I Am Now Blogging At..

EPICSKILLZ.COM

So I got myself an iPhone again.

(I sold my iPhone 3G a couple months ago to get a Blackberry Bold.)

I loved the Blackberry Bold primarily because of the awesome keyboard but the apps from iPhone were just too tempting for me.

Quick trivia fact: Did you know Amish Shah uses an iPhone too?

Ed Dale’s passion for anything Apple isn’t a secret anymore so you probably know that too.

I’m no Apple fanboy, but the ability to sync calendars and the awesome apps are turning me into an iPhone fanboy.

Without further ado, here are my favorite apps which I think all Internet Marketers must have:

1) Dropbox – I use Dropbox extensively in my daily activities so having it on the iPhone just makes things that much more convenient. 

2) Evernote – I write my nightly and weekly reviews on Evernote so I can write it wherever I am. I also store notes from courses/ebooks here and properly categorize them so they will never get lost.

3) Fring – For a one-stop mobile IM station, which includes Skype, AIM, Gtalk etc

4) Awesome Note – Yeah you already have the default Notes app but Awesome Note is just.. More Awesome! It syncs with Evernote, lets you add pictures etc, and it just looks better.

5) Facebook/Twitterific – Duh.

This will be the last post for this case study.

The performance of the campaign for the past week was horrible, and I have lost quite abit on this campaign just trying to optimize it, only to realize the bad conversions were due to a factor I couldn’t control.

The campaign started getting profitable again immediately after Christmas so I guess all I can say is that this niche doesn’t convert well at all during Christmas.

Here’s a screenshot of my stats for the past 2 days.

Profits are small, but you can see how these add up as you find more and more profitable campaigns.

My goal is to hit a consistent $200 per day with CPA in the first month of 2010, so I probably need to uncover at least 20 more profitable campaigns like this one.

That said, I realize that I’ve provided really little value in this case study because I’ve revealed so little about my campaign.

In the spirit of giving, I’ve decided to reveal more about the campaign, whilst not giving away everything.

Here we go.

It’s a dating offer.

DUH.

Newer affiliates might be surprised that dating offers actually “still work”.

But yes they do and they work really well if you take care of the smaller details properly.

I’ve learnt a bunch from this campaign, and here are some tips that will probably help you out when you decide to tackle this niche too.

1. Target males ONLY. Females are a whole different ball game.

2. Turn off your campaigns during office hours. They click, but they generally don’t sign up at work.

3. Don’t promote dating offers over Christmas. This hurt me big time. Does this theory apply only during Christmas or for other holidays as well? I’ll let you know when I find out.

4. Track like a maniac, track whatever you can. This cost me big time. It took me almost a hundred bucks in the hole to realize I needed to find the highest converting combination of adcopy and creative.

Now all I’m testing are 2 adcopies with 2 creatives, and constantly deleting the “losing” ones and adding new ones to “compete” with the winner.

Same thing you do for Google Adwords.

I’m going to be testing out some PPV traffic sources for the next couple weeks – I’m relatively new at this but I’ve got a mentor helping me out so hopefully this accelerates my hitting $200 a day by alot.

I might consider doing a PPV case study and even giving away ALL the details of the campaign (after I stop running it, of course) just so you guys get to really peep behind the scenes and hopefully connect the dots.

As I look back, I’m not really satisfied with the amount of value I provided in this series but I really want to protect this campaign, so I hope you guys will understand.

I now know why so few bloggers actually do real LIVE case studies!

Today, I received an email from a spammer on my webmaster email for one of the forums that I run.

This email address was created solely to register automatically at thousands of forums for the purposes of spamming forums like yours. Remove my account and any other account registered with my email address!
You should also consider making the password requirements for your forum much more stringent.
Sincerely,
A Random Digilante Who Is Sick Of Forum Spammers From Russia

I thought this was pretty funny.

So my Google Adwords account was banned.

Setting up conversion tracking was also a bitch because my AM seems to take ages to do it and kept coming back to me saying there were errors.

Nevermind.

I’m terminating this one.

I don’t want to stop this series so I’m doing something else.

I’m experimenting with a new traffic source and network anyway, so I thought I might as well chronicle my stats here instead.

Using a really simple setup here, without LPGen and Prosper202.

I’m just using different subids for different adcopies and tracking that way.

Anyway, here are my stats for the campaign from 3 nights ago:

Clicks: 78
Adspend: $5
Leads: 4
Commissions: $23.60
ROI: 372%

2 nights ago:

Clicks: 85
Adspend: $5
Leads: 2
Commissions: $11.80
ROI: 136%

Last night:

Clicks: 71
Adspend: $13.90
Leads: 4
Commissions: $17.70
ROI: 27%

I’m trying to scale up by increasing my budget but it seems like my target demographic was really limited.

Plus it seems like weekends are bad for this market, as my returns last night were pretty dismal.

I’m going to just let it run this way, and by Tuesday I should have enough statistics to switch off non-converting adcopies to further increase the ROI.

I also need to figure out a way to scale these babies!

And here’s what Google had to say when I tried to enquire more about why my account got banned.

Hello Kang,
As mentioned in our previous email, your Google AdWords account has been
suspended. We are unable to revoke your account suspension, and we will
not accept advertisements from you in the future.
Please note that our support team is unable to help you with this issue,
and we ask that you do not contact them about this matter.
As noted in our Terms and Conditions, Google reserves the right to
terminate advertisements for any reason. To view our Terms and Conditions,
please visit https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder .
We appreciate your cooperation.
Sincerely,
XXX
The Google AdWords team

Notice the lack of details of any sort, and the absence of any means of recourse.

I feel sorry for businesses that have depended on Google for survival.

Yep, my account has been banned.

Dear advertiser,
We are writing to let you know that your Google AdWords account has been disabled due to one or more serious violations of our advertising policies related to Landing Page and Site Quality.  As a result, your ads will no longer run through the Google AdWords system and we are unable to accept advertising from you in the future.  Please note that future accounts you open will also be disabled.
As part of our commitment to making the AdWords experience safe and effective for our users and our advertisers, we routinely review the landing pages that our advertisers promote through our search and content networks.  If we find that an advertiser has submitted a landing page that egregiously violates our policies, we reserve the right to take immediate account-level action.
Landing pages advertised via AdWords must have relevant, original content, and must be transparent about the nature of the business being promoted. Further, advertising certain types of sites will lead to immediate account disabling.  These types of sites include, but are not limited to:
   * Sites that charge users or collect personal information in exchange for a product that is never delivered
   * Sites that charge for "free" software
   * Sites that trick users into paying for fake or poor-quality content
   * Sites that charge users for information that makes unrealistic promises of financial or personal gain
   * Sites that install malware software on a visitor’s computer
Please note that this action is related to sites that have recently been advertised through your account.  In a review of your account history, we found that your account had submitted a least one site that egregiously violated our advertising policies.  Although you may have removed these sites since our latest review, advertisers that have a history of promoting these types of sites are still subject to account-level disabling.
You can review our Advertising Policies, including our Landing Page and Site Quality guidelines, by visiting: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guidelines.cs
You may also review the complete AdWords Terms & Conditions here: https://adwords.google.com/select/tsandcsfinder
In addition, our FAQ about Account Disablings can be found here: https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164786
If you have additional questions or concerns not addressed by our policies or help center, you can contact support by replying to this email.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords team

Or rather, one of my Adwords accounts has been banned.

Time to focus on other traffic sources for affiliate marketing, I guess.

However, being on the corporate side of Adwords as well, I think I understand why Google is being so strict on affiliates.

The ideal target customers for Google Adwords are corporate entities.

Not work-at-home guerilla marketers like us.

Adapt or DIE!

Quick update to the case study.

I’ve been trying to integrate Prosper202 with LPGen to no avail, which explained the delay in updates.

I’ve given up on the integration for the time being and am just using Prosper with iframes for now.

If that wasn’t enough, the offer I’m trying to promote has frame-breaker code in it, which broke my Google Adwords campaign, as my destination URL and display URL didn’t match.

I’ve also stopped testing on Yahoo! and am trying out a second tier PPC search engine now.

So I’m banging on walls in a couple directions but I’m going to keep trying to make this campaign profitable.

Hopefully I get some clicks in the next couple days so I can report back with some results.

I recently signed up to John Fancher’s 30 Day “Send an Email Everyday” autoresponder series.

What a mouthful.

What it is, is a series of emails from John Fancher for 30 days straight, about autoresponders in general. Being a copywriter, he weaves powerful thoughts and ideas into his emails.

I’m now on day #8 and am looking forward to my daily dose everyday.

I thought I’d share two of these posts with you here.

Day 2!

Review of the ground rules:
*I won’t be pitching anything
*I’ll try to keep all of them less than 500 words
*They won’t all be genius marketing insights, but hopefully they’ll
   all be at least a little fun
*I welcome your feedback. Good, bad or incoherent.

Ok, here’s #2.

Yesterday I wrote about one of great "idiot savant" songwriters in
rock history, Iggy Pop. Iggy writes deceptively simple songs by
keeping his word count low, repeating phrases, and writing from the
perspective of a much-less-intelligent and self-aware persona.

(He’s not as dumb as he sounds)

I also ended the message with some stats. One was a word count. The
other was a reading level.

Perry Marshall and I will send each other texts…

"5.9!"

"5.4!"

"5.2!"

We both know what they mean just from the numbers. It means the
other one has written some unrevised sales copy that reads at a low
grade level. (Btw, Perry, "4.4! Beat that!").

Yes, we’re PROUD of this.

Why? Because simple copy sells. If you can take a complex idea and
communicate it simply…well, that’s kindofa salesmanship 101 thing,
right?

The readability stats are based on a few key numbers: Average
number of characters per word, words per sentence, sentences per
paragraph, and percentage of passive sentences.

You can find out the reading level of your copy by running it
through Word’s spell check function and looking at the bottom of
the results screen that pops up when it’s finished. If you don’t
see the results screen, go to Tools/Options/Spelling & Grammar and
make sure "Show readability statistics" is ticked.

I use this ALL the time. It’s a great way to get an idea of how
well you are communicating your message. It’s not perfect. But if
you run your copy through it and you get back "12.8" you’ve
probably got some serious revising to do.

General rule of thumb: shoot for "8.5" or lower.
I just ran "Mr. Tambourine Man" by Bob Dylan through it. Dylan is
not a songwriter most people associate with "simple".  And
"Mr. Tambourine Man" is more than a bit trippy and obtuse. "Your
ancient empty streets too dead for dreaming" ???
But readability?

5.8

That’ll sell.

Word count: 389

Reading level: 5.5

Recommended Song: "Mr. Tambourine Man", Bob Dylan
John Fancher
NoLameCopy.com

Inspired by this post, I’ve gone out and found a wordpress plugin evaluates the readability of your posts automatically.

And here’s day 8, my other favorite.

I’m a HUGE Bob Dylan fan.

And whether you’re a fan or not, you have to admit, the guy is a great songwriter. Allmusic.com’s bio of Bob starts like this…

"Bob Dylan’s influence on popular music is incalculable."

And most of that influence is due to his songwriting, or course. But did you realize that right up until his first album (mostly covers with only two originals), Dylan doubted whether songwriting was "his thing"?

Right up until he started, perhaps the greatest songwriter of the rock and roll era, doubted that he could write. Then he heard a song ("Pirate Jenny", I believe) that made him believe he could do it. It was his tipping point.

So, he started.

And the productivity that followed over the next 7 years or so might be the most voluminous outpouring of genius that the rock world has witnessed. He put out so much great material that what he LEFT OFF his albums could have been collected into 5 or 6 more fine records.

What does this have to do with ARs?: Well, one thing I’ve discovered during this 30 day challenge is that the ideas will come AFTER you commit. After you GET STARTED.

Dylan didn’t have 1001 ideas for songs stored up waiting to be written back in 1961. But once he committed. WOW! Boy did the ideas come! One on top of the other like an avalanche.

Same here. I had a handful of so-so ideas for this series before I started. I wondered whether I’d have enough.

Now? The ideas are just rolling in. And, here’s the kicker: the ideas are BETTER than the ones I had before I started. I probably won’t even use any of those old ones now.

So, if you think you don’t have enough ideas to write a 10- or 12-part follow-up AR series, here’s what I say to you: You’re right. And you WON’T have enough ideas UNTIL YOU COMMIT to writing them.

But once you commit, you’ll have way more than you need.

Word count: 356
Readability Level: 3.4
Suggested Song: "Start Me Up", Rolling Stones

Rock on,

John Fancher
NoLameCopy.com

“And you WON’T have enough ideas UNTIL YOU COMMIT to writing them. But once you commit, you’ll have way more than you need.”

Wise words, eh?

Here you go, if you’re interested in signing up for the series too.

I learnt something earlier on today which I thought will be interesting to you guys.

We all know names are important, whether they’re product names or domain names, because they helping in creating a good first impression, and more importantly, in branding.

Not forgetting the fact that having your keyword in your domain name helps tremendously in SEO. (Not that you didn’t know that, right?)

Quick tip:
Download domain name analyzer. It’s going to help tremendously when you’re thinking of domain names for your sites. Just enter keywords off the top of your head and it’s going to see whether they’re available, in all different TLDs.

Now, back to what I was talking about.

Frank Kern has one of the best product names I’ve ever seen in internet marketing.

Okay, so it might not be the “best”, but it’s certainly one of my favorites.

Mass Control.

Short and sweet, easy to understand, reeks of mysterious power.

I found something interesting though.

The domain name for Mass Control is this: masscontrolSITE.com.

With special emphasis on the word “site”.

So I checked out masscontrol.com and guess what the site’s about?

“Wholesale Heating & Air Conditioning Supplies”.

Lol.

(There really IS a whole big world out there outside of Internet Marketing, eh?)

So there you go.

Two lessons in this post:

1) Names are really important.

2) The world’s not going to end if you don’t manage to get the perfect domain name. (Most “perfect” domain names have been taken up anyway so no surprise there.)

So just grab what you can, and DO something about your business instead of fretting over minor obstacles like not having the “perfect domain name”.

With proper branding, or more likely to our case, with better SEO, not having getting a “perfect” domain name is a non-issue.