If you’re not familiar with iSnare, it’s an article submission directory where you can submit your articles for other webmasters to pick up and post on their sites.

But what I learned over at the Associate Programs Forum is that they have an article distribution service as well, where they’ll submit your article to many other articles directories, instead of you manually doing it yourself.

There are currently services and software programs that do this for a steep fee.

But iSnare’s distribution service seems relatively cheap: $2 or less per article to be distributed. The more distribution “credits” you buy, the price per article drops.

Someone told me they had an article distributed hundreds of times in about a month using this service, so I figured it would be worth a shot.

So here’s what I did: about a week ago I finished up a new niche site with about 75 pages in size and no current inbound links. I had 3 1000 word articles written to distribute to article directories for this site. I used the iSnare service to do this for these 3 articles, for a total cost of $6.

And now I’m waiting….

I’m going to put together a report (not sure when) to highlight the distribution and inbound links I received for my $6. I may even throw in traffic and Adsense stats, but I won’t reveal my site’s name, topic, or address.

What I’m trying to determine is if iSnare should be a service I use for all of my sites to get inbound links. Now keep in mind, this isn’t an end all solution. It’s just ONE potential method of getting inbound links to a site. Here’s a couple other methods I reguarly use, besides article distribution:

• Link Exchanges
• Directory Listings
• Press Releases
• Contributing unique (non-distributed) articles to other sites
• Posting in related forums

So, stay tuned for that report. It will be a PDF document showing hard numbers on my results using iSnare. After a couple days, things are looking good, but only time will tell.

Oh, one more thing - it will only be available to my newsletter subscribers.

Update: Sorry for the confusion on this issue, but this is not the issue of the planned Adwords outage. This occured much earlier in the day on Friday and only affected the displaying of ads, not the user interface.

Today across my sites I noticed most of my Adsense windows were serving PSAs, which is highly unusual. I checked out some of my friend’s sites and noticed the same.

So, I figured the least I could do was send Google a message about it to see what was cooking. I received an interesting reply to the message I sent Google’s Adsense support team today:

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. This afternoon we encountered technical difficulties with our ad servers, and were unable to serve targeted ads to your web pages for a brief period.

Our engineers quickly resolved the issue, and ad serving has returned to normal.

For me, “quickly” involved a couple hours of no ads showing; from at least 3 to 7 PM EST. (I wasn’t home after 7, so I’m not sure how long it lasted for me after that.). It’s the best hypothesis I can come up with why my earnings were down about 30% for Friday.

Of course it’s expected that no operation can maintain 100% uptime. But what bothers me is Google didn’t notify me via email or by a post on their blog. Or perhaps the issue was too isolated to warrant a mass notification?

Any one else notice excessive PSAs on Friday?

While I don’t believe that restitution is in order, the situation does give me a kick in the pants to take advantage of the Alternate Ads URL that I’ve neglected.

Sure, we all do! (so we think)

But Alex Tew put his to use with the Million Dollar Homepage, which as of today has made him more than $1,000,000.

His strategy was to raise some money for college by selling 1 million pixels on his homepage for $1 a piece, with a minimum order of 100 pixels for $100. Advertisers then submit an image meeting those dimensions and provide a link for the image. Once the site was picked up by the press, things really took off for Alex, netting him his goal in only a few months.

This success story brings an interesting point to light: (more…)

As I mentioned in Tax Tip 5, estimated taxes are an issue you’ll need to consider.

So, what are “Estimated Taxes” anyways?

Well, according to the IRS, you should never owe more than $1,000 in income, social security, or Medicare taxes at one time. This is called a “pay as you go” system.

When you work for “the man,” your taxes are automatically taken out of your check and remitted to the IRS every quarter, if not more often. But when you’re making commissions, Adsense, etc., taxes haven’t been taken out or remitted. And adding up all of the various taxes you’ll owe, the $1,000 limit can come rather fast.

That’s where Form 1040-ES comes in handy. What that worksheet allows you to do is to estimate in the most conservative sense what your taxes will be for 2006. Once you’ve calculated an amount, you can either pay it all at once or make 4 equal amount payments throughout the year of 2006 using the vouchers included with Form 1040-ES.

Then, when you file your regular 1040 for 2006 before April of 2007, you’ll reduce the tax amount you owe by the payments you’ve already made. Make sense?

Speaking of taxes - Who still needs to finish them from 2005? (me)

More and more searchers are jumping Google and heading over to MSN and Yahoo for their Internet searches.

“Why” this is happening varies on whom you ask. Some will say that Google is populated with spam results for competitive terms, while others say their static results never serve up anything new.

But let’s not forget that both Yahoo and MSN have been improving their search and spidering capabilities considerably.

Another tidbit: with Windows Vista launching sometime in 2006, Microsoft will certainly attempt to integrate Internet search more thoroughly into the operating system. That should shake the snow globe up for everyone.

This is perhaps the most important advice you’ll ever get for running an online business:

Finish What You Start!

When people are serious about making a living from affiliate programs, they often first learn that a bunch of banner ads on one page isn’t going to cut it.

They begin to wise up and stumble across a good system from a guru to build sites to make money. They give it a try for a few months, but nothing happens. And then they make their biggest mistake - they quit that system and try another, often after purchasing another internet marketing e-book. The new system doesn’t work after a few months, so they try another, and another, and…. you get the idea.

It takes time to build up consistent income, it will rarely, if ever happen over night.

I recommend that you find a system that’s known to be reliable and then stick with it for a year. Yes, a YEAR. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by your results.

Here’s two other great articles on the topic of consistency:
Consistency and Follow-Through
Stop Procrastinating - 10 tips to get yourself blogging

Yes, I know we all like to put our taxes off to the last moment, even when Uncle Sam owes us a fat refund. So, I doubt you’re ready to file if you owe taxes from your online business earnings.

But what I recommend is this: Start filling out the appropriate forms today or input your information into good tax software. By time you’re done with this process you’ll know if you’ve got a refund coming your way or you, gulp, owe some taxes.

If you’ve had a good year online, then don’t be surprised if you owe income, social security, and Medicare taxes, as they aren’t withheld from your checks from merchants.

The main reason I start mine early is that I give myself a few months to set aside the money to pay my tax bill. Generally my funds are earmarked for regular expenses and projects, so I give myself a head start when saving.

Another very important note: If your tax bill is over $1,000, you may owe penalties to the IRS. Taxes are considered pay-as-you-go and the IRS doesn’t like it if they don’t get their hands on it ASAP.

So, if you have a year where you owe close to $1,000, consider filing a 1040-ES for the following tax year and remit taxes quarterly to avoid penalties. If you feel like you’ll be in this situation, I highly recommend that you contact an accountant or tax professional.

While some may consider them outdated, checklists are the hottest thing in my book right now.

Besides creating a daily todo list for miscellaneous tasks in my Palm, I’m also creating a checklist for each site that I’m working on.

Anyone who has ever built a new site from scratch knows there’s a bunch of components that go into the process: (more…)

When I’m filing my taxes (personal and company) the best tool I’ll have will be a software program. While there are plenty of free online versions that allow you to manually input the data and submit it, I find the best versions ask you questions step-by-step and automatically fill in the data in the correct fields for you.

Here are some of the top used tax applications, in no particular order:

• Turbo Tax
• TaxACT
• Tax Cut

While I don’t like doing my taxes like the next guy (or gal) I do make sure I do them right. Running my online business is important to me and keeping in good terms with the federal government is essential.

The main reason I’m advocating using software like this is simple: I don’t like wasting my time if it doesn’t involve building my sites. Tax software helps me get my taxes done quickly and lessens my chances of getting an audit or penalty which would take even more time to deal with.

My advice: do it right the first time and forget about it!

I thought this would be appropriate for everyone, as staying organized is half the battle in this business.

Yesterday, I sat down with a high school friend at a coffee shop, as we do every week, to talk business.

That’s when he whipped out a Palm Z22, which is a new handheld PDA. I’ve never owned or used one before, so I played around with his.

Let’s just say I liked it so much I bought one for myself today! It’s a great beginners model and at less than $100, it won’t break the bank.

The biggest benefit I’ll get from it is keeping track of my hectic schedule and creating a to-do list for my business, which I can “check off” as I complete tasks. It is going to definitely help me plan things out for my business much better than my previous pen and paper system.