Last week, I received my first web-hosting referral check from An Hosting.
I don’t specifically promote web-hosting affiliate programs, except posting a banner in the sidebar of this blog and now writing this short review.

A friend was asking for a web-hosting company and I sent him my An Hosting affiliate link. After reviewing, he selected the cheapest hosting plan at $83.40 ($6.95/month) per year. My commission was $85!
For a $83.40 hosting account, I was paid $85 in commission. I was amazed!
I didn’t read the payment plan and schedule when signing up as an affiliate and thought I would be paid only when my commission amount exceeds $100. So I was pleasantly surprised when I received a check for the $85 commission.

My friend told me he had no problems with the web-hosting account and the CPanel was simple to use. He didn’t have to get any help from support so I couldn’t comment on their service support.

I’m currently using another web-hosting account and would most probably switch to An Hosting, even though I don’t have much problems with my current web-host, HostingBay. I had a few problems but the support was always prompt, always within 24 hours. When this blog was hacked a few months ago, they help me resolve the issue promptly. But I won’t recommend their affiliate program as they recently reduce their commission rate from 50% to 25% and pays after the third referral. That’s certainly unattractive compared to An Hosting.

Hostgator is another web-host affiliate program I’m in. Hostgator seems to be popular among Internet marketers and it’s listed as one of the top web-hosting companies. They have varying commission structure, paying $50 for each referral sale for up to 5 referrals a month. The next step up is $75 for each referral sale. There’s no mention which hosting plan for the $50 payout.

Netfirms is another web-host I would recommend. They have the cheapest domain name registration at $5.95. You even get $1 for domain name registration referral. For a yearly hosting plan of $119.40, they pay a commission of $50, about 42%. Read my experience with their domain registration here.

There are hundreds if not thousands of web-hosting companies, so do some research before you sign up web-hosting accounts or as affiliates. The few mentioned above are some I have some experience with. Of course you should sign as an affiliate with a reputable web-host and not one that’s merely providing the cheapest hosting plans.

An Hosting is at the top for me as an affiliate for web-hosting for the high commission rate (101%) and promptness in payment. Their hosting service should be good or clients would not renew the hosting accounts and they would lose money since they pay more than 100% commission. They pay out $85 to $100 per new referral every 2 weeks. An Hosting also has a 2nd tier affiliate program paying 5% for 2nd tier affiliate sales.

To sign as an An Hosting affiliate, go here.

I would love to hear from someone who knows of any web-hosting company paying their affiliates 100% or more commission rates.

One of the best forms of viral promotions is by giving away a no-charge report and allowing others to freely distribute it for you.

If done well, a simple PDF report can get extremely viral and drive a ton of targeted traffic and sales to your sites.

But have you ever wondered how to give an even stronger incentive for other people to give away your product for you?

Simple!

By offering them rebranding rights to your products!

I’m sure you’ve seen how most of the top marketers do it.

Rebrandable reports are an excellent way to motivate affiliates and serve as an excellent promotional tool.

By allowing your affiliates to rebrand a short report with their own affiliate links, this will motivate them to give away their own rebranded report willingly for you.

Simply because people like the lazy way of earning money online!

Even if you do not have an affiliate program (which you really ought to have one), you can simply allow your subscribers to rebrand your reports with affiliate links to other people’s products and still achieve the same viral effect for your sites.

The best thing is, I just stumbled upon a really cool piece of software which allows you to create rebrandable eBooks with just a few clicks of the mouse!

Instant PDF Profits offers you the best solution of creating viral rebrandable eBooks.

As the same suggests, it will make all your PDF files viral and profitable.

So hurry and check it out for yourself!

Adsense Secrets is taking me longer than I had expected to finish.
Not that it’s difficult to read but I was trying out the ideas and the many links in the eBook. I was also a bit distracted by Ewen Chia’s Working From Home.

More …

Joel Comm, host and executive producer for The Next Internet Millionaire, a reality show where 12 contestants compete to be the next Internet Millionaire.
He also created a program, The Secret Classroom, where 12 Internet Millionaires were “kidnapped” and “force” to show a handful of newbies how to make a fortune online. Some of the 12 Internet millionaires are Perry Marshall, Ray Edwards, Mike Filsaime, Marlon Sanders, Amand Morin, Mark Joyner, etc.
He also wrote a book, The Adsense Code, which became a best seller and he has just launched the 4th edition called, Adsense Secrets.
It is this ebook which I’ve just bought…for $9.95.

If Adsense Secrets is any good, you will most definitely see some changes to this blog. Hope to finish reading it in a couple of days.
Do check back in a few days for my take on Adsense Secrets.

I’ve been on Joel’s mailing list for quite a while and he uses alot of videos for his websites, one of which is Ask Joel Comm. Here’s where he answers questions from the public using videos. Some are quite amusing but informative for the newbies.

Here’s an update on some of the new features and services being offered on LeadsLeap.
Since the launch, LeadsLeap has been a bit quiet for a while. But that was probably because it was developing some new features for it’s membership.

A “Viral” blog was launched in early March. Why “viral” blog? Basically it’s like a normal blog except there’s a referral effect in that there’s an affiliate link to each post. Any reader that reads the blog through your affiliate link and signs up as a member, is considered to be your downline.

Read an article from the blog here:

How to Increase Your Google Page Rank to PR4 for Free

More …

Recently I came across this website that provides a plan to make…$100 per month. Yes, you read that right and it’s not a typo error.

Unlike so many Internet marketing programs out there that hypes about how many 100’s or 1000’s of green moolahs that you can make a day or a week, this website comes as a refreshing change.

Warning! If you are looking for hype that claims how fast and easy to make truckloads of cash, this is NOT it.

More …

In a nutshell, LeadsLeap (created by Kennth Koh) is a membership cum networking program where you can advertise for free in newsletters and set up joint ventures with fellow members.

Membership to LeadsLeap, is free. However there’s another level of membership called PRO Membership. The PRO Membership quantity is set at 5% of total membership and is currently closed due to the 5% quota being met.

Regular newsletters with contextual ads will be sent to members. As free members, they would have to check out ads in the newsletter at least once in 30 days. You, as members can earn points for clicking and checking out the ads. Points accumulated can be redeemed for products such as eBooks and videos related to Internet marketing.

You are also encouraged to recruit members which become your downlines. Downlines recruited by you can go to 10 levels deep.

You can put ads advertising your website in LeadsLeap newsletter for free. As a free member, only your downlines will be able to see your ads which you have to renew or update every 14 days. There’s a 30-day challenge starting from 13th January to 12 February 2008, that if you can recruit directly 100 members, your ads can be seen by all members for 6 months.
As a PRO member, your ads can be seen by all members.

Now, I’m not a big fan of MLM and words like “recruit” and “downlines” set off a bell in my head. But I guess, MLM is here to stay, like it or not. Membership is free, but there’s no free lunch, so have to do a bit of work.

Another attractive feature of LeadsLeap is the joint venture or JV Network. There are organisers who will post innovative JV proposals or campaigns in the membership site and all members will be able to review and decide whether to participate.

Campaigns could be events like mega giveaways, where Internet marketers could each contribute an item to give away to subscribers. For example, if 40 participants were interested in a “Christmas Giveaway” and each of these Internet marketers have a subscribers list of roughly 200, there would be 40 gifts. These 40 gifts or products should preferably be something that they are currently selling and would be offered to the combined subscribers base of roughly 8000 (40×200).

This is a win-win situation for all participating Internet marketers, as their subscribers list has increased exponentially and subscribers has many more gifts than if each marketer were to offer only their product to their own list.

Such JV opportunities were previously available only to Internet marketing “gurus” with their clout for proposing such JVs. But through LeadsLeap, even those relatively new Internet marketers could participate in such JVs and leverage on fellow Internet marketers subscribers list.

Here’s a view of the membership site:

 There is also a Free Bonus link where free members can download products such as:

1.  How to Create Paypal BuyNow Button
2.  How to Generate Leads through Co-Registration
3.  7 Photoshop Tutorials
4.  How To Convert Cragslist Into Your Personal ATM
5.  How To Generate Cash From Your Blog With Or Without Clicks
6.  Website Conversion Mastery
7.  How To Get A Lot More Google Traffic For Free
8.  Skype Product Secrets
9.  5 Easy Ways To Maximize Your Adsense Commissions
10. 10 Easy Steps To A Google Friendly Page
11. Instant Audio Mastery
12. Instant Blog Traffic
13. 10 Easy & Instant Programming Tricks For Your Website
14. How To Master Web Graphics In 10 Easy steps
15. How To Create Profit Pulling Toolbars For Free

and many, many more…
I’ve stopped here because I’m getting bored typing the freebies list. For freebie-junkies, the free stuff is already worth signing up for, which is also FREE anyway!

For the rest of us (shush! I’m a freebie-junkie too!), the free ads and JV Network is worth signing up for. I’m sure there’ll be more features and stuff added later on.
LeadsLeap was just launched on 17th January 2008 and it definitely pays to be early-movers to be a member.

The first time I heard about Vince Tan was when I attended the Internet Millionaire Incubator 2 in October 2007, him being one of the speakers. However, I missed his presentation, which was on the second day because I couldn’t attend.

My buddy, who was at the event, called me after Vince’s presentation. She was excited by his story about how he had only recently embarked on his journey in Internet marketing and is already one of the speakers of the Internet Millionaire Incubator 2.

That got me curious and started reading Vince’s blog and got on his mailing list. Admittedly, I didn’t find his email marketing that impressive. After the first few email, I noticed a trend. Practically all his email messages were promoting sales of certain products.

Then recently, I happened to notice a certain email of Vince’s. It was another sales-promoting email about some confession by Mike Filsaime. Have heard of Mike but wasn’t too sure what he was about. Decided to check out the sales page…

The sale copy was simple and neat enough for fast browsing. Confession of an Internet Millionaire was a half-hour interview recording with Mike Filsaime that Vince had conducted. The price wasn’t high, only $9.90 and includes a PDF transcript of the interview. Nothing great, I thought but it also came with FULL MASTER RESELL rights and a reseller website.

The sales copy mentioned that what Mike Filsaime said during the interview, helped Vince plan his course of action over the next 18 months. Now that got me really curious and decided to fork out a “princely” sum of 9.90 USD to find out what it was that Mike had said that helped Vince. Figured I got nothing to lose, since there’s a 100% 30-day money back guarantee.

Now, I’m not sure what it was that Mike said that helped Vince. But there was something Mike Filsaime said that made ME sit up and realized something.

It has been a year since I started knowing Internet marketing and hasn’t had much of a result. I’ve been trying to find as much useful information as I can, taking baby steps. Sure, I got a couple of squeeze pages up and running, but I haven’t done much to promote them.

What was it that made me sit up and realized something? Mike said that he wasn’t a fan of learning and learning and not do anything. There’s a lack of success for many people because they were not prepared to get out of their comfort zone. They did 90% of the required steps and then slowed down or stopped. They were afraid they would actually get customers and have to set up support and other work to service the customers.

I have been learning and learning but not taking further steps to build an opt-in list. I’m not sure if I’m afraid of success on the sub-conscious level but yes, what Mike said about not taking immediate, massive action certainly hit a chord in my heart. I’m sabotaging my own success by not taking immediate, massive action. Another thing Mike said rings somewhat true for me. Many people want free software or service and not willing to pay for them. Sometimes that’s what stops them because free stuff usually means a longer and more tedious way of doing things. Things become too much of a hassle and we end up not doing them.

I’m certainly glad that I got Confession of an Internet Millionaire because it woke me up. It might just be the waking-up call for me to take more immediate and effective action.

I recommend it for those who’s been sometime in Internet marketing and not getting much success. It may just be the key that opens that stubborn lock in your head.

I must state here that what I’m about to elaborate is my personal experience and is not meant to dis-credit anyone.

A few months ago, I had intention to start a website selling an eBook “Advanced Selling on eBay”, from eBookWholesaler. Like a good student, I follow the “gurus” advice and tried to select a domain name related to my eBook. Unfortunately, advancedsellingonebay.com was taken. I settled on the next best one, www.ebayadvancedselling.com

With www.ebayadvancedselling.com, I went to my favorite Netfirms to register it. A couple of days later, my registration was declined, due to the word “ebay” being in the domain name. Undaunted, I went to godaddy.com to register. The registration was successful.
“Hmm…maybe Netfirms is no longer my favourite. Maybe Godaddy has more clout and got around the problem”, Or so I thought…

A few weeks ago, I received an email purportedly from eBay. The email said I had infringed on eBay’s trademark with my domain name. I was told, “not to use the domain name for any purpose, do not sell, offer to sell or transfer the domain name to a third party, and instead simply let the domain registration expire”. Otherwise, further legal action will be taken. Sheeesh!
When I incorporate the word “eBay” into the domain name, I’m termed cybersquatting, if I intend to transfer or sell the domain name at an inflated price.

One thing about online business, is that I want to avoid any form of legal action like the bubonic plaque! It’s just not worth it.
Being ignorant of certain business practices can lead to rude awakenings…if you’re lucky. Legally sued, if you’re not.

I tried asking Godaddy for a refund, just for the heck of it. To see what’s their response. They replied something like, “Sorry, its not our responsibility to exercise good judgment and due diligence in researching any marks that you intend to register. Just give us your money and we will register whatever you want”.
Erm…that last sentence was NOT what they said. But that’s the impression I got after reading their reply.

Oh, did I forget to mention that they “must respectfully declined” my request for a refund?

It can be seen how 2 domain registrars handled my issue of registering www.ebayadvancedselling.com.

I’ve also heard about how Godaddy has shut down several domain names for unverified claims of spam.

So…Netfirms is again my favorite domain registrar. Not only it’s a responsible corporate citizen, it’s also $4 cheaper to register a domain name than Godaddy.

Oh oh…just received an email update from Netfirms. They are having their Christmas promotion for their Business hosting package for only $9.95/month, a discount of $5. That’s for 300GB disk-space, 3000GB month bandwidth, unlimited websites and 5 free domain names!