Firefox 3.0 has just been released after being in Beta. As can be seen on the affiliates4u forums many plugins and extensions aren’t compatible with the latest release.

Firefox 3.0 was released with a massive camapign to become the biggest download event in internet history see http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/ despite the fact that many extensions aren’t yet compatible I have certainly noticed a massive speed increase at some sites (mainly gmail) so it’s certainly a solid start for the latest version of firefox, I just wish that major plugins were compatible before the release!

In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned a tool called ’stats remote’ I came accross this tool a few years back when I first got in to marketing and thought I would give it a review as it has saved me countless hours.

Basiclly Stats Remote is a tool which allows you to check all your affiliate stats from hundreds of diferent programs from adult programs, retail and gambling. It also checks your adwords and yahoo spend which gives you a great overview of your current profit %

I first started using this as I would spend up to an hour a day checking stats (I’m a stats whore) but stats remote combined all my programs in to one easy to use interface (see screenshots below). Another great feature is the support, if you find an affiliate program that is not supported you can shoot them an email and ask them to include it, likewise if you spot a program not functioning properly you can email them from within the program and send them an error report. Once a week they do an update with any new/update programs.

Your stats are automaticlly checked at specific intervals such as every 15 mins/ 2 hours, you can then choose to have a report emailed to the address of your choice . You can even make it play a sound when you make a new sale/commission (hows that for incentive )

None of your login data is stored on the stats remote site (it’s all stored in encrypted files on your PC)

Stats remote costs $29.99 a month with discounts available for longer subscriptions as well as a 3 day trial to see if it works for you. You can use paypal/credit card.

The only downside I have come accross is some of the revenue displayed is not 100% accurate, for example some programs I have logged in to and it’s display diferent data to what stats remote is showing, but a quick email to their support should get it sorted by the next update.

Currently Stats Remote is only supported on windows systems but Linux and Max versions are in development and should be released soon.

All in all this is well worth subscribing to if you’re a stats junkie, especially as it costs from as little as £15 per month (or 3 days free)

www.statsremote.com

Here are a list of my top gambling affiliate programs (their are no affiliate links this is my honest opinion)

Ladbrokes Affiliates
A well respected brand name with fantastic reporting tools. Payments are prompt and commissions generous (up to 35% of net loss) There are 4 products to promote (poker, casino, sportsbook and bingo)
http://www.ladbrokes.com/aff_man

Referback
Offering up to 35% on net loss, Payments done within 12 days of the next month. Great range of casinos to promote and good reporting software. They also regularly keep in touch with affiliates offering new deals and incentives. Great program if your mainly involved with online casinos
http://referback.com/

Virgin Games
Virgin have always been a weel respected brand name in my eyes, as both an AM and a consumer. Virgin Games offer affiliate the chance to promote their Casino, Poker Room and Bingo Room. They payout 35% of net profit and have very good communication with their affiliates
http://www.virginggames.com/affiliates

32red Affiliates
32red Casino was probably the first casino I ever played on and still do to this day, so it comes as no surprise that I would want to promote them, as a player they offer me good loyalty bonuses and friendly customer support which is why I would recommend them to my visitors. They offer a couple of online casinos and poker rooms to promote paying 35% net revenue (40% on poker room rakes for a limited time)
http://www.32redaffiliates.com

Casino Rewards
MY favourite thing with this program is the fantastic stats system, most programs only seem to show the amount of traffic you have sent and the revenue generated where as casinorewards display much more in depth stats such as the players age/sex/country as well as the sort of games they like to play, this helps to target your advertising a lot more.
http://www.casinorewards.com

Party Partners
Home to one of the biggest online poker rooms - Party Poker. Party Partners are without a doubt one of the fastest paying affiliate programs around (paying on the 4th of each month) and some good tracking options (such as offline tracking so you can advertise poker rooms on posters with your promotional code) They have recently launched a sports betting site and a casino to go along side their array of party gaming sites.
http://www.partypartners.com

Vegas Affiliates
Probably the most controversial in the list. Over the last 6 months or so communication between affiliates and vegas affiliates has been poor and even non-existant. Also payments can take over 1 month. However they have the best player retention over any other program I have worked with. Some of my players still play 3 years on, and they are big players! Although payments take longer than a majority of program they do still pay without fail.
http://www.vegasaffiliates.com

What I’m drinking now - “A free bottle of wine from iPoints”

The UIGEA hearing which could determine the future of online gambling transaction in the USA is underway. Watch it live here.

This obviously affect all online gaming affiliates as well as players and is well worth watching.

As per usual on the 1st April all hell breaks loose as various websites try and fool their readers.

A couple of favourites today are:
The BMW ad which automaticlly shocks dog that attempt to urinate on your car.
BBC and theur flying penguins News Clip
News in the mirror about greyhound racing on ice (I wish this was real)

Some not so good pranks would be on johnchow.com, although I have respect for anyone making money in affiliate marketing and someone who is also good at SEO, he linked to a page which hijacks your browser plays a music videos and makes it impossible to close, as a firefox users the only way to close it was to CTRL+ALT+DEL therefore loosing all my work in other tabs

What I’m drinking now, orange - Bit to early for beer still.

I decided to run a small mini project. With $100 I intend to create a site from scratch and get enough traffic naturally from google to make a constant £20/month ($40). Now £10/month certainly isn’t much but for a site that only costs $100 thats a 480% profit in the first year. If I can make the site earn $40/month then whats stopping me from building 10.. 20… 100..?

Costs:
Software - I will be using affilistore to create  the site (see affilistore.com )
Domain - $9 from namecheap
Hosting - I use servage so I can host unlimited domains, but for the sake of it I will say $4
Logo Design - Cheap outsourced logo $8
Directory submissions - 1000 submissions for $40 on digital point market place
Social Bookmark Submissions - $25 for 100 submissions

Total $87

Total time for me will be about 2 hours to install everything and do some small customisations on affilistore.
I will also spend about 4 hours gaining reciprocal links from other sites (affilistore has a links manager built in)
Obviously by now this sounds like an advert for affilistore but it is great customisable software with some good built in seo features.

For the merchant I have decided to promote alcoholic drinks (suprise)

I will update this project as it comes along I will also include monthly earnings from affiliatewindow and Adsense.

After much waiting and excitement the new series of the Apprentice started on the BBC last night. The apprentice takes a mix of 16 people from diferent backgrounds i.e. sales people to lawyers and divides them in to two teams. These teams are then sent tasks each week to compete.

The task this week was to sell fish out of a van at one of 4 london markets where the ‘all girls’ team took victory after making a pitiful £160 (as opposed to the boys £50 or so). They started of with £600 of fish, so when you take in to account the hours involved (about 8 hours) and the amount of people (8 per team) it works out that the boys made about £1 per hour.

In the end Alan Sugar fired ‘Nicholas de Lacy-Brown’ a rather snobbish stuck up lawyer whos claims to be best suited for the job merely because he has a degree and a posh name. Which as any apprentice viewer would know Alan Sugar just doesn’t care about, after all Alan Sugar started of Driving delivery vans and has no degre.

All in all it’s a very interesting mix of people on the new series, with clashes of personality almost straight away. This was mainly down to the fact that the boys couldn’t price their fish properly despite having pictures and names of all the fish.

Thankfully it hasn’t quite gone the way of the American series which was so incredibly over the top, as you would expect (I seem to remember several segments where Donald Trump would enter the rooms with several trumpets playing for him like some sort of royal event)

Next weeks episode looks to be promising with each team having to start and run their own laundry business.  - BBC2 pm wednesday.

What I’m drinking now: Can of Lech beer (from poland I believe)