5. Geeks Are Smart

This one is obvious, but it had to be on the list. The way I see it, geeks are very knowledgeable about specific areas of study. It could be music, technology, food, films, science, etc. Have you ever “geeked out” over your favorite restaurants or your favorite bands? I do it all the time and sometimes people are interested and sometimes they’re not. Well, when you’re on the same wave length about a particular topic with someone and totally geeking out, that’s hot.

4. Geeks Are Interesting

A very good friend of mine told me that in order to be interesting, one has to be interested in a variety of things. Ain’t that the truth. This comes from someone who is a doctor, musician, artist, foodie, and loves to mountain bike, sail, and snowboard. Needless to say, he’s extremely interesting. Wouldn’t you be interested in him if you were a woman? (Ladies, he’s single )

3. Geeks Can Solve Problems

I don’t know what it is about someone who can solve problems (real life or theoretical), but yea, that’s hot. Right?

2. Geeks Are Passionate

While geeking out about your favorite songs, do you start singing it out loud and humming the guitar riffs? When you’re discussing quantum physics, do you paint pictures with your words? Well showing that you have a true passion for something shows depth of understanding and it’s usually linked in some way to your life that affects you in a tangible way. Passion is for sure hot.

1. Geeks Don’t Know They’re Hot

Most of the geeks I know that are really hot don’t even know they’re hot. In general, that makes them even hotter. What’s more unattractive than some non-geeky Joe Schmoe who thinks he’s God’s gift to the world? Not a lot. Therefore if you think you’re a geek, there are a lot of people out there with their eyes on you. Hey, you can’t help it if you got it going on.

[Post inspired by Geeks are Sexy]

What camera would you buy if you lost yours? I’m thinking of getting a replacement, like an SD1100 or something. Sigh…Thanks!

As expected, we talked about how our holidays went, our families, and gifts that were given and received. Nate is expecting a Flip Mino HD in the mail this Tuesday, a pretty awesome blogger gift from his father. We discussed video blogging and I got the urge to go buy a Flip for myself, with the intention of testing it for future video blogs. Since Best Buy doesn’t yet carry the HD in-store, I bought the regular Mino, and Nate and I are going to compare actual video quality once his arrives.

We traveled over to Urth Caffe, where we saw the tiniest dog I’ve ever seen in my life. It must have been about 8″ in length, all up, complete with pink knit sweater and pink hair bow, which Nate appropriately named Hamster Pup. Here’s the video I shot:

All in all, the video quality is pretty good. I did notice it got kind of wavy when I was swinging it back and forth, although I probably shouldn’t have been swinging it around so quickly anyway. I can’t wait to see how the HD compares. I’ll admit though, it’s super easy to use, and uploading the video straight from the software to Youtube was very simple. I’ll most likely be testing the Flip a lot more so look out for more random video blogs from me, coming soon!

[Please feel free to let me know if you have any Flip tips. Or how you think the Mino and Mino HD compare. Thanks!]

For those of you who may occasionally still be stopping by…Thanks! It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything here on my little part of the blogosphere, and just thought I’d write a little “hello.” No, I’m not dead, or in jail, nor have I been kidnapped and taken to the Motherland. I’ve just been out of the loop. I’ve been planning on attending Affiliate Summit West and hopped on over to a few blogs to see what everyone’s been up to. I’m glad to see my friends still publishing away.

If you’re going to be attending ASW, leave a comment here for myself and others. If not, also feel free to just leave a hello

I’m going to try to get back in the loop after the holiday craziness is over, and to be honest, it felt really good to type up this little note to all my cyber friends!

Happy holidays, everyone!

[Image source]

Since you were so young when Bankaholic started, how difficult or intimidating was it working with your affiliate managers in the beginning? And how quickly did you get their attention?

I’ve had great experiences with all affiliate mangers. My first affiliate manager was Bill Gales Jr. at NCSReporting. I’ve met one of the founders of NCS, Scott Langdon, and he takes prides in building an affiliate network that puts great emphasis on customer service. If you feel intimidated by your affiliate manager, you should really get a new one!

I didn’t have any leverage in the beginning, but as the traffic ramped up, affiliate managers were much more willing to work with me to get higher CPAs.

I remember a couple times hearing you negotiate higher CPA’s with your affiliate managers. At what point did you realize you had a lot of power over negotiations, and did that come naturally to you or were negotiations ever trial and error?

I realized I had power over negotiations when rival affiliate networks started reaching out to me out of the blue, offering to beat my existing CPAs. This ultimately created ‘bidding wars’ where I would bounce back and forth between networks as they struggled to beat eachother’s CPAs. A tip for marketers is to keep your afflinks naked, so that affiliate managers can clearly see who you are running with.

In general, I don’t really stress much about CPAs. I rarely proactively ask for higher CPAs, I just let the bidding wars determine the final CPA. I focus more on tweaking conversion rates and driving traffic.

If you were to consult other affiliate marketers, what metrics would you tell them are most important to track to achieve success and why?

Organic Traffic - Self explanatory

Revenue Per Visitor - Segment your RPV by offer categories and plot your monthly RPVs. When you are running a big site with lots of different types of offers, you need to make sure all the gears are running smoothly. If you see a sudden dip, that will alert you that something has gone awry. Having an RPV will also help you set bids for your search marketing campaigns.

Profit Margin - If your margins are too high, you’re not reinvesting enough back into your operations. If you’re margins are too low… well, that’s a sign of trouble and you’ll need to fix the monetization side of your business.

Do you have any tips on negotiating deals with large corporations once your affiliate site has proven it can drive high quality traffic?

Working with corporations was EXTREMELY stressful. Anytime you do ANYTHING with a corporation, you will probably need to sign a contract. This means you need to hire a lawyer to make sure you’re not signing away your soul. At least five lawyers have at one point performed services for Bankaholic, and my overall legal expenses from running Bankaholic are north of six figures. Unfortunately, there’s no way around this. Lawyers are a necessary evil, although I’m thankful all the lawyers I’ve worked with so far have been great.

Now that the deal with Bankrate is sealed, what are your next plans?

I’m already looking for new projects to work on. For people like us who live, eat, and breathe Internet marketing, there is WAY too much opportunity out there to sit on the sidelines.

I’m watching domain auctions like TRAFFIC very carefully… I really want to buy a premium domain and build out a megasite. In times like this, premium domains are a good investment and a handy tax benefit (always amortize!). To some extent, I have some seller’s remorse because I’ve come to become emotionally attached to Bankaholic after working on it obsessively for so long, so I need to get started on something new to keep my brain occupied.

One thing I’m excited about is that a lot of powerful Internet entrepreneurs with insanely impressive track records have been reaching out to me to explore possible partnerships on future projects. Find me on LinkedIn if you want to connect and bounce ideas about all things Internet. Other than that… I’m looking to buy an Aston Martin once things get settled, definitely looking forward to that.

I know that you are a truly inspirational entrepreneur that represents the essence of what we in affiliate marketing seek to achieve. Do you have any final words of wisdom for those out there who are working in the affiliate space but haven’t gotten that first huge break?

Yeah, connecting with the right people in your vertical is really important. Becoming cool with powerful people leads to partnerships that can differentiate you from the crowd. Reach out and email EVERYONE related to your business: advertisers, investors, and even competitors. Some jerks will blow you off, but other that, there’s nothing to lose. And even though it’s inevitable, try your best not to step on other people’s toes as your grow your business. Don’t be shady, evil, or greedy. Karma has a way of finding it’s way back to you, and you never know what kind of obstacles you can overcome with others’ help.

This bus is O!H! K!

Doing a good job or not of keeping it LoPro?

A really cool moment I captured on the way to the Hiroshima Memorial Museum.

I swear this one isn’t Photoshopped.

No comment.

You’ll notice the fourth ad is for Ask.com. Hmmm. Am I the only one that finds that peculiar? If anything, the ad definitely caught my eye first, so the advertiser at least got my attention!

But is Ask.com really advertising search results listings in Google AdWords or is this some weird hoax? It’s not like eBay or Target or even Shopping.MSN.com, where a massive company is leading you to a search listing of goods, comparison sites, or products to bid on. The ad actually leads to Ask’s search results page for the term “coupons.”

So I figured I’d try to play Sherlock Holmes and see where the ad was coming from. If you hover your mouse over the ad and copy and paste the link to a text editor, you’ll find the destination URL embedded in the link. Most of the time these are re-directs. This link is re-directing through Everesttech.net, which appears to be associated with Efficient Frontier. They’re an agency which also allows clients to use their bid management software. Since I’ve never used them, my investigation ends there.

I just think the whole thing is odd…dare I say desperate. Someone needs to Tell.com them to throw in the towel. Is anyone else curious, or have feedback or thoughts on the ad? Are they so lacking in users that they have to place their search results into AdWords paid listings? What do you think?

L-R: Zac Johnson and girlfriend Reena, Gary Lee, Greg Morgan, Derek Semmler, me, Gary Ng, Matt Blancarte.

Nate and Josh were with clients, while some other bloggers were wandering around the exhibit hall, so this is the group that was hanging out at the moment just choppin it up. These are some of the best people a person can know. What’s better than hanging out with some really down to earth, intelligent, like-minded people…in Las Vegas? Exactly…nothing. What was really cool was meeting Derek, since he’s my blog birthday buddy! Alright, I’m taking off to hit up the strip now. Good night.

I’m posting some links to others who are attending BWE and who will most likely be posting updates later on. If you’re attending BWE, please say “Hi!” to me if you see me. Check out these blogs below to see who will be partying like rock stars this weekend.

Nate Whitehill - Co-founder of Unique Blog Designs and really awesome guy. His business partners, Josh Mullineaux and Matt Blancarte will also be pimpin it at the UBD booth.

Derek Semmler - Author of DerekSemmler dot com and Sparkplugging: The Man Page. Also, my blog birthday buddy!

Greg Morgan - Founder of BCMblog and my conference homey. Always good times when BCM is in the house!

Make Money Online Panel - Super Affiliate Zac Johnson (and all-around nice person) will be speaking on this super blogger panel, along with John Chow, Brian Clark, Jim Kukral, Darren Rowse, and Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker. Yowzers!!

Wendy Piersall - Everyone knows her as the original eMom and she’ll be back to deliver on a panel discussing how to sell direct advertising on your blog. Sweet.

and more! If you’re going to BWE, leave a comment here to let everyone know. Or leave links to your friends who will be attending. Hope to see you all there!

Members Project is your chance to join a community that’s passionate about making a positive change in the world. Show your support and vote on which projects get $2.5 million in American Express funding. The possibilities are endless. The decision is yours.

The way it works is that card members submit ideas on how they can have an impact on changing the world for the better. Other card members vote for the winning ideas in a series of rounds. Going though the list I’m thinking, “How do I choose between helping malnourished children and rebuilding New Orleans?” But like the election of 2008, each person must find within their heart what they feel is worth their vote.

So today Amex announced their Top 25 projects, and they’re as diverse as you could ever imagine. I’ve voted for “Rebuilding New Orleans Green” because I feel our fellow neighbors need the support to rebuild that wasn’t given to most of them. I’m sure each of you will find a cause that tugs at your heart strings and ensure your vote. This first voting round is open until September 29. On September 30, the top five projects will be announced and will begin the second round of voting. Voters will choose the number one project that will receive the top funding of $1.5 million.

I have to commend American Express for launching such a project. They don’t have to do it. Of course they will get great press coverage and probably a huge surge of credit card applications, but nonetheless, a few very worthy causes will have $2.5 million in support, making their dream a reality. It falls in the league of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Oprah’s The Big Give. Someone gives a lot and probably makes money off the promotion, but in the end, the world is a slightly better place.

If you’re a card member, go to the Members Project and cast your vote. It only takes a minute, but can have an impact that affects people for the rest of their lives.

Resources: 

• Members Project
• American Express Press Release