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I’m going to keep this one short and sweet.

A lot of people have asked me : “Amit, how do you pick a niche?”

Simple.

I go to conferences, such as the Affiliate Summit, and I talk to merchants and affiliate networks. I interview them, I find out which niches are hot and which are not.

Here are some questions I like to ask:

1. Do your top affiliates use ppc to promote your affiliate program?
2. How much do your top affiliates make?

If they say ANYTHING less than a $100,000/month I walk.

Think about it. Are you going to waste your time in a niche where the super affiliates are making a measly $10,000/month in commissions? If you think $10,000/month is a lot, then you need to THINK BIGGER.

Let me tell you a little secret: let’s say you can have 3 affiliate promotions, you can put the same amount of effort launching each promotion, researching the keywords, making landing pages, setting up your Adwords campaigns, etc, etc, etc.

With the SAME EXACT EFFORT you can make $10k/month profit in one promotion, $100k/month profit in another promotion, and $1 million/month profit in yet another promotion. IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE NICHE YOUR IN.

Many affiliate are stuck in the rut of promoting affiliate programs where they are capped at $10k/month.

Find the right niche and you will be blown away how easy this business really is.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek The Next Generation you know what I’m talking about. Data is the android who can do all his work totally void of 99% of emotion, and he also has a IQ of 200-that helps!

Can you imagine if you could build and run your affiliate promotions WITHOUT the emotional ups and downs of failed campaigns, daily/weekly sales fluctuations, etc, etc??

This is why as an affiliate marketer I absolutely envy Data-that is-the ability to keep your emotions from effecting your business decisions. This is absolutely vital to success!

Think about it, this way your decisions are based on logic and evidence. You’ll never make decisions based on statistically irrelevant data, which results in changing bids too frequently, or pausing a campaign too soon. Most importantly with wild emotions out of the way your productivity will skyrocket! Emotional ups and downs are the #1 factor that kill your productivity!

Now let’s be honest, in practice, this is difficult to virtually impossible for most people. The good news is that controlling your emotions is a mental muscle you can develop and strengthen overtime.

Here are some tips that will help you exercise your emotional control and keep your emotions from negatively effecting your business decisions:

1. Checking Stats: Do you check your stats 5 times a day? We’ll I can tell you right now that over checking stats will KILL your productivity. You end up spending half your time agonizing why your sales are lower than normal, or celebrating when you see that they’re higher than normal. Of course at the end of the day it all usually averages out, and you’ve just wasted 1/2 your day that you could have spend building your affiliate campaigns. Don’t check your stats more than ONCE A DAY.
2. A Priori Criteria: Set specific criteria ahead of time about how your going to make decisions about your ppc campaign. For example, I will pause the campaign after 3X commission spend if there are no sales, if a keyword has a high Cost/Conv. I will lower the bid by 10%, etc, etc. Most importantly, STICK WITH YOUR CRITERIA!
3. It Gets Easier with Success: Being unemotional about your campaigns gets easier the more success you have. Think about it, if you have a very successful campaign going where you’re making $2000/day profit, are you really going to sweat it if you start a new campaign spend $200 and your Cost/Conv. is $35?? Are you less likely or more like to make a rash decisions? Would you be more willing to let it run for another $200 if you didn’t have that $2000/day profit coming in?

Are you letting your emotions control your decisions making?

Conquering your emotions is one of the biggest obstacles you’ll face in becoming a super affiliate, but the rewards of doing so will prepare you for success in other parts of your life as well.

You know, when I first started this business I wish I had a ebook that told me EXACTLY what to do.

1. What market to pick
2. What keywords to bid on
3. What ad to write
4. How to adjust bids
5. Etc, etc, etc

Won’t that be great? An exact blueprint, step-by-step, color by numbers, of what you have to do to make money in ppc affiliate marketing?

Now I know some of you experienced super affiliates, who are reading this, are laughing right now!

Here’s a tip: YOUR NOT GOING TO FIND AN EXACT BLUEPRINT OF HOW TO DO AFFILIATE MARKETING

Even if you convinced a super affiliate to tell you exactly what to do in a given market to make money, how long do you think that will last? What you have to do to succeed today was different then two years ago, and will be different two years from now.

The fact is that there is no exactly blueprint for doing this business, and don’t expect any successful affiliate to tell you exactly what they are doing and what markets their in. Don’t get me wrong, I learned a TON from ebooks about Adwords and affiliate marketing. But that’s only a part of the process of becoming a successful affiliate.

You know what, I had to put the pieces of the puzzles together myself and develop a strategy that worked for me. If you’ve been doing affiliate marketing for at least 6 months, and have been proactive in learning as much as you can about it, chances are you have all the puzzles pieces in your head. You have to put the pieces together correctly to achieve success.

How do you do that?

Well, to be honest, it requires a lot of trial and error, a lot of FAILURE! You have to be willing to fail AND learn from your failures. Here’s how I like to describe the process:

1. Read an ebook, a blog post, teleseminar, have a mastermind, or brainstrom some ideas on your own.
2. Test these new ideas
3. If you succeed, great, build on that success, if you fail, try to understand why. Go back to step 1 and REPEAT.

Keep repeating this process and build your business with gusto and determination. Make a decision that you WILL succeed no matter what.

If you do this over a period of time the fog will begin to clear in your mind, and you’ll form your own affiliate marketing blueprint in your mind, and know exactly what to do to succeed.

No one makes you a super affiliate, you become a super affiliate.

Remember knowing the path is different than walking the path.

I had my first 30 minute one-on-one with Mr. Adwords, Perry Marshall! And you would think there’s no way you can cover much ground in 30 minutes, but the insights I got from Perry were absolute gold! The man really knows his stuff!

We also had our monthly Roundtable conference call today and in the Q&A I got into a little debate with Perry on whether affiliate marketing is a real business or not. And this is not the first time I got this, when I was in Rich Schefren coaching program, he flat out told me to leave affiliate marketing and start a “real” business.

You mean a real business with real employees, real office space, and real headaches??? FORGET THAT!

Don’t get me wrong I have a great deal of respect for both Perry Marshall and Rich Schefren-I just think they don’t fully understand the power of an affiliate business.

Now if you do affiliate marketing wrong, then it really isn’t a business. If you rely on a direct-to-merchant, “googlecash”, approach to affiliate marketing then you’re treading on thin ice and in my opinion you don’t have a real business, but just a promotion.

However, if you have your own unique branded site with your own content and copy independent of the merchant, and you market your site PROPERLY, than you have a real affiliate business.

Perry Marshall did have a good point when I was debating with him, that most affiliate campaigns are very vulnerable to changes in the market-either increasing competition, or change in consumer behavior.

Again, if you build your affiliate business properly and are proactive about maintaining and growing it then you’re as good as gold.

Don’t let anyone tell you you don’t have a ‘real’ business!

I’m happy to announce that I’m been recently accepted as a member of Perry Marshall’s ultra-exclusive Roundtable, this is Perry Marshall’s inner circle of razor sharp marketers, all multi-millionaires. Being a part of this Perry’s mastermind group will really allow me to take my affiliate marketing business to the next level.

Myself and a good friend of mine, Miles Baker, have formed a Super Affiliate Mastermind Counsel, where we’ve assembled 7 top-notch super affiliates. We have conference calls every two weeks where we discuss our goals and problems, and brainstorm solutions. Every since we’ve started we’ve had some real breakthroughs.

You know it’s just amazing what you can accomplish and the ideas you can come up with in a mastermind. It creates a synergy where the whole is greater than the individual parts.

I had hit a wall in my business, trying to figure out other ways to expand in the niches I was in, just by asking other successful affiliate in my mastermind groups what strategies and approaches they were using I was able to learn a TON, and come up with new ideas to expand my niches.  I’m fortune to have some really smart people in my mastermind, and they’re also really great friends.

So if you’re not involved in a mastermind group right now, find some other affiliates and set a time to have a conference call once a week to trade ideas, discuss goals and obstacles, and brainstorm solutions.

How Amit, Tom and I Got Together…

In one of Amit’s posts, he mentioned that one of the keys to working less and making more money as a super affiliate was to build a winning affiliate team. So how did it all began for us?

Tom was Amit’s client, and Amit was mine To be more precise, by the time I got into the picture, Tom and Amit were already more of a ‘team’.

When I first worked with Amit I knew instantly he was different. He had a list of content needs, the style he wanted me to adopt, what the content was for, etc. Now I work with many clients and it really pains me to see them go about like headless chickens sometimes, asking for this one day, this the next, and then this… just because of what they read yesterday, or an ebook they bought and read last night, or a special free report on this super secret new thing, etc., etc. By Friday, the client is into such a fit that he just gets more and more confused on what he wants! Everything is half-way. Nothing is really successful.

Amit was different. He knew what he wanted and how to achieve it. I met Tom on the same project and immediately liked his professionalism and the sincerity that came across even if we only corresponded via email and had our weekly telecons.

Just like what he did with Tom Amit lost NO time in offering me a percentage of his profits in return for continually working with him and prioritizing his projects. And I reacted exactly like Tom (LOL), I was hesitant due to my bursting schedule. To cut the long story short, I accepted but asked for a month or two to fix my schedule.

So why did I accept? Was it the lure of great moolah? First, it’s B.S. to say that making great money online is not great because you know what? IT IS. However, to make it with people you LIKE and most of all RESPECT, that’s something that just doesn’t come across everyday folks.

As a netpreneur, your instinct may be to “keep it all under tabs”. It’s YOUR ideas, YOUR strategies, and therefore YOUR profits. So much so that you don’t want others ‘dipping their hands into your bowl’. Well, as Amit has been trying to teach you – by example – you will achieve WAY MORE than you are currently earning if you let go a little bit. You cannot be the CEO and the janitor you know. One will suffer and you better pray it’s not the CEO part!

 … and My Take on the Super Affiliate Lifestyle

For those of you who are not successful yet with affiliate marketing, you may be asking “Is all this true?”, “Is it possible indeed to achieve financial freedom from  affiliate marketing?” I can only share my experience.

Each check is a great experience but one thing sticks out to me.

I was in Spain. I was sitting in a café overlooking the great, blue sea… my husband sitting just across me. We just came from an internet café where we checked out the stats of one of Amit’s affiliate sites and of which I am a partner. That was the time it REALLY donned on me…

I’m on vacation. I have not turned on my laptop in over a week. And I am STILL earning this much. I thought, as I sit here sipping this coffee, enjoying the sun on my face, I am earning and earning well.

Damn! I love affiliate marketing!

It’s time to have some fun!  Let’s face it, we all love affiliate marketing and all the glorious benefits that go along with the lifestyle but sometimes we need a break from metrics, split-tests, keyword research, google slaps, and on and on…

I love technology.

Everytime I have an idea about something that would be really cool, BAM! it appears as some online start-up ;)  One of those thoughts was how I could watch some great, full screen TV shows on my 24 inch monitor, on demand, without installing a cable-ready video card, crawling under the house to run a new line, etc. Internet TV is the future for sure, and Joost has their hand in the cookie jar.

 So what is Joost?

It’s free TV, with the choice to watch alone or with friends. Joost is packed with internet tools such as instant messaging and channel chat, allowing people to really share the TV experience. It’s a completely secure platform for content owners that respects their rights, while protecting and enhancing their brands. And it’s an incredibly flexible way for advertisers to reach a truly global audience, in ways that really work. Joost isn’t just video on the internet - it’s the next generation of television for viewers, content owners and advertisers everywhere.

Joost combinines the best things about television - great shows, great picture quality, something that everyone knows how to use - with the incredible power of the internet to bring people together and deliver entertainment on demand. Check out some screenshots below:

One thing you need to know is that Joost is currently in beta and you can download it by invitation only. Once you receive an invite code yourself (usually by a friend who is already a member) you can then send out invites to all your family and friends:)

I WANT ONE! Hmmm… OK.

If you want an invite just post a comment and I’ll send one to the next 10 people who ask. (I can’t drag this out forever, what do you think I do, watch cool internet TV shows all day

Doing PPC affiliate marketing takes a certain amount of risk, and the amount of risk your willing to take will ultimately determine your success. Its about whether you take too much risk or too little risk, but it’s how you manage it that’s key to your success.

A lot of people avoid risk at all costs, if you’re one of these people then affiliate marketing, especially with pay-per-click, is NOT for you. On the other extreme there have been stories of people that have lost $1000s on Adwords overnight, not knowing what they were doing. Actually, I don’t consider that risky, it’s just flat out stupid.

I remember when I first got started with Adwords, I admittedly played it safe, I kept my daily budget low, and my cost per click low to make sure I didn’t lose my shirt! And I also had a idea of how much I was willing to invest in a campaign to test it out, something like 300 clicks at 0.10 a click.

In the beginning your really have to think of your ad spend as an investment in your education. And not freak out that you spend $50 and don’t make a sale. I mean come on, if you’re willing to spend $30,000/year, all on loans, to get a college education, that will keep you broke for the rest of your life, then what’s a few hundred dollars on Adwords to learn how to become a millionaire-or at least never have to work a job again.

Once I started making some money at affiliate marketing, and I was spending $300+/day on Adwords, I took a leap of faith and took out $10,000 from my home equity line of credit and put it in my business account. And that made all the difference in the world! It allowed me to really accelerate the growth of my business. Test more markets, and aggressively expand the markets I’m in.

Would you do that?

You got to be willing to push yourself out of your comfort zone if you want to become a super affiliate. If I showed you how you could take your campaigns from $300/day profit to $3000/day profit, but you’d have to spend $2000/day on Adwords-starting tomorrow, would you be will and ready to do it?

When I first started spending $2000/day on Adwords, it freaked me out, it really pushed me out of my comfort zone.

You see a lot of people would not be willing to spend $1000s a day on Adwords, even if they did double their money. Risky-yes-if you don’t know what you’re doing. The key is to manage the risk, here are several tips to doing that:

1. Even when you have a successful campaign going, never take your daily budget from $5/day to $1000/day, overnight. Take your daily budget from $5 to $50 the next day then $200, then $500, then $1000, that way you can monitor your ROI each day and make sure you’re making money. Also by gradually increasing your daily budget your avoid an infamous Google Account Review-where they pause you account for two days with no explanation.
2. Make sure you do your research and homework before doing anything. If those dummies who started a Google campaign and lost $1000s had bought Perry Marshall’s Ebook and studied it they would have saved themselves their financial disaster, and maybe actually even made money right off the bat! Just like in real estate, doing your research and becoming knowledgeable about the next market your going into, or even about PPC affiliate marketing in general (if you’re a newbie) is the best way to minimize your risk and maximize your chances of succeeding.

Once you gain more success and profits as an affiliate you’ve got to be willing to take bigger risks to take your business to the next level. If you’re making $500/day in profit, it will require a much bigger risk to go into a market where you can make $5000/day profit, you may have to invest more into making your site and lose more money upfront testing it.

Similarly if you want to hit $50,000/day profit, you have to take an even BIGGER risk.

A lot of people’s income plateau’s when they hit a few hundred a day in profit or a few thousand a day in profit, because they’re in a comfort zone and are not willing to push themselves to the next level.

Is your business stuck in a rut?

One of the major keys to success in the affiliate business, or in any other business you start is to answer this question: why are you doing it?

This may seem like a stupid question, but really, do you have a clear vision of why your doing this business, and what your long term goals are?

I can tell you EXACTLY why I built this business:

#1

Ever since I was little I realized one thing about the job world: you could either work really hard putting in long hours and make a lot of money, or you could work easy hours and make a little money. In the first scenario you had a lot of money, but no time. In the other scenario, you had a lot of time but no money!

Let’s face it, if you trade hours for dollars you’re limited to how much you can make, since there’s only 24 hours in a day. But I knew there had to be a better way. Then I got involved in network marketing, probably one of the most difficult business models to succeed in, however, its really great crash course in entrepreneurship.

In my 3 years in network marketing these are some of the biggest lessons that were drilled into my head:

1. Leverage: This is an amazing concept and what essentially separates the rich fromthe poor and middle class. In a job, you have no leverage, since you’re basically geting paid on your individual efforts. In network marketing for example, you leverage yourself by building a sales team, from who’s efforts you derive a small percentage. When your team gets into the 1000’s those percentages add up to a massive income. You’re leveraging the efforts of others. Do you know what you’re leveraging in affiliate marketing? You’re leveraging the internet of course, the most amazing network in the world. You have access to millions of consumers at the push of a button!
2. Residual Income: I immediately fell in love with this idea, WOW, work once and get paid forever! What could be better? In a job you get paid for the time you put in, if you quit your job, your income stops. You know I could lock myself in a closet and say: “I don’t want to make any more money!” And guess what, my income will continue to come in month after month!

I got obsessed with the idea of leverage and residual income. Once I quit network marketing I was in search of the perfect business opportunity. Six months later I found ppc affiliate marketing.

What I really love about affiliate marketing is that :

1-you have leverage since it’s the internet,

2-it’s virtually residual income, if you set it up right, it only take a few hours a week to maintain an optimized campaign,

3-it’s easily scalable, that is you can go from $1000/day business to a $10,000/day business overnight, since you don’t need to increase inventory, hire employees, or rent more office space to do it!

Yes, it’s the PERFECT business. And since I had a burning desire to develop a residual income-so I could have time+money=lifestyle-and take advantage of leverage, I pursued this business with a passion.

It’s the ultimate lifestyle business.

#2

My second reason for doing affiliate marketing is strongly connected to my first, and was at the time my strongest motivation: I HATED my job as a research scientist.

I didn’t like my boss, and I didn’t like the work I was doing. In fact I would cut out early from work frequently, and even played hooky when my wife had a day off from school.

Once I started making some nice affiliate profits, I started going to work at 10am and coming home at 3pm. It was great, I missed all the Boston traffic!

Man was I motivated to build my affiliate business, I kept dreaming of the day I would never have to go to work, and it happened!

I’ll never forget it.

June 15, 2006…

freedom day - the happiest day of my life! The last day at my job, and my first day in the land of the living!

If you hate your job, then don’t let it upset you, make it your motivation to do the business.

And you’ll have your freedom day too!

So if you don’t already, make a clear vision for what you want. Write it down, think about it, talk about it, tell your spouse about it - and live it!

There are few things more exciting than launching a new campaign and seeing it really transform into a money machine as you optimize it!

I should know, I just recently started a new campaign! Man, is it exciting.

But with all the excitement of beginning a new campaign there are a lot of pitfalls to be aware of, especially if you’re new at the game of affiliate marketing:

1. Not giving a campaign a chance: A lot of affiliates, especially newbies will pause a campaign WAY too early, based on way too little data. If you get 100 clicks and no sales, it’s not enough information to make a decision, for all you know you may get 5 sales on the next 100 clicks. It happens all the time! I would recommend you wait for until at least 500-1000 clicks before you make a decision to pause the campaign.
2. Don’t let quick success fool you: Sometimes affiliates get really excited and bid up their keywords and taking the cap off their daily budget, based on one day, or sometimes even a few hours worth of campaign stats. If you ask me that’s totally nuts, you can’t base anything on one day, that just may have been a really good day. By upping your bids and raising you daily budget too quickly you risk really getting burned. Wait at least several days and then make gradual bid adjustments based on statistically relevant data.
3. Don’t immediately drop your bids either: The other side of having quick success is having a campaign that starts out in the negative, maybe with a $30 Cost/Conv. on a $20 commission product. Now you know the market has potential, so you decided to drop your bids way down to get in the black! If you do this too soon and too drastically, based on only one day of data you could risk pushing your high performing keywords to the 2nd or 3rd page. Only to be surprised to see your campaign dry up. Let your campaign run for a few days to a week and then gradually start biding down your adgroups that are poor performers and bidding up the ones that are converting well.
   

The most important message is to be patient and not make rash, emotional decisions based on little data and statistics. Be willing to lose money for a few days, even a few weeks, so you have enough, clicks, impressions and conversions to make solid statistically valid decisions on how to adjust your bids. And please adjust your bids gradually, lowing and raising them by no more than 5%-10% at a time (in most cases).

The real challenge here is whether you have the emotional fortitude to let you campaign run at a loss for an extended period of time. If you let your emotions get the best of you, you’re dead in the water.