I’ve always been intrigued by new phones. Part of me has always wanted an iPhone but I’m unwilling to move from Verizon to ATT. I know there is some rumors that iPhone is coming to Verizon soon but I’m getting the “new phone itch” now. My 2 year agreement has been up for a while and I’ve been eligible for an upgrade for a few months. The day “Android” was announced I was intrigued because I’m a Google guy. Love everything Google does and I seem to use about every product they have (Gmail, Reader, Goog411, Google Maps, Adsense, Adwords, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Calendar, Voice, and more). So it only made sense for me to look into Android and what phones were compatible.

The first phone released for Verizon that used Android was the Motorola Droid. I have been throwing around the idea of getting this phone for months but just never could do it. The early reviews were positive but most said they were hoping the 2nd version of an Android phone would fix some issues. Some talked me into waiting for either the Nexus One or the HTC Inredible. Well, that day has come.

Just the other day I got an email in my inbox telling me that I could “pre-order” the HTC Incredible and have it by the end of April. WOW! I resisted this offer at first. But then I did some research on the Incredible. Most tech reviews gave this phone a huge thumbs up and called it truly Incredible. They called it the only Android smartphone you should own. I fell in love with it just from the reviews and videos I watched. I’m not typically a spuratic buyer but something gave me the urge to do something a little crazy the other day. So, I went ahead and pre-ordered this HTC Incredible online. $299 marked down to $199. Plus it will cost like $10 per month more for the data plan. No biggie. I’m so pumped for this phone to get here.

You might ask what I’ll use this phone for and what I’m so excited for? Well, here is a list of things I’m pumped about:

• Productivity. I rely on Gmail and Yahoo mail for everything I do. With the instant apps and the 1GH processor I can manage email all day long very quickly.
• Facebook and Twitter. Yeah I know, social networking could be a waste of time. But I use it and so does everyone else. The Incredible has some great Droid apps available for playing around on these sites.
• Mobile Browsing. I own an Internet business and make money online. I’m always doing web work. This makes it essential for me to browse on the go. My LG Voyager did “ok” in this area but the Incredible should be lightning fast.
• Camera. This is like a bonus. We recently bought a new family camera and it’s a bit bigger and bulkier than I wanted. Sarah will carry it around but it won’t fit into my pocket. The Incredible has a ridiculous camera on it so I can use it for all my picture needs as well. Oh, and a few videos here and there!

So those are the biggest things I’ll use this for. Basically managing my online businesses and keeping track of my life all in one phone. I’ll be sure to give a follow up once I’ve received the phone and let you all know how I like it. Anyone else getting the HTC Incredible?

I told you so. This shirt is one of the finest pieces of clothing I’ve ever put on. It feels good, it looks good, heck, it even smells good. So what is affiliate.com? Affiliate.com is an affiliate network that pays webmasters like myself for generating leads and sales to other programs. They pride themselves on being a “next generation” type affiliate network. For more information about affiliate.com you can check out their website available here.

My whole family wanted it!

As soon as I got my shirt in the mail I ripped the package open and tried this thing on. Immediately, my wife started winking at me, my kids started gravitating towards me. I was insta-popular! This shirt truly does amazing things. Before I knew it, my whole family was begging to have their shot to wear this tshirt. I finally gave in as you’ll see below.

My youngest son Bryce just can’t stop smiling in this shirt!

My oldest (and most stubborn) son wouldn’t turn around so I got a nice back side photo with him wearing it!

My wife even begged to wear it!  Amazing!  I wanted her to wait and hold out for the “queens version” but she couldn’t wait.

Finally I got the shirt back to myself. I’m fairly confident I’m going to need to buy some kid sizes for them to wear in the near future though! I’m hesitant to even wear this thing around my friends for the fear of them tearing it straight off my body in a jealous rage.

This tshirt looks good everywhere!

Not only does everyone want to wear the affiliate.com tshirt – but it looks good everywhere.

• I can wear it eating lunch…
• I can wear it hard it work…
• I can wear it when I’m sleeping…
• I can wear it out to dinner…
• I can wear it … ANYWHERE!

The options are endless on where I could wear this tshirt. It just looks so good. That black piece of cloth with the silver outline of a King on one side and the K of diamonds in red at the top. Truly state of the art. It has sort of a grunge feel to it as well making it ultra-cool to wear. Just ask my wife – she hates tshirts but has given this one the stamp of approval obviously. The poker flavor to the shirt makes it a must to wear when playing cards or at the local casino. I’m sure it is “lucky” as well!

The word is spreading…

So word is spreading quickly about this new shirt. Everyone who is anyone has now been seen in this shirt. Check it out…

Lebron James smiling in his affiliate.com tshirt!

President Obama really enjoys the shirt.

Phil Helmuth rocking the shirt at his latest tourney…

I’ve even caught wind that some of our favorite affiliates in the industry are wearing these shirts.  I don’t have an action photo of them but the rumor is Missy Ward, Zac Johnson, Murray Newlands and John Chow have all been spotted rocking these sweet shirts!

Why this post?

So many of you are probably thinking – why in the world is Knup writing this post? Well, as most of you have probably figured out, it is for a contest. Affiliate.com is offering up $1000 in cash and $1000 donated toward the Haiti fund to the most creative and unique affiliate.com tshirt post. I think I should qualify don’t you think? But this post isn’t all about the money to me and to prove it – I’m going to show you exactly what I’d do with the $1000 if I were to win this contest.

$100 BUY MORE SHIRTS – If I win this contest I will buy $100 worth of tshirts right up front. These shirts I will give away over the next year to other affiliates and webmasters via contests, promotions and giveaways on my site. I will help spread the word about the awesomeness of these shirts (or future affiliate.com shirts)!

$100 WIFE APPRECIATION – This little bit has to go to the wife for letting me use her and the kids as models above. Cmon, she deserves it at least for being a good sport, right?

$200 POKER ROOM – If I win this contest I will take $200 straight to our local casino. I’ll buy in for $200 at the $1-$2 poker table. Of course I will wear the affiliate.com shirt all night and take the pictures to prove it. I will stay there until I either lose the $200 or double it up. If I double up this money I will be buying another 10 affiliate.com tshirts to give away as prizes on some of my gambling/poker related websites. How could I not buy more at this point as it’s truly proven to be the luckiest shirt on the planet. I know you all want to see pictures of me at the local poker room in my affiliate.com tshirt!

$300 CRAPS TABLE – You probably know by now that I like to gamble, errrrrr invest, my money a little bit from time to time. So here is another opportunity to double up or go home. I love craps and if I win this contest I will take $300 to the Craps table sometime over the next week. I will be wearing my affiliate.com tshirt for all the rollers and bystanders to watch and lust for. This is another deal where I’m going broke or doubling up. If I lose the $300 well that sucks. But if I hit a few points and double up the money, again, I will be buying 10 more affiliate.com tshirts to give away! This batch of tshirts will go to local poker and casino players I know. I may even require they wear the shirts out to the poker room the next time they go

$300 ME TIME - Ok, so doesn’t all of that above sound like fun? I think it does and I’m looking forward to mapping out my progress on each of these tasks if I win this contest. The last $300 will go to me. I gotta feed my kids too right?

So there you have it. I think it’s very apparant that I feel the affiliate.com tshirt rocks. I look sexy, feel sexy and am sexy when I’m wearing this shirt. Thanks for listening to my rambling and go grab yourself a shirt. Either that or wait around and see if I win and maybe you’ll be one of the lucky winners of my affiliate.com tshirt giveaways! One thing is for sure, this post didn’t lack creativity I’m out!

Knup

So I turned on Google Buzz the other day.  I have to admit I’m not 100% sure what value it’s going to have or even how much I’m going to use it.  But I’d love for all of you Buzz people to follow me.  Here is my profile at Google Buzz.  I’m knupnet.

Here is a little overview video that explains Google Buzz a little bit.

If you use Google Buzz comment or send follow me on Google Buzz and I’ll follow you back!  You think it’s going to be a good thing?  Overtake Twitter in time?

Big thanks to Luke over at http://LukeJeffrey.com

He hooked me up with a Wave invite.  So now I’m all setup with Google Wave.  Problem is – I have no idea where to go from here.  How do I start?  If any of you readers have Google Wave, please send me a “wave” and lets test some things out.

My email is: knupNET@gmail.com for wave.

I am going to pick 10 of the blogs and write 1-10 articles on each and every blog. So, for Blog1 I will write 1 article, Blog2 I will write 2 articles, Blog10 I will write 10 articles, and so on. I will write this content over the next month. So at the end of the day, each site will have different number of content entries. Then, I want to start monitoring the traffic on these sites and see if there is a direct correlation between content and traffic. I’m fairly confident there will be but how much correlation?

So what will this do? For one, it will force me to get content rolling on my NFL sites. Secondly, if it proves what I think it will prove – this should motivate me to focus more on content. Because as we all know, traffic = money in this industry. So what do you all think?

So why are directory submissions good? Well, the major search engines need to find and index your site. These links play a large role in helping you get indexed quicker. Your site will build link popularity and increase its visibility. If you submit correctly and use your main keywords in the anchor, this will help you “rank” better for these terms as well. When you are trying to rank for certain terms in Google or Yahoo or Bing, the more relevant links back to your site the better. These inbound links from online directories could play a huge role in moving you up the ranks.

I realize there is some debate about online directory submissions in the industry, but I’m still a believer that they are a good thing. Build your links up and move on without looking back.

• knupnet – my personal / internet marketing Twitter
• CubsSuckClub – to do a little Cub bashing 
• OneSeasonTrader
• MVPujols5 – for http://mvpujols.com and to talk Cardinal baseball
• GetawayGames - promote one of my side businesses- Talk about sports
• CelebrityClub - Talk celebs and promote the CCN sites
• USportsNetwork - Talk about sports
• UGambleNetwork - Talk about gambling

So as you can imagine, updating and keeping track of these Twitter accounts is probably quite a feat in itself.  IT IS.  Many Twitter Apps out there claim they are the best for handling “multiple accounts”.  I’ve given several of them a try and nothing is perfect.  Here are a few I’ve tried and where I’m at today.

1. Twhirl - I started with this little app but quickly gave up as it wasn’t quite as sofisticated as some of the others on the free Twitter App market.

2. TweetDeck - Lots and lots of tweeters use this app but I just can’t get into it.  It’s something about the layout that I just don’t like.

3. Seesmic Desktop – Now we’re talking.  A slick desktop app that lets me easily manage my multiple accounts and tweet from them with ease.  It had a friends or List feature that allowed me to group my contacts into buckets for easy viewing.  I did like this app but there are a few things I don’t like.  IN general I’m not a desktop app kinda guy – I’m a web guy.  I hate that I have to have this thing installed on any PC i want to access Twitter.  I like things to be consistent wherever I’m at and it just didn’t sync up at all from PC to PC.  So time to look for a web version huh?

4. SplitTweet- very simple web interface that allows me to add many different accounts.  I used this for a while but became dissatisfied with the look and feel.  It was very hard to just view and work with one account as you have to X out the others and them add them all back.  Annoying.  Also lacked a “friend list” and some other nice things.

5. TwitIQ – This is where I’m currently at.  It’s a glorified Twitter interface or a smarter Twitter interface that allows you to work with multiple accounts, one at a time, by simply choosing a dropdown.  It is very slick and easy to use.  Still doesn’t have a friend list or anything to allow you to group people you ACTUALLY want to read.  But it’s where I’m at.  I’ll give TwitIQ a try until the next great thing comes out.

Any suggestions?  What do you use?  Twitter is here to stay and I’m struggling to find the right app to manage all my accounts.  Help!

1) Get into another niche completely.
2) Check out google adsense and earn a little bit each month.
3) Promote an ebook or make some money via clickbank.
4) Pay per lead programs can be a nice little extra revenue stream.
5) Partner with other sites as joint ventures.

I know, these are not breaking news ideas.  But think about where your money is coming from and how you can expand that.  Turn the $2000 per month from one or two programs into $3000 a month spread across 5-10 different revenue streams.  In the end, you will be much more comfortable with your online business plan.

How am I taking action on this myself?  Currently I make 50% of my money from Google Adsense, 40% from private advertisements and 10% from Affiliate marketing.  This is solely in the sports and celebrity niches.  The first thing I’m going to do is branch out into one more industry – gambling.  Secondly, I plan to promote affiliate programs heavily and make that more like 25%-50% of my income.  Sportsbooks, casinos and poker rooms pay massive amounts of revenue sharing to promote their sites.  I also plan to heavily incorporate email marketing into my bag of tricks.  I’ve been building lists over the years but never really did anything with those lists.  IF I can manage another few hundred a month via email marketing, thats good.  I took the step and subscribed to aweber.com to manage all my email lists.  This is a little pricey, but without taking that step I know I’d sit on my hands again and do nothing.  So now it’s on.

What are you doing to bring in your income in 2009?  Anything different?

1. Use the Google services consistently among all sites. I need to verify EVERY site I have in Google Webmaster Tools along with adding a sitemap.  Sitemaps are very important and it’s something I have not done for many sites as of now.  Make sure the Google Analytics code is installed properly on all sites.  Attempt to use Google Ad Manager for some sites.
2. Complete development of all USN team sites.  In 2008 I got domain names and headers done for all NBA, MLB and NFL team sites.  Now I need to finalize the design, monetize them, add content, and bring in at least $1 revenue from every single site in 2009.
3. Launch the UGambleNetwork.com sites.  This process has begun and I just need to keep the ball moving here.
4. Move knupNET.com from 278 into the top 150 on http://www.digitalproductreporter.com/make_money_online/
5. Get PR boosted.   I currently only have PR on 38 of my 260 domains/sites.  This needs to be increased.  PR goals at the end of 2009 are.  100 sites with PR1 or higher.  20 sites with PR3 or higher.  Sound easy?  Ha, not so much.
6. Profit Goals (Revenue – Expenses).  In 2008 I made nearly $3k in profit.  I plan to triple this in 2009.  Still not a ton compared to some of you, but my goal is $10,000 in pure profit from my sites in 2009.  To break that down, that is $833 profit each month.  Yikes!
7. Properly use my partners, resources and consultants.  I need to contract out more work.  You have to spend money to make money.  Content writing is going to be the big thing this year that I contract out.  I also need to get some of my “partners” involved a little more heavily.
8. Attend at least one Webmaster conference.  Just one please.

So that’s enough goals for now.  Time to get to work.  What are your goals for 2009?

So as you can see.  I was in the green so that is good.  I finished making $2730.04 in pure profit for 2008.  Nearly $10,000 in income.  Some thoughts.

• Celebrity Club Network was my big earner.  It’s the most established of my networks and has several sites that are a couple years old and get great traffic.
• The last two networks listed, Niche Content Network and Celebrity Fan Zone, have been retired.  Those were flops.  I know when to stop something if it’s going down the wrong path – and these were.  So I cut my losses and disbanded those networks.
• Knuphost shows a loss because it takes a bulk of the “server/hosting” costs.  Without a lot of external clients this network has very little revenue streams.
• UGambleNetwork is brand new.  Just launching it here in the last quarter so no income yet.  Look for 2009 to be a big year for this network.
• USN turned a profit despite paying for domains and graphics for 90 sites that have not turned any income yet.  2009 we hope to bring in some revenue from these sites.

Traffic numbers were very solid and out the roof for a few sites.  Because of the “low paying niches” I’m in – the revenue and traffic might not match some of you.  Here are some of the traffic numbers that I ended with for 2008.

Absolute Unique Visitors
CCN 485,480
USN 114,801

CCN was led by ClubJonas while USN was led by CubsSuckClub.com!

As for PR.  I’m very unhappy with Google PR right now.  For some reason I’ve been penalized or something on a number of my sites.  Some of my top performing sites as well.  But oh well, here was the final list of sites that had some PR.

Time to work on my goals for 2009.  I’ll use 2008 as a baseline and make some improvements!