Email is the primary way I communicate in my business. For this reason I wanted to write a post about one of the best things I have done for this sector of my business.

Most people are unaware you can do this, but all my important email addresses are actually hosted and use the gmail mail servers. This includes their spam filters, etc. All emails are directed to my outlook email inbox still. My own domain (thanvolk.com) is pointed to google's mail server and I get it all delivered to my outlook inbox.

This is a great way to increase productivity and one of the best moves I have made when it comes to email.

I say I increased productivity because when I would host the email on my own servers, I would get so much spam that it would take so much longer to filter everything out. Besides that, I would also have trouble receiving mail from certain carriers because I am far from an email mail server expert.

So to sign up, you can go to Google.com/a and either sign up for the premium account for $50 / year or get it free as a standard account.

If you're full time and have your own domain email, I highly recommend signing up for this service.

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One of the main reasons why I am successful today is because I have failed enough times to know what to NOT do.

So often people start trying to make money online in a few weeks and tell me how they are frustrated because they can't get anything to work.

Failing since 2004

Let me put things into perspective for you. I have been working at making an income online since 2004. It wasn't until 2007 that I earned enough to make it full time. It wasn't until 2008 that I made enough for me to feel comfortable. It's now half way through 2009, 5 years later.

During the 5 years, I tried everything I could possibly try.

Edison failed over 1000 times before he created the lightbulb. Those failures are what defined his success.

You will never fail if...

You will never fail if... you never try. The bigger the risks you take, the bigger the success you're going to have. Plain and simple.

I know of numerous people who want to be full time internet marketers but don't want to risk PPC Money, advertising money, etc. Essentially they want no risk, and 100% reward. The times this happens are very few and far between.

Minimize Risk

There are a ton of ways to minimize risk in this game especially. When I was first starting affiliate marketing, I had very little reliable sources, which is one of the main reasons why I created this blog.

Now there are a TON of great resources out which I recommend to everyone who asks me. The hilarious part is that many people still do not take my advice because the resources usually cost something. Again, it's better that way because if you're not willing to risk $40 bucks a month for a training program, then you're not going to be willing to risk $1000 on PPC.

Resources to help Minimize Risk

If you're looking to start in affiliate marketing, the best place you can go to in my honest opinion, is PPC Coach. You can read my full review of PPC Coach.

Another great place is Affiliate Summit. Networking in person with people is a great way to learn new tricks, tips and overall gain a ton of valuable information.

So there you have it. Now go fail!

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About The Author

Dennis Yu is the author of this guest post. Dennis is the CEO of BlitzLocal, a localized internet marketing company. He is an amazingly smart and talented internet marketer. Also, thanks to Nick Abramovic, who assisted with concepts in this article

Why Most Bid Automation Packages Suck

At SMX Sydney last month, I spoke on the Expert PPC panel. There were several web analytics vendors (I won't name them here) who all but claimed that their proprietary bid optimization software would eliminate the need for you as a PPC marketer to do anything. Just watch the cash roll in. How does this software actually work? Well, you'd have to be a Ph. D in Statistics to understand-- but drill down and you'll find that it's really not that difficult. No bid management system we know can beat the power of a motivated human, who can account for brand terms, seasonality, competitive actions, what's going on in TV land, or any of a zillion factors that aren't quantifiable by a change in CPC, average position, and conversion rate.

Agencies scale not by creativity but by overhead. This is true even with agencies who use either in-house technology or license technology from others. Even the advanced agencies are not very sophisticated – they will use rules-based bidding that works half the time (you still need a human to double-check) and because they are rules-based – they require you to make customizations (or as they say “settings changes”) depending on your account/campaign. We've taken over a couple dozen campaigns from the big boys and when we look under the hood, it's still hampsters on wheels, not technology. If you're a small affiliate-- a one-person show, take heart to know you're not at a disadvantage! The emperor has no clothes.

What are some issues with rules-based bidding? Not enough data. So you've got 10,000 keywords x 10 positions x 10 ad variations x 10 landing page variations x 3 search engines. That's 30 million combos. And then the supposed bid automation tool vendor says they can manage those 30 million combos each day for you in real time. Why, certainly, you wouldn't want to manually try to look at that, would you? First off, just like the density of matter in outer space, 29.95 million of those combinations are likely to get you zero impressions, not to mention clicks or conversions. How is the tool to make a determination if there's no data?

What if Keyword A gets 10 clicks and 1 conversion, while Keyword B gets 8 clicks and 0 conversions? Can you tell if one term is better than another? I've actually interviewed someone who claimed they can determine if a keyword would convert in just 10 clicks. Reminds me of the old TV show "Name That Tune", where contestants compete to see how many notes they can name a tune in. While most contestants could get it in 5 or 6 notes, the reality with PPC is that required sample sizes are dependent upon factors such as confidence intervals and expected conversion rates. If an offer converts at 1 in 100 clicks on average, you can't tell with just 10 clicks.

So let's say you run the calculation and determine that you need 200 clicks to make a statistically significant decision. How many keywords meet this threshhold? What if you split those measly clicks further into time of day, destination url, and other factors? Pretty soon you've got but a handful of clicks to make a decision, no matter how nice your Taguchi tests are set up. The solution-- set up keywords into tightly themed ad groups. Make sure that keywords in an ad group mean the same thing and are equally likely to convert. Then you can bid at the ad group level.

What bid management software will group your keywords properly? None, unless there is one that can write and speak as well as you-- Alan Turing, we're a long ways off from that. So don't let magical software substitute for good old fashioned thinking. Use affiliate PPC tools appropriately. Landing pages are 10 times more important than ads, which are 10 times more important than keywords, which are 10 times more important than targeting, which are 10 times more important than bid optimization.

At one conference, I met an advertiser who boasted of having 3 million keywords in his portfolio. He wanted to get advice on how to manage such a complex campaign. I asked how many of those terms got at least one click in the last 14 days. About 15,000, he said. Get rid of the other 2.99 million keywords and you'll have an account that's easier to manage and will make you more money. His campaigns were complicated and crappy-- at least take the step to make them simple and crappy, where you stand a chance. No amount of cosmetic surgery will fix it.

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit. So a great bid optimization package won't fix a poorly built campaign. Got extra cycles? Work on your landing pages and ad copy. Want to send competitors on a wild goose chase? Go on and on about how bid management through some magical software or other set of tools has been so key to your success.

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Tony Hsieh (prounounced shay), CEO of Zappos

I always love reading about successful entrepreneurs and CEOs of multi-million and multi-billion dollar companies.

Since I was young, I've been trying to decode the mindset of these type of people and learn how I can apply the good and chuck the bad that I glean from studying them.

Today, Mother's day (happy mothers day!), is a day that my family relaxes and spends time with each other. So my day consisted of hanging out with family and then lounging in the pool reading about the CEO of Zappos.com.

Personal Experience with Zappos:
Zappos.com is one of those websites that I love to use. I buy all my designer jeans from them both for myself and my fiance'. The reason I do is because of the amazing service. The first purchase I made, I got free overnight shipping and though it was a mistake that I got the package so quickly.

Another time, I had ordered my fiance' some diesel designer jeans which looked smokin hot. Sadly, when we got them, they just didn't fit right. I sent them back and got credit to zappos.com with no questions asked. AND I didn't even have to pay for return shipping! Awesome...

Aftermath:
After reading about Zappos.com, they say that they do not advertise free overnight shipping on their site on purpose. It invokes a response of surprise and almost a feeling like you got a little something extra for nothing.

As I was reading that, I smiled realizing that I responded exactly how they had intended me to respond. That is the goal in marketing. You want to get into your target audiences mind to the point where you know what to do to invoke the exact response that you desire!

Reading page after page of this CEO's mindset really got me thinking. He is considered a marketing guru by many and as I began to read more, it be came increasingly evident.

Employee Training:
Another interesting thing that Zappos does is have each employee go through 4 weeks of training. After the training they are offered $2000 plus time spent training to quit. They only want people with buy-in of the company.

At first I thought of all the people who would apply and then quit in hopes of getting that "essentially" free $2000 bucks. The more I thought about it, the more I realized what a great idea it was. By offering the $2000 bonus, they offered the employees a way to create a feeling of ownership of the company; it's almost like getting initiated into a clubhouse.

Management:
Tony encourages the Managers to fool around with the employees. No, I'm not talking about that type of fooling around. I'm talking about just messing, joking, hanging out, relaxing, etc. In the corporate world where stress levels are high, corporate thresholds are pressed onto the workers, and there is a strict, work only policy, this company is different and is thriving because of it.

There are no scripts that customer representatives need to follow... there are no forced way of doing things. People are encouraged to be themselves.

Customer Service:
One story I read about was where a Zappos customer had purchased a set of boots for her husband. Her husband dies shortly after the purchase and the lady wants to know if she can send the boots back. The customer support representative not only allowed her to send them back but the lady received a bouquet of flowers on the day of her husbands funeral from zappos. The customer support rep had ordered them (on Zappos' account) without permission from her manager or anything.

By doing so, the lady told every single person at her funeral. Not only did they have a customer for life (however long that was! ) but also had 30-40 new customers.

Now that is how a business grows from a small start up to over $1 billion dollars per year in sales and having sales days over $3 million dollars (and I thought a $24,000 dollar day was a good record...)

The list of things that you can learn from that company are quite large and as most of us on this website are those trying to make many millions (or more) online it's a great example to look to for innovative ideas.

Enjoy your Mothers Day!

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Twitter is quickly becoming one of the great ways to connect with people and make yourself more of a face instead of a name.

For me, I've begun to connect with a few people who have done really well in the industry that I previously had not really connected with on a personal level.

Its seems like the more I use twitter, the more I realize the power in networking via twitter.

See many times when people want to "network" with me or others that have some sort of experience, they hit me up on AIM, say "hey" and proceed to ask me question after question.

This is not a way to network.

The way you network is by first building a relationship. Give a little, don't expect to get a lot up front.

That being said, twitter is a great way to build a relationship with people.

If you have not yet created a twitter account, go make one now!

After you've made your twitter account, follow me and I'll follow you back.

The other person you want to follow is NickyCakes! The reason you want to follow him is because by doing so, you enter yourself into a drawing to win a free 40" Samsung HDTV! There are other ways to enter, so please be sure to check the rules first..

See you in twitter land.

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Larby, a "seven figure a month" affiliate, is one of the best at this. He built his affiliate business to over a million dollars per month by being in constant communication with the people who are there to work for him, his account managers, representatives, etc. Larby isn't the worlds most advanced php coder, a uber blackhat, a hacker of any sort, (but he is a hard worker) and managed to make more in a month than most people make in half a lifetime.

So many of us computer nerd affiliates are "scared" to talk on the phone and just want to do our own thing. Most of us who remain this way, only make it to a certain degree of success. I was this way for a long time. I hate to talk on the phone (still do), and had to learn to get over my phone phobias in order to advance my business to the next level.

Every single successful affiliate that has hit a huge degree of success replies on other people. Other affiliates, affiliate managers, representatives, etc.

Although I might not be doing business with X affiliate network, I am working on building a relationship with them now for the chance that I might work with them in the future.

My Affiliate Manager Ryan Sessler, from Azoogleads, is another person who taught me the importance of relationship. He has helped me in many ways and always communicates issues to me directly. Because of the relationship we have built, any account issues are directed towards me and we work it out.

This type of mindset goes beyond just affiliate marketing. It extends into good ol' regular business. To run a successful business, you must build relationship and find favor in the sight of those you're working with.

So when your next affiliate manager calls you from Random_new_affiliate_company, don't shrug them off! Ask them questions, get information! When representative from X_company calls you about your campaign, don't just say, "I got it, thanks." Ask him/her for tips, etc.

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Dan Walker runs his blog over at Dans Blog, he's a great PHP/MySQL coder and startup affiliate himself. He tends to share a lot of his technical knowledge with affiliates less techy, this is his first guest post of hopefully many

Welcome

Welcome to this tutorial on useful tips and tricks that you can do with htaccess! This tutorial will only cover the basics and essentials, a more advanced one may come in future. First of all a quick primer on what htaccess actually is, for those of you who haven't heard of it or are unsure of what it does.

htaccess is a configuration file used by most web hosts to configure how the URL's look and how the website actually behaves. For an affiliate marketer in particular it can be the difference between:

http://www.jonathanvolk.com/blog/?somepage=readpost&postid=my_first_post&this=that

and the much more friendly-on-the-eyes version:

http://www.jonathanvolk.com/blog/my_first_post/

As you can see, htaccess makes URLs much more user friendly and easier on the eyes. The prettier URL is nicer to look at, it better explains where the user is, what they're reading and even better for marketers - they're more likely to remember it. Not only that but more friendly URLs are easier to manipulate and users can use them to navigate your site in some cases. Consider this for example, the user is on a page about cards made by Honda, but they'd much rather look at cars made by Ford. Here's your two possible URLs:

http://www.jonathanvolk.com/vehicles.php?car_brand=honda&perpage=20&somevar=this

http://www.jonathanvolk.com/cars/honda/

I exaggerated the top URL a little but the point is there, the second URL is much better from all aspects, it also helps for SEO as it's almost describing the page, extra brownie google points.

Getting a bit more technical

Right, now we know what htaccess does, let's get a little bit more technical. To make use of this wonderful little useful piece of SEO gold, we need to be using an Apache server. It doesn't matter if we're running Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Sun OS or anything in between, as long as we're running apache. The next thing we need is the Apache module mod_rewrite to be enabled, if you're unsure then check with your web host.

htaccess is a file, basically whatever directory you put it in, the rules will apply to that folder and all the sub-folders. So if you put it in /public_html/ then it will apply to all your web-accessible folders. Right, let's crack on!

Let's get started

Ok, go to whatever folder we're testing on, for these examples I'm just going to put my file in public_html so it applies to my entire website. The file is called (amazingly) '.htaccess' without the quotes. The '.' prefix to the file means that it's a hidden file, so if you try to create a new file and it says it already exists, make sure your FTP is set to view hidden files. Now open up the .htaccess file to edit, and we begin!

Basic URL rewriting

Ok so the first line you're going to want to put is;

RewriteEngine On

This enables the ability to transform the URL in real time, if this was off it wouldn't work. For our first example let's turn this ugly URL:

http://www.jonathanvolk.com/index.php?page=contact

In to something more sexy...

http://www.jonathanvolk.com/contact

I know which one I'd rather take on a date. Now let's find out how to do it. The code for this is pretty simple, it looks like this in total:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ /index.php?page=$1 [L]

Ok, now for simplicity let's break that down into parts. First of all what is RewriteRule? It's a simple command that we write when we're going to write a new URL changing rule, like converting index.php?page=contact to /contact.

Second, what is ^([^/]+)/?$? It's a regular expression. I'm not going to go in to great detail with regular expressions because they're beyond the scope of this tutorial and there are plenty of great tutorials on Google. For now, all you need to know is that ^([^/]+)?/$ will match any string, be it /contact /about or anything else similar. If you know regular expressions (regex) great

The second parameter /index.php?page=$1 is the old URL aka what the new URL is doing behind the scenes. The $1 is replaced by whatever is in the brackets in the first parameter. So if a user typed in /contact then $1 would be replaced by 'contact'.

Finally the [L] in the square brackets tells mod_rewrite that once this rule has been used it should be the Last rule used. It's typical in files like htaccess to have many rules that could interfere with one another, by using L after you've applied the rule htaccess will not read any more RewriteRule's.

Passing more than one variable

Let's say your script takes more than one variable, let's say your URL looks like this:

http://www.jonathanvolk.com/car.php?make=ford&model=mustang

This is quite an ugly URL, lots of unnecessary variable names and ampersands (&) that we can get rid of. We want it to be pretty, so our new htaccess file looks like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ /car.php?make=$1&model=$2 [L]

$1 will take the make, $2 will be the model. Which means our new, better URL will look like this:

http://www.jonathanvolk.com/ford/mustang

Beautiful. You've just covered the basics of RewriteRule, you can replace what's in those brackets with any regex you like and you can customize the URL to look how you want, let's move on now to look at other useful stuff with htaccess.

Forcing the trailing slash

For those perfectionists out there like me, don't we just love consistency? In this case, consistency is a trailing slash on the end of every URL. To accomplish this we use this code:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,5}|/)$
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://jonathanvolk.com/$1/ [R=301,L]

Hey look, new stuff! What's a RewriteCond? Basically it specifies a condition for which the following RewriteRule will take place. The first two RewriteCond's we have up there are followed by !-f and !-d, the f means if the user requests a file, don't serve index.php and the d is the same just for a directory. The 3rd line is for some matching with your URL, don't worry too much about that right now! The most important line is the last, the rule, which puts anything it found after your URL where $1 is, forcing a trailing slash (because Google likes it when our page only has one URL).

Forcing www or non-www

If we want even more Google points, we know that Google loves it if we only have one URL to avoid duplicate content in the search engines. We're half way there with the trailing slash, now we need to decide whether to force a www or a non-www policy. It's down to personal preference really but in my experience I tend to force no-www.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.jonathanvolk.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.jonathanvolk.com/$1 [R=301]

This would force a www, if we wanted to force non-www then simply remove the 'www.' from both lines

Conclusion

Whew, will this post has gone on a little longer than I expected! However we've still only lightly skimmed on the basics. Further interesting topics include stuff like making everyone but you see a maintenance page (useful for updating), blocking directory listings, custom 404 pages and much more!

Depending on the reviews for this post, I might make a part two, it's up to you guys If you have any questions post them below and I'll try my best to answer!

I'd like to thank Jonathan for giving me this wonderful opportunity to post on his blog, it's a great blog and one that I read on a daily basis and it feels great to contribute to it!

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Yahoo! is finally catching up with Google and MSN and has some new features rolling out mid-March. Here’s what they are:

1. Day Parting: Yahoo! has officially opened up their targeting preferences to certain times of the day. This is the exact same concept of Google’s ad scheduling. You can go in at the campaign level and select certain hours of the day that you would like to increase your bids. If you find that people convert more frequently during the lunch hour 12pm - 1pm, then you can increase your bids by 10%, 20%, etc. to get more traffic to your site during that time. To activate Yahoo’s ad scheduling you can go into a specific campaign and edit the campaign settings. Yahoo doesn’t currently have this information online, so I can’t give you explicit instructions on where to go and exactly how to set it up until it’s launched.

2. Demographic Bidding: In addition to ad scheduling, Yahoo is now allowing advertisers to increase their bids by a percentage on certain demographics like male/female, and age groups. If you have a website mainly targeting women, ages 18 - 25, you can increase your bids for when this demographic is searching for your keywords. Any time a person signs up for a new Yahoo! account and enters their age and gender, Yahoo! collects this information and uses it so we can target to them specifically. The only catch is that Yahoo! doesn’t necessarily collect their date of birth, so whatever the age they type in when creating a new account is the age they’ll always be.

3. Targeting at the Zip Code Level: You can now increase your keyword bids at the zip code level. If you find that certain areas of a state will typically convert better again, you can increase your bids by a percentage to get more of this type of traffic to your site.

4. Content Network: another update my Yahoo! rep mentioned is that they have really tightened up their content network. Yahoo! now has better control over which ads they display on which websites. They wanted to make sure the websites were more relevant for advertiser’s keywords and websites. Yahoo! has also decrease the minimum bid for the content network from $.10 down to $.05. This is so that advertisers who have turned off their content network campaigns can feel more comfortable turning them back on to try again now that the update has been made.

Well there you have it! These updates from Yahoo! were a long time coming. Now if they could just get on board with the search query report and placement targeting!

What are your thoughts on these new features? Will they influence you to use Yahoo! more often? What other features do you wish Yahoo! could/should come out with this year?

I'm really excited for these changes, particularly the day parting. In fact just a few days ago I was talking about day parting in yahoo to my employee and how instead I just have to go in and set the daily budget to whatever has already been spent when I want to pause it mid day.

I look forward to this update!

Source: PPC Hero

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Vote John McCain

So that time is coming up when the deadline comes for you to register to vote... As an American (if you are), it's your duty to vote so do it.

If you're an affiliate, you should be thinking about your well being. ALL Affiliates should vote for McCain in my opinion. There was a really funny banner I saw on Wickedfire.com which you can see a part of above.

Reasons Why Affiliates Should Vote McCain:

• First and foremost... If you work hard enough at affiliate marketing, you can earn a sizeable income. $250,000 a year is something I believe is achievable by a large number of affiliates if you apply yourself to PPC and don't be lazy. That means, if you vote Obama and you plan to be an affiliate, you're literally making your profit margins automatically lower... Common think about it. Obama has promised tax increases to anyone making $250,000 a year. LAME.
• Refer to above.
• Obama's Middle name... Enough Said. Hahaha...
• Obama's Church is one that clearly states how they are "True to their native land..." Africa. Wow. That's the perfect place for the President of the United States to go... There are also statements on that site which are almost racist in a sense.
• People Think Obama will help the economy, but all his policies that I have seen do nothing but spend more of the rich people's money. Annoying
• You shouldn't waste your vote on a third party. Literally that's throwing your vote in the garbage... Don't vote. Pick the lesser of two evils (McCain) and make it actually count.
• Etc, etc, etc.... Research it for yourself.

Another interesting thing is that McCain will give an overall better tax break to ALL people. Sounds good to me!!!
(click to enlarge) [Thanks tweak50 of wickedfire for the image]

So all that to say... Every affiliate should vote McCain. He's the better of the two and won't steal all your money via tax hikes.

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Let me start off by saying it's probably one of the best things I have ever done in my life!

Let me describe the process...

First, I made an appointment online for a local Lasik eye Surgery place. My sister had the same surgery before so I knew a bit about it. This initial appointment is to check your eyes to see if you qualify for Lasik. I'd be willing to bet that MOST people qualify these days.

After that appointment, you setup another appointment for the actual surgery.

I had mine yesterday. I went in around 10:30 AM and waited till about 11:30 AM. I went in and roughly 7 minutes later, I came back out with a brand new set of eyes.

The Lasik process itself was a bit uncomfortable but not painful. They put a load of eye numbing drops and other drops. They used a laser to create a flap in my lens and peeled it back. Once they peeled it back everything went blurry. It was strange!

Next they positioned the laser over my eye. I was nervous at first that if I moved my eye it would screw up but actually the computer tracks normal eye movements which I thought was pretty neat.

After about 10-15 seconds of zapping (which I couldn't feel but I could smell [gross]) I was done for that eye and they repeated the process for the other.

I went back in today for a follow up exam and it turns out I now have 20/20 vision.

The cool thing about Lasik is that most places offer a 24 month financing program which has 0% interest.

This way, even the very best procedure (which is what I got), only costs about $150 a month. The top of the line procedure cost $1999 an eye but I got 10% off for making an appointment on the same day as my free consultation.

Most people won't need the top of the line package so you can expect to pay anywhere from $899 an eye up to around $1500 an eye. Really, if you factor in the cost of glasses and contacts over a lifetime... it's a good investment.

If your eyes ever change or have issues, you can go back in and they have a lifetime program where they will fix your eyes for no extra cost!

Pretty impressive eh? I love it.

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