Now and then I’ll have an idea which I just know is going to be a success. Sometimes though, I’m just plain wrong. Like the time I decided to email every single Technorati Top 100 blogger asking for their ‘secrets to success’. It took me longer than I would like to admit, and of the few replies (12 to be exact) I did receive, pretty much all said the same thing. An entire day wasted.

Thankfully, sometimes I’m right. My experiments with taking Facebook Fan pages to the next level is one example where my intuition has been spot on. Many of you know I’ve worked with some of the largest companies in the world (Nissan, Hewlett Packard, Land Rover) as there social media manager, and still consult with a few companies now and then. I had some ideas to increase the conversion rates on their Fan page, and the results blew me away.

I feel bad that I haven’t updated you all on my million dollar case study. For those of you who missed the project, I’m aiming to build an affiliate site which makes $30,000 per month, that could theoretically be sold for $1M. Though this goal is difficult enough, I also challenged myself to do it in just 12 months. You can view the earlier posts on my case study here, here, and here.

My project relied heavily on an exact-match domain for my targetted keyphrase, which set me back $550. This reliance was my downfall, but it’s not the only hurdle I’ve faced along the way. As a quick update: The site is currently on page 2 of Google for a keyphrase which gets 100,000+ exact searches per month.

I’m surprised it has taken me over a year to put together a post like this, since I love reading them on other blogs. Often, I’m already aware of many of the suggested reading material and products, which may be the case for you here. However, if I just discover one great book, product, or resource from them, then reading the article is invaluable.

Everything here is a genuine recommendation, meaning that I actually read all of the blogs, have read all of the books, and use all of the products. I would love to make this a community discussion as well, so please feel free to share your favourite resources in the comments below.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a product launch expert. I’ve read a lot on the topic, but action – which breeds experience – is far more important than knowledge. Since I make most of my income with affiliate marketing and promoting other peoples products, launches aren’t something that I’ve dedicated a lot of time to.

At the end of 2010, that all changed. I spent months working on Cloud Living HQ, which I released for only 72 hours (it’s available again as of today), and managed to make a five-figure sum in a single day. In my state of shock, I convinced myself “You might not think you know about product launches, but you must be doing something right.”

This is an article I’ve been waiting a long time for somebody else to write. Over the years, I’ve changed how I manage my online projects so drastically that I wished someone would come along and say, “Okay, Glen, this is how it’s done.” Sadly, that just never happened.

Instead of waiting around for some perfect solution – though there probably isn’t one – I decided to share with you all, the strategy which helps me to do what I do. Although my system is by no means perfect (and you should really just use the things you think will help you), it is the most effective I’ve found after years of running popular websites. Hopefully I can learn a thing or two from you all in the comments as well.

As everyone knows, if you want to increase the amount of traffic you receive from search engines, you need to build backlinks to your websites. Each link is essentially a ‘vote’ which shows the likes of Google and Bing that you’re a trustworthy site. Because links are so crucial, marketers around the world have come up with hundreds of ways to build them.

Some of these tactics are easy to follow, while others require more obscure work, and some even cross the border when it comes to ethics. The backlink building tactic I want to talk about today is most commonly viewed as greyhat – not totally natural but not totally immoral either.

After months of work, hundreds of hours of testing and a keen attention to detail, affiliateSkin is now here. affiliateSkin is a creation which came about through my frustration with solutions on the market to build affiliate websites. As many of you know, I make my living with affiliate sites, and finally became fed-up with spending hours tweaking WordPress or manually uploading HTML files in order to get a result I was happy with.

The solution to my own problem, is affiliateSkin. They say the best products are those which help you in your own work, as they’re more likely to help thousands of other people. This software has enabled me to build great looking affiliate websites in minutes, and allowed me to focus on marketing and making money. The real place your time should be spent.

Phew! You guys sure do know how to ask tough questions. 4,000+ words later and I’ve hopefully answered all of the ones which will help as many people as possible. I wasn’t able to answer every single question; some because they were very technical and I didn’t know the answer, others because they were a little too specific and others because I was simply running out of time.

I’m sure that you’ll all find something in here to help you. I’m going to spend the rest of this week focusing on my “Skin” product launch and then you’ll see some pretty exciting things around here.