also been in the process of trying to do my own taxes and let me tell you that’s been a barrel of fun. If you’d like to know the secret to an exciting Friday night just buy the 2008 Ernst & Young Tax Guide and spend the night reading about tax laws and you’ll see what I mean. I don’t know how accountants do it day in and day out, but I know that’s definitely not a job that I’d ever want to do.

One recommendation that I do have to make though is for you to see the movie Juno. I saw it about 3 weeks ago and it’s by far one of the best movies that I’ve seen in the last few years. It’s definitely the complete package from the script, to the acting, and everything else in between. Next time you go to the movies go check it out and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Well now that I’ve given a brief update on what has been going I’ll definitely get back to posting on a more frequent basis. That’ll probably be next week though as I’m heading to Los Angeles this weekend for a short vacation with my brother and parents to check out the Nascar race.

Well my wife somehow got me to agree to getting another dog. I’ve already got one named Ernie, but she thought that he needed a friend. So after a few days of convincing she came home from the pet store with Gracee.

So far she’s been a lot of work but luckily per the agreement with my wife she is doing most of the work with her although I try and help out as much as I can. She is a really sweet dog so far and I’m sure that her and Ernie will be the best of friends when she gets a little older. Overall I think it’ll be good for him to have another dog to play with and I’m sure they’ll have a lot of fun and possibly get into some trouble as well.

PepperJamNetwork Launches
In other news I’m still working pretty hard at my affiliate marketing efforts and I just joined the pepperjamNETWORK affiliate program and I just got activated today. So far my early impressions of the program are extremely positive and they definitely put together a great site to cater to their affiliates. Overall they’ve got a nice selection of programs to promote starting out and their site is extremely well thought out and has a ton of great features for affiliates to use. Since I’m pretty new to the network so far, I don’t have an extensive review, but I’m looking forward to writing one a few weeks down the road when I’ve got a little more experience with the program. So if you haven’t head on over and check out the PepperJamNetwork.

Well another year is over and a new one has begun with me reflecting on a lot of things in my life. It’s hard for me to believe that this time 10 years ago I was a junior in high school. Man it’s amazing how fast time flies by sometimes.

As I look back at 2007 I had a lot of great things happen to me and unfortunately some that I wish hadn’t. Back in August I put a list of goals on here that I wanted to reach by the end of the year. Well Here is how I came out on completing these.

• Increase My Affiliate Income - I did ok here, but I’m not going to tell you how much I made because that’s classified! This is going to be probably 80% of my focus this year, so I’m definitely going to invest a lot of time to really grow this into a success for myself.  As I progress throughout the year I’ll share more information and give some tips.  I still see a lot of doubt in people who think I can’t make a substantial additional income online and that drives me everyday to prove them wrong.  I don’t care what anyone thinks, I will be very successful this year, because I refuse to give up no matter what.

• Improve My Web Design Skills - Unfortunately I wasn’t able to spend alot of time improving my design skills, but I’ve been doing a lot of usability analysis on the web to find out what does and does not work. As I continue to do this this year I look for it to greatly increase my skills as to how effectively design and layout a site.

• Learn Some Application Development - I just haven’t had anytime to venture into this area yet and I really don’t see a great amount of time being dedicated this year. I do find it to be an interesting subject buy not nearly as much as internet marketing and pay per click. Most of my application development will be done at my day job as we are looking to build a great online travel application.

• Increase My Knowledge of SEO and PPC - I’ve put a ton of time into this over the last 6 months and it’s definitely starting to pay off. I’m becoming more and more efficient in quickly launching effective PPC campaigns that convert. Over the next year I plan on continuing to learn as much as I can about each because they both hold massive importance when it comes to internet marketing for years to come.

• Attract More Subscribers to My Blog - This hasn’t happened as I would have liked over the last few months. I’m going to try and come up with some ideas to truly make this an effective resource with my readers. I think this will go hand in hand with my increased knowledge as I focus on particular areas throughout the year. I’ll also probably launch a completely new design sometime in the summer, because this design could be so much better.

• Get Back Into Physical Shape - I did a little better during the last few months but I really need to do better. So starting this Monday I’m going back to working out hopefully up to 5 days a week. I’ve even started cutting Dr. Pepper out of my diet, although it’s been harder than expected I still may have one every now and then. Overall I do plan on getting myself into great shape this year because I’ve got to be ready for softball season. I used to be pretty fast and I’ve got to get that back because my wife seems to think that I lost a step from my younger days!

• Spend More Time with My Wife - I’m still not doing as good as I could here. I need to balance my time spent online and that spent with her. I learned the hard way last month that you need to not take your time with loved ones for granted. So this year I’m going to spend a lot of quality time with my wife doing all kinds of things and I’m really looking forward to it.

So I hope that you’ve got your goals ready for 2008, because if you don’t then you definitely need to make a list. I’ve got a whole year this time, so I plan on accomplishing everything that I set out to and I hope that you do as well.

I hope that you’ve had a Merry Christmas if you take part in celebrating the holiday. I just got home from visiting my family and overall I had a great Christmas in light of some unfortunate circumstances over the last few weeks.

Unfortunately a little over two weeks ago my grandpa passed away unexpectedly and it was definitely pretty tough for me. This was initially very hard for me for a couple of different reasons. I had a great relationship with my grandpa and I’ve got a ton of great memories that I’ll always hold dear to my heart. The hardest part though is the fact that I hadn’t been home in awhile to see him or my grandma and I think in a way that I took for granted that they would just be there the next time that I made it home. They last time I actually spoke to him was last August when he and my grandma called to wish me happy birthday. I spent the days after his passing feeling guilty for not keeping in touch more than I had been but finally I came to a realization. Even though I hadn’t seen him as much as I should have he knew that I loved him and we’ll always have numerous great memories of each other. Grandpa I miss you dearly and I look forward to seeing you again some day and I’ll cherish all of our memories until then.

Here are some best memories I have of my grandpa

1. My brother and I spending weeks at my grandparent’s house during the summer to go golfing with grandpa and our shopping trips for new school clothes.
2. He was at almost every organized sporting event that I participated in growing up to support me.
3. His funny stories - It didn’t matter if he had already told the story a 100 times he still told it each time with the enthusiasm of the first time.
4. The great vacation he and grandma took my brother and me on when we were young kids.
5. Going out to dinner with he and grandma. I could spend 2 or 3 hours just sitting and having a conversation with them after dinner.
6. The respect and appreciation that he should me each time the honor roll was released in school.
7. Seeing how proud both he and my grandma were at my wedding 3 years ago

So I guess my point is don’t ever take your loved ones for granted. Always take the time out to spend quality time with them. It doesn’t even matter what age because each of us never knows when their time will come. I know this has definitely changed my prospective on some things and I’m going to make a much stronger effort to spend more time with my loved ones and hopefully you will to.

I hope that everyone has a happy rest of the holiday season and I look forward to a great new year!