WOW!

The response to the first PPC Classroom 2.0 interview has been nothing less than OVERWHELMING.

The first interview was release just last Wednesday and we already have over 15,000 pageviews and 250+ comments on the PPC Classroom 2.0 blog.

Anik and I were completed floored, we totally did not expect this!

Due to the tremendously positive feedback we’re getting we’ve decided to launch a video competition where a select number of winners will get 1 Year VIP membership to PPC Classroom. That’s a $2000 value for absolutely free.

The VIP membership to PPC Classroom may not be open up for months and will be highly exclusive.

So how does this video contest work?

Click here for all the details of the video contest.

We already have videos rolling in, look forward to seeing yours!

PS Interview 2 is ALMOST ready, here’s some good news and even some BAD news!

This blog, SuperAffiliateMindset.com, ranks #1 on Google for the search term “Super Affiliate”!

Check it out :

Honestly, I was shocked that I have successfully outranked top affiliate blogger Zac Johnson and industry veteran and super affiliate Rosalind Gardner.

If you’re wondering, NO, I don’t buy links or do anything to proactively get back links. All I do is post a couple times a week.

Pretty cool!

As many of you have already guessed, I’ve been quietly working with Anik Singal for the last 3 months developing the most comprehensive PPC affiliate training program ever:

PPC Classroom 2.0!

Mark your calendars, the official launch is Oct 14th.

Between now and then Anik and I are going to be giving you a taste of just some of strategies (that I will fully reveal in PPC Classroom 2.0) that I used to do $2.4 million last year all through PPC and affiliate marketing.

Anik and I are doing a series of interviews where he grills me about my affiliate business and the strategies I use.

Click Here to Watch the First Interview between Anik and I

For those of you who are wondering, yes, PPC Classroom 2.0 goes WAY beyond just the information that’s on my blog. I don’t want to reveal too much just yet, you’ll just have to wait and see.

For those of you who don’t already know, Content network can be a GOLDMINE, if you’re not testing it you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

Here’s why you may have tested the content network and not had any significant success yet : to succeed big at the content network you absolutely must structure your content network campaigns DIFFERENTLY than search.

Why?

The content network is a fundamentally different beast than search. For search it’s best to have any where from 1 to 30 (MAX) unique keywords per adgroup. And all the keywords in your adgroup should be very tightly related phrase variations.

For content you actually want MORE keywords per adgroup, anywhere from 30-200, and they should NOT be all tightly related phrases, but rather you want a broader array of keywords all related to one theme.

“So Amit are you telling me I need to create seperate campaigns for search and content, and also group my keywords differently?!?”

YES!

Here’s what you need to understand…

To determine which content sites to show your content network ads on Google looks at the overall all theme of the keywords in your adgroup. If you only have one keyword per adgroup (or a very small tightly related group of keywords) for your content adgroups then you’re giving Google a very narrow theme to work with and as a result you’ll get much less traffic, and from my experience, pay more per click.

Properly structuring your content campaigns will result in a HUGE increase in traffic vs just copying your search campaign and running your content traffic through there. I’m not talking about a 5 or 10 percent jump here. More like 3X to 5X!

“But Amit, to group everything separately for search and content like that, that’s a LOT of work!”

Better get busy than, that is if you want to become a super affiliate.

Btw, this is JUST one of many ultra advanced strategies I’ll be revealing (in much more depth than above) in the course I’m releasing with Anik Singal next month. Stuff I’ve never before disclosed on my blog.

So stay tuned!

You know know what blows my mind?

When a super affiliate will spend TONS of money on their home entertainment system and their car, but they’ll start budgeting when it comes to their office.

If you’re going to spend most of your waking hours in front of your computer, why not have the best computer and office setup money can buy? Or at least the best you can afford if you’re not yet a super affiliate.

Not only do you want to be comfortable and enjoy the time you spend working in front of the computer, but studies have shown that upgrading to a 30 inch monitor or multiple monitors can significantly increase your productivity.

Once I heard that I immediately bought a 30 inch Apple Cinema screen, check it out :

Btw, I just recently upgraded to this 30 inch screen and I gotta tell you.

I LOVE IT!

It really has significantly improved my productivity, now I’m seriously thinking of getting a SECOND 30 inch Cinema display. Only problem is I need to get a bigger desk first! LOL

I also upgraded to a real keyboard; the tiny apple wireless keywords suck!

Let’s flashback and see how I used to work :

This was my setup when I first started my affiliate business. What’s REALLY sad is that even after I went full time as a super affiliate, and I had the money to majorly upgrade, I was still using the same setup for almost a year!?!

My business paid a HUGE price for this, in terms of lost productivity, increased stress levels, etc, etc…

Do NOT make this mistake.

Does your work environment need a serious upgrade?

There’s one key skill that you absolutely must possess if you want to succeed, long term, at affiliate marketing.

Do you know what that is?

If there’s just one skill you needed in the next 5 years, or even 10 years, to succeed, what would it be?

It’s the ability to adopt to change.

Think back to how different ppc affiliate marketing was just few short years ago:

1. No Google Slaps
2. 0.05 min bids on ALL keywords regardless of how poorly your adgroups were structured or how untargetted your ads were.
3. Keywords were only dissabled if your CTR was below 0.5%
4. No one url rule. 10 different affiliates could direct link to the same offer on the same keywords and ALL show up!

Some of you veterans remember those days! Many sees those days as the glory days of ppc affiliate marketing. Lots of affiliates were making obscene amounts of money back then.

Look at things today, it’s a totally different world : periodic Google slaps, increasing bid prices, Google aggressively cracking down on thin affiliate sites, one url rule, etc…

All these changes happened in just a few years! The smart affiliates adopted to the changes, and shifted their strategy. These affiliate continue to make boat loads of money.

Sadly, many affiliate did not adopt and are either making a fraction of what they did in the old days or had their businesses totally wiped out.

Now in light of all the change to ppc affiliate world in the past couple years, I want you to step back and imagine how different the game will be 5 years from now!

My guess is very different.

Will you be ready?

Here’s a better question to ask yourself : What’s the best way to be ready?

I would have to say the best way to be ready is to anticipate the changes coming to ppc affiliate marketing. That is, you need to start building your business in such a way that you won’t be hit with future Google slaps, that you’ll be ready for increasing competition from more savvy advertisers and affiliates.

I have a highly refined system to building and launching affiliate campaigns, it’s a system that I’m continually looking for ways of improving. That incremental improvement will keep me one step ahead of the competition, as competition gets more fierce.

I’m anticipating change.

As far as creating value added sites that Google wants, my team goes WAY overboard.

Why?

Because again we’re anticipating change.

Do you have a system in place to continually adopt, grow, and improve your affiliate marketing methods and strategies? If not you’re at best falling behind, or at worst you’re dead in the water.

In light of banks going under left and right AND in light of my last post, I let me ask you this question :

Is your income dependent on Google Adwords?

Because if it is, you need to start thinking about how you can diversify your income ASAP.

In general, it’s dangerous to have your income all coming from ONE source. If that one source is Google, you’re flat out playing with fire.

If you’re just doing ppc affiliate marketing then the best way to diversify is to transfer your campaigns to Yahoo and MSN ASAP. If you’ve been waiting for the right time, well, the right time is NOW.

I spend a LOT of money on Yahoo and MSN. Only trouble is that Google still has most of the traffic, so without Google you would still take a big hit, but you’d be okay. I know super affiliates who do well over a million a year in revenue just from Yahoo and MSN.

No doubt in the short running, I believe ppc affiliate marketing is the BEST way to make money.

In the long run, however, you want to think about how you can create a more solid stable income that is NOT dependent on the whims of a merciless mega corporation like Google.

In this post I discuss a bunch of long term strategies.

Now if you’re just a newbie, just focus on building a full time income with ppc and affiliate marketing. But if you’re a full time affiliate it’s time to start thinking long term.

For those of you who are wondering, YES, my Google account is active. However, I’m now using completely seperate accounts for my new affiliate campaign that I’m launching - just to be on the safe side. Of course, I’ll have to rebuild my account history, but that’s a small price to pay for piece of mind.

Have any of you received a message like this ever from Google:

“It has come to our attention that despite multiple disapprovals, you have repeatedly submitted ads that violate our Editorial Guidelines and content policies.

Please consider this notice a final warning. If you submit these ads again or continue to run ads that violate our policies, we will be unable to run any of your AdWords ads in the future.”

I received this message after I recently uploaded a new campaign. Now this campaign was promoting a legitimate (big) company with a 100% legal service. Someone at Google got confused and by mistake took my ads as promoting something illegal. So ALL of my ads where dissapproved and I received the above scary message!

When I contact Google about this they basically gave me the middle finger in their reply. They basically said yeah you’re not promoting anything illegal BUT you have a bridge page so screw you anyways (I was actually testing the market with this page before I built out a full blown site).

So now I’m working with my affiliate managers to try to get my site whitelisted. My team is going to beef up our site with content and hopefully it will pass muster with Google.

Here’s the thing…

You need to tread softly with Google, they’ve been banning affiliate Adwords accounts left and right recently.

A good friend of mine lost a 6 figure income because Google shut his account down. Google claimed one of his sites had spyware - which was TOTALLY bogus. He was just promoting Clickbank ebooks.

He tried to work with Google to resolve the issue to no avail.

SCARY STUFF!

If Google doesn’t like your sites or what you’re promoting and shuts down your account down you’re screwed.

There’s NOTHING you can do.

Carefully read Google guidelines and try to stay in the straight in narrow as much as possible.

And make sure your landing page has substantial content or links to other pages on your site that have value added content. Google is cracking down on bridge pages like nobody elses business, and yes, I’ve heard of affiliates who have had their accounts shut down over having bridge pages.

This is AWESOME news for the affiliate industry. Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom has been choosen as a Finalist for BusinessWeek’s America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs.

Big congrats to Anik! It’s also nice to see our industry getting some positive press coverage, for once.

BusinessWeek will choose top 5 winners based on votes submitted by readers.

Click here to vote for Anik and really the affiliate industry as a whole.

Btw, Anik and I are partnering up on a BIG project. You’ll find out more details in the coming week.

For most of the offers that I promote I typically have between 5%-7% refund rate.

5%-7% is actually pretty good. A lot of affiliates get hit with 10%+ refunds, depending on the offers they’re promoting.

Even if you have just a 5% refund rate here’s why you need to be careful…

Let’s say you have a campaign that’s pumping out a 100% ROI, then a 5% refund rate will cut out 10% of your net profits.

Now most affiliates typically work on 50% margins, if that’s the case with you, then a 5% refund rate will reduce your net profit by 15%.

If you increase that refund rate to 7% on the 50% ROI campaign then the drop in profits jumps to 21%, if you increase the refund rate to 10% the profit drop is 30 freaking percent!?!

This is a big wake up call for those of you who are running offers on slim margins. For example, one of the offers I’m running took a big dip over the summer with 38% margins (still making great money because the search volume is very high). However, the refund rate was about 8%.

That 8% refund rate dropped profits by a ridiculous 29%!

Btw, here’s the formula for calculating the percent drop of your profits as a function of ROI (before accounting for refunds) and your refund rate.

% Drop in Profits due to Refunds = (1+ROI)*(Refund Rate)/ROI

where ROI is your ROI before you take refunds into account.

So are YOU tracking the impact of your refund rate?