Here’s the next part of my blog updates for 2006.

1. The VincentRich.com forum is now search engine friendly. I installed the phpBB SEO friendly add on I got from Able2Know.com. I "modelled" my forum to their search engine friendly recommendations by removing a whole bunch of useless elements on the page. Now the pages will appear with a "*.html" filename for the search engine spiders.
2. The next forum update will be to let users subscribe to "email digests". I want to participate in the forums as it grows bigger and bigger. By receiving daily email updates, I will be able to keep track of all the topics in the forum and so will you.
3. The forums will also have "insider clubs" for people who purchased products through my affiliate link. I will have forums for people who purchased Google AdWords 123 and some other products I plan to support in my forums. This will be done manually for the time being as I research and find ways to automate the process by looking into Clickbank’s API.
4. I am also creating a "membership site" format for my newsletter subscribers and customers in addition to access to the private forums mentioned earlier. For a start, I will email my newsletter subscribers a password to password protected WordPress blog entries and pages. I will research for ways to automate the process that will ensure only the newsletter subscribers get to login to the members only pages.
5. The newsletter bonuses will be changed very soon so please make full use of the $50 Google AdWords coupon while its still there.
6. WordPress has a new version! I tested out the version 2 release candidate 3 for the past few days on my home web server and I must says its so much easier to use than the previous 1.5 version. I have used other blogging/CMS platforms like drupal, phpnuke, boastmachine, and my own custom made CMS… I consider WordPress to be the best in terms of features, ease of use, and scalability. I find the WordPress template system really easy to customize. Just look at this blog and you’ll get what I mean.
7. Branding myself online for 2006. I just purchased a copy of "Branding Yourself Online" by Bob Baker today. I believe I will only receive it in the middle of January 2006 due to the shipping delays. The book is out of print and only Bob Baker has some of it left. Its only $17.97. You might want to check it out if you’re interested in branding yourself online.

On the branding topic… I actually wrote down some "unique selling points" about what I represent in my blog "about me" pages. I also have some new ideas in my "idea journal". In 2006 I will be organizing all these loose bits and pieces to form a very strong identity about what I choose to represent myself to the world online.

Its going to be cross of all the heroes I respect. I’ll give you a clue… My identity will be a cross of Anita Roddick (founder of Body Shop and activist), Bruce Lee (Movie star and founder of the modern martial art Jeet Kune Do), Liam &Noel Gallagher (Founder of Oasis) and The Buddha (founder of Buddhism). Put them all together in a blender and you’ll get Vincent Rich!

Happy new year everyone! See you in 2006!

Categories: Blog Updates | 1 Comment »

You might have noticed a few minor changes in my blog. Here’s a list of changes I made to welcome the new year!

1. Enlarged the logo and made some minor tweaks to the Vincent Rich cartoon and background image.
2. Updated the "Who is Vincent Rich" page with a better photograph of myself that looks kind of like my Vincent Rich cartoon.
3. Added a forum to the blog! Please register an account at the forum while I finalize the categories and forums in it. Subscribe the forum RSS feed to get notified whenever there are new posts in the forums.
4. Added a dollar sign favourite icon to my blog. Its so easy to create a favourite icon for your web site. Check out this free favourite icon service I used to create my own favourite icon!

I have a couple more updates to be released before 2006. I will fill you in on the details once they are ready.

Categories: Blog Updates | 1 Comment »

Oh damn I was right. I got kicked out of the Wealthy Affiliate for asking too many questions and the owners didn’t like my tone and said I was being overly negative and critical about them. All I can say is you can look at the questions or even join the site to take a look for yourself to judge whether I was being critical for the sake of being critical or because I was wanted to get the answers from them. I had a genuine desire to learn the things I asked them but the owners didn’t think so. I emailed them my campaign details for a critique but they told me its too late because they have decided to terminate my membership.

Please check out my Wealthy Affiliate review for the full story.

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing | 18 Comments »

I just joined the Wealthy Affiliate membership site 2 days ago. I’ve been looking around in the membership area and so far I am not so impressed. I can’t give a full review on the Wealthy Affiliate membership site yet because I have not used their "coaching" services and all their keyword lists.

Wealthy Affiliate is for affiliate program marketers who want to promote affiliate programs with PPC search engines like Google AdWords. I personally didn’t see any information about promoting affiliate programs with Yahoo Search Marketing. I only see Google AdWords related information in there.

Here’s what you’ll get in the Wealthy Affiliate membership site:

1. "Personal Coaching" in the forums. I have seen members sending the 2 owners of Wealthy Affiliate their Google AdWords campaign details privately for them to critique. This could be useful to learn how they optimize their campaigns.
2. Keyword lists of a bunch of affiliate programs. I am not sure how they came up with their keywords lists. Its just a long list of keywords in a text file. There are no indications of the amount of searches made for these keywords, neither are they arranged in ad groups. There is still a lot of work for you to do in order to use these keyword lists. I personally wouldn’t simply take their keywords and assume it will make me loads of money. I ran them through my keyword software to see the exact search statistics.
3. A simple get started guide. I don’t like the guide at all. It is very vague and I have complained about it in the forums. You’ll be better off reading a guide like Google AdWords 123 and then join a forum like Wealthy Affiliate if you think you need a support group.

Yesterday I had a Jeet Kune Do class. Before I went for the class I was reading a bit of Bruce Lee’s "Jeet Kune Do" book. I have to tell you its almost impossible to learn Jeet Kune Do from those sketches Bruce Lee made. You can’t see the full picture from the book. You have to have someone show you how its done.

In the internet marketing industry, I am seeing a shift to creating info-products with screen recording software. Almost everything that is done on a computer can be recorded with a screen recorder. A lot of things cannot be explained effectively through words alone. I was expecting much more than what I am seeing in the Wealthy Affiliate membership site right now.

I have very high expectations of someone I pay to be my coach. Paying $29.99 per month isn’t going to get me a coach of the highest level. If you can afford it, you might want to pay someone like Perry Marshall to train you how to get your campaigns in order. I believe my expectations were a bit too high for the low monthly fees I am paying right now.

I have a list of questions to ask the guys in there… I am waiting for them to answer my list of questions. If they give me satisfactory answers, I will consider extending my membership if they don’t kick me out for my hard hitting questions that is!

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing | 11 Comments »

Hey everyone, I managed to get all my emails for the past 3 days. Everything’s back to normal again. Thanks for your patience!

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »

I haven’t been receiving emails for the past 3 days. There is something wrong with my email servers at my web host. I have contacted them about this and I hope they can fix this as soon as possible. I apologise for any emails sent to me from 5 December 2005 to 9 December 2005. Hopefully when the mail servers are up, I will receive all the "lost emails" for the past 3 days.

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »