Alright, so I recently stumbled across what I consider a somewhat “hidden” productivity gem of GMail but before you start throwing rotten vegetables at me and saying, “Yeah this was cool in December 2008 when it was released you fucking moron…” just be aware that I realize it’s old but I don’t think it’s very well known.  After all, an avid user of GMail for 4 years didn’t discover it till last night…

This tool is especially useful as a type of cloud software that can be used from different computers as Ryan, Richard and I use it since we all share one email address for our company needs.  Previously we had just starred emails and as they gradually got buried by more and more affiliate network offer updates, we would forget about them.  Alas, our problems are solved with Google Tasks!

I literally worship to-do lists as you probably know if you’ve read a couple of my posts before so I was naturally tickled to death to find a to-do list application that could be shared between multiple computers with so much power and ease.  Here’s an example of a great way to use Tasks to benefit your productivity:

Step 1: Select e-mail for task you need to do.  In this case, I need to renew a GoDaddy domain.

Step 2: Click “More Actions” and then “Add to Tasks” in order to add it to your list.

Step 3: Voila!  It’s in your to-do list and whoever opens the email will see this list.

Step 4:  You can also click the arrows on the right and get section for notes and what not.  Super powerful stuff to keep employees/partners on the same page.

Since tomorrow I’m doing a video interview with Clickbooth I decided to test out my webcam by doing a video blog! Enjoy!

Reflecting back on the last year I’ve noticed I’m spending a good amount of time optimizing my campaigns. Recently I’ve been asking myself ‘how much is too much?’ 99.9% of campaigns must be optimized before they can become profitable. But once they’re optimized and you’re seeing a nice return (100%+ ROI) how much more should you optimize?

During my reflection (while relaxed on vacation) I noticed I’ve sometimes spent upwards of three weeks focusing on one campaign just to squeeze a couple hundred more dollars a day. More landing pages, different calls to action, new creatives, multiple offers, etc, etc, etc (the list goes on and on). To add to my frustration, once an offer gets pulled or a traffic source limits the offers they’re willing to accept, it’s back to square one with optimization. Annoying!

Therefore I’ve decided to take a new approach on all of my campaigns. Once I begin seeing profit I’m going to set a goal to get to 100% ROI. So for every dollar spent I make a dollar in return. Once I reach this point I’m going to focus my time and effort on making another campaign have the same ROI. While essentially I may limit some campaigns I’ll end up with more campaigns.

How much do you optimize? Do you set a ROI goal?

For those of you generating your affiliate marketing traffic via pay-per-view (or cost-per-view) I want you to look at your stats right now and notice where the majority of your ROI (return on investment) is coming from. Nine out of ten chances your conversions are coming from keyword/URL targets that have very low clicks but high conversion rates. Since starting Internet University I’ve noticed a lot of people fail with pay-per-view traffic because they all want to bid on the same targets/keywords as everyone else.

A bidding war can be one of the worst things for you campaigns and even if you win the ‘war’ chances are another affiliate is eventually going to challenge you again. There are literally hundreds of millions of websites on the Internet. To be successful driving traffic via pay-per-view you need to take the time to go out and find where there is NO competition. Notice the below screenshot:

(I apologize I accidentally ran the report with another campaign that’s why the first two rows are black)

I took this from one of my Prosper installations yesterday. I setup a campaign just for this blog post to prove my point correct. Notice the target with 1,041 clicks. It has 1 conversion (0.10%). This traffic was around $0.01 per view. The offer I was using pays $1.50 so I lost $8.91 on this particular target. Notice the target with 8 clicks (views). Paying just $0.08 for these views I generated $3! 3650% ROI! This is what I like to call the ‘hidden gems’ of pay-per-view. This is where profitable campaigns come from.

The pain with this, is it takes many hours to find targets that everyone isn’t bidding on. This is one of the main reasons you’re not going to get rich over night. Campaigns take days, weeks, sometimes even months to build. The harder and more creative you work to find these targets, the more generous you’re going to be paid. So next time you’re setting up a pay-per-view campaign or when you’re looking at scaling your current campaigns keep this post in mind!

On a side note, I announced yesterday in Internet University that soon we’re going to be holding ‘competitions’. This is where everyone will work on a particular campaign together and we’ll all share ideas/landing pages/etc. We won’t share sensitive information such as particular keywords/traffic sources, but rather our ROI and campaign status. In my opinion this is going to create a new ‘hands on’ way to learn how to make money online. If you’re not signed up you may want to get in before the first competition begins (most likely the first week of August). You can do so at this link.

Man, oh, man, what a deal Amazon has just released.  If you are a college student you are eligible for a free one-year membership to Amazon School, a spin-off of Amazon Prime and a $79 value that I’ve been a member of for about 3 years now.  (It’s worth every penny even at retail!)  The only difference between the two services is that overnight shipping is $3.99 for Amazon Student vs. $2.99 for Amazon Prime but the free 2-day shipping aspect remains free for both programs.  Which really isn’t a big deal as most places are $10 – $15 at the very least for overnight shipping.   All you have to do is provide a .EDU email address and major and everything is golden.

It looks like Amazon is trying their best to compete with the high overprice of the  same books that universities sell.  I know that I spend a good $600-$700 a semester on books and half the time I don’t even use 1-2 of the books more than a handful of times.   The worst part is that the resell/buy-back of the books is absolutely terrible at least at my school, resulting in me selling on Amazon or Ebay anyways.

This rivals the popular back-to-school deal by Apple in which they provide a free iPod Touch ($200 value) for free with the purchase of a Mac that I’ve capitalized on twice thus far as a college student.  However, I think they have a slight edge as you can usually find a $100 discount most high ticketed items. Registering for this great deal now… if you’ve come across any other great back-t0-school deals, let me know!

If you think that media buys are no longer profitable since re-bill offers have came under fire, think again.  I wrote a guess post on Zac Johnson’s blog where I discuss how promoting CPS offers via a media buy can equate to some massive profits!  For those of you unfamiliar with Zac, he’s been working online as long as I have (since 1998) and is someone I have a ton of respect for.  He’s also a very successful and well known blogger in the Internet Marketing industry!  You can check out my guest post at the link below:

Cashing In On Media Buys Without Re-bill Offers

For some reason it seems like the July 4th holiday has the biggest effect on our campaigns.  Things seem to slow down around most all holidays, but this one seems to be the worst for us.  Yesterday I was almost timing it as I saw two of our better media buys quickly jump to a high CPA (cost per acquisition).  Today things don’t look to be improving much at all.  I may even decide to pause some of our high volume campaigns (ones without insertion orders) to keep from losing over the holiday.

Sadly, online campaigns are not the only thing effected by the holiday.  My girlfriend works as a server at a local chain restaurant while she attends college.  Last night she had to work and what normally is at least  a 30 minute wait to be seated (given it was Friday night), you could walk in and get a table in almost any section.  Very rare.  My father owns and operates a local hardware/lumber supply business and sees the exact same thing!

In my opinion people are out spending time with their family at barbecues, pools, lakes, etc.  I’m actually about to head out on the lake with my friend as well!  Are you seeing the same with your campaigns?

I want to wish everyone in the United States a very safe and happy July 4th holiday weekend!  If you decide to drink alcoholic beverages, please designate a driver!  Just one drink is too many.  No life is worth risking for a buzz.

I know this is the third post today but thought I’d let everyone know of the GoDaddy coupon that got passed my way once again… It makes all domain registrations comes to a total of $1.17.  Only one use per account.   The coupon code is SOCCER99.

Regardless of what kind of music you listen to while you mash the refresh button on your stats screen, there’s one noise that every affiliate marketer out there can relate to… the sound of cellphone interference.  I purchased some nice Bose speakers to jam out with while I get in the zone and there’s nothing more frustrating than a different affiliate manager calling me every 10 minutes interrupting me despite my phone being on silent.   A friend passed me over a guide Macgyver certainly would have followed in order for a solution with a couple of my tips.

1. Look for an old USB cable with a small nub/enclosure on one of the ends.  This nub contains ferrite beads that are a form of magnet that will stop the interference.  I found a great set of ferrite beads on an old Sony digital camera cord but I’ve seen them on printer cords frequently as well.

2. Open the little nub enclosure with a knife of scissors.  Some of them simply wont open without smashing them with a hammer, which I don’t recommend, haha.  (I crushed a set of beads before I found one with tabs to open it).  I don’t recommend cutting the cable unless you have to in order to get it off unless you need the cord later.

3. Tape the beads on the speakers, usually both works best, around the back near the cords.  I would recommend testing behind the speakers  and maybe even the top.  I noticed mine work better on the top and I don’t mind seeing them as long as it stops the annoying sound.

I’ve found it doesn’t work 100% with my speakers/oddly shaped ferrite beads combo but it’s definitely better.  The smaller, constant sounds of my iPhone generated interference are blocked but obviously a call directly in front of the speakers does still go off in a blood curling nature.   Are there any other remedies you’ve found for this problem short of putting your phone in airplane mode? Let’s hear it in the comment section!

Props to MacLife for providing the guide, definitely makes my day-to-day easier.

To be a successful Internet marketer you must succeed with optimizing. With every campaign you launch there are numerous items that must be optimized before you can become profitable (most of the time). Sure, sometimes you get lucky and hit a home-run with the bases loaded, but most-of-the-time your going to have to spend some money buying traffic before you can become profitable. One of the most important items to optimize is your landing page.

Whether you’re going into a media buy, ppc campaign, cpv campaign, etc. you need to test multiple variations of landing pages to find which one converts the best and provides you with the best bottom line. It is also important to note that no two traffic sources are alike. Traffic responds to landing pages very differently. Just because one landing page is working good on one source doesn’t always mean it’ll work good on the next.

Before I begin any campaign I spend a lot of time researching. Like an animal hunting for prey I’ll sit and watch my competition to see what they’re doing. Are they collecting emails? Are they sending the visitor right to the offer? Are they direct linking? Are they using testimonials? How long are they keeping visitors on their site? The list goes on and on. There pretty much isn’t an aspect that I overlook. I analyze the crap out of their campaign!

While preparing to launch I’ll then create multiple formats of landing pages. Depending on the action the user is required to complete (ie: purchase a product, enter email, etc.) I’ll decided how I need to go about presenting the offer. For example, if I’m promoting an offer that requires the user to purchase a product I’ll present it to my traffic using different methods:

(1) Review Site
- I’ll setup a site that compares this product to others. Before a lot of people like to buy something they prefer to read a review.

(2) Sales Letter
- This is pretty much a straight sales pitch. I’ll setup a website that discusses the benefits of the product and how it could benefit the visitor if they purchase.

(3) Squeeze Page
- Before pitching the visitor the product I’ll give them something for ‘free’ in return for their email address. Sometimes I’ll even send them to a lead gen offer and then mail the product I want them to purchase later (or may send a series of emails).

Depending on the product/offer there are more formats, but these are all I’m going to use for this example.

Once I begin sending traffic I like to let things run a full 24 – 48 hours before deciding which format converts the best. Sometimes the time of day can make a big difference so patience is a must. Also, if I’m emailing it may take more time to see if I’m going to be able to make the campaign work.

After my initial testing phase is up I review my data to see which landing page format is working the best. Normally you can easily tell within 24 hours, but sometimes you can be surprised. If the pages are running close (same conversion rates) you may have to let things run a little longer before choosing the winner.

Once you find the ‘winning’ landing page (the one that yields the best conversion rate and ROI) you are far from being done testing. I like to take my ‘winning format’ and then make loads of different pages with things switched up. I change the headlines, pictures, copy, buttons, calls to action, offers, etc. I’ll test up to ten different variations of landing pages at once to find one that performs a tenth of a percent better. Depending on the volume, a tenth of a percent could mean some serious money!

This past fall John and I became pretty frustrated with many of the software packages currently on the market to test landing pages, so we had our developer custom code us some software that makes this a heck of a lot easier. We feel that there are two main things to keep in mind while testing landing pages: click through rate and conversion rate. If a visitor isn’t clicking through to your offer they don’t have a chance at converting. If they’re just hitting your page and leaving, your landing page isn’t doing the job properly. The conversion rate then allows you to monitor how well the landing page pitches the product as you’re able to gauge the number of people that go on to convert after hitting the landing page (we make this software available for free to our students in Internet University).

In conclusion don’t become ‘content’ with your landing page. There is always a tweak that can be done to increase conversions more. Sometimes the smallest change can make a huge difference. Remember to keep your patience, but to optimize your landing page for every single campaign! Also don’t think you’re going to become successful by ripping others as there is a good chance you could be ripping one of their many tests!