HOT Tips from Yanik’s Underground…
April 4th, 2008 by 
Amit
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 :
- 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.
- Get a stop clock. Set it for 50 minutes. Work continuously on your MOST important money making activity for the next 50 minutes.
- After 50 minutes take a 10 minute break. Stand up, walk around, stretch your arms, get a drink of water, and just chill.
- Set the stop clock at 50 minutes again & continue working on your most important money making activity.
- 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.
- 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 :
- 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.
- Based on the search volume and conversion rate you get for each offer, you’ll know if it’s a winner or not.
- 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.
eben pagan joe polish market research productivity tips time management underground seminar yanik silver
Posted in General Internet Marketing, Industry News, Super Affiliate Mindset | 
Hey Amit
Cool post but you don’t necessarily need a voice recorder. I just dig out my phone and type it in as a reminder which goes off the next time I’m at a computer.
I’ve carried a voice recorder for a couple years now and when I really use it, my productivity skyrockets.
Just ordered the PPC Classroom DVD’s…can’t wait to get started on my new campaigns.
Live with passion Amit…
Wasn’t Pagan’s tips from his free website. The one that had like six hours of free video. I think tip #2 falls into the 80/20 rule. Most things in life do follow the 80/20 rule. Tip #3, I saw that on the Home Shopping Network. And I always have a pen and small notepad on me, bad habit I guess.
I watched Pagans Videos and they were good and then I received about a dozen emails. The problem for me with the emails was, they seemed to be the same as any other email. Nothing jumped out. Then again I am not wanted to produce a product for the market. His price was way too much. What really would I get for that much money? Amit we love you, but the only thing that will get us successful is what you have been teaching us all along. Hard work and never give up. I think I have not been successful because I have been checking to see what everyone else is doing and not doing my own work. We get lazy and chase after glowing headlines about big affiliate checks, waste our time on forums and never follow threw on the simplest of task that we set for ourselves. And then we get upset about a blog post that just doesn’t do it for us, yes me included. Well I think I have birdwalked all over this comment. Sorry for the rant, I’m really just upset with myself.
That’s funny you say that amit about your last post because I was going to leave a comment and say you notice no responds to this post LOL, only in a joking manner though.
I’d have to agree with you launching multiple offers is the way to go I have about 3 in mind right now and have launched 2 so far one through organic search and the other one is PPC.
I know the one through organic search will do well
for sure 
now the one through PPC I’m little iffy about, but reguardless I’m launching around 20 sites all together 20 through organic and 20 through ppc same offers.
Personally, I liked the tip on time management. Particularly when you’re working on the internet, it’s so easy to get distracted by something else. I like the stop watch idea and I think I’m going to try it. Thanks for the tip!
- Dave
Hey Amit,
I’m going to try that Eben thing. I heard it from him before but having you refresh my memory was perfect. Thanks for that.
This is totally off topic but is there any chance you can weigh in on Efficient PPC vs Speed PPC Beta….Speed PPC is launching a new version on the 8th that will support Yahoo Marketing now…I’m having a tough time making a decision between these two tools.
Thanks Amit,
Chris
Really good idea, one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that’. Kind of similar to endurance training in physical workouts. Really gets maximum effeciency. Eben is a great researcher, just charges waayy too much. Then again it’s the value that comes through when he adds in all these ‘free’ gifts (gifts are already free right?!) and usually priced at that (somehow!) hypnotic $97 or $997 price point! LOL. A bit unethical and shady if you ask me.
“Multitasking is an addiction…”
Too true.. Timothy Ferris advises writing out your SHORT to do list the night before, then first thing the next morning do the one or two most important things for the day immediately.
What’s with all the exclamation points.
How’de Amit,
Just stop, stop following all the so called gurus around like little puppy dogs, get busy, stay focused, and don’t give up, success will be knocking at your front door.
Response #3 above. I could not have said it more succinctly he took the words right out of my mouth, cheers to him! That guy, Pagan makes me psyically sick
Cheers,
Jim Novak
Nice ideas,
It reminds me the good old Pareto principle, it states that, for many events, 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes.
So keep on focusing those 20% of your time!
Thanks Amit for this great blog!
Shlomi Lavi
Since I have my phone with me most of the time, I either use http://jott.com or send emails to myself.
If you guys want a stop clock for your computer checkout this freebie:
http://www.appsapps.info/instantboss.php
I think I found it on slashdot come a while back, use it everyday
Try
http://www.workingcogs.com/interruptron - It’s a free Windows desktop application that has dramatically helped me improve productivity.
Basically, it does exactly what you say. It tracks your work time and rest time and shows you when you need to take a break. It’s a simple count down timer, with some advanced features like productivity graphs so you can see how much of the day you actually spend working–and on which tasks.
Highly recommended!
A simple egg timer will do the same thing.
Why would we spend $9,997 or $97 for that matter on a program that teaches us to use a egg timer and give pointers on how to take breaks. You will not get the secret information that they talk about. Sorry to be so negative here. But why would any marketor give out their secret tips at any price. I’m talking about their real secret tips that took them years to develope. No way, ever would they do that. Hey why not just ask for their email list as well.
Visit the adwords, yahoo and msn support docs and study real hard. Phones calls, emails and online chat to adwords support and your affiliatte managers are free. Get tips where you can and write every thing down. And finally just do the work and fine your own method of success and OWN it.
Used books are a good bargin on amazon, study, study, study…
I’d like someone here to answer just one question for me since Amit never answers any of his readers questions!
How do you go about decided what niches to even test? I agree it’s all about finding the right niche, but where to begin? shoes? chocolates? ringtones? how do you guys boil it down?
Well I use to say look at what the front page of paypal, ebay, overstoc and the like are promoting. Those items would not be there unless they werre selling well. But you don’t just want to follow the crowd into a fast trend which may die fast. Perhaps find out what is in need, think of some things that you need and promote that. Solving a problem is always a money maker. But it can be hard to spot the trends and problems. So thirdly I would say go with something that you like. I like sports, outdoors and health items, so I tend to gravitate there. Stay away from ebooks. Ebay will not let you sell them and this market like any other “money making” is really over done.
As for Amit answering emails directly I would say forget it. This blog and its commentors (you and me) are more a means to and end, and really don’t merit emails replied to. I make comments here but never expect to hear anything back. Google loves web pages that grow so we’re just like water to this web page. I’m sure Amit is busy, maybe. He has a lot of trips to go on, the gym for a photo shot, a game of squash, sleeping in, who knows.
May I suggest Jermy Palmer at http://www.quityourdayjob.com/ Jermy is really a great guy who does answer email when he can. He always seems to answer the questions on his forum, he is “top notched”.
Wow that was sure negative of me. Guess I ‘m just not in the “yeah team ” spirit today.
[...] I like multi-tasking, although the latest Guru-Du-Jour Eben Pagan says it’s a “no-no” [...]
I hear stuff like ‘…based on the search volume and conversion rate you get for each offer, you’ll know if it’s a winner or not…’ as far as testing offers in direct linking but what I can’t seem to find anywhere is how long or what volume is necessary to draw conclusions from these tests. Are we talking a week, two days, 1000 impressions?
Hey Amit, great site
point taken - In response to Jeff r#19 That’s what I like to know also “amit jump in here” I have been doing the ppc thing, and I’m beginning To understand how most of it works, but when it comes time to quit promoting the product, when should you stop. Let me tell you I do very well in getting the clicks, tight groups, building landing pages, a domain name for a particular product etc. hundreds of clicks no sales? And the most important question.
When your promoting a product and they say we convert 1 in 100 or 1 in 20 how can you verify this claim I know that when I look at the web site it looks very professional, and I would buy from this particular site.
If anyone can address this problem I would appreciate it, here’s a tip, you can see by looking at my site I don’t promote to affiliates ONLY. It’s a big world out there folks.
Cheers,
Jim Novak
Wireless-Home-Computer.com
I was just doing a drive by of this website (Note the quote about Joe Polish is not entirely accurate - he said that Joe Mercola told him it was worth that much).
To answer 16. You attack a market where you can reach it, people are already spending money and they are highly motivated (ie: either passionate or desperate), and you can make them an offer that is unique and highly attractive. Any high ravity CB product will give you a clue.
To answer 19. 100 Clicks should give you an idea, 200 is plenty.
To answer To answer 20. Don’t believe anything other than your own data. ie: never believe numbers you haven’t manipulated yourself!
Thanks James for the tips for question 20
Just the little comment that you made go a long way.
Jim Novak
My pleasure Jim!
I liked tip #2 regarding numbers. Very helpful.
I have a question regarding launching multiple (5-10) offers at the same time. Does Yanik mean for the same set of keywords and copy, use it on multiple offers. This way one can test how they do relative to each other, and pick 1 or 2 best ways at the end of it?
OR
Does he mean to launch 5-10 different offers that needs to be individually researched with own keywords etc. ?
James, or anyone else, 100 clicks over what period of time?
In response to question #25
Hey Darryl,
I don’t think it really matters what the time frame is at this point, if I receive 100 clicks, I would like to get a couple sales, this would make me happy.
If I run the campaigns for a week or 2 days it doesn’t matter, at least to me, anyway. That’s the issue. But for all the aspiring affiliates, you have to stay focused, and persevere, and tell yourself you will not fail!
I know this sounds like geek speak, but after all this is what I’am, every little failure is a step in the right direction.
Just keep focused, never quit never surrender. I hope this helps folks
To your success
Cheers,
Jim Novak
Wireless-Home-Computer.com
re: 24, Xin, Different offers.
From my pointof view that is too many. A little bit of research will prevent you diving into dud offers. (Forums are great for research).
re: 25, Jim is right. Timing is not really the metric. You want something that converts better than 1% so 1:100 sales is a good guide over whatever period it takes to get 100 clicks. For low volume markets that can take a while.