Early bird pricing for Affiliate Summit East 2012 ends tomorrow, May 11, 2012.

The Early Bird registration rates are as follows:

• Networking Pass ($99)
• Networking Plus Pass ($279)
• VIP Pass ($879)
• All Access Pass ($1,879)

As of May 12, 2012, the rates to register will be as follows:

• Networking Pass ($249)
• Networking Plus Pass ($549)
• VIP Pass ($1,249)
• All Access Pass ($2,249)

For a description of the available pass types see registration options at the Affiliate Summit East 2012 site.

Save money – register today!

Google warned us in advance about its planned webspam algorithmn update (now known as “Penguin”) and site owners who ignored those warnings are now paying the price.

Many of the comments posted to Danny Sullivan’s post about the Penguin update verify search engine ranking downgrades and loss.

Here are just a few examples:

• “I just had a website that ranked on the first page for numerous rankings…. completely tank. One of the only websites that didn’t do comment spam in my SERPS. Didn’t do link exchanges. Now it’s gone.”
• “5 out of 11 of my sites have dropped into oblivion today.”
• “In one of my niches, of course, my site has disappeared.”
• “I have 2 sites that went missing ..they are MIA .. No where to be found in any key word !!”

While I feel for the truly innocent who get caught in the crossfire of Google’s algorithm changes, they will mostly likely regain their rankings — as has happened in the past. By the way, if your site was affected by the “Penguin” webspam algorithm update on April 24th, 2012, and you don’t think it should have been affected, you may submit a report to Google here.

But some not-so-innocent webmasters are stating that Google doesn’t “play fair” and blame Google for the possibility that they may have to seek offline employment or go on government assistance.

Oh, too bad, so sad.

Forgive my lack of empathy, but give me a break.

I’m sick of the whining and moaning that ensues when Google dumps Viagra, make money online, and diabetes web spam over-optimized sites. Google stated that only 3.1% of English language sites would be affected by this update, yet there’s way too much emphasis placed on spammers’ reactions to such changes.

Instead of living in fear of Google algorithm changes, online business owners should seek out positive reports — and there are plenty of positive reports related to the Penguin update, including:

• “I went to my analytics and did a quick search of traffic over the period from April 23-27 and saw my stats go up after Penguin. More traffic, coming from more places. My ranking in Google is stagnant at #4, but has gone up in Yahoo, Aol etc. Has anyone else seen positive signs from this Penguin update?”
• “one of my sites is up 20-30%…”
• “I’ll wait and behold, and start to arrive at any conclusion in a month or two. First of all, none of my sites dropped outta’ index. Second, being patient is natural for buddhists. Third, being an IT worker, I’ve never seen anything of that scale working well at the moment of release and later on. And I don’t really think I’m ever going to, to be frank)”
• “my total search traffic hasn’t changed”

I too have seen a traffic increase in the past week on most of my primary sites, as is usually the case when an Google puts out an algorithm update.

Here’s a Google Analytics screenshot from one site to which no posts have been made for well over a week and no traffic sent from email blasts. Daily traffic variations remain completely normal and new visitor ratio is virtually the same.

After almost 15 years online, I must conclude that’s because I’ve consistently played by the rules. I do NOT do SEO other than naturally including important keywords in my post titles and text, i.e. I do NOT use silly formulas that may work today, won’t work tomorrow and will get me bounced from the index.

It’s Google’s game, therefore Google makes the rules.

Webmasters who want to rely primarily on free traffic from Google should know and follow Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Here are a few more recommendations:

1. Don’t buy links
2. Don’t allow links from low-quality sites and networks
3. Don’t get sucked into buying SEO services that promise a #1 listing
4. Don’t waste your money on crap tutorials that promise to teach you how to get #1 listings in Google

In other words, don’t waste your time on SEO – become a real business that provides real value to real people.

Has Penguin affected your site? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

P.S. Thanks to Stan Shebs and Wikipedia for the beautiful penguin pic.

Just got this email from Google….

You are receiving this message because your email address is associated with an unmigrated legacy Blogger account. As we announced in April of last year, legacy accounts will no longer be accessible after May 30th, 2012 unless they are updated to the Google Account system. Any blog content associated with this account will also be unmodifiable after that date.

To transfer your blog to the Google Account system you need to visit the Legacy Migration page at http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/XwhEs5ahHDwakI right now to make sure that your account and associated blogs are claimed. If you’ve forgotten the Blogger password that is associated with this email address, you can use our Account Recovery page at  http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/k9ak3qH6oHjXeG to request password information to be sent via email.

For more information, please see our initial announcement we posted to our blog at http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/gk1GnncxkbRzxZ . If you have questions, please visit our Help Forum at http://www.google.com/appserve/mkt/1tkXWGMyAAaToG and create a message with [Legacy Account] in the subject line.

Inasmuch as I don’t think affiliates should use Blogger accounts to do business, you’d better migrate / update before you lose your content!

Food content is a great traffic generator and if you’ve been into Pinterest lately, you alredy know that food images draw a lot of attention.

Here is a gigantic PLR bundle with 200 recipes that can help you capitalize on all of that interest.

Plus, there are 160 images of food too, which will make illustrating your food content so much easier.

The whole package is only $25, making it super easy to start publishing food content and photos. But it’s available only for a short while, so you’d better get yours now.

BTW, The pic is of me eating my favorite food – Pho – at the Sheraton in Saigon… for BREAKFAST. The Vietnamese people have it SO right!!

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Back in February, I challenged myself to blog everyday at 101Date.com and posted the results here.

After a month-long break, it’s time to engage in another challenge.

This month, I will:

1. Post every day to at least one of my sites (here on NPT, WindingWay, 101Date.com and RosalindGardner.com)
2. Walk for 2 hours a day (1 hour if I do an hour of yard work).
3. Drink NO beer.

The objectives should be obvious. Make more money and lose more (some) weight.

So, who’s in? Or, what is your challenge for the month of April 2012?

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Yes, barely 3 months into a year in which I vowed that all my posts would be positive, I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to share some bad news with you.

It’s what I call the “Merchant Bait and Switch” and it works like this:

• Merchant gets you interested in a product.
• You sign up for their program.
• Loving the product, you promote it in good faith.
• You discover (if you are lucky) that your affiliate links no longer produce commissions.

Fortunately, this is a relatively rare occurrence.

However, if you learn that you’ve driven thousands of visitors to a site without the hope of being paid what you are due — you might be somewhat teed off.

Especially if you learn that one merchant has done it not once, but TWICE.

Sadly, that’s the story behind my dealings with Affmeter.

When I started to promote their product, they were using one payment processor with an affiliate program.

Sometime later (read years), I discovered they’d switched to Clickbank.

Yet, despite the fact that I’d done beta testing for them to help them improve their product AND then given them a great testimonial after they’d made the changes to develop a great product — no one ever notified me of the change.

The last time I checked, my testimonial was still on their homepage (although I expect it to disappear shortly after this article is posted).

So, what did I do?

I contacted Firuze Okten Gokce, the owner (whom I knew personally from conversations over the phone and at industry conferences), to tell her that I think she’s committed a major faux pas in terms of fairness to her affiliates. I then change my links over to the new Clickbank links.

When I next met her at an industry conference, neither of us mentioned the incident and life went on.

Duh. me.

Considerable time passed and one day I’m reviewing all my affiliate links again and guess what I notice?

The Clickbank link to her product works, but when you go to the order form from the merchant page — the processor is NOT Clickbank.

Not only THAT, but the affiliate signup page on her site still gives you Clickbank links.

Here’s the video I took to show what happened.

I’d like to say this was an honest mistake, however, in this case, I know better.

The owner of this company started in this industry as an affiliate, and as an affiliate, she’d have known better. At least you’d think she’d have the integrity to contact her best affiliates to let them know of the changes… but no.

And, to prove I was a super promoter of her product, just search “Affmeter” on Google. My 4 year-old review (January 2008) still comes up 3rd in the listings. Granted – what a waste. Gotta wonder how much she owes me. I assume it is a LOT. (The listing in 2nd place doesn’t even have a link to their site… weird).

Anyway, fool me once, shame on you — fool me twice, shame on me — and I should have kept a much better eye on this bad actor.

On the brighter side, it looks like Affmeter recently went out of business, which I’m sure has nothing to do with the software – which was great – but really, really bad karma on the part of its owner.

I wish I could say this was the only time I’ve seen this happen, but it’s not.

Over the years, I’ve soused out a number of links to programs and products that had been terminated and the links redirected to totally different products. The links still worked so you won’t get a broken link error notice like you would if they were a Commission Junction merchant.

In most cases, they are Clickbank merchants of products that are no longer viable (out-of-date or violated Clickbank’s terms of service) and their affiliate links redirect to a landing page with an email opt-in form.

Hopefully in the future, Clickbank will contact every affiliate who ever sold a specific product to advise them of changes to the product or terminations of the product.

Most recently, my affiliate links to Bizzites redirected to a Chinese Bee Pollen site.

Fortunately, the owner of the company had warned me that he was selling the company and that he didn’t know what they new owners would do with it — so when a subscriber informed me that the links were being re-directed, I wasn’t as surprised as I might have been otherwise.

The point is — keep an eye on your affiliate promotions. Don’t just check to see that they redirect to the merchant site, but make sure you are getting credit for the sales as well, i.e. check the order page.

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

This is a true story about a very smart marketer who approached me to promote his Internet Marketing product.

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know that I rarely promote products in the Internet Marketing and business opportunities categories, simply for the sake of promotion.

I also loathe the product launch bandwagon — where all the so-called ‘guru’ IMers promote a brand-new product at the same time. I avoid them like the plague. (Having said that, I did just recently find and promote a product that was in the midst of a launch — unbeknowst to me until I received a notice that I’d won a prize. Weird.)

Anyway, my rule of thumb is to promote only those products which I would buy and use to conduct my own online business… and being a bit of a spendthrift (cheap-o), it’s unusual for me to want to buy any of the over-hyped products that I see being marketed, no matter how hard the JV manager tries to get me on board a launch.

In my experience, many of the ‘new’ techniques touted in information products were used successfully by their developers but are on the way out either due to overuse or black hattery that Google eventually disallowed.

Back to my story about the smartest JV request ever…

So, I hop on the phone one morning with a client who ordered a consultation.

As a pre-condition of the contract, I never look at their sites before we get on the phone to talk. That way they get my unvarnished reaction — a critical view of their offer.

Surprisingly, the gentleman immediately asked me to view a video and read his sales page.

I groaned inwardly when I realized that he was selling a product geared to the online business crowd. However, as I’d been paid $499 to review and critique his site, I shrugged the feeling off and went to work watching, reading and making notes.

At the end of my review, I told him what I’d liked, disliked and made recommendations for change — all of which he apparently noted.

I then asked him if the product really worked as promised.

He immediately gave me access and after reviewing the product, I told him how impressed I was with the quality.

From what I’d seen, he was obviously not some flash-in-the-pan operator, but a genuine human being who wanted to share with others who could benefit from his knowledge.

He got my unvarnished take on that perspective too.

At that point, he pointedly asked me if I would be willing to promote, and gee… guess what I said??

Heck, yeah!!

After he made the changes I recommended to the salespage, I promoted his product and we both made out like bandits, with an almost-zero percent refund rate.

Overall, his $499 consultation was a worthwhile investment, and represented only a tiny outlay compared with his eventual earnings.

Just to be straight, I’m NOT saying that everyone should invest 500 hundred bucks in a consultation with me to get their product promoted.

What I do suggest however is that you think outside the box when marketing a new product. Ask yourself a few questions, such as:

1. Who, in your industry, will give you honest feedback?
2. Who will be your best advocate?
3. Am I willing to implement the changes they recommend?

When you figure that out, approach that person and ask for their assessment of your product and pitch.

If they like what they see – ask them for the JV.

Back at the beginning of February, I announced that I was going to challenge myself to post an article each day to my dating review site, 101Date.com — a site that had been sadly neglected in terms of content publishing for a very long time.

Well, here’s what happened over the month with my blogging challenge.

To produce the content, I:

• Created 6 new articles
• Resused 2 old articles
• Re-used 2 polls, created 6 new polls
• Used 2 merchant articles
• Used 3 press releases / news articles
• Used 2 posts generated by a shopping plugin
• Used 3 PLR articles

And contrary to my original plan, I used no spun articles.

Did I post every day of the month?

If you added the numbers above together, you know the answer is “NO”.

My general excuse is that my brain was addled by allergies here in Arizona, and somehow I missed publishing on the 11th, 26th and 29th. For the last day of the month, I totally forgot it was a leap year.

To make up for the leap day ommission, I posted on March 1st.

Were the results benefical?

According to my Aweber stats, the overall results were mixed. Readership declined by almost 2% over the month. On the other hand, subscriber complaints declined from .12% from the original broadcast on the 1st of February to a mere .04% by the last broadcast.

My take on that was that “they’re getting to know me again” and “it’s GOOD to cull the non-responsive”, especially when one pays for each subscriber!

Traffic Generation results were very positive.

Increases / decreases from month-to-month were as follows:

• 12.05% increase in visitors
• 10.47% increase in unique visitors
• 5.81% decrease in pageviews
• 5.57% increase in time on site
• 19.68% decrease in the Bounce Rate
• 2.71% increase in New Visits

Overall REAL Results

The best results by far, however, were in terms of affiliate commission gains.

I more than doubled my average monthly earnings from the site.

Woohoo!

What did I learn?

Creating a challenge for oneself is good for increasing both productivity and earnings.

It makes you much more aware of how people respond to what you publish, and to produce more of that to which they respond positively.

Not only that, but the positive results energize you to do more of the same!

I also asked you to join me in the challenge and a few of you responded.

So… how did your February blogging challenge work out for you? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Sending traffic to a merchant site plastered with telephone numbers used to be a total waste of time.

I refused to promote those merchants, regardless of whether they had the best brand reputation in their niche market, i.e. think 1-800-flowers. Granted, that’s a little too obvious, but you know what I mean.

The telephone numbers ‘leaked’ commissions when a person referred from your affiliate link, chose to order over the phone, rather than buy the product online.

The common term used to describe such commission loss is ‘leakage’.

As sales conversions are always much higher with direct customer contact, I couldn’t blame merchants for posting their phone numbers.

But the potential for commission leakage is why I personally stopped promoting almost all consumer goods, except through my own drop-shipping arrangements with merchants.

Fortunately, merchants can now both speak to potential customers over the phone AND pay affiliates their commissions due for referrals by setting up Pay Per Call marketing campaigns.

How does Pay Per Call marketing work?

Suppose you have a site about home renovations.

1. You apply to and join the iHomeExperts Heating and Air Conditioning Pay Per Call program (available on the CJ network), which targets homeowners who want a quote on the installation of a new whole-home heating or cooling system.
2. The iHomeExperts Pay Per Call program is web-integrated, meaning that they replace their standard telephone number with your promo number when you direct traffic to their website. NOTE: where merchants are NOT web-integrated, you place your promo telephone number on your website (or in an ad or your business card, etc.)
3. Your referral lands on their page, they phone your promo number and you earn $10.00 per call.

Granted, there are stipulations regarding call duration and quality.

• You earn $10.00 per call if the call duration is greater than 2 minutes and 12 seconds long and it must come from the United States.
• Too, calls are evaluated for quality, so if you consistently send callers who are not looking for a free quote, your commissions will be reversed.
• On the other hand, if the paid calls are legitimate and of good quality, your commissions will remain as posted and you may be eligible for bonuses and an increase in commission levels from iHomeExperts.

From my research, EPC’s reported by merchants in the CJ Pay Per Call network are quite impressive. For example, iHomeExperts is currently showing EPC’s of:

• $121.21 for their HVAC site (heating and cooling),
• $200.00 on roofing quotes, and ;
• a whopping $333.33 for quotes on vinyl siding.

Pretty nice, eh?

Per call commissions vary considerably, anywhere from $1 – $20 for Direct TV and up to $43 per call with Cura Debt. Likewise call duration and definitions of call quality vary from merchant to merchant.

How well does Pay Per Call marketing work?

Based on reports I’ve read recently, Pay Per Call marketing works well for those who work at it.

Adam Viener reported on Revenews that he added a quarter million bucks to his income by driving phone calls. He made no bones about the fact that there was a learning curve involved and that it wasn’t all roses, but in the end, the effort ADDED to his overall income.

Robert Duva, co-founder and CMO of RingRevenue, wrote the following in Feedfront magazine:

Top publishers are earning over $75K/month promoting pay-per-call campaigns. Calls are converting 10x better than clicks. Click-through rates improve 5-30% when phone numbers are included in the ads. Advertisers are earning 1.5 to 2x as much for converting calls as they do for online transactions.

I’ve only just started playing with Pay Per Call myself – since buying the
MMB program (Great course, HATE the name though) – so I have no results to report as of yet. But, like Adam, I know that Pay Per Call marketing will only add to my bottom line.

Quite frankly, although Pay Per Call is still very much in its infancy, it is the future of affiliate marketing. Over the next few years most merchants with affiliate programs will recognize its potential and start their own Pay Per Call campaigns.

Right now, merchants on most of the major affiliate networks offer pay per call marketing campaigns — including Linkshare, the Google Affiliate Network, Commission Junction, ShareaSale and others.

So, for affiliates, the time to get on board and learn how to make Pay Per Call work is definitely NOW.

To that end, I HIGHLY recommend the Mobile Money Bandit course.

Justin Elenburg, the MMB program developer, shows exactly how he managed to “supercharge” his mobile marketing systems to rake in an amazing six-figure income (and more than a $124,000 in a single month).

Moreover, the course was recently endorsed by one of the original Pay Per Call marketing experts — an early and successful adopter of the strategy and one of the guys who taught Justin the ropes.

Check out MMB program today — You have nothing to lose, as it comes with a 100% money-back guarantee.

Sometimes you have to challenge yourself to do better.

This month, I’ve challenged myself to blog each and every day to my dating site at 101Date.com. The ‘challenge’ is due to the fact that I’m no longer too keen on the subject and have therefore been very remiss in posting to that blog.

Ya, I know… that’s how I made my first million — BUT, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m still inspired by the topic.

Too, Valentine’s Day is a HUGE profit generator so getting traffic to the site through content will ultimately be worthwhile.

So, I’m using a few ‘tricks of the trade’ to succeed at this months challenge.

1. Re-posting old articles.
2. Working to finish posts that were drafted long ago.
3. Researching trade industry news.
4. Buying PLR.
5. Checking out some content spinners (yes, I know that’s against everything I’ve ever taught you, but if I can auto-spin an article and then do a little work to make it sound human – hey, why not? Besides, the 7-day trial is only $4.97.

Anyway, that’s MY challenge for February… the SHORTEST month of the year.

Anybody willing to join me?

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,