For the last few weeks (or maybe months) every affiliate logging into their Commission Junction account was greeted with the announcement about FTC Guideline which will take effect just a few days from today:

I find it interesting that one of the videos on FTC website aimed to answer this question – “Is the FTC planning to sue bloggers?”:

I tend to react emotionally whenever word “blogger” and “lawsuit” are mentioned in the same sentence. If I were to advise anyone from my personal experience- I would say try to avoid lawsuits at all cost. There are of course situations you can’t avoid them….

Much of the fear that is being spread about the new FTC guidelines is likely as emotional as my comment on Andy’s latest post. Some fear that bloggers might get in trouble for promoting products and services. There is one simple solution not to get in trouble- disclosure and transparency. All five of the videos put together by FTC in one way or another address the issue of disclosure and transparency.

I think the bigger issue missed by most pundits is whether or not FTC will enforce their guidelines evenly and justly?

Personally I believe there is a greater danger for a blogger to get sued by many other parties before you get in trouble with FTC. Just think about it- if you disclose and are transparent about possible conflict of interest you should not have anything to worry about.

Runing a business from home has it’s advantages. You may enjoy working in your pajamas and make your own schedule.

I on the other hand have always struggled with working from home. Not only managing my own time was an issue. But the comfort of working in my pajamas resulted int he fact that many days I had no idea what was the weather like outside.

Since the launch of my Interpreting and Translating business over a year ago other factors began to influence my desire to move my home based business outside of my home. And while my primary focus will be my interpreting business, I plan to continue to share my experience in affiliate marketing as well.

Today I am writing my first blog post in my new office. I feel very fortunate because I realize that not every blogger and affiliate marketer can afford to have an actual office, not to say that many are not enjoying working from home. I am double fortunate because my office expenses are next to nothing- besides the cost of my internet connection I really have no other expenses.

Originally I did not anticipate to move into this office until December 1st, things went much batter and faster then I thought or planned.

If you are ever in the area feel free to look me up and stop by.

Finally I would like to thank all of my friends for the support and advice that made this move an absolute pleasure.

LeadPress, the premier builder of search engine optimized Mortgage Lead Generation Websites for Mortgage Brokers, Loan Officers, Net Branches, and Lead Aggregators, just launched an affiliate program. If you are interested in promoting LeadPress and it’s products you have a chance to earn up to $249 per lead for life time license. The subscription options pay affiliate commissions in a form of a 50% of the plan’s price plus 10% of recurring monthly commissions.

Who is behind LeadPress?

LeadPress is the brain child of Trace Richardson, a well known blogger among real estate professionals. Trace is a licensed Real Estate Broker in the state of California. His experience in online marketing, social media and lead generating industry serves as assurance that if you join the LeadPress affiliate program, you will receive an unsurpassed attention from the founder himself should you join LeadPress’ affiliate program.

I would also like to to take this opportunity to congratulate Trace on the launch of the affiliate program. I very proud to consider him my friend and wish him and LeadPress much success! Well done!

Disclaimer: This post is entirely my personal opinion.

Not so long ago LeapFish.com lunched their own affiliate program. LeapFish is a search aggregator that displays the results from Google, Yahoo, MSN and some other websites. They strip down the sponsored ads from the search results provided to them via APIs by Google, Yahoo and MSN while inserting their own ads instead. Ad can be purchased on LeapFish.com for a set price with 5% yearly renewal fee. According to LeapFish the average price per keyword is $1,499:

Is LeapFish Affiliate Program Promoting The Wrong Product?
It appears the LeapFish affiliate program is aimed at gaining traffic to their website and the sale of keywords is left to often overly aggressive sales executives- which in my opinion is a mistake. It sends the wrong signal, in my opinion, that LeapFish.com is really in desperate need of traffic and exposure (see my take on their linking payola below). According to their FQA an affiliate will make $0.05 for each search performed through a search widget provided by LeapFish. As I pointed out in my comment at 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Forums to LeapFish affiliate manager, I believe LeapFish should have linked their affiliate program to the sales of keywords instead, it would have helped them on the following levels:

• eliminate partially or completely the need of sales executives
• saving money spend on hiring and reimbursing the sales executives.
• finally at 5%-10% commission, it will automatically make LeapFish one of the most competitive affiliate programs out there, if they had a product worth buying that is.

LeapFish Affiliate Program Will Suffer From Bad Reviews
In my opinion, LeapFish.com did not go far enough nor were they sincere in apologizing for overly aggressive sales person who committed click fraud trying to “scare” potential client into advertising with LeapFish. While LeapFish reacted by firing the employee, the LeapFish blamed TechCrunch for misrepresenting the entire event and treating LeapFish unjustly. The problem with a such bad publicity is that many affiliates will pass the opportunity to make money with LeapFish once they learn about the above described click fraud fiasco. Many affiliate marketers use extensively the pay per click advertising across major search engines themselves and the click fraud episode will serve as a huge turn off for many of them.

The true irony about this is that, according to Spyfu, LeapFish started to run pay per click campaigns in June. It contradicts their sales pitch that “the prices on PPC have skyrocketed therefore you need to advertise with LeapFish”.

LeapFish Affiliate Program is Nothing More Than a “Linking Payola” scheme
Their affiliate program seams to be focused on “linking payola” as their search widget code contains a SEO friendly link back to their search engine. Since I am not an affiliate with LeapFish, I do not now if removing the link or at least adding a “nofollow” attribute to it is against their TOS. It is my opinion that the best way to gain incoming links is to provide services that your clients and/or users will rave about.

LapFish Search Widgets Might Be Misleading To Visitors
The search widget may confuse some of the visitors, . Many websites integrate search box for the purposes of searching their own website- one of the reason I have implemented Lijit on my blog. The LeapFish widget issues no warning before taking away the visitors to LeapFish.com search results page. If you have two search widgets one to search your own website and another is to search LeapFish it may get even more confusing.

LeapFish Affiliate Program’s Payout is To Small To Attract Affiliates. Will Mac Air Giveaways Do The Trick?
Considering the pay out of $0.05 (five cents) per search performed, I am skeptical that any average blogger will be able to make $500 or more per month. LeapFish is trying to get new affiliates by holding a contest at the end of each a winner will receive a Mac Air (note the amount of astroturfing done on Twitter by LeapFish management and employees). While this incentive may attract some affiliates, in my opinion LeapFish’s plan is rather shortsighted- I see many bloggers and website owners taking the search widget down after the contest is over. Unless of course giveaways become regular.

Leaders in “Make Money Online” Niche Will Never Endorse LeapFish Affiliate Program.
Not sue if I would ever get involved with an affiliate program offered by a meta search engine. But to be honest I have never heard of one before. Personally I am always excited to learn that a company’s marketing plan includes affiliate program. LeapFish, in my opinion, introduced their affiliate program too little too late and had been scarred beyond hope by the feedback resulting from high pressure sales methods- some of those contacted by LeapFish sales associates compared conversations to the episodes from the movie “Boiler Room”. I seriously doubt that Shoemoney, Problogger, Zac Johnson, Ian Fernando, John Chow, Jason Katzenback or any serious affiliate or internet marketer will start promoting LeapFish any time soon. The giveaways can generate some temporary interest, but much more is needed to keep their affiliate program afloat- a product worth investing into.

Ever since discovering Disqus, I have been keeping an eye on their product. For some periods of time I have used their commenting system across my blogs – yet for some reason or another would revert to WordPress‘ default commenting system or try other services like Intense Debate. I have more than few complains about the speed of their plugin – one of the main reasons I would stop using it.

But things at Disqus have changed. Not only they gained a powerful ally in Andy Beard, whose opinion is respected and valued by the thousands in the blogging community, they have also dramatically improved their product from the time I last tested it.

If you are dissatisfied with the you current commenting system on your blog, here are my two cents on why you should seriously consider using Disqus on your blog.

• Disqus allows your readers to comment using their Facebook & Twitter Credentials.
• Disqus allows you to reply to comments via e-mail.
• Disqus allows you to manage multiple blogs from one account.
• Disqus integrates well into Blogger.com powered blogs. If you share my sentiment, you probably do not comment often on Blogger- their native comment system needs some major overhaul. Using the Disqus on blogger can probably increase users interaction via comments.
• Finally Disqus folks at Diqus are really paying attention to what other people are saying about their services. They also seem to be implementing things gathered from the feedback from users.

In the past I often questioned using a third party commenting system. Now I am becoming more and more convinced that Disqus is actually one of the very few systems capable of providing real value to it’s users.