No Excuses 3 - Official Thread

SEO_Mike said:
Back to how you figure out what you want to run:

  1. Talk to other affiliates. They may not give you their golden eggs, but most will at least help you figure out what might work for you.
  2. Check out the sponsored links in the search engines. Are there a bunch? Few? Might give you an indication of how profitable it is. Pay attention to only the affiliate marketers' links, ignore manufacturers and retailers.
  3. Talk to your affiliate manager. They know whats converting on their network and are more than happy to help you out. If you make money they make money.
Once you have an idea of what you want to run, learn everything you can about it. Back to the acai example, find out:

  • What is acai?
  • How does it affect the body?
  • Will it really do what it says?
  • What are the terms and conditions of the offer?
  • etc.
You need to know your product like the back of your hand. That knowledge will help you market it better, and figure out your demographics / placements faster. If all you know about it is "it's supposed to help people lose weight" then you're going to be that much farther behind the guys that took the extra hour or so to figure out those questions. Don't make it harder for yourself to make money. This is your business, treat it as such.

:angrysoapbox_sml:
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WOW! Thank You!! That was a gold mine of info for my simple question! Unfortunately (for you) it just spurred a bunch more questions, but I'll try not to jump the gun and ask them all yet! I don't want to take advantage of you! (hmm, now in the spirit of WF I should twist that into some sort of reverse 'come on', right?! ha!)

ok,
1. so affiliate managers - where to find one, do they charge a fee or just commission, and are they necessary? (that last part might be redundant since you mentioned them in this post...sorry!)

2. how can you tell what is an affiliate's ad vs. someone else's ad? when looking thru the sponsored links?

There's more, but I'll save them for later! THANKS AGAIN!!
 


dreamer: an affiliate manager is just simply your point of contact with the affiliate company you're dealing. After you sign up with an affiliate company, you'll be assigned an affiliate manager. They are free of fees as they are paid by the affiliate company.

#2. Experience more than anything. There are usually clues though:

  • Affiliate ads are usually more provocative
  • Can be "warnings" or "scam alerts"
  • Take you to a landing page for the item(s) and redirect to another page for you to purchase
nat3r said:
this video is going to be fucking amazing
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Uh, I guess. I thought Transformers was amazing, but I don't have the budget for that level of special effects. So, this will have to settle for informative and slightly amusing at times. :stonedsmilie:
 
SEO_Mike said:
dreamer: an affiliate manager is just simply your point of contact with the affiliate company you're dealing. After you sign up with an affiliate company, you'll be assigned an affiliate manager. They are free of fees as they are paid by the affiliate company.

#2. Experience more than anything. There are usually clues though:

  • Affiliate ads are usually more provocative
  • Can be "warnings" or "scam alerts"
  • Take you to a landing page for the item(s) and redirect to another page for you to purchase

Uh, I guess. I thought Transformers was amazing, but I don't have the budget for that level of special effects. So, this will have to settle for informative and slightly amusing at times. :stonedsmilie:
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lol! I'm sure it will rival transformers! a close second anyway...

Thanks for the info!! I probably should have known that... anyway, thanks!! I'll try to lay low on all the questions now for a bit! :)
 
Holy crap! 63 signups in two days! This thing is going to be huge!!!! Nice!

Okay, so next week I'll secure the server and start setting up accounts and start acquiring domains for those that need them. It's going to take sometime for me to set up all of those accounts and make sure the server is hardened and optimized, so things will probably start in two weeks.

It's getting close!

Also, next week, I'll announce who the sponsor is, what the prizes will be and give you the official rules to win a prize.

That being said, keep in mind that the prizes are not the reason you should try your damnedest to excel. YOUR business is the reason you should want to kick ass. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I wish there was something like this when I started out in AM (affiliate marketing) but there wasn't so like most of the vets here, I learned the hard way. Luckily, there was Wickedfire and I owe so much to this forum and Jon, I'm happy to give back. Maybe you'll be the next superaffiliate. I hope so! :D
 
nat3r said:
just the fact that we are gonna get to see a PPC campaign that isn't fake is gonna be pretty awesome

is NE3 a purely PPC event? or is there SEO involved.
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SEO isn't really marketing in my opinion. I was talking to the owner of the sponsor network earlier and he agrees.

Here's the reason why I don't believe SEO is marketing:

  1. Your primary goal is to get to the top of the SERPs. SERPs don't buy anything visitors do. Granted getting to number one will get you more visitors, which brings me to number 2
  2. The visitors you get are free, so you're not nearly as concerned about the landing page they see. In fact, it's probably not going to be a landing page at all, just one of the random pages on your site
  3. SEO doesn't require you to know your demographic, or understand their mindset, it only requires that you know how to get links and get to number one.
I could go on, but you get the idea. SEO isn't something I do anymore. I'm a direct marketer. Notice I didn't say affiliate marketer, there's a difference, but that's a whole 'nother thread. As a marketer, I need to know who my buyers are. That requires research that has nothing to do with SEO. Also, I don't have the time to wait for results from SEO. I want to get paid now. That means buying my traffic. If I want to get the best traffic I can, I need to really know my buyers otherwise I'm pissing away money.

Sorry, got to ranting. Anywhooooo.......

There a ton of great places to learn SEO, and I encourage you to learn more about it, but NE3 is going to focus on marketing not SEO. Sorry. Notice I said marketing and not PPC? :1bluewinky:
 
Help!

Seo mike, sorry this is off-topic. I sent you a PM, I am hoping to take part of the NE3 event and I have run into a big problem. Thanks, Ken
 
SEO_Mike, you made me pop my WF cherry 1st post :)

Sounds a great idea and will be signing up ASAP, currently taking working on my first few campaign so this is spot on timing for me. Thanks!
 
So, the first 35 minutes of the video have been uploaded. I skimmed through it and goddamn do I have a bad habit of saying "Okay, so what we're doing...." Fucking horrible. Oh well. That 35 minutes took several hours to put together so I'm not very motivated at this point to change it much.

That just covers some intro stuff, signing up for the affiliate program, choosing your offer, and doing some research. Next, I'll get into building the landing page, signing up for Adwords and creating your first campaign. I'm going to use Adwords for this because its familiar to most people and Google can still provide a shitload of traffic. Also, Adwords is one of the more difficult places to optimize and it will be good for you to see that. I'll get into analytics scripts, and some other scripts that I use and some that I'm going to test on this campaign. I found an open source analytics called Piwik that I've been testing on another site and I really like it so far, also an open source heat map called Heatclicks that I haven't used yet, but looks promising.

Finally, I talked to the sponsor last night and I now have his credit card! Yay! So, I'll be getting some prizes ready, hosting and setting up the domain account. My goal is to be ready to launch this by Monday June 1st. If you're on the fence, get signed up soon. You must be signed up by the start date if you want to participate in the contest portion and take advantage of the free hosting and domain name.
 
I am looking forward to checking out that video.

SEO Mike don't do no SEO? Maybe you should be renamed PPC Mike?!

I'm new to affiliate marketing, but i have worked in the digital marketing field for a while. I agree with you for the most part about SEO. However, in my opinion, SEO is not "marketing" per se, but it is a subset of the online marketing field and is a marketing tool.

I found Piwik about 2 weeks ago. I wanted an analytics solution that was not in Google's hands. I am a pretty technically oriented guy but I found the installation to be a little annoying so I abandoned it. The "straw" was that they wanted me to edit my PHP.ini file.

It looked like a very simple edit but I didn't want to risk screwing around with it. Did you have to edit the PHP.ini file and did everything work fine once you did? Or did it screw up other scripts you are running? If it did work without trouble, I may go ahead and resume the installation because it looked like a pretty powerful package.

Ken
 
I don't edit PHP.ini files, I let Platinum Server Management do that shit. :) FYI, unless you are a whiz at server management, that is the best $30 per month you will ever spend. I can't remember what the change was, but I also needed the PHP GD library installed so they just did it all at once. Plus, their monitoring is very good. And, one of the first things I have them do when I get a new server is harden and optimize it. Takes 'em about 24 hours, but it's worth it.

If you have a shared host, then you can usually just email them and let them know what you need. VPS with Virtuozzo is pretty easy to work with yourself. Just login to Virtuozzo find the php.ini file and add the 2 lines that they ask for. Done.

As for my name, I though about changing it to Big_Mike or Fat_Mike, but I've used SEO_Mike since the beginning. It came about because I used to do SEO for a living, then moved on. Mostly I don't like SEO because it bores the fuck out of me and I don't create longterm sites. Every site / landing page I make is expendable and generally only has a shelf life of a couple months.
 
Is the video going to be released on June 1st then? Or am I missing the boat and you've already posted the first 35 min? (ok, i just reread, you've uploaded it, but not posted it yet... right?) I'm just so anxious! I've never been a very patient person.

Which leads me to another question. I know the faster way to make this all happen is to use PPC - it takes money to make money - But if I seriously don't have any to spend, am I wasting your time by joining NE3? I SOOO want to be doing this NOW - but I don't even really have the credit (let alone real money) to spend for a campaign right now. :cry:

Should we kick me out or will I be able to be involved without being able to buy ads?
 
dreamer13 said:
Is the video going to be released on June 1st then? Or am I missing the boat and you've already posted the first 35 min? (ok, i just reread, you've uploaded it, but not posted it yet... right?) I'm just so anxious! I've never been a very patient person.

Which leads me to another question. I know the faster way to make this all happen is to use PPC - it takes money to make money - But if I seriously don't have any to spend, am I wasting your time by joining NE3? I SOOO want to be doing this NOW - but I don't even really have the credit (let alone real money) to spend for a campaign right now. :cry:

Should we kick me out or will I be able to be involved without being able to buy ads?
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Don't cry. There's no crying in baseball!

Seriously, you'll just need to come up with some more creative methods than PPC. Nothing wrong with that, and I'm sure we'll discuss some. Twitter anyone? Craigs.....nevermind. Yahoo questions. There are a shitload of ways to make money without spending a lot or any even. Yahoo questions is great actually. Combine it with some good landing pages, or Squidoo lenses and it can do quite well. The only problem with it: it's a lot of work. If work doesn't scare you then try something like that out until you raise enough to do some PPC or branch out into other areas.

Here's another idea along the lines of Yahoo! Questions: have a friend call into a radio station with a story about something (related to your offer), then have another friend (or yourself) call in and say "Hey, I don't know if this will help that other caller, but I saw a website - {insert your website here } - that talks about that very thing and they have a solution to it as well." or something a little more polished and less obvious.

Get creative, think outside of the box. Remember, this isn't about just PPC, it's going to be about marketing. Just because we do most of our marketing online doesn't mean you can't do any offline marketing as well. I'm very seriously considering some DRTV in the next 6 months. DRTV = Direct Response TeleVision. Infomercials. There are a ton of products that we market online - and do well with - that you don't see on TV. Why not? I don't know, but I'd like to find out. A television, radio or print media buy is not much different than a large online media buy. The only difference is the media you're advertising through.

You are correct, BTW, I haven't released the video to the masses yet. Only one or two other people know where to find it. I don't think my Dad is going to post on Wickedfire ;) and my wife doesn't care (it bores her). Speaking of the vid, I'm off to do some more work on it. Time to get to building the landing page and such.

prathsgd said:
Wow I am amazed at Mike's dedication.
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I enjoy this shit, amazingly enough. TBH, I like the mentoring as much as making the money.
 
I can definitely tell that you enjoy it, otherwise you wouldn't give such clear, thoughtful answers to my incessant questions! Thanks again. The crying has left the building. *shudders* too much blubbering, it had to leave. :) lol - well I'm willing to put in the elbow grease for now, but believe me, as soon as I have some money to play with it will be time to try PPC, etc. Part of why internet marketing appeals to me is the idea of being able to set something up (eventually) and then be able to let it roll without me babysitting it. - Once I actually learn it and stuff.... ya know, the minor details :)
 
Important Update!!

Last day to sign up for NE3 will be friday. This is especially important for those that want to participate in the contest portion of the project, and / or need hosting or domains.

Sponsor and prizes will be announced later today (possibly) or tomorrow.
 
SEO_Mike said:
Important Update!!

Last day to sign up for NE3 will be friday. This is especially important for those that want to participate in the contest portion of the project, and / or need hosting or domains.

Sponsor and prizes will be announced later today (possibly) or tomorrow.
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just wanted to say thanks for everything :) never seen anyone willing to spend so much time just to help noobs and create himself a competition:1bluewinky:
 
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