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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.

If you’re following me on twitter then you already know that I’m helping Jeremy with the Black Ink Project. In fact Jeremy has been gracious enough to let me do 2 modules: “Pay Per Click Mastery” and “Outsourcing - The Key to Growth and Sustainability.”

I can remember back when I was a newbie affiliate struggling to make this business work, I had bought Jeremy’s Ebook QuitYourDayJob. I learned a lot from that ebook, it was just one more piece (a BIG piece) in the puzzle that helped propel me to success.

So as you can imagine it’s a big honor for me to have the opportunity to work with Jeremy, who in my opinion is one of the top affiliate marketers in the world.

So some of you may be asking what is the Black Ink Project?

The Black Ink Project is a 100% Free, no strings attached comprehensive course on affiliate marketing. It’s 4 weeks long with 5 one hour modules a week.

Here’s some exciting news…

Many of you may have heard that the black ink project is ALREADY sold out, all 1000 seats are taken. It turns out that 1000 people is as much Webex, the company hosting the Black Ink Project webinars, allows at one time on a webinar.

Well, I just got off the phone with Jeremy and he shared some exciting news with me :

After some negotiations and arm twisting, Webex has agree to open up an additional 2000 seats for the Black Ink Project!

This is a first come first serve opportunity, if you haven’t signed up for the black ink project then this is your last chance. The Black Ink Project promises to be the #1 COMPLETELY FREE affiliate marketing training ever offered.

Chances are that Jeremy may never do anything like this again, so sign up for the black ink project as soon as you can before those 2000 seats are gone too!

PS There really is NO catch to this, no upsell, no nothing - just solid content on how to grow your affiliate marketing business to the super affiliate level.

Here is an awesome poem about the July 2006 Google Slap, written by David Guggenheim, “Ocean Doctor”, one of my top coaching students.

David is a marine biologist and founder of 1Planet1Ocean, a non-profit organization “founded to explore, restore and sustain the oceans through strong international partnerships, offering solutions to the problems our oceans face.”

What’s cool is that David is using his affiliate profits to help fund his organization.

Anyway, check out the poem he wrote :
“An Open Poem to Google AdWords
by Ocean Doctor
July 17, 2006

A decade ago, from the hallways of Stanford,
came a new way to find things, just using a keyword.
Two grads used their noodles,
built something called “Google.”
It’s a verb now in Webster’s — who figured?

It was different, superior – a gem.
We bookmarked and embraced it back then.
Six colorful letters,
it really worked better.
“Do No Evil,” they said. We believed them.

In 2000 many web sites were dying.
But Google knew soon folks would be buying.
They launched a product called “AdWords,”
though pay-per-click then still seemed absurd.
Google knew it was a risk, but worth trying.

Of course AdWords went on to success.
With this tool we could build strong business.
Selling local or other nations,
stay-at-home moms or corporations,
we quit our day jobs to do this, no less.

But in the darkness something sinister lurked.
They monkeyed with something that worked,
and gave us “Quality Score,”
“user experience” it was for,
but clearly explaining it was something they shirked.

In selling and marketing we’re well-versed,
skills we needed to get rising click costs to reverse.
Sometimes we’d get by,
though we never really knew why,
but then in July of ‘06 things got much worse.

We went to bed without warning,
and awakened ripped from our mooring.
A terrible lurch
Our best words “inactive for search,”
what was a penny last night cost ten bucks in the morning.

So many found their campaigns in ruin.
Even hit those who knew what they were doing.
Not newbies, but veterans,
now addicted to acetaminophen,
which Google mails out if you boo ‘em.

Our reward for loyalty, millions spent?
We’re suddenly broke, can’t pay our rent.
We believed at the IPO,
but now live in Google Gitmo,
Without a clue as to why we were sent.

We plead, “Google, just tell us what to do.”
But the response is unhelpful and cool.
Their vague ramblings of a madman
belie “Quality Score” is no more than
a black box, contents shielded from view.

But perhaps most serious among this wreckage?
Google’s judging for itself what’s quality vs. garbage.
It’s the hallmark of ivory tower,
of a corporation drunk on its own power,
trying to reshape the web in its own image.

But assuming that Quality Bot’s airtight,
and for “user experience” it has insight,
please explain – and this is critical –
how it’s not plain hypocritical
that poor quality’s OK if the price is right?

Google, please put yourself in our shoes.
Say you bought a new car for your business to use.
It runs faithfully day and night,
then one morning, only turns right.
But to fix it, the dealer gives you only vague clues.

We understand selling’s risky, often dangerous,
but the tools that you sell us should be helping us.
Large and small business alike
saw loss of fortunes overnight.
If that’s not evil, than really, what is?

So the next step isn’t hard to construe.
We’re frustrated and angry with you.
Larry and Sergey might be deafened,
inside their 767,
‘cause that sucking sound is adCenter and Yahoo.

Don’t underestimate the web “marketeer,”
Whose resilience and spirit will persevere.
Big changes are underway.
Every Empire has its day.
But, Google, it’s not too late for you to reconsider…

We thought you were different, not like the rest
We trusted “…No Evil” I guess
And though naïve and extraordinary,
to fight corporations with poetry,
frankly, it’s all I’ve got left.”

When I last spoke with Anik Singal he was absolutely shocked with the success of the free Blog Classroom pre-launch course.

They’ve had over a 1000 comments! People are following all the free blog classroom videos, putting up their own blogs, and getting TRAFFIC right away.

I decided to check out what all the commotion was about.

Let’s get one thing straight , I’m skeptical about any product that claims to show you how to blog. When I first started SuperAffilatemindset.com I didn’t know squat about blogging.

Anik encouraged me to check out the free course and the outline of the full course that he and Rosalind Gardner had put together.

All I can say is that I’m completely blown away by the depth of material this course covers. I’m embarrassed to say that the Blog Classroom course covers a lot of material that I don’t know, but stuff that I SHOULD KNOW!

I can’t wait to go through Blog Classroom myself, I know I will learn a ton!

I actually learned about social media and blogging from Tom, one of my top advisers and partners. He actually setup SuperAffiliateMindset.com, helped me setup the all the social networking widgets, etc, etc. I learned a ton from him, and without his help this blog would not be where it is now.

Most people don’t have a blogging and social media expert at their finger tips to hold their hand and show them what to do to get a successful blog off the ground. That’s where Blog Classroom comes in.

Here’s just some of what Blog Classroom includes :

1. Easy to Follow Step by Step Instructions on Exactly how to Setup, Customize, & Launch Your Blog
2. How to Get a Avalanche of Highly Targeted Traffic to Your Blog
3. How to Make Start Making Money from Your Blog, Even a Full Time Income Stream! As I showed you in a previous post, you can make a killing as a blogger.
4. Detailed, Easy to Follow Answers to Every Possible Technical Question You Ever Had About Blogging. No Joke, this is a REALLY Comprehensive Course!

A lot of you have been asking about how to setup landing pages and Google Quality Score friendly affiliate sites. We’ll if you start a WordPress blog (which is what Blog Classroom shows you how to do) and add ppc landing pages to it, BOOM, you’ve got a high quality affiliate site up and running.

So if you want to discover how to quickly build an affiliate site that won’t get slapped by Google, Blog Classroom will show you EXACTLY how to do that. (Now make sure you have a customized Wordpress template and lots of unique relevant content on your blog or you’ll still get slapped - again Blog Classroom shows you how to customize your WordPress template as well).

Before you sign up for Blog Classroom I need to tell you about a exclusive bonus package I’m putting together with Andrew Wee.

SPECIAL BONUS FOR GETTING BLOG CLASSROOM THROUGH MY LINK

Top Blogger Andrew Wee, and I are putting together a HIGHLY exclusive bonus for the top 30 people who sign up for Blog Classroom through our link.

The first 30 people who sign up will get access to a live 4 part Advanced Blogging Strategies Webinar Series. For the first time (and most likely the last), Andrew and I are going to reveal our most closely guarded secrets :

1. Little Know & Unorthodox Techniques to Quickly & Easily Explode Your Blog Traffic
2. How to Create a Fanatical Reader Base that will come Back to your Blog Again and Again, and Tell Other People about Your Blog.
3. Why Most Blogger Fail and How to Avoid Falling in This Trap
4. How to Leverage Your Blog for Massive Profits & Not Just People Clicking on Adsense Ads

Andrew and I do not currently have plans to release this as a product to the public, this may be your only chance to get your hand on this information. We are opening this up for 30 people ONLY, so act quickly!

Sign up for Blog Classroom now and get access to Amit & Andrew’s Advanced Blogging Strategies Webinar Series.

Email your sales receipt to amit [at] superaffiliatemindset [dot] com to receive a sign up link for Advanced Blogging Strategies.

PS Based on the overwhelming number of people who signed up for the free blogging course after my post about Blog Classroom last week, the 30 seats for our Advanced Blogging Webinar Series will sell out FAST. So hurry!

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!

I had a chance to talk to my good friend, and super affiliate Jeremy Palmer today, and he convinced me to join Twitter.

Click here to follow me on Twitter!

Honestly when I first heard about twitter I was reluctant to get involved. Twitter is basically instant messenger on crack. Every time you post something, everyone who’s following you gets it, and you get EVERY message from EVERYONE who’s following!

At face value it sounds like an incredible time sucker. Jeremy somehow convinced me to try it and even twittered about me, so now I have a following already!

Pretty sweet, but now I have to start posting!

I know I post on my blog a lot less than I used to in the beginning, my goal is to have twitter bridge the gap.

I’m going to test it out and see how I like it. Who knows, I may get super addicted and end up twittering 30 times a day! LOL

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.

I just got back from Yanik’s famous Underground Seminar in LA.

It absolutely ROCKED!

It was by far the BEST seminar I’ve ever attended in terms of quality of speakers and the information that they presented.

The Underground represented a whole new world to me, it was the first information marketing seminar I’ve ever attended. As I’ve mentioned before, this is the direction I’m taking my business in, and the Underground is really the best seminar to attend to get up to speed on info marketing.

Here’s some highlights of the seminar :

1. Business Success Tips from a 23 year old who was a millionaire BEFORE he graduated high school
2. How to Build a Billion Dollar Company from the CEO of Zappos.com
3. How to Build a $20 Million dollar a year info from Eben Pagan.
4. A UNBELIEVABLE list of online resources revealed by Andrew Lock - I’ll reveal some of these in future posts.
5. How Dr Joe Mercola Build a 8-figure natural health mega-business
6. How 2 days traders build a $4M/year membership site -with NO ppc traffic

I gotta tell you, I was TOTALLY humbled by not only the speakers on stage, but many of the attendees at the underground. There were a ton of people with high 7 figure & 8 figure businesses.

I had a chance to spend a lot of time with my good friend Anik Singal. I always learn a TON from Anik, he’s extremely knowledgeable about business/entrepreneurship as well as affiliate marketing.

Here’s me with Anik and Evelyn (top advisor to Anik and a very sharp affiliate as well) :

The VIP dinner was also a blast. Check it out:

So what did I actually take away from the Underground ?

I’ll talk about that in future posts, so stay tuned!

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.

Today at PPC Summit, we had another round of info packed sessions. This is REALLY great stuff.

I picked up some real gems regarding Google Adwords today :

There’s been a veil of secrecy on Google’s part as to what’s the deal with history?

ACCOUNT HISTORY

There’s been widespread claims in the SEM world that people who have had Google accounts for years have a significant advantage (in terms of lower click costs) over newbies who are just starting out.

Now, one of the presenters actually got some answer out of Google regarding account history, and Google claims is takes only 4 months to overcome the disadvantage of having a new account.

So presumably there’s no benefit between someone who’s had a Google account for 1 year vs 5 years, once you’ve had your account actively running for about 4 months you’re on a level playing field - according to Google.  

What sucks is when you first start a new account you could be paying 30%-60% more per click than you otherwise would, just for having a new account!

CAMPAIGN HISTORY

Now many of you have heard that when you first start a new campaign you’ll get high click cost and/or poor ad positions until you’ve build some history.

But how long do you have to build history on a new campaign anyway?

Again, according to Google, in the case of campaign history it takes approximately 2 weeks to build up your history.

So over the first two weeks of building up a campaign expect your traffic to increase and your CPC to drop as your history builds.

There’s keyword history and ad history as well. How fast your keyword history or ad history builds up depends on how much traffic you’re getting.

POSITION NORMALIZATION

Position Normalization? Yeah, sounds like some fancy mathematical term! LOL

Position Normalization was put in place by Google on August 2006, and yet most people have not heard of it.

So what does it mean? It means that Google no longer rewards you JUST for having a high CTR, it’s now ‘normalized for the position.’ So if you’re in position #1 on Google and your CTR is 5%, while most advertisers get 7% CTR in that position, you’ll be penalized, NOT rewarded.

Your CTR only helps as far as it compares to how other advertisers fare in the same ad position.

In the old days you could bid high when you launched your campaign and build up a super high CTR by being in the first position; as a result Google would give you a high quality score. Then you just cut your bid by 75% and your ad would STILL be on the first page thanks to your high quality score.

Guess what? With position normalization this doesn’t work anymore. Unfortunately a lot of people are still aggressively promoting this bogus strategy - totally not their fault, Google slipped position normalization in while no one was looking!
Don’t waste your money by bidding high when launching a campaign - only benefit of biding high now is to build up your ad and keyword history faster - but you don’t have to be in the first position to do this.

I recommend you determine your initial bid as followed:

Assume average conversion rate : 1%=0.01 (5%-10% for pay per lead)

Let’s say you have a commission payout of : $X

I would recommend that you start bidding 1% x $X = 0.01 x $X

Why? Because the Conversion rate times the Commission (affiliate payout) = EPC (earnings per click)

Now if you’re bid = EPC you can expect to break even at this point. Then you can just adjust your bids from there as you collect data.

Now this is just a rule of thumb, but it works well in most cases. It works best if you actually KNOW what your EPC or your conversion rate is for ppc traffic (ask your affiliate manager).

It was SOOO worth paying $1000 to go to the PPC Summit, just for these few tidbits I got on the second day!

If YOU want to be a super affiliate you have to be absolutely hungry for the knowledge.

I’ve been hungry since day one, and I’m still seeking to take my game to the next level.