It seems I am hearing the term; “White Hat” and “Black Hat” more and more please doesn’t confuse these with a Jimmy Hat which is a whole new topic. Since the terms clearly need definition I thought I would list out all the known aliases and their meanings. A little Wikipedia repost, but the morale of the story is not to pretend or claim to be something you’re not and in doing so attract the attention of those who are, or the powers that be.

White hat: A white hat hacker breaks security for non-malicious reasons, for instance testing their own security system. This classification also includes individuals who perform penetration tests and vulnerability assessments within a contractual agreement. Often, this type of ‘white hat’ hacker is called an ethical hacker. The International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants, also known as the EC-Council has developed certifications, courseware, classes, and online training covering the diverse arena of Ethical Hacking.

Grey hat: A gray hat hacker is a combination of a Black Hat Hacker and a White Hat Hacker. A Grey Hat Hacker will surf the internet and hack into a computer system for the sole purpose of notifying the administrator that their system has been hacked. Then they will offer to repair their system for a small fee.

Blue Hat: A blue hat hacker is someone outside computer security consulting firms who is used to bug test a system prior to its launch, looking for exploits so they can be closed. Microsoft also uses the term BlueHat <http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bluehat/default.mspx> to represent a series of security briefing events.

Black hat: A black hat hacker, sometimes called “cracker”, is someone who breaks computer security without authorization or uses technology (usually a computer, phone system or network) for vandalism, credit card fraud, identity theft, piracy, or other types of illegal activity.

Elite (or known as 1337 or 31337 in 1337_speak): Elite is a term used to describe the most advanced hackers who are said to be on “the cutting edge <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_art> ” of computing and network technology. These would be individuals in the earliest 2.5 percentile of the technology adoption lifecycle <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle curve, referred to as “innovators.” As opposed to script kiddies and noobs who utilize and exploit weaknesses in systems discovered by others, elites are those who bring about the initial discovery.

Script kiddie: A script kiddie is a non-expert who breaks into computer systems by using pre-packaged automated tools written by others, usually with little understanding of the underlying concept—hence the term script (i.e. a prearranged plan or set of activities) kiddie (i.e. kid, child—an individual lacking knowledge and experience, immature).

Neophyte: A neophyte or “newbie <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newbie> ” is a term used to describe someone who is new to hacking or phreaking and has almost no knowledge or experience of the workings of technology, and hacking.

Hacktivism: A hacktivist is a hacker who utilizes technology to announce a social, ideological, religious, or political message. In general, most hacktivism involves website defacement or denial-of-service attacks . In more extreme cases, hacktivism is used as tool for Cyberterrorism <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberterrorism> .

If you’re not interested in my opinion and ramblings feel free to view the news article here. Or if you need some inspiration and have a basement, 2 free hands and plenty of time to make online money

Time and time again, I keep hearing people tell me, email is dead, incentive paths are dead, marketing is dead, the internet gold mine is dead, and Elvis and 2pac are dead. It would seem that the only thing that is dead is those people’s creativity and drive. If two guys can pull down a quarter of a million pounds from their basement selling sperm, experienced marketers like us should be doing ten times that. I decided to try and think of the top five online killers, ( in no special order) let’s see if you agree.

1. Laziness, ok let’s admit it 96% of us are some of the laziest mofo’s around, we become masters of automation not because of efficiency but because are lazy.
2. Discouraged, once we get discouraged we lose focus, give up, or just don’t care.
3. Cry over the dumbest shit, he stole my landing page, I made that email creative, and all the time we spend whining we should be using to make more money.
4. Lack of focus, if you are like me, I bet you have 100 things 85% of the way done.
5. Accepting what our talents are, if you’re a hacker, hack away, if you’re an analytical genius crush those numbers. If you love data, and nothing else, than mining is for you. And so on and So on…

It should work; it just makes logical sense…

Have you ever scratched your head and said, “It should work; it just makes logical sense”.

If you have used this same logic in Affiliate Marketing I would be willing to bet there is one key factor you’re forgetting, your customers. While some of us are intelligent, well educated and logical people or we are pretending to be. The average consumer is going to make a 30 second decision about your marketing, and or product, and in the affiliate world that decision means hitting it big, or losing big.

One perfect example of how the general public thinks would be the environmental movement. Anyone shown the facts would easily conclude that cows are much worse for the environment than cars. So logically environmentalists should be vegetarians or at the very least shy away from beef products. Which begs the question; either consumers are un-educated or they simply don’t care enough to put the steak down! How does this apply to marketing you might ask? By remembering that the people you are marketing to may be smart and educated but that doesn’t mean they are logical!

Never forget we are not educators on a crusade to make the world a better place, were more like pirates jumping ship to ship after the all mighty dollar. Use that poor use of logic to your advantage J

Please see below for more info on Cows vs. Cars

“Now should be environmental vegetarianism’s big moment. Global warming is the single biggest threat to the health of the planet, and meat consumption plays a bigger role in greenhouse gas emissions than even many environmentalists realize.” – Ben Adler

This quote above is from an article by Ben Adler in American Prospect, titled “Are Cows Worse than Cars?” It really stands out as a reminder of the clearly divided environmental movement. By and large, the movement towards environmental sustainability has just plain ignored the impact that dietary choices have on global warming. Curious, isn’t it?

On the one hand, we can support cleaner energy, buy more efficient cars, and reduce our consumption of products derived from petroleum, and yet with our other hand, eat a burger that has a carbon footprint bigger than most SUVs.

“I think it’s amazing that even the greenest of green liberal environment activists, the vast majority of them tend to consume meat at the same rate as people who think global warming is a hoax. Meat consumption seems to be the last thing that progressive people address in their lifestyle. If I had a nickel for every global warming conference that had roast beef on the menu, I’d be rich.” – Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network

The beef industry is driven largely by corn subsidies (over 5 billion dollars last year alone). If feedlots had to pay the true cost of feeding the cows all of that corn, or if they had to offset all of the fuel and emissions produced from calf to slaughter, most of them would probably have been out of business long ago.

We’ve been bailing out the meat industry with subsidies and price supports for years, and for what? For greenhouse gas emissions that out-pace the levels from cars and other transportation.

Considering the large carbon footprint for animal agriculture, why is it that we’re so adamant about not giving up meat?

“I don’t know of anyone in the environmental community that has taken a stance of ‘we support no meat consumption because of global warming.’” – Tim Greef, League of Conservation Voters

owning a hybrid vehicle with Sierra Club stickers on the back is way sexier than cutting the flesh out of our diets.

Until the connection between CO2 emissions, global warming, and our diet is accepted, you can be sure that people will be rolling through the drive-thru for Big Mac, in the biodiesel or hybrid, feeling like they’re really making a difference…

Here’s the info:
Dixon Bar and Grill
(on the corner of 14th and Wazee)

7:00pm – 9ish

Come for a time of networking with others in the Colorado area!

Click here for more information!

While there, they will be attending the Social Media Advertising Event, which by the way, if you want to save an extra 10% off your ticket, use getads10 for the discount code.

If you would like to meet up with either of our attendees, please contact nicole (@) getads.com or pat (@) getads.com.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Most of these people have illusions of grandeur and easy cash. They have no idea what they are going to do, what offers they are looking for or even the marketing method.

So what is it really, that people should know before considering a career in affiliate marketing? I came up with these 5 basic areas.

If you are thinking about getting started in affiliate marketing, ask yourself these questions:

1.) Do I know basic HTML?

Over the years, I have never talked to an affiliate who said, “Yea, I made all this money knowing NOTHING. Isn’t that amazing!!!”

Do I think you can get started knowing basic html? Yes.
Do I think you can get started not knowing any? No, not really. Plus if you want to do this full time, know your craft. You need to know how to optimize your campaigns or you will end up losing money.

For the more complex stuff, hire someone. But you have to have a general idea of what you will be asking the programmer for.

Before you even get started, know HTML.

2.) Do you have a basic understanding of the Internet?

So what is a basic understanding of the Internet? Well, can you use a browser (yea, you’d be surprised.)

Please know that you have to use an affiliate link to track your leads. You’d be surprised how often people forget to do this.

3.) Do you have Realistic Expectations?

Our favorite phone call was from a gal who read about George on a blog. She called in and asked if she only works 10 hours a week, can she make a million dollars in the first year.

I am not making this up. She called for two weeks straight asking how she can make that working just a few hours a week.

For those of you successful in affiliate marketing – how much time did you put in at the beginning? Even now? I guarantee it’s way more than 10 hours a week. Possibly more than 10 hours a day.

Online marketing takes both time and money. If you don’t have enough money to pay your bills – work a job and do affiliate marketing at night, on the weekends or whatever.

I have people that call in and tell me they can’t pay their mortgage, so they need an offer to just blow up for them. I tell them, get a part time job even to pay your mortgage. And let’s get some money coming on the side with affiliate marketing. Honestly, you need to reinvest what you make to build up your earnings to where you can do this full time.

4.) Are you Dedicated?
This one is an understatement. One word – and it means so much.

You need to be dedicated to succeeding in affiliate marketing. You need to want it so bad that it’s all you can see. Because honestly, that is what it’s going to take. You will lose money, offers will go down, and you will get discouraged. There is only thing that will keep you going: dedication to the goal.

5.) Do you LOVE this?
Affiliate marketing is tedious! It’s scraping keywords and urls, it’s setting up campaigns, it’s split testing pages and optimizing everything you can. It’s analyzing data and testing offers. It is tedious work – but inside you still have to love it.

You have to get a bit of a rush when you get that java script working. You can feel your heart beating a little faster once leads start pouring in. A high, so to speak, after you optimized a landing page and your CTR rises 150%. Wow.

If you envision nothing but sipping martinis on the beach after you did absolutely nothing but put a link up on Google – then keep dreaming. You would be better buying a lottery ticket.

I don’t want to discourage Newbies from getting involved in the industry. I just want to offer some help. If you answered YES to all 5 questions, I’d say jump on in and make some money. If you answered NO – then go back to the drawing board. It will save you both time and money.

What do you think? Is there any other must-haves that we should put on the list?

First Place: IPad – Aff ID 119963

Second Place: Ipod Touch – Aff ID 121740

Third Place: $100 gift card – Aff ID 140846

Fourth Place: $50 gift card – Aff ID 142173

Congratulations!!!!

In checking out stats from day to day, I started to notice something. There was a staggering income difference between those affiliates who used Prosper 202 and those who did not.

In any given week, Group A (those who DO use prosper) made an average of 10 times (yes that’s TEN TIMES!!!) more than Group B (those who DO NOT use prosper).

So this post is for those of you who are not using Prosper 202 with your PPV campaigns.

I want to keep it simple and to the point. Here are some bullet points as to why you should give it a go:

• Tracks ROI on a keyword level
• Protects your keywords from the network
• Keeps your data safe on your own web server
• Allows you to rotate and split test offers
• Aggregates all your stats in one location
• Can setup direct link campaigns or landing pages (with single or multiple offers)
• Is open source software supported by the community of users
• Did I mention it’s totally free?

Next week, I’ll be showing how to use Prosper with your affiliate campaigns. But for now, they have excellent directions on how to set it up yourself.

If you want to take your affiliate campaigns to the next level, based on what I’ve seen, you’ll need Prosper202 in your box of online marketing tools.

Despite the numerous ways to make money online, we can also get a case of tunnel vision. When campaigns stop working, or when traffic sources start to dry up. Panic mode can easily kick in.

I thought I’d put together a few ideas on how to recharge your battery, so to speak. To keep our direction forward while still handling all this industry throws our way.

1.) Take a breather: This industry isn’t going anywhere. Sometimes you just need to step back, relax and gather yourself together. Take some time to learn something new and act on it. Do something that is just for you.

2.) Reprioritize: When we are constantly in motion, it’s hard to always see where our paths are leading. After taking that breather, it’s important to reassess if we are heading in the direction we planned. Write down those goals and a clear plan on how to attain them. What are your priorities? And are they in the right order. How do you correct that if they aren’t?

3.) Remember why you love what you do: Ok, its list making time. Get out a pen and paper (or your ipad) and write down why you love this biz. What excites you about it? What drew you to it?
When you start to get bogged down again – refer back to this list. Remember, it beats working at McDonalds any day.

4.) Get Back at It: Pump yourself up and get back to it. Get out there and make that mad cash. Only you will do it for you. You know how – now go do it. Get motivated and blow it up.

What are your industry recharge tips?