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Three I am at home working on the blog… You can see from this picture that I have a lot of fun working on my websites, and those of my clients. I like to work near a window at all times, so I can look out and check on nature at the same time as working.

I’ve been a fan of Live Writer for several years, and had heard many good things about it, I’m just not sure how well it does. I created this test post, added an image, and now I am back into my blog online editing the same post, just to see how well it did.  I’m impressed so far.  I tried a few other WYSIWYG editors and they were either very old (and not updated to the latest version of WordPress, or they were not good enough for what I want to do.  Let’s face it, adding and positioning images is not a fun task in WordPress, and using a full what you see is what you get editor makes all the difference in the world.

I’ve got tons of new products to review and I will get to that over the coming weeks. Let’s just say I’ve had a field day on the Warrior Forum, picking up quite a few products recently, most of them being for Facebook, and Social Media, or SMS marketing, or for my offline client gaining business of Web Design which I have been doing for years online for clients around the world.

A lower cost Autoresponder is available!

The biggest problem is that about 2-3 months ago all of the white label autoresponders raised their prices, from the looks of things it seems that Aweber does not allow the lower priced options and they are wanting everyone to signup for their full suite of services.  That’s fine if you have good sales numbers already and you can justify the cost, and if you really need all of the additional services such as: ‘send only’ to those who have not opened previously, or you want tracking statistics that are top-notch.

With the advent of using Google Analytics for email tracking, and the fact that current open rates for email are down, as well as click through rates, you might want to consider the lower cost alternatives, and as an experienced marketer (from way back in 1997), there is only one really good one in town – short of setting up your own mail server (which I can happily do for you if you need it).

That service is MadMimi.  The pricing is fair: get up to 10,000 names for $36.00/month! Their campaign tracking, (additional priced: drip sending is at $5.00/month) and other features set them in a league of their own for the thrifty autoresponder user.

MadMimi is available at: http://www.madmimi.com

First, a little background: I’ve been running my own mail servers since late 2003, but I ran my own email server from my local machine before that, managing my lists (up to 25,000 or more) during that time with my own custom database code. I’ve probably used about every type of email software you can purchase that runs in windows.

Email marketing was way different back then (nearly 10 years ago). It used to be possible to do all your own sending – right from your desktop, but now that it is not allowed your best option is to purchase, and setup your own dedicated email server (either a VPS server, or a dedicated stand-alone machine) that is managed by a hosting company.  The ‘Managed’ word here is really important, because if you do not choose the managed option, you may get stuck re-booting your server (remotely) whenever it goes down, or restarting your Domain services, MySQL process, or Exim mail process whenever one of those goes down – and believe me, they do go down!  Not frequently, but enough for it to be a problem.

So, the first thing to look for is a company that will allow large email sends from their servers – this is getting hard to find, but there are still some good ones available (see list below).  A VPS server will usually do just fine, as it’s not incredibly taxing to a server to do this, but it does require that your host understands what you are doing, and that you are doing it responsibly, otherwise you could get shut down, and you do not want that to happen. So keep things clean (as in your email lists), remove unsubscribes promptly, and be responsible about your sending – 1.) choose a reliable software, and 2.) keep it throttled (I tend to throttle around 4,000 emails/hour) to you don’t overload the outgoing send queues.

Still, you may wonder, how can I send to 50,000, or 100,000 at a time, without having it take days?  Well, my friend, that is an entire other side of emailing all together.  In that scenario, you are better of with your own dedicated server, which you will likely have to manage on your own. Still, you will probably also want to consider purchasing email ‘white list’ services from GoodMail, Habeas, or any other type of similar service that can guarantee that your email will go through both reliably, and timely to the big name email ISP’s such as: AOL, Yahoo, HotMail, LiveMail, etc.

Recommended Hosting Services for sending to large lists

When it comes to hosts there are very few these days that understand large email sends, and how to deal with them.  Even some of the better hosts will block, or stop large list sending automatically, so you’re stuck trying to use those hosting services (I’ve tried at least one and it did not work).   So, choose from the list below of hosts that are known to respect larger sending volumes and you will do fine.  If you have to handle extremely large sends (over 100,000 at a time) consider a dedicated, co-located server, or purchase co-location services that are managed (some of the hosts below offer these services as well – but you will still need to check that you can do very large email sends from their servers).

• JTL.net – excellent hosting, choose from VPS, Dedicated or Co-location.  I’ve had good luck with this host, their service is excellent too, and their prices are reasonable.
• Future Hosting.com – another excellent choice.  From VPS to Dedicated, you can also choose your server location, London, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, etc.

Recommended Software for sending to large lists

With software you must be very careful that the software can handle larger sending queues and list data.  Choose from the software listed below to make sure of that.  I have either tested these myself with list sizes up to 215,000+, or I have heard from others, and believe that it is true.

• ListMailPRO – I’ve been using this software for years, in fact I’m now known as the List Mail Pro technical support expert, and I have setup, configured and tuned servers all over the world with ListMail Pro software.  The best part is that Dean (the author) has now made ListMailPro completely free!
• Dada Mail – another free alternative, but you will do better to upgrade to Pro for $50.00.  I’ve heard of this software being used to send to very large lists just fine.
• Active Campaign – A paid solution with extra features (reminders, email triggers, etc) that will also handle larger lists.

Now that you have your server, and your software in place, the last step is to make sure it is tuned properly for large list sending.  I’ve not had much experience in the ‘very large list’ category (100,000+ active subscribers), so, you will have to be patient (as I will post up here as time goes by and I learn more), or you can try some of the services referenced below for consulting with technical experts who can handle your list properly.

Reference Information for Large Email List sending

• Sending larger email lists – a post at Active Campaign forum discussing larger sending lists.

Downside it costs money, however if you want to do 6,000 messages a min you need to pay.

• Sending messages really fast with Dada Mail – a post in the Dada Mail support forums indicating that co-location is your only alternative, especially for very large lists.

The thing to do is invest the money into a co-located server either setup by yourselves, or by a 3rd party at a cost of about $1,000 Canadian Dollars a year, and then you can send emails as fast as the server can go.

For us with a newly configured box and DaDa3 we are doing 200,000 in about two hours

• Optimize your Server, Software (MySQL) and Mail Software – for larger sending, this is required, a post over at Active Campaign forums.

Finally, if you need assistance in setting up your own VPS, or dedicated server please feel free to contact me at my web design company: BGS Web Design – where I can answer your questions, you can contact me through my website at: http://www.bgswebdesign.com/Contact-Us.php

Yes, the single most important thing to consider when signing up, or setting up your own mail server is: Email Deliverability! It should come as no surprise really, when you are paying for a service, the first thing you want to make sure of is that when you send an email, it has a chance of making it into the Inbox of the person you are sending it to – right?

Jeeezsh, and to think I ever forgot that one.  So, that makes my top 3 autoresponder services in order of how much I like them as:

1. Aweber – you cannot get any better deliverability in the marketplace, in my opinion. Support can speak to you directly on the phone (business hours, M-F), or by chat (24/7).
2. Xmailpro – a white label version of Aweber, and much cheaper alternative, it leaves out a few ‘statistics’ and the ability to do things like send email to someone who has not opened, or clicked on a link previously – but I can live without that for now, and save myself a cool $100 or more/month.
3. GetResponse – they are still a top dog, and providing good service, as well as now including audio/video hosting too, but I’m not sure I would host all of my multimedia content there.
4. ListMailPro – I setup and tune installations of this script on LAMP servers (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).  You can see my services for doing this over at my webdesign company website at: BGS Web Design – ListMailPRO support and installation.  ListMailPRO is now also free.
5. ActiveCampaign (previously 1-2 All) – ok, I’m still looking into this script, mostly because it is supported well, and even offers an excellent support forum that is active for sharing ideas on how to increase deliverability, conversion rates, and do other really ‘good’ and automated things with Email (from your own server), or from a Hosted version.
6. PHPList – it’s been around forever, and has an active community of supporters.  A great alternative that is free. I have setup a few lists with this script and they work just fine.
7. DadaMail – one other alternative that is free, with an inexpensive ($50.00) upgrade to Pro version.  It’s been around forever, but I have not setup or tested this application.  It does run under PERL/CGI so, it’s a bit older technology, but that’s just fine. It’s well supported with forums too.

Now, back to the topic at hand…. I’ve found some excellent resources to follow when increasing your deliverability rate over at the ActiveCampaign website, see those below, follow them and you will see more money/profits coming in based on your email marketing campaigns.

Email Deliverability,  Email Marketing Delivery resources at Active Campaign.
Serving Larger Email Lists a great forum post in the Active Campaign forums.
Validate your SPF records if you are using your own server.
SPF lookup over at MXToolbox.com
Emails marked as spam and what to do about it.
Optimizing your Mail Server if you run your own, which I recommend.
Using Port25 – PowerMTA to increase your sending rate, and deliverability.
SPF Setup wizard, if you want one way to increase deliverability from your own server use an SPF record.

So, that leaves the question, do I run my own mail server, or do I purchase a service?  That still depends, and my answer is still ‘up in the air’.  So far I am finding that sending through my own mail server increases my conversion rates, but I’m not yet sure if it is due to the fact that I was sending information only to the Autoresponder list, instead of Offers that I normally send to my own server list, or if it is for some other reason.  Further testing will provide answers – for now, I still believe it is best to maintain both, if you can.

There are basically 4 main competitors, and one two (free) competitors in the Slide In/Slide Up ad market.  These scripts, for the most part do a great job of presenting an offer that will slide in, or up from the bottom of the page (though some will slide in from the side, or top of the page as well), to present a small banner/offer, or even an Opt-In for your autoresponder.

I got curious as to how much they really increase signups, so I had to give them a try – all of them!  I hope I can save you some time as I go over what I found, right here… Here are the main scripts, please note: the most important factor with these scripts is, in my mind, the size of the Javascript File(s) they require to load on your website. Why? Because the larger the scripts, the less that Google will think of your website, and many of these scripts are using HUGE, yes, really HUGE Javascript libraries that will hurt your Search Engine Ranking, and that is not a good thing.

SlideInCode (Price: $14.95-$49.95/monthly)  – Script size: 99,690 bytes . A full service script, with a  login & control panel for tracking your Slide Ins. Unfortunately I’m not sure the monthly price is justified, but it’s worth it to get the upgrade – just to have the graphics.

Ultimate Footer Ad  – UFA (Price $47.00) - Script size: 105,468 27,644 bytes – (note: author promises a reduced size to jquery.min.js on the next release updated and reduced script size version 3.x and beyond: 27,644 bytes) An impressive slide up with a countdown timer, well done.

Instant Slide Up (Price: $77.00) – Script size: 35,564 bytes – impressive slide up, but costly.

OptInCrusher (free – runs on WordPress blogs only) – Script size: unknown. A brand new Slide Up / footer ad script, Opt In Crusher works on WordPress blogs and comes configured to work straight away with Aweber, GetResponse, MailChimp, iContact and several other Autoresponders.  It does a good job of popping up, and even lets you add custom HTML to the PopUp inline page: include audio, video, or anything else.  The stats you get will only be those from your Opt-In service, using tracking images, so the stat tracking is not as sophisticated as some of the other scripts, but overall a very nice implementation at a great price.

TamingTheBeast.net (free – using online slideup generator) – Script size: 36,508. A free solution, if you can deal with visiting the slide-up generator page and using the code – I prefer to install these on my own server, rather then use the script code elsewhere.

Slide Up FX (price $9.99-$17.00) – Script size: 176,232. Not even worth looking at, as the code is enormous.

Oh, and the one software that I have not covered yet, but I think is well worth it?  It’s XSitePro, version 2.x.  I use it for website development and it’s great. It has a PopUp Ad Generator included, the best part is that the Javascript code is a miniscule 8,819 bytes in size!  It’s bound to make you look good in Google’s eyes.

What Is The Best Slide Up Script?

That really depends on if you want to go to the trouble to setup the script on each of your servers. If you do, I really like: Ultimate Footer Ad, for it’s ease of use, and timely updates. If you do not want to setup a script on your server, then SlideInCode may be for you, or if you’re looking to develop an entire website, have a look at XSitePro along with Ultimate Footer Ad.

I will be posting updates in the next few weeks as I put some of these slide in scripts to the test, so stay tuned… Updates have been posted above, and below, I’ve chosen 2 winners, below:

UPDATE (November 18, 2010) – And The Winner Is:

There are 2 Winners, as of November, 2010, (I’ve finally been able to get the DOCTYPE to work properly with XSitePro allowing me to run Ultimate FooterAd on XSitePro websites. The most recent update of UltimateFooter Ad, 3.04 now features a reduced script size (27,644 bytes). I also found a brand new WordPress only Slide In / Footer Ad – OptInCrusher which is excellent for WordPress blogs)

1. Ultimate Footer Ad ($47.00) – for all sites Blogs & static (XSitePro) websites, the new version 3.04 (email me if you need an upgrade link) reduces the script size considerably and adds new options to limit the display of Ads to specific pages and Pause All Ads completely – a great timesaver.  Rating: Excellent
2. OptInCrusher (Free) – a recent Slide In /Footer Ad for WordPress Only has some interesting options including a Popup with embedded Video, Audio or any type of HTML.  OptinCrusher runs in WordPress only.

Here’s an honest review of Info Prodigy. As an internet marketer myself, I make it a point to purchase and use each product so that you can get an idea of it’s value.  Let’s get right into the review.

First, a little bit of background. Tim Godfry and Steve Clayton know their way around the internet marketing world. This is their product (along with a collaborator Kate Anderson), but I’m more familiar with him from previous products of his: Commission Blueprint  and Niche Blueprint, as well as the IM Eye Tool and his IMA (Internet Marketing Advantage) membership website, which is excellent.

This product is a little different. 1.) It contains mostly PDF documents (tons of them), rather than videos as the other products, 2.) It is only available for about 7 days, so if you are interested in it, you must buy it right away, otherwise it will not be available again.

So, what is included?  You login to the Members area and have access to all of the PDF documents, and one video (Module 1 – Finding A Niche that is Profitable).  The rest of the course is made up of many short to medium length (5-30 page) PDF documents, most of them are in the 20-25 page range.  It may seem like a lot of reading, but it is required if you want to pick a market that is valuable, and that you can make money with – for the long-term.  Long-term income is the focus here, it’s important to find the right market, and to pursue the marketing over many months to start seeing income. The 6th module does include details on selling your site (flipping your website), but I would consider this a last resort.

Ok, I know you want to know ‘whats inside’ so here’s a quick look:

Module 1 – Finding A Profitable Niche (1 video, with explanation on how to go deep into finding a market). This is a great video, but I do wish they would have made a PDF of this as well.  It goes into great detail on finding a info product niche that will pay off.

Module 2 – Developing Product (10 PDF manuals + 1 Contact Form).  Includes a great Idea Factory and other tools to help you find niches you may have never thought of previously. Here we have documents on Product Creation, Adding Value to your product, How to Interview others (to create a product), Product Protection and even Outsourcing and using PLR (Private Label Rights products to develop your own product). Most of these PDFs are great and cover tons of material, unlike other Info Product courses I’ve purchased previously. This is a huge module – the PLR development material is excellent and shows you exactly how to take a PLR product and turn it into your own. The Product Protection manual is a little weak, as I would recommend a few more options for locking your content – but I do that for a living, so it’s likely I would know more in this area.

Module 3 – Sales and Marketing – the Meat of the course (6 PDF manuals), here we have a 39 page manual on Backend-System, and a 20 page manual on Pitch Page Layouts.  Just seeing how these guys do it, really helps. These manuals focus on using ClickBank as a payment processor which I would also highly recommend for new marketers.  These manual are all excellent covering how to setup/define your USP (Unique Selling Position), how to Price your Info Product, and more, even how to setup a Continuity Program (membership) to earn additional revenue.

Module 4 – Payment Processing (2 PDF manuals).  This module is a little lite on content, but it does provide the basics, covering ClickBank, PayDotCom and eJunkie – 3 of my favorite processors (I would probably also throw in 2Checkout).

Module 5 – Launching Your Product (7 PDF manuals). A huge 36 page manual on Launching a product is the highlight of this module. I’ve never seen launches covered so thoroughly, and again to see how Steven Clayton and Tim Godfrey do it is just great! Also covered in this module are topics: Affiliate Creatives,  Finding Partners, Generating Buzz, Minimizing Refunds, and Pre-Launch Strategies as well as Post Launch.

Module 6 – Exit Strategy (4 PDF manuals).  If your product is not turning the profit you like this module goes into great detail on using Flippa and a few other web sites to sell your creation. The other manuals cover How To Value your website, Increasing the Value, and Exit Strategies.

Module 7 – Valuable Additions (6 PDF manuals + Legal Docs). Even more details on how to make sure your Info Product (and website) is legally correct, including disclaimers and more details on making a smooth sale and transition of your site if you decide to sell it. These manuals cover a host of details not covered earlier such as: Setting up a ClickBank Account, Hosting and FTP, and Escrow Process (for selling).

Well, that covers it. My recommendation is to consider purchasing this product if you want to learn to create a valuable Info Product that will sell.  There are other similar courses available, and I’ve tried many of them.  Info Prodigy however covers details not found in some of the others, important details, and even exact strategies and techniques that the authors of: Commission Blueprint and Niche Blueprint use to launch their own products.  The details are all here, and there’s little else to go over.  If you are an advanced expert at creating products and have done it before, this course is probably not for you, but you  may learn a thing or to as well, I know I did.

==> For Full Details on Info Prodigy Visit This Link…

*Note: I will be including a nice Bonus for you if you purchase Info Prodigy through the link above.  I’m still putting it together, but it will be exceptional. To claim your bonus, please forward the details of your purchase to me at: brett@profit-internet.com

The hype of this product has been enormous, leave it to Simon and Jeremy, but I have to tell you, if you have a website, you really, really need this product. If you are looking for real traffic to your website, you need Underground Traffic Blueprints.  The intro videos, and the sample videos have really been a little ‘lacking’, but I figured, for $77.00 (price may have gone up since this post) it’s worth it, just to see what is inside. When I first logged in I found sets of videos.

Underground Traffic Blueprints

In this section there are 4 phases, phase 1 through 4. The phases do not make sense as each seem to be completely different sections on how to generate tons and tons (millions) of visitors to your website, so listen up… Here are the details on how I see the Phases:

1. Phase 1 goes into a unique Google Adwords technique that I’ve heard of recently. It includes complete details on how to go through the entire process, from top-to-bottom, it’s very well documented. I’ve seen some of this covered before, but this one goes into full details. It starts at the ‘newbie’ level and even if you know nothing about how to do some of these things you can learn quickly by watching the videos.  (this includes 6 videos ranging from 4 minute to 22 minutes, the total running time here is: (62 Minutes).
2. Phase 2 covers how to use blogs to generate up to 8 million visitors to your blog, yes MILLION!  It may sound impossible, or ridiculous, but after watching the videos I can tell you it is not, if you dedicate the time to it. There are 2 videos here (47 minutes and 26 minutes)
3. Phase 3 looks at article marketing in great detail. I’m talking about ‘Guerilla Article Marketing’ here, how to write an article fast, get it up on the directories and get traffic to the article. It’s well documented in 4 videos. Some of the techniques I already knew about, but others I have not, just this one phase alone is worth the price of admission… but it gets better (read below). The 4 videos total (73 minutes).
4. Phase 4 is the biggest of all and covers Social Network Traffic building (everything from facebook to press releases, etc). The 3 videos are 54, 12 and 29 minutes totalling: (95 minutes).  This is a huge but there is a bonus that spends over 2 hours covering just Facebook Marketing!  I’m watching that now… but I learned a lot just in this phase with techniques that made perfect sense and actually turned on a light-bulb compared to some of the other ‘Facebook Training’ I have seen in the last 2 weeks or so… I’ve been gearing up for Facebook marketing lately.

Ok, I now see the phases are laid out differently. I don’t understand lumping all of these videos together, but they are all on one page and actually the phases I describe above are really Phase 1 and Phase 2, then there are 2 more phases after this: Phase 3 – Underground SEO Tactics, and Phase 4 – Underground Massive Traffic Blueprint, wow this Phase thing is confusing, but like I said it is really of no use anyway as the videos are grouped together in 3-4 video segments covering a major topic in each, splitting them into phases is really not of much use, and there’s no reason I can see that you have to do Phase 1 first, then Phase 2, etc, etc… in fact you could pick and choose any of these Video Segments at a time and go from there…

Underground Ad Secrets

Ok, that just about covers it – but, as I said I’m diving into the Bonus Videos which are: Underground Ad Secrets. This entire 4 video series covers Facebook Ads and how to do it, from soup to nuts, it’s all in there… I’m still watching these videos, they total 33, 39, 44, and 46 minutes! Do you see what I mean, wow, over 2.5 hours of material here, and it’s great content and techniques with full details.

Well, I think I’ve about covered it… I have to go back now to watching video, and if you haven’t guessed by now – I highly recommend you check this out and give it a listen. If you have a website and you want more traffic, there is no better way to generate it than by watching these videos, as it’s all layed out for you in bite size steps (just watch a series, or group at a time and don’t pay attention to the phases).

These blueprints are on a special price right now, with the bonuses so head over there and grab them at this link: Undgeround Traffic Blueprints – Click Here!

I still pull out the old Web Position software from time to time, but it’s become dated, and unfortunately it will not run well in Windows 7. So, I’m off searching for something better when I hit on WebCEO. I heard for years that Web CEO is a great program, in fact I wasn’t even sure it could be so good after all of the hype surrounding it, but now I have ‘seen the light’ and do believe that it is top notch at doing a few things really, really well, and for the other things – well it’s ok at that too…

When working with SEO software there are some very important points to keep in mind, you really want something that will not leave a footprint for the search engines, getting you banned because of your page content, or because you are using the tool and it is querying the search engines over and over – so you have to be able to really control the speed that you are using the tool – WebCEO does that beautifully. In my opinion it’s way to cautious at first, and will take hours to get back usable data on a large group of keywords, but after my quick adjustments, and enabling caching I can get good ranking data for nearly 200 keywords in around 1 hour. That’s not too bad. And the data is very usable too, letting me easily compare to previous rank checking that I’ve done throughout the silo sections of my site. I have one site that is close to 1,000 pages and it requires siloing. So, the key here is to setup specific silo rank checking features for each main silo (category) of your website and go from there.

Now, WebCEO is kind of a ‘linear’ model, if you follow the help guides…. They want you to go from Keyword Finding, to Ranking/Checking, to Building Content, to Finding Link Partners, to Auditing, etc… but you can jump around if you want to. I started with rank checking and found it very useful, after the tuning I mentioned above.  In fact one of my favorite parts of webceo is the ‘check all ranking pages’ option which easily returns every page that is ranked in the search engines I choose.  What a great job. It lets you see the keywords sorted by engine, or by keyword, and it’s a great way to see what is in the engines. You may find, as I did that some keyphrases are in one search engine while missing from others, and you can quickly go about finding a way to solve that little problem!

The Keyword Finder is fairly proficient too, though it is a bit too highly focused on KEI (keyword effectiveness index) for my liking. Either way it does a good job of grabbing keywords based on your one search term and letting you see where there may be some ‘open spots’ to grab rankings based on low competition. It works almost the same as Market Samurai, though I would place Samurai a little higher up in this regard. I also like Micro Niche Finder for finding new/unique keywords as well as Keyword Snatcher and Webcomp Analyst.

The use of projects is kind of confusing and actually one of my least favorite parts of this software as everything is focused on domain, so it becomes impossible to have 2 projects with the same  domain which can be annoying at times. Either way you can still have separate profiles that you use with the domain so it works out that way instead, it’s just a little harder to keep track of.

I will continue this review in the next week or so as I complete the Link Finder and Auditor part of the software. Stay tuned…

**Update (July 7, 2010)

I’ve been working with WebCEO now for another few weeks. I did find a way to speed up and optimize the rank checking task, I have it down to about 1 hour now for 250 keywords/phrases, so I’m happy with that.  I’ve been happy overall with how the rest of the software has been performing, it does an excellent job, for example compared to Market Samurai it outperforms in rank checking. I had a site that dropped rankings completely and MS would not show any previous rankings for the site, until the rankings come back online, but Web CEO has no problem showing that site, and the dropped rankings just fine, even letting me compare my dropped rankings to previous ranking checks on any date – now that’s spectacular.

One thing I do not like about WebCEO is that the estimate of time left to complete the rank checking is way off.  I found a decent way to speed this up a little, and make it a little more accurate. Do not ever scan through more than 2 pages (20 listings) in the search engines. That will help you speed up the rank checking, but still not as much as the tweaks I made to the Settings->SE Requests tab.

So far so good, watch for my next update where I try to find Affiliate Partners using the WebCEO -> Find Link Partners section.

To check out Web CEO on your own follow this link: http://www.webceo.com

If you haven’t heard of Josh Spaulding, you’re probably living in a cave. As one of the top affiliate income earners, and a good teacher of strategies, he’s been making good money online, and making a good name for himself with his honest, and straight-forward approach to earning money online. He mostly makes his money through affiliate marketing, and he drives most of his traffic using article marketing (you will get his Article Marketing Domination free as a bonus for signing up, plus monthly submissions to 200 websites using up to 3 keywords/phrases).

First, you should know that Josh runs an excellent blog Ethical Internet Marketing (http://www.ethicalim.com/). It has to be, in my opinion, one of the most honest blogs around when it comes to earning affiliate money online, I would rank it up there with Eric’s Tips as one of the best. Josh is a fellow ‘Hoosier (Indiana boy), and I like his folksy down-to-earth approach. Now, let’s get on with the review.

Hot Niche Spy

From what I can tell Josh developed this application to help him with his own Affiliate Marketing, and that’s a very good sign. There are other products out there like this, but, there are tradeoffs to using them, as you will see.  When you first login to Hot Niche Spy, you will see the main window (below), as well as links to training videos (1 bonus training video with Josh himself will be added every month), and links to your bonuses. Here’s a pick of the opening screen:

You can see from the main screen that right now there are 5 main actions for Hot Niche Spy (Josh is adding all of the time, in fact, just since I’ve been a member he added the Rankings & Backlinks checker (very nice).  For this review I entered “profit internet” into the box, but this is where you will enter your niche terms that you are checking for ‘Hotness’ – now… here is a review of the 5 actions.

• Related Products – shoots you over to Click Bank, Amazon and eBay to look at products related to this niche. You want to make sure that there are at least a few decent products to promote, before you even go any further with your niche. You don’t get the Gravity number with ClickBank which would be nice to see (I’ll put in a request to add it), but you do get the details on the top 10 products offered through each service.  If you find at least 2-3 good ones, then you should consider that you will have a product to promote, and can move on to the next step
• Keywords & Competition - this is my favorite part of Hot Niche Spy. It does an excellent job of returning the competition you will face, including the top 10 competitors in Google, and their average PageRank, as well as a decent list of related keywords that you can use to promote your niche – Excellent!  This part really blows me away, because you get even more than that.  For each of the top 10 sites, you will see the related keywords, and cost-per-click, as well as page rank for each competitor site – amazing detail, and this beats Market Samurai in it’s ease of use.
• Domain Checker – let’s you quickly and easily find matching domains that you can buy for your niche to setup your website on. This is an excellent checker, that will also show you related/possibilities for other domain names, if your primary niche domain name is taken. There’s a quick ‘Buy button’ which takes you right over to GoDaddy.com where you can make the purchase. I use GoDaddy as one of my main domain registrars and they are excellent. Well done on this section in Hot Niche Spy, it’s not included in Market Samurai at all.
• Related News – let’s you pull up news that is related to your niche. Find out what is happening right now in this niche, check out what is hot, and get great ideas for articles, that you can use to drive traffic (in spades) using Josh’s bonus: Article Marketing Domination.
• Rankings and Backlinks – another excellent tool, and I like the way this one works too. It’s fast (very fast), and it gives you all of the rankings, and the backlinks to your site, quick, fast, and accurate.

You’re certain to be gathering up tons of new Hot Niches with this tool, I highly recommend it, and it’s a good ‘partner tool’ to Market Samurai for finding keywords, and domains to promote your new Niche products on.

UPDATE (July 2010): I just logged in to Hot Niche Spy to see that Josh is planning a new update (in 3-4 days that will grab Google Suggests Keywords)! This is huge, as there’s about to be a similar product released in the marketplace, but if Hot Niche Spy will do it, all the more reason to own a membership to HNS, once again this depends on the functionality of the feature, but it’s like previous functions, I’m guess it’s going to be great, as the other features/functions are. Here’s what it says on the Members Area home page today->

The next, exciting, new Feature which will be available sometime in the next 3-4 days is a “Google Suggests” keyword generator! Generate a list of related keywords that people are searching for in Google, but that the Google Keyword Tool is NOT displaying! (untapped keywords!) This is the next of MANY new features that you will have full access to as a “HNS” member!

UPDATE (August 2010): The Google Suggests tool has been live now for over 1 month.  You can really dig deep into what people are typing in their Google bar by using this tool. I like the layout and the way the details are returned on this tool over other Google Suggest tools, plus the fact that it runs ‘in the browser’ means I do not have to worry about it crashing – it runs great on both PC, and Mac.

UPDATE (August 2010): Another new module is being planned for Hot Niche Spy (leave it to Josh). Like previous functions, I’m guess it’s going to be great, as the other features/functions are. Here’s what it says on the Members Area home page today->

We are currently working on a new tool that will generate a list of niche specific Questions that people are asking in your niche. Knowing what questions those in your niche are asking is huge because most search queries are just that, quesions! Keyword tools don’t offer full questions, so it’s hard to find them… for now

UPDATE (August 2010): Part of your membership also includes access to the NBZ (No Bull Zone) Forum. This used to be limited to Josh Coaching clients, so it’s a premium forum where Josh answers questions. I’ve been lurking in the forum here and it’s great. The questions are spot on, and the answers to real internet marketing problems are great. I’ve even learned a few things since signing on.

To check out Hot Niche Spy on your own, check out this link: http://www.hotnichespy.com