MarketingSherpa recently interviewed the CEO of Zappos.com.

I strongly recommend you read their resulting article, How Zappos.com Grew So Big So Fast - 10 Strategies Behind Their Success, but do it quick–it’s open access only through August 14.

Zappos.com is an online retailer of shoes. Doesn’t sound too exciting, does it? But it’s a remarkable success story. They’ll rake in about $800 million this year. They’ll do it by focusing on low-key marketing programs (mostly word-of-mouth), and customer retention. No huge advertising or PPC campaigns, no special promotions or discounts.

Exceptional customer service is the key.

Of course, it’s not the ONLY key to their success. Here’s their list of core values:
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Big Mike (Michalis Kotzakolios) has made my day. One of his latest products will allow ME–a total graphics DUMMY who does NOT own (or want to own) PhotoShop–to create professional-looking website headers.

Oh, and ebook/report covers, too!

Did I mention it's CHEAP? "YEAH BIG MIKE!"

Here's where to read more about it: GFX Writer

In case you don't know who Big Mike is, just check out the Warrior Forum. I'd say he has one of the best reputations of the Internet Marketers who participate there… and that's saying a LOT, because some of the best in the biz are Warriors!

Big Mike always overdelivers and exceeds expectations. I am very excited about his latest TOOL and can't wait to try it out.

Yes, I did buy it! But no, I haven't installed or tried it yet. I don't need to try it to know it's a winner. Why? Because I've been a Big Mike customer for two years and though he has often surprised me (in a good way), he has NEVER disappointed me.

This particular product provides something I've been craving for a long time… a simple and cheap way to make my own professional-looking header graphics and covers.

Heck, I'd buy it sight unseen! But Big Mike's sales letter is a good one for your swipe file, so be sure to check it out even if you have no need for his software.

Here's the link again: GFX Writer

Before my recent move to a new house, I had a bit of anxiety about the thousands of computer files I’ve created and collected over the years. If my PC got dropped or damaged, those files (and much of my Internet business) would be history… along with my digital family photos and so much more.

Yeah, yeah… I’ve always known I should backup my files. I’d always intended to do that… but never got around to actually doing it.

The pending move got me motivated and I did some research on various alternatives for backing up my computer files. I found one called…

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Are you a web designer at heart? Do you like to explore cool new software tools?

If so, check out this color picker application called AdesClrPicker.

While you're at it, get a free PR 7 backlink from the guy who created it. That's right… he has a PR 7 blog and is doing one of those "review my (insert noun here)" promotions.

It's actually quite smart, and something worth taking a close look at if you have a product yourself that you'd like to promote.

He gets tons of links for his specific anchor text plus lots of eyeballs (and potential customers) checking out his AdesClrPicker product, and review participants get a PR 7 backlink. Sounds like a win-win to me.

It's very hard to resist a backlink from a PR 7 site. Obviously, I jumped on the bandwagon.

Get the details on how to participate (it's easy; took me all of 5 minutes) at AdesBlog.com.

Oh yeah… don't forget to review the product. Here's mine: AdesClrPicker is the best color picker! Seriously, it's quite good and very reasonably priced.

Blogger 1: “I just learned a fantastic tip from a magazine!”
Blogger 2: “What is it?”
Blogger 1: “It’s a publication printed on shiny paper that contains lots of articles, photos and ads.”

Fans of the movie “Airplane!” (in my opinion, one of the funniest flicks of all time) may appreciate my attempt at humor.

My point is that many internet marketers spend so much time online that they forget and/or neglect excellent offline resources, such as magazines!

Here, in no particular order, are magazines that can help you with your online business:

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Lynn Terry is a full-time, work-from-home Internet marketer. Her ClickNewz blog displays the tagline, "Internet marketing ideas, tips and reviews to help you succeed in your online business," so you immediately know what her blog is about.

I like the functionality and navigation (including the handly links at the very end of each post), the clean, fresh look of her blog template… and the natural-looking yet professional photos of her which change as you change pages.

Her blog categories include Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, RSS & Blogging, SEO & SEM and so on… the usual topics you'd expect for a blog about internet marketing.

But does she know what she's talking about? Look at the following stats and judge for yourself:

According to SmartPageRank, ClickNewz has, at the time of this review:

* a PageRank of 5
* an Alexa ranking of 62,103
* more than 30,000 backlink pages
* and more than 850 blog pages indexed by Google (more than 1,000 indexed by each of the other major search engines).

These are impressive stats. In my opinion, they're adequate proof that Lynn not only knows a hell of a lot about SEO, blog promotion and getting traffic–she practices what she preaches.

Many of her posts are of the "how to" nature, written simply and well in nontechnical terms so even the newest newbies can easily understand what to do… yet also including details on various strategies and techniques so that experienced readers will also benefit from reading them.

While she doesn't go into as much detail as some bloggers (such as Darren Rowse of ProBlogger), you'll definitely learn a lot by reading her posts. You'll learn even more by noticing how she incorporates links in those posts. She uses internal links to her other posts, which guide readers to other useful information and also helps with SEO. She uses external links to affiliate products (monetizing her posts), to her SSWT discussion forum, and to other blogs.

You can tell that networking and building positive and mutually beneficial relationships with other bloggers is one of her priorities. This is what blogging is all about.

Glitches

Lynn changed her blog format recently, and I think it still has a few glitches that need to be worked out. On her About page, I could see at the bottom that there were 13 comments, but the page view was truncated and I could not scroll down to read them. BUT… when I clicked on the barely visible link of the first comment, then went back to the About page, I COULD scroll to see all of the comments. The same sort of glitch plagues her archived post listings. Her Internet Marketing category, for example, shows 182 posts. But I was only able to access about 20 of them–no posts beyond Page 3 of her archived listings for that category–had a link to "Previous Entries" (as there was at the end of Pages 1 & 2). Then I checked the Work at Home category archives and I couldn't get past Page 1. BUT… if I clicked on a post title, then clicked on the Back button, the "Previous Entries" link appeared at the bottom. So clicking on a post title seems to fix the glitch. Other category archives worked fine. Perhaps it's an intermittent problem.

Those glitches could be minor or major, depending on whether her blog visitors will click on titles and links that will then "fix" the problem and allow additional viewing.

In Summary

ClickNewz is a winner. Good design, good content, by a knowledgeable and experienced blogger who is truly interested in helping others to succeed with their online business.

Tyler Cruz is a 23-year-old online entrepreneur who earns a living by creating websites and selling advertising on them.

He recently invited me (and several other bloggers) to do a review of his site in exchange for a link back from his blog. Tyler's blog is ranked 8,746 in Technorati, is a PR5, and gets 900-1000 unique visitors per day. So getting a link from his site is a good thing for me.

Plus I often participate in discussion forum requests for website critiques anyway; it's something I enjoy.

Things I Like:
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John Chow Dot Com is one of my favorite blogs. Not just because he writes like a real person I’d love to meet one day, but because he shares such useful and valuable information.

Here are just five of his many posts (in no particular order) that I feel should be “required reading” for all online marketers:

1. Big Sites Rule Small Sites Drool. The question of which business model is best (most profitable) for online marketers–having a single “big” site or several “small” sites–is the topic of this excellent article. There will always be “yeah, but…” arguments on this topic, but I think you’ll agree John provides a very convincing case for his position… which I totally agree with!

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If you are at all interested in (or doing) affiliate marketing, you gotta check out the best ebook on the subject, written by Jeremy Palmer.

I don't know why he doesn't put his name on his sales page… especially when he's listing these impressive credentials:

I am a 2005 Commission Junction Horizon Award Winner
I am a certified Commission Junction Performer
I am a Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador
I am a Google Advertising Professional
Oh, and did I mention I made more than a million dollars last year?

Probably just an oversight. But though Jeremy Palmer left his name off his sales page, he doesn't leave anything out of his ebook, "High Performance Affiliate Marketing." It shows you everything you need to know about making money through affiliate marketing.

I bought it (based on Allan Gardyne's recommendation) and I really love it. It's all detailed meat (no hypey fluff) on exactly how to get the most money out of your affiliate marketing efforts, in easy-to-understand, step-by-step language.

Also very cool is that you can read it online OR as a regular PDF…it's very well organized.

Perhaps best of all, Jeremy includes a private forum in which he candidly answers questions on exactly what he does to earn big bucks. He's revealing amazing insights on a daily basis! How many ebook authors do that?

And the price is nice! He's offering a 50% discount through Dec. 6th.

His very brief sales letter is at the following link. Trust me… it does NOT do justice to his product!

Check it out here: "High Performance Affiliate Marketing"

Forum Equalizer may have started out as an innocent, "Hey, why don't we automate this time-consuming but SEO-valuable forum posting activity?" idea. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to its creator. But the reality is that Forum Equalizer is a spammer's dream come true. It makes spamming online discussion forums push-button easy, and no respectable online marketer should use or promote it.

Paul Meyers has an excellent post about Forum Equalizer on his TalkBiz blog entitled Spam Equalizer.

New online marketers are particularly susceptible to automated software that claims to save them their most precious resource–time–while boosting their SEO and traffic. Even long-term marketers can be tempted at first blush. But before you hit the BUY button on this, or any other product that promises to help you with your online marketing, practice due diligence. Take a few moments to check out online discussion forums such as The Warrior Forum and see what the REAL scoop is.

This can save your money–and your reputation!