Justin Germino Ramblings

Being an affiliate of Amazon Associates I only recently started to see earnings surpass the $50 per month mark from affiliate product sales and crossed $100 in earnings in a single month for the first time last month.

With Amazon Affiliate I found that simply doing a product review and including a little Amazon information and purchase option at the end of the product review worked well if consumers found the product.  This particular worked with my Roku XDS and video game reviews which sold the most “direct sales” out of any of my affiliate banners.

That being said most of my earnings didn’t come from products I directly advertised or sold but came from the cookie being set by the reader clicking on the affiliate link and then finding another product they liked and wanted while in Amazon.com.  It is these indirect sales commissions where Amazon affiliate really ads up and many times someone will order multiple items in the same purchase and you get commission from each item.

Amazon associates also tiers your earnings % based on number of sales, and you start at 4% but after your 7th sale the commission increases to 6% which starts to get better than some CommissionJunction commissions.  For instance if you become an affiliate of Roku XDS on CJ, you get 5% commission which is less than the 6% after your 7th sale!

I will say that most commissions range in the $2-5 dollar mark, but my highest commission ever was $47.96 commission on an $1199 camera lens that was sold from my affiliate link.

Overall I am still trying to get more creative and boost my affiliate sales and one way I have started doing this is with the EasyAzon WordPress plugin which allows you to insert images, info blocks or text links into posts and link to your affiliate account automatically.  This can also be a good way to find images for posts that won’t violate any copyrights so it is something to consider if you ever need to add images of generic product stuff that can also serve as a way to gain some occasional affiliate sales from wandering clicks.

I also leverage the Affiliate Easel plugin for WordPress which has just a few features that are lacking in EasyAzon such as product search and auto building a store, but also EasyAzon has some features missing from Affiliate Easel.

I wrote a 2 part series on how I build an Amazon Store in WordPress with the Affiliate Easel for Amazon WordPress plugin and if you are interested in incorporating Amazon sales page, or even just simply product links and sales information with related items into your blog posts then this is the best free plugin I have found that accomplishes this.

You can read my two parts here for more information.

Building an Amazon Store in WordPress – Part 1

Building an Amazon Store in WordPress – Part 2

-Justin Germino

I was inspired to write this poem while thinking about my wife and the time we spend together whether it’s dining, working together, enjoying some TV or simply hanging out.

Distraction

I just can’t tell

an attraction or distraction

or is this moment in time

simply an infraction

I just can’t figure

an easier way to say

spending time together

always wanting to stay

I just can’t fight it

urges to tout and shout

life’s just better around you

this is love, no doubt

-Poem by Justin Germino

One thing I have been waiting for is for music based console games to allow you to use real instruments to learn and play along with the games.  Forget the Guitar Hero replica guitar with button frets I want a real guitar controller that plugs into the Playstation 3 and each real string, hum lets me play to a rock song in real time.

I think once the gaming consoles get advanced enough to where you literally can connect or they can listen to and understand real instruments and play along this will unlock a world of people who will learn to become musicians through play.

Xbox Kinect is one great example and has potential, it has microphones imagine if it was trained to understand guitar or flute pitches, notes…etc and you can literally play songs in real time with a real instrument and get feedback, improvement and have to get better for real to be better in the game?  Imagine the virtuoso’s that would come out of a Guitar Hero type of game where they have to shred a real guitar to rock along with tracks by Slash!

Rock Band first showed that drums were similar enough that timing and skill could become close, there are also real guitars by Fretlight that plugs into your PC via USB with LED lights that show chords so you can make sure you play along correctly which is a great teaching method for people learning on their own.

I am just waiting for music games to start using and recognizing real instruments.

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The family had a great time in SEA World last weekend where we took the kids up for the 5.5 hour drive from AZ to San Diego and took in the Sea Lion and Otter show.  It was a blast to have a one day getaway just to break out of the normal and the kids were honestly so impressed with the Hampton Inn which is always funny.  (They impress easily).

Here are some pics from Sea World:

The good news is 2 trips for 1 ticket price means we will be going back sometime this fall and won’t have to pay for a 2nd round of tickets.  We will likely combine it with some other trip around CA like maybe a Halloween festival somewhere.

-Justin Germino

Earlier in the week I was mentioning how my older Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum Pro doesn’t work with my new iBuyPower system with Windows 7 64 bit Operating System.  This mean’t that I had to stick with the motherboard sound which I heard isn’t too bad on the Asus P8P67 Deluxe motherboard but still can’t compare to a dedicated high end sound card if you are a gamer.  I did have a set of Creative 5.1 surround speakers for my PC and I had tried fiddling with the volume on my motherboard sound and just could never get it to produce enough volume for some of my apps no matter how much I tweaked the sound and volume controls in the Control Panel, App, or the Realtek Audio Manager itself.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”B0018EFGTM” alt=”Creative Labs SB0886 PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series Sound Card” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BVcdjSMAL.jpg” align=”left” width=”250″ ]As a result I broke down and bought the [easyazon-link asin=”B0018EFGTM”]Creative Labs SB0886 PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro[/easyazon-link] because of the following reasons:

A) On Amazon.com the Fatal1ty version which is normally $149.99 was the same price as the X-fi Titanium was at my local Best Buy combined with no shipping cost this made it a steal!

B) The 109 dB, 64MB XRAM and various hardware accelerations means that it would consume existing system resources to push my gaming sound like motherboard audio would.

I am still a little miffed that Creative discontinued support for a sound card that worked perfectly well forcing users to buy a new sound card when they upgraded operating systems, but I am glad I bought among the best sound card money can buy and it was about 1/2 as much as the Platinum Pro when I bought that one.

Hopefully it should arrive any day now and I can swap it in and do some comparisons to my motherboard sound card.

-Justin Germino

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So I have been a member of the Spotify Premium service for a few weeks now and really like instantly finding virtually any music I want online and building custom playlists of both my local content and online content.  I even can save my playlists as “offline” to where they will work when not connected to the Internet from my iPad.

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However, I still have an iPod Nano and Spotify doesn’t allow syncing of playlists for online content to anything but an iPod, iPad, Windows PC, Mac OS though they have an experimental Android OS client that you can preview if you have an Android device.

This means I am probably going to have to look at adding an iPod Touch to my wish list soon as I really want to have custom offline playlists that I can listen to when working out at the gym (If I ever start going back, been on a hiatus).

So far Spotify doesn’t have everything that I have been looking for, I found some Tangerine Dream albums that I can’t get on Spotify, as well as they are pretty sparse on movie soundtracks and such.  However hopefully the service will keep adding indie and older content so that it becomes even more beneficial.  I still think they should have more options for finding random music in similar genre or category or list top charts from years past so you can easily play a top 50 or top 100 from a decade ago.

Meanwhile, the iPod Touch 8GB is going on my wish list.  I don’t actually need more than 8GB because I have an iPad 2 which I use for all video media, I would only use it for audio and I don’t need that much audio stored at once.

-Justin Germino

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When Michael over at CravingTech.com asked me about whether I think charging for guest posts is okay I had a rather long winded answer on Google+ on how I handle guest post requests and the deluge of advertisers who come in requesting paid links on existing articles.

My own policy is as such for the 7 WordPress blogs I run varying from PR0 to PR3 (used to have PR4 but was downgraded recently).

Guest Post from a Real Blogger

If person shows me they are linking to a true blog, not a sales page or company site, and their post is of value and unique (passes copyscape scan). They are allowed a free guest post with link in their author bio only (not in article).

Guest Posts from Link Buyers

If it is a blogger or hired person looking to build SEO links, then I automatically charge them a fee (depending on quality of article). My demands are “no fluff” article must inform, educate or entertain and be no less than 500 words. All guest posters must reply to all comments, and content must be 100% original (copyscape scan proof) the author byline must also pass copyscape scan.

My prices vary depending on the advertiser, quality of post and if I have worked with them before. In my case I only charge after I review and approve article, but I am can see why some people charge just to review as I get 4-6 guest post requests per day.

Still unless your site is a PR5+ or gets 100k plus visits per month I wouldn’t charge more than $5 to review. But honestly I charge between $25 and $50 for some of my sites depending on PR of site. Remember when guests want a link in article they don’t care about traffic, just PageRank of site. So charge more based on the PR of your site. I have seen these rates reasonable.

Recommended price for an in article link or what I call sponsored guest post:

• PR2 = $25
• PR3 = $35 – 50
• PR4 = $75 – $100
• PR5 = $150+

I can tell you I was getting anywhere from $75 to $150 per link in a post on DragonBlogger.com when it was a PR4 average. This dropped down quite a bit when I was slapped to a PR2, but the requests dropped off.

Also note, I would rather just embed a link in a new paragraph on an older article (which they are usually okay with and saves them time) than put a junk new article up on the site. This saves everyone time and this I always charge for.

Note, I am fully aware what I do is frowned upon by Google but hey a blogger has to try and earn something for putting effort into their sites. As I have no products to specifically sell, don’t market services that I perform I have to be creative in how I bring in money.

-Justin Germino

For some reason on my new iBuyPower machine the Creative Soundblaster X-FI Platinum Pro soundcard I was using does not work.  I keep getting driver errors about no Windows 7 64bit support for the soundcard and no drivers I could find online will let the sound card work. [easyazon-image-link asin=”B001E25KDK” alt=”Creative Labs SB0880 PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Sound Card” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51C8l31PAJL.jpg” align=”center” width=”500″ height=”375″]

It is ironic because on my older system with an Asus P68 Deluxe motherboard I was able to get the Soundblaster X-FI Platinum Pro working on Windows 7 64bit without complaint so some combination with the new motherboard and Windows 7 is freaking out.

Creative themselves officially retired the soundcard and won’t support it anymore, so looks like I will have to make do with the onboard sound of the Asus P8P67 Pro motherboard or shell out another $90 for a Soundblaster X-FI Titanium card.

I do some gaming and I have a 5.1 speaker system, but I found the audio volume even with tweaking in various system and control panels doesn’t seem to get loud enough on the motherboard sound so I may opt to buy the PCI Express soundcard.

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I was thrilled to learn that I was a winner in one of the first blog contests run on Bloggers Compete.  The contest netted me a $75 cash prize for writing an article about online startup tips.

Bloggers Compete is a site that is focused on helping bloggers run cash contests from a central location where they can collect and review entries into the contest and award the prizes based on who writes the best article.

At it’s current state the Bloggers Compete website lets you basically invite people to write a contest about any topic and they publish articles as entries into the contest.  These articles can include up to 3 backlinks / anchor texts you provide as requirements for the contest.  This is a great way to not only gain fans but servers to build more backlinks to your own site and you get SEO, Brand Awareness and networking benefits all from running a contest here.

I intend to run a contest for DragonBlogger.com technology blog very soon on BloggersCompete where I will be giving away $100 cash prize to a single winner who enters the contest.  I just haven’t decided what I want the contest to be about yet, I have seen others create blogging contests about promoting their own site but I don’t see this as an effective use of the system.  I would rather have a reader write an article about something fun to them and include a few anchor text, keywords to my site as an afterthought than require a reader to write just about my site.

So should I create a contest asking readers to write about some of their favorite tech gadgets, or should I create a contest asking readers to write about something related to blogging?

Let me know what you think would be a good contest to run with a $100 cash prize offered to the winner?

-Justin Germino

Thanks to one of my writers covering all the hype around Pottermore, DragonBlogger.com reached it’s highest single day traffic of all time on Monday August 8th 2011, with a total # of 9,274 unique visits for a single day.

This continues the trend of growth and I have had two spikes of over 5k unique visits recently with both articles centered around Pottermore.  This adds to the site in the Entertainment genre as it was previously dominated by technology or blogging related articles and finally has some more entertainment related articles (somewhat related to Internet) taking front and center.

I am edging closer to the goal of reaching 100k unique visitors per month by January 2012 on DragonBlogger.com and have been averaging over 60k unique visitors per month the last two months so far.  If this trend continues and can be maintained I should be able to reach 100k unique visits in a single month by October.

I still am seeking ways to expand revenue for the site as I have lost a significant revenue stream when my site was penalized from a PR4 to a PR2.  AdSense doesn’t increase in a profitable enough ratio to the number of increased visits only increasing by an average of $2-3 bucks per extra thousand visits per day which isn’t a lot of money.

My goal was to have my technology blog bring in $1,000 per month in steady revenue by January 2012, but I still struggle to meet this goal and even after reaching over $900 in revenue for June 2011, the sharp drop to less than $600 in revenue in July means I have to find additional income sources or risk not meeting my goals.

-Justin Germino