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FYI, I’m in LA right now at Yanik’s Underground Seminar, all I can say is that I’m TOTALLY blown away! I’ll give fill you in on the details when I get back.

Anyhow, here’s a letter I recently received from a reader in China :

“Dear Amit,

I kept reading your blog everyday since you started it last March.Your Blog is great.I learned so much from it.Your are my hero.Thank you for sharing your experiences so generously.

After reading your article:When & When NOT to Quit Your Job…,I thought a lot.I am in the same situation,and need your advice.

I am a graduate student in South China Normal University now and would get the Master ’s Degree in June. To find a job or not ,that is a question to me.

This is my situation:

1. Income for Clickbank by GG Adwords method:$8000-10000/month
2. but the keywords group is small,only include 20 keywords.Only promote one products.So it seems like the income is not stable.Anyway,it last for 5 months till now,and survived after two GG slaps.
3. My family expense is about $400/month.I had a boy nearly 2 years old.And my wife is a fulltime mother.
4. If I get a job(as a tearcher),the salary is about $500-600/month.Working 5 days/week,8 hours/day.
5. If I go to work, it’s hard to get my affiliate income to a new level.If I take affiliate as my full job,maybe I could do better.My next goal is $30000/month if I go full time in affiliate marketing.It is big money in China,as you know.In addition, I have learned so much about affiliate marketing and don’t want to give it up.

But the market is always chanceful, No one can promise the affiliate income would last forever.In the contrast,the job can give me a stable income in the long run.

So,what should I do now? Could you give me some advices? Sorry for my poor English.

Thank you in advance.”

I wrote back to him and told him that he should go full time, considering his affiliate income is OVER 20 times his living expenses. Congrats to your success!

Think about it, this fellow is in China, his English is not the greatest, and he’s a student - yet he managed to launch a successful ppc affiliate campaign that blows away what the average American makes.

And yet I continue to hear the same excuses from affiliates :

1. I don’t have the time
2. I don’t have the money
3. My English isn’t very good

If you how rigorous the Chinese education system is you know he doesn’t have a ton of free time on his hands. Students in China go to college to actually learn, not binge drink and go to frat parties.
Do you think my reader from China “had the money”? Most newbie affiliates spend $25- $50 testing out a campaign for profitability.

Do you know how much money $25-$50 is in China?!?

His goal is to make $30,000/month.  I have no doubt that he will.

Ever wonder why the Chinese economy is growing so fast?

Get off your butt, stop making excuses, and make it happen already!

I recently had a friend and a student go full time in affiliate marketing.

Good stuff, huh?

Well, not quite, my friend is making ZERO income as an affiliate and the student only has one small profitable campaign (he quit a strong 6 figure job).

I talk a lot about taking a leap of faith, and having the entrepreneurial spirit. But there’s a fine line between entrepreneurial spirit and being foolhardy.

Quiting your job before you have a SOLID affiliate income (at least 2X your job income) is about the STUPIDEST thing you can do, especially if you’re doing PPC.

Now if my friend and my student had asked me BEFORE they had quit their job whether it was a good idea, I would have told them exactly what I thought.

The best thing about having a steady job while building a ppc affiliate business, is that you can cover your living expenses with your job income, and thus allowing you to reinvest all your affiliate profits into more ppc adspend.

If you quit your job too early you’re drastically going to slow the growth of your business, since you won’t be able reinvest your profits back in your business - you’ll be LIVING on them or at least TRYING TO.

I didn’t quit my job until :

1. I had paid off ALL of my consumer debt
2. I was making 3X my job income

Now some of you may think I was being TOO conservative, but you know what, my profits took a big hit soon after I handed in my resignation letter. Luckily I was in a strong financial position so I was able to recover.

Had I quit several months earlier I would put myself and my wife (she’s a student) at the brink of bankruptcy.

Another thing to keep in mind…

Just because you have a profitable campaign or have replaced your job income does not guarantee that your affiliate income will continue to grow.

If your business was anything like mine it’s likely you’ll have LOTs of ups and downs in the beginning until you learn how to deal with :

1. Google SLAPS
2. Market Changes
3. Seasonal Changes
4. Changes on the Merchant Side

There’s a difference between making a large affiliate income and making a large & consistent long term affiliate income.

When you understand THAT difference you’re ready to quit you job.

This will be my last post on Paris. There are WAY too many things to share about Paris, so I’m just going to give you some key highlights.

A big highlight was The Louvre Museum of Antiquities, which is-without a question-the TOP Museum in the world. Shilpi and I literally ran through the ENTIRE Louvre in ONE day.

If you don’t know how big the Louvre is, it’s something like 5 miles if you go through every room.

No Joke.

Here’s some highlights from the Louvre :

Here’s some highlights from Notre Dam & Sacre Couer, the epitome of European Cathedrals (along with Westminster Abby!):

Also check out this shot of the Eiffel Tower :

Also, on our final day in Paris Shilpi and I had a chance to do some shopping.

I’m telling you, there’s stuff you can get in Paris you simply can’t find in US.

Between the 2 of us we dropped over 3000 Euros!

I bought my first REAL suit, a Ermenegildo Zegna suit. There just something magical about wearing a designer suit, the look, the feel is like NOTHING ELSE!

I wouldn’t bludgeon you with what the suit costs. To give you an idea, it cost 50% more than the Armanis they were selling and the tie alone was over a 100 Euros!

I had a chance to wear my suit that night when we went to a nice family run French restaurant :

This French restaurant was not a gourmet restaurant with Foie gras or caviar, it was more like something you would get if you had dinner with a French family.

And the food was REALLY good!

Yum!

I miss French food already!

Having just gone to Paris, I learned a few things about French people and French culture.

Here’s the 10 requirements to passing off as a French Person :

1. Don’t Smile
2. Be Skinny
3. Drink More Wine Than Water
4. Don’t Wear a Beret - contrary to popular belief, very few French people wear berets. During my time in Paris I saw ONE guy with a Beret
5. Give Yourself a French Sounding Name - Especially important if you’re looking for a job in France
6. Have long meals, and be sure to chit chat and gesticulate during the entire course of the meal - you’re allowed to smile in this situation
7. Wear designer clothes - French people (and Italians as well) really know how to dress sharp.
8. Wear nice shoes - no sneakers - the easiest way to pick out an American Tourist in Paris is to look at their feet, they’re usually wearing sneakers!
9. Kiss your friends on the cheek when you meet them
10. And, of course, the most important, speak French PROPERLY

What can I tell you about Paris?

It’s a breathtaking city. Just imagine, it’s 2500 years old. That’s 2500 years of history and culture. The city itself is a museum, with many of the building dating back 100s of years, and archaeological sites going back to the time of the Romans. Paris is arguably the epicenter of European history (along with London and Rome).

Also, it’s changed.

Really, people are actually VERY friendly now. I heard a lot of horror stories about how rude Parisian are, but my wife and I experienced none of that, everyone we meet was extremely helpful and friendly.

Are trip was both exciting and intense, we saw : the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Versailles , Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, dinner cruise on the Seine river, and one day in London via Eurostar.

The Food

Now the French are famous for their food, and you know what, the food was REALLY good. I’m not talking about foie gras, escargot, or cavier, everyday French food is delicious!

Picture this : My wife and I went to a cafe everyday, just down the street from our hotel. We had fresh squeezed orange juice (not ordinary oranges, mediterranean oranges -yum!), ham and swiss sandwich on fresh baked bread (hot out of the oven), homemade crepes, and French yogurt!

You have not lived life until you’ve had French yogurt, I’m not kidding, it’s INCREDIBLE.

Check out the view from our hotel :

Here’s our day at Versailles :

Here’s some videos from our Seine river dinner cruise :

Stay tuned, more to come…

A number of my readers have asked me to blog about the recent Google Slap.

For a lot of affiliates it was more like a Google Knockout Punch. A few of my friends had their campaigns, their life and blood, wiped out overnight.

I was unscathed, and I’m still trying to fully understand why.

Based on talking to some reliable sources here’s what I can glean:

1. A lot of affiliates doing dynamic keyword insertion, direct linking, or sending all their traffic to one page got slapped.
2. A number of affiliate lost nearly all of their content network traffic. It seems as if Google is looking for increased relevancy between the keyword theme (of your content adgroup), your ad, and your landing page.
3. Google is tightening the noose on what it considers a “quality” affiliate site.

One of my very small niches (where I was spending $90 bucks a day) got hit hard, my other niches were overall unaffected - some keywords got deactivated but my overall traffic levels are unchanged.

My slapped site was just a few landing pages with 20 or so articles thrown in to make Google happy, while my sites that were unaffected by the Google Slap were REAL sites.

What do I mean by real sites?

My unaffected sites share the following qualities :

1. The sites were structured as real sites. They didn’t look like sites that was designed for ppc with a bunch of articles thrown in to make Google happy.
2. The sites all have unique content added to them on a regular basis (in some cases an actively updated blog).
3. The sites are actively being promoted in ways other than ppc…through article & direction submissions, press releases, etc, etc.

In other words, my sites that were unaffected do NOT resemble thin affiliate ppc sites who’s only purpose is to redirect the visitor (from Adwords) to the merchant site. I suspect Google can now smell out if you’re just adding articles to your site to make them happy.

Final Thoughts :

Focus on making real sites that add substantial value, rather than making an affiliate site that’s just crammed with content for the sole purpose of getting a good landing page quality score.

Forget automated programs that make bogus promises of protecting you against Google Slaps.

Just take the time to do it right, it will save you a lot of time, money, and stress in the long run.

PS Also check out these related posts by Adwords Experts (and Good Friends) Josh and Geordie.

On a quick note my wife and I are back from Paris, we had a REALLY great time, will blog all about it soon.

For now I want to talk about where I see my business going. The fact is I don’t see myself doing strictly affiliate marketing for the rest of my life, I’ve already began shifting my efforts into more sophisticated business models.

I’ve already started an information marketing business through my Super Affiliate Accelerator Coaching Program that I’m doing with Andrew Wee (we are currently preparing for a second launch a month or two from now).

There’s HUGE income potential in information marketing, and one of the TOP guys in this space is a guy by the name of Eben Pagan. You may have heard of him, he’s the man behind the phenomenal success of DoubleYourDating.com.

I’ve been following Eben for sometime now and I’m blown away by his insights on business building and information marketing.

Check out this video where Eben gives a sneak peak at his $20 million/year information marketing business.

What’s cool is that he says the best way to get started is to first sell your own ebook straight up through Adwords OR promote an affiliate product through Adwords.

This is not surprising at all, the fact is ppc affiliate marketing is the best way to get a crash course on all the fundamental elements of online marketing & direct marketing.

Once you’ve master the fundamentals of getting traffic through ppc and converting that traffic to generate sales, you’re now ready to start building your own product and a customer list.

Let’s face it, the big money in online marketing is in making repeat sales to your customer list, not on the one time sale that we as affiliates focus on.

I’ve already started shifting my future projects in this direction so I can ultimately build a solid 8 figure business. This is my long term business strategy.

Do you have a clear vision of where you want to take your business 5 or 10 years down the road from today?

PS Yes, I will talk about the recent Google Slap, still investigating what’s actually happened.

This is a guest post by Melanie Tan.

Since Thomas covered the “L” word, it inspired me to discuss the “O” word… outsourcing.

By now, you’ve probably already realized that one of the things that set Super Affiliates apart is that they don’t do EVERY little thing by themselves. They zero in on their BEST ability/qualification and outsource the rest. Yes, there are pitfalls so here’s a few things you need to keep in mind.

One: Service providers are not mind-readers. YOU should know what you want done even before you start looking for providers. If you need a website done, you should at least have an idea of what you want it to look like! If you want an application done, you should be clear on what it should do in the first place. If you want content written, you should know what you intend to do with them (website content? article marketing? compiled later into a report? etc.)

If you’re not 100% sure of what you want, the best thing to do is provide examples. Choose five websites and tell your provider this is the ‘look’ you’re aiming for. Show links to a few articles online and say this is the ‘tone’ and writing style you want. This simple step will save you and your provider time, money and headaches.

Also, the clearer you are about your requirements, the better you are at selecting which service provider you should go with. Speaking of selection…

Two: Don’t always go for the cheap provider! Yes, you WILL get what you pay for. So how do you know you’re hooking up with the right provider?

• Single person vs. company. I started out as a one-woman provider so I’d be the last person to say don’t trust one-man firms but take note of deliveries. The disadvantage of single person entities is they’re prone to not deliver on said dates due to illness, etc. If it was a firm, then there’s at least a bit of redundancy and your project SHOULD still be delivered on time regardless of who got sick or not. On the other hand, most single person providers do provide that personal touch.
  

• Check their portfolios. Most online marketplaces show the portfolios of providers so take a few minutes to view them and see which ones suit your project best. If you’re still not convinced, ask for a PAID sample. For instance, in my company, first-time clients can pay for ONE article and we write the article based on their exact specs. When they get their articles, they can see if we meet their expectations to a T or not.
  

What about bigger projects? I hear you. This is a bit harder for copywriting projects as they are more costly. But this is how I’ve solved that. You can commission for a part of the copy to be written first. For example, pay $100 for headline samples and bullet point samples. You may think this is a big amount for a sample but don’t forget that the provider is already spending time on your material. So you’re not just paying for the headlines and bullet samples here. You’re paying for the time and effort already being extended on your project.

• Set up a call. Touch base with your provider before the project begins to make sure he/she understands what you want done.

Three: Lastly, if you’re outsourcing something, don’t just let go. You MUST still have the BIG picture in your head. Oftentimes, when I’m called in, hundreds of articles are already online for a client. When asked where these articles are, their keyword density, do they have meta tags, etc., etc., clients often don’t know. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve outsourced that part so it’s getting done, and that’s it. Hmmm… that’s like throwing money against the wind if you ask me. So what do you do?

You ask for reports. You verify where the articles are once in a while. In short, make sure you’re getting your money’s worth!

Online marketplaces I recommend:
Elance.com
GetAFreelancer.com
RentACoder.com
oDesk.com

Good luck! And if you’ve got outsourcing nightmares, share it on the Comments section

Melanie Tan heads an online content provision company that provides SEO articles and other e-content annually. She is also a professional copywriter who specializes in affiliate marketing landing pages.

When I was a younger, I used to think a lot about the different ways
people earned money outside of a job. I spent time reading random
books on multiple subjects - investing, the stock market, flipping real estate, etc.

The question that always seemed to pop back in my head was “what are these people doing that’s different than 99% of the rest of the world?” I knew most people hated their job and usually struggled just to make ends meet.

So why was it the “norm” to go to college, get a supposedly “high-paying” job and then spend the rest of your life secretly wishing you were doing something else?

I still haven’t answered that one, but the first one - yes.

These guys were simply using LEVERAGE.

This is a great story a good friend of mine told me a while back, so read on - it’s inspiring

John, (my friend) has niched himself as a private physical therapist that caters to a wealthy client base - CEO’s, sport figures, etc. One day he went golfing with one of his clients, a VERY successful entrepreneur, so he could evaluate his clients swing and see if he could pinpoint the source of the back pain he was experiencing. (Now mind you, this guy’s got serious cash. He even has a private gas station on his property.)

While they were playing, his client received a phone call from one of his business partners. They chatted for about 10 minutes or so, then continued to golf. During the rest of the day, the guy continued to make a few more calls back and forth until they finished the course.

Afterwards, they hit the bar to have a few drinks at the club. John asked his client, “what were all those phone calls about?” The guy said, “My business partner found a golf course for sale and was asking if I wanted to get in on it with him. I made a few calls to some other people I know and sold it for $4.2 million more.”

Let’s stop and reflect for a minute…. ok, times up. You and I are in the wrong business

John said “Wow, thats amazing. How do you come across a deal like this and sell it so quickly?”

His client responded, “I have spent 35 years building my little black book of contacts that I carry with me at all times. It contains about a hundred people out of the thousands I have met. Each one is a hand-picked, valuable resource and personal friend. It’s my leverage.”

There it was again. The “L” word.

If this guy can use leverage to this degree with a hundred people in his back pocket, what can we do for our business leveraging the Internet? I don’t know about you, but it really makes me think of the possibilities.

-Thomas

This is a guest post by Miles Baker

Split Testing, Multivariate Testing, A/B Split, Bounce Rate, Taguchi Method, and HeatMaps are enough terms to make your head spin. However, if you don’t know what some of these terms mean, or even worse - you aren’t using any of these methods in your marketing efforts, then you’re losing out on massive amounts of money and chances are your marketing efforts will be short-lived. Testing and tracking gives you cold hard data that practically makes no-brainer decisions for you! You know exactly what works okay, better, and best, and what doesn’t work, period.

Unfortunately, most online marketers and affiliates don’t even bother doing a simple split-test on their landing or sales pages. Ask most affiliate managers what page converts the best and they’ll tell you what they ‘think’ is best. Sorry, but only cold hard data works for me, and that’s why you need to do YOUR OWN testing and tracking, all the time! In fact, if you want to be a super affiliate you must always test, track, find out what’s working, adapt, and continually repeat the process over and over again.

Now I must make the disclaimer that I’m not a testing and tracking guru, nor do I know everything about the subject, but what I do know is what has worked for me, and that testing and tracking is a never-ending learning process that will not only increase your profits, but evolve you into a better overall marketer.

So now that you know the importance of why you should test and track your marketing efforts, let’s take a look at what’s possible, what kind of data you should be paying attention to, and what easy to use free and paid tools you can use.

In my experience it has always been possible, and sometimes too easy, to increase your CTR (Click Through Rate). You shouldn’t only be testing your Google Adwords Ads, but also split test the copy or headlines on your landing pages, test what checkout page works best, and test different merchants if that’s available. Also test different products, as well as direct downloads vs. sending visitors to a landing page. In essence, test everything you can! And don’t just take someone’s word for what’s working, because most people don’t do the easy work of split testing and they make assumptions or use hearsay to design their pages. Test it for yourself and I guarantee you will learn something new that will increase your profits.

What should you be paying attention to when you’re testing? Well, you not only want to pay attention to simple things like what gets the most clicks, but you should be looking at other factors as well, such as WHERE are people clicking on your page, in addition to what kind of links are getting the best click-through, such as images or text links. Also, look at how long people are staying on your page, and what is the bounce rate (bounce rate is defined differently by different tracking systems but in general it’s the amount of time a visitor stays on your page before leaving or hitting the back button), look at what other pages on your site they may be visiting most (this can give you great ideas on what your visitors may also be looking for).

Pay attention to what happens after you make changes; keep a log, notes, whatever you have to do so you know what’s going on and keep track of all the changes you make and the data you get from those changes. Think of yourself as a scientist, you don’t have to be perfect, but make sound decisions based on the logical data you receive, and also make sure you have enough data. How do you know if you have enough data to make a decision? Well I leave that up to the true math geeks and use a free tool at SplitTester.com. This free tool makes all my decisions a no-brainer.

Another tool I love is CrazyEgg.com because this site has a free version and gives you so much valuable data! If you aren’t using it sign up and copy and paste the one line of JavaScript on your site and you’ll start getting great feedback as to what visitors are doing on your site. CrazyEgg provides you with heatmaps showing where people are clicking, how many clicks each link on your page is getting, and even shows you where those people came from. From using this simple tool you will be able to gather great data you can then use to redesign your site or create split-tests.

There are a ton of scripts and tools for doing split testing, I won’t get into all the different tools available, but the one I currently use is called OpenX and can be downloaded from their site www.openx.org. This is primarily a banner rotation tool, but it allows you to do massive ad split-testing on hundreds even thousands of pages, and that’s what I use it for. Oh yea, it’s also free. Since the latest version I installed doesn’t show you ‘unique’ CTR, I use a special plug-in from www.openadsmods.com. The plug-in is $60, but well worth it if you want to split test ads, buttons, etc. across many pages.

So what about tracking? Well, many people use Google Analytics since it’s very powerful and free. For now though I am not using it. Why? Because as some sites claim, Google will use your analytics data to make decisions on how well you should rank in their natural results, as well as other factors when it comes to Adwords. Google doesn’t officially state this, however what do you think they will do with that data? This could be a good or bad thing, but for right now I’m finding success without using it, so until more information is available I’m staying away.

Here are some Analytics alternatives, however no matter what tracking system you’re using it’s important you are at least using something that will give you the data you need such as page views, visitor time spent on site, bounce rate, page traffic, referrer traffic, etc.

103Bees
Mint
Clicky
ClickTracks
Lodgy
AdFreeStats

Your webhost should also have some web statistics program built in, either AwStats or something else. These programs can be beneficial as well, and so make sure you use them.

I also recommend continually learning about testing methods, read up on definitions if you see something you don’t understand, and also don’t be afraid to start learning PHP as you can easily set up simple split test rotations with a simple PHP script. If you’re just a beginner you can also head over to places like RentACoder and have custom scripts written for as little as $10 to $20.

As an online marketer you really have no excuses not to be doing some kind of tracking and testing in everything you do.

Miles Baker is a 10 year Internet marketing veteran. For more information on him visit his website MarketingWithMiles.com