Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Taking Internet Marketing from Peanuts to Profits

Thanks to the awesome designers at Unique Blog Designs, my blog has a shinny new look and some awesome interactive features.

There are still a few tweaks to be made, but overall I am VERY happy with the end result. Among some of the features added:

• Twitter Integration - Follow me on Twitter
• Video Integration - YouTube and Revver embeds in the sidebar
• Email RSS Subscription is back
• Popular Posts are highlighted in their own section
• Some new Ad Inventory to sell ($50/month for a 125×125 while they last)
• Social media integration
• An SEO WordPress makeover

Now that things around here are looking a LOT better, I will try to pick up the posting frequency and even bring in a guest blogger or two maybe.

Last night my wife was doing some online shopping on the Victoria’s Secret website.  After 2 HOURS of digital shopping bliss she had managed to find a ton of nice tops on sale for some crazy low prices.  Then it happened.

Internet Explorer suddenly stopped responding.  My wife had not signed into her account before she started shopping and she frantically called for me to “just come fix it.”  Unfortunately there was no way to get IE to start responding again (insert FireFox joke here) and she had to close the window.

Don’t worry I consoled her.  Abandoned shopping carts are one of the biggest problems in the e-commerce world.  Of course they would use a cookie or a session to remember your selections from the previous visit.

To my shock, when we returned to the website, it didn’t remember a thing.  It seems that unless you sign into your account, the site doesn’t track what you have looked at or placed in your cart.

Amazon does it.  Godaddy does it.  Heck, every serious online retailer does it.

So here’s my message to a company credited for bringing happiness to the evenings of so many married couples…  Thanks for TANKING my wife’s evening, making her upset, and forcing her to spend the wee hours of the RE-SHOPPING your entire website.

For all of you graphics guys in the house, check out the video here.  It pretty much sums up any situation a graphics guy has been confronted by and the idiot business owners who employ them (like me).

http://www.whoneedsdesigners.com/

We knew it was going to happen at some point, somewhere, before the show started.

The 12 Top Affiliate Challenge Contestants have created a private chat room on their own and have started networking with each other and getting a feel for what everyone is capable of.

Of course, the producers are listening in and learning as well. One of the things that impressed me the most about this group of marketers is that they are helping each other accomplish marketing goals in “reality” already.

Digg requests, stumble requests, opinions, page rank discussions, and the I can send more traffic than you smack-talk are flying behind the scenes and it is pretty nifty to see!

AT the same time, the gurus of the show have been caught stealthily researching the 12 contestants. If there was a doubt that the gurus were going to take the Top Affiliate Challenge as seriously as the 12 contestants, John Chow was caught poking around the web as the top 12 contestants were being selected.

Things are turning out so much better for the show than we had hoped. We have powerful and interested gurus, 12 contestants who are all strong in different ways, an a mini-community where everyone is vested in the project and we are vested in them.

The first Top Affiliate Challenge episode airs on July 1 and is slated for 1:00 CST. We hope to see you there

We have received some calls lately from customers from Brad’s PC Repair.  Brad has moved on to another company and we wish him nothing but the best.

We had reported sightings of his company vehicle outside of another local computer repair shop, but his site confirms that he has folded and taken  his expertise elsewhere.

We wish you nothing but the best brad!  (And why didn’t we get a resume???)

This morning Gmail was having issues, so I decided to throw some time into the black hole that is Digg.com. I was disappointed though because all of the top stories were genuinely things that had no bearing, relevance, or much impact on anything. Check out these Earth shattering headlines from the world’s social news source:

blog.makezine.com — How fast is the fastest clock in the world? Well, this one measures time to a millionth of a second. More…

Wow… I wonder if it’s digital or if it has hands…

Top 10 Tips for How to Green your Pet

treehugger.com — 1. Adopt from a shelter Pet breeders have only one goal in mind—to raise large quantities of purebred animals for profit. They’ve also been pilloried for misdeeds such as overbreeding, inbreeding, poor veterinary oversight, lousy food and living conditions, overcrowding, and culling of unwanted animals. Love knows no pedigree. More…

What the heck is this? A story about the environment or a rant on pet breeders? Two dogs with one stone I guess…

Brad and Kimberly have been tweaking the new look and feel of the Top Affiliate Challenge website and it is set to launch today!

Creating a hybrid video, text, and image website is challenge nough, but keeping everything organized in a way that people will be able to find it and enjoy it was a huge undertaking.

At the moment we have the old show trailer on the site, but we have a spiffy new trailer that should be on the site soon.

Check it out and let me know what you think when it goes online!

I am going on the air in 20 minutes (7 PM CST) with Gary James to talk about all of the day’s Top Affiliate Challenge happenings. I invite you to join me by calling in.

If you have questions about who we picked and why, this is your chance to call and ask me directly - live.

Call (718) 664-9522 between 7 and 8 CST and you might  get in.  He has 10 lines available!

Today the producers and I need to pick the final 2 Top Affiliate Challenge contestants from the top 25% of all of the video auditions submitted for the show.

All three of us have diferent opinions, anddifferent names we would like to see on the show. There is also a massive email campaign going on for Eric Green the “DigitalGanster” and Gaj Subudhi.

I have neen receiving email from all over the world for these 2 for the better part of 2 days now. I can only wonder why they didn’t ask these people to vote for them while the voting was still open.

Nevertheless, there are LOTS of very qualified and very entertaining people to choose from in the Top 25%. Originally we were planning on using these wild card picks to balance our cast. For example, if we had a bunch of veterans, we would bring in some newbies and visa versa. We are a little heavy on men, but that is also representative of the industry.

Some people think we should pick a couple women regardless of other factors to help gender balance the show. Others think we should bring on the two people who would be the best earners in our opinion because that is what the show is about. One of the producers has mentioned that by picking one of the more controversial contestants we would increase viewership. As you can see, there are a lot of factors to consider.

Who do you think we should pick? Who would you pick if you were in our shoes? The auditions are no longer up on the Top Affiliate Challenge website, but you can view the videos in my Revver account here.

What faces would make you watch the show every day?

Congratulations is in order for the following 10 Top Affiliate Challenge contestants. After months of campaigning, voting, and working they have emerged as the best affiliate markets in the competition:

1. Ty Hurd
2. Big Jason Henderson
3. Jonathan Van Clute
4. Devin Hunter
5. Tom “the Furry Hat Guy”
6. Jani Gaffor
7. Jonathan Ryan
8. Carl Zetterlund
9. Chad Van Norman
10. Ronda Del Boccio

With the Top 10 taken care of, we are now required to select two contestants from the top 25% of the auditions to round out our cast at 12.

We spent some time this morning reviewing the videos, traffic statistics, public interest, and raw affiliate marketing abilities to determine who would best round out the cast. It’s not an easy choice.

On top of that, there is a concentrated effort to market Eric Green to the producers. I have personally received about a half-dozen emails this morning asking me to pull for Green. A few of the emails came from Norway and Sweden.

We are going to be reviewing the paragraphs that others in the top 25% submit in the Top Affiliate Challenge Forum and we will have our decision on the final two by Monday at noon CST.