I am honored once again to be finalist for the Pinnacle Award: Affiliate of the Year to be presented at Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas next month. Will I once again be “always a bridesmaid, never a bride”? Those of you that know me personally can decipher that in various ways.

Anyway, last year I was up against two very deserving gentlemen where Mike Allen won the coveted title.  This year I am again up against two notable males – Nicholas Koscianski of NickyCakes.com and Eric Nagel.

Joe Sousa put his bets on the winners, so here’s my handicaps on the situation…

I didn’t even know NickyCakes’ last name until the finalists were announced, but I do read his blog and get a chuckle over his ability to tell it how it is. If the winner was chosen by “whose made the most money”, my bet is that Nicholas would take the cake (yes, pun intended) as he is a self-admitted reformed blackhat.

Now, if they choose the winner by the nicest, most thoughtful and kind-hearted person of the bunch, Eric Nagel would win hands down. Sure, I like to think of myself as having those qualities, but I can’t even compare to Eric.  I have seen Eric donate very generously to the Affiliate Marketers Give Back charities on several occasions.  Plus he’s just an all-around likable guy. The first time I really talked to him, he impressed me by mentioning something trivial that I had twittered about.

So, see you boys in Vegas! The only other woman to ever win the prestigious Affiliate of the Year award is Connie Berg, and those flamingo shoes are hard to fill.

Check out All of this year’s Pinnacle Award Finalists.  Plus see Past Pinnacle Award Finalist Nominees and Winners.

I recently spoke on the “Affiliate Marketing Blogging Secrets” panel, part of the Monetization track at Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas with….

Jim Kukral, Moderator
Brian Littleton, President of Shareasale (shown in pic with me)
Angel Djambazov, Managing Editor of Revenews.com
and Todd Sawicki, stepping in for Ben Huh from ICanHasCheezburger.com.

I’ve had several people since then ask me for a list of the “tools” I mentioned that I personally use on my sites.

Many of my websites use the Wordpress platform, therefore I incorporate a lot of WP-Plugins (as I haven’t taken the time to convert to Thesis Theme yet).

Link Cloaking – I use this to mask my affiliate links, and it automatically adds the “nofollow” attritube. There is also NinjaAffiliate which is more robust, but is not free. Someone also mentioned SkimLinks.com, but I haven’t had time to experiment with them yet.

I also like to import content from my other sites that aren’t powered by Wordpress and my Twitter status updates into the sidebars of my blogs, therefore I use the Aggregate Plug-In and Twitter Tools. More recommended Wordpress Plug-Ins.

Speaking on monetizing my blogs, my main source of income is generated through affiliate programs, but I also generate revenue through additional sources, such as…

Chitika – The organic traffic visitors that I receive via Google Images generally aren’t looking to buy anything, so Chitika is cool in that it only shows relevant ads to the keywords they used to search with that pay per click.

List Building – Collect email addresses on individual post pages. I use AWeber to create hover pop-overs (usually unblockable), sign them up to receive the RSS feed via email, and set the thank you to a CPA offer (ie MarketLeverage Email Submit).

Affilistore – I have played around with this free downloadable script to make datafeed stores. If I can make a website with it in under an a hour, I’m presuming most others can as well. I downloaded datafeeds pertaining to my niche from ShareASale, changing my user id and re-uploaded to my new site. The only “marketing” I’ve done is adding the website and it’s sitemap to Google Overview and watched the sales come in.

Banner Ads – Since most people do not actually click through a banner, I prefer to shy away from CPA and CPC offers, but instead sell banner space or use a banner network such as Glam Media or TodayShow Network that pay per impression.

Google Adsense I presume everyone already knows about Google Adsense? Chloe Spencer from NeopetsFanatic.com fully monetizes her website with only Google Adsense.

Chloe was on the panel before mine “Are You Getting the Most Money Out of Your Blog as You Can?” with Dave Taylor, Tim Jones and Chris Pirillo, which was similar to our panel.

Some people wrote blog reviews about our panel, including Ms. Babble and Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media. I think our session was too “basic” for them and aimed more towards newbies.  Can’t please ‘em all.

I think Lisa Barone said (ok, tweeted) it best “Aren’t all the cool kids going to BlogWorld? That’s what I heard.” And I’m excited to say that I’m going to be one of those cool kids this year!

Next month, I’ll be attending my first Blog World Expo. And not only will I be attending, but I’m speaking in the Monetization Tract with Missy Ward, Scott Jangro and Brian Littleton talking about “Affiliate Marketing Blogging Secrets”.  See who else is speaking on the monetization schedule posted by Tim Jones.

So, I’ve booked my trip to Las Vegas!  I found it cheaper to fly Allegiant Air from a closer, smaller airport than making my usual trek to Omaha. I decided I’m staying at the Las Vegas Hilton* since it was inexpensive and within walking distance of the Convention Center.

I hope I receive my Poken in the mail that I won from I WearYourShirt.com and PokenZoo.com before my trip so I can “high four” everyone there!

Are YOU registered for BlogWorld yet? Or you can take your chance and win a free BlogWorld pass from John Chow!

*I applied to the Hilton affiliate program managed by Converseon.  I replied to the “Your Application Has Been Received” email asking how long it would take for approval. Reply was “2 – 5 days”.  After 8 days, I replied again asking. Reply “You should be approved next week.” Not cool. I ended up booking my stay through Hotels.com where they are offering up to $100 Rebate! And I’m still not approved for the Hilton program.