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Okay, enough of the serious stuff (last post). Affiliate Summit West was a blast!

Except for all the smoke in the Rio!

Was it just me or was it impossible to breathe in there??

Inhaling all the smoke must have weakened my immunity, because now I have a fever…no joke.

Being that I’m ill, I’m going to give a quick recap…

On the first night of the Summit (Sunday) a bunch of us headed off to the ShareASale Party, which is always a major highlight of every Affiliate Summit. Afterwards, we headed to the Revenuewire party.

Affiliate parties are a great time to talk shop, maybe it’s because people are more laid back and relaxed at parties, or maybe because they’re drinking alcohol, people at parties are much more open to sharing their methods and strategies than they would otherwise be.

Anyways, I had a chance to talk to a number of super affiliates and SEM experts including : my buddy Felix Leshno, Heather Paulson, a fellow from Clicks2Customers, a fellow making $300k/month through Clickbank.

Don’t worry I’ll share what I learned in future blog posts…one thing I did learn is that there are a number of super affiliates who are making a KILLING with direct linking, contrary to what some of the ill informed comments and feedback I got from my “How to Get Started as an Affiliate” post would suggest.

A lot of what I learned that night not only confirmed what I had suspected, but has forced me to rethink some of my affiliate marketing strategies.

The best part of my trip to Vegas was meeting Melanie Tuinstra (and her husband Hank), my long time business partner, for the first time.

Here’s a picture of me, Tom, and Melanie, all equal shareholders of Performance Marketing Worldwide :

We had a chance to have our very first shareholders meeting ever since we incorporated a year ago. We plan to shift gears and jump into info marketing, in addition to the affiliate stuff we’re already doing.

Here’s Paul, Kristen (Paul’s wife), Vanessa (Doug’s wife), Doug, Tom, Sheila (Tom’s wife) :

Here’s Melanie, Sheila, Shilpi (my wife), and me :

DAY 2

The highlight of Day 2 was none other than the Affiliate party at the Venetian hotel, featuring the Blue Man Group!

Unlike the Rio, the Venetian is actually one of the classier hotels in Vegas, when you walk in it feels like you’re in Venice. Check it out…

The Affiliate party at the Venetian was in the coolest night club I’ve ever seen. The night club had a slick modern design with Buddhist statues and flowing water.

The Blue Man Group only performed for about 10-15 minutes, but it was pretty cool, here’s a 2 minutes excerpt :

Afterwards, upon Felix’s recommendation, several of us headed off to an AWESOME Italian restaurant in the Venetian. I had pasta with black squid ink, check it out :

DAY 3

On the third day I was speaking on a panel with Super Affiliate Zac Johnson, Top Blogger John Chow, and CEO of Pepperjam Kris Jones.

I was flattered to be on a panel among such industry heavy weights, it was quite an honor to say the least.

Zac summed up the panel very well in his post.

I also had a rare chance to have lunch with internet marketing extraordinare Joel Comm, one of the top bloggers in the world, John Chow, and my buddy Andrew Wee :

I wish I had a tape recorder while talking to Joel Comm, he was sharing some really awesome strategies on how I can take my business to the next level.

Hope to see YOU at the next Affiliate Summit in Boston.

If you didn’t attend the Affiliate Summit in Vegas this year, you can read about the HIGHLY controversial keynote by Jason Calacanis here (in his own words).

A number of my readers have been asking : “Amit, what’s your opinion on Jason’s keynote?”

Believe it or not I actually did agree with several of the points he made.

Let’s start with…

AFFILIATE SPAM

I know some of you out there were shocked when Jason attacked what most affiliates do as spam.

Well, here’s a reality check : most people outside of our industry consider what most affiliates do as SPAM.

Do I believe most affiliates are “pissing in the pool” and cluttering search engines with crap that no one wants?

No, actually I DON’T believe most affiliates are spammers. I know lots of affiliates who sincerely strive to add value through their efforts. They build real sites that provide real value to the market place.

Unfortunately, the spammers and black hatters tend to get the majority of media attention so that’s the perception of our industry.

And you know what?

The perception of our industry and our indifference to spammers and black hatters is REALLY hurting us. These “pool pissing” punks are not just giving our industry a bad rap but are asking for a serious backlash from major search engines, and also a regulatory backlash from the FTC.

Trust me, once the government starts regulating affiliate marketing, in an attempt to stamp out black hatters and spammers (CAN-SPAM is just the beginning), it’s going to end up hurting honest affiliates and the industry as a whole.

We need to step up and stop tolerating the minority of affiliates that are polluting the lake (in the words of Jason Calacanis), and show the world that we’re not just a bunch of white collar criminals trying to swindle a quick buck off people.

What really disturbs me is that I hear a number of affiliates saying that being white hat or black hat is merely a CHOICE. In other words, it doesn’t matter which tactic you use.

That’s like saying being a bank teller vs a bank robber is merely a career choice and nothing else.

The day people are ashamed to be spammer and black hatters, the perception of this industry will change for the better.

Thanks Jason for being honest about what you thought about our industry, it’s a real eye opener.

Okay, now here’s where I disagreed with Jason….

Jason attacked Shoemoney and Zac Johnson for holding up 6 figure affiliate checks on their blogs.

Here’s what he had to say about it :

1. That it was pathetic holding up 6 figure checks, which was peanuts where he came from (Silicon Valley). He then suggested that people in Silicon Valley work 6-7 hrs a day/5 days a week-making 100X more money-while affiliates work 14 hrs a day/ 7 days a week are fighting for table scraps.
2. Secondly, he claimed that showing the 6 figure checks was an attempt “exploit poor people,” because these checks encourage desperate poor people to click on the make money online ads ( that are on same blogs where the checks are posted). These desperate poor people would presumably click on the make money online ads and get swindled out of what little money they had.

Let me address the second point first…

Jason, are you a freaking Marxist? Or is this just a shamelessly pathetic attempt to depict internet marketers as unscrupulous greedly SOBs who would steal candy from a baby if the ROI was high enough??

Get REAL!

As for the first point, Jason, did you just make that up or what?? I don’t know ANY super affiliates that work 14 hours a day/7 days a week. All the super affiliates I know have an AMAZING lifestyle : world travel, free time, living life to the fullest.

My business partner, Tom, used to work in Silicon Valley, and from his experience people in the Valley work up to 20 hrs a day and sleep under their desks if need be. It’s anything BUT the lifestyle that most super affiliates enjoy.

Liston Jason, you can have your billion dollars business, I’m happy making several million a year while working just a few hours a day and living the Super Affiliate Lifestyle.

We’re not trying to be the next Bill Gates or Larry and Sergey, we’re NOT trying to build an empire that will consume our lives, we’re chasing lifestyle!

I gotta tell you…every time I go to the Affiliate Summit it just gets better and better. This time was definitely the BEST!

My wife and I flew in on Friday the 22nd (yes, Shilpi was finally able to join me for the entirety of the Summit, which made it really special).

This time I don’t just have pictures to share, but videos as well. A week before I left for ASW in Vegas I bought one of these slick Flip Cameras.

Check out the view from my room in the Rio :

On Saterday I had a opportunity to talk at Anik Singal’s Affiliate Manager LIVE Event. I talked about how affiliate managers can effectively recruit super affiliates, and what super affiliates are looking for in affiliate programs before they decide to promote it.

I hope I really got some points through to all the affiliate managers out there :

1. Unsolicited Emails and Phone Calls to Super Affiliates DON’T WORK
2. The Key to Getting and Keeping Super Affiliates is ALL about Developing Relationships FIRST

Later that night my friends and went to dinner at the Voodoo Cafe on the 50th floor of the Rio. The food was good, but the view of the city was even better!

Afterwards we all headed to Penn & Teller, which happened to be playing at the Rio.

If you’ve never seen Penn & Teller live I HIGHLY recommend it. Shilpi and I have seen them twice, and this time we had a front row seat! Penn & Teller is a wacky blend of magic and comedy that makes for an unforgettable experience.

That’s all for now, I’m exhausted…Shilpi and I took a red eye back to Boston last night.

I’ll be posting about the Summit for the next several days…about the parties, about my panel, and what I thought about the keynote from Jason Calacanis.

So stay tuned!

You know, I have to hand it to Shoemoney, he’s free T-shirt Friday’s are a great idea. I’m sure he gets WAAAY more stuff than he can even blog about.

I admit it, I also LOVE getting free stuff, I have at least 15 T-shirts that I regularly wear that I scored at the Affiliate Summit.

For the first time, I actually got some REALLY cool free stuff in the mail from, Clickbooth, a CPA network. Check it out :

I can’t believe they send me all this stuff, of substantially higher retail value than just T-shirt.

Forget the black card, the Rolex, once you start getting stuff like this in the mail you REALLY feel like you’ve arrived! LOL

Btw : If you’d like to send me free stuff, please send an address request to amit [at] superaffiliatemindest [dot] com and in subject line put : Address Request from <Company Name>

I can’t guarantee I’ll blog about it. If you send something really cool and I like what your company’s about, then I’ll be happy to share it with my readers.

Now I know I’ve been talking about a lot of advanced topics recently. I’ve had a number of readers ask : “Hey Amit, all this is great, but I’m just getting started. What you do recommend that I do?”

Now based on the amazing success that many of the students in my coaching program are having I recommend starting affiliate marketing with direct linking campaigns promoting clickbank products.

Why?

First off direct linking requires no website, that right, all you need to do is sign up for an affiliate id through clickbank and you’re good to go - it takes 2 minutes.

Building a website is probably the biggest hurdle many affiliates face when getting started in this business, that is, unless your a professional web designer! I know it was a HUGE hurdle for me, it took me weeks to learn enough html to make a simple webpage with tables that didn’t look like a 5 year old threw it together!

Needless to say, I don’t make my own sites anymore. I have people who actually know what they’re doing handle that!

Now what’s direct linking? If you don’t already know it’s where you simply put your affiliate link in the destination url of your Google Ad, taking the visitor right to the affiliate site.

How cool is that?

As long as your commission are greater than your click costs you’re making a profit.

This is by no means a long term business strategy, but it’s the FASTEST way to learn Adwords, and direct marketing, for that matter.

Here’s a few basic steps to take to get started :

1. First a relatively obscure niche in clickbank, a highly competitive niche will be difficult to break into with direct linking. Obscure little niches work great with direct linking though, as long as they has a decent sales page and a viable market.
2. Use a tool like Keycompete.com or Keywordspy.com to dig up a nice broad keyword list
3. Clean up junk keywords out of your keyword list
4. Use EfficientPPC to setup a ONE keyword per adgroups campaign, with two unique ads per adgroup
5. While you’re setting up your campaign with EfficientPPC, Setup clickbank tids for each keyword. There’s a number of ways of doing this, the easier way is to simply assign a number to each keyword and use that number as your tid (since clickbank severely limits of the tid to 8 characters you can’t use the keyword itself). This is critical to your success, you need to be able to track which keywords are actually making sales.
6. Launch your campaign on Adwords with a starting bid of 0.20. Closely monitor your campaign. (1) if you’re getting virtually zero traffic, up your bids. (2) If your getting lots of traffic ( > 500 clicks) and zero sales, you’ve probably got a dud, move on (3) If your getting traffic and consistent sales, you’ve got a winner, now you need to optimize and make it profitable!

I don’t have time to go into more detail in this post, but I’m planning a simple direct linking case study where I pick a clickbank niche and show you what I do, step by step, and how to make it profitable.

So stay tuned!

A little while back Linda Buquet of 5 star affiliate forum asked me to address the question of domain strategy.

A lot of affiliates are very confused about what domain to choose for their sites and fail to understand why the proper choice of a domain name is absolutely critical to affiliate success.

Here a few tips when choosing domains for your affiliate sites (Linda, this will answer your reader’s question) :

1. NEVER use a general domain like abcmarketing.com and use subdomains for different niches. You may as well shot yourself in the foot. You domain builds or destroys credibility with your visitor, instantly. They say never judge a book by it’s cover, well, people will judge your site by it’s domain, whether you agree with it or not.
2. You want your domain to be targeted as closely as possible to the niche and to convey what your site is all about. If your promoting an ebook about dog training, then you want a domain like : dog-training-tips.com. Your choice of domain will effect your CTR AND Your Conversion rate
3. When entering a new niche, buy MULTIPLE domains tightly related to the niche, setup the domains as aliases and test them to see which one generates the highest CTR. You’ll be amazed, a slightly different domain name can double, even triple your CTR.
4. If your domain name contains your main keyword it will boost your Google QS.

So when it comes to domains, choose wisely, and test.

For those of you who don’t know already, I’m excited to announce that I’ll be speaking on a panel at the Affiliate Summit in Vegas at the end of this month.

I’m speaking on the Super Affiliate Strategies That Work Panel along with some industry heavy weights : Kris Jones (CEO of Pepperjam), Zac Johnson (viral marketing extraordinare) , and John Chow (among the top bloggers in the world).

I’ve never actually met John Chow in person, so I’m definitely looking forward to that.

Kris, Zac, John, and I had a chance to discuss what we’re going to talk about, and all I can say is that if you’re attending the Summit I would make it your #1 PRIORITY to attend this panel.

We’re going to share some AMAZING insights.

If you’ve never attended the Affiliate Summit, or any other conference in internet marketing/search marketing/affiliate marketing world, I would strongly suggest you do. Not only do you learn a ton of useful stuff attending these conferences, but the networking opportunities are priceless.

Yes, most of these conferences cost $1000 or more just for admission, not including airfare and hotel costs, but don’t be cheap, it’s an investment in your future and in yourself (plus it’s a tax write off).

The Affiliate Summit was the first conference I ever attended in this industry. Honestly, I was blown away, I had no idea that affiliate marketing was THIS big! Attending this conference totally changed my business.

PS I’ll also be attending the PPC Summit in Boston in the beginning of March, hope to see some of you there

My good friend Anik Singal, founder of the hugely successful Affiliate Classroom and PPC Classroom, has done it yet again.

Through Affiliate Classroom, Anik is launching a program where affiliate managers can get trained and certified!

Imagine, actually having a AC Certified Affiliate Manager that actually knows what they’re talking about!

No offense to many of the brilliant affiliate managers out there, but let’s face it, there are TONS of affiliate managers who have NO idea what they’re talking about.

I’ve dealt with my share.

I think having a standard certification program for affiliate managers is a GREAT idea, and is a BIG step in moving our industry towards a new level of professionalism. Enough with the booth babes and porn hustlers! We, as a community need to clean up our act and get the respect we deserve for the larger business community.

Kudos, Anik for taking the initiative and doing this!

Anik is looking to nominate some outstanding affiliate managers for Honorary AC Affiliate Manager certifications.

So if you have an outstanding affiliate manager, please nominate them here & tell them how much you appreciate everything they do.

In a previous post, where I showed pictures of my new office, a reader of mine asked me to list the books on my bookshelf. Now I have already listed about 3 books that I highly recommend that everyone read.

However, I read A LOT. In fact over the years I’ve had to give away dozens and dozens of books, or put them in storage since I don’t have the room to store them in my place.

I can’t overemphasize the importance of reading books about business success and personal growth; it’s really the BIGGEST key to my success.

If you’re not reading you might as well shoot yourself in the foot, because you’re at best slowing down your business and at worst outright sabotaging your own success.

So here’s just a handful of books on my bookshelf that I highly recommend that you read, that is, if you’re serious about becoming a super affiliate and living the super affiliate lifestyle!

I’m not including the 3 books I previously recommended, so if you haven’t read my post about those 3 books, you can read it here.

Here’s the list of the books I recommend in addition to those 3 (NOT in any particular order):

1. Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
2. Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
3. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
4. Being Happy! by Andrew Matthews
5. Build to Last by James Collins & Jerry Porras
6. How to Have Power & Confidence in Dealing with People by Les Giblin
7. Marketing Sherpa’s Landing Page Handbook
8. Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy
9. Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel by John Carlton
10. No B.S. Wealth Attraction for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy
11. Change Your Thinking Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
12. No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy
13. Influence by Robert Cialdini
14. Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki
15. The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
16. Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing by Robert Kiyosaki
17. No B.S. Business Success by Dan Kennedy
18. Secrets of a Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker
19. Retire Young Retire Rich by Robert Kiyosaki
20. Infinite Wealth by Barry Carter
21. Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords by Perry Marshall
22. Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug

“But Amit, that’s a lot of reading! It’s gonna take me forever!?!”

Better get busy then!

These books will change your business, and most importantly, change your life.

Happy Reading!

Felix Leshno is not only a good friend but-without a question-one of the TOP super affiliates in the world. As a heavy hitting CJ Top performer, Felix, is always developing innovative ways to do affiliate marketing better and faster!

Check out this post I did based on a conversation I had with Felix.

Anyhow, I’m excited to announce that Felix has just released a new tool to build your PPC campaign at blazing speeds, called Efficient PPC, that puts Speed PPC to shame.

Plus it’s a fraction of the cost of Speed PPC!

Efficient PPC does everything Speed PPC does plus :

1. Allow Campaign Error checking
2. Ability to Add More Default Lists
3. Has 8 Build in Keyword Lists
4. Create Duplicate Campaigns Instantly - Useful if you want to separate Search & Content
5. Break Up Huge Campaigns into Smaller Ones - Instantly
6. Word List Editor

A huge complaint I’ve had about Adwords Editor, is the ridiculous amount of time it takes to load large campaigns when using the bulk add feature. Efficient PPC completely solves this headache.
With Efficient PPC the long wait times are gone, you can load a 50k keyword campaign in Adwords Editor in 1 sec instead of 15 to 30 minutes.

Try Efficient PPC now, it’s free for 14 days and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

PS You’re probably wondering why Felix didn’t do a big product launch? Simple first off he’s not an info marketer and honestly he makes so much money as an affiliate he doesn’t need to be. Secondly, He just wants to share this awesome tool with the affiliate community-at a fair price-so that everyone can benefit.