A year ago, I was running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off.  I was trying every offer, trying every network, and just throwing shit up on the wall and hoping that it sticks.

Sooner or later, you start doing things in a more systematic way.  It sort of becomes second nature to you.  You know the network you want to use, you know the niche, you know the offer, you know the keywords you want to use, and you know what your landing page needs to look like even before you start that campaign.

I wasted a ton of time on reading shitty blogs and useless forums, trying to find that magic bullet.  If you want to make serious money, quit reading them “Make Money Online” blogs.  They don’t teach you shit about affiliate marketing.   All those blogs do is give the fucking blogger an ego boost with “Oh look!  I just added another RSS reader”

Here is what you need to do if you are serious about making it in the affiliate marketing world.

1. Go read and don’t make any dumbass comments on Wickedfire.com – this place is filled with  Treasure Trove of information.  After reading that, if you still cannot make it in affiliate marketing, go back to your job at McDonalds.

2. Below are must read(s) blogs without wasting time and just dreaming about making it in the affiliate jungle -

1. Nickycakes
   
2. Profitapolis
3. Convert2Media Blog
4. Adhustler
5. Cash Tactics
6. Diorex (He does not update it often, but read his old posts)
7. PPC.bz – your Shamwow hq.

3. Sign up with Networks that will make you money and possibly hold your hand (for a sexual favors) if you are a newbie.  I know for sure that these networks don’t scrub your leads and rape you of your commissions.

1. Ads4Dough – I have written about this network before.  Just a top notch network run by Jason (Smaxor).
2. Convert2Media – Ruck knows his shit and will help you with tweaking your lps and your campaign to get them profitable.
3. Copeac – These guys have offers that pay like a mofo and convert just as well.  You need to get on with them for the exclusive offers.

There are other networks that I can list, but then you would just be wasting your time and money.

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Yes.   He brought the thunder like he promised.  Check out the video -

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• any headed to #asw09 at slc airport? #
• @quityourdayjob waiting for delta flight – sitting at squatters in reply to quityourdayjob #
• Just entered to win a flip minoHD. Just follow @shoemoney and retweet. http://xr.com/fliphd #
• omfg line to check in at rio is lonnnnnnnng wtf? a bus just came in? #
• nice! rio welcomes me with a leaking bathtub faucet. i know should have stayed at venetian. #
• wickedfire party at tropical room g @affsum #
• @affsum aff strats for traffic generation & monetization – panel @nickycakes, @andrewwee, miles baker, geordie carswell – starting in secs in reply to affsum #
• sitting next to @johnhasson – stealing his wifi connection #
• oh cant live tweet – @andrewwee just asked me to pass the mike around #
• #asw09- q. how do you use social media? #
• ans. – @nickycakes – i use facebook. geordie – its easier to stuble and sphinn if it is free. then change to paid commercial #
• q. have you used youtube for aff marketing? #
• ans. @nickycakes – dled music videos. waternark with ringtone afflink & upload. geordie – tag, and comment videos with kws #
• quote: you will never rise above your vision #
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**Disclaimer** – This method does not work for Acai – you will get slapped.

Assuming you are getting your ass bitch slapped by Google, and just can’t figure out wtf to do…try these simple changes – no guarantees, but they have worked for me.

I set up a wp  blog and added a ton of content to it first.  I used the default template for it and made no effort to change the theme.  The content was very targetted for that niche with all relevant kws.  I let that ride for a few days while I had my landing page made, and did my kw research and campaign setup.

My lp was made on a sub directory in that same domain, totally unrelated to the blog.  And when I setup my campaign, my ads had the display and destination url pointing to the blog home page, and had the destination url on the kws pointing to this LP.  I kept adding content as scheduled posts.

This niche was quite competitive and a couple of months later I got slapped.

I used the same steps above, but on this next campaign for the same niche, before I added any content to my blog, I changed blog theme to a very niche related and elaborate theme.

I have this campaign running for almost 6 months now, and Q/S is great and is still going strong.

Adding an elaborate theme,  I think actually made the manual site reviewer think that this was an actual site that had some effort put into it.

My Take On It: Since WP blogs are the easiest to add content to, and G loves to see content, set up the blog type site (NOT FOR ACAI) and follow the steps I have shown, and you will get your high Q/S and your campaign will probably be safe.

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I was reading Chad’s blog this morning, and it reminded me of something, that a very well established marketer once told me.

Here is what he told me.  When you run an offer, don’t run it too narrowly ie. let’s say that you are trying to build a campaign for “green tea diet” – now, green tea, like many other  weight loss products is a fad, which sooner or later will be replaced by another new and better weight loss product.  So, when building that campaign, don’t just use keywords like “green tea” “green tea diet” “green tea weight loss” etc.  Go broader.  Attack the weight loss market, and not just green tea.  Try keywords such as “quick weight loss” “natural weight loss” etc.  You get the point.

One other thing I want to mention, 2 words, “Go International“.  Really.  I mean it.  Have you even looked at Canadian or UK markets for your niche?  You might wanna check it out. Ton of money there, and lesser competition.

Good Luck.

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Hopefully you read my post earlier about how Smaxor with Ads4dough helped me increase my earnings.  But this happened today and you will not believe it.

I was split testing an offer in a niche with Incentaclick and Ads4dough.  They both had offers from the same merchant but their merchant landing pages were a little different and I was testing to see which lp converts better.  Anyways, yesterday, the offer was just not converting.  I was sending a shitload of clicks and nothing was converting on either network.  Ofcourse, I was thinking that I was doing something wrong, or maybe it was just an off day.

I called Jason for some other issue, and he mentioned to me that, “Hey, we are having an issue with <name deleted> offer, but don’t worry.  Your sales are being tracked, it’s just that the merchant was having a problem with the pixel firing.”  Ok.  I have been through this song and dance before with other networks, and you literally have to beg the network to credit your account for their screw up.  I didn’t think much of it.

I also got this email from Jason -

Afternoon Roger,

There was an issue with the advertiser and firing the pixel with <name deleted>, for all networks.
All sales were tracked on the advertisers side and will be credited to
your account if you earned
them. Sorry for the inconvenience and msg me or your AM if you have any
questions.

Success,
Jason Akatiff aka Smaxor
President, Ads4Dough.com

I am yet to hear from my manager at Incentaclick regarding this issue, since it is the same merchant.

Jason asked me to switch the offer to a different merchant in the same niche, and I did so yesterday.

Today, I am checking my stats and had conversions on the offer that I had disabled yesterday!  What?  Yup.  Ads4dough had credited me for the pixel mess up the merchant had yesterday.

Incentaclick, I haven’t seen a dime.  Guess will call them up on Monday and deal with it.  But first, they have to credit me for conversions that they didn’t pay me for another offer.

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Like many, I am registered at pretty much every affiliate network out there, because you never know when you may want to run an offer that only that network offers.  Plus, I like to split test my offers with various networks.  However, I don’t know of any network that will give you a one on one advice about how to run your offers.  Oh, and that advice is not by some grad school flunkie who got into affiliate manager position because its a nice desk job.  I am talking about primo advice by a “Real Super Affiliate” who knows the game.

Here is what I am talking about.  I started a campaign and did the lazy mans game.  Threw it up on Myspace and Facebook, which most of you know its like throwing shit on the wall – you keep what sticks. Conversion rate was really shitty, but it was making little money.  I was direct linking to the offer at this time, since I figured that was the easiest way to convert and this time I don’t have to worry about no Google slaps.  To fix the situation, I call up this “Super Affiliate” and ask for advice about how to increase my conversions.  His first question – “Are you direct linking or is it an LP?”.   To which I said, “Ofcourse direct linking”.   “You always create a bridge page or a landing page.  You presell the customer before they get to the merchant page.” Eureka.

Yes.  My conversions increased with the LP.  And, since I already got off my lazy ass and had an lp made, I figured, why not just build a PPC campaign too.  You know what happened next.  I am kicking ass.

You know who this super affiliate is that you can ask for advice anytime?  You can IM him  Call him.  Email him.  His advice is true gold  He is the owner of Ads4Dough – Jason aka Smaxor.

Thanks Jason.

ps. Ads4dough is my #1 Money Maker.

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Math, cannot be learnt by reading. You have to practice math, you have to work the formulas, you have to work the equations, you have to work the problems.  Unless you are Einstein, I don’t believe that you can learn math just by reading the text book.  You have to practice it on paper.

I have learnt, that Affiliate Marketing is quite similar in that aspect.  I remember, before I really started doing affiliate marketing, I read umpteen ebooks, forums, and attended industry conventions.  Yes, I got knowlege about aff marketing, but that didn’t really teach me how to run it.  It showed me that these are different ways that you can do it, but never really showing me what to run.

When I first started, I would build campaigns, and would think, wow, I have done it by the book, and this has gotta work. Fail!  Each time I would do it by the book, and it would be too rigid for me to make changes.  However, when I built campaigns from scratch, without using someone else’s know how, I was successful.  Today, my most successful campaign is the one in which all the  keywords used to start the campaign were written using my head.  I did not use a tool to generate kws.  That made it easier for me to tweak and run the campaign in a more fluid way.  It was a bitch when I would use a keyword tool, and generate 1000s of kws, and then had to weed through them, and not really knowing if they would work or not.  This time, I put myself in the shoes of the consumer, and started with just 64 kws, and expanded on that once the campaign was running.

So, if you are reading this, trying to get into aff marketing, just go ahead and do it.  You will not know what works and what does not.  Test it yourself and use your head more than the tools.

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In Poker, you can be pot committed and have the tendency to bet, even when you know you probably have a losing hand.  However, in Affiliate Marketing, if you use the same tendency, you will end up losing over and over again.

This is what I am getting at.  There will be times that you build a campaign, spend money on landing page, domain name, articles and every thing thats needed to probably make that campaign successful. You start your campaign, tweak it, and spend some money trying to make it successful.  But no matter how much money you spend, how much you tweak it, that campaign is a “losing had”.   Have the courage to shut it down.  Not all campaigns will be successful.  Even seasoned marketers don’t have 100% success rate.

Don’t beat a dead horse.

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Negative Keyword Lists

Negative keywords are so critical to your campaigns, and it’s a topic that is pretty overlooked in my opinion – especially by newer affiliates. What is a negative keyword? A negative keyword tells a search engine NOT to display your ad if a person searches for a string with your negative keyword in it. For example, if you have an ad group with the only keyword being “ringtones” and you broad match it, your ad will show up for “Nelly ringtones, mobile ringtones, buy ringtones, free ringtones, etc.” Now say you don’t want your ad showing up when someone searches for “free ringtones”. Go into your ad group and type in “-free”. This will add “free” as a negative term, and your ad will never be displayed when someone types “free” in along with their keyword. Is this all that adding negative keywords can do? Nope, you can take this to an even larger and more important keyword.

Let’s talk basic buying philosophy for a second. When you’re advertising online, do you want to advertise to somebody who’s looking to buy something, or somebody who’s ready to buy? The obvious answer is you want somebody who is ready to buy. There are browsers, and there are buyers; we want the buyers as they are much more likely to convert and fill out the entire offer. Negative keyword lists can help us tremendously in this aspect. Let’s look at an example. Say you’re running the DentalPlans.com offer, and you put in the broad match term “Dental Plans” in your ad group. This could be a good term, your ad will show up for keywords like :

• affordable dental plans
• fast dental plans
• cheap dental plans
• buy dental plans
• family dental plans

These all may be great keywords, it looks like they’re all people looking to purchase a dental plan. Aside from that, your ad will also show up for the following keywords :

• information on dental plans
• about dental plans
• research dental plans
• browse dental plans
• dental plan help

In these keywords, it looks like the user is much more of a browser. They’re not ready to buy, they want to surf the net and research what’s out there. That’s great for them, but they’re going to click on you’re ad to research dental plans and you’re going to be the one paying for it. We want to show up for all the good keywords, but not the bad ones; here’s where we make a negative keyword list :

• information
• about
• research
• browse
• help

Adding all those as negatives will eliminate your ad showing up when somebody searches for them. Never though negative keywords could be so helpful, did ya?

Where did I find this little gem? Right Here!

UberCamp tutorials were written by Uberaffiliate (no not me) Paul, and one other undercover super affiliate who may or may not have his own affiliate network.  But seriously, this is good for seasoned affiliates to just brush up on the basics or someone wanting to get into am, this is a must read.  It will guide you from the basic information about “What is affiliate marketing” to actually showing you how to build your own campaign and do it the right way.

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