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Ever since I start this blog I’ve gotten a lot of flack from people who think I’m absolutely nuts giving all this wonderful information away.

“Amit why can’t you just pitch ebooks like half of the affiliate marketing blogs out there do? Why do you have to give away industry secrets? The increased competition is going to kill us!?!?”

This type of thinking is pervasive in this industry. Everyone is REALLY secretive about their techniques and strategies, as well as the niches their in.

In fact, even some merchants have this attitude. I was about to go into the education leads market, working with some ad agency. I ask them if they could send me a list of universities and colleges they work with, and some other suggested keywords. They basically said they couldn’t share that information because they themselves were bidding on the same keyword!?!? HELLO, are you stupid? I’m a super affiliate here to produce a massive amount of leads for you, and make you money.

Needless to say, I’m not working with them, and they have no idea how HUGE a mistake they made.

Even my mother said I was crazy to reveal my most closely guarded secrets.

I’m hear to say that despite all the naysayer, I will continue to share my insights with the world, and hope to help as many affiliates as possible.

“But Amit, why would you that? Why not just keep all these money making secrets to yourself?”

Here’s why I believe that super affiliates and all successful people should share their secrets:

1. I believe the more you give, the more blessing you get in return. It’s the law of reciprocity, the law of giving and receiving, or whatever you want to call it. There are many ways of giving: your money, your time, your knowledge. This is an age old secret to success, and from my experience it works in amazing ways!
2. I really like helping people and watching them succeed! Once you’ve succeeded, having more success is awesome, however, there’s nothing like the feeling of helping others achieve success as well. And again, this will only accelerate your success.
3. The pie is only getting BIGGER! There are thousands of markets, and millions of keywords, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds every year. There’s enough opportunity out there for everyone to succeed and become a super affiliate.
   

So do YOU have a giving mindset or a hoarding mindset?

When I was a “wet behind the ears” brand new affiliate I thought public affiliate marketing forums were AWESOME.

Wow! All these affiliates willing to share their experiences, failures, and successes so we can all benefit. Sounds almost too good to be true? We’ll it should be no surprise to you that it is.

Now in the beginning I happened to stumble upon some really quality forums and learned a LOT from them. And for someone who knew next to nothing when I got started, the affiliate marketing forums were really beneficial.

However, public forums are a double-edged sword.

The more successful I became in affiliate marketing,the more and more I realized that most of the advice on affiliate forums was TOTAL BS. Let’s face it… 95% of affiliates on online forums, have no idea what they’re talking about. Most of these affiliates are making a few sales a day. What’s worst is that some of these affiliates think they’ve struck gold and are anxious to share there “breakthrough” with everyone else.

Taking advice from an affiliate who’s making a 3-5 sales a day can be dangerous, since they’re either newbies or have no idea what they’re doing. And if that offends some of you, then sorry, but that’s the truth. If you’ve been doing this business for 3 years and are still at 5 sales a day…then your doing something wrong and have no right to give advice on public forums.

I have completely stopped going to public affiliate marketing forums.

Not only is most of the advice on these forums DEAD wrong, the attitude of many affiliates can also be a hindrance to someone who’s trying to become a super affiliate.

What do I mean by attitude?

Well it’s no secret that a lot of affiliates use public forums to bitch about how badly their business is going, and how it’s Google’s fault, Clickbank’s fault, their spouses fault (for not supporting them), and any number of reason. But of course they never want to fess up and admit that they’re doing something wrong.

This is what I call a victim mindset. It’s really easy blaming something or someone else for all your problems, instead of taking personal responsibility. With this type of thinking, you’ll NEVER become a super affiliate.

It’s just amazing how much time some affiliates waste venting and theorizing about why their sales have gone down. If they spend half as much time bitching as they did working on their campaigns, they would be super affiliates.

One simple fact that some people never seem to get it that : SALES GO UP AND DOWN ALL THE TIME! And they go up and down for a million different reasons, just like the stock market. They’re no grand conspiracy about it, they’re no mysterious program deleting all your cookies or stealing all your sales.

So if you think you’re a victim of Google, Clickbank, CJ, or whatever, GET OVER IT. STOP spending so much time bitching on forums and start building your affiliate marketing business.

You’ve all heard it, the horror stories of people who turned on the content network, got 1000’s of clicks and dropped $100’s of dollars in a matter of hours!

It happens!

When I first started ppc affiliate marketing I was told again and again, “Disable the content network or else you’ll lose your shirt or worst!” I was told one horror story after another, how I would suddenly, in the middle of the night get 1000’s of clicks and rack up a HUGE Google bill with no sales to show for it.

It was as if the Content Network was some hideous beast to avoid at all costs.

I’m here to tell you that you’ve either been lied or mislead by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Think about it, there are people with content sites that are monetizing their adsense clicks to the tune of $1 or more per click. Now the only way that’s possible is if adwords advertisers are bidding $2 or more per click on content network. Now if there are adwords advertisers that are bidding THAT HIGH on content network, they must be making a killing.

So there’s definitely a bundle to be made on the content network, however, a word of warning: it depends on the niche you’re in. In some niches you can not only get a TON of traffic from the content network, but it actually converts better than search!?!

You need to test this.

Here’s what I suggest you do: setup a separate campaign that’s content only, this campaign should contain the same keywords as your search campaign. Now here’s whats sweet: your adgroups can be much less targeted, that is you can place WAY more keywords per adgroup and not have to worry about Google disabling your keywords, or punishing you in any other way (except landing page quality - but I won’t get into that in this post). This will cut down the time it takes to setup a separate content only campaign.

Once you’ve copied all your adgroups over to the new campaign, go to the campaign and make sure it’s set to content network ONLY. Set your daily budget low, say $100/day, if that’s too high for you go lower to $5, $10, or $20 a day. Now bid exactly the same amount on everything as you do on search.

Now all you have to do is let the new content only campaign run, if you get 500-1000 clicks and not a single sale, then it’s likely that your niche does not convert well in the content network. Dump it.

If you do start seeing sales, let your campaign run, even if it’s at a loss, long enough to get proper statistics to adjust your bids to maximize your ROI. You may have to lower your bids to 0.05 or less in some cases, but as I said before that’s what’s AWESOME about the content network, you don’t have the draconian minimum bids you have with Google search, nor the stringent quality score requirements.

So have YOU tested the content network on your campaigns?

Wow! What an awesome trip! I just got back from Austin yesterday and my friend, Jeff, and I had an absolute blast. It’s a really COOL city. The city really has character, lots of unique, sites, stores, and restaurants. A great city if you like the outdoors.  Austin’s great for hiking, boating, canoing, and much more.

Jeff and I put down a contract for a duplex in North Austin, our first investment property!

Here are some great places we eat at in Austin:

• Whole Foods - The Whole Foods Landmark store in Austin has some excellent restuarants inside.
• Iron Works - Some GREAT Texas Barbecue. Yum!
• Magnolia Cafe - Fresh and tasty breakfast food, with lots of healthy options.
• Trudy’s - Some of the BEST Mexican food I’ve ever had, located on the UT-Austin Campus.

Also, if you visit Austin be sure to see the bats under the bridge, and definitely visit Mt Bonnell.

Stay tuned for tomorrow to learn how to cash in on the Google Content Network.

One of the easiest and most inexpensive ways to drive traffic to your affiliate site is to issue an online press release. Within minutes of being published, there is buzz around your product/service and people are flocking to your site! Is it THAT easy? Ah… no.

As in all things, there is a technique to this. But it DOES work. Remember the Alex Tew phenomenon of MillionDollarHomePage.com?

Alex issued an online press release about his newly conceived pixel site in September 2005. THREE days later, his online PR was picked up and featured on Digg and soon enough, it was the talk of the online community! His site was featured on BBC, CNN, and just about every major media channel. In January 2006, Alex auctioned off his last batch of 1,000 pixels up on eBay for a whopping $38,100. Alex Tew was a millionaire in five months.

Ok, you’re thinking “Alex had a unique product idea. An online press release will not work for my diet ebook.” Mindset people, MINDSET! Don’t undermine your business and how you can make online press releases work for you!

“I don’t have anything at all to talk about.”

Really? Here are a few ideas for you.

• launch of your affiliate site
•  launch of a new product or service
• release of new version of the product you’re selling
• business tie-ups or JVs
• launch of a marketing campaign / special promotions / online club
• receipt of an award
• announce winner of a contest you set up
• release of data gathering, survey results, research, etc.

Now, as in all things, online stuff is always slightly different than print stuff so here’s a quick rundown of web press release DO’s.

• Ensure the online PR has a catchy headline! Something worthy of a second look.
• Think online audience so short sentences, short paragraphs.
• The Internet is a highly visual medium so to increase the visibility of your press release – and its chances of being picked up by the media – attach an image to the release. This can be a photo of your product, a graphical representation of the data you are presenting, or even a screenshot of your website.
• Use anchor text that link back to specific pages in your site.
• Follow distribution guidelines. Online press release distribution channels such as PRWeb, PRLeap, BusinessWire, and others, have a reputation to keep so they will never issue a press release that is sloppy. Ensure your online press release is free from any spelling and grammar mistakes, and that it is written in the suggested length of the PR publisher.
• Press releases are expected to convey NEWS, not hype. Online PR distribution channels will outright reject your press release if it’s not newsworthy so stay away from any marketing hype.

Want to see an online press release in action? Check this out -> SAM Press Release.

As a copywriter, it shocks me sometimes how webcopy is often the LAST thing on many of my clients’ minds when they build their affiliate sites. I have even heard it said that “it’s not the copy that makes the sale but the product”. And to this… I reply… DUH!

This is not to say that a lousy product will do as well. No. A product that delivers what the copy promises is of course the best. A great product means you don’t get refunds and that you increase the chances of your customers coming back and trusting your opinion of what they should buy.

HOWEVER, for that crucial first sale, you must CONVINCE that site visitor. You must PERSUADE him/her that what you are offering is THE best he/she can get. It is mute to try other sites. This is it folks. The best deal is in front of your eyes. BUY NOW.

Think about it. Many of us go to the mall with a fairly good idea of what we want to buy; but do we just go to a store, point at something and pull out our credit cards? No. We search for the saleslady/man. We want information about the product… we want to be convinced that the purchase we are going to make is the right one.

This mindset is the same for all online buyers - with a twist - you only have about 5-8 seconds to make an impact on the site visitor.

So what IS the formula to writing killer copy? I wish there was ONE formula, but there isn’t. Webcopy that sells is webcopy that takes everything into account: the product, its price, the target market, target buyer location, buyer mindset when he/she reaches your affiliate site, search engine optimization, neurolinguistic programming (NLP), and yes, MORE.

You may have heard most of these factors already but neurolinguistic programming?

NLP is the process of tapping into your visitors’ way of thinking (neuro), how they communicate verbally and non-verbally (linguistic), and how these affect the way they communicate and behave (programming).

By understanding or ‘getting into the head’ of site visitors, a great copywriter can use just the right words or use exactly the right language (at the right places!) to connect to the reader. The effect – convincing copy that connects exactly to the needs of the site visitor. The results – more sales of course

NLP is not something to play with. Use it incorrectly and you turn on all the WRONG responses. However, use it correctly and… CHA-CHING!

If you want to be a super affiliate, don’t just focus on the product/service you’re selling and your site design. Remember that your buyers are just like you – humans – and they need that ‘extra push’ to be convinced that what you’re selling is worth their hard-earned dollars. And in the realm of affiliate marketing, that extra push is often killer webcopy.

I was going to talk about the whole web 2.0 thing today and all the drama that seems to surround it’s “definition” but I’m under the weather today so decided to share Mike Wesch’s cool video, “The Machine is Us/ing Us”, where he explains the jest of it in 5 minutes. Enjoy…

In an earlier post, Amit covered the aspects of surviving Google’s “quality score”, and how you can avoid the nightmare of waking up and finding out that 75% of your keywords have been deactivated and now Google’s asking you for $5-$10 buck minimum bids. I wanted to expound on this a little and share my view on URL/landing page “relevancy” and some techniques you can use that not only target your potential customer on Google AND on your website, but also give the big “G” what they want:  relevant text ads and landing pages for their visitors.

Let’s look at the following example:

Johnny Affiliate has a site selling “widgets” and has setup his campaigns with tightly structured adgroups and keywords using the word “widget” in both his text ad and display URL to improve overall relevancy.

Adgroup: “Blue Widgets”

Keywords: “blue widgets, buy blue widgets, cheap blue widgets, etc…”

Landing Page: Johnny sends his visitors to a landing page selling “blue widgets”.

This is a common example of how a lot of affiliates structure their campaigns but in the never-ending quest to lower bid prices and stand above the competition, we need to go further.

So how could we improve on Johnny’s campaign/landing pages and become even more relevant?

Domain aliases for display URL’s and landing pages.

Purchasing multiple domains and setting up domain aliases is a quick way to become more relevant in the eyes of Google AND your potential customer. For example, Johnny could purchase “Blue-Widget-World.com, Red-Widget-World.com, etc.” and use these domain names for each seperate adgroup. The benefits to this is that his display URL is  targeted to the customer looking for “blue widgets” and his keywords are in the display URL as well, helping his overall Google relevancy.

So what is a “domain alias” and how do I set it up?

Domain aliasing allows additional domain names to lead to the exact same location of your original website. For example, if Johnny is hosting his domain name “widget-world.com” and added a domain alias for “blue-widget-world.com” on his web server, then “blue-widget-world.com” and “widget-world.com” would take the visitor to the exact same landing page as his original site “widget-world.com”. The difference being the domain name in the visitors browser window would reflect whatever domain name was used to send the visitor to his site.

We can make the same site become seperate “niche” sites, all with one code base. Most hosting companies provide a web panel for your hosting account which will allow you to add multiple domain aliases, and then re-direct them to your main site. The next trick is to display the matching domain name on your webpage. This can be done by setting a simple variable name.

For example, if your web host is running PHP, you could add the following code snippet at the top of your “index.php” landing page:

Now if the domain name Johnny used in his destination URL to send visitors to was “http://wwww.blue-widget-world.com”, the above code would recoginize the word “blue”in the domain name and set the “$DomainName” variable to match that domain -same thing with “http://wwww.red-widget-world.com” etc. If it doesn’t find the word “blue” or “red” in the URL, it will just default to Johnny’s main domain name, “widget-world.com”.

He can display the domain anywhere on his web pages simply by adding the code below:

<? echo $DomainName; ?>

The code: ‘”Welcome to <? echo $DomainName; ?>! We have thousands of widgets at 70% off!” would display to the vistor as: “Welcome to Blue-Widget-World.com! We have thousands of widgets at 70% off!” or “Welcome to Red-Widget-World.com! We have thousands of widgets at 70% off!”

Johnny can now send his “blue widget” customers to “blue-widget-world.com”, his “red widget” customers to “red-widget-world.com” etc. without having multiple websites. He has turned one website into multiple “niche” sites that target his customers directly.

I just finished printing out my boarding pass for my first class flight from Boston to Austin Texas. I’m leaving for Austin tomorrow and will be returning on the 24th of April, next Tuesday.

I’m meeting up with, Jeff, a good friend, business partner, and very successful affiliate in his own right. We’re actually scoping out some real estate properties to invest in the downtown Austin area.

We hope to purchase 2-4 hot properties through our limited partnership. Although you’ll never get the type of return with real estate as you can with affiliate marketing, it’s a great conservative long term investment.

This will also be a great opportunity for me to take a much needed vacation from the world of internet marketing! I’m having two of my business partners, Tom & Melanie, step in as guest writers until next Wednesday, where I’ll resume the daily post.

Tom is an SEO & social media expert, he’s also a world class web designer who has worked with the Who’s Who out of Silicon Valley. Melanie, owns a highly successfully writing company, she’s an absolute pro at writing copy and an SEO expert. She worked with several big name internet marketers and is privy to their techniques and secrets.

Tom and Melanie are really the secret to my success, I want you to read every post that they write the next couple days, I promise that you’ll be blown away by their insight and expertise. I have learned a TON from them, and I know you will too.

You know, there are so many aspects of ppc affiliate marketing that are incredibly simple, yet the average affiliate continues to mess them up. Let me give you an example, here’s how EASY it is to optimize your bid prices (once you have Google Conversion Tracking in place):

1. First step is to know what your average commission per sale is, let’s say it’s $20 for this example.
2. Now if you want to achieve a 100% ROI, you want to watch your Cost/Conv., that’s the last column you see in Google Adwords. The Cost/Conv., is how much it cost for each sale you make, this is the KEY METRIC you want to watch. If you want a 100% ROI and you get $20 per sale, then you want your Cost/Conv. to be $10.
3. Now after you let you campaign run for a while, and get proper statistics, then you can adjust your keyword/adgroup bids higher or lower based on their Cost/Conv. If their Cost/Conv. > $10, lower the bid by some set amount, let say 10%, and lower it by 20% if Cost/Conv. > $15 (just an example). This will reduce the ad position and click costs of your poorly converting keywords. Now as your ad position drops, not only will your click costs drop considerably, but your conversion rate will go up, since you’ll have less “tire kickers” and more serious visitors coming to your site.
4. On the other hand, if the Cost/Conv. is well below $10 then you can increase the bid by 10% or more, this will increase your traffic and profits. Your Cost/Conv. will increase a bit, but your profits will jump substantially, especially if that 10% increase takes you to the first three positions.

Sounds pretty simple huh? But do you know what’s really shocking? Most affiliates, especially newbie affiliates, fail to follow the simple steps above and as a result their campaigns fail. The mechanics of optimizing your bid prices is SIMPLE, but again, affiliate marketing is not about mechanics, it’s about thought process.

Here are some typical scenarios that many affiliates go through, tell me if any of them sound familiar:

1. The trigger happy affiliate: This is the affiliate who adjusts his bids prices EVERYDAY. If he has a good day, he’ll shoot his bid prices up, if he has a slow day, he’ll slash his bid prices way down. The problem with this, other than the fact it’s a freakin’ full time job, with little time left to expand, is his/her decisions are based on statistically insignificant data. If you make a decisions on too little data it’s as bad (or worse) as making no decision at all. Affiliates who engage in this type of trigger happy approach often wonder why their sales and profits are stagnant and not moving up. Here’s a tip: You can’t make a decision on how well a keyword/adgroup converts after 30 clicks, you need at least 300-500.
   
2. The scared affiliate: I see this all the time, an affiliate has one bad sales day and they PAUSE their campaign for several days!?! If you ask me this is about the stupidest thing an affiliate can do. Your sales will fluctuate (sometimes wildly) day by day, week by week, and month by month, depending on the market. If you have ONE slow sales day, it does not mean the next 3 days will be slow as well. You missing out on sales and profits, and even worse than that, you losing data you could use to make rational statistically relevant decisions. As long as you let one day’s stats scare you, then you won’t have the confidence to build a large profitable affiliate marketing business.
3. The REALLY scared affiliate: A lot of times you’ll have to lose money in a market for a while before you go from losing money to making money. The REALLY scared affiliate will walk away from a campaign if it’s not profitable right off the bat, in stark fear that he or she is losing money everyday, even if their daily budget is set at $10/day!

Here’s the key: you ABSOLUTELY must be unemotional about the decisions you make when adjusting bid prices and optimizing your campaign. You have to understand that just like the stock market, your sales will fluctuate up and down, erratically and unpredictably. Sales can also be stronger one month compared to another.

In order to get an accurate gauge of how well a keyword/adgroup converts and what its actually Cost/Conv. is,  you have to let the keyword/adgroup accumulate AT LEAST 300 to 500 clicks, before you decide to pause it completely, or bid it up or down.

If you let fear control you, and control your decision making, than you’ll NEVER become a super affiliate until you overcome that fear.

Fear is what keeps most affiliates from entering the big leagues with the super affiliates, in the same way fear keeps so many people enslaved to a job that they hate, when there’s ample opportunity to start their own business and quit their day job.

Until you learn to control your emotions in regards to money, money will ALWAYS control you.

Are you letting fear control YOU?