Have you ever had that feeling when you’re making something and you’re really excited to keep going. Where you know the process is going to be as awesome as the end result? That’s how I feel about writing this post. I just want my fingers to keep moving, as there’s a lot of insights to come.

Before I do that, I want to do something I never do and that’s push a project or idea, but here we go: Sign-up to my email list at the bottom of this post or in the right sidebar here. Click through to ViperChill if you’re reading this elsewhere. The emails I have been sharing lately include information you won’t find on any other website (even here) mostly focused around unique SEO ideas. I actually have two more videos going live to the list this week.

A few years ago I wouldn’t have written a blog post about affiliate marketing. It all seemed too dirty. But that’s changing now thanks to a few animal updates from Google.

These days it’s all about trust and authority – you need your readers to see your blog as an authority and you need Google to trust your SEO strategy. That means it’s harder than ever to succeed but it also means that the people willing to work away at it for months and years are doing very well.

In this post I’m going to show you:

• My personal theory for this slow-to-grow strategy.
• Why multiple passive income streams are important to mitigate risks.
• How to choose the right affiliate program to promote.
• How to write an “ultimate article” that promotes your product.
• The content strategy that drives traffic and authority.

At the end of it all I’m going to show you an example of this being done extremely well by a very nerdy individual who really knows how to match his traffic to a non-sleazy sale.

Some of the biggest news in the blogging world over the last week was without a doubt Google’s announcement that on June 1st, they’re closing Google Reader. Paraphrasing their own words, the usage of Reader is smaller than ever, and Google want to focus on fewer products. I don’t believe the latter for a second, since new products like Google Keep are being spotted in the wild, and instead think it’s all about, well…money. Reader simply isn’t paying for itself.

Countless news articles have been written by the BBC, New York Times, the Verge and many other huge publications, all highlighting other services that people can be using instead. What people haven’t been writing about though is how this affects us as bloggers and what we can do about it (if anything). Here’s the jist of it: Reader’s closure is going to hit a lot of us very, very hard.

Way back in the day when I used to run PluginID, I took an afternoon out to make a few graphics for my blog sidebar which would feature my most popular blog posts. Though they did look attractive – and I quickly found other bloggers imitating the idea – I found myself constantly having to make new images any time I made a hit post.

With ViperChill, I was fortunate to have a plugin come with my theme called ‘Popular Posts’. It’s basically just a widget that you currently see in my sidebar (for now). When I designed Butterflyist for Andrea for the blogging case study project, we made sure she purchased a theme which had a similar plugin installed. Without them we would have been a little lost. Until now.

New York Times best-selling authors Chris Brogan and Julien Smith recently launched their latest book, The Impact Equation, and kindly mentioned me as someone who has built up a large following of passionate (and attractive) readers. They also compared me to Seth Godin, showing how people who write totally different types of content can still grow a respectable audience in the same niche.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Seth. Though his posts are usually very short, more often than not they contain ideas you can apply to your business immediately. In this post I’m going one step further by taking Seth’s short, motivating style and opening up my Evernote account for you all to see.

In other words, you’re about to hit with a wave of ideas, images and random pieces of knowledge which I’ve collected up over the last few years.

This is a really awkward blog post to write. Mostly because I now have to backtrack on a lot of the things I said recently. I’ll cut a long story short: I’m no longer writing Viral Marketing for Dummies. This was not a decision by Wiley, nor the person who approached me with the book offer. It was entirely mine, and an entirely difficult one at that.

And maybe not even the write right one to make. I’ve had to tell this story countless times to family and friends over the last few weeks, usually leading to disappointed faces and people not really understanding my decision, so hopefully I can express myself better when I carefully craft the words.

In an early episode of HBO’s hit TV-show, Hung, a financially troubled Ray Drecker finds himself looking for alternative ways to support his family in addition to his high school basketball coaching position. He settles on the uncomfortable idea of becoming a male prostitute, hesitantly enlisting his friend Tanya to become his “pimp”.

In her enthusiastic style, she suggests to Ray that they partake in Viral Marketing in order to bring more clients to their ‘Happiness Consultants’ business. Ray quickly responds, “What the hell is viral marketing?”

Though the episode premiered in 2009, his response wouldn’t be too out of place in 2012. The phrase is certainly known, but how to go about Viral Marketing still baffles many a media executive, small business owner, and anyone with something to promote. This book aims to change that.

Update: It turns out that to set a price above $50 on Clickbank, they need to do it for you. So I’m just waiting for confirmation then the price will be increased. I expect it to be done 24 hours from now. This isn’t a post based on any marketing tactics or insights I have to share with you, so I’m going to keep it fairly brief, since I know you’re all busy. After Sunday, we’ll be raising the price of OptinSkin from $47 to $67. That’s pretty much 96 hours from now (and dropping) until the launch price disappears.

I had been pushed by a few people when I first announced the product to raise the price, but I wanted to keep it affordable and get it in the hands of people who really need the solution it offers. We’re closing in on 3,000 customers now, so I definitely think that’s happened.