Jan 22nd 2008

Vegas Should Just Be A Huge Affiliate Program

Hey guys,
I got back from Vegas late last night and have a lot to tell. First off, Vegas is truly an unbelievable city; after walking through casino after casino I’ve come to learn a new type of energy, Casino Energy. While walking through the casino’s to get to where I needed to go I could never help but notice the excitement and energy that people have when betting away their hard earned dollars. This wasn’t my first trip to Vegas but this was the first trip where I became aware of “casino energy.” When I’m 21 I will stay to playing in the poker rooms or something; The house SHOULDN’T win my hard earned dollars (I’d rather just buy there stock: Las Vegas Sands Corp. or Mgm Mirage hehe).

From show tickets to bringing high rollers into Vegas I believe that affiliate programs should be created. Most hotels in Vegas do have affiliate programs (Mainly all of the strip hotels since they are all owned by the same company) but their programs SUCK! Last Ecomxpo i contacted the guy who was in charge of the MGM-Mirage affiliate program (which is the affiliate program for: Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Excalibur, Mgm Grande, Mirage, Monte Carlo, and I know I’m forgetting a few) and he told me I couldn’t promote for him because he “already had a good search publisher.” It’d be cool if we got .5% of what our reservations spend in the casino (one person fucks up their credit and you make 5k)!

Imagine the possibilities with offers like Vegas Concert/Show Tickets, Limo Rides, Helicopter Tours, Strip Clubs etc, All having affiliate programs. The possibilities would be endless, One thing you could do is make a concert ticket page that’s also offering a hotel room, limo ride to and from the show and even a ‘dance’ after the show. Would be a great way to cross promote offers and target SO many things without being irrelevant (you could target vacations, vegas, concerts, gamblings, casinos, and tons of other things).

Well I got to go now BUT hopefully some Las Vegas execs read my blog and pimp up the affiliate programs in Vegas
-Harrison

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Jan 19th 2008

In Vegas

Hey Guys,
Just wanted to let you guys know that I am in Las Vegas till Sunday. I will be doing a post for you guys sometime tomorrow though.

Later,
-harrison

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Jan 18th 2008

Free Unique Offer Idea For You Guys!

Hey guys,
I have been e-mailed the question of ‘what to promote’ numerous times and I have had this unique idea for promoting Affiliate program affiliate programs through PPC but in a more honest opinion type of matter which I want to do and am probably an idiot for giving away, when you get rich just e-mail me and I’ll give you my paypal ;)

I briefly thought about an idea similar to the one I’m giving to you guys like 6 months ago when I referred a lot of people to Millnic Media and made low $x,xxx off that 6% commission. I wanted to start promoting Millnic on the affiliate blogs by buying advertising but decided not to when I noticed they already were on the spots that I had hoped to approach, so I never did anything with until recently.

Just a few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me for a signup link to Incentaclick and I gave it to him happily. I than forgot about it until last week where i had earned over $2,000.00 from just one friend, I have now signed up one more person and am continuing to get more people signed up under me for as many networks as i can decide.

So This Is What You Can Do To Make Money
Make a landing page that has like 3-4 affiliate networks logos on the page with a rating you give them (Give an honest opinion, don’t rate the one that pays 5% out a 10/10 and the one that pays 2% a 3/10 the 2% one will probably make you more money). Write honest reviews for each of the networks, if you haven’t done much with that specific network just go look at their main website and see if you can figure out what to write from that. Once you do this collect a bunch of affiliate marketing relevant keywords; some that I would gather would be Affiliate Network Names (They can be the ones on your landing page or competing networks, both work), Big Blog names like shoemoney and johnchow etc, and last but not least use content network on some of those blogs (have not tested this but it is something I plan to test when I get to promoting networks through ppc)

Let me remind you as I don’t think I explained myself correctly. I have not promoted any affiliate networks affiliate programs through the methods I have suggested yet but I will be working on it when I am not swamped to the brim. I noticed that this is a niche with money to be made and I figured I’d blow it and let you guys make tons off of it instead.

Heres Where I Benefit From This, Here are MY affiliate links from a few networks you should sign up if you haven’t: Incentaclick - Ask For Debrani Copeac - Ask For Danielle Neverblueads - Ask For Victoria Azoogleads
RocketProfit Millnicmedia Pepperjam Network XY7 and HydraMedia

Tell me what you guys think of my idea,
-Harrison

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Jan 17th 2008

Correctly Testing A Campaign

A problem that many new search/affiliate marketers have is the way they test their campaigns. I hope this post helps you get a grasp of how I like to test out offers. My testing methods always change a little bit depending on the campaign and you will learn that as you become more experienced search marketer your methods of testing will change and adapt to the markets at that time.

When I decide I want to ‘test’ a campaign before blasting the campaign it usually means that I feel the campaign has room for tremendous growth but holds a slightly higher risk than other campaigns or is an offer that I feel will perform different than other offers of its kind (this can make my research trends data 100% worthless sometimes).

Basically this is a quick overview and step by step on how you can really test a campaign and not come to the conclusion that a campaigns a 100% failure if you lose money your first day, Don’t give up guys, Please!

1. Budget: I like to test my campaigns by spending like 10% of my goal spend. Although 10% sounds like a low number it can be a pretty nice number when your spending mad money on ppc ;). If your starting out small i recommend you either make your budget 50% of your goal or by putting your goal as the daily budget and lowering your bids in order to decrease volume or get some cheaper clicks. When I just started messing around with AdWords I had an experience where I started testing with my goal as my budget but made my bids about 30% lower than what they should be. To my surprise i spent my whole daily budget the next day and saw a decent consistent ROI after that, that was kind of a fluke and probably doesn’t happen all the time but you might find yourself on a luck streak and start making more than you could imagine on your FIRST STAGES of a campaign!

2. Ads - My friend Jeff says that I am a little over the top when it comes to writing multiple ad variations. I disagree with him because in this business to many ads shouldn’t really be a problem. The whole point of testing is to find out what works and what doesn’t, once you test a campaign you can delete the ads which you didn’t make any money on and keep using the ads which worked. When you start a campaign I suggest you write up like 3-4 different ads. I love to do 10-20 ads for a new campaign and than narrow down the ads that I’ll actually use when going full power on a campaign.

3. Quality Score - Generally it’s a good thing to get your quality score’s all to the “OK” and “GOOD” score before you start going full power on a campaign. Although sometimes I say fuck it and just bid higher; one issue that I get e-mailed about quite a bit is issues with the quality score therefore new affiliates should really take it seriously and be concerned with original content, relevancy, etc. As you learn how to Affiliate market you will adapt to the quality score and form your own little strategies on dealing with quality score.

4. Last But Not Least, When To Stop etc - Determining weather a campaign is a good one (+) or a (-) on your income sheets is pretty important when testing a campaign as its pretty much the whole purpose. Before you start testing be sure to come up with a goal on how many leads per day and how much profit to earn, regardless of if you hit your goal or not having a ‘goal’ set in stone can make it a lot easier to determine if a campaign is working for you. HINT: If you have a campaign and its making .01% profit it’s still profitable, why pause it? Some people think that affiliate marketing is only worth it if you make 2x your money when doing it on a little scale and i disagree because most people doing search engine marketing hope to make A LOT OF MONEY and not do it on a small scale for a long time, you’ll get their soon.. i promise

Since I just re-read this post and I think it’s missing something feel free to contact me via email @ GevirtzMedia@gmail.com and I’ll gladly answer any questions you have about scaling a campaign

Goodnight Guys (2 40 am)
-Harrison

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Jan 16th 2008

Pay Per Click Software/Portals

Hey Guys,
This last few weeks I have been getting pretty frustrated with the different engines and how long it takes to create a campaign in google and than move it to Yahoo and MSN. This made me decide to start looking at Pay Per Click Software like Doubleclick and Pagusano to test out and maybe start using on a more common basis. As of now, I have only talked with Pagusano and am waiting for a call to see Doubleclicks system.

These are the three key things that I am looking for in whichever application I end up using.

1. Multiple Search Engines - As i discussed above, I feel that I have been wasting time doing the same campaign’s two-three more times just to obtain presence in all engines. With a PPC Software I would like to be able to create a campaign that will upload itself to all search engines in a matter of minutes (Therefore eliminating the hours i spend in Yahoo, MSN, and probably even google). My only concern with a set up like this is that the application doesn’t upload everything or doesn’t track 99.99% accurately (nothings perfect, sorry) therefore putting my ROI’s and stats in jeopardy; This probably shouldn’t be a concern of mine but I always asses my risk before I go in full fledge (In this case deciding if I should trust some software with my “livelihood” (I put it in quotes because I know some of you don’t think i even need a livelihood.)

2. Quick UI - I notice that Google Adwords, MSN AdCenter, and Yahoo/Overture All are ridiculously slow. I’ll press the submit button for a campaign and sit at my screen waiting for it to load and waste 5-10 minutes sometimes (It pisses me off). If I use a 3rd party application I want it to be really fast; Efficiency is one of my big goals this year and with a faster system I could skim off 10-15 minutes of work per campaign just because I wont sit and stare waiting for google to load!

3. Customer Support - With a ton of products that offer services like this they claim they offer “Awesome Customer Support” and they say things like “Just give us a call, were here to help!” Most of them are bullshitting you therefore it’s best to do your research before your softwares broken and need to call support! I’m going to be doing my research about the Customer Care that Doubleclick, Pagusano, or whoever I end up using offers.

Some other features which would be really great would be:
1. A mobile bases platform so I can check stats on the go or have stats texted to me.
2. A way to have multiple accounts at each ad-network in your on portal (Probably has it).
and 3. Ability to track your competitors placements, alexa charts, estimate spend etc. The goal of this tool would be to have an analyzing tool in your portal instead of having to open up Keyword Elite or something.

I’m excited to see which application I choose and how I end up doing when being able to use another companies infrastructure and tools for my own campaigns. When i start demoing these programs I’ll be sure to do some write-ups for you guys just in case any of you are looking for a management software to.

-Harrison

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Jan 15th 2008

Hou-u-u-u-u-ston, We Have A Problem (not about internet marketing)

Hey All,
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/15/huckabee-amend-the-constitution-to-gods-standards/

I just came across this article on Digg and thought I would post this link. When i saw this article on the homepage i nearly felt sick to my stomach. We live in America and have been known to be one of the countries with the most Human Rights and freedoms, I just can’t believe a presidential candidate would say something like that, America has Jews, Muslims, Scientologists, And Tons Of Other people That Aren’t Christian so why should they be changed to gods standards?

I know i probably pissed off like 100% of you guys
Sorry/Thanks For Reading,
-Harrison