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Carsten Cumbrowski - Cumbrowski.com Editorial Note


Editorial Note by Carsten Cumbrowski
A personal message by the website owner and editor to the visitors of Cumbrowski.com

Introduction


Hello and thank you for visiting Cumbrowski.com.

I cannot stress this enough: business on the Internet is getting more and more complex. None of the individual marketing methods alone will guarantee success for your online business. I strongly recommend that you check out the various resources sections - not just one, but all of them - to increase your chances for success.

This website is a personal project of mine, which I work on in my spare time. I am happy if I am able to help others by sharing my knowledge gained through years of hands-on experience. I provide everything for free. There is no membership fee or signup required to access the content herein.

I do all this simply because I want to do it. I enjoy doing it. It wasn't planned and in fact it happened almost by accident. Since no "master plan" or hidden agenda is behind this project, a lot of its content was created without serious planning beforehand. Naturally, this causes some issues with the site and its usability. I am trying to fix those issues and improve the site as much as I can and I am certainly open to any recommendations!

The content on this website


You can find a lot of resources about Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization on this website. In addition to that I also provide resources on Web Development, APIs, Web Services and SQL Server, MySQL Database Development. You might also find my Articles to the various subjects to be useful sources of information.

I have good technical understanding and knowledge and experiences in the various types of internet marketing.

A strong point and specialty of mine is internet marketing strategy across the various channels to leverage and balance each in relationship to each other. Other strong points of mine and areas of advanced expertise are (affiliate) data feeds and web services APIs, which are essentially automated interfaces between two parties with the purpose to exchange or transfer data.

Free services provided for your convenience


I have also spent time gathering information on News and Events for you. I have created two Google calendars available for subscription (free of charge). One calendar includes Internet marketing events, including affiliate marketing, SEO and SEM events; the second calendar is for events specific to web development and database development.

I have collected several news sources on Internet and affiliate marketing as well as search engine optimization and marketing.

I provide the aggregated news via two free RSS feeds, to which you can subscribe via your preferred RSS reader software or gadget or even via email if you prefer delivery in that format.

My resource pages are updated frequently. Yesterday's news is today's old news. This is especially true in the fast and constantly changing business environment on the Internet. You might want to bookmark these resource pages and check from time to time for updated content.

My goals for Cumbrowski.com


My goal is to provide the most comprehensive collection of tools and resources related to Internet marketing. "Most comprehensive" does not mean biggest. I focus on quality rather than quantity. Being active in this industry for years helps me with the task of filtering out the "noise" from the vast amount of available resources on the Internet, but it does not make my contributions foolproof.

Your opinion is important to me - please provide feedback!

If you find that I have missed important information don't hesitate to contact me. Thank you.

Would you like to know more about who is providing you with all these resources and information? See my Professional Homepage to learn more about me and what I do.

What is being linked to and why


I link to a resource only if I honestly believe that it is a valuable resource that will be useful and beneficial to my visitors.

I make the decision about whether to link to a specific resource based on its relevance and quality. I try to be as objective as possible but of course I am human so I do make errors from time to time.

If you disagree with me about a resource listed on this site, contact me and let me know. Please provide rational reasons and explanations for your opinion and we will discuss the disagreement.

Some of the sites to which I link were recommended by good friends whose professional competence and experience I respect and honor.

In most cases I add the resource first without any affiliate link and then check whether a referral program is available. I sign up for the program if there is one available. Then I replace the direct link to the resource with an affiliate link. The point is, the value of the resource is more important to me than simply seeking out affiliate links. In simple words:

I add affiliate links to content and not content to affiliate links.

That actually explains everything there is to explain in one short sentence.

Affiliate and sponsored links


Some of the links on my site are affiliate links. I also display "sponsored links" which are provided by Google (Google Adsense). I cannot control every ad, especially those of Google AdSense. This means that ads which run here do not have my explicit vote of approval.

The sponsorship process is done manually. In contradiction to the sponsored links provided by Google AdSense and similar services do sponsorships have my personal approval and the same rules are being applied as I outlined in the previous section.

The maintenance of the site takes time and costs money. Sign up for a sponsorship if you want to support the project. All funds received will be used to support either Cumbrowski.com directly or to support other industry projects with which I share the same goals and beliefs.

See my Support and Sponsorship & Advertising Opportunities page to learn more about how you can support my efforts.

Your help and support is very much appreciated.

Affiliate links are coded and will write a cookie on your computer (if you don't block it) that will remember that you came from a link on my website. I will receive a commission (be compensated/benefit from) if you decide to sign up for some of the listed services or purchase some of the mentioned products (if the tracking cookie is still intact).

As a matter of fact, most links on the site are not affiliate links at the moment.

I also occasionally receive free sample products or accounts from companies and individuals to review and endorse on the website. I am glad to review any relevant product and service and also endorse it, if I like it. I will provide my honest opinion, including what I like and also what I don't like about a specific product or service.

If my review is negative, I will not refer to the product or service at Cumbrowski.com at all. This does not, however, preclude me from expressing my opinion when specifically asked, or at other outlets such as blogs and/or forums.

I am telling you this because I would like you to know that the fact that a link is an affiliate link does not affect my opinion about the resource and is not the reason why I list it on my website.

Reciprocal link requests


Many people are interested in reciprocal linking with me. Short answer: Don't ask! and waste your time and mine. I hope that you find the resources on this website useful and link to it or specific pages if that makes sense to you and your users. I really appreciate any link, because it encourages me in what I do.

I am also more than happy to link to your site or, more likely, to specific content on your site if it provides a useful tool, service or relevant resource that enhances the value of the page on my website where I place the link. Chances are that I either already link to you or that I would add a link myself without you asking me for it.

If you are interested in linking to me only if I would be linking to you, don't link to me please.

Closing words


I am happy to invest in making this site fresh and keeping its contents of the highest quality. I invest not only time, but also money into the site. I don't want to charge for access to the resources here via membership or a similar model.

Instead, I want to provide for free the types of resources for which other websites charge a lot of money. So a quick note to the sharks: move on to the next site. I'm all about integrity and sharing the lessons I've learned over the years.