Nagel Family Website

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Hey everyone… I’m going to have a real simple contest during Affiliate Summit where you can win a $25 iTunes gift card. No purchase necessary, but you must be present to win. Here’s how to play:

1. Find me, and trade business cards. I mentioned earlier that I’ll have some really cool cards, and I was super-excited when I got them. I ordered a few decks of personalized Bicycle playing cards, with all of my information on the back. These cards are sweet! So pick a card… any card.
2. Then you have to follow me on Twitter. Easy enough… go to http://twitter.com/esnagel and click that little “Follow” button.
3. Watch the tweets! I’ll be chosing the winning card from a full deck and tweeting the winning card. For example, I may tweet “If you have my 9 of diamonds, find me at lunch to claim your $25 iTunes gift card”.

Now for some fine print… I have 9 decks of cards, meaning about 450 business cards. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. I’ll bring along my boring cards for the fish bowls, and save the nice ones for networking.

I also have only 6 iTunes gift cards. I’m giving away 2 per day. So if 3 people with the winning card find me, only the first two get the gift card. Also, you must have the card before it’s named the winner. You can’t find me after I tweet that, then rummage through my decks of cards looking for the winning card. Finally, winners will be announced via my twitter account, so be prepared to share your twitter username with me.

This is a fun contest… not a multi-million-dollar lottery, so I’m not making up a long list of rules. Don’t throw a hissy over it.

Start collecting cards once I land in Vegas (on Saturday the 10th). I don’t know where I’ll be Saturday night, but Sunday morning I’ll be at the CAMA Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues. Then onto the Meet Market.

In the end, I’m using this as a networking tool. We trade cards, chit-chat a little, and take it from there. Who knows… networking is what Affiliate Summit is all about!

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Here they are… my 2009 goals. While I probably should be more concrete with them, it’s a good start. I just have to remember to keep revisiting this list to make sure I’m on track.

Affiliate Marketing

• Continue building sites that are related to my niche - it’s taking me way too long to build a site. And as I make improvements on the latest one I’m working on, the older ones get ignored.
• Build a site that takes advantage of a holiday - I completely ignored Christmas in 2008, but was shocked at my Amazon sales. Where were these people coming from? I still don’t know. Back in July I thought Doko was going to be big at Christmas, but I was wrong (hence I never developed that site). I should’ve looked at Bakugan - those things were sold out in all the stores around here, yet somehow my son (who lost all of his right before Christmas) ended up with 17 of them by the time Christmas was over. Talk about a big seller.
• Figure out how to make Twitter work for affiliate marketing - I talked about this before, and actually relaunched my syndicator on Give2Students. Since I turned the DonorsChoose account over, I still managed to raise $5,495.41 for classrooms across the US. Not bad for 3 weeks.
• Build a site that has a viral effect to it, where people market the site for me - I actually have a plan for this one, and hope to launch it in the summer of ‘09. Lots of planning for it, though. I’ll be amazed if I get this one done this year.
• Network more - Affiliate Summit in Boston was great; I have a feeling Vegas is going to be even better. I’m also looking forward to making it to a 202 meetup in Toronto but not until March (January I’ll just be getting back from Vegas, and February I’ll be down in Florida).
• Incorporate - LLC or S-Corp? I still don’t know.

Fitness

• Keep on track, run more often, workout heavily (just showing up isn’t enough anymore).
• Eat better, including small, sensible meals and protein supplements.
• Get the full cashback allowed from our healthcare program - that’s $1,000 in 2009. They pay us for doing things, like going to the gym, eating right, and getting an annual physical.

Finance

• Max out IRA
• Continue to pay down debt.
• Open (and fund) 529 savings accounts for my kids
• Transfer car payments into a savings account for the next car: our family van will be paid off in a few weeks; instead of spending that money, I want to save it for repairs & maintenance or a down payment on our next car. (of course, I have a $750 repair to pay for today. ugh.)

Other

• In 2009, Christmas falls on a Friday; I want to take off from Dec-24 through Jan-3. Real time off, without worrying about work stuff.
• Ideally by September of 2009, I’d like to only be working while the kids are in school or in bed. I know there are some people who work 14-18 hours a day and make boatloads of money; I’d rather spend more time with my family, but still make good money.
• Stay off IM all day long: it’s really distracting. Even if I set my status to DND, I’m still disturbed.
• Read more… whatever. Related to marketing or pleasure reading, it keeps the mind sharp and helps me relax. I should also do some sort of puzzle regularly… like Suduko.
• Be more organized. My desk (and my PC desktop) is a huge mess. I’m going to get help for this… that’s where Laura comes in. I should take before & after pics

I’ve got more goals this year versus last - here’s hoping I’ll achieve them all! Happy New Year!

This entry was posted by Eric on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 10:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

With 2008 wrapping up, and 2009 right around the corner, I thought I’d review my 2008 goals & resolutions.

Affiliate Marketing

• I’d like to win a contest… nope. The merchants that I work with don’t hold these types of contests. It seems contests are only held by CPA networks these days (you know, the guys with the exclusive offers and highest payouts) and I don’t do much work with them. I either need to drop this goal, or start working with those CPA networks.
• Attend Affiliate Summit East in Boston - done!

Fitness

• 11% body fat, or lower - done! But I’m sure I’m over that now. Maintaining 11% isn’t easy.

Finance

• Max out savings accounts - not yet. I still have time to fund mine, but I didn’t get anywhere on Laura’s or the kids’.

Other

• Watch less TV. Nope - in fact, I probably watch more now. I lessened the impact of TV by putting one in my office, so I can have it on while I’m working. Some people listen to music, I watch (listen to) TV. One result of this has been that I stopped watching Heros - I couldn’t spend an hour reading all that Japanese translations. To make things worse, I installed FIOS recently and now have like 85 movie channels for the next couple of months.

In all, 2008 was a good year. I joined the Black Ink Project back in April, followed the directions line-by-line, and in August my website. Back then the Black Ink Project was free, but today they’re charging $97 to join. Believe me, it’s worth it. In fact, my first 3 days of having my site launched, I made exactly $97 ($32.34, $13.64, $51.02). Since then, it’s done much better, even giving me a day with $1,000 in revenue! I’ll be continuing what I learned from the Black Ink Project as I expand my affiliate marketing websites in 2009.

I’m currently working on my 2009 Goals & Resolutions and will hopefully post that from my new laptop on Jan-1.

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 10:58 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Finance, Fitness, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

I’ve had 2 coffee donations lately, and just wanted to say, “Thanks!”

A while ago my friend Jess from Affiliate Program Advice bought me a coffee. I met Jess at Affiliate Summit East last year in Miami - we went on a tour of the Everglades together (candid photo) - and have kept in touch ever since. Recently, I chimed in on a project she & her team have been working on. If I can help, I try to… if I have no idea what the project is about, however, I’m honest & don’t try to fake it. As an affiliate that has experience on both the UK & US sides of things, I was able to help “translate” a survey that originated in the UK, but is being moved to the US. We don’t have “Voucher Code” sites here, we have “Coupon” sites. I’m looking forward to meeting up with Jess again next month in Vegas.

And recently, I received a coffee from my friends over at the Kids Defense Team. They do a great job gathering donations for homeless children. If you’re looking to make a difference this Christmas season, I encourage you to check out their wishlist or donate to their organization today.

Why did these people buy me a coffee? It’s a simple “thank you”, and one that is greatly appreciated. I really do drive out to Tim Horton’s & buy my cup of coffee when I receive a donation. If I had that PayPal debit card, it would be with the same money… but I usually use what’s found in my pockets, or the kids lunch money.

Why should you buy me a coffee? Maybe you use my RSS -> Deeplink -> Twitter script, or my post on geo-targeting saved you hours of programming, or maybe you use this script that rotates offers based on EPC. Hey… I need my coffee to stay awake & provide such quality work

So how do you give me a coffee? Simple… click on that cup of coffee in the right sidebar of my blog. It’ll take you to Paypal and prompt you for a $2.01 donation. Why $2.01? Well, after PayPal fees, that leaves me with $1.65 - enough for a Tim Horton’s large double-double. If you think sending me money via PayPal is impersonal, you can always shop for Tim Horton’s online. Or, if you live in WNY or Southern Ontario, get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to meet you at a Tim Horton’s for a coffee in person. Just no Starbucks.

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 9:40 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

I finally took some video of my Christmas lights! If you can’t make it over, here’s a sample:

What’s going on here? Well there are 600 commercial mini-lights in the tree out front. Those are new this year. Just about everything else is the same as last year:

• 600 Colored mini-net-lights on the front porch railings
• 600 Colored and white mini-light balls hanging in the porch area
• 750 White tree wraps around the porch supports
• 351 White snowflake mini-lights on upper roof
• 750 White icicle lights on lower (porch) roof
• 300 Mini lights surrounding the upper windows and wreath
• 2 lit, molded candy canes with 36′ of candy cane rope lights (432 mini lights)

In all, there are 4,387 lights (but 1 blew out, and I haven’t replaced it yet). Notice the strange movement in the 3rd floor window? That’s Santa:

Like last year, the lights are on from 6-9pm most nights (often later). The music is broadcast over the FM radio, so you can stay nice & warm while you listen to the music & watch the lights.

I’ve got some big changes planned for next year (yes, I’m already planning next year). Merry Christmas!!

This entry was posted by Eric on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Christmas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Wow - last week was just nuts. Let’s start with work… I’ve been very busy, but that comes with pros and cons. Pros are obvious: work more, make more money. Ah, the joys of entrepreneurship. The cons to that is I missed the gym 3 days in a row, by Saturday my bum knee was acting up and by Sunday my carpal tunnel was back. Not only that, but my sleep schedule was messed up, too.

Friday night we went to a sing-a-long & bonfire at Crosby Field. It was pretty darn cold out then, too. When we got home I watched the UB Bulls game, but fell asleep before the final… go Bulls!

Saturday morning was a holiday breakfast at the kids school, which included crafts & games. Then I worked some more, then got ready to go out with Laura. We went out to dinner, tried to do some shopping (we went to 3 stores, and none had the toy I was looking for), then went to the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert at HSBC Arena. What an amazing show! I got lots of good ideas for next year’s Christmas lights

I was back to work after the show, and got to witness a rarity… a thunderstorm with snow! At first, I thought my light display blew-up. It was pretty impressive, but didn’t drop too much snow.

Sunday started like any other Sunday, heading to Church; Jason made it interesting with a stomach bug (I won’t get into the details, but let’s just say puke freezes at 20° in about 5 minutes). When we got home, I decided to get my Christmas shopping done.. an hour later and orders placed with Amazon & others, I was done… I love shopping online BTW - Amazon had the toy I was looking for the other day.

Sunday night finished with dinner at the Bishop’s, where we had a 2005 Hardys Oomoo Unwooded Chardonnay. I finally found a white wine that I like! I think this was my 5th bottle of white that I’ve tried; the others were either too fruity & syrupy or too dry. Then my father-in-law broke out The Glenlivet and threatened to disown me if I didn’t like it. Wow… I have to get some of this. Very smooth. I was under pressure to like it, but it really was good stuff.

So this morning, with the alarm clock to the other side of my bedroom, which forced me to get out of bed to turn it off, I actually got up at 5AM to go to the gym. If the alarm was still right next to me, there’s no way I was going to get up… it was only 17° out this morning, and since we don’t heat our bedroom, getting out of bed to turn off the alarm was shocking. But I got up & made it to the gym! Hopefully I can finish up at a reasonable time tonight & make it 2 days in a row!

Now I’m sitting here… waiting for some keywords to process. Yeah, back to work.

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.