Jim at The Net Fool has updated his Market Leverage contest! Before, the contest was setup so that only people who signed up for ML under his affiliate link were eligible to compete. Unfortunately, many of us already have ML accounts, and as such couldn’t compete.

Tyler Cruz has held 4 Market Leverage contests so far, but he continues to limit the contest to people who signed up under his referral code. Jim’s ability to include “outsiders” in the contest shows that Tyler is just being greedy by limiting it to HIS affiliates.. I always thought that Tyler was a stand-up guy, but maybe some of John Chow’s evilness is rubbing off on him.

In any event, in light of the recent changes to Jim’s contest, he’s extended the deadline until November 15th! The grand prize is a Nintendo Wii (I’ve got one, and it’s a ton of fun!), 2nd place gets a Flip Mino Video Camera, and 3rd place gets a $50 AMEX Gift Card.

So don’t delay, sign up today!

I’ve spent my life surrounding myself with extremely wealthy people, and finding out what makes them tick. The one common thread that I’ve noticed? These people are willing to put EVERYTHING on the line to get ahead. I’ve made some gutsy decisions in my life, but I never really put everything on the line..

I’ve talked with a number of entrepreneurs who mortgaged their homes to the hilt, and put every last dollar into their business! They had the attitude that if the business failed, they’d just rent a place and start fresh. I worked VERY hard to pay off my home in record time, and I’m not going to risk it all on a business that could potentially fail. Unfortunately, that fallback mentality will inevitably set you up for failure!

When I started my e-commerce business, failure was not an option. I self-funded the business by working a regular job from 12:30pm-9pm, and I worked on the business in my off hours. Averaging just 4 or 5 hours of sleep each night, I lived like this for the first year. It was exciting, and I never gave it a second thought. A few years later, I was able to walk away from my full-time job, and I became even more productive. But over time, that hunger for success has somehow diminished..

I see myself falling into some bad habits – Namely, watching 4 hours of TV each day. Jim Krukal made a comment at the AS Social Media conference about how he hasn’t watched TV in 8 years! It sounds crazy, but if you’re serious about success, you have to make some sacrifices. And that becomes even harder when you have a wife. (And even tougher if you’ve got kids!)

Are you serious about succeeding? Do you believe in your business model? Then put some skin in the game, make some sacrifices, and push ahead!

Many people aren’t cut out for the dot-com lifestyle. My wife is the perfect example. She works a regular 9-5 job, gets a paycheck every week, and she contributes to her 401K. But she works in an industry that has been absolutely ROCKED by the economy over the last year, and job security is a major concern. (Her company has already had 4 rounds of layoffs, and there’s no end in sight!)

This keeps her up at night. Me, I don’t really care. If she loses her job, I’ll put her to work on the affiliate marketing front, and she’ll quickly exceed her earnings from her old job. She thinks I’m nuts.

But I’ve been through a lot. In college, I started a dot-com company. While all of my classmates accepted jobs with good companies after graduation, I took the road less travelled and forged ahead with my business. In the end, some unfortunate circumstances that were out of my control spelled the end for the business. But in those few years, I learned WAY more than I ever would have working in the regular sector.

In the interim, I tried the regular 9-5 job, and I HATED it. But as luck would have it, I came across a job that was very different, and I ended up being the perfect fit. So here we are, 2000-2001, making a TON of money, but working extremely long hours and traveling like you wouldn’t believe.

And then it happened, the 1-2 punch. First, the stock market bubble burst, and I lost my shirt.. Close to $50K just GONE! Fast forward a few months, and I buy my first house. (Hey, real estate is the way to go, just ask Donald Trump!) But then 9/11 hits, and the company I work for is directly affected. By late October, I’m getting the call that I feared the most. I was laid off.

Shoemoney asked if you’ve ever lost it all.. At that point in my life, it sure felt like it. The job market after 9/11 was BAD. When I finally did get a job (10 months later), it was at 50% of my old salary, and I was working overnights. It sucked. But what choice did I have? Unemployment ran out, and I had a mortgage payment to make!

About a year later, I was laid off again! It was at this point where I realized that job security didn’t exist, and that the only way to protect yourself was to create your own destiny. I had the skill set, I just needed a direction. I initially tried my hand at affiliate marketing, but had limited success. (It took me months to get my first $100 Google Adsense check, and I was making only a few bucks here and there promoting other products..)

In retrospect, my downfall was that I was in the wrong market. My niche was automotive (a topic near and dear to my heart, but one that doesn’t pay worth a damn on the affiliate front!).. I learned a bit from those first experiences, and moved on to create an e-commerce site. Fast forward 6 years later, and I’m still running the site. It’s actually my primary source of income, even though I’ve since diversified and now have about 40 websites under my belt.

Affiliate marketing has been very good to me over the past year, and I’ve also earned quite a bit of money from direct ad sales. In addition, we recently started working with a CPM network, and that’s brining in decent cash each month.. CPM is a flawed model in my opinion, but if you’re working in a niche that doesn’t work well with affiliate marketing, it’s a decent alternative.

The key is to diversify.. If you’re relying on a single source of income, and something comes along to disrupt that, you’re screwed! I’ve been down that road before, and it’s not fun!

Is Twitter useful anymore (was it ever?), or is it just a dumping grounds for spammers and marketers? I’m more active on Twitter now that I have Twitterific on my iPhone, but most of the stuff in my feed seems to be garbage. Am I the only one that feels this way?

Affiliate Summit held their Social Media 2008 conference yesterday in New York City. The event was held at the Baruch College Vertical Campus (an odd location for sure, and one hell of a walk from the subway, as I found out the hard way!), and about 500 people turned out for the conference.

The event ran from 10am-5pm, and ShareASale had a party later that night from 8pm-Midnight. I thought that was a bad choice, as most out-of-town attendees (myself included) were leaving the city immediately after the show ended.

Jim Kukral was the moderator for the entire day, and he did a great job.. I arrived just after Don Crowther started delivering his Keynote, and it was 50-minutes full of fantastic information! I was always indifferent to StomperNet, but Don made me a believer! If the rest of the SN staff is on his level, then StomperNet is probably worth signing up for.. I’m sure Don’s keynote video is already on the Affiliate Summit website, as the AS staff was videotaping in FULL FORCE throughout the entire day!

The first session of the day was about learning how to leverage video to increase brand engagement, time spent on site, and page views. The lovely Melissa Salas from Buy.com was on the panel, along with Steve Rosenbaum from Magnify.net. I had no idea what Magnify.net was, and Steve didn’t do much to explain it to the audience. His loss. Some interesting tidbits learned from the session, no complaints here.

Then was the “Networking Lunch”.. In my opinion, this was a total disaster. There wasn’t enough room for everyone to sit together, so people were spread across 5 different rooms! The food was mediocre at best, and my expectations were low coming in, considering I knew it was going to be a box lunch. I found that a lot of the attendees were from agencies, and as such completely useless to me. There were 3 exhibitors there, and they were totally out of place. Why they had any exhibitors to begin with was a mystery to me.

Thankfully, 1:45pm rolled around and another session began. This one was “Social Media Case Studies”, and included Michael Jenkisn (CEO/Founder of MarketLeverage), along with Jivan Manhas (President of Advaliant). James Keating frmo ShopWiki was also there, but I felt that he was out of place in this panel.

An interesting session, but short on revolutionary ideas.. Mike kept praising Tyler Cruz, and rightfully so.. Tyler’s run contests sponsored by ML for 4 months now, and has generated an insane amount of money for ML’s merchants. He admitted that ML’s strategy is basically going after the blogger market to expand their business. Web 2.0, yes.. Social Media, ummm….?

The next session rocked.. Larry Bailin gives Gary Vaynerchuk a run for his money as most dynamic speaker on the circuit right now! A really innovative marketer, he shows some really innovative examples of work he’s done for clients, using video to really elevate his clients to the next level. Jay Berkowitz also gave a great presentation, but flying through 50+ slides in 10 minutes, it was hard to digest all of the information he gave out. I was hoping that he’d offer a link to his Powerpoint presentation, but no such luck. Shashi B from Network Solutions also offered up some interesting information.

The last presentation of the day was about leveraging social networks. You had Sachin Agarwal, Zac Johnson, and Adam Alter on the panel. Sachin acts totally nuts, as if he’s on speed or something. Zac Johnson is the worst public speaker I’ve seen – He may make lots of money, but he shouldn’t speak about it – One word answers and mumbles were all we got from him. And Adam Alter, the odd-ball of the group who shouldn’t have been on this panel to begin with.

This session sucked so bad, I got up and left in the middle of it. All they talked about was Facebook ads and Myspace ads. But they offered nothing new. No “latest techniques and strategies”.. Yawn.

All in all, a good event, even if it had some slow spots. It was AS’s first niche event, and hopefully next year will offer an even better event!

Tyler’s had HUGE success with his previous MarketLeverage affiliate marketing challenges, and October brings us another new contest! This time, there is over $10K worth of prizes, including a 52? 1080p HDTV, Alienware computer package, 24″ Widescreen Monitor, and 8GB iPod Touch to name a few.

The contest runs from October 1st-31st, and it’s simple to get started. Just head over to Tyler’s site and sign up for MarketLeverage through his referral link. Then just start making money..

More detailed info can be found on his site.. Good luck to all!