Plew…PPC Classroom 2.0 launch complete! We’ve now shut our doors and will now shift our focus to helping our students succeed.

We had over 6000 scramble to join PPC Classroom over the last 7 days and many are ALREADY having success.

Now it’s time to get back to my regular blog posting…..

Here’s a very typical scenario…

You find a HOT affiliate offer, it convert well, you’re making a profit and then you just focus on just building up that offer.

Well, let me ask you, did you bother testing similar affiliate offers in the same niche to see if they convert better??

Sure the offer your promoting may be convert well, but you may be missing out on a better offer and as a result leaving a ton of money on the table.

I’m made this mistake a ton of times! Yeah, I know it take MORE time to setup a seperate landing page for different affiliate offers and rotate them to see which bring in the most $$.

But you know what?

In a lot of cases you can just direct link to 3,4, or 5 different offers in your niche and see which one converts better before you bust out a landing page.

Here’s another instance where you want to start testing affiliate offers….

Let’s say you’ve been running an offer for a long time and suddenly it plummets, conversion go into the toilet. Chances are the offer your promoting has reach the end of it’s life cycle - it’s DEAD. And I’m NOT talking about seasonality here.

Now you could just drop the whole niche and move onto something else, BUT if you know the niche is long term and profitable then start testing other offers in that niche and hey you may find one that converts really well and revives your dead campaign.

This is a really smart strategy since you already have a ppc campaign and affiliate site in place. You just need to change your page so it’s pushing the new, higher converting offer.

Something BIG in the Works

Some of you may be wondering why I’m suddenly not posting as much as I usually do, we’ll let me just say thing I was in DC the last several days working on something BIG.

I mean REALLY BIG.

Pre-launch starts later this month so stay tuned…

My New Place in Boston

Shilpi and I are moving back to Boston at the end of November and we’re moving into a new place. It’s in a beautiful luxury urban loft in Back Bay, right on Newbury St!

Also, don’t miss the sneak peak at the interior.

I’ll give you a video tour once we move in and are done decking our place out with brand new furniture.

Anti-Poor Loser Program

Check out this site, it’s HILARIOUS!

Over 4th of July weekend Shilpi and I spend 3 days on Little Palm Island, one of the most AMAZING resorts in the world, located right in the Florida Keys.

Little Palm Island Resort is a tiny little island that’s only accessible by boat or float plane. The idea is total seclusion: there’s no alarm clock, no cell phone usage allowed in public areas, and no TV! The idea is just to relax and unwind!

The first night we had a romantic dinner on the beach :

The food was incredible. I had some grilled fish that they had just caught that day.

The following day we went on a snorkeling tour on a coral reef out in the open ocean. I’ll be honest, I was scared at first, I’ve never been snorkeling out in the open ocean before. It didn’t help that the water was a little choppy.

However, after I overcame my fear the view was absolutely STUNNING. I saw at least 10 types of fish & coral, barracudas, and a sting rays. I wish I had pictures to share, however, I didn’t have an underwater camera on me.

Later that day we had a chance to explore the island and see : a lifesize chessboard, a zen garden, the tide coming in, and some of the wildlife that inhabits the island.

Check it out :

The following day we went out for flatsboat fishing. I’ve never been fishing before in my life so I was more than excited when I caught a hammerhead shark.

No joke :

I won’t bludgeon you with what a weekend at this resort will cost you, let’s just put it this way, there NO WAY I would be going to Little Palm Island Resort if I was still working at MIT.

There’s NOTHING better than the Super Affiliate Lifestyle. It really is the ultimate dream life!

You’ve probably heard a lot of people talk about this, and I myself have talked about it.

So is ppc affiliate marketing just a numbers game? Is you success determined by how fast you can go through niche after niche, product after product, until you find a winner?

Here’s the problem with that idea : You have affiliates who go through 50 campaigns and are not making a cent of profit and then on the other hand you have affiliates who consistently find winner 20-30% of the time?

Do you see what I’m saying? If you’re just going through niche after niche, not making cent of profit, thinking it’s JUST a numbers game, then you’re in for a very frustrating ride!

Yes, to a large extent you have to go through the numbers to find a good niche but you also have to know what the hell you’re doing.

You could be in the most profitable niche in the world and STILL FAIL. In order to strike it big you have to do more than just find a good niche :

1. You need to bid on the right keywords for that market. That could be geotargeted keywords, niche speific lists/names, 1000s of highly targeted long tails, or just a really broad keyword list.
2. You need to know whether the content network, search, or both work well for your niche. Do NOT write off your campaign until you’ve tested BOTH.
3. Is your landing page setup correctly? That alone could be killing your conversions.
4. How about your Adwords campaign, is it structured correctly so you get a good quality score right off the bat?

It’s easy to right off a niche as a dud, but if other affiliates are having success in that niche you have to ask yourself : “What are they doing that I’m not doing?” or “What am I doing that they’re not?”

My education in this business began by asking these questions. By seeking out the knowledge, and persistently testing and trying everything I learned, I discovered what I need to know to succeed.

The answer is a little different for every niche.

Shew! Finally, moved into my new place in Coral Gables. Exhausted today, tomorrow I’ll give you a video walk through of my new place - it’s AMAZING. Miami is Amazing, my wife and I absolutely love it here.

I’m going to make this short and sweet, since I’ve been completely slammed the last week with moving in, and I’m still tying up some lose ends.

Here’s the Super Affiliate Tip for today : In PPC Affiliate Marketing there’s a Secret to every niche you go into. Once you discover this Secret, you’ve unlocked the key to making massive profits in that niche.

Really.

For a while now I’ve attempted to automate the process of going into completely different niches and cranking out campaign after campaign. Every time I’ve attempted this I’ve failed.

Every time I’ve taken time to carefully study a niche, dropped a bunch of money just testing it from different angles, I’ve succeeded.

So how do you crack the secret to big profits in an affiliate niche?

Whether it’s ringtones, dating, herbal remedies, or whatever, here’s what you need to do :

Test content vs search. Some markets do really well of content and poorly on search, some do great on search but suck on content. Some do great on both. You need to TEST THIS.

Test your Google Adcopy. This is a REALLY important and it’s amazing that most affiliates don’t take the time to really do this rigorously. You need to understand the emotional hot buttons in your niche and put them into your ads.

Getting your ads right can spell the difference between being highly profitable and losing money like a sieve - this includes what domain name you choose.

Keyword Research : Have you thought of all the different types of keywords you can bid on for your niche? Do you know what types of keywords generate the best conversions? Does having state/city names in your keywords help? Do keywords with words like “buy”,”discount”,”sale” in them convert well?

Understanding what types of keywords convert best in your market and making sure your bidding high on these keywords is CRUCIAL.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Make sure you put together a REALLY thorough keyword list that’s nice and broad.
2. Carefully tracking which keywords are converting and look for PATTERNS. Use what you learn to expand your keyword list and come up with new keywords ideas.

Bidding on the right keywords and getting good ad placement for the keywords that convert is a BIG part of the Secret to any niche.

In most cases newbie affiliate are missing 80%-90% of the converting keywords. They’re either not bidding on these 90% of keywords, or their bidding too low on them so they get barely on impressions for them without even realizing it. BIG TIP : Keywords that convert really well have a higher CPC.

Landing Page :

Do you know what type of landing page works best in your market? Review site, optin page, or straight sales page?? Look at what your competition is doing, and if necessary test several different types of landing pages to see what works best.

Do you know what type of copy or page layout will pull your visitors in to click through to the merchant and make a purchase? Keep testing until you find something that works.

I’m not going to lie to you, testing and studying are niches is not always fun. And sometimes it can be quite expensive.

But let’s put things in perspective, let’s say you bust your butt and spend a good 2 months testing and trying different angles on a market you knew is profitable. You finally found a landing page that converted really well, high CTR/high converting Google ad copy, and what type of keywords are pulling in all the sales.

Now you’re making $500/day in profit -> that’s $15k/month!

Do you think it was worth it?

PS Once you’ve cracked the Secret to a market you need to totally focus your effort on building up your campaign and scaling it like crazy. Don’t go into another market until you’ve squeeze every last cent of profit out of that market and have created a solid income stream that will last years.

Here’s a quick thought for you :

PPC affiliate marketing is an much art as it is a science .

I talk a lot about :

1. Optimizing your bids
2. Split testing ads
3. Split testing your landing page
4. Setting up your campaign properly
5. And tracking your metrics

This is the scientific, or analytical, aspect of affiliate marketing. And as a former scientist I, no doubt, really like this aspect of the business.

Now here’s what I’ve realized : you can be a quiz at the analytical left brain aspects of this business and still struggle to make it work!

Why?

Because there’s a right brain creative aspect of ppc affiliate marketing that’s just as important as the analytical one.

So what’s the creative right brain element to ppc affiliate marketing?

1. Understanding the USP (unique selling proposition) of the offer you’re promoting
2. Understanding what the emotional hot buttons are in your niche
3. Understanding consumer buying patterns in your niche
4. Writing your copy so it speaks the language of your demographic, whether they’re new moms, single male yuppies, or whatever. Do you even know what your target demographic is?
5. Overall, understanding the psychology of your niche and getting into the frame of mind of the customer

By really doing your homework before hand (5 point above) you’ll be able to write really effective Google ad copy (that will get a high CTR) and landing page copy (that will get a high conversion rate), and even do much more effective keyword research. Just doing this will often spell the difference between success and failure.

Have YOU been doing your homework before you promote a new affiliate offer, or are you like most affiliates who just jump in a niche and throw up a campaign as fast as they can hoping it will convert?

Even now, with all my success as a super affiliate, I feel a sense of anxiety when I launch a new offer in a new niche, especially an offer that my team has been working on for several weeks-developing the site, unique content, etc, etc.

What if I don’t make any sales?

Will this work?

Will Google slap my site?

Am I using the right approach in this market!?!

It all usually works out and the affiliate offer is a success (well at least 90% of the time)!

Anyway this anxiety I was feeling just the other day when I did actually launch a new offer really got me thinking about this whole process.

You see when I started affiliate marketing the success rate of my new affiliate campaigns/offers was about 10% (or less), and now my success rate is about 90%.

What happened? What an I doing differently? And most importantly what can YOU do differently?

Here’s a few tips that will help you out:

1. Talk to Your Affiliate Manager - I always talk to my affiliate manager and make sure that the affiliate offer is HOT (conversions are good) and I always ask what the top affiliates are making with that offer, the bigger the number the better.
2. Does it Work with PPC? - Make sure that whatever your promoting that it’s actually something that will convert well with PPC. For example, if the payout for the offer is $1 and the average CPC in that market is 0.50, then forget PPC. Your merchant or affiliate manager should able to tell you if the affiliate promotions is something that works well with PPC.
3. Market Research - My team carefully researches a niche before we dive in. We look at what other affiliates & merchants are doing. What type of landing pages their using, what type of keywords their bidding on, and what style of ad copy they’re using. Based on this analysis we get a good feel for the market and an idea how to can add value by improving on what other affiliates are doing. We develop our plan of attack from there. (NOTE: We DON’T use a scraping program to do this market research, and we DON’T rip off & copy other people’s hard work, and YOU shouldn’t either.)

The key is to take sometime to really understand what you’re getting into if you decide to promote ringtones, pay day loans, or whatever.

Do your freakin’ homework and your success rate will go WAY up.

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet.

A lot of people have asked me : “Amit, how do you pick a niche?”

Simple.

I go to conferences, such as the Affiliate Summit, and I talk to merchants and affiliate networks. I interview them, I find out which niches are hot and which are not.

Here are some questions I like to ask:

1. Do your top affiliates use ppc to promote your affiliate program?
2. How much do your top affiliates make?

If they say ANYTHING less than a $100,000/month I walk.

Think about it. Are you going to waste your time in a niche where the super affiliates are making a measly $10,000/month in commissions? If you think $10,000/month is a lot, then you need to THINK BIGGER.

Let me tell you a little secret: let’s say you can have 3 affiliate promotions, you can put the same amount of effort launching each promotion, researching the keywords, making landing pages, setting up your Adwords campaigns, etc, etc, etc.

With the SAME EXACT EFFORT you can make $10k/month profit in one promotion, $100k/month profit in another promotion, and $1 million/month profit in yet another promotion. IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE NICHE YOUR IN.

Many affiliate are stuck in the rut of promoting affiliate programs where they are capped at $10k/month.

Find the right niche and you will be blown away how easy this business really is.