I am in the process of opening a coffee kiosk in one of the malls in DFW area, and the mall is more than happy to entertain the idea.  Everything is approved by the mall, including the architectural designs, the colors etc.  Talked to the Health Department guy, and everything is great.  All he asked me to add in the kiosk was a 3 compartment sink to be able to wash the largest utensil, and a hand sink.  Fine.

Now Comes the building department dumbass.  I have been going back and forth with him, trying to explain that this is just a 10×12 size kiosk, serving only coffee (espresso, cappuccino etc) and nothing else.  At first he was adamant that I add a mop sink in it. (WTF?????)  I explained to him that the mall housekeeping does the cleaning around the kiosk, and they have their own mops and mop sinks.  Ok cool.  Next he comes up with, “Oh, you will also need a grease trap”  WTF????????????????? A grease trap?  For what?  I am not cooking anything.  I am not serving any food.  Just coffee.  But according to the genius, “…coffee has oils”.

How do I prevent this guy from f-ing me around?  I checked all the Starbucks around the mall (and there are plenty) and asked them if they have a “grease trap”, which they don’t.  Not a single Starbucks in the area has a grease trap, and they even serve some food (sandwiches, cakes etc).

I have a meeting with the guy next week, hopefully I can convince him that he is just full of s**t.

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I came across this post by Jeremy Palmer, founder of the Affiliate Classroom, via Uberaffiliate’s comment section. In the post Jeremy talks about the mistakes that affiliates make. Sorry, “Dangerous Mistakes Experienced Affiliates Make“. It is a very interesting post, and I really don’t feel terrible about the dumb shit that I have been doing with my campaigns, considering I am just a n00b. One part of the post really caught my attention, which is kind of along the lines of my previous post.

I had a merchant tell me that their current landing page was the top converter. They had done months of multi-variate tests and come to the conclusion they couldn’t move the needle any further. I decided to do my own landing page, bypassing theirs, and linked directly to the shopping cart – my conversions doubled.

So here is the thing. Rehashing my previous post. How many different ways can you really do a landing page. I did a simple search for “ringtones” and pretty much all the landing pages had the the same crap – enter your phone number and pick your carrier, with just different graphics. I think that the users will get banner blindness or should we say landing page blindness. How would it work if you did one of the following?:

• A landing page that was targeted to just a particular carrier – “Ringtones for AT&T“
• A landing page that was targeted to just a particular brand – “Ringtones for Motorola Phones“
• A landing page that was targeted (super targeted) to a specific phone model which is hot or newest – “Ringtones for Palm Centro” or “Ringtones for HTC Tilt” etc

Have any of you guys really done that kind of targeting? Would surely be interesting to find out.

edit// Just found out that you can do a link directly to the Artist though Thumbplay on Azoogle like this – ‘http://x.azjmp.com/1GmcC?sub=kristen&thpartist=kristen’ Ringtones By Ashley Alexandra Dupré aka Kristen of the Elliot Spitzer Fame

Kristen

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You can find 100s of sites that will tell you what to do and what not to do with and on your landing page.  I was trying to come up with different ideas on “what else” to do with a landing page.  I am not talking just about sites telling you to make 1 page 1 offer, or 1 page multiple offers etc. What I am talking about is this – 1 product, but different ways to make the landing page, and then testing it out.

To keep up with the previous posts, lets say you are promoting “bluetooths”. Now, there are multiple ways that you can promote this:

1. A landing page where you pick top 5 bluetooths, and run a compare, review type offers.

2. A landing page where you pick a brand – for instance “Motorola” and promote 5 Motorola bluetooths. You can do this with other brands as well. And then run a compare, review type offers.

3. A landing page where you promote a single bluetooth – eg. Motorola h700 (the most popular one) and promoting your ppc campaign with a very targeted keyword of Motorola h700. I am assuming you would get a decent roi, since if a user is clicking on your “Buy Motorola H700″ ad, he is very likely looking to buy that headset.

4. A landing page where you give the user options on different types of bluetooths – headset, car, computer dongle, bluetooth printers, bluetooth phones etc. Not sure how this one would perform, since you are giving the user a gateway to other options, and the “ppc pundits” don’t like to promote is as such. However, this really opens up a whole new world to promote.

I have come up with these ideas, because I know a bit about the telecom stuff. But, I am sure there have got to be similar ways for other products also – you can try the same for Ringtones, scholarships, dating etc.

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If you are an affiliate marketer, you know what a pain in the ass it is when you find a niche that you want to promote the hell out of, and have to jump from network to network, trying to find out first whether that particular network offers anything in your selected niche. And if they do, what type of creatives are offered, and most importantly what is the payout? Now, if you are like me, and have signed up with over 20 networks, you are going to start hating trying to promote new offers pretty quick.

But, don’t worry. Relief is only a matter of time. Enter Affspy.com. I first read about affspy.com on Uberaffiliate.com, and the met the guys at ASW08 meet market. Apart from checking some really good looking booth babes, I really wanted more information about this service. At the summit, there were only 2 new concepts that really got my wheels turning, one was Affspy, and the other was Popshops.

Affspy, although now in selected beta, is one amazing service. Let’s assume that you are really wanting to promote “hoodia”. With Affspy, finding the best offer is just a couple of clicks. Once signed on, insert the name of the promotion, in this case “hoodia” in the search bar, and enter.

In an instant, you will receive various offers of hoodia from various networks, offering every creative, and also different payouts by clicking on the Compare Payouts button.

I found it easier by clicking on the View Single Network view on the right hand side, where it gave me the payouts, the advertiser and the network names right there. Therefore, if I liked the payout, the product and the network, I click on the details and and I can then view the landing page and the creatives. In this case, I picked the Hoodia Trin by Copeac, since it offered the highest payout of $24.50 (Neverblue was giving a higher payout, but the only creative offered was email). Below, I have shown just 2 banners, but it lists all the banners available, as well as email, text or any other creative that the advertiser offers.

Affspy does not have any monetization plan in place, other than the “Join Network” button on the results page. Not sure how many new signups they are expecting to get, and be able to keep the site running. I for one hope that they sign up a ton, to sustain their growth, and make my life easier.

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Whaddaya know…I am now hip with the affiliate marketing lingo. Had no idea it was called A/B testing or Split testing until a month ago. Cool.

Anyways, if you have been following my journey into affiliate marketing, you and have read this, and this post, let me tell you about another important aspect that you won’t read in any affiliate marketing guide or school. You have to bullshit on your landing page. Yes, you really have to lay it thick. How do I know? Simple.

I had 2 landing pages made. Now here is the thing though. The field that I was promoting, is something I know quite a bit about. (it is bluetooths headsets… ssshhhh!)

Anyways, this was a compare site, and on the first landing page, I put up 5 headsets to compare. I listed them from the one I thought was really crappy to the one that I thought was the best. I put up ratings, short specs, and also a true blue review done by me, since I have used all of the headsets shown. Result – it sucked on conversion. I had awesome hits to the page, but 0 (that is a ZERO) conversions.

The other landing page that I had made, I only listed bluetooths that had a really high search rate. Not only that, but I also gave them ratings of not according to what I thought was the best, but what I knew was searched more. (Yeah I cheated, sue me ) I also listed the highest searched headset first, and the least searched one last. I gave my reviews, and other customer reviews (ahem!) for each headset. Result – extremely high conversion. I mean, it blew it out of the water.

I am gonna fix it even though it ain’t broke. Why? How else will I know what else works. I am doing this to test my ideas, limits and learn something new. I am going to turn the landing pages upside down, and see what happens.  I will keep you updated on the changes.

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I have a simple explanation of why Ron Paul is going nowhere in this elections. His supporters spammed and pissed of a lot of bloggers, webmasters, radio hosts, tv hosts, and every other media you can imagine.

Are you a Ron Paul webmaster? What I mean is this. Are you one of the bloggers who visits most blogs and comments on it just to get a link back, and nothing of importance to say, other than, “Good post. It makes sense” or “Thanks for posting that“? Or are you a webmaster that trolls forums with witty remarks like, “This ebook sucks” or “I can do it myself“?

Your site url on the comments, or your forum signature is your identity, and you need to treat it like it is your baby. Most times, I will click your link if you have something intelligent to say on a comment or a post, and I am sure most of you do the same. That space is your “audition” and you need to nail it.  Don’t use your audition as a means to just get your face out there, you can do that by walking the streets, which in this case, join Mybloglog and your avatar will show up on most sites just by visiting them. Use that audition to get the job done.

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Ok, since I was just not gonna site back and take it (see previous post), I decided to scrap the whole campaign, which was done totally by the book, and redid it entirely, using just my head. Rewrote all the keywords and re-did all the ads. I didn’t use any tools for keywords generation, other than running it through Adwords tool. Just cleared my head, and wrote the keywords that I thought would be enticing.

I knew that the ads were really boring, thus no clicks. I did a search on Google, and found this little gem by Googlelady. Thank You Googlelady. I followed each idea to the tee, and added ads accordingly, and what do you know. My CTR went through the roof. My entire budget was used up in 3 hours. Damn!

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As most of you know that I was holding off going full throttle in putting into practice what I learnt at Affiliate Summit and Affiliate Classroom. I just could not take it anymore, and thought would give it a test run.

Here is what I did:

• Picked a market that I wanted to promote
• Since I was planning on a “compare offers” site, I picked the highest paying offers from Hydra Network, Incentaclick, and Rocketprofit. In total, I picked 6 offers.
• Built my landing page with the highest offer listed first and lowest one at the bottom.
• Added some unique articles and reviews about the products
• Added Privacy and About Us Page for SERPS
• Added a keywords campaign on Adwords and added 6 adgroups, and approximately 100 keywords in each
• I bidded quite high and got really good number of impressions

But, yes, but! Here is the problem. My CTR on the ads was terrible. And I mean extremely terrible.

So what is the lesson? You can attend any number of classes, or seminars, do everything by the book, but you better have an interesting Adwords Ad Copy! People were just not finding my Ads enticing enough to click. Btw, I have made some changes, and added call-to-action phrases like Buy, Get, Order etc. Let’s see if it helps.

If you gurus have any ideas, I am all ears.

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The first video is of John Hasson, taken during Ask The Experts Roundtable seminar. In this video John talks about using ppc engines, other than just the big 3. It is an interesting video because it opens your eyes to other options for promoting and making money.

The second video is from the Super Affiliate Strategies Seminar, where John and Amit Mehta answer a question about what they do about their content getting ripped off or their blogs get scraped.  John, being the evil Chow that he is, has the most evilest response to scraping.

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