Thank Canada It’s Monday

So it’s actually Wednesday as I write this – but hey it’s been a crazy few days, and today is really the start of my work week – so screw it, it’s Monday to me!

Canada Day was on Monday – and I felt it was the perfect time to thank Canada. For those unaware – I moved from Scotland to Canada when I was 16. And really – it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

For so many reasons – but one big one is to do with the internet. When I left Scotland the internet wasn’t really a thing over there. Especially where I lived – we never even had any digital cable or anything, and the internet would’ve been impossible to get until I was like 26.

Then I came over to Canada where they sold floppy discs at Walmart where you could pay $10 a month and get dial-up internet. Plus of course all the free AOL discs although I never really went that route. I paid the $10 to go with….I think NetZero? I think that was the company. I know it was an N-Word.

(I wonder if just typing “N-Word” raised a red flag in Washington. What a stupid world we live in.)

If I hadn’t gotten into the internet at such a young age – who knows where I would have been today. One of the first things I did when I got into the internet was start creating websites. I was doing internet marketing within just a few weeks of getting the internet, hosting my websites on Geocities etc. And really that wouldn’t have been anywhere remotely possible if I had stayed in Scotland.

Then I look at my friends who I left high school with. They almost all went to college to study absolutely useless courses, with zero idea of what they wanted to do in life. Of them all now – most are unemployed, or working in fast food joints. I think the most successful of the bunch is a manager at McDonalds.

(Not that I’m anti-college or anything; it just would have personally been a horrible choice at that time for an idiot 16 year old like myself).

On top of that – if I never moved to Canada, I would have never got into American sports such as NBA, NFL and NHL. Which is also a huge part of my income as well as a large part of how I enjoy my daily life.

So thanks Canada – thanks to you, I don’t have to spend my days saying “Would you like fries with that?”. Instead I spend my days watching Sportscentre and it’s actually work.

Can’t be thankful for much more than that.

G+ Profile Pic:

I recently changed my G+ Profile picture that shows up in seach results. So instead of this:

I went for this:

Obviously the intention is to increase CTR by pointing at the links. Looks a bit too spammy for my liking so I’m going to work on it. But these are small things you should always be thinking about and doing. It amazes me the amount of people who don’t use the G+ authorship – it really makes your website stand out in the SERPS and personalizes the website for people immediately.

Note to New Affiliates:

I probably get 50 new e-mails per week from new affiliates. People who are just starting, or are interested in getting started.

One of the most common problems I see is design.

Not ugly designs(although some are) – but the amount of time people spend on designs.

If you’re a new affiliate, forget about design. Seriously. Use the most simplistic design ever. I would allocate 1 hour to a design. 20 minutes picking a simple one, 20 minutes tweaking it to your liking, and 20 minutes on a logo.

Instead all of the focus should be on the content. Search engines don’t give a crap about design(to an extent) – it’s the content that’s important.

Once you have a site going, live and kicking – that’s when you can maybe think more about design. But a site like https://www.realmoneyonlinecasinos.com/ is what you should be looking at as a solid example – the design is simplistic, it’s not exactly well optimized for conversions – but that’s okay. They’re starting a base – getting in lots of content first, gauging how many visitors they get etc – and then from THERE they can start optimizing and tweaking things.

Things That Kept Me Sane In June:

The monthly section where I list whatever entertained me in the previous month. Let’s see:

Video Games: I played a lot of Gears of War 3 multiplayer. My game is glitched – they basically have a section where ONLY newbies can play in it. Then after a certain amount of games they kick them out. However my game is messed up and allows me to play in it. So it’s been a lot of fun as while I usually suck at online multiplayer I’m able to absolutely destroy people for once.

Also went through Bioshock Infinite. Had so many people telling me how great this was. I’m convinced it was one large collective troll. This game was a POS and I really struggled just to finish it.

Books: Still going through the Spider Shepherd Series. I actually messed up and read Book # 8 before Book # 7 – and halfway through Book #8 there is a MASSIVE spoiler about someone who died in Book # 7. So yeah, that sucked as it literally happens right at the end of Book # 7 too. Bah. Oh well – will have that series finished just in time for his new book coming out this month.

Movies/TV: Haven’t got into any new television shows yet. Been trying to go through movies. I watched about 10 movies during the month. Only one worth noting is Seven Psychopaths – just a fantastic movie with some incredible acting performances.

E-mail Solution:

This probably won’t apply to affiliates – but if you run any sort of e-commerce website I’d recommend hooking up with Sendgrid.

We were having problems with DIYLandlordForms.com – 10-20 e-mails per week from people who weren’t receiving their e-mails with their login information. Of course they WERE recieving them but they were hitting their spam/junk folders and people never check there.

Then we’d e-mail them back and…guess what….half the time the e-mails would go straight to their spam/junk.

We hooked up with Sendgrid 3 months ago and are more than happy. We went from 10-20 e-mails per week to just 1 in the whole month of June. Even better is we’d get some chargebacks due to the e-mails not getting to them, so we’ve totally eliminated them. So if you run any sort of website that sends the customer information over e-mail – go with Sendgrid.

Alright, I am off to re-watch last weeks CFL games, then do up some betting tips for BetCFL.net.

Such a tough life!

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This article, as are all articles on AffiliateBible.com, was written by Graeme aka "Dealer Dan". Graeme currently resides in Kingston, Ontario and has been running his own internet marketing business since 1996.

This article was written on July 3, 2013 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.

If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.