I talked about the American Express Plum Card in a previous article, and how I use it for about 95% of my company’s purchases. They’ve decided to extend a great offer to readers of ZanderChance.com, and you’d be crazy not to take advantage of it. Apply for the Plum Card from American Express OPEN at plumcard.com/bzz and you can receive a $100 credit when you spend $1,000 by September 4th, 2008.

In order to qualify for this promotional offer, you must activate and spend at least $1,000 on the Plum Card by 09/04/2008. A maximum of one $100 credit per Card account will appear on your monthly billing statement 6-8 weeks after you have reached the qualified spend. Your Plum Card will be mailed approx. two weeks after your application has been approved. You may be permitted to have more than one Plum Card account; however, you are eligible to receive only one promotional $100 statement credit.

As we near April 15th, the question that keeps coming up is, “Do I have to pay taxes on my affiliate income?” Of course you do!!

This topic came up today on Shawn Collins blog, and was also covered by John Chow a few days ago. They both covered it in-depth, so I’ll spare you the rehash. The bottom line is this: If you’ve got a question, contact an accountant. A blog is treated like a business, and as such, you can take a number of deductions.. But no one is more well-versed in IRS deductions and loop holes than a certified tax accountant, so it’s definitely worth the expense to have a professional handle your taxes.

Should you setup an LLC or Corporation for your websites? Should you buy a Hummer H2 (like Zac Johnson or Shoemoney) for the Section 179 tax writeoff? (Did you know that the amount of that deduction changed, and might even be phased out this year?) Should you lease instead of buying a car? Should I be paying quarterly taxes? These questions can only be answered by an accountant that knows your current financial situation.

My accountant was able to save me $5000 last year compared to TurboTax or TaxCut. Considering his bill was only around $300, I’d say that was money well spent!

Zac Johnson decided to use an incentive (a free MoneyReign T-Shirt) to generate more tips for his Top Spots list.. The Top Spots list is a “Fancy-Schmancy Tip Jar For Your Blog”, powered by Jim Kukral’s ScratchBack. For people that don’t want the headache of manually coding up their own Paypal Donations button, ScratchBack is a pretty easy alternative.

My only complaint with ScratchBack is that they’ve hardcoded all links with a nofollow tag, instead of giving users the option whether or not to use the nofollow tag on outgoing links..

It’s a simple concept - Don’t rely on a single source of income, because if that revenue stream dries up, you’ll be screwed. And that’s exactly what happened with Henry and Wilson, twin brothers from Baltimore who got banned from Google AdSense earlier this year and lost roughly $200K as a result! AdSense was the only way they were monetizig their websites, so this was a devastating blow.

If Google suspects that you’re involved in click-fraud, they’ll ban you first, and ask questions later (if ever). It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again. It’s great that they’re so proactive when it comes to click-fraud, but many innocent bystanders have unjustly fallen victim to Google’s ban-stick.

Never let yourself rely on a single source of income or traffic. Making money online is all about maximizing income and traffic from multiple sources. Yahoo banned one of my sites about 6 months ago for no apparent reason, and my pleas to them fell on deaf ears. Has it affected my traffic? Sure, but I’ve worked around it, bringing in other streams of traffic to compensate for it.

Below are some AdSense alternatives that you should consider implementing on your site:

Some Good Affiliate Programs:

You’ve got nothing to lose, so try them out - The results might just surprise you!

Text Link Ads helps you monetize your website, by selling ad space to perspective advertisers. As the name suggests, the ads you’re selling are simple text links. Advertisers like Text Link Ads because they get search engine love as well as traffic. Unlike other ad networks, the links served by Text Link Ads are static links without a nofollow tag. TLA is as much a SEO tool as advertising tool.

Publishers like Text Link Ads because the links are non-intrusive and doesn’t look like advertising. I sell TLA links on one of my sports blogs, and I’ve placed them right below my blog roll. Advertisers get the SEO benefits, and readers don’t view the links as advertisements, but rather sites that I endorse. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Advertisers buy links on a site for one flat monthly rate. The price is based on a site’s Alexa and Technorati ranking as well as Google PageRank and estimated number of RSS subscribers. The better the numbers, the higher the link price. Currently, we’re only getting a modest amount of money for our ads on the NFL site, but we expect the price to increase when the next Google Page Rank update happens.

Text Link Ads is a great program to join, as it adds yet another revenue stream to your website, and it’s not dependent upon variables out of your control (traffic, clicked ads, etc). TLA take 50% of the link price as their fee for getting a link sale. It’s a bit high, but they are finding you the advertisers, and all you have to do is approve them. All in all, it’s a pretty good deal!

Check them out - It costs nothing to join, so check it out!