The feeling of them wanting to partner with me was great. I could offer them services they didn't have, and they me.

Sadly however, the longer I thought about it, the more I realized how I was rushing into it way too quickly. With decisions that will affect your business for years to come, it's not something you ever want to rush into.

See, after just three short 1 hour meetings I was wanting to partner with a company I knew not much about. While they had tremendous opportunities for me, abilities that I could add to my company, and loads of other perks, I realized I knew nothing of their actual character.

Whenever you enter into a business partnership or even a relationship, the thing that is more important than talent, ability, gifting, etc is their character. Because when the times are rough, character is the thing that will keep the person going. When it comes to making hard choices, character is the thing that will make the person pick the right (or wrong) choice.

So often however, we focus on the persons ability first and later on examine their character.

This is much less affiliate related as it is business related but running an affiliate business is still a business. So, hopefully that'll help some people out there.

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All I can say about this app is WOW. Just wow. The number one thing that I love about this app is the speed. I have not yet upgraded my iPhone to the 3g, so checking stats would often be quite a chore.

Now, literally within seconds, I have complete campaign information.

When you first login to the application using your AzoogleAds information, you are immediately taken to your daily revenue stats. Sweet!

Other features include showing when / what you were paid last, previous 7 days of revenue, EPC reports, etc.

The only feature that was missing was a By hour report but I'd be willing to bet that it'll be in the full release of the app.

This just goes to show one of the reasons why AzoogleAds is the best. They simply are always ahead of the game.

To apply for beta of the application or for more information, you can go to this page.

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This site brought me to an amazing idea that may or may not work. Basically, with this site, you are able to see a preview of what ads are going to run on black Friday here in the states.

Now, a great money making idea is to use this information to create a one day campaign geared directly towards this information.

So let's say for example you find target's ad on black friday ads. Then you go and make ads targeting these amazing low priced deals. Image ads on high traffic sites would probably be the best to target (pun).

An even better one to look for would be to try to find Amazon.com's deals before they go live. With the payout they give, you could easily make some nice cash.

In any affiliate marketing or marketing campaign, the more unique benefits you have to offer the customer the better. What better unique benefit than an AMAZING deal from a store that they don't even have to wait in line for.

The idea isn't 100% refined but I'm sure some of you could probably go and run with it and make some good coin.

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Jon has recently been crowned the king of affiliate marketing by many. See after not having run a single affiliate campaign for over 2 years, Jon decided to come back into the industry, and come in strong.

By networking with some of the industries smartest such as Larby (Really nice guy) and Konrad (very smart PPC marketer), he was able to generate $2.2 million dollars in just 30 days!

Normally with this type of volume in this short amount of time, I'd expect the margins to be almost nothing but actually he generated over $600,000 in profit. And, if he was able to use any sort of cash back program, like the Amex plum card, he would have generated another $40,000+ just on cash back rewards. (Gotta love reward points... ;))

This goes to show a few important things:

• First, networking is important!!! I have had a lot of the success I have had due to the great people that I have been fortunate enough to meet.
• Second, that affiliate marketing can make you an unbelievable amount of money if you know how to do it right.

To check out his post, look at Aojon.com.

Enjoy!

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Today, I want to talk to a much less talked about, higher risk and potentially much more profitable way of making money online through affiliate marketing. This method is called Media buying.

A media buy in basic terms is when you pay a website (or agency) to display your banner on their site. You generally pay on a per one thousand impressions (ad views) basis. This is called CPM. This means that no matter if people click your ad or not, you pay per each one thousand views of the ad.

A standard CPM can cost anywhere from less than a dollar up to $20+. Many places (larger websites) require a minimum purchase of $5,000 - $10,000.

Doing a media buy on Myspace for example will run you a minimum of $10,000 ( I believe ) and around $1.70 CPM.

Now, because we're not actually paying per click, the game changes a bit. No longer are we focusing on quality score or even relevancy like having keywords in the ad... Now we are focusing on getting the attention of visitor so we can get as many clicks in that 1000 impressions as possible.

I've heard stories of experienced media buyers hitting profit margins upwards of 5000%! Now that is impressive eh?

Needless to say, it does take a lot of experience, work, and most importantly money. A great place to start however would be getting your experience via places like myspace self service advertising network, facebook self service ads, and even adwords content network with image ads!

Once you get a handle on a great converting ad, you can try your hand at some of the smaller media buys and go from there.

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Many people think that I am cheap and I'll be honest when I say that for what I make, I don't spend a lot of it. I think of it this way: the less I spend, the more I can reinvest into ventures online.

If you're like me and like to calculate profit / numbers regularly, you can get a general feel for ABOUT how much taxes you're going to need to pay for this next tax period.

Now, the way I like to think about this is that I have a pool of money that is waiting to be sent off to my favorite place in the world... the IRS. The more I spend on tax deductible, valuable assets for the company, the more I get to dip my hand into that lovely pool.

It's either do nothing and spend all your money on taxes or invest it into assets and thus I have chosen assets.

So, as the year is coming to a close, it's always good to be on the lookout for great ways to lower your tax bracket down to as low as possible while building your company. I look forward to telling you all about what I will be purchasing!

There are some great places to look at valuable assets.

First, there is sitepoint.com. Site point marketplace is one of the largest places for you to purchase websites.

A word of caution however: Do not purchase arcades, photoshop tutorial sites, proxies, etc unless you know how to market these type of businesses. Additionally, you shouldn't purchase a site unless you're interested somewhat in the market... Otherwise the site will probably die off. Overall, I'd stay away from the "Start up" websites as I think they're just not that great of deals.

One other thing to think about when purchasing (Thank my girlfriends Dad for the wisdom): Why are these people wanting to sell the business? What skeletons are in their closet essentially... Where is the market going?

Next, there is Digital Point Forums. Known as the largest web master forum on the internet. The buy / sell marketplace is a great place to find good deals on domains, websites, and other things. Another great place to locate some great assets ;).

Lastly, there is Sedo and DNForum. These two places are the top two places (that I can think of) to buy premium domains.

I like to think of domains as real estate. Because essentially... they are virtual real estate and what's the rule? Location, Location, Location.

Now... go buy something!

~JV

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Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year because you get to dress up and act like a fool (on purpose) and eat lots of junk food without repercussion (at least in that instant...).

For this year's celebration my girlfriend, Maria, is going to be Alice from Alice in Wonderland so... of course I got to be the rabbit.

What are you guys doing to celebrate Halloween? What are you dressing up as?

And now... enter stage right the biggest season for online sales and sales in general. Enjoy your Halloween and get ready for some big money making seasons!

~JV

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See... It's really all just a matter of fine tuning everything to be a well oiled machine that pumps out more dollars than you're putting in.

When someone else has figured a way to make this "machine" work, chances are, you can too as long as you optimize (oil it) enough.

I had my own formula for calculating profitable ads... Basically, I would watch major keywords for a period of around 30-90 days (usually a quick check during the "I don't want to do anything" times). Next I would make a mark of what sites I remember / are actually affiliates like myself. During the period of even just a week, you can begin to tell which are the bigger players and which ones are not. The bigger players have consistent higher positions and show for almost all inquiries. Smaller guys however probably show less frequently and in lower positions.

The thinking behind this is that the bigger guys have a much better optimized campaign. Therefore profits are higher so they can bid more to get a larger percentage of the market.

This is how I generally find what sites are what I consider profitable.

I've always wondered how sites such as PPC Bully calculated this type of thing for you.

If you don't know about PPC Bully, it's a site that basically does all the work above by checking the ad some 20 odd times a day. You can do this for up to 25 keywords.

After researching how they figured out if a keyword is profitable, I realized it was much like the way I try to calculate profitability but with even more accuracy and more importantly... automation.

How PPC Bully Calculates Profitability
Here is a little snippet from the PPC Bully page showing their algorithm.

Profitability-Indictor (PI)

How the PI is being calculated?

Ad PI = (Number of Days Seen * Percentage Seen) / Number of Days since Last Seen

Example:

Ad "Birthday Flowers" was seen 12 days out of 18. The Ad was last seen 2 days ago.

Number of Days Seen: 12 days
Percentage Seen: 12/18 = 66.6%
Number of Days since Last Seen: 2 days
P-Index = (12 * 66.6%) / 2 = 4
Profitable Ad is an ad whose PI is at least 7. You can change this default threshold (7) in the Account page.

Now, with anything, you could do this yourself like I USED to be doing, or you can sign up for PPC Bully and start doing the whole automated thing.

Personally, I like to automate as much as possible.

I think of it like this... I have so much going on right now affiliate wise, that I couldn't afford the time to take on another project right now. Let's say that I hear about a HOT campaign or keep seeing it all over. What do I do?

I throw in the top keywords into google... maybe some long tail keywords... and then continue working. Now... thirty days later, I have a complete data set of research material ready for whenever I am ready to enter that niche! And thus... more money is made.

To me, that's worth the 45 bucks.

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One of the winners, I believe is one of the best ideas I have heard of in a long time...

This application uses the android technology to create a huge number of affiliate commissions for the person who created the application. Let me explain...

First, this application is called compare everywhere. With this application, you can use the camera's phone and scan bar codes at your local store. Then this application searches online and in local stores for the best price of that product!

So let's say you go into your local best buy, find an amazing television set and scan the bar code with your camera. You see tigerdirect has the TV for quite a bit less... In fact you can get the TV for $350 off! Sweet. You buy the TV right there through tigerdirect.

We'll let's think about this for a minute...

Stores such as amazon.com, tigerdirect.com, and loads of others all have affiliate programs.

So with this application, each time someone finds a better deal, not only do they win, but the creator of the application wins.

What an out of the box idea for making (prob) millions.

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Each and every morning, I get up, check my email (of which a good amount are blog updates). I love to check these blog updates because I can often find nice new gems of knowledge in them! Granted, every blog writer needs to write some fluff posts (Refer to my political post a few posts back...) that really don't benefit you. What I like to say is Eat the meat, chuck the bone... Which means take in the good stuff and throw away / ignore the bad and pointless posts.

That being said, I'd say there are about 15-20 blogs I am subscribed to that I read on a constant basis. Most of these blogs have great material. Some have better than others and the list I am about to give you is not in any particular order.

So without further ado:

• CDF Networks - Chad doesn't post very frequently (because he's too busy rockin' it) but when he does post, they are always of good quality. His blog has given me the most "Aha!" moments where something clicked. A recent good post of his was theming your landing page... You can read it on his blog... Very good stuff.
• http://adwords.blogspot.com/ - If you use adwords, you need to be subscribed to this blog. It's not even a question of if... you just need to. There are always helpful updates and you're always the first to know about the latest and greatest with adwords... very important seeing as a large portion of your traffic probably comes from adwords if you're anything like me.
• Jonathan Volk - Some cool guy that talks about AzoogleAds way too much... You should subscribe to his blog for sure. (hahahaha)
• UberAffiliate.com - Paul is a smart guy and usually has some really useful tips. I used a tip on his blog back in the day when I was doing ringtones to make at least 5-7k extra in revenue. Yea... So worth reading through his posts to see the tips. He also has an amazing guide at UberCamp.com which gives newbies a complete course that they can go through...
• Shoemoney.com - While Shoemoney doesn't provide useful tips as much anymore, he does usually do a great job at getting large industry news out before anyone else. Another thing I enjoy about Jeremy's blog is that he usually provides insight as to how he looks at this as a business instead of an "internet thing." Because he is the one making multi-millions, I like to learn how he does it from him... and not someone who isn't making anything.
• Cash Tactics - Usually has some good information... specially enjoy some of the older posts. A great wealth of information there.
• NickyCakes - NickyCakes is simply the king of linkbait. He is also a great guy but more importantly he releases juicy insider secrets all the time on his blog that always make me cringe when I see them. ~95% of his posts are useful which is a much higher percentage than many!
• Affiliate Confession - Alan is someone I respect a lot. Although he is just learning PPC, I think he probably has single handedly written more posts on BANS than ANY OTHER PERSON EVER. Seriously... if you want to make some income not using PPC, BANS is a great way to go and he will teach you virtually everything you need to know in his previous posts! Don't waste your money on an ebook. Seriously. I also enjoy the fact that he seems to take time with his posts and usually includes images that are well suited for the post.
• Justin Dupre - Justin is newer to the affiliate marketing game than pretty much all of the guys above but when it comes social marketing, he really provides some great tips! I've learned a thing or two about my social media advertising.
• Neils Web - Neil is the king of facebook advertising posts. If you're trying to learn to advertise on facebook, read through his old posts. Though the blog has been dead for 23 days now, the old content is still relevant and worth reading...
• [NOT A BLOG] WickedFire.com - *WARNING* - Wickedfire is filled with people who will literally RIP you apart if you ask or say anything stupid so I would not go there if you're a newbie... or stupid. Lots of great information about affiliate marketing in the affiliate marketing section so it's worth checking out.

EDIT:

Some others I remembered:

• Matt Marcin - Matt doesn't write much but the posts he does have are really good info.
• PPC.bz - Sometimes it's just nice to have a laugh at some of the things going on in the industry. I like the sense of humor this guy has.
• 5 Star Affiliate Blog - How could I forget Linda's blog? This is THE authority blog for affiliate blogs.

I'm sure there are more I am missing but can't think any more tonight. Post your favorite blogs that I have not mentioned here too!

~JV

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