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I’m on my way to Las Vegas tomorrow for Anik and Jeremy’s PPC LIVE Seminar.

It will be my first time as a keynote speaker, so I’m very excited to say the least.

Honestly, I never really had a goal of becoming an internet marketing ‘guru’, whatever, that means. I started this blog to put a public face to the new company I started at the beginning of this year, Performance Marketing Worldwide.

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I’d be the keynote speaker at Anik Singal’s and Jeremy Palmer’s PPC Seminar, I would have said that you’re out of your mind.

My original goal with this blog was to:

1. Share my knowledge with the Affiliate marketing community
2. Get my name & my new company’s name known, so I could negotiate higher commissions with merchants!

Now I’m developing my own product and am entering the seminar circuit! I’ve stumped upon a WHOLE new revenue stream because of this blog and the talk I gave at the affiliate summit.

Of course, I have you, my loyal readers to thank most of all!

There’s a lesson in this:

A lot of bloggers out there are so focused on how they can instantly monetize their blogs, how to increase their technorati rating, how to get more backlinks (even buy traffic) to their blogs, that they forget that their PRIMARY PURPOSE as a blogger is to provide excellent content.

That’s all I focused on, providing excellent content, everything else more or less fell into place.

As internet marketers, especially as ppc marketers, we all want instant results & instant profits. Here’s what I discovered: It’s often better to focus on creating something of extraordinary value first and figuring out how to monetize it later.

This is especially true of blogging.

I hope to see many of you in Vegas.

I often get this question : “Amit, I love your blog and all the info you give out, but honestly already what’s the secret to being a successful super affiliate?”

As I’ve said before there’s really is NO secret to becoming a super affiliate, however, there are two concepts, idea, or whatever you want to call them, that if you understand these 2 concepts, I mean REALLY understand them, then you’re either already a super affiliate or quickly on your way to becoming one.

So what are these two concepts you need to understand??

TESTING & SCALING

What exactly do I mean by testing and scaling?

Here’s what I mean by testing:

Assuming you understanding the basics of ppc affiliate marketing, and most of you do, whether you want to believe it or not.

You first goal is to test, test, test.

Test different affiliate offers, test different keywords for your affilaite offers, test different landing page copy, test different Google ad copy, most importantly test different strategies for successfully launching & growing a profitable affiliate offer.

Once you found a good affilaite offer and tested enough keywords, Google Ad copy, and landing page copy to produce a consistently profitable affiliate campaign (even if it’s only $25/day profit), your next goal is to SCALE your campaign.

What most affiliates do at this point is they jump up with joy at their $25/day campaign, and then go into a completely different niche with a completely different strategy.

THIS IS A BIG MISTAKE.

If you have been busting your butt optimizing an affiliate offer and got it to $25/profit you need to LEVERAGE everything you discovered while making that offer profitable. This is what I call scaling your affiliate business.

You want to do everything you can to MULTIPLY that $25/day into $300/day or even, in some cases, $3000/day.

I’ll get into a lot more detail about this is Part II of my post, but here’s a few ways to scale your profitable affiliate offer:

1. Aggressively expand your keywords list, go wider and deeper.
2. Promote other affilaite offers in the same or in a very similar niche. In this case you’re leveraging everything you learned in your niche, what type of keywords and copy work best, that is. You discover that with different products in that same or similar niche, the same type of copy and keywords work well.
3. Expand your campaign onto other search engines, this is a no brainer, but you’d be surprised how many affiliates don’t take the time to do this. I run some of my top offers on up to 5 different search engines.
4. If your strategy is unique, replicate the same strategy you used to make your affiliate offer profitable in other niches. For example if your bidding on misspelled domain names, and have found a really effective way of doing this that generates high ROI, then duplicate this in as many niches as you can.

An essential key to building SCALE is systemization.

Building scale without a system can be an insane amount of work.

What do I mean by systemization anyway?

What I mean by “system” is a nearly automated step by step process that allows you to dramatically speed up the process of scaling your business.

Here’s an example: I’ve had a lot of success scaling my affiliate offers by pumping up the amount of keywords I’m bidding on, in particular broad keywords. It’s not uncommon for me to add 20k, 30k, or even 50k of keywords to a campaign I’m scaling.

Now setting up targeted adgroups can be a nightmare for 50k keywords, and especially if it’s a BROAD keyword list (that is with lots of related and lateral keywords, and not just long tails combinations).

I have a whole system in place, including a team of people that I’ve trained to clean, sort, & group the keywords. Plus I’ve developed some bulk methods to setting up 100s, even 1000s of adgroups in a very short period of time.

This system has allowed me to take an affiliate campaign that’s maybe making $100/day profit and explode it to the point it’s making $1000+/day profit in a matter of weeks.

Do you have a system in place to scale YOUR affiliate business?

Stay tuned for Part II where I get into more of the nitty gritty of TESTING & SCALING!

Today is my wife and I’s 3rd wedding Anniversary!

And I gotta tell you the last 3 years have been the happiest years of my life, I’m so blessed to be married to such a wonderful wife.

This year to show my wife just how much she means to me I got her a shimmering diamond ring (the center stone alone is over 1.5 carats) and an Omega watch with gold and diamond bezel and oyster pearl back as an anniversary present:

Now I’m not going to bludgeon you with what this cost, because that’s NOT the point of this post.

You see, back when Shilpi and I got married I was so broke that I could not even afford to buy my wife-to-be a diamond ring, my parents bought it!

I felt really bad about this.

I promised her that one day when I made more money I would buy her a really nice ring.

And now, thanks to this AWESOME business, I was able to do that. No payment plan, the ring and the watch are fully paid for!

This meant just as much to me as it meant to Shilpi.

And you know what, she’s my loving wife, and she deserves nothing but the BEST.

I promised her when we got married that I would give her the best life and that is a promise I strive to fulfill everyday, and NOT just by making more money.

One of best parts about becoming a super affilaite, is how you can bless those close to you. Thanks to this business, I can spend so much more time with my wife and do so many more things for her that I could never do back when I worked a job and was broke.

When YOU become a super affiliate, how will it impact your spouse and your family?

Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not in your part of the world…

Happy Thanksgiving!

All I can say is WOW, I’m stuffed, I just had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with my in laws down here in Houston (Sugarland), TX.

I just love visiting my in laws, they’re really great people, and I’m glad their apart of my family.

Here’s my in laws, including my brother in law, and Shilpi at the dinner table:

Here’s Shilpi and myself:

Instead of turkey we had duck and 2 cornish hens. The cuts of cornish hen with stuffing and a little cranberry sauce throw on top was to die for!

Check it out…

Well, that’s what’s left of it! LOL

Spending time with family and stuffing yourself with good food is all good, but let’s not forget what Thanksgiving is all about.

Thanksgiving is about being thankful for all the blessings you have in your life.

And no you don’t have to be rich or a super affiliate to be thankful. No matter what your situation is or where you are in live, you have lots to be thankful for.

Think about it.

I was thankful for everything I had back when I was poor and struggling financially.

Be thankful for the blessings in your life right now, because this is the first step to attracting more abundance in your life.

The area where affiliate loss patience most quickly is when they actually launch a campaign:

Here’s a couple scenarios that I’m sure will sound familiar:

#1 DUDE, WHERE’S MY TRAFFIC?

Okay, you start a campaign, you immediately notice that you’re getting very little traffic from the keywords you’re bidding on, so you drastically increase your keywords to “get better ad positions.”

Then you start getting lots of traffic, however, you end up spending $200, and only make $40 in affiliate commissions.

You pause your campaign.

Now this is more of a newbie mistake. The fact is that with Google Adwords it can take a few days to a few weeks before you start getting decent traffic, as you build your history.

If you’re on a tight budget it’s better to be patience and wait for the traffic to build up.

Now if you find your ad positions are WAY too low, like position 56, then you have two options:

1. Bid up your keywords.
2. If you’re bidding on keywords that are WAY too competitive (i.e. insurance keywords, mortgage keywords, etc) you need to go back to the drawing board and find converting keywords you can buy for cheap and get on the first page for.

#2 OH NO, MY CONVERSION SUCK!

You’ve got a campaign going with a solid amount of traffic coming in everyday and you’re getting consistent sales everyday.

But you’re losing money EVERYDAY. It’s might be as much as few hundred bucks A DAY.

At this point you’re probably thinking: “Shit, I need to do something fast to get my campaign in the black!”

Now, if you’ve been doing this business for at least 6 months, you know there’s 3 basic areas where you need to improve your campaign to get it profitable:

1. Your Landing Page Copy
2. Your Google Ad Copy
3. Your Choice of keywords and Bid Amounts
4. A Combination of the Above 3 Factors

So here’s what a lot of people do: make drastic changes to their campaign, either to one or all of the above factors.

Of course, this is purely driven by fear, fear of losing money!

What happens to their campaign?

Nine times out of ten, a campaign that would have been a consistent winner fizzles out.

The more you can control the urge to make rash changes, and the more you realize that you must get statistically relevant data before you change ANYTHING about your campaign, the more you will win in this game.
Now a lot of you have asked what exactly I mean by statistical relevance. When I’m split testing an ad or doing an A/B split test of a landing page, I use a tool called Splittester.com, to check to make sure that the winning combination (ad or landing page) is REALLY winning within the margins of statistical error.

Also, as a rule I will not pause a adgroup unless it has AT LEAST 300 clicks and no sales.

GOLDEN TIP

Most ppc affiliates are constantly monitoring their stats, like day traders watching stock prices. I call these affiliates ’stats checking junkies.’

The truth is that stats checking junkies are more likely to make rash changes than someone who check their stats no more than once a day - the disciplined super affilaite.

If you’re a stats checking junkie it’s killing your business, and YOU KNOW IT.

Here’s how I do my stats checking:

Established Campaigns:

My team sends me reports everyday with : adspend, commissions, profits, & ROI for each of my campaigns, so I can see at a glance how my business is doing on any particular day. This also includes month reports, etc.

In addition to this about once a month I’ll actually go into to my Google campaigns and see how my campaigns are doing in terms of keyword and ad group performance.

New Campaigns:

My team sends me the same daily reports for a new campaign, as for established ones. Also, for a new campaign I’m logging into Google everyday to see how my keywords and ad groups are performing, for the first few days of the campaign, I’ll log in multiple times a day, but ONLY for the first few days.

Once my campaign is profitable than I’ll check my campaigns much less frequently and simply let them collect data on keyword conversions and split tests.

Now if you’re a hard core stats checking junkie, checking your stats ONLY once a day is going to be harder than a chain smoker never lighting a cigarette again.

To break out of the cycle of stats checking junkie addition I recommend these remedies:

1. Self Discipline - suck it up and only check your stats once a day. Let’s face it, this one is not going to happen for most people.
2. Get Busy with MULTIPLE Campaigns - Launch your campaigns in bursts, not one by one. I suggest launching 3-5 campaigns in a 2 week period. Then do step 1 (much easier now).

Why #2?

By launching campaigns in batches of 3-5 (or more) it will keep you from getting too attached or emotional about any one campaign. You’ll be able to make rational decisions based on statistically relevant data, instead of rash decision based on emotion.

The less attached you are to the success of any one of your campaigns, the more logical and objective your decision making process will be.

Once you launched a batch of campaigns, force yourself to check your stats only once a day. This will be easier since you’re already less attached to the success of any one campaign.

By check stats only once a day, you’ll become even more unattached to the success of your campaigns. You’ll see the cloud of emotions, fear, and doubt clear from your mind and you’ll start making decision that will explode your income.

Try it.

I have to admit, patience is one area of my life I still really need to work on. However, it’s one of THE most important attributes you need to have to become a super affiliate.

How’s that?

Here’s how a lot of impatient newbies sabotage their business:

BEFORE LAUNCH

My team and I will sometimes spend weeks putting together a site. We also do a considerable amount of market research ahead of time to really understand what we’re getting into, and what visitors in a market were promoting are looking for.

We build a site with multiple targeted landing pages, each with unique copy and content. We also add 20-30 unique articles to the site.

I put a LOT of thought into how I structure the campaigns & ad groups. I also spend a good amount of time writing a bunch of different Google ads, and researching existing Google ads for the market to really understand what the emotional triggers are.

The whole process is a team effort that is carefully though out at each and every step. We will NOT launch until everything is just right.

Are YOU doing that before you launch a new affiliate offer?

Or are you just throwing up a ripoff of the merchant site, and putting together a campaign as fast as you can to see what happens?

Are you sending all your traffic to one landing page?

Really, are you rushing to get as many offers up as fast as you can and sacrificing quality as a result?

When I started out I know I did. Half the time I really didn’t understand what I was really promoting, I was just in a mad rush to blast out as many affiliate offers as I could until I saw some success.

It’s funny how two people can promote the same EXACT affiliate offer through ppc and one fails completely, while another is wildly successful.

My point is that it’s often not just finding the right affiliate offer, it about doing the right things to setup the right affiliate offer for success.

That means having a little more patience and really taking time to research and understand what you’re promoting.

That means building a quality site that won’t immediately get slapped with $1-$5 bids.

That means putting some serious thought into how you want to structure your Google campaign.

Back when I was a black belt in karate, we had a saying that went something like : “The battle is won before it has begun.”

And that’s so true in this business, the more planning and preparation you do before you launch a campaign the more likely you are to have a successful profitable campaign.

Next time I’ll talk about the pitfalls that newbies make AFTER LAUNCH…

My wife and I going to live in Miami between June 2008-Nov 2008! We’re going to get a place right on the beach.

So why Miami?

My wife, Shilpi, is in Optometry School, and next year is her last year where she does a full year of rotations. Shilpi got accepted to Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, the top eye hospital in the world! She has a 6 month rotation there so, we’re moving to Miami!

Why is this a super affiliate perk?

Because this would not have been possible had I not been a super affiliate. If I was working a 9-5 job, Shilpi would have either not applied to Bascom, or have gone there and we would have been apart for 6 months (that would have REALLY sucked)!

When Shilpi told me the news about Miami, I realized what a blessing it was to have a mobile income. To have the freedom to run my business form ANYWHERE around the world (well, anywhere I can get internet connection).

If Shilpi and I want to spend 6 months in Miami we can, if we want to spend 3 months in Greece we can, if we want to just stay in Boston we can!

Having a 9-5 job in the rat race not only severely restricts your income potential, but also restricts where you can live. Now I know some of you are proud of the fact that you have 4 weeks of vacation time.

How about living your dreams EVERYDAY. Doing what you love, and taking as much or as little time off of your business as you want while you make $1000s a day on autopilot.

And if you get board with the scenery, you can go somewhere else for a while.

The perks of being successful in this business go way beyond just the money. Affiliate marketing gives you both time and location freedom, which are absolutely priceless!

Let me ask you this question:

Would you rather make $1,000,000/yr in a job, where you’re tied down in a cubicle for 60-80 hrs/week, or $200,000/yr as an affiliate, where your income is on virtual autopilot and you have complete freedom to live how and where you want?

Okay, wow!

I’ve been doing some more testing and I’ve decided I’m moving ALL of my campaigns to my main account.

Here’s what I found, a campaign that we launched about a month ago on my second Google account (the culprit) was getting killed in terms of QS, even though my team had build a substantial site, following all of Google’s landing page QS guidelines.

What’s worst is that we had to pay around 0.50 a click just to get decent ad placement on search. Which was NUTS, considering on my main Google account I was promoting a different product but in the same general niche, and my CPC was considerably less.

After I discovered (my last post) my account history on my main Google account was giving me an excellent quality score, I moved a part of my above campaign over to my main account just to see what would happen.

I not only noticed that my min bids went from 0.15-0.30 down to 0.05-0.10, I also noticed that my ad positions were WAY higher for the same Max CPC.

I know, I wrote a whole post about how your ad position is only effected by CTRx(bid price)x(ad history). Actually a famous Adwords guru (who’s name I will not mention) told me this.

Now I have to admit, I was wrong dead wrong about this point. YES, your quality score DOES effect your ad position AND your min bids.

How much does your quality score (in this case account quality score), effect your ad position and average CPC?

Just to give you an idea one of the adgroups that I was paying 0.68/click for position 4 on my second account, I paid 0.59/click for on my first account for position 1.

Overall, on my main Google account my CPC for this campaign, on search, went from 0.47/click to 0.30/click!?!

Now I know this may sound very discouraging to a lot of newbies out there. The fact is the more account history you have : the better your QS, the lower your min bids, and the lower you pay per click.

Can you just image the ridiculously unfair advantage I have over a newbie trying to compete with me in the above market.

0.47/click vs 0.30/click?

I should say I make this market profitable paying 0.47/click, but at 0.30/click I can DOMINATE.

If you are a newbie keep this in mind:

This game gets easier and easier the longer you play it. Play Adwords game over an extended period of time and build up your history on ONE Google account.

The longer you play the game the better you get at it and the easier Google makes it for you.

So stay persistent!

Just when I thought I had the Google Quality Score cracked I discovered another layer of complexity!?!

Here’s the deal: I launched a new ppc campaign where I’m sending traffic to a site that my team has quietly been building up for some time now. This site has 100s of articles, PR, age, history, laser targeted landing pages with highly relevant content, the works!

Now I first launched this campaign on a new Google Account that I had started earlier this year. When I launched this campaign I was shocked to discover that most of my keywords were disabled with an OK to Poor quality score?!?

Now here’s the kicker: I paused this campaign, and launched it on my main Google account (one I’ve had since I’ve started), and ALL MY KEYWORDS BECOME ACTIVE. In fact, my quality score was Great and my min bids were all between 0.03-0.05!?!

So what happened? Honestly, at this point I’m not completely sure, but I have some theories:

1. Account History : My main Google account has considerable more history than the original Google account I had launched my campaign on.
2. Campaign/Keyword History : The new campaign I had launched was actually an upgraded version of a small existing campaign I had been running on my main account. So my site, and some of my keywords had some previous history on my main account. (Btw, I frequently start a small scale campaign for a niche or affiliate offer to test it out, before I go all out.)
   

Morale of the Story
Your account & campaign history seems to have quit a bit of weight on not just how much you’ll pay per click but ALSO your minimum bids.

Build up one Google account as much as you can, and if you hit the keywords limit and have cut out all the junk keywords from your account, call up Google and ask for an account increase.

You want to use the same account for as long as possible before you start a new one.

Just like a well aged domain name, having a well aged Google account is PRICELESS.

As many of you already know I will be the keynote speaker at PPC Classroom LIVE Seminar in Las Vegas on Nov 30-Dec 2. I just got off the phone with Anik Singal, and I gotta tell you this event is going to be AWESOME!

Here’s the line up of speakers:

1. Anik Singal
2. Jeremy Palmer
3. Rosalind Gardner
4. Greg Cesar
5. Kirt Christensen
6. David Bullock
7. Mark Widamer
8. And of course, Myself

Talk about an all star lineup! I can’t wait to see what all the other speakers have to say about ppc, I’ll definitely be taking notes.

Anyone who’s serious about taking their ppc affiliate marketing business to the next level needs to attend PPC Classroom LIVE.

I’m actually giving 2 talks at this seminar: one keynote, and another talk where I divulge a handful of killer advanced ppc strategies. I have some new material that I plan to share at this seminar that I have not talked about on this blog.

You don’t want to miss it.

There are less than 50 seats left, and they’re going quick, so if you haven’t got your ticket yet, sign up for PPC Classroom LIVE Seminar now!

I hope to see you there!