If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Check out this very funny SEO Cartoon Quiz.

I only scored a 67%, just missed the passing score of 70%!

LOL

What can I say, I’m a PPC guy.

No, I didn’t write the headline for shock value, Stuff White People Like is actually a hilarious, somewhat edgy, and controversial blog.

Stuff White People Like doesn’t really make fun of white people, so much as it makes fun of urban hipsters & yuppies. The author of the blog is actually a white guy himself!

I love this blog because it describes people in Boston so accurately that it’s almost SCARY!

The reason I’m bring up Stuff White People Like is because it’s an amazing example of how POWERFUL blogging can be.

Here’s some mind blowing stats about Stuff White People Like :

1. Has over 14 MILLION visitors since it’s inception - started Jan 18th, 2008. No joke - check out the date on the first post.
2. Averages over 1000 comments per post - and that’s a conservative estimate.

Now go to Stuff White People Like and check out the cleverly placement of Google adsense ads, sometimes before a post and sometimes after.

Now based on the amount of traffic this guy’s pulling in can you IMAGINE HOW MUCH MONEY HE’S MAKING?

The blog itself ONLY has around a hundred posts.

Stuff White People Like has totally demolished any doubts in my mind about the enormous income potential of blogging.

So what stops most people from starting a money making blog of their own?

Two things :

1. Most people don’t have the technical know how to setup a blog properly
2. Most people don’t know the fastest and most effective ways to start getting a ton of traffic to their blog

Here’s some exciting news…

My good friends Anik Singal and Rosalind Gardner have recently launched a FREE Blog Classroom course on how to setup and start getting an avalanche of traffic to your very own blog.

I’ve been going through free Blog Classroom videos and I’m can’t believe the amount of free content they’re giving away. I wish I had had access to a free course like this when I first started blogging.

As an experienced blogger I can tell you Anik and Ros know what they’re talking about. Just based on the content they’re giving away, I can’t wait to go through the full course that they’re launching on April 29th.

So if you’d like to discover a simple step by step way to launch your own money making blog, sign up for the Free Blogging Course Now!

PS For those of you who decide to take it to the next level and purchase the full course on blogging next Tuesday, I have a very special bonus in store for you (note : must sign up through my link to receive bonus). Stay tuned for the details!

Okay, I admit, my last post had no point at all!

LOL

I figured I’d give you a teaser before I dished out some real meat.

So here it is, some hot tips (as applicable to affiliate marketing) that I picked up at the Underground :

TIP #1 : EBEN PAGAN’S TIP ON TIME MANAGEMENT

This is a tip that I implemented right away.

I’ll give you the abridged version, since there’s lots of other tips I want to talk about.

The biggest thing that KILLS your productivity is multitasking & distractions, the key is to FOCUS on ONE activity at a time, in particular a productive active that will grow your business and increase your revenues and profits.

Here what you need to do first thing in the morning :

1. Turn off your phone, email, crackberry, pager, fax, beeper, instant messenger, bluetooth headset and any other potential distractions. I know for a lot of you this will be near impossible. Just do it.
2. Get a stop clock. Set it for 50 minutes. Work continuously on your MOST important money making activity for the next 50 minutes.
3. After 50 minutes take a 10 minute break. Stand up, walk around, stretch your arms, get a drink of water, and just chill.
4. Set the stop clock at 50 minutes again & continue working on your most important money making activity.
5. After your second set of 50 minutes are up take a 30 minute break where you eat something, take a walk, or even a nap. Basically you want to try to completely relax as much as possible.
6. During this process you’re NOT allowed to drink coffee, soda, energy drinks, or any other stimulants.

Just start by doing that everyday until it becomes a habit, and notice your productivity, focus, and mental energy SKYROCKET.

I’ve been doing this - well, partially anyway - I’ve faltered quit a bit but I’m STILL seeing a significant increase in my productivity.

In fact, I have my stop clock going right now, I’m at 12 minutes (started at 30 minutes though)!

Multitasking is an addiction, so it will take sometime to get into this new routine. Just stay persistent.

TIP #2 : GOING THROUGH THE NUMBERS

Here’s a tip right from Yanik Silver himself. Yanik btw is a very cool, down to earth guy.

He was talking about how to quickly test a market & a product before making a huge invest of time & money into something that may be a dud.

It’s essentially a numbers game.

Yanik finds that 2 out of every 10 products/markets he tests are a BIG success, 2 out of ten are total BOMBS, and the other 6 bring in a little bit of money.

So you want to go through the numbers and test AS FAST as possible so you can find those 2 winner.

How does that apply to affiliate marketing?

You want to test different affiliate offers as fast as you can to find the winners.

Here’s how you do that :

1. Launch multiple (5-10) affiliate offers at once using just direct linking. If any of your campaigns get Slapped, move it over to Yahoo and test it there.
2. Based on the search volume and conversion rate you get for each offer, you’ll know if it’s a winner or not.
3. Also, test search AND content.

The more I do affiliate marketing the more I realized that picking the right niche (and offer to go with it) is EVERYTHING.

TIP #3 HOW MANY GREAT IDEAS HAVE YOU LOST?

Let me rephrase that : If you had remembered and implemented every great idea you had about your business, how much more money would you have made?

Let’s face it, we frequently have great idea : in the middle of the night, when you’re driving in the car, when you’re in the shower, etc.

So what happens? It slips from your mind, right? You completely forget about it. I’ve had it happen to me countless times.

Here’s a great solution to catching all those ideas that pop in your brain and then disappear:

Get a small digital Voice Recorder and carry it with you everywhere. If you get an idea then just pull out your voice recorder and start recording.

Joe Polish claims this ONE idea generated him $10 million last year!

WOW!

I got my voice recorder right in front of me right now.

That’s all for now.

I’ll share more insights in the future, too much good information to cover in one post.

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.

First off, special thanks to Amit for the invitation to contribute a post to his blog. Amit has set the bar high for good content on his blog, and I hope to live up.

I think this is a good follow-up post to Miles’ excellent post. As I read his post I started reflecting on my own business - you know, what I’ve done well, and what areas need improvement.

Well, in my own business there’s one area that could use improvement: more outsourcing.

I know, you’ve heard it before, right? Of course. But it’s true. If you analyze your business and find that you’re single-handedly running the show, congratulations - you’ve just identified your own bottleneck!

If you don’t start looking for ways to outsource some tasks now, eventually it will limit the amount of profits you earn and probably contribute to burn out as you struggle to keep up with everything. If that sounds like you, this post is designed to help you get started.

Where should you start? Website design and article writing.

Website Design

But wait, why would you pay someone to create a site when there are HTML editors available for free? Well, unless you are very comfortable with HTML and you have good graphics skills (i.e., you know Photoshop or an equivalent program), I don’t recommend building a site yourself. Let’s face it, affiliate marketing is only getting more competitive. If you want to compete in most markets today - you’re going to need a professional looking site with graphics - period.

But isn’t that going to cost a thousand dollars or more? I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to know that you can find people on Elance and/or Rent-A-Coder that will deliver a simple but professional looking site for $150-$250. Additionally, you may be able to reuse the same website template as you tackle other related markets. So, that one time investment may pay off two or three times.

Article Writing

Article writing is another good task to outsource. Whether we like it or not Google has forced us into becoming info publishers. I think Amit mentioned that he’ll have at least 25 original articles on his site before starting a new campaign. I do the same thing. The good news is that it’s not hard to find good article writers on Elance. In case you’re new to the process of outsourcing your article writing, here are some guidelines I use:

• Start small. When looking for a new provider, I’ll usually start with an order of no more than 10 articles. If the project turns out well, then I’ll try a larger order.
• Always go with a provider with good feedback. I like to go with people with a 90% or better positive feedback rating.
• Look for a provider with writing samples. When working with a new provider I like to see a few samples and I look for someone with “SEO” in their description. This indicates that they know how to write good articles for the web (e.g., Good and balanced keyword use in the title and throughout the article body).
• Only use original content. State in your project description that all articles must contain 100% original content. I’ve never received plagiarized content, but I’ve heard from others that it happens. Picking a good writer with good feedback will reduce the risk.
• How much should you pay? I generally pay about $10 an article. This seems to be the going rate for my markets. Bonus tip: if the person did a good job with the articles, make sure to leave positive feedback and tip over the agreed price. You want to start building relationships wih your providers.
• Find 2-3 providers. I like to have 2-3 “go-to guys”. In case one is too busy to take my project, one of my other preferred providers is usually available. I’ve also had providers disappear from Elance for whatever reason. This is another reason to use more than one provider.

Anyway, those are just a few tips and recommendations to help get you started. Of course, if you’re just getting started you may not have the budget to hire anyone at any price. That’s understandable. But really make it a goal that you will start to outsource at the very first opportunity.

If the idea of outsourcing sounds a little overwhelming or intimidating, don’t worry, once you get your feet wet it becomes easier.

Thanks for reading and here’s to a happy and prosperous 2008!

- Doug Partridge

A couple of weeks ago, My wife and I were invited to a backyard BBQ that one of her co-workers put together. It was a friday night, so my wife rushed home from work and we shot across town in time not to miss the party.

When we showed up there was about 30 people eating, drinking and having a good time. About half way through the night, I noticed a couple of guys across the yard who looked like they were having a heated conversation.

I’m nosey,  so I decided to go over and find out what the convo was all about

When I first approached them, one of the guys instantly stopped talking and scuttled away. The other guy just stood there with a puzzling look on his face, staring down at the lawn.

I said, “Hey, how’s it going? I’m Thomas.”

He introduced himself and asked me what I did for a living. I said “I work out of my house, I’m an affiliate marketer, what do you do?” After a long pause, he said “I’m a corporate bitch. I sit around making people I don’t really like money. Like that guy that just walked away over there.”

I said, “That sucks, is he your boss?”

He replied, “Yeah, one of them. But probably not on monday, I just told him I was sick of my job and I’m quitting soon to focus on my online mall full-time!”

“That’s cool.” I said, “So how long have you been running your site?”

“About a year now. it’s up to $300 bucks a month,  all from word of mouth.”

Now I don’t know about you, but $300 dollars a month for a years worth of work doesn’t seem like a lot to me, or enough to quit your job, but ok.

I thought about it for a second and said, “Do you advertise online, like on Google, Yahoo, etc.?”

He replied, “No, that stuff doesn’t work. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising there is.”

I said, “You really believe that advertising online doesn’t work? How do you think Google makes most of their money?”

“Ripping people off who don’t know anything about marketing.” he said.

“Do you know people make millions per year with contextual advertsing, etc.? You should really look into it” I replied.

“Yeah, but it’s mostly spammer stuff and porn peddlers, not legitimate businesses like mine. I don’t want to be a affiliate marketer like that.”

Still a little frustrated, he excused himself and walked away to “spread the word” about his online mall to the other guests and pass out his cheesy homemade business cards he printed out on the old colored inkjet that obviously needed a good head cleaning :). Ok bro.

Lesson for the day? Prejudging opportunity is why people stay broke.

Whatever. 

More money for all of us spammers I guess

No, I’m not going to talk about how great my life is, but about a awesome post about the Super Affiliate Lifestyle by Kirsty McCubbin . Kirsty is really living the dream life! Here’s a little of what she has to say:

“Every day I wake up, and it feels a bit like Christmas. I have a funny little feeling of excitement in the pit of my stomach and a great feeling of optimism. The cause? My one true passion in life, affiliate marketing. As soon as I open my eyes, that’s me… I have to get up, grab a quick tea and get straight onto the internet to assess what happened yesterday and plan my day ahead.

The other great thing about affiliate marketing, is that you don’t need to stay in one place to do it. You can take time off whenever you like and generally your earnings don’t suffer from it (within reason!). I’ve been travelling for the last 7 months and running my affiliate business on the road. So far I’ve been to Thailand, New Zealand, and half way round Australia whilst still earning 5 times my salary when I worked for an online marketing agency.”

WOW! Now there’s someone really living the affiliate lifestyle. She’s right when she says it feels like Christmas EVERYDAY.

My wife and I plan to spend a significant amount of time traveling the world when she finishes school. My wife only plans to work about two days out of the week, so that leaves lots of time to see the world.

Now I bet when Kirsty first started affiliate marketing she had a bunch of campaigns that were duds. I bet she lost some sleep trying to build her business and working full time at the same time. I’m sure she made some big mistakes, and hit some major road blocks on her road to becoming a super affiliate.

But she didn’t QUIT!

Do you think it was worth it for her, all the struggles that she went through when she started her affiliate business for the life that she has now? I can personally tell you that I would have done 5X-no 10X-as much to live the life I have now.

I know there’s a lot of you out there frustrated, losing sleep, hitting your head on the wall trying to figure out how to make this affiliate thing work. I emphasize with you, I know that feeling of hurt and frustration. Although I had relatively quick success in affiliate marketing I was involved in another business before I discovered this one. Yes, you guessed it, they were total failures.

Overall, it took me about 4 years of struggling, with no success, before I become financially free.

How many years are you willing to put in to live that life that I have, or that Kristy has?

Is 4 years of evening, weekends, a little bit of struggle and frustration now and then worth living a dream life, having time and money, doing what you’ve always dreamed of doing, and NOT having to answer to a boss??

You had better believe it!

Have you ever been in a niche where no matter how targeted your adgroups were, how much you split tested your landing page copy, and Google ad copy you just couldn’t get your affiliate promotion to convert?

Have you then gone into a completely different market, and the minute you launch your campaign you start getting a flood of sales? Within days your campaign was solidly profitable and everything just worked out almost effortlessly?

It’s happens to me a LOT!

The simple fact is that some niches are hot, and some are not. If you want to become a super affiliate, you can either go into a super saturated market, try to though it out against well entrenched competition OR you can find what market are REALLY hot and ride the wave.

What would you rather do? Where do you have better chances of becoming a super affiliate?

In fact I’m constantly looking for hot markets, by reading industry news, attending conferences, etc, etc. I focus my efforts on entering hot markets and dominating them.

You have to trust me on this, getting a solidly profitable campaign going is really easy when you’re in a hot niche, and nearly impossible in a saturated niche. The only danger in a not niche is that you can get lazy and not properly build and optimize your campaign. You must always think long-term, the niche may be hot now, however, the easy picking may not last long. Think one step ahead and always work on improving your campaign, and building a solid website and business.

So if you’re in a niche where you’ve tried everything and you’re just hitting your head on the wall, then you may want to direct your affiliate efforts where there’s low hanging fruit.

When I was a “wet behind the ears” brand new affiliate I thought public affiliate marketing forums were AWESOME.

Wow! All these affiliates willing to share their experiences, failures, and successes so we can all benefit. Sounds almost too good to be true? We’ll it should be no surprise to you that it is.

Now in the beginning I happened to stumble upon some really quality forums and learned a LOT from them. And for someone who knew next to nothing when I got started, the affiliate marketing forums were really beneficial.

However, public forums are a double-edged sword.

The more successful I became in affiliate marketing,the more and more I realized that most of the advice on affiliate forums was TOTAL BS. Let’s face it… 95% of affiliates on online forums, have no idea what they’re talking about. Most of these affiliates are making a few sales a day. What’s worst is that some of these affiliates think they’ve struck gold and are anxious to share there “breakthrough” with everyone else.

Taking advice from an affiliate who’s making a 3-5 sales a day can be dangerous, since they’re either newbies or have no idea what they’re doing. And if that offends some of you, then sorry, but that’s the truth. If you’ve been doing this business for 3 years and are still at 5 sales a day…then your doing something wrong and have no right to give advice on public forums.

I have completely stopped going to public affiliate marketing forums.

Not only is most of the advice on these forums DEAD wrong, the attitude of many affiliates can also be a hindrance to someone who’s trying to become a super affiliate.

What do I mean by attitude?

Well it’s no secret that a lot of affiliates use public forums to bitch about how badly their business is going, and how it’s Google’s fault, Clickbank’s fault, their spouses fault (for not supporting them), and any number of reason. But of course they never want to fess up and admit that they’re doing something wrong.

This is what I call a victim mindset. It’s really easy blaming something or someone else for all your problems, instead of taking personal responsibility. With this type of thinking, you’ll NEVER become a super affiliate.

It’s just amazing how much time some affiliates waste venting and theorizing about why their sales have gone down. If they spend half as much time bitching as they did working on their campaigns, they would be super affiliates.

One simple fact that some people never seem to get it that : SALES GO UP AND DOWN ALL THE TIME! And they go up and down for a million different reasons, just like the stock market. They’re no grand conspiracy about it, they’re no mysterious program deleting all your cookies or stealing all your sales.

So if you think you’re a victim of Google, Clickbank, CJ, or whatever, GET OVER IT. STOP spending so much time bitching on forums and start building your affiliate marketing business.

One of the easiest and most inexpensive ways to drive traffic to your affiliate site is to issue an online press release. Within minutes of being published, there is buzz around your product/service and people are flocking to your site! Is it THAT easy? Ah… no.

As in all things, there is a technique to this. But it DOES work. Remember the Alex Tew phenomenon of MillionDollarHomePage.com?

Alex issued an online press release about his newly conceived pixel site in September 2005. THREE days later, his online PR was picked up and featured on Digg and soon enough, it was the talk of the online community! His site was featured on BBC, CNN, and just about every major media channel. In January 2006, Alex auctioned off his last batch of 1,000 pixels up on eBay for a whopping $38,100. Alex Tew was a millionaire in five months.

Ok, you’re thinking “Alex had a unique product idea. An online press release will not work for my diet ebook.” Mindset people, MINDSET! Don’t undermine your business and how you can make online press releases work for you!

“I don’t have anything at all to talk about.”

Really? Here are a few ideas for you.

• launch of your affiliate site
•  launch of a new product or service
• release of new version of the product you’re selling
• business tie-ups or JVs
• launch of a marketing campaign / special promotions / online club
• receipt of an award
• announce winner of a contest you set up
• release of data gathering, survey results, research, etc.

Now, as in all things, online stuff is always slightly different than print stuff so here’s a quick rundown of web press release DO’s.

• Ensure the online PR has a catchy headline! Something worthy of a second look.
• Think online audience so short sentences, short paragraphs.
• The Internet is a highly visual medium so to increase the visibility of your press release – and its chances of being picked up by the media – attach an image to the release. This can be a photo of your product, a graphical representation of the data you are presenting, or even a screenshot of your website.
• Use anchor text that link back to specific pages in your site.
• Follow distribution guidelines. Online press release distribution channels such as PRWeb, PRLeap, BusinessWire, and others, have a reputation to keep so they will never issue a press release that is sloppy. Ensure your online press release is free from any spelling and grammar mistakes, and that it is written in the suggested length of the PR publisher.
• Press releases are expected to convey NEWS, not hype. Online PR distribution channels will outright reject your press release if it’s not newsworthy so stay away from any marketing hype.

Want to see an online press release in action? Check this out -> SAM Press Release.