As many of you know, Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman and I have been great friends for quite some time now.  We joke with each other that we’re actually twins separated at birth.  Him and I share a lot of same qualities such as a strong work ethic and perfectionism.  We’ve both created successful companies and combined we have over TWO decades of Internet marketing experience.

After a lot of collaboration we’ve decided to start a new website catering to Internet marketers.  IMGrind.com officially launched this week and we’ve already received a lot of positive feedback.

Obviously we’re going to be doing a lot with our new site… July 1st we’re going to be launching our Mastermind Forums to a select group of “elite” Internet marketers and on Saturday, August 20th we’re going to be holding a very exclusive and limited seminar at the Hilton New York City (right before Affiliate Summit East).

This is just the beginning to something we’ve always wanted to do.  I’ve been a blogger on this blog since 2009 and Ruck used to own a very popular blog called Cash Tactics.  I invite you all to check us out at IMGrind.com and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!

Since it’s been a while I wanted to provide everyone with an update of what “us twins” have been up too. May 1st I made the move to Orlando, Florida where I now work out of Convert 2 Media’s home office.  For the past seven months I had been living back in Beckley, WV and realized there was not a lot going on in that town and it was becoming increasingly frustrated to grow my businesses at the rate I was looking for.  I’ll always been humble from my West Virginia roots, but it’s definitely not the best place for someone working in technology.  With my move to Orlando, I have the pleasure of working with some amazing people that really understand the Internet Marketing industry.

As many of you all know Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman (the CEO of Convert2Media) and I have became great friends over the last year.  For the last several months we’ve been working on our new coaching program that in my opinion will become one of the most valuable coaching programs on the Internet.  This has taken a lot of my time away from the blog as at the end of the day I simply cannot type anymore.  It’s going to be well worth it though as I strongly feel our program achieves our motto A.D.P. – Adapt, Develop, and Progress.  In the fast paced Internet environment you have to constantly be willing to change to achieve success.  Nothing angers me more then when I hear people talking about the “old days” like the money boat has already sailed away…  Friends, the Internet is very young and we’re just in the beginning.

John’s been busy completing his education down at Wake Forest in North Carolina but did come down to Florida to visit for the Memorial Day holiday:

Things are still going very well for our businesses and I’m very blessed to have sustained companies with long-term business strategies.  Richard is still working daily on our content development/monetization company and it continues to set records monthly!

I hope all is well with all of our readers, no matter where I travel I’m always receiving compliments for the material on this blog.  Thank you all, I’m glad to know our content has made an impact on you and your businesses!

Looking back at the last decade of my life, I could not have achieved success without quality web hosting.  Since my businesses rely on the servers they run on, 100% up-time is absolutely necessary to sustain my living.

Anyways to ponder this question further, I’m doing some independent market research on what users actually look for in a web host.  If you could please answer five quick questions on your experience, you’d greatly help me out!

Click Here To Take The Survey

I’m a split testing nut.  All the way down to the font size/color I like to test every aspect of my page to find out what will yield me the best ROI.  Anymore I like to maximize my investment (amount spent) on campaigns before pushing massive amount of volume.  One thing I’ve tested successfully is writing descriptive links…

Given my web properties I own, I stumble upon a ton of landing pages daily.  One thing I noticed (and began testing myself) are pages where outbound links actually describe the product/service promoted.  For example, if your landing page was promoting a skincare product called ‘ABC Lab’ you could write your link as ‘ABC Lab Wrinkle Remover’ or ‘ABC Lab Skin Therapy.’

Another possibility could be a website promoting survey offers where the links are: ‘Click Here To Take ABC Survey’ a more descriptive link would be ‘Click Here To Get $5 For Signing Up With ABC Survey’ (describe a real perk on their landing page).

By testing this on my pages I’ve sometimes been able to double my conversion rates.  This isn’t always the case, but definitely something you could consider during your next split test.

Good luck!

LeadCon here I come!  I feel like I just left Vegas and now I’m on my way back to meet my good buddy Ruck, Steve, Michael, and Derek for another successful show.  I do need to apologize for the lack of blog posts this month, but it’s been extremely hectic.

Current business has been keeping me busy and the rest of my team.  Unfortunately this has delayed the launch of Millionaire Mentors, but with the fast-paced Internet environment, we have to adapt and ‘roll with the punches.’  I’m however very pleased to announce we’ve added another ‘Super Affiliate’ to our internal media buying team and it looks like a relationship that’s really going to be beneficial.  I’m trying to realize I’m just one person and can’t do it all!

We’re not going to be exhibiting at LeadsCon, but we’ll be walking the floor and are open to affiliate meetings.  If you’re going and would like to meet-up, let us know!  I’m really excited for this show, this is the first LeadsCon I’ve ever been too.  I hope to pick up a lot of new connections that will continue to help grow my businesses.

2011 has certainly been interesting and I really cannot wait to see what the rest of the year holds!  I have to say, I’m very blessed to surround myself with a truly amazing team.

I’ll have more later this week!

Weekend approvals…  One thing I really hate.  My weakest link is my patience.  I’ve heard sayings such as ‘patience is a virtue’, ‘good things come to those who wait’, etc.  While a lot of times these are true, I cannot stand working my butt off only to be left to the liberty of some review team.

Since Affiliate Summit West I’ve been pulling 16 hour days to get our newest website up.  Finally late last week we completed everything and prepared for launch.  For this particular website we buy traffic on paid search.  Thursday evening we finally garnered some volume from Microsoft Adcenter.  Friday morning things were really rocking until 2:00 p.m. everything stopped out of the blue.

Given this is not an arbitrage website, and after confirming with the phone support team, it is not an editorial issue.  But for whatever reason I’m no longer getting any traffic.  According to Microsoft’s support team, they’ve escalated the issue to another department that is not available on the weekends.  16 hours a day for nearly two weeks and I’m left waiting to see my hard work pay off.

While waiting for Monday to get here I decided to start-up another campaign on pay-per-view. Again, I submit my ads, and am left waiting for the review team.

If calculated, how much money is actually lost waiting for a review?  Had I been up on Adcenter and pay-per-view for these two particular campaigns, I would be spending at least $1,000 a day on each campaign.

Assuming everything goes as planned, traffic will begin sometime tomorrow.  But even if I do start spending $1,000 a day per campaign tomorrow, there has still been money lost over the weekend.  A text-book example of a sunk cost (cannot be recovered).

How much would it cost one of these huge companies to run a special team to handle these issues on the weekends?  How are affiliates who work day jobs suppose to scale their businesses when they’re left waiting for a review?  If calculated, how much more profitable would the search engines, advertisers, and even employees be if they were open on extended hours?

</rant>

Affiliate Summit West 2011 is in the books!  In my opinion this was the best Affiliate Summit show to date.  The show this year was at the Wynn Hotel & Casino and they did an amazing job to accommodate us.  Richard and I always stay at the Wynn when we go to Vegas for vacation, but I was shocked with the Affiliate Summit group rate of $189 a night.  This was seriously a steal!

After battling through a blizzard I finally arrived in Las Vegas on Saturday.  As soon as I got checked in I met Ruck, Steve, Mike, Ryan, and the rest of the Convert 2 Media crew (minus Durham) at the Palms for dinner.  As luck would have it, there was an adult entertainment convention at the Palms, so upon entering, I had to battle through the massive crowd watching the adult entertainers arrive.  This was interesting to say the least (I’m pretty sure one of my buddies found his soul-mate, haha)…

Following a great meal of sushi and premium sake we all went to the Wynn for some gambling.  We ended up staying up until around 3:00 a.m. enjoying each others company.  Lots of fun, but I joked that we paid the salaries at the Wynn that night given the amount of money they took us for (it happens, right?).

On Sunday I thought the meet market started at 10:00 a.m.  After waking up at 8 I had a full meal and was ready to head down to get to work, when I was informed via text message from Ruck it wasn’t until noon.  I cursed a bit, but ended up going back to the room and working for two hours until the show began.

The meet market was a lot better than the one in New York City as there was enough room to actually move around and network.  A great way for some of the smaller companies to still have a presence at the show.

After the meet market concluded I joined Ian Fernando for his IANteract dinner at Switch in Encore.  This dinner was sponsored by Executive Fortunes and included notable names such as Riley Pool, Ad Hustler, Rohail Rizvi, and Eric Schechter.  Excellent food with a great group of guys.  Thanks again Ian, you rock!

Monday came early as it was the first day of the exhibit hall.  I enjoyed a quick breakfast at Society in Encore then headed to the show.  Being that I now work on the affiliate network side of things (as well as being an affiliate) it was interesting ‘seeing the other side.’  I was quite surprised at the amount of people that didn’t even know what CPA meant.  None-the-less we had a very successful day meeting with some of our top publishers, acquiring new advertisers, and maintaining current relationships.  I also spoke with several other companies that I work with as an affiliate and with my other businesses.

After being the last person to walk out of the exhibit hall on Monday, I went to test my luck with some of my buddies playing roulette at the Wynn.  After being down a good bit from Sunday it was very refreshing to see my luck took a turn for the best.  Eventually I ended up at Treasure Island with Ruck until 3:00 a.m. still gambling completely missing all the affiliate parties and even dinner.  It was nice to win though.

On Tuesday I again enjoyed a nice meal before heading to the show.  A bit pricey at the Wynn ($8 for a glass of juice) but very well prepared food.  I spent most of my day on Tuesday meeting with multiple associates and colleagues.  Even spoke with an individual about coming to work for one of my companies.  In my opinion, this is the biggest benefit to affiliate summit; networking.

My friend dk (David Klein) won $1,000 by dropping his business card in the Revenue Wire bowl.  At first he almost thought they were joking as he didn’t even bring business cards to the show (but did write his name and contact info down on one).  Jonathan Volk and I decided to celebrate with him:

Amazed by dk’s quick $1K win I decided to test my luck in a competition and played a scratch off ticket from Affiliate.com.  Oddly enough, I won a quick $100!  Thanks guys!  It was also very nice finally meeting Tom in person (he’s an avid reader of this blog).

Tuesday afternoon people began clearing out as the show was wrapping up.  All of us at Convert 2 Media decided we’d get together and have a fun night together to not only celebrate the success of the show, but the success of us working together.  The best thing I’ve ever done for my career is joining forces with the Convert 2 Media team.  Not only do I consider Ruck one of my best friends, we work very well together, hence are growing both of our businesses at break-neck pace.

We started the night out by having dinner at La Cave in the Wynn.  It’s the type of place where everyone orders a dish or two and everyone at the table splits it.  Absolutely amazing dinner (the Copeac crew was also there enjoying).  We then headed over to Treasure Island and gambled for a few hours, followed by Planet Hollywood.  My luck wasn’t near as generous as the previous night, but still enjoyed everyone’s company.

I’m now on the flight home and look forward to getting back home to continue taking my hustle to the next level.  I want to personally thank Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for another show well done.  The Wynn was well prepared and provided a MUCH better experience than the Rio!  It was also very nice meeting more of our readers, colleagues, as well as seeing good friends.

I can’t believe it’s that time of the year again!  In just a few hours I’ll be leaving for Las Vegas, Nevada to attend Affiliate Summit West 2011.  Vegas is always one of my favorite cities to go to and I’m really looking forward to this year’s show.  I recently spoke with Shawn Collins on this coming week’s conference as well as the phenomenal growth of Affiliate Summit.

This show is going to be a very busy one for me.  Not only do I now work with a select few affiliates at Convert 2 Media, but I’m also an advertiser, and of course an affiliate!

We got a nice six inch blanket of snow last night, so it’s going to be a challenge to get to the airport, but hopefully everything will go smoothly.  See you all in Vegas!

I’ve been a hardcore Apple fanboy since my younger days when I received an iMac for my 14th birthday that was pretty much my next three birthdays/Christmas holidays combined.  In all my years, I’ve never had to take my phones or computers to an Apple store to repair it nor mail anything in.  I’ve always been able to order the parts and fix it on my own despite not being very handy with a screwdriver.

However, my father, is an entirely different story.  I gave him a brand new Macbook and within 3 months he had already managed to break what I thought was an invincible machine.  After scouring Google results and Apple’s knowledge base and finding nothing to get past the problem, I didn’t really know where else to turn.  That’s when I stumbled across iResQ.com.

I know this is starting to sound like that flog you just tried to throw on Pulse for the 3rd time this week but I promise you, this service legitimately “wow’d” me.  The turn around was 7 days flat despite the holidays and the total cost was a mere $18! Turns out the problem was a broken hard drive and the computer was under warranty so they ordered a new hard drive from Apple, installed, and restored the hard drive all for free.

Tip of the hat and definitely a recommendation to take a cracked iPhone screen or other puzzling Mac problems to these guys!  And oh yeah, if you still haven’t switched over to Mac yet, you need to get your priorities straight…

I meant to make this post earlier this week, but due to my hectic schedule, I couldn’t get it out.  Anyways, this past Tuesday (December 28, 2010), made my twelfth year anniversary working online.  I’ll never forget December 28, 1998…

This was the day I was exploring the Internet on my new Gateway computer (Richard and I got for Christmas) and created my first website: http://www.geocities.com/sportsfan_13.  I still can’t believe what that one little website turned into.  Every time I go to an accounting meeting, a conference, the bank, etc. I’m fascinated what can be done in this country if you’re willing to work hard and never accept failure.

At the young age of 13 I never saw myself as a 25 year old Entrepreneur that’s made millions (I was planning on going into law enforcement).  I’m so thankful for everything I’ve accomplished and want this to serve as a reminder to everyone out there, that no matter WHAT your situation is, you CAN make it happen!

Happy New Year!