Finally, I am out of my UPS Truck and retired as of November 30th 08

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Ranked #2,021 in People, #37,584 overall

I finally retired from UPS, and Thanks to everyone who helped me !!

I have now been retired for quite awhile - What a change this is for me. I actually get up and make coffee, fire up my notebook and begin working on my web projects every morning. I am trying to think outside of the box to be successful in this bad economy. One big challenge for affiliate marketers like me is to find better ways to market products and services to a consumer base that has lost confidence in their financial future.

My favorite affiliate network is Shareasale, and there are a lot of reasons for this. They have great integrity for one, and they have affiliate friendly useful marketing tools that are the best. I recommend all affiliates join and promote Shareasale merchants and see the difference a great network can make. This network was created by affiliates for affiliates. S H A R E A S A L E

Consumers are looking for bargains when they do buy, and that is what I am trying to communicate through my websites, blogs and social media articles and tweets. It is all about getting on target in niche markets and identifying the products people want and need right now. Good thing I have 12 years of experience doing this part time so I have a good set of content to work with.

Over the past week I worked developing new pages and content for affiliate niches I market in, and some of these pages are excellent and should make money if people are willing to use their cards in this economy.

Summer is here, and bikes are one thing people do buy online. Bike shoppers can save lots of money by seeking the best prices from online dealers who do not have to worry about store overhead like most bike stores do. The prices for many models are discounted online, so that is my first niche for the year. Later on I will fire up my snowboarding stuff for the next season, and lots of sales happen for this market in the summer.

I use blogs to promote my snowboard products. I have developed a cool way to link the blogs together with the sites that seems to increase their indexing strength. RSS feeds from blogs are a great way to increase the audience seeing your blogs and articles, sale offers and so forth. I have found some great RSS to Social Media pathways that really work to increase sales.

This summer I attended the new Affiliate Convention here in Denver. Very nice convention and I truly loved that it was free to attend. Their motto is that Affiliates attend free, so companies in the AM space sponsor each of us. They had a great lineup of speakers and I got a lot of great ideas from it. Made a new friend too. Very cool convention. The best part was the last module, "black hat or white hat". Fun session!

I attended Affiliate Summit and arrived home today, Jan 12th. I left a bit early, but my wife had to return to her profession Wed. The summit was interesting and not unlike the last one I went to, but the players are changing and their companies are merging. Some are gone,. some are new, some are the same as before. I like to go to Vegas too, so it was a good excuse for me to go have some fun and see a show with Pat. We saw the show LOVE at the Mirage. Great Beatles Show.

In addition to Squidoo I have been creating some new blog articles and product display sites for these hot snowboards. I hesitate to reveal all of my processes here but suffice to say, I am all over this one for the holidays and beyond.

I am also busy tweaking and adding content to existing sites that are productive, but could be more productive. I have learned how to use some really wonderful research tools, but I also am kind of free wheeling, and instinctive about marketing strategies within my online sectors. I am working it up to be successful and not have to get another job. Please God, no J.O.B.

My main thing now is to post tons of product recommendations on my blogs and web 2.0 sites that allow affiliate publishing. By doing this I have avoided complete failure this holiday season. Still, I appeal to anyone who likes my idea here to please help me by shopping at my many bargain sites to get holiday shopping accomplished.

I found a new and exciting web design option for many to use. It is completely free, and it is the easiest online site designer I have ever used. I built a new site called Skate Banana Snowboards (I know, it's an obsession). The website is called WEBNODE. The neat thing is that these sites on Webnode are fully functional Web 2.0 sites. Very wonderful free service!

World Class Snowboards is my newest and best creation with the Webnode designer. You must be very careful while using the online designer. This site has no errors, but 2 of my other sites do, and I have had to ask for help with them in order to fix the errors. World Class Snowboards is my showcase site on this system, and since I did not make any errors, it is a great looking site (my humble opinion).

I use my Retired UPS Driver Deal of the Day Blog to publish many of the deals I find. I also have many other product display blogs and domain sites where I advertise my niche market products. So far this holiday season I am earning some money, but only about 40% of normal revenue for the traffic levels I am seeing.

Below are some of my deal of the day, week, month RSS Feeds from various merchants I represent online. Maybe you will find a deal here and save some money on something you need to buy anyway! These come through another great Affiliate Network called AVANTLINK.

Web 2.0 Business Community Classified Marketing

Masseys Outfitters Deals

Altrec Outlet Deals

DigitalSeller's Blog RSS

Deal of the Day Blog

Deal of the Day Online Shopping

I have finally started using Wordpress for the first time. I am developing a new snowboard selling site with it, and thus far, I have not transferred it to a domain, but I am very impressed with this system. No wonder so many top affiliates use it. Loads of useful applications and it is search engine friendly. Unlike Blogger where you have to tweak the template to get it to index correctly, Wordpress automatically publishes each post with search and SEO in mind. These guys are brilliant who designed this thing. Snowboards at Discount Prices is only a few days old, and is already in search. Amazing stuff.