You can earn up to 10% selling Amazon.com items from your website using Associate-O-Matic!

Build a complete store with 1000’s of items in minutes. Convert more of your visitors to buyers. You keep 100% of referral commissions from your website/store. No technical expertise or programming required to setup. Target your store to the topics/categories you choose. Build a single store (or an unlimited number of stores) or add a shopping area to your existing website.

They offer a "Lite/Free" version which is nice, you keep 90% of the sales commissions…but if you do tend to recommend a lot of products from Amazon, it may be worth the $99 to upgrade to the full version. The full version comes with an actual shopping cart, so while readers browse your shop they can add items to their shopping cart, without ever leaving  your site. You also keep 100% of all sales commissions.

From what I’ve seen, Associate-O-Matic is definitely the easiest way to build a complete Amazon Affiliate Store. Check it out!

Uncommon Goods - one of a kind shop

Uncommon Goods is one of the coolest sites! I promise you will always find something there that you’ve never seen before…and most likely will find something you just can’t live without.

Want to get Dad something unique for Father’s Day this year?  Check this stuff out, Gifts for Guys …after all, what guy doesn’t need an Ammunitions Case Wine Rack?!

With the iPod Nano and iPod video out, the earlier iPods are often overlooked. Take for instance the iPod Mini. It can hold up to 6GB of songs, is in a small, compact package and even comes in different colors…so there’s still some cool factor to it.

Even though it has a monochrome screen and of course doesn’t show videos, it still is a great MP3 player. There are also still a lot of accessories available for the Mini, and since it’s no longer being manufactured you can usually pick them up a lot cheaper than those for the Nano.

Ebay is probably your best bet for an iPod Mini, but the Apple Store often has refurbished models too. (Refurbished iPod mini - 6 GB Blue)  Either way, you get a great MP3 player with up to 6 times the space you’ll get on the new Nano.

I give the iPod Mini -

Every month Computer Graphics World explores innovation in computer graphics technology and applications for professionals in fields ranging from engineering to entertainment.

If you’re in the Graphic Design field,  you can get 12 issues of this magazine for free.

They now offer a digital edition, so if you’d prefer to read online you’ve got that option.

In the most recent edition the editors cast a spotlight on product announcements made during NAB2006, held at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

AccessoryGeeks.com has some very cool and hard to find accessories for your cell phone, including a belt holder for the RAZR that I’ve never seen before, but seems much better than the plastic clip holder.

They also have faceplaces, hologram screen protectors and stickers to personalize your phone. Stand out in the crowd, make your phone look unique!

Check out AccessoryGeeks.com! Cool unique cellphone accessories and gadgets with Free Shipping on every purchase~

HostGator

I know that many people use the free web site/blog hosting services that are available. Although that is great for small personal sites/blogs, if you are trying to get a regular following and/or expect to eventually get a lot of traffic on your blog, then paid professional hosting is the way to go. It really is not an expensive endeavor to use a professional web host, in fact if you have friends with blogs you can even split the cost of hosting.

I use HostGator.com, and get Unlimited Domain Hosting Only $9.95 a Month. The great thing is that I can use my server space for as many web sites/blogs as I have room for…and the space alottment from HostGator is very generous! 

I am currently hosting my blog and the blog of a friend, and haven’t even begun to come close to using the limits for my $9.95 per month plan. What’s even better is that with HostGator hosting they provide an application called "Fantastico" which allows you to install Wordpress and other cool blogs and/or applications simply by clicking a button.

Of course to use a paid hosting service you will need your own domain name, but again that will only help you when publicizing your web site or blog. An expensive domain seller is GoDaddy.com, but there are several others out there as well.

Once you see all of the extras available with Fantastico (blogs, photo galleries. FAQ, Help Desks, etc…) how quickly the servers deliver your content, how reliable their servers are (99.9% guaranteed uptime, can your free hosting deliver that?) and how blazing fast their customer support is if you have any questions, you’ll be encouraging every blogger you know to take the next step and use a professional hosting service.

iPowerWeb

For another option, check out iPowerWeb, here’s a special they’re running now:  Introducing $7.95 Hosting, Free Setup and $75 Marketing Rebate

With iPowerWeb, they provide a lot of marketing including $30 in free Google AdWords, you can host up to six different domain names and if you pay for a year of hosting in advance you get a free domain name…quite a good deal! Although I don’t host my blog with iPowerWeb, I have used them for clients and have never run into any problems at all with their service.

HostGator Reseller Program

The main reason I went with HostGator is because they offered unlimited domains with each package and they offer a great reseller program as well. Their reseller packages start at $24 per month, and allow unlimited domains with it as well.  If you are a reseller, I highly recommend this…it’s a hard offer to beat!

The cheapest way to get more speed out of your computer is to upgrade your RAM. RAM stands for "Random Access Memory". A friend of mine in sales often refers to it as "short term memory" when explaining how it works to anyone not familiar with computers.

RAM is the memory your computer relies on to run programs. It empties itself when the program closes or when the computer is turned off. The more RAM you have the more programs you can run simultaneously.

Although upgrading RAM is the least expensive and the easiest way to boost the speed on your computer, people are often intimidated at the thought of trying to do it themselves. Honestly, with most computers RAM is easily accessible and as long as you practice some safety precautions you can usually upgrade your RAM yourself. PCWorld.com has a tutorial which is quite a few years old, but will explain safety precautions and the installation procedure itself really hasn’t changed that much.

The first thing you need to do is find out how much RAM your computer can hold and what type of RAM you  need. The Crucial Memory Advisor Tool takes the guesswork out of upgrading. It walks you right through the process …all you need to know is the brand and model of your computer, Crucial’s memory advisor tool does the rest.

If you have the owner’s manual that came with your computer, it will usually give you instructions on how to replace the RAM. If you no longer have it, or feel more comfortable having someone else install it, you can still order your RAM from Crucial.com and pay to have a local computer geek install it for you. By purchasing the RAM yourself you usually save quite a bit of money.

I’ve used Crucial.com every time I’ve upgraded my computers and I can’t say enough good things about them. Their site is easy to use, their shipping times are wicked fast and the products are top-rate! Check out the Crucial Featured Specials, and keep them in mind the next time you’re waiting for a frozen program to close…a little more RAM can make a big difference.

I recently read about BlogMad and thought I’d check into it to see exactly what it was. Last night I signed up and began exploring.

(Note: It is absolutely free to join BlogMad. I did include my referral id in the links in this article, since referrals are one way this network grows.  If you would like to learn more but not use my referral link, click here)

The general premise of BlogMad is a blogging community which helps promote blogs via the payment of "credits". You can earn credits by surfing other blogs within the BlogMad network or by playing games. You also earn credits by referring other bloggers to BlogMad. These credits are then used to "pay" to have visitors sent to your blog.

When you log into BlogMad and begin surfing a bar displays along the bottom of the screen. This bar has a countdown of 20 seconds, the minimum amount of time you can spend on a blog and still receive your credit for visiting it. Once the timer has finished counting down, you then have to click on a number from within a list of numbers that matches a number randomly generated once the counter reaches zero. Once you click on the correct number you are awarded one credit.

I like the general idea, and the whole operation is still considered to be in the beta phase of development, so I hope it will only improve.

The things I liked about BlogMad:

• Finding blogs that I may not have found by just browsing the net
• Being able to select my interest categories for blogs I’d like to see. (This is definitely something that could use improvement though, since I often came across blogs that were mis-categorized)
• The ability to easily earn credits
• The option to pay for banners to advertise my blog
• The ability to block sites from my blog viewing rotation, although the method needs improvment.

The things I think could use some improvement:

• I’d like the ability to block a blog from within the bar that displays while browsing. Right now the blocking process is very time-consuming and you have to do it from within the control panel.
• I’d like the categories to be less broad, more descriptive.

Overall, I’m having a great time surfing blogs from all over the world. It’s a nice bonus to earn credits that allow me to share my blog with others.

If you have a blog, and especially if you are trying to get more traffic to your blog, I highly recommend checking out BlogMad!