The majority of sites that I operate work off of the WordPress blogging script.  I have been unable to find a comparable website backend that stream lines my affiliate marketing.  Everything is made easier in Word Press due to it's huge inventory of plugins, which allow for simple tasks like adding Amazon products to posts or full on automated scraping of articles and products.

Below are the Word Press affiliate plugins I can't live without. (Affiliate links are used, thanks for your support.)

phpBay Pro ($79.00) - My online life has changed since finding this handy little affiliate plugin.  Basically the WP plugin adds items from eBay onto your blog and can be customized to fit your sites style.  Items can be inserted in a shop type manner or as a few items listed at the bottom of a post.  This plugin has great support directly from it's creator Wade and is under constant improvement and updates to follow the changes within eBay.  phpBay Pro works with the eBay Partner Network and with Pepper Jam Network.

See phpBay Pro in action - Used Hybrid Cars

Amazon Auto Poster ($29.99) - I've only started using this WP plugin about a month back and it's already paid for itself.  As you can tell by it's name, this plugin scrapes product listings at Amazon.com and then creats blogposts automatically.  The items are scraped per your keyword choices, starting point, and category.  The posts generated can then be scheduled up to 9 days out or published immediately.

See Amazon Auto Poster in action - Flip MinoHD Camcorder

Article Auto Poster Premium ($29.99) - Again, I just started using this plugin about a month ago and it's already provided me with additional traffic, sales, and profits.  Just like the plugin name says, it scrapes ArticlesBase.com for the keyword you choose and generates blog posts off the articles found.  Each keyword creates it's own job to publish a post based off of that keyword as often as you want.  This is a great method of generating long tail keyword search traffic and keep your blog updated when you cannot be bothered with writing content.

See Article Auto Poster Premium in action - 10 People To Surround Your Band With

AD Rotator (FREE) - This free Word Press plugin makes ad management on your blog a no brainer.  You create a catalog of advertisements, which are then grouped by php code that you place within posts or on your theme files.  This will automatically rotate the ads you placed within the group.  Weights can be adjusted and there is no limit to the amount of ads that you use.  Great way to keep ads fresh on your site through multiple page views and try different affiliate products.

Closing Statement

I use a lot of different plugins with my Word Press blogs, but these are the ones that I can't live without and provide me the most commissions.  No, the majority of them are not free, but very quickly they can be paid for with just a little traffic.  Pair these WP plugins with a browser plugin like Affiliate Espionage and you'll see your weekly earnings rise.  It still takes hard work, but thanks to plugins our work as marketers can be streamlined.

Like any digital product your mileage may vary.  However, the items listed here I use on a daily basis and can vouche for their usefullness.  For more affiliate news and information please read my affiliate blog on Blogspot, where on my latest post I describe what makes a BAD landing page.

Update 7/2/09 - The Amazon Auto Poster and Article Auto Poster are now known as WP Robot.  I'm still on the fence on my opinion of the new wordpress affiliate tool.  First reactions is that there is only an option to schedule and not 'Publish Now', which makes it difficult to edit these posts before going live.  We'll see.

I'm guilty of having too many irons in the fire and this summer is no exception.  Although having this problem doesn't allow for any single project to be exceptionalin quality, it does allow some testing to see which sites will potentially be money makers.  That's why I continue to partially develop and build at a slow pace on many projects and then once they start earning money adjust my focus.

Tunerhybrids.com - Automotive forum dedicated to hybrid enthusiasts looking to modify their cars.

Why I Think It Will Work

Every type of car has an enthusiast that ones to customize and push the limits of the vehicle.  I thoroughly believe that they hybrid market is no exception and because of this I'm lookign to cash in early.  This forum will hopefully serve as a place for hybrid enthusiasts to meet up, discuss, and learn new ways to customize their hybrid cars.

suGuesstion.com - Humor site with failblog type pictures of search suggestions from popular search engines.

Why I Think It Will Work

Why do any humor sites make it, especially those like FailBlog.org and Icanhazcheeseburger?  It's a specific niche that can easily be updated daily, it will be a stop on the internet, not a destination.  With proper integration of social bookmarking scripts this can be another meme phenomenon.(maybe that's asking a bit much)

EvansvilleBlog.com - Local blog that focuses on what I'm doing in my home town.

Why I Think It Will Work

Currently there is very limited competition amongst the Evansville Indiana market for an online presence.  This seemed like a great opportunity, considering this is a city of more than 300,000.  Time will tell if I can keep it updated frequently enough to start drawing regular visitors and local advertising dollars.

Buy-HD.com - Testing blog for automated affiliate scripts focused on any product that claims high definition.

Why I Think It Will Work

So far so good, considering the majority of the content is scraped from article websites.  Furthermore it focuses on an affiliate program that requires a lot of volume to really make some money, Amazon.com.  I'm hoping that generated content mixed with my own articles will help bring in some of the residual search engine traffic, since I'm not too concerned with Google at the moment.

Dead Man Blogging - My actual affiliate 'guru' blog, with tips on marketing online.

Why I Think It Will Work

I'm not an expert on everything online, but what I do learn I like to share with others.  If nothing else this blogspot blog is a launching point for me to work on my writing skills.  So far traffic has been increasing on a weekly basis, we will see where it takes me.

The Google Blog Search powered Incoming Links widget on the dashboard of my WordPress blog is no longer functioning.  This has been going on for a few days now and I know I have links, although it shows none.  I've verified incoming links because I'm getting ping backs and interlinking amongst my own blogs as well.

Perhaps this function is broken because of a change in Google Blog Search or in the latest update of Word Press.  I can't remember if this just started happening around the time of upgrading to WP 2.8 or not.  Either way, it was a nice feature to have, especially when said blogs weren't pinging and were just mentioning your posts in passing.

It's been about a month now since I signed up to opt-into the beta test of the upcoming Starcraft 2.  Unfortunately, I think that I was one of 1 million that signed up, making my attempt futile at best.  Or, there may not be any beta testing going on quite yet...not for sure.

I just started playing the first StarCraft a few months ago and fell in love.  It's no wonder this game has garnered such a following, especially over in Korea.  Of course all this does is make me foam at the mouth at the possibility of getting to play the next gen RTS as soon as possible.  To make matters worse, I don't even think a release date has been metioned for StarCraft 2.

At any rate, just a reminder for anyone interested in helping Blizzard beta test upcoming software, be sure to log into your Battle.net account and opt-in to any beta opportunities you wish.  But don't call them, they'll call you.

Usually I'm not the type of person to interact with anyone on Facebook.  Generally you'll find me accepting friend requests and then a few times a month looking at peoples pictures, just to see what they have been up to.  However, my wife is a completely different bird, always updating, and constantly playing the flash games available.  The latest game she started playing was Farm Town and she dragged me right along for the ride.

Farm Town was created by a company called Slash Key and contains the basic elements of what made Sim Farm, developed in 1993 so much fun.  It's all about planting crops, developing a plan, and trying to earn enough money to purchase the Mansion instead of the run down shack you start out with.  Thanks to my wife, I am now playing it almost as much as she is and find myself logging into Facebook just to check on my crops to see if they need harvesting.

Farm Town is not nearly as complicated as Sim Farm was and the options are fairly limited.  Furthermore the creators of Farm Town have integrated a leveling system to keep players logging in and interacting.  Usually experience points are awarded for helping out on friends farms, planting crops, or plowing fields.  To really start moving through the levels though takes coins, which you will use to purchase buildings and fences.  Everytime you buy a higher level item you gain massive amounts of experience points, then the process starts all over again.

Sim Farm

Well, thanks to this friendly reminder of how much a farm simulation can be, I decided to hunt down Sim Farm.  Thanks to the interwebs you can still find this abandonware available for free download, but requires some serious tweaking to play on a new computer.  DosBox came in handy and after figuring out it's install I was ready to start playing Sim Farm again for the first time in 16 years.

The only problem I've ran into when running Sim Farm on Vista through DosBox is the window size.  It tried tweaking the config file as suggested on the wiki's, but still no luck.  The solution I use, but causes some graphical errors, is to alt-enter, which plays in full screen mode.  Generally this works, but from time to time will cause everything briefly look like  a lake.  Small price to pay.

How am I supposed to twit about the maintenance on Twitter if Twitter is down?

We will have 90 mins of maintenance starting at 9:45p Pacific today, June 15.

Also, I'm still not throughly convinced that the proper speek is not Twat instead of Twit.  And lastly, I'm working on a through Twatting how-to article to get the most out of your blog posts and help reach the Twitter target audience.  It's gonna be easy and utilize just a couple of Word Press Plugins.  BRB

Just on a quick break at work and decide to pickup some Cracker Jack's out of the vending machine.  Admittedly it's been years since I've tasted the sweet popcorn and nuts, but my has the product itself changed.  I'm not just talking about the packaging, which instead of a box is in a chip bag for dispensing, I'm referring to the product and Cracker Jack Surprise.

If my memory serves me right, not only was Cracker Jack full of carmel covered popcorn, but also plenty of peanuts.  Well my friends, if there were 3 peanuts in the entire bag they would have been lonely.  Seriously, a complete lack of peanuts, which basically meant they robbed me of the Jack in my Cracker.  But teh salt in the wound came in the form of the shitty Cracker Jack Surprise.

Usually I remember getting super cool rub on tattoos in my Cracker Jack boxes or maybe some little x-ray tool, mini coloring book, or something interesting.  Today I was greeted with a pencil topper, that's it, a crappy paper cutout pencil topper.

This Cracker Jack experience basically ruined my entire day, thanks to a $.50 snack.

Thank you Microsoft for finally launching Bing!  Taking it a step further, please continue to promote Bing and make it a real Google competitor.  Today traffic from Bing has made a substantial impact on my web stats.

Also, following the search terms used I'm seeing that the visitors are highly relevant.  In most cases it appears to be mimicking Google SERPS, but for now has me closer to the top of the results.  Although I know this is early in on it's launch, but it already feels better not having to worry about all my eggs being in Google's basket.

I think it's time I start looking into advertising on Bing, at least while the attention is high.  And, I'll kick back and hold my breath that the traffic will hold and increase as time goes by.  Google needs some competition.