Featured Posts

LotsofAds Review - Social Ads Spy Look into any major forum right now and you'll see people complaining about how it's gotten absurdly tough to advertise on certain social networks. Yes it's true it's gotten...

Read more

How to Sleep 21% Less and Still Kick Ass Sleep (or lack of it) remains a big issue for a lot of affiliates. Truth is ad networks and most affiliate networks still operate on the 9-5 schedule so if you need to get...

Read more

Tatted Up! Industry Ink Exposed There's no denying it. Our industry definitely has a thing for tattoos. There's no doubt that there are more than a few well-known figures in affiliate marketing who sport...

Read more

Eight Things You Must Do in 2012 to Thrive It's already 11 days into the new year. Are you on track to achieving your 2012 goals?  Here are 8 things you must do to be successful this year. 1) Sign up to the StackThatMoney...

Read more

Santa's in Trouble - Affiliate Wish List 2011 I asked affiliates what present they would want if they could get anything this holiday season and I got a few respones. Here are some interesting ones:   1....

Read more

Rohail Rizvi | Rogue Affiliate | Entrepreneur Rss

LotsofAds Review – Social Ads Spy

Posted on : 01-02-2012 | By : RohailR | In : Affiliate Marketing, Reviews, Tools

0

Look into any major forum right now and you’ll see people complaining about how it’s gotten absurdly tough to advertise on certain social networks. Yes it’s true it’s gotten way harder, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. People are still making money advertising on social networks no matter how uptight they get just because they have an IPO coming out. There are more than 1 Billion people to monetize on these social networks. The rules have changed, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any more money there.

One of the best tools out there right now to know what’s working is LotsofAds.com. Their intelligence tool has an absolute slew of features and countries in it’s database and it continues to grow. US markets have become extremely saturated now and international is where the easy pickings are. With so many international offers readily available there’s no reason you shouldn’t be attacking those markets especially with the help of a tool like LotsofAds (Use “RR2012″ for 10% Off)

Think about how much time you’re currently wasting finding a winning ad. First you sift through the web to find the perfect images. Then you edit those images. Then you painstakingly submit those ads and variations of those ads to split test copy and demographics. All to find out the next morning that your ads were DENIED or worse they just sucked and you have to start from scratch again. Are you really living the dream? Tirelessly working and begging to have your ads approved and testing day in and day out. It sounds worse than a 9-5! You’re literally chained to your computer chair because all the wasted time in testing.

I thought we got into this business for more money AND freedom not a back torturing, arthiritis-inducing experience in front of five blaring monitors. The only way to get rid of the most time consuming part of our business is with two words: competitive intelligence. Steve Jobs said it best- “The best ideas are stolen.” There’s a reason for that- it’s because they work! Now this isn’t to encourage stealing other affiliates works and becoming a copycat affiliate, but more about learning the angles that work. So much of this business comes down to the angle you’re using and if you don’t have one you’re lost. Gone are the days of flinging up generic ads and profiting at a whim. You have to know what works and that’s what LotsofAds lets you do. Now let’s cut to the chase. Here’s how to dominate your competitive research with LotsofAds step-by-step:

Use Coupon Code RR2012 to get 10% Off  of LotsofAds.com (First 20 people to use it only)

1. Figure out what offers are doing well. This is a no-brainer and you should be doing this anyway. Once you have the offers you want to run here’s what you’re going to do:

Plug in the offer URL into the filter for display URL and you’re shown all the ads in the database being run for that particular offer.

OR get a broad view of all ads being seen by your chosen demographic which can include country, gender, relationship status, and age. You can mix and match this in anyway you want along with a search for the ad display URL, or any particular text in the heading or body (say “dating” for example). You can even search for all ads using a particular image by placing the image url. How sick is that?

2. Plug in the offer URL into the search filter and LotsofAds will literally show you the ads that are being run for that offer in whichever country you choose.

3. Organize your listings by Days Running, Last Seen, Min times seen, and Min Days running.

4. That’s it your competitive research is done for you. Now go make some money!

You literally cut hours upon hours of your research time, which you can instead put towards scaling your campaigns or how about even something not involving a computer! :P Jk I’m a workaholic so you’ll probably still find me on here, but it just means I’ll be making more money. LotsofAds is seriously a powerhouse of a tool for any serious marketer. There’s no better tool out there right now for doing competitive research on social network ads. There’s a reason I haven’t named any of those networks here and it’s because in order for it to continue to operate it has to remain pretty underground. It’s not cheap at $499 a month for an All Countries package (although you can get cheaper packages for their US, English, Europe, and Latin packages), but tools like this don’t come around often so if you’re still struggling to make a profit, sign up for LotsofAds today and get 10% off when you use the code RR2012. This code is limited to the first 20 people that use it. Have fun and let me know when you make some bank!

 

Disclosure: I am not being compensated for writing this post, but I will be compensated if you use my referral discount code as an affiliate. This product does not guarantee you will make money, but it will make it a lot easier.

How to Sleep 21% Less and Still Kick Ass

Posted on : 19-01-2012 | By : RohailR | In : Affiliate Marketing, Experiments

0

Sleep (or lack of it) remains a big issue for a lot of affiliates. Truth is ad networks and most affiliate networks still operate on the 9-5 schedule so if you need to get anything productive done, which requires communication that’s the window of time you need to be operating in too. Whether it be insomnia or the after-effects of waking up at 1 in the afternoon almost all of us wish this problem of getting enough sleep would just go away. After all, we spend a third of our lives doing it.

I personally got frustrated after telling myself every late morning that I would definitely go to sleep early that night only to find myself repeating the same pattern and staying up til 4 or 5 in the morning doing work. This resulting in another “sleeping in” of sorts and only have 2-3 hours of sunlight to enjoy here in the already depressing state of New Jersey.

SO I decided to fire up the iPad and fast forward to the chapters on sleep in Tim Ferris’ book The Four Hour Body. He goes into a bunch of methods and devices he uses to fix his insomnia and one of the methods he touches on involves taking 20 minute naps spaced out through out the day resulting in having to sleep a fewer number of hours in your “core sleep session.” The less you want to sleep the more naps you’ll have to take, but I’m sticking to one 20 minute nap during the day, which will let me sleep just 6 hours overnight and still be well rested and functional (I’m big on sleep, normally needing 8 hours not to feel groggy throughout the day). So what can you do to hack sleeping time?

1. Nap 20 minutes during the day and sleep 6 hours overnight.

2. Download F.lux- I’ve been using this program for about two months now and it definitely helps me be ready to fall asleep at night and reduce eye strain. What it does is reduce the brightness setting on your monitors automatically as the sun sets. At first when it dims it feels really weird, but then you get used to it and can’t tell the difference.

3. Download SleepCycle on your iPhone - Also learned about this from Tim’s book. This app is amazing! It actually measures the quantity and quality of your sleep overnight. How does it do this? Using the accelorameter in your iPhone, it’s able to tell when your moving about in your bed and when your in stages of deep or REM sleep. I use it now and it’s scary how accurate it is. What’s even better is that you give it a 30 minute window to wake you up within and it will wake you up when you’re in your lightest phase of sleep so you don’t feel like you usually do when you want to throw your alarm clock out the window.

4.  Use WakerUpper.com - Do you suck at waking up in the morning? Well thanks to the Internet, you can now have a free automated calling service wake you up in the morning with an optional reminder if you’d like. It’s called WakerUpper.com and works like a charm. No more needing to have your girlfriend call you to wake your lazy ass up!

5. Buy a Philips goLite- If you’re having issues operating during the day with enough energy, something else recommended by Ferris might help. It’s called the Philips goLite Blu Therapy and is a portable device which emits a particular kind of blue light which you naturally get on very sunny days that is supposed to give you a boost of energy like you would on an actual sunny day. Now I don’t know if this thing works or not, but the reviews on Amazon seem to be pretty promising.

Hope these tips help you conquer some of your sleep-related issues (unless you’re Ryan Eagle, in which case you don’t sleep)

Tatted Up! Industry Ink Exposed

Posted on : 13-01-2012 | By : RohailR | In : Affiliate Marketing, Miscellaneous

11

There’s no denying it. Our industry definitely has a thing for tattoos. There’s no doubt that there are more than a few well-known figures in affiliate marketing who sport some of the sickest ink ever seen. Here are some of the top tats in the industry:

1. Kris Trujillo from Xrevmedia

kris tattoo

2. Ian Fernando – Offer Snitch

Ian Fernando tattoo

3. Drew from DrewtheBarber.net

Drew the Barber tattoos

4. Ryan Eagle – EWA Network & BLAM Ads

Ryan Eagle tattoos

5. Ruck – IMGrind

ruck tattoos

6. Ryan Gray – IMGrind

ryan tattoos

7. Jason Rubacky – #GetSome

jason tattoos

These guys have some bad ass ink work done. Who do you think takes the cake for having the best tats? Vote below.

 

Eight Things You Must Do in 2012 to Thrive

Posted on : 11-01-2012 | By : RohailR | In : Productivity, Rewards

0

It’s already 11 days into the new year. Are you on track to achieving your 2012 goals?  Here are 8 things you must do to be successful this year.

1) Sign up to the StackThatMoney forums. If you haven’t signed up yet, what are you waiting for? From real case studies to free tools to access to some of the top affiliates in the industry, STM has it all. Not to mention they just had one of the sickest meetups to date at ASW at the “Hangover Suite.” Talk about opportunities to not only learn from the best, but to hang and connect with them in person too.

2) Ignore the flood of weekly if not daily emails that hit your inbox on what the latest and hottest offer is with through-the-roof EPCs. Just stop it. It’s counter-productive. Take a single offer that you KNOW converts and focus on it for at least a month. Figure out a way to make it work before jumping on to the next hot offer that lands in your inbox.

3)  Plan ahead for conferences and go with a purpose. Shows and meet ups seem to be right around the corner almost all year round and sure they’re fun, but they should also be productive. If you’re not going with a clear purpose with set meetings that are meant to make you MORE MONEY, then why go? If you’ve never been to one before, then sure it’s great to go to meet people and make connections, but if you’ve done your time it’s essential that you’re using your time wisely.

4)  Have a Plan A. Your Plan A should be the project that’s most important to you and that you own. It’s the long-term project that is supposed to be directly effected by the amount of hard work you put towards it – and guess what – you own it- not somebody else like all the offers you’re putting your blood, sweat, and tears into.

5) Start being healthy. Your health affects how well you perform so why not take care of it? This means everything from getting enough sleep to eating breakfast to reinvesting your earnings into a more ergonomic computer chair. Take care of your health and it will pay dividends.

6) Start a mastermind. As we all know, this business can be particularly lonesome on a day-to-day grind. There’s no water cooler chat or lunch break conversation here. It turns out human interaction is actually GOOD for us and can actually make us more money. A mastermind is a great way to connect with people that are on the same wavelength as well as have people there that can keep you accountable if you start to fall off. These shouldn’t be surface relationships, but rather in-depth ones where everybody is aware of new goals and struggles within the group. Everybody helps everybody out and you might even get some vitamin D in the process by leaving your house!

7) Read more. I’ve fall under the assumption that I already know everything there is to know about creating wealth, until I was blind-sided recently and realized I wasn’t doing things right. I was recommended the book, The Millionaire Fastlane, by barman from ppc.bz, and so far it’s really caused a shift in the way I see things and made me realize a lot of the crucial mistakes I was making that have been holding me back. It’s amazing how much you can pick up just by reading a single book. All the value and knowledge ascertained by an entire lifetime can be yours within 300 pages. No matter how much you think you know, there’s always more to learn and re-invent yourself with.

8 ) Tease yourself – No not in that way. But with your goals/rewards. Is there something you’ve always wanted to get once your successful? What’s the ultimate reward for you? Whatever it is go test it out! Find out what owning that car you dream about would be like.  If it’s something like a BMW 645ci coupe or a bright yellow Gallardo go take one for a test drive. It doesn’t even have to be something so lavish. Say you want to act for a living without having to worry about paying the bills. Go check out a show at the Lincoln Center the next time you’re in NYC and get a backstage tour. Want to live on an island? Take a five day breather and soak in some sun. Imagine what it’d be like to do that full-time. And then work your ass off for it.

NDemand Puerto Rico Meetup Recap

Posted on : 28-11-2011 | By : RohailR | In : Meetups, Vacations

0

I just got back a few days ago from the NDemand Affiliates meetup in San Juan, Puerto Rico and it was probably one of the best trips I’ve ever had. Mike Pacheco and the team took great care of us and it was an eventful weekend to say the least. Here’s what you missed!

I got set up at the Ritz-Carlton right on the beach and it had a pretty awesome view with of course great service. We arrived a day before the meetup so myself, Ian, and Gabe decided to see what was going on locally. After perusing the beach and grabbing some really good food at the outdoor bar the Ritz had set up, we decided to see what the other Jersey affiliates were up to (we definitely took over this meetup). After some dinner (complete with empanadas and mofongo) we all caught up together at the boardwalk. We knew we had a super early morning to leave for the catamaran cruise by 7:30am, so we all called it an early night.

 

NJ Affiliates

Saturday was the official day of the NDemand Affiliates meetup. Mike and the team had an awesome itinerary planned out for us and it started with a catamaran cruise. We left the Ritz on a charter bus about 45 minutes away until we arrived to where our catamaran was set to leave. Everybody got suited up in their swimming fins and snorkel gear and headed onto the boat, which was pretty huge. We left the dock and were on to an afternoon of snorkeling in beautiful clear blue water, hanging out on the white sand, and getting a much-appreciated lunch break on the catamaran.

Puerto Rico Catamaran

NDemand Catamaran Cruise

I had never been actual snorkeling before where you see actual real fish (only other time was in Miami and I didn’t see anything), and so it was definitely an awesome experience. We checked out a second island which had deeper waters and got to dive in from the boat and feed the fish. Everybody had a great time and we made our way back to dock with plenty of music and sun to keep us relaxed. Once we got back we only had about an hour and a half to get ready for the second part of the day. The NDemand team had arranged for a dinner cruise around Old San Juan, which turned out to be a lot of fun. There was even trivia on board with a lot of cool prizes like really sweet D&G sunglasses (which I’m still mad I didn’t win lol).

Party Boat

Following the dinner cruise, we decided to scope out a bit of Old San Juan, the historical district. Once we made our way back to the Ritz, I suggested we should hit up Club Brava at the San Juan Hotel, which is the biggest club in San Juan. Considering it was a Saturday night in PR, there was no reason not to and we got ourselves a nice table at the club. Unfortunately, we were all so exhausted from the day that a few of us came close to passing out on our lounge and decided to call it an early night.

Club Brava

Club Brava

The rest of the weekend was pretty chilled out as we explored the city and hit up a few other local spots. On Monday, we took some time to relax on the beach and hit up the hot tub. Tuesday ended up being a full-blown day of activities as it was our last day. We had booked an 8am outing into the rainforest to ride ATVs, which was awesome. After we got done with our ATVs we tried to figure out what to do for the rest of the day and our driver told us about the bioluminescent bay, which is a rare lagoon in which when you touch the water it immediately glows neon green (kind of like something out of Avatar). We were intrigued and some of us had previously heard about this being a must-do activity, so we luckily got a spot for the night on one of the tours. After hitting hour hotel we were again picked up by our driver and although we weren’t able to grab any pictures, I have to say it was one of the coolest things you could ever see.

ATVing in Puerto Rico

All in all, it was an awesome meetup / vacation and I hope to be there for the next one. It was great being there with all my Jersey affiliate friends and Mike and the rest of the NDemand Affiliates team definitely made sure to take care of us for the weekend and we can’t thank them enough for such a great time. If you weren’t there you missed out, but definitely check out NDemand Affiliates and be there for the next one!

AdTech NYC 2011 Recap

Posted on : 12-11-2011 | By : RohailR | In : Conferences

2

Just got back from AdTech yesterday and it was definitely a great show. Here’s the recap:

Tuesday was kind of the set up day for the booths so I skipped the exhibition floor and went to the Limelight CRM party at Kiss & Fly. The event was really laid back and the atmosphere allowed actual business and deals to get talked about as opposed to your usual run of the mill industry club event where you can’t really even hear each other talk. There were a lot of big advertisers in the room and it was interesting to meet guys that went from affiliate to owning their own offer. I also got to talk with Rich Gorman from DirectResponse.net (who runs a great blog, by the way) as well as Steve from SiteScout, a great place to start buying media if you haven’t heard about them already. Overall this party was probably one of the smallest yet most productive one I’ve been to at any industry event in recent memory. Following that I headed over to the XRevMedia dinner where I was joined with Kris Trujillo (CEO of XRevMedia), Ian, Gabe, Morgan Thomas, and others. The dinner was a great time and Kris and his team definitely treated us well. I called it an early night after that and definitely was in food coma mode after that dessert.

XRevMedia dinner

XRevMedia dinner

 

On Wednesday, I hit the floor around mid-day and covered a few meetings. The exhibition floor was, as always, huge at adTech and there were a ridiculous number of booths. I must have wandered through around four times and still managed to miss a few booths. It was cool to see so many different traffic sources – I just wished they organized all of them in one area separate from all the other kind of business that were exhibiting. It would just make it a lot easier to know who you want to talk to as opposed to starting up small chat with a company and then realizing they have nothing they could offer your business. All in all the floor was great with a variety of traffic sources and a bunch of really stand out booths (Google probably had the best one to be honest).

I caught a couple keynotes one being with Walter Isaacson, the author of the Steve Jobs biography. He relayed a lot of what it was like to be Steve Jobs’ biographer and it was interesting to get that insight in addition to a lot of the valuable business lessons he was able to pass on. One of the things he said was that Steve Jobs hated the word ‘entrepreneur.’ He thought entrepreneurs were just in it for the quick buck wanting to create something and then sell it off. What he really appreciated was someone who would build a real, lasting company. To him, being an entrepreneur was equivalent to that of being a street hustler. It was building an empire and a corporation that drove him. The final keynote featured a presentation from Christian Oestlien of Google on how Google+ can be used to get closer to your customers. It was basically a sales pitch for the newly released Google+ pages for business, but it was interesting to see what they thought their angle was in the social networking game and how concerned they were about their competition (to which of course they said they weren’t competing in the same space as anyone else and their goals are different…yeah right lol).

Following the floor I headed off to dinner with everybody at China Grill, which was hosted by the guys at WhatRunsWhere.com. If you haven’t heard of WhatRunsWhere, it’s quite possibly the best tool out there right now to spy on media buy campaigns. It provides you with creatives as well as placement details and they’re offering a seven day trial right now for just $1. Definitely worth checking out. Max was really cool and we had a good group of guys amongst us, but apparently not enough to finish all the food we got which was A LOT. It was great food with a family-style concept on an Asian fusion menu.

After dinner it was time to hit up all the industry parties. I was pretty beat, however, and decided to just hit up the Xposure 2011 party hosted by Adscend Media and CPAWay. It was at the Terminal 5 club which was an enormous venue and featured Mike Posner, Slick Rick, and Naughty by Nature. Adscend Media hooked me up with a spot in VIP and I got to catch the show from right behind the DJ booth which was cool. Mike Posner and the rest of the acts killed it on stage and it was definitely the best NYC industry party I’ve been to and a great way to end the show.

Xposure Party 2011

Xposure Party 2011

Now it’s time to get to work, but I thought I’d offer a little recap on the event. It was also cool to meet new affiliates and some of the younger bloggers out there too such as Dino Vedo and Dan Palunchuk.

See everybody at the next one (which won’t be for a while for me :P )

Yes, I’m Alive

Posted on : 16-09-2011 | By : RohailR | In : Conferences, Meetups, Travel

8

Definitely been a minute since I’ve put out an update. Not that a lot hasn’t been going on. I just don’t like posting when I’m not making money. And by the lack of posts and income reports you can tell it’s been a rough few months!

A part of that is because I was travelling most of August. After hitting up Chicago, I headed to Amsterdam for the Adsimilis meetup, where I spoke on the Facebook marketing panel, which was pretty awesome. Following that, I decided to backpack around Europe for three weeks and explore Berlin, Prague, and London. It was definitely a wild and interesting experience at the same time. It was kind of cool to just rough it and backpack my way through Europe and meet people from all over the world along the way as I chose to stay in (quality) hostels and not splurge on four star hotels everywhere I went. Let me just say that hosteling it is definitely the better option if you want to meet other backpackers and not feel so isolated because of the cultural barriers. Most backpackers were from Australia, Canada, and around Europe. I didn’t meet too many Americans in my travels…not even in London, which I thought was strange. Some pictures from the Adsimilis meetup:

Rohail Rizvi and Sean Mulkeen

Sean Mulkeen and I

Anyway, following my little europtrip I flew straight to NYC for Affiliate Summit arriving on Sunday evening. The conference, although a bit shorter for me this time, was definitely a good one. This was the biggest Affiliate Summit to date with almost 4,000 attendees. I got to meet up with affiliates I knew and talk business with some of my favorite networks. Also hit up the main parties hosted by MundoMedia, Clickbooth, and EngageBDR. I did miss out on Affiliate Ball though as it was too late, but I heard it was a blast.

After taking a few days to recover after my more than month of constant traveling, I got back to work with all that I’d learned from Chicago, the Adsimilis meetup, and ASE. These conferences and meetups are just so vital to your growth as an affiliate, there’s no reason not to go. The only reason would be that you’re traveling too much and working too little, which I sort of felt like. I told myself there would be no more traveling or conferences until I have another few profitable campaigns. Well I hope that’s the case by November 18th, because I’m flying out to the Puerto Rico meetup courtesy of NDemand Affiliates. This meetup by the way is looking to be pretty awesome as I’ve mentioned before. Mike has got the whole thing planned out, and it’s looking to be an epic weekend. If you haven’t RSVP’d yet, go do that now here.

As for my campaigns, I’m definitely putting in work these days. Trying all kinds of traffic sources and offers from mobile to adult to pop unders. The hardest part is to just focus on one campaign to make it profitable instead of jumping from one thing to the next. So far I’ve dumped a lot of money into testing without results either due to low quality traffic sources or just not testing enough. It’s hard to know which it is sometimes and even tougher when people are touting traffic sources they’ve never even used. Hoping to find some winners in the next few weeks though. I am really putting in work and just want to take it to the next level now. The affiliate space has gotten tougher this year for sure, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still opportunities. If I can’t make it big by the end of this year, I quit affiliate marketing. Let’s see what happens.

 

 

ASE 2011 Platinum Pass Giveaway

Posted on : 03-08-2011 | By : RohailR | In : Affiliate Marketing, Conferences, Contests

5

So word on the street is there are a lot of people still looking to get a pass for upcoming Affiliate Summit East NYC in just a few weeks. If you don’t already know, Affiliate Summit is the conference you should be attending if you’re an affiliate. It’s worth more than the price you pay in terms of who you get to meet and what you learn at Summit. Well if you still don’t have a pass or are short a few dollars for this year’s ASE, you’re in luck. Keep reading to find out why.

Over the course of my trip to Chicago I got to hang out out with Jason Rubacky from ShareASale. I got the chance to check out the Sharesale office which was pretty cool. The atmosphere was almost indescribable. Everyone was really focused on their work, but it didn’t seem like a stuffy corporate environment by any means. The office was huge and had tons of cool stuff including a ping pong room and a stack of angry birds plush toys for playing a live game. Check out these pics for measure of my visit to ShareASale headquarters:

Jason Rubacky and Rohail Rizvi at ShareASale

Jason and I at ShareASale

Ping Pong table at ShareASale

Check out the ping pong table!

ShareASale office

Comfy seating for letting the ideas flow

ShareASale Awards

Look at all those awards!

I had a great time checking out the offices at ShareASale and an even better time getting to know more about the CPS side of affiliate marketing. There is truly a ton of potential if you know what you’re doing and these guys are seriously good about helping their affiliates succeed. I learned a whole lot just by spending a couple hours with Jason about SEO and how to make serious money with CPS. I’m looking forward to what kind of business we can set up with the holiday season approaching, and I’m recommending you do the same. Go check out ShareASale right now!

Also check out Jason’s blog here it’s got some seriously cool stuff. If you’re wondering what it’s about, it’s right on the about page!  I also gotta give a big shout out to him and ShareASale for being able to put this giveaway together. A Platinum pass will get you pretty much everywhere you need to go at ASE and it’s really cool that he and the rest of the team have been able to put this together.

SO, by now you’re probably wondering how do I get my Platinum pass to Affiliate Summit. Well here it is:

All you have to do for a chance to win the pass is:

  1. Follow @rohailr on twitter.
  2. Simply tweet “Just entered to win a Platinum Pass to Affiliate Summit East!  Just follow @RohailR and retweet to enter #ASE11PlatPass  http://bit.ly/pe9Ewh”
That’s it! I will pick a winner at random out of all the retweets at midnight on the 12th, so the winner still has enough time to book a hotel. So what are you waiting for? Start tweeting now! Oh and again, big thanks to Jason and ShareASale for sponsoring the Platinum Pass for the winner!
P.S. Liking my fan page will also not hurt your chances!

Chicago

Posted on : 02-08-2011 | By : RohailR | In : Meetups, Travel

1

So I’m back from my quick 5 day trip to Chicago and it was definitely a blast. Glad I went.

On the first day I went straight to the Pre-Affiliate Summit meetup / Meetup202 Chicago hosted by Jason Rubacky. The meetup was being hosted at a nice Greek restaurant in the “Greektown” part of Chicago, and it was still a pretty cool set up :P  We had our own room and it was a more intimate setting with a round table set up as opposed to a huge meetup where you don’t necessarily get to talk to everybody and engage in a discussion as a group. I got to meet Jason there as well as a few other affiliates including Darryl Thomas Jr. and Max. I didn’t think I was going to pick up a lot of info just purely based on the fact that there were affiliates of all levels present and we had to cover some basic stuff being a public meetup, but it was actually pretty informative. Jason went into a lot about SEO and CPS as well as how to capitalize on trends. It’s amazing how much money and potential there is on that side of the fence. Definitely opened my eyes to the world of SEO and CPS for sure.

After the meetup Jason and Max were cool enough to show me around the city. We first grabbed dinner at Bar Louie and then went off to explore downtown. Here’s a pic of us at Howl at the Moon (aka the cougar bar lol):

 

Look at that hurricane! Def had a good time checking out downtown my first night in with these guys. It was an eventful week to say the least. I did most of the touristy things like take the architecture cruise around the Chicago river, go up to the top of the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower), check out “The Bean” at Millenium Park, and grab a burger from Billy Goat Tavern (where you better order a double cheezburger or else face public humiliation from the Chef. Thankfully, Jason had my back and the ordering was a breeze lol).

I also got to meet up with Ian Brennan from LFM Network, which was cool and treated me to wings at a cool west Chicago bar. From there I rushed to catch the fireworks over the Chicago skyline, but missed it by just a few minutes. I made up for it by walking 2.5 miles back to my hotel to check out all the cool landmarks Chitown had to offer in the dark and there were a lot! For example, I ran into cool works of art in the middle of the night:

And of course I got to check out the Sears Tower, which was awesome:

And that was pretty much my trip to Chicago. Definitely had an awesome time. Thanks to Jason, Max, Darryl, and Ian B. for hanging out and showing me the city!

Now off to pack my bags for Amsterdam tomorrow.

Chicago – Amsterdam

Posted on : 26-07-2011 | By : RohailR | In : Affiliate Marketing, Travel

2

I’m writing this post from the WordPress app on Android so forgive me for its brevity :P If you blog, it’s a pretty clean app so check it out.

I’m currently en route to the airport on my way to Chicago. I’ll be hitting up the pre-Affiliate Summit meetup at the Pantheon restaurant in downtown tonight and then checking out the city for the rest of the week and hopefully hanging out with some local affiliates. If you’re in the area give me a shout and maybe we can connect.

I’ll also be heading to Amsterdam for the Adsimilis meetup a few days after I get back from Chicago. A lot of affiliates I know are hitting this one up and so far its looking to be an excellent international meetup. I can’t wait to check out the Dam and then do a little eurotripping afterwards. If you’ll be there as well let me know!

Alright time to go check in I will catch you later.