Who is my customer?

Helpful Shit Feb 10, 2012 No Comments

We here at Affiliate Made are huge fans of Seth Godin, he inspires us, educates us, and helps us to constantly think outside the box.

Seth just finished writing a blog post about identifying ‘who your customer is’ and why that’s important to your business. This sounds like a pretty basic concept, but you’d be surprised by the amount of people that we’ve met (we’re guilty of this as well) that have never asked themselves this question before they jumped into a business or website. Starting a business or website without ever knowing who you are serving, can very easily set you up for failure, before you ever get started!

Rule one: You can build a business on the foundation of great customer service.

Rule two: The only way to do great customer service is to treat different customers differently.

The question: Who is your customer?

How do we, as affiliates, find out who our core customers are going to be for a specific project? (what drives them? what get’s them to click? why are they at my front door and not someone else’s? What keeps them on my site?)

These are really hard things to know (and unfortunately for some), there’s not a magical system to help you give you a detailed description of our clients (mainly because it does require some human intuition to get it right).

To show you what we do, let’s create an example that could benefit any newbie WordPress Affiliate Marketer out there.

Here it is: If we wanted to build a niche product website, let’s say it’s a potato peeler focused website, here’s what we/you should do to find out who our customer is for that product group:

Ask yourself this question, “who will be buying this product?” – And from there, you’ve probably already mentally broken it down to a more narrow demographic that you stereotyped…my personal answer would most likely be 25 to 35-year-old women and/or single 40-50 year old men – I immediately think this way for all of these stereotyped reasons: Women usually buy kitchen utensils/cookware. A potato peeler isn’t something that you buy every year, most likely it’s purchased when someone first gets a new home apartment (and they probably don’t buy another one unless it breaks). But, most people who buy household stuff like ‘potato peelers’ online, I would stereotype as being men. I could easily see there being a large group of newly single men, that have just moved out of their home after a breakup or something and would order a potato peeler online to get their new kitchen in working order. BTW, I have no idea if I’m right or wrong without some more research, or potentially building a trial website around these assumptions.

If you had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA who would be buying a potato peeler from your website, because you were unable to think through the above process like me, then you can do one the following three things:

1) Move towards another product that you know more about. Seriously, why start a website about something that you might not enjoy…you know that you won’t keep it up to date if that’s the case!
2) Search for a potato peeler on Amazon.com, reading through the reviews to see who wrote them…male or female. This won’t give you the full story, because maybe only one part of a demographic actually leaves reviews in the first place, but at least it will be somewhere to start.
3) Use the new Yahoo Clues page to see who’s searching for this keyword in their Yahoo Search engine (this experimental tool gives you the demographic from their search population). Remember, human intuition on a topic that you ‘semi know something about’ is usually your best bet to get started, but these other two ways will help you double-check yourself.

Do you know of any other good tips of how Affiliates can find out what their client’s demographic is, for a specific product or service ahead of time, please share below!

Thanks for reading,
~The Affiliate Made Team

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WordPress URL Pretty Link Plugin

Helpful Shit, Latest Happenings, Strangers Jan 31, 2012 1 Comment

Since we’re really big fans of Smart Passive Income and similar affiliates, we’re constantly trying to figure out what kind of Affiliate products and tools they’re using to make their lives and website better…and we recently found a really good one to share with you!

It’s called ‘Pretty Link‘, which is a website URL shrinking and tracking Plugin for WordPress. IT IS INCREDIBLE!!!

We went out and purchased the pro “Developer Version” of this plugin last week and we’ve used it non-stop without regrets.!

What does this plugin do?

This plugin shrinks URLs into any ‘pretty’ URL you want to replace it with!
[Example: let's say you have an affiliate link like the following: http://www.themeforest.com/?ref=affiliatemade & you want to make it look a little prettier, using your own branded URL and hiding the affiliate code at the end. You're in luck! With Pretty Link you can make that URL like the this: http://www.mybrandedurl.com/themeforest or something similar.]
This plugin tracks URL clicks in the back-end of your WordPress install!
[Whether you're sharing these newly created links in your social networks, on your own site or emailing them to people, your website still tracks how many people have clicked on each link...Which is awesome to see how many people are really getting involved. Finally we can say goodbye to bit.ly!]
This plugin redirects your links in pretty much any ‘redirect’ form that’s available to you!
[You can do 'Permanent Redirects' (if a page address on your website changes from "/Advertise" to "/Advertising" for branding reasons, this will send anyone that visits the old link on to the correct address with no SEO problems) - 'Temporary Redirects' (pushing a link to a third-party website for tracking and link disguising purposes...you'll use this one most often to create link relationships) - 'Cloaked Redirects' (totally hiding the real URL address because it's being cloaked by your newly created pretty link - example here) - 'Branded Redirects' (brand your links with your logo and/or slogan at the top of the page, this is great for links that you share on social networks to gain more brand attention - example here) and then some extra awesomeness that you can see in the videos below.]

Ok, what we’re getting at is this plugin is f#@%ing incredible!

If the stuff we’re talking about doesn’t really make that much sense to you, please watch some of the below videos that interest you, they do a better job explaining what this plugin is all about!

Here’s a Basic Introduction Video for this Plugin

Stop SOPA, PIPA & their Constituents

Helpful Shit, Latest Happenings, Strangers Jan 17, 2012 No Comments

What’s going on?

Right now, what we know of the world wide web (aka. the Internet) is trying to be tampered with, manipulated and controlled by the ‘Federal Government of the United States of America’ and ‘USA Entertainment Industry’. If you’d like to see a video on how this impacts affiliate website creators like yourself (and other average people), please click on the photo above to get a summarized the scoop!

I didn’t watch the video, why is this bad?

The US Government will be able to shut down any website or domain name they deem as a threat to this bill.
The US Government will have the power to make search engines remove your content, website links and references from search results if you break even one of their ‘loosely lipped’ rules.
You may end up in jail for up to 5 years if violate the copyright laws, according to this bill.

…Those things above sound very harsh, what sort of things would I have to do to receive penalties like those? All of those penalties could happen if you have a single video on your website, playing a song (that you didn’t create) in the background. NOT EVEN JOKING! Also, any affiliate website that you build, that is auto pulling in content from another source that you’re not 100% responsible for, could land you in the clink (yes, that means jail time).

The scariest thing about one of these bills passing is the momentum that it will give to other Countries that want to control their citizens in a similar fashion…changing what we know of the web (free speech, self expression, creativity and ways to make some extra cash online)!

What can I do to help Stop it?

There are a couple of different ways that you can help stop the forward progress on passing the SOPA & PIPA bills, I’ll list some below.

You can go here (http://americancensorship.org/) to learn more about it and fill out petitions, etc.
If you have a website (or group of affiliate websites), you can put your website on strike (http://sopastrike.com/) for the day of January 18th, 2012 (ours will be if you try to check back)…we understand that you may lose a little money during the day of your strike, but sometimes that’s necessary to create positive change.
If you have a WordPress based blog or affiliate websites, you can add the following plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stop-sopa-ribbon/) to your website. It will place a ribbon in the upper right hand corner that says “Stop Sopa”…look at ours to see what you think!
Lastly, you can choose not to support any online business that is Pro SOPA!

What online businesses would want this bill to pass?

Great question! The main one that affects our Affiliate Made system is GoDaddy.com!

Unfortunately, we use GoDaddy in our video tutorial systems, so it’s going to be a challenge to not support them anymore. We have decided transfer all of our domain names to a different DNS (Domain Name Registrar) and we’re also going to change our video tutorials, and remove GoDaddy as an AffiliateMade ‘Playmate’!

Even though GoDaddy has “officially” retracted their support of SOPA (only after they lost 100,000 domain names), we see them as a fair weather friend at best. Time to move onto someone else for our domain management…we’re doing some research about who is the next best choice and once we have some solid info, we’ll happily share that with you!

Thanks for reading this and we look forward to seeing additional affiliates putting their websites on strike this January, 18th 2012!
~The Affiliate Made Team

Additional Resources:

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5 Methods of Ensuring Return Visitors to Your Website

Helpful Shit, Latest Happenings, Strangers Jul 22, 2011 No Comments

As we’ve told you previously, Pingler.com is one of Affiliate Made’s Playmates.
They serve a very crucial role in pinging our websites (broadcasting to the search engines) that our website is alive, active and ready to be crawled for new content…this of course, helps us have the best presence for our Affiliate websites that we can!

Not only is Pingler.com amazing at filling this role for us, but they also write some great blog posts! They just recently wrote a post about “Why You Should Hunt Down Repeat Visitors”, and here’s our summary of what they said:

Repeat visitors will eventually become a fan of your website, become generally active with your content and push your websites to their friends, family and other businesses if you follow these ’5 Methods of ensuring return visitors to your website’. [Our notes are below, in this style of brackets]

Method 1: Turn your site into an authority site

People return to sites that they consider are expert and which provide information that they cannot find elsewhere. Posting new articles and thoughts on your site which provide interesting and relevant content will start to develop the thoughts that your site is an authority on a given subject. [This requires actual work with research, investigation and Originality...which the shitty sites don't have. We don't want to build shitty websites anyway, our goal is to create websites that we can grow and branch off of, as individual brands. You want to OWN your niché market!]

Method 2: Provide Free Tools on Your Site

This is easier than you might think. There are a number of free widgets and plug-ins for WordPress sites which people find of value. These include dictionaries, forums, website lists of relevant sites and search boxes. The easier you make the site to use and the more tools you provide the longer someone is likely to remain on the site and this increases the probability of a sale. [Additionally, If you aren't a developer of any kind and never want to be, but you like the idea of purchasing and reselling (or giving away for free) someone else's work, there is a way to do this. You can go to a website like CodeCanyon.net to find a plugin (or chunk of code) that you want to buy. The beauty of a website like CodeCanyon is that ALL of its products are created by individual developers that will sell you 'User Rights' or 'FULL Control rights' to their plugins for the right price. Meaning? You can purchase full rights, rebrand the plugin/code and sell it yourself or give it away. Now that's what I call Beautiful!]

Method 3: Add a Forum to Your Site

This is also easier than you might think. Most hosting companies have free software which will add a forum to your site. This might be Vbulletin or PHPBB but they are all easy to add. [For us WordPress users, we can use the free plugin called BBPress to build a forum on our main website...I say "Main website" because at this point, a plugin that will install a forum on a Multisite network hasn't been easy to find.] The advantage of a forum is that it starts to stimulate interaction and debate amongst your visitors and therefore they find your site even more valuable.

Method 4: Use Your List

You should always be building a list from your sites visitors even if they don’t buy anything. You can use this list to drive return traffic. You can offer various incentives to make them return, such as a free gift or special offer. [An easy way for WordPress users to build their mailing list, is to use one the following plugins from WPMU - #1 The "Mailchimp Newsletter Integretion" Plugin (which is our recommend one for ease of use with the free Mailchimp service...Mailchimp also includes a free embed code in their service, if you don't want to use that plugin) - OR #2 The "e-Newsletter" Plugin ]

Method 5: Cross Promote

This means making sure that you have an internet presence – preferably branded. This could be on Twitter, Facebook or even a specific blog or website telling people more about your online business and activity. Traffic which crosses between these various sites will increase the traffic and interaction that your business has with customers. It’s also worth creating a customized logo – something specific and memorable that customers will remember. [Also, it really helps to create authentic comments on other peoples blogs/website. Try to stick to websites that are in the same industry as yours. That way anyone that potentially clicks on your link will not be disappointed when they see what you offer. Never put your website address in the comment itself, just in the URL or Website spot they give you to fill out when leaving a comment.]

If you’d like to get these emails automatically sent to you and/or you’d like to watch our free Affiliate Video Tutorials, please Sign Up for a free account!

Please let us know if you have any questions about this blog post, otherwise, happy visitor building!
~The Affiliate Made Team

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A Lesson In Trademarks & The Law With Affiliate Marketing

Helpful Shit Apr 16, 2011 No Comments

We recently had ‘an interesting experience’ with a very well known shotgun manufacturer called Mossberg. (Watch the video to see what happend & I apologize about the lighting, it makes me look dark and ominous ;)

If you don’t want to watch the 6 minute video (that explains it all), here’s the gist of what happened:
Mossberg’s attorney sent us a certified letter, saying that we’ve infringed upon Mossberg’s Trademarks (Trademark #1 = “Mossberg” & Trademark #2 = “500″) by building an affiliate website with the URL of ‘mossberg500.net’ [NOTE: This URL will only be active until 4-20-2011].
We infringed on their Trademark because “We should have known this was their trademark & yet we still purchased the domain name”…

To us, this seems absolutely ludicrous because no where on the ‘mossberg500.net’ website do we claim to be the company Mossberg; in fact, here’s what our ‘About’ page says:

This website has been set up to provide direct links to Mossberg shotgun accessories and parts (specifically the Mossberg 500).

I am not associated with the company Mossberg, I just wanted to build a site on their behalf.

Frankly, I just got tired of all the websites out there that had bits and pieces of information but I couldn’t just go to one website to find what I was looking for…now we can!
If there’s anything that you think would be a good addition to this site, please let me know.

Thank you and have a good time using this site as a one stop shop for Mossberg 500 parts and accessories!

So the certified letter explained that if we do not shut down the website and turn it over to Mossberg, we will be sued for $250,000 (to potentially $500,000). Now we assume that this is just a threat letter and that 95% of all similar letters being sent out will never go to the legal stage, because it’s a scary thought being sued by a big company and potentially loosing everything you’ve worked your life for to obtain (no wonder it works)!

Q: Why do I think this is ludicrous?
A: because we’re working on THEIR behalf, to sell THEIR products, to push THEIR accessories, and to better explain how well THEIR products can be used and customized.

We didn’t spend a terrible amount of time building this website (4-8 hours) & our ‘costs’ were very minor ($10 for a domain name & the sweat from our brows…or calluses on our fingertips rather ;), but it’s frustrating that a company (that’s apparently too lazy to buy one of the 3 biggest domain names extensions out there [.net, .org, and .com] for one of their best selling products) can just take ours!

Yes, I asked the lawyer during a telephone meeting if we would be reimbursed for our costs involved in the domain name and/or hosting account … What do you think he said? NO. He said, “you shouldn’t have purchased a domain name that includes a trademark; we’ll call next week to have you start the transfer to us.”.

Understand this…this does not mean that ‘Mossberg’ is a bad company (or even a bully), it just means that their attorney’s make big $$,$$$ off of every one of the little guys they can get shut down (I would assume that they have an enormous hourly wage they bill to Mossberg).

Lessons learned:
1) Be prepared to have companies contact you if you show up higher in search results than ‘they do’ on a specific product ;)
2) Be sure to make it known, that you are NOT the company…you’re just a fan of their products.
3) Don’t spend hundreds of dollars on a domain name, because this could happen to you and you’d be out that money (go for the cheap and available market niches)
4) Don’t spend dozens of hours on a website that includes a manufacture’s business name…just do enough to make it a beneficial to the internet (NEVER SPAM THE WEB WITH POINTLESS WEBSITES).
5) Finally, don’t try to fight the 10,000 pound gorilla (Mossberg in this case) over something small and insignificant like this.

Thanks for reading and let us know your thoughts…if you have any.
~The Affiliate Made Team

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“wplift” Gives Us More Useful WordPress Guides

Helpful Shit, Strangers Mar 30, 2011 No Comments

We’ve been messing with WordPress quite a bit over the last two years and all of a sudden, ‘wplift’ keeps showing up on our information radar!

They seem like a really sweet company, sharing all sorts of WordPress goodies, helping people be more knowledgable about what WordPress is designed for and how to maximize it for your uses.

Here ‘s a really good page on their website that includes a ton of good WP resources: http://wplift.com/category/wordpress-guides

Do you have any other WordPress customization and/or educational sites that we might enjoy?
If so, please share them with us in a comment below!

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The Latest Ping List for Affiliate Websites

Latest Happenings, Strangers Mar 27, 2011 2 Comments

If you’re involved with web affiliate marketing, you have to make sure that your websites are pinging the appropriate ping services (Update Services) with every new post, page or product addition. Some people will have a website ping the different services every time they edit a page, post or product and that is not always a good thing…

…The main trouble you run into if you want your site to ping on every ‘edit’ is:

You can OVER-PING the services.
e.g. If you edit & save a page/post five times in 30 minutes, that will be five pings to the server in a 30 minute window. Certain pinging services (most of them) do not enjoy you ‘spamming’ their distribution service in such a short time period and will, in turn, blacklist your website from their service. Never to ping again!!! NOOOO!!!!!

Okay, it may not be that dramatic, but it is something to consider when your affiliate sales rely on people knowing that certain products or services are on your website…AND they’re not gonna know if your website cant ping to tell them!

What’s the solution?
Well, for WordPress the solution is ‘Cbnet Ping Optimizer‘, a free plugin located on WordPress.org.

Why is it so wonderful?
Because it includes a little check box in the plugin settings that says “Limit excessive pinging in short time”…meaning, you can check that box and choose to ping no more than 1 time every ‘so many’ minutes (our setting is 1 time every 15 minutes).

If you’d like the latest ping list (Update Services List), please take what we use…they are all listed below:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

http://www.zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.php

http://blogsearch.google.lv/ping/RPC2

[Update: Additional Ping Services listed below]
(thanks to Chais Meyer):

http://blogsearch.google.be/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.bg/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ca/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ch/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.cl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.cr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.hu/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.id/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.il/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.in/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.jp/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.ma/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.nz/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.th/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.uk/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.ve/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.co.za/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.ar/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.au/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.br/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.co/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.do/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.mx/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.my/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.pe/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.sa/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.sg/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.tr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.tw/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.ua/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.uy/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.vn/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.de/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.es/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.fi/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.fr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.gr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.hr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ie/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.it/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.jp/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.lt/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.nl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.pl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.pt/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ro/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ru/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.se/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.sk/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.us/ping/RPC2

http://ping.blogs.yandex.ru/RPC2

http://ping.kutsulog.net/

http://ping.wordblog.de/

http://rpc.aitellu.com

http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.reader.livedoor.com/ping

http://rpc.twingly.com

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.blogpeople.net/ping

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?XmlPing

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

…Or, feel free to download this list in a ‘plain text document’ (that won’t include any text formatting, like copying and pasting from this post will have) —–> You must be signed up and/or Logged In before you can see this stuff that has been hidden from people we don't know. If you'd like to see more about what we offer before you give us your name and email, please check out our "Start Here" page.

If you don't want to sign up, feel free to look at our "Playmates" page so you can see what makes up our super sexy affiliate systems.

If you find that we should add some other services to our list, please let us know…We may have missed some good ones along the way, only because we’re not perfect…Yet!

Oh ya, one last thing…Don’t forget about one of our playmates that allows you to ‘Ping’ websites without creating a new post or page. It’s called Pingler.

Thanks again,
~The Affiliate Made Team

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We’re on the WPMU Dev Showcase!

Latest Happenings, Strangers Mar 23, 2011 No Comments

Hello all of you Affiliate Made team members out there!

We wanted to let you know that our website has made it on the WPMU Dev Showcase ‘because of how sexy our website looks’…AND because we use some of WPMU’s Amazing plugins to make this website function.

As you probably know, we’re using WPMU as a playmate of ours, specifically for one of their plugins they make that is crucial to our affiliate websites…it’s called ‘domain mapping’.

If you’d like to take a look at our ‘Affiliate Made’ showcase page on the ‘WPMU’ website, please check out the following link:
http://premium.wpmudev.org/showcase/affiliate-made/

If not, Have an awesome Day!
~The Affiliate Made Team

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New Tutorial: ‘Adding WordPress & Setting Up Your PHP Editor in Aptana’

Latest Happenings, New Video(s), Strangers Mar 04, 2011 No Comments

This is a sexy new Video Tutorial that walks you through:

(1) Downloading WordPress & Extracting
(2) How to Upload the WordPress files to your FTP Server
(3) Adding the PHP Editor Plugin to Aptana Studio

If you’d like to take a look at this tutorial, please go here: ‘Adding WordPress & Setting Up Your PHP Editor in Aptana‘…Please let us know if you have any questions!

~The Affiliate Made Team

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WPMU – $30 Off a one Month Membership

Latest Happenings, Strangers Mar 03, 2011 4 Comments

POST UPDATE:

We just got word from WPMU that this special price promotion has expired and is no longer Active, thank you for coming by to check this post out though.

WPMU is still worth it, for all the goods they provide, even at the full price!

~The Affiliate Made Team

We wouldn’t be your Affiliate Made Team Members if we didn’t share this exciting news with you…WPMU (who is one of our ‘oh so awesome’ playmates), is giving new users $30 off a One Month Membership!!!

Why is this worth ‘the above’ three exclamation points (“!!!”)?
Because, you get unlimited downloadable access to all of their Plugins (Over 100), unlimited downloadable access to all of their Themes (Over 150) & one full month of unlimited support through their forums!!!

Look at this way, you will be paying $49 (for one month) to have access to all of their awesome shit that is worth “literally” thousands of dollars. You’re going to need their ‘Domain Mapping‘ plugin for your Affiliate Websites anyway…you might as well download all the others FOR FREE, even if you don’t use them right away.

[Note, before your first month of service with WPMU 'Renews', you're going to need to cancel your subscription...unless you want to continue paying $79/month for support...we don't.]