The HOW Mindset

Affiliate Marketing is essentially like any other home based business. You need dedication, perseverance, time management, etc.

When you go into Affiliate Marketing and you want to be successful, you need to go in with a goal for yourself just like any other business. Some would call this a business plan, others would call it ambition, others... just an idea. But whatever form your goals come in, you need to have one when starting.

"This month I will earn $1000 USD!"

That goal might seem impossible to you or others but I promise you it is obtainable. Instead of thinking I can't do it, or even, I don't know how to do it, you need to think... HOW can I do it? This is what I call the HOW mindset.

Thinking of HOW you can do it is a small and simple mindset change that will continually allow your affiliate marketing business to grow.

Let's take a look at my marketing business for example. My current challenges are the same but on a different scale. Instead of how can I make $1,000 it's how can I obtain MY goals?! How can I manage my time better? How can I get over this darn $170,000 per month plateau I've been stuck at for 4 months now.

So how can I do it?!

Well for me, my solution was doing less of the work myself and doing more of the ideas / creative part. My company (Surge Marketing Inc.) is now up to 3 employees (all of which are part time) and it's been the best move I've ever made. Now I am planning on hitting the $400,000 mark by next month simply because I can leverage time a lot more efficiently.

It's because of the "HOW" mindset that caused me to think... How can I increase my business income.

Instead of being content with my level of income (which is comfortable enough for me), I want to keep pressing forward towards the goal which I believe is my purpose... (feel free to read my complete goal list)

I wanted to take a look at some goals some of the readers have posted here before in hopes of inspiring you. Take a look and maybe even set your goals to a similar level others have set.

• Dan
• When it comes to affiliate marketing, I’m planning to hit at least 5-digit net profit per month by the end of March 2008. I know that’s possible after I received my first commission from affiliate marketing. Sky’s the limit after that!

  Other goals include getting a Corvette C6 (or similar) by the end of March, being more proactive at Church, and harboring the serial-social-entrepreneur mindset to change the world for the better through philanthropy and ministry.

• Rideswitch
• my short term goal is now netting $100/day as I have just made my mark at net $50/day this week. This comes just in time b/c we just started tithing a full 10% of our income to our church and that has put us at an $800/month deficit in our budget. Very scary but we have faith as I’m sure you can relate to.

  I want to match my salary with AM by August of 08 and double it w/in one year.

  I want to put up five profitable and fully scaled long term campaigns to accomplish these goals.

• Alan
• My short-term goal is to make $5,000 in June 2008. I’m new at this and my first week has left me $400 in gross revenue, so I’m motivated.
• Work Plus Faith
• My immediate goal is the make $1,000/mo. After that I’ll adjust higher.

There are so many more and I have not yet checked up on everyone's goals, but I'm sure some of those who are set out to hit their goals, are doing it.

So what are your goals? Write them and remember... Keep up the HOW mindset!

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One common affiliate marketing mistake a lot of people make is focusing on too many things at one time.

As an affiliate there are opportunities that arise probably every day. I mean even just getting emails that show you the "campaigns of the day" can be a bit over whelming simply because you can never build campaigns fast enough to keep up with it.

Focus.
Let's say you finally have found a niche that's profitable in the way you're promoting it and now you're making a consistent profit.

What many people do is think that they're successful and try to find something else. Unless this campaign is a very short term campaign, I highly recommend NOT doing this. I can almost guarantee you will make more money by tweaking and optimizing your successful campaign than trying to find an entirely new niche.

I know people who have focused on good long term niches and are now making tens of thousands of dollars per day because they took the time to understand how the niche works and mastered it.

So... all that to say, the affiliate marketing mistake you don't want to make is focusing on too many projects at one time instead of optimizing currently successful campaigns.

~JV

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Yesterday I was contacted by a company that offered me a special ringtone deal to any of my buddies.

Well, since I consider all of you my buddies, I am going to let you know about this really great deal.

Basically, if you push any sort of volume on ringtones ($50+/day in commissions), then contact me in the next 24 hours and I will let you know of this special deal.

You have to act fast because they're only doing this for the next 4 days.

When you email me, just let me know what type of volume you do a day on average and I will email you back with the information.

My email can be found on the contact page.

For any other affiliate companies that might have special deals for my readers, please feel free to contact me.

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If you have been a long time reader of my blog, you'll know I am an advocate of PPC Coach.

What is PPC Coach?
PPC Coach is a pay per click training program for people looking to learn how to use systems such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft Adcenter.

There is a focus on pay per click affiliate marketing but this service is not only focused around affiliate marketing.

Who should use PPC Coach?
If you are looking to start fresh in affiliate marketing PPC Coach is probably one of the best resources you could use. Even if you've already begun in affiliate marketing and are struggling to coerce the big google monster to work for you, PPC Coach is a great option for you.

The other person who PPC Coach is great for is a small business trying to launch a product or service. If you don't fancy hiring someone to do all your pay per click campaigns and are trying to advertise your services, Adwords really can do wonders for your business. Taking the time to learn the basics in PPC Coach's membership area really will benefit you and help you to spend less and make more.

Why is it great for affiliates?
The main reason why I love PPC Coach so much is because each month that you're a member, you get to be a part of a new "case study."

For example, in the first month, PPC Coach would show you how to market zip and email submits in an effective way using a specific poll method. Not only does PPC Coach show you how and what to do, he provides a script to enable you to do it.

It's really amazing value.

Recently (within the last few days), PPC Coach also added on another month one case study for you which gives you a FULL review site script which allows users to comment, rate, etc. It's a really powerful way to market a product, specifically those which cost the end user money.

Cost:
If you don't know, the price for PPC Coach is just $49 dollars a month.

If you have just $500 to start in affiliate marketing, (which seems to be the number MOST people say they could afford to start out with), I'd highly recommend spending $50 of it on PPC Coach.

Even if you only had $100, I'd still recommend PPC Coach first because it'll save you the headache of trying to test and teach you what works and why.

Other Posts:
If you'd like to also read other posts about PPC Coach that I have made you can view them below:

• Ubercamp vs. PPC-Coach

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Many times in this industry it feels like as you get comfortable with how to play the game, they decide to change it up.

Well, this Saturday, adwords will be going offline for a few hours. This downtime is no doubt to change the system quality score over to a new improved scoring system.

The basics of this quality score update is that there will no longer be a "Inactive for search." Now every keyword will get traffic, although those who would normally be "inactive for search" will probably get one click a day or something crazy low.

Another huge update is the Quality score will no longer show minimum bids. Instead, they will show minimum front page bid.

This number is actually quite helpful as compared to the minimum bid. Basically you'll know exactly what you need to pay to get on the front page. Neat huh?

The last major update is that the quality score is supposedly calculated for every single search. The process is fairly complicated sounding and so I'll leave you to read about that on the google blog.

You can check out the whole article here.

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Today I want to continue the affiliate marketing mistakes series.

One affiliate marketing mistake you don't want to make is ignoring trademark bidding. MOST of the time companies in search don't allow you to bid on their trademarks.

For example, let's say you're going to create a campaign for netflix and you realize that you can't bid on terms such as netflix. Those generally would be great profit generating keywords.

Now, normally, when we read a rule, our brain automatically applies that rule across the board. Instead, we need to remember that trademark term rules sometimes only apply for an affiliate campaign and are not a google rule.

Therefore, you can create a cross promotion campaign. Simply create multiple pages all around the different products in the industry.

For example, you can create a netflix and a blockbuster landing page. Now, all you need to do is bid on trademark terms and direct the traffic to the competitors page.

Netflix trademark terms now go to blockbuster landing pages and blockbuster trademark terms now go to netflix.

There is an exception. In google, you can request your trademark term to be banned from bids. For example, if you try to bid on the term "shoemoney" your ad will be disapproved (sneaky little... ;)).

All that to say... the affiliate marketing mistake you dont want to make is ignoring trade marked terms.

Enjoy...

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I'm sure you guys have seen the virtual sales people such as site pal and others which place a virtual sales person on your website.

There are many things you can do to increase or decrease sales but these type of things have always seemed to help (when done correctly).

More and more, the videos are moving over to actual actresses and actors.

Well, this morning I saw a video that literally blew my mind. First, check out the video HERE.

This person you see in the video is not real. How impressive is that?

As all technology, this technique will get replicated and become cheaper and cheaper and I bet make a move over to the virtual online sales world.

Imagine having a virtual assistant for your entire website browsing experience and better yet, the person is unique to your website - branded exactly how you want.

Pretty cool stuff huh?

Check some of the other videos:
Main home video.
Tribal man

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So now that I am back from Affiliate Summit East, I have to do the review of how things went. I know this post is a bit late but I have not been feeling all that well since I got back from the Summit.

Flying out to Boston:
I flew out to Boston from San Francisco the night before Affiliate Summit started. I got to the airport around 9 PM and waited to catch my flight. We all loaded onto the plane and waited... and waited... and then all of us had to get off the plane due to some technical issues. Doh! We waited till about 11:15 PM and another plane came. Things didn't go well again and we all had to wait another 45 minutes due to technical issues on the new plane. It was crazy. Once I finally got into Boston, my luggage was missing and so they were going to deliver it once they found it.

Day 1:
The first day of Affiliate Summit was pretty uneventful at first. I didn't have my luggage so I was in clothes that smelled like air planes (you know what I mean? haha), scrubby, and tired.

My awesome affiliate manager @ AzoogleAds, Ryan, hit me up to go get some lunch. I told him that I was scubby and he said, "It's not a fashion show, it's an affiliate conference!" Hahahaha. That was pretty funny.

Me and three azoogleads guys went and got lunch at The Legal Test Kitchen. It was pretty grubbin food.

The weather was nice and sunny until lunch was just about over. The rain just started to pour down.

We ended up catching a cab back to the hotel which was a few blocks away and relaxing a bit.

I wanted to go walk to exhibit floor and stuff but before I could I needed to get my luggage in order.

I ended up calling the airport again and seeing what time my luggage was to be delivered. They said sometime around midnight but had it waiting for me if I wanted to go pick it up.

I went, got my luggage from the airport, and went back to catch the last 5 minutes of the exhibit hall. It was cool because I got to meet Zac Johnson right off the bat. I also talked a bit with Adam from AzoogleAds.

After that, I went back and went out to dinner with some people from AzoogleAds and some publishers.

One guy that I really thought was cool at this dinner was Matt Marcin. If you read other affiliate blogs, Matt Marcin is a guy who won a contest over at NickyCakes.com by earning over $1,000 in 24 hours. He ended up winning an Xbox360 or something like that.

He was a really smart guy and we ended up going back to the Hotel Lobby (where there was a LOT of affiliate summit people) and talking for a couple hours. It was cool. He then introduced me to some really cool people such as Larby. Larby is a really cool younger guy that is also making a killing online. I learned a lot in the few hours that we chatted.

I was trying to find Mr. Uberaffiliate, Paul, but I didn't see him. It was at like 1 AM or so when I finally got to meet him in the Lobby.

We ended up talking for a little while and then... well... we met the spammer. Everyone called him the Russian spammer and he was one interesting character.

He came over and cornered us all and was telling us about his... rather interesting life. Hahahaha. Eventually all of us moved to the side and he had cornered Paul.

Hahaha. You can see Paul kinda backing up as this guy get's closer and closer to his face. It was so hilarious I had to take a picture.

That was the end of Day 1.

Day 2

Day 2 was pretty cool too. I slept in till about 11 AM which was awesome. After that I went down and walked the exhibit floor for about 20 minutes. Nothing seemed super extraordinary to me at first. I went back upstairs and I worked on some campaigns for a little bit.

I actually ended up just hanging out all day at the hotel till dinner.

I went to dinner with Paul from Uberaffiliate.com, Steve from Affspy.com, and some more AzoogleAds people (Ryan, Jeremy, Erin). This dinner was awesome. Most of us had some really got steaks.

I took a bunch of pictures but none of them really turned out due to the low lighting.

After dinner, I went back to the Hotel and hung out in the lobby again with Matt, Paul, Larby, and some other guys. We talked for a while and had a good time.

Towards the end of the night I got to meet some guys who regularly attend the Meetup202, including Wes (Owner of Tracking202 and Prosper202), Jimmy Ramos, and a whole lot of others.

It was really cool to meet everyone.

Day 3.

Day three was the day I was determined to check out the exhibit floor no matter what. I checked out of my hotel and headed on over to the floor.

It was really great to be at the exhibit hall on the last day because there was almost nobody there that I got to talk with pretty much all of the people at the booths.

While walking around from booth to booth, I got to meet up with some cool people.

First, I got to meet the cakes... that is nickycakes.

Nicky cakes was really nice and hooked me up with a skateboard deck from AKMG.

After that, we saw Zac Johnson again and took a picture.

After this I went over to the Market Leverage booth... Boy was that awkward. Hahaha. I tried just walking by slowly and of course they caught me and said hey to me either way. Hahaha.

I saw Wes again and ended the day with one more picture.

So right before I left to go catch my plane, I caught up with Jon Fisher (owner of WickedFire.com), and we checked up on our little competition.

All in all, affiliate summit was really awesome!

I want to thank AzoogleAds for flying me out and paying for my affiliate summit tickets!

Any way... this post is long enough so I'll end it here. Haha.

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Well, yesterday was the last day of Affiliate Summit East and man it was a great time. I'll post more details about my time at ASE in another post though... This post is about the Jon Fisher Competition.

For anyone who doesn't know, basically, I was trying to get my website Jonathan Volk to rank in google for the term Jon Fisher. Jon Fisher of AoJon.com (and the owner of Wickedfire.com) was trying to rank as high as possible for the term Jon Volk.

I saw Jon the first day of ASE in the night and when I had checked the rankings we were both at position 5. When I first saw Jon, I said, It's a tie!!!

After that we decided to extend the deadline to Monday morning.

Monday morning I didn't see Jon but Tuesday morning right before I was about to leave we caught up and checked the results right there on my iPhone.

In the few days time we had to finish optimizing, Jon had moved up 1 position to be in position 4. I was thinking, "Crap...!!!" Hahahaha.

Next we checked my google results and BOOM. I had moved up 1 position too!!! Another tie!

So all in all, we tied and we'll both be giving each other the links.

And that ends a fun google bomb competition.

More details to come about Affiliate Summit (with photos). Feel free to subscribe to my posts to get updates.

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This next post in the series of Affiliate Marketing Mistakes you don't want to make is going to be about name servers and dedicated hosting.

As some of you may know, I have three dedicated servers at my favorite web hosting company but this post really isn't about that.

When you get large enough in the affiliate realm to need a dedicated server, most dedicated server companies encourage you to host your own private name servers. Sounds professional and cool right?

For anyone who doesn't know, a name server is a server which basically points the domains to IP addresses on your server. In other words it makes your domain access the files on your server.

So what's so bad about having your own name servers?

In 99% of cases, having your own name servers is the best solution because you can ensure your websites are up more often. You control every aspect of your websites uptime essentially.

However, as an affiliate having your own private name servers is a bad thing. The main reason that this is a bad thing is because there are ways to look up every domain on a private name server.

Quick example:

Let's say you have grown enough to need two small dedicated servers. Let's say that you have set up private name servers. The sad part about this is that no matter what, people with a little know how can find every single site you own.

Clearly a bad thing for affiliate marketers.

The solution:
The main reason I like LiquidWeb so much is that they allow you to use their private name servers.

The reason this is so good is that while people will still be able to look up all the sites on their name servers they'll have to go through tens of thousands of domains. It's a lot less likely for someone to be able to find exactly which site is yours in this way.

If you sign up for liquid web under my referral link, you can contact me for more details on how exactly to set this up.

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