Rohail Rizvi

Many of the following guidelines might seem like obvious obvious stuff that you’ve heard a million times, but it’s worth it to really make sure you’re not committing any of these fatal errors. It is easy to make these mistakes, even if you’ve heard the guidelines before like I had.

1. Waste money on useless products/coaching. I’ll be honest here. It’s a huge waste of time and money for the most part. I was part of PPC-Coach for since December 2008 and just came to cancel my membership this month. It’s great if you’re starting out, but you could do a lot more by just TRYING stuff instead of hoping someone will hand you down their magic campaign. Seriously, all you need a few good posts from WF, your brain, and the determination to test, test, test. That’s what it all comes down to and it’s what I failed to realize the first time around. Almost ANY offer can be made profitable, if you do the right testing.

Using PPC-Coach I actually wound up LOSING money. Why? Well I thought I had it made with polls and moved onto their search strategy (which was along the lines of bid HIGH and Google will discount your clicks). Well that didn’t really happen and by the time you knew it I was out $10,000. Yeah. Big mistake. Better idea- follow your gut, use your  brain, and be rational. (*While I liked the tools and there were some insightful posts, the quality died off as the program went on.)

2. Don’t track. This one is huge. I was lazy and part of the reason I didn’t make my grants campaign work was because for some reason T202 wasn’t showing my stats even though I had installed the tracking code, and I didn’t bother to figure it out. I figured oh well, I’ll just go by the daily profit and loss. Uh NO. Before you do anything, do yourself a huge f***ing favor and make sure your tracking is working. In all honesty, I wish I had gotten Tracking202 PRO so my lazy ass wouldn’t have had to worry about most of the usual stuff involved with tracking.

3. Link your credit card to Adwords, etc. Bad idea (in the beginning). I was desperately throwing shit against the while trying to get something to stick…and nothing did. The higher my credit card bill went up, the more desperate I got to try just one more thing and maybe have it turn around. That didn’t happen. I had my $100+ profit days with PPC in the past and thought I could get another one to do it for me, but unfortunately not before I maxed out my cards. And now I’m pretty much stuck with a very large PPC bill that I’m looking to get rid of using SEO/free methods of marketing. Really ONLY start off in PPC with what you have, and not what you wish you had. Not only is it safer, it will force you to look at your numbers much more carefully and not go balls out setting $150/day spending limits.

4. Don’t track your Landing Page to Offer CTR. What a really dumb thing to do when I look back on this. Although I did on a daily basis keep track of my EPC, rarely did I put as much importance on my landing page to offer CTR. This is probably one of the biggest metrics you have because….any clicks that you’re not getting to your offer is the same as burning piles of cash. You just want to make sure you burn as little cash as possible. Another metric to look at is which ad is producing the most conversions. An ad might have a higher CTR, but converting less than another ad with a lower CTR.

5. Advertise on Google Search. The longer I’ve been in this industry, the more I realize just how MANY different sources of traffic there are. We’re all suckered into Google Search in the beginning until we wake up and realize…WHY GOOGLE SEARCH? Dealing with QS, getting slapped, and inflated click prices…why bother when you have so many other traffic sources to test out. NickyCakes posted a huge list of places you can advertise that you can find here.

These don’t have to obscure traffic sources. I still recommend Google content network as its the easiest way to get a ton of cheap traffic. The first place I started off with in AM, Facebook- while it isn’t looking like the greatest place to advertise right now with clickbot issues, is still a great place to get cheap traffic provided you think outside the box.

All these tips sound repetitive and obvious I am sure, and like I said I myself had heard many of these guidelines before…but it still happens! When you’re starting off, you might think you know all the answers and will follow everything according to guidelines, but trust me it’s easy to mess up when you play the game with emotion as opposed to being rational and getting your math skills in order.

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Affiliate marketer extraordinaire, Justin Dupre, from JustinDupre.com and Tatto Media are sponsoring a blazing hot contest.

What’s up for grabs?

Good question. You can get either an Asus EEE 10″ netbook (these things are awesome, I own an Acer netbook and they’re way better than lugging around a giant laptop) OR you can win a 25.5″ Samsung SyncMaster. That’s freakin huge and I could definitely use one of those to pimp my workspace out.

All you have to do to get a chance at winning (and the odds are pretty high considering the competition) is apply for Tatto Media using this link. Joining Tatto Media by itself gives you a chance to win, but if you want to ramp up your chances you obviously gotta start marketing! For every $100 of revenue you generate, you gain five more entries into the contest.

Check out Justin’s blog for all the details here and get your hustle on, because I really do like that Samsung .

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Everyone’s trying to figure out how to monetize Twitter these days so I figured I’d give it a shot.

I bought TwitterSnipe, a product put out by Ian Fernando and his team, and so far it’s been pretty good at doing what it’s supposed to do: Follows people in your niche based on keywords and unfollows people who aren’t following you.

I’ve learned a couple things about using TwitterSnipe and marketing on Twitter in general since I started.

1. Always use a real person as your avatar. One of my accounts thats aimed at selling to the “I just broke up with my ex” crowd has just 6 follows and I think a big reason for that is that people know it’s not a real person right off the bat when they see a non-human avatar.

2. Conversation is key. If you’re not posting daily and conversing with you’re followers, you’re at a loss. Unfortunately, Twitter monetization isn’t as easy as adding followers and spamming them with links. That should be obvious. I see my Twitter follower count shoot up whenever I tweet @ other people or post about popular topics. And when I don’t, even for a day, I see that the people who I’ve set to follow the night before aren’t following me back.

3. Follow and unfollow strategy. Because I’m impatient I want to build my number of followers up as quickly as possible and so I’m not going to wait around for someone to follow me back. I want active participating followers and if they take longer than 24 hours to follow back they get unfollowed. This is why every night I run TwitterSnipe to follow around 50 people in my niche and the next night I unfollow whoever hasn’t followed me back. It’s a slow process, but I’d rather get active Twitter followers than those that rarely log on. I’m learning to up the number of people I follow and unfollow each day though to make this process faster.

That’s all I’ve learned for now. It’s MUCH harder than I thought to get a good number of quality followers. But it’s not about the number of followers you have, it’s about whether they’re responsive and trust you in the end. And that’s where I’m trying to focus. A fake, but genuine Twitter profile is the goal.

So far it’s been a good experience and I’m sure once I reach critical mass, it’s going to be easy to recommend something and see leads come in. If you want to see what all the hype is about and test out Twitter marketing for yourself, check out TwitterSnipe.
If anyone has any suggestions, tips, or ideas, feel free to post them.

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Seems like everywhere you look, there’s new contests to be had these days.

The first one I want to let everyone know about is the new Bidz.com contest hosted by Direct Agents. This one’s got some sweet prizes and you only need 200 leads to win a prize.

Contest runs from May 1^st to June 30^th.
1^st prize: (5,000 leads) 

The first prize package will consist of:

•         Round Trip Tickets to Affiliate Summit East for four days, three nights.

•         Platinum Pass to Affiliate Summit.

•         Driver pick-up to and from the airport.

•         Three night hotel stay at Hilton N.Y.

2^nd prize: (1,500 lead minimum)

•       Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit East

•       Dinner for two at NYC restaurant of choice.

3^rd prize: (750 lead minimum)

•       Gold Affiliate Summit East Pass

Honorable Mention: (200 lead minimum):

•      2 Affiliate Summit East Prize Giveaways

*Contest applies to all Bidz Short Form Lead campaigns. See Terms and Conditions.

Sign up with Direct Agents now to get rolling.

Another contest I want to let everyone know about is Nicky Cake’s 40″ Plasma Giveaway. Nicky, from NickyCakes.com, is won a 40″ plasma from CX Digital, but doesn’t need it so he’s giving it away! To find out how easily you can enter this contest, click here.

I would highly recommend signing up for both contests! I know I could use a new 40″ plasma and tickets to Affiliate Summit East .

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CPAShuffle.com is one of the best alternatives to AdSense I’ve seen.

Most individuals that try to make a buck online usually start off with implementing AdSense into their website’s code that make them only a few cents per click in most cases.

Well as far as I’m concerned, there’s a much better way for those individuals to monetize their websites.

CPAShuffle.com allows qualified users to run CPAShuffle ads on their site that link to CPA or cost per acquisition offers which normally pay anywhere $8-$35 per conversion (varies, but this seems to be the mid-range).

When I heard about CPAShuffle.com, the brainchild of affiliate marketer and entrepreneur Ian Fernando, I had to check it out… I mean I’m STILL waiting for my first AdSense check and I started AdSense my freshman year of college…3 years ago.

After checking it out, I was definitely convinced that CPAShuffle.com could possibly chance the way publishers monetize their websites. Instead of making a dollars and cents on their traffic, why shouldn’t publishers be able to make $10-$30 per conversion on offers that are related to their traffic.

I think this is a game changer in the world of traffic monetization . After all, this is exactly what publishers need in a time where bringing floods of traffic is failing to produce dollar signs through conventional monetization tools like AdSense.

Surprisingly, founder, Ian Fernando, whom I met at Affiliate Summit West, has actually asked me to partner up with him on his latest project. Knowing the potential of CPAShuffle.com, and Ian’s immense work ethic and knowledge of the marketing world, I agreed to help him make CPAShuffle a success. I’m extremely confident that the world is looking for a new, more profitable medium to monetize their traffic…and I’m equally as confident that CPAShuffle.com will be the one to bring it to them.

If you have a high traffic website that you feel could use a better payout than a few cents per click, head to CPAShuffle.com now to see if you qualify.

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There’s been a lot of talk about local affiliate marketing recently.

Jeremy Shoemoney from Shoemoney.com did a post  a few months ago about how he started making something like

$50,000 a month just from local affiliate marketing.

He was also generous enough to put out a guide explaining how get started in your own area with local affiliate marketing.

I think the concept is priceless – the only hurdles I see with it is getting local businesses to understand what you do and how you’re going to get them more clients.

That’s probably why Shoemoney recommends that you provide them your services for a month at no cost to show them what you can do for them. And if they decide to stiff you- no worries- just go to their biggest competitor.

Seriously – the value that we provide as affiliate marketers to companies trying to generate leads online is hugely muliplied when we take it to the offline space because 1) No one locally knows how great of a return they could possibly get through online marketings as they’re still pushing their ads in the Yellow Pages and 2) You have little to no competition.

If you’re trying to think of a way to start generating extra cash, get off your ass and try local affiliate marketing right now. If you’re good at what you do, you’ll quite possibly have more clients than you can handle and so will your clients.

I know a few guys that are currently making bank doing this and I’m about to give it a go as well.
Check out Shoemoney’s post here. Good luck.

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The wait is over! Tracking202 Pro officially launched recently and it’s getting a lot of great reviews.

Here are some really quick testimonials from people in the industry about T202 in general: Tracking202 Testimonials

And here are some of the things people are saying in the industry about Tracking202 PRO.

The creators of the software, Wes and Steve, are undoubtedly some of the hardest working and honest guys in the industry. They’ve created something of HUGE value in my opinion and doing affiliate marketing without Tracking202 would be like doing affiliate marketing blind.
The coolest thing about the program is that you it aggregates all your stats to be viewable on your iPhone. Considering everyone’s got an iPhone these days and that affiliate marketers can’t live without obsessively checking their stats, an iPhone app is definitely a nice touch.

Tracking202 Pro is offering a free 7 day trial right now. So what are you waiting for? Check it out now.

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Jasper, from NerdyAffiliate.com, is first of all a really cool guy and one of the rare guys in affiliate marketing who is cool with sharing and kicking around ideas and tips to succeed. He’s a fellow PPC-Coach.com member and has had some recent success in affiliate marketing. I definitely think he’s one of the top guys to look out for this year, because he has shear dedication to his work as you’ll see below in the interview he was gracious enough to do.

1. How and when did you get into affiliate marketing?

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I’ve always been a huge believer/practitioner in networking since Day 1 and networking in the AM industry is not an exception.

Way too many people think AM is just about their 22 inch screen monitor and themselves sitting behind that monitor in their underwear on a day-to-day basis. Now that’s great and probably one of the benefits of being an internet marketer, but there is just so much more potential if you just go out there, meet, interact, share ideas, and grow from NETWORKING with people. This is especially true if you just LOVE the industry- why wouldn’t you want to meet more like-minded people and benefit from it at the same time?

I am serious when I say that going to Affiliate Summit West, not knowing a single other soul in the industry that I would see there other than a few people like Wes Mahler from Tracking202 on whom I had occasionally talked to on AIM (and who got me into the industry). Nonetheless, the people that I met there and hung out with all turned out to be really exceptional people and many of whom I remain in touch with today and consider friends. Some of the individuals I met at ASW include:

• Tangy
• Shoemoney
• MGrabowski
• Anthony D
• Brandon aka Ad Hustler
• Barman
• Robert Adler
• Beernuts
• Bryn Youngblut
• Ian Fernando
• Wes Mahler
• Lorne Fade
• Kyle Healey

It was great meeting these guys and I know I’ll see them again soon probably at ASE in New York, which I can’t wait for because hopefully by then I’ll be half as good at AM as they are.

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In my last post I talked about Direct Agents and about how they’re always looking to motivate their affiliates.