Often marketers are viewed as spammers because all they do is promote a certain topic or link. They also use copy that does not tie with the subject being discussed or do not even provide anything back to the community they are trying to influence. I have spoken with a few affiliate marketers who felt that the product they were promoting was their contribution back to the community. I personally think that is retarded. Hello you are selling something. Plain and simple.

So following the “Be Human!” rule can be challenging and a very manual process. Especially if the subject matter does not interest you. I totally get why marketing experts insist that you pick niches that you enjoy because you will be spending a lot of time on the subject. The manual process is really involved since you are trying to push yourself to be relative to the discussion occurring. And I spend a few extra minutes on each post to make sure I do not sound like a eastern bloc spam bot.

My most successful web growth experience has been posting my site’s URL in the signature of each forum post I completed. I search the forums for threads that have a high read count and especially post in stickies since those threads are always at the top and get the most newest forum members. By using this strategy I get eyes reading my link and I get link juice from the forum. On these two levels I benefit from the link I placed in the forum post. I also include a catch phrase before my link in my forum signature. An example would be “I bought my mac from: www.maclaptopshop.com.”

I have confirmed that this tactic works on two levels. The first by researching my google analytics and secondly by the amount of commissions I made. In May and June I made a total of almost $180. Not bad for spending about 3 hours a month. Now I need to scale the tactic and the effort to another level. There other cats making $450 to $550 per month on lame niche products.

Feel free to leave your comments, questions, and feedback about online marketing.

Then there are underground superheroes such as UberAffiliate (Sup3rNova). Who instead tell you a little of what they are working on or discuss what other affiliate marketers are doing. UberAffiliate never tells you how he handled his marketing and the details of his campaigns. He is basically very secretive on his “super affiliate marketing powers”. And besides him there are many more underground superheroes that do not even blog or think about blogging.

These are the guys I want to know about and meet in person. But I can see how the underground superheroes do not want to ruin a good thing. I had a chance to experience being a superhero. It happened last week Friday while at my day job. One of the guys I work with told me he was reading about an alien task force being created in Colorado. The purpose of the task force was to greet aliens visiting Earth. I joked with him that it was most likely a link bait story with the intent of making the keyword “E.T. Taskforce” popular. I told him I bet some marketer got some affiliate pages ranked on the first page of Google with the keywords of “E.T. Taskforce”. The discussion carried on and I shared with him the Fox News link bait story where a 13 year old boy supposedly stole his dad’s credit cards and purchased services from a bunch of strippers

I could tell he was interested in affiliate marketing and has done some reading. I figured I would let him know what I have up and what I am working on. It was fun to share and let him know how some of the online marketing stuff works. I guess I felt like a superhero. We spoke for about 45 minutes and he seemed interested. With his new found knowledge I hope he does do something within affiliate marketing. If he is successful enough to quit his day job then I will have been a real superhero in his eyes.

At his ATTIGO site, he goes through the complete design process and prototype phases. He even shows how the user interface for the device works. Scott Hobbs appears to be one smart cat since his product covers multiple technology disciplines and he built the TT prototypes within a few months.

I think Scott Hobbs should work on building a touchscreen mixer to match his touchscreen turntables. The set-up would look so hot. A touchscreen mixer would allow users to set-up the mixer interface how they wished or the interface modules could be developed that mirror popular mixers. This would help DJs transitioning to touchscreen equipment.

So you want to try and sample some of this visual touchscreen DJ goodness? Do you have a Nintendo DS? If so, then you can install ProtienDS on your DS and let the fun begin. Maybe get two Nintendo DSes and have your own mini DJ set-up.

I will update this post with new info as it becomes available. For now watch the video below and be prepared to be blown away.

Final Product // ATTIGO TT from Scott Hobbs on Vimeo.

Some of the new features/upgrades for the 2nd generation are:

9″ inch screen

Finger gesturing touchpad

CPU upgrade

8gig or 16 gig Solid State Drive

Now if I can slap on OS X on it I will be smitten as a kitten.

After running through the process you will see a new icon on your iPhone. It is called “Installer”. It works best while you are connected to a wifi spot. Run it and you will notice an “install” icon at the bottom of the screen. Tap it with your finger and you will be dropped into a list of various categories of software. Be sure to install the BSD system files first and then you are home free to install just about anything else you can find on there. I have the following software installed:

Apollo : It is a AIM client. No more SMS message charges for me when I go over 200 messages.

CameraPro : A image capturing software that increases the features of the default camera on iPhone.

SNES : A Super Nintendo emulator. Games for the iPhone finally. Gosh.

NES : Similar to above but of the 16-bit variety.

Labyrinth : A game where you roll the marble around in a maze by tilting your iPhone in various directions.

Pushr : A app that pushes up all my pics on the iPhone to my Flickr account.

TTR : Tap Tap Revolution. Think guitar hero meets the iPhone.

TouchPad : VNC software that allows me to connect to various servers.

SummerBoard : Provides controls on the appearance of the desktop and icons. As well as being able to import complete themes. Works and looks very nice.

I got various games and other software installed my iPhone, but find the ones listed above to be the most outstanding.

If you have jail broke your iPhone please share below on what software do you have on your iPhone or what software you find to be necessary to enjoy the iPhone.