I want to share a story about how I nearly got
into a fist fight at a meeting.

To give you some background, I belong to a group
of local Internet marketers. These guys all have
full-time Internet businesses. They make anywhere
between $5,000 per month to $60,000 per month.

(Before I joined this Club I had no idea that
there were this many local people making a six
figure income from the Internet).

In any event, this Club meets every two weeks. We
meet in a separate building nestled in the woods
of a Rochester suburb. We discuss business ideas,
hot new offers, our websites, new techniques, etc.
We also talk about our goals.

At our last meeting I talked about getting 100
sales per day from a credit card affiliate program
called “Green Dot.” Tom, one of the members,
was rude. He said this to me:

“Ben, for months now you’ve been talking about
getting 100 sales per day on that offer, but you
have yet to do it. You are just all talk and no
walk. Either do it, or stop talking about it.”

I was shocked. I got really mad. My face turned
red and my palms started to sweat. I wanted to
fight this guy right then and there.

I also wanted to bring up all the reasons I
haven’t achieved my goal – like I’ve been
busy with other projects, I’ve been traveling,
etc. However, I knew he was right. I knew those
are just excuses. Inside I had to admit that I’ve
been talking about that goal for a while.

Instead of getting into a fist fight with Tom I
made him a wager. I bet him $1,000 that I could
generate 100 sales in a single day before the next
Club meeting. Tom didn’t hesitate one bit. He
accepted my wager on the spot.

I went home that day feeling nervous. I sat down
at my computer and thought:

“What did I just do? If I don’t get 100 sales
in a day, I’m going to have to pay this jerk
$1,000.”

I decided I’d better get to work. I looked for some
traffic loopholes. Luckily I found a big traffic
loophole that almost nobody else knows about.
(More about the traffic loophole below).

I started getting tons of traffic to the Green Dot
offer. Sales started pouring in. I was now getting
60 sales per day. It was good money, but I
wasn’t done yet. I went back to this same
loophole and worked it some more.

Then, something exciting happened. Sales EXPLODED!
I finally did it – I got 100 sales in a single
24 hour period! In fact, on Thursday I hit 105
sales. The next day I hit 117 sales. Yesterday I
hit 121 sales!

The first thing I did was send Tom an email with
the screen shot of my sales and commissions.

The next thing I did was grab my calculator and
figure out how much money this will bring in
each month.

I figured out that this one Affiliate offer is on
pace to bring in an extra $49,000 per month.

All I am using is a simple one page website,
a good affiliate offer, and a traffic loophole.

(I am now grateful to Tom for calling me out and
challenging me.)

There are two big lessons from this story:

Big Lesson One: The secret to success is Focus:
The reason I am now getting 100 sales per day is
because I focused on my goal. I had tunnel vision
and did whatever it took to reach that goal.

Lack of focus is the enemy of an aspiring entrepreneur.
There are a ton of shiny objects you can chase.

My business partner, Dave Clabeaux, and I are guilty of occasionally losing focus
and have to periodically refocus ourselves.

If you are currently juggling too many business
ideas, consider this your wake up call.

In other words, if you are simultaneously working on
a multi-level marketing project, while flipping
houses, while building websites, while selling vitamins
door-to-door, while delivering newspapers, while
starting a pizza shop, then I would bet that none
of those things will work out.

You’ll be working on each thing “half-assed”.

There is nothing wrong with having multiple
streams of income. In fact, the wealthiest people
in the World have dozens, if not hundreds, of
income streams from very different projects.

However, if you asked them how they did it, they
will tell you that they focused on one thing at a
time.

For example, Felix Dennis is the owner of Maxim
Magazine and has a net worth of 900 million. In
his book he says that he gets “tunnel vision”
with his projects. He focuses on one thing and one
thing only until it is successful. Even if this
means he must temporarily ignore other projects.

This is what I did. That credit card offer is now
generating $49,000 in extra monthly income without
too much babysitting.

In other words, I did all the heavy lifting up front
and the campaign – now a $49,000 per month income -
is now running pretty much on auto pilot.

2. The Second lesson is that there is a huge
untapped supply of cheap traffic available to you.

The supply is a direct result of the recent merger
between Yahoo and Microsoft search.

I just got 10,000+ hits in a day for 4 – 6 cents each.
Dave and I are purchasing blocks of 1 Million impressions at a
time for next to nothing.

Most of your competition is totally missing out on
this traffic source. They are still chasing Google
traffic and swimming upstream. The NEW way for
Affiliates to get massive traffic on demand is to
take advantage of the Yahoo/MSN traffic merger.

If this is confusing to you, just think about the
way that the stock market operates. When two
companies merge, the value of the stock goes way
up.

I am not sure how long this traffic supply will
last, but we are definitely going to milk it for
at least a few hundred thousand dollars.

(If you want to get in on this traffic too, then
I suggest you run – don’t walk – to www.adcenter.microsoft.com
and open an account.)

Before I go, I want to remind you that the LAST
DAY to register for the CPA Clinic and qualify for a
custom MLB quality jersey is TONIGHT at midnight.

This isn’t a trick to get you to register early.
We need to provide the jersey company with your
name and size. They are going to print your name
on the back of the jersey – just like they do in
the Big Leagues.

They need to have all the orders by tomorrow morning
at the latest. If you register after midnight you’ll
miss out.

Also, at this event Dave and I will be spending
more time than usual on getting massive traffic.

We’ll show you, among other things, exactly how
you can get 1 Million impressions for next to
nothing. We’ll reveal, in fine detail, how we
scale campaigns by getting traffic from other
sources too such as media buys, pay per view, pay
per click, and arbitrage methods.

I can assure you that the CPA Clinic will sell
out. If you’re leaning towards coming then I
suggest you register now so you’ll be guaranteed
to receive your custom jersey.

www.CPAClinic.com

-Ben

Here is the email from Ken McCarthy:

If you’re running a good sized Google AdWords
campaign ($5,000 a month and up), fasten your
seat belt.

Ken

Perry titled the call: The Death of Affiliate Marketing on Google and you can find the corresponding blog post here.

Amit stated that in some industries the number of advertisers has been slashed from 50 to 5 as the result of the Adwords bans.

There were other comments made that gave me the impression that Google is or will be banning any and all affiliate marketers from using its advertising service.

Frankly, I think it’s a bit premature to think that Google’s goal is to rid the World of Affiliate Marketers. My observations indicate that Affiliate Marketing still continues to thrive on Google.

I do know several advertisers who are now banned for life. However, all of the objective evidence indicates that Google is targeting a very narrow category of advertisers – not just people who are doing Affiliate Marketing.

Specifically, all the banned advertisers who I know personally had one thing in common:

They promoted (or were suspected of promoting) a business opportunity (biz-opp) product. Even more specifically, they promoted a biz-opp product which used Google’s brand in the product name, e.g. Google Money Tree, Google Profits, Google PayDay, etc.

Google Money Tree could be especially problematic and perhaps the catalyst of the recent activity. A close friend of mine was banned by Google because he used “Google Money Tree” as a keyword.

His training material had nothing to do with Google Money Tree. However, he could not convince Google of his innocence. In other words, a single offensive keyword led to his demise!

Most affiliates were banned for promoting biz-opp deals which used the Google brand name

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the owners of Google Money Tree were sued just a few months before Google went on its Adwords ban rampage?

My legal background reminds me of the mindset of plaintiff’s lawyers. When I worked as an attorney in a civil litigation law firm I quickly learned that plaintiff’s lawyers always look for the deepest pockets.

In other words, if there is any way to name the deep pocket as a defendant, a plaintiff’s lawyer will figure it out. If I am the plaintiff’s lawyer for the consumers who were wronged by the Google Money Tree product, and I know that they used Adwords as a vehicle to promote the product, then I’m going to do all I can to get the $153 Billion Dollar Gorilla on the other side of the table.

As a lawyer advising your client, the primarily mindset is cover-your-ass. I would be shocked if Google’s attorneys didn’t warn the Adwords department of a potential messy lawsuit if they continued to allow advertisers to promote Google type biz opp products.

I’m aware of other non-affiliate advertisers who were banned too. I can only guess that they were unfortunately caught in a wide over-zealous net to catch the real targets.

(This all goes without mentioning how Google probably does not want their brand equity to be used to promote a hyped up biz-opp program).

Otherwise, my own experience as well as conversations with affiliates and account managers tells me that Google still is happy to accept money from Affiliate Marketers in most industries outside of the business opportunity space.

You can see this for yourself. Do a search for just about any product outside of the business opportunity/work from home market and add the word “reviews”. You will see that Google is often selling most of this space to affiliate marketers.

For instance, take a look at “web hosting reviews.” Five of the top six spots are affiliates.

Google still sells space to affiliates in other markets

This isn’t to say that you need a product review website to use Adwords. It is just one of the many obvious examples where Affiliates continue to thrive with Adwords.

In fact, Google is actively building its own Affiliate Network – recruiting super-affiliates and new advertisers. (And no, all of this is not part of a big conspiracy to monopolize the Affiliate World.)

The bottom line is that it’s a little premature to announce of “Death” of Affiliate Marketing on Google because a narrow slice of affiliates are no longer allowed to use Adwords to promote business opportunity products.

I believe that people are quick to over generalize Affiliate Marketing and throw Affiliates into the same bucket with shoddy products and price gouging continuity programs.

In fact, I was at a marketing conference a few weeks back when a very well known Internet Marketer walked up to me and said that he would never do Affiliate Marketing because his conscience would not allow him to fool consumers into singing up for a crappy weight loss continuity program.

I wasn’t sure whether to be more shocked or angry at his ignorance.

Being an Affiliate isn’t about fooling consumers into signing up for the latest “flavor of the month” continuity product.

Put simply, Affiliate Marketing is selling without the face-to-face aspect of sales.

Remember too that Affiliates were originally called Publishers because they had already published tons of content on a topic before they became affiliates. In other words, there are many affiliates who own websites containing a mountain of content on a particular topic. These affiliates also use Adwords.

What reason would Google have in banning such websites from using Adwords?

On that same topic, there are literally thousands of legitimate well-established bricks and mortar businesses with robust affiliate programs. Dozens of affiliates make damn good livings selling reputable products and services.

Here are just a few examples of products I’ve promoted as an Affiliate:

• Zappos Shoes
• Turbo Tax
• Web hosting
• Norton Anti-virus
• 123 Inkjets
• Travelocity
• Automobile parts
• Lawn and Garden products
• Weight Watchers
• Pet prescriptions and pet products
• Sporting goods and equipment
• Rosetta stone language learning

The list goes on and on and there are thousands more offers just like them.

Indeed, the Affiliate industry is very much alive and well on Google.

With that said, I did agree with Perry and Amit on how affiliates need to provide content in order to survive. I didn’t recall that any concrete examples on how to add value as an affiliate. So I decided to list the two most effective approaches that work for my affiliate sites:

1. Product Review/Testimonial – what I mean here is a real testimonial. My best advice to new affiliates is to USE a product or service before you promote it.In fact, most of the products I promote I have bought for myself, my relatives, and my closest friends. I use their feedback in my sales message.As a consumer you get the inside perspective of how a product works, the sales process, etc. In other words, you get the exact EXPERIENCE that your website visitors are looking for. Plus, you will notice the downsides of the product or service which are actually a great addition to your sales copy.

   For instance, if I were to promote the Kindle as an affiliate I would write about how the battery life stinks if you accidentally leave the wifi enabled.

   These sorts of things give your sales letter authenticity and creates a stronger sales message to a potential buyer.

2. Use the “Super-Sub-Niche Angle” – You’ll discover that many products and services solve a host of totally different problems. You can really differentiate yourself by segmenting your sales message and tailoring your sales page entirely towards just one of the problems.Let’s take the Weight Watchers example. Everybody knows that Weight Watchers is for people looking to lose weight. How about if you design your affiliate website around one of the many REASONS a person is trying to lose weight like:

   - They want to look good for an upcoming high school reunion
   - They want to get in shape for an upcoming beach vacation
   - They are recently divorced/separated and need to make themselves “marketable” for the dating scene

   I guarantee that if you dedicate your website to one of these super-sub-niche categories, your visitors will be 100% more satisfied than if they went directly to the Weight Watchers website.

   These are just a couple of ways to be an Affiliate who adds value.

   In other words, this is a way to find your USP as an Affiliate Marketer.

In closing, I totally disagree with anybody who claims that Affiliate Marketing is now “dead” on Google or any other online advertising platform. My experience has proven just the opposite.

However, I do appreciate anyone who warns me against getting comfortable with relying upon any single advertising medium as a reliable traffic source. I believe you should constantly test out alternative traffic methods as well as alternative affiliate offers. (I’ve had $50K per year affiliate offers die overnight!)

The days of easy profits from affiliate offers are long gone. The only security in this business is to hone your craft and get really, really good at copywriting, buying traffic, negotiation/joint venturing, and any other direct marketing skill.

Hope you had a good Christmas.

Mike and I were running adwords search traffic to our web site. Google came through and slapped the campaign. I have modified the ad, changed the landing page, but it still won’t run. Am I better off scrapping the domain and starting over or is there something else I can do?

Thanks,
Brianne

Hi Brianne -

I had this happen to my campaigns too. However, the main keywords that got dinged were the brand related keywords. The more generic keywords are still ok and the content traffic is still steady. Did you experience this as well or did you get the full blown slap where it appears as though a human went through and disabled your entire account?

In any event, here is my advice:

- Scrap the domain. I’ve battled with this a lot. On several occasions I spent hours and hours and money revamping a slapped domain. I added articles, content, blogs, etc. but could never revive a slapped domain.

It seems as though Google has handed down a life-sentence for that domain.

- Set up your landing page on a new domain. I’ve had better luck the second time around if I select a very keyword rich domain. Specifically, if you look at your heavy volume keywords and then select a domain with those keywords in it. That usually goes a long way with your quality score.

You may also consider this:

(a) add content to your landing page – on your new domain. Specifically, I suggest adding tons of content below your main above the fold landing page area. This usually won’t hurt conversions – and may actually improve them – and is adhering to quality guidelines. So, for instance, perhaps write a half – dozen paragraphs and place that content below the fold.

(b) consider installing a wordpress blog on the domain too. This shouldn’t take too long. I can’t find where this helps in the quality score guidelines, but I’ve seen it improve things. Considering google’s love affair with Wordpress, it may be worth the 30 minutes it takes to install it and post once in a while.

(c) upload your new campaign with adwords editor. I’ve seen my *initial* quality scores be higher by 2-3 points when I use the editor as opposed to the keyword tool or a manual upload. What happens after that is unpredictable, but at least you’ll start off with a slight advantage.

I hope this helps. Don’t be afraid of the slap. Most Adwords marketers consider it a badge of honor these days

-Ben

I love Yahoo! sponsored search.

I love the price I pay with Yahoo! sponsored search even more!

I have always found the click costs are way less expensive in Yahoo! as compared to Google. Lower CPA’s, bid prices, great customer support are all reasons I love Yahoo! and am always sitting in their corner rooting them on to be a real competitor with Google.

They are finally making some great strides. Here are a few new things -

Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop – this is like Adwords Editor

Yahoo's Search Marketing Desktop for quick/bulk ppc campaign changes

Search Query Reporting – so you don’t have to use a third party interface and you can quickly mine out negative keywords.

I am thrilled that Yahoo! is now allowing advertisers to employ search retargeting. This allows you to show ads to people you know are interested in your product or service. The way it is explained makes me think of it like CPV traffic on steroids withOUT the annoying intrusive pop-ups.

Yahoo! already provides a lower CPA as compared to Google so the retargeting feature is like an added bonus.

Thus, for the most part, we focused more on optimizing our Google content network campaigns as opposed to dissecting Yahoo and MSN’s wildly unpredictable content campaigns.

However, after seeing quite a few very targeted content ads well placed in MSN content pages, I decided that MSN’s content network deserves a closer look. While I cannot say which campaigns we tested, I can say that they were affiliate offers in two completely unrelated industries.

We invested $2,500 over the course of 4 weeks and purchased over 4,000 clicks. The bottom line is that MSN’s content network, while still somewhat unpredictable, is much improved and can be a source of unbelievably targeted prospects.

Specifically, here are our discoveries:

1.    We found a handful of placements that reliably show conversion rates of up to 10X higher than similar traffic from Google and Yahoo paid search campaigns.

2.    Ads for products in some industries (Think financial niche) will bring traffic, but almost a non-existent conversion ratio.

3.    The number of different web properties is limited – even with a broad appeal type campaign, e.g. business opportunity, which had over 10,000 different keywords.

4.    You have good control over your placements including the ability to exclude properties as well as access reports on where your ads were served.

5.    Placement reports are available quickly, sometimes only 10-12 hours following the visit. (Compare this with Google’s placement reports which are available 48-72 hours following the visit)

6.    Placement targeting campaigns are an option although operating a placement targeted campaign is a challenge because of the limited number of available properties.

7.    The advertising reps are helpful and willing to set up a content only campaign if you request. (They’ll even identify keywords which are likely to trigger good traffic on the content network)

The bottom line is that MSN content traffic is much improved. Traffic is limited and sometimes poorly targeted. However, it is worth the time and resources to invest in a new test campaign to identify the small number of properties that consistently bring you targeted visitors. Of course, you should expect investing a reasonable amount of time up front monitoring your traffic and excluding any irrelevant properties.