If you are using Twitter, you may have already noticed that people out of nowhere mysteriously started to follow you. They usually have a pretty girl’s picture as their profile photo, and their twitter username usually ends with 3 digits, a sign that they are using some sort of automated twitter tools to generate these fake accounts.

It usually works like this: the spammer get an affiliate link through Clickbank or other affiliate networks; she or he then shortens the link by using bit.ly; they then create a lot of twitter accounts and start following people automatically; these links are posted to their twitter stream – usually as the first and only tweets these fake account will post.

So why do spammers target twitter now? It turns out it is quite profitable for the spammers.

I recently noticed that I have been spammed with all sorts of links related to online forex trading. I don’t know much about the forex trading market but it must be highly lucrative for the spammer affiliates promoting forex trading ebooks through clickbank.

Let’s do a quick back of envelope calculation on this type of spams. The url shortener service bit.ly has a nifty feature that gives you the statistics of clicks on a particular link. Here is a screenshot of a spam link that promoted a forex trading how-to type of ebook.

As you can see, this guy generated 14,571 clicks to his landing page in just one week. Let’s conservatively estimate that only 1% of clicks generates a sales for him. That’s almost 145 sales in one week. For an ebook on Clickbank that sells for $47 a copy and pays out 50% to affiliates, 145 sales would amounts to $3,407 in profits for this spammer in one week. Of course this is just an estimate, but you got the idea.

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Usually such problem as service scalability issue can be a good thing for a young company as they can solve the issue earlier and prepare themselves for greater success in the future.

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The eBay US team has been working to solve the tracking issue that
began on Saturday April 7th. A fix was implemented over the weekend and
early data is pointing to an overall improvement. Additional data is
required to confirm that the fix is complete.

We don’t know how extensive the problem was and how much commission the eBay affiliates have lost. But we can imagine that if you are a big eBay affiliate, your income is probably going to suffer a little bit of uncertainty. This sort problem further taught us a lesson that it is really important to not put all your eggs in one basket, no matter what.

Moreover, we wonder whether AuctionAds.com is affected by this problem as well.

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Viral marketing, by most experts’ definition is a form of marketing where people are enticed to pass the marketing message around to friends, families and colleagues.

For viral marketing to be successful, you want to achieve a high pass-along rate. A high pass-along rate in turn is dictated by the incentives/motivations the message implies on the messenger and the easy of pass-along the message. In the case of $7 Dollar Secrets, the incentives for people to pass along the script is that Jon has given the source-code of the script away and anyone who uses the script could potentially be using it to build its own viral marketing effort to make money (although the money-making part is probably not easy for new internet marketers). Secondly, by setting a low price of $7, it dramatically reduces the psychological barrier for buyers to try it. Lastly, the script and ebook can be so easily passed along and setup by anyone which allowed an entire eco-system to be built around the $7 Dollar Secrets concept. On my last check, there are a total of 342 $7 eBooks listed for sale on 7dollaroffers.com.

There is also Digg style review site for all $7 eBooks at 7dollargurus.com. The most successful viral marketing is through a network of affiliates. And if you do decide to play affiliate games, you need to be aware that some markets are not for all users in every geography. For example, you don’t want to spend any of your money to target United States internet users for internet casino sites because gambling site is illegal in US.

By the way, Darren Rowes’s article on “34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog” listed infrequent posting as the number 2 reason why people unsubscribe blogs. I better increase the frequency at this blog.

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There are two excellent examples of how great affiliate marketers produce, market and sell their products. One is Chris McNeeney with his smash-hit release of Day Job Killer (aff). The other is Jonathan Leger’s phased release of $7 Secrets (aff).

Apart from offering quality products, the most important techniques I learned from these two affiliate marketing gurus are the following:

Bold and Disruptive Affiliate Marketing Techniques

In the case of Day Job Killer (aff), this is the third product Chris created, where he banked on the idea of ‘beaing the gurus’. He claimed that the gurus are ‘cheating’ the regular guys. This kind of marketing is sure to have a grassroot appeal. Can you come up with something that’s disruptive?

Build An Affiliate Network Ecosystem

In the case of $7 Secrets (aff), Jonathan started with a simple (but very useful) ebook selling script and a 30 page report that basically outlines his idea of selling $7 ebooks while building up an affiliate email list. He followed up by creating a marketplace of $7 ebooks so that more affiliate marketers can join him to create an entire eco-system of affiliates, merchants, and services. If he is successful, this could become a mini-clickbank. What would you recommend Jon’s next step to be?

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There are three different ways you can use to make money online.

Selling Products Or Services

In this case, you have created some, hopefully, unique and useful products that you can sell. It could be physical products like an iPod killer or virtual products eBooks. Amazon.com is a great success. Or you developed some expertise in your professional area and you can offer your service to other people that are in need of your service. When your service is delivered through the internet, it could become very powerful. Youtube.com is essentially a video sharing service.

Another example of service providers is the web hosting companies, web designers / developers, and search engine marketers etc. These are all good money-making professions.

Affliate Marketing

In this case, you are selling other people’s Products Or Services. This is most appropriate when you realize that you are the type of people who likes to create stuff but you have a great skills for marketing and sales. Affiliate marketing could be very lucrative if you do your research and find great niche products to sell.

Internet Advertising

Internet advertising are essential to the success of the first two groups, which is why it is the fastest growing segment of the multi-billion dollar advertising industry. Google is the clear leader in this space with its Adwords advertising program.

Internet publishing (blogs, photo-sharing, video-sharing etc.) benefited from the huge growth in advertisers’ internet spending. One of the most significant product is the Google Adsense program, which single-handedly changed the business of media publishing, allowed numerous small, independent publishers (anyone who writes on a website:-) to make a nice profit from internet publishing.

So which one of the above money making methods is for you? It really depends on who you are and what you want to be. I would say most of the people that are making money online have two or more revenue streams so that they are not dependent on any one source.

This blog will not limit itself to any particular money making technique either. In the months and years ahead, I will post greater details on all sorts of techniques. Hopefully you will enjoy the journey as much as I do.

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