Affilicon has come and gone.

I was surprised with the professionalism, the quality of the sponsors, the stage set up.

I was impressed by the free water, delicious lunches, Tequila and Sushi, and the plans being made for future events.

I was delighted by how much the boys outnumbered the girls, and the number of native English speakers…

….and mostly that I was not nervous speaking in public and really loved it.

It was an honor meeting and presenting with Ran Aroussi, Yigal Pines, Sam Michaelson, and Felix Leshno.

I also got to meet / know a little better Charlie Kalech (thanks for ride from hell man), and several other internet addicts from Jerusalem and environs.

I love my new PR agents of cool, Lloyd and Ilya. It felt like reconnecting with old friends, even though we just met.

A special shout out goes to Graeme from Gibraltar. He sat in the front row of my presentation, since he knew it was important to me that people come and listen.

But WHO Moved me Most of all????

I invited you to exchange cards, to come talk to me, and boy did you!

Sometimes I behave in ways that I cant explain. Do I HAVE to give you a really good explanation why i wanted to hand out my card to everyone and receive theirs in exchange? Do you not know how opportunities happen?

I dont buy lottery tickets, but I sincerely believe that it’s entirely possible a card in that pile could make me or them a LOT of money.

Before you go, here is a TEST:

Find for me what is different in this image and the one above? Let me know below. Tell me how long it took you, and your thoughts. There is a lesson to be learned here.

If I asked you to do work for me, but only hinted at a possibility of financial reward…

say a year or two down the road….

what would be your response?

WAIT! Dont answer yet. There is more to the question.

I would require that you give me your best quality labor! Which means not physical work, but to share with me your MIND, perhaps a nice chunk of HEART & SOUL.

And Time.. oh yes, it would require lots and lots of time.

Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.

The truth!!!! Not only would you think I am insane, you would probably think me rude, and an assortment of other unmentionables.

and… now you know why sooo many blogs go silent.

There is a HUGE distinction between Blogging for Dollars and Blogging for Impact. In fact, I may start a little controversy here,… and even though I had planned future posts on blogging for ‘money’, I think it is the rare blog that is able to support even ONE individual in a comfortable fashion.

However, let me jump to the Punch Line.

“Good things come to those who wait”

Not too funny, but I will be laughing all the way to the bank.

By Blogging for IMPACT, or SUCCESS, with passion, with YOU in mind, NOT my wallet, many opportunities have come my way.

Israel is hosting it’s first International Affiliate Convention. It is well known to me, not from locals, but from being told the world over, that Israel boasts some of the top Affiliate earners across the board. In fact, I had the great honor of working extremely close with one of them (May he rest in peace).

I will be speaking about ‘Making more money from your traffic’, focusing specifically on List Building and Membership Sites. Come witness live a sexy powerpoint. This 2 day convention is thorough and filled with powerful speakers on an incredibly wide range of topics. I look forward to meeting others. Maybe you?

If you CANT just somehow make it over to the Holy Land, I may figure out a way to get a video clip, images, and well, I can at least share with you some highlights from the event.

Interested in attending? Visit the Affilicon - Affiliate Marketing Conference Now!

To summarize, don’t neglect looking at the BIG PICTURE. Often times We spend so much of our time in our daily microscopic lives, we fail to see the potential in well… in just potential.

I urge you to SEE the potential in the potential.

Have you ever experienced a “Big Picture moment?

Today we are discussing monetizing from promotions made via your affiliate partners! Is the Gap offering a 20% off sale for a week, or Bed Bath & Beyond a special buy one, get one free? Listen up!

*NOTEWORTHY

1. Dont JUST Listen to these ideas and hear them at face value. As a creative marketer, I listen 2 steps behind and 3 steps forward. If this idea isnt for you, try to dig a few layers deeper and find how this could translate into improving your bottom line.

Need Some Extra Cash? Way #2 - 20 Ways to Make Money Online

2. I realize this is not a hand held tutorial. Anything I talk about can easily be backed up with a product explaining the ins and outs. Sometimes I WILL provide a link for such a product as I realize a 2-3 minute video could leave you intrigued but needing more guidance. If you want more information, and no link is provided yet (such as now), please let me know!

Please join in the conversation, or share this with friends! Would you like YOUR company, service, idea, etc.. to be featured in one of these videos? Let me know ..

… Anything is Possible

About 6 months ago or so, MANY online marketers (newbies and seasoned) signed up for a $1 trial to StomperNet. The StomperNet program claims to ’stomp the search engines’ and build your business to be a SERIOUS business, and at an $800 monthly membership fee, this trial seemed like a no brainer!
 
Only once we entered, did we find out that they were offering their trial members a special system called Stomper Simple. The plan of simple was to help EVERYONE get an online affiliate business up and running. Everyone was to take a product of their choice at Clickbank and pre-sell it. Part of their system including creating ‘Kitchen Table Copy’. The idea is that you print out 4 different salesletters of competing products, and place them all on your kitchen table. Take a red marker and highlight all the best parts of each salespage and then create one ‘knock em dead’ salesletter.
 
But what’s the catch? After creating this awesome salespage you have to send them to ANOTHER full blown Clickbank salespage! Many of the better products - better meaning that according to Stomper Simple ‘mathematics’ it’s an easier sale - include poor salespages, opt-ins, and just a LOT more reading to get to the order form.
 
When you pitch a product, you have to make it READILY available - dont ask them to jump through ANOTHER hoop!
 
Here was a question I posed to my Stomper Team - Is there a way to SKIP the clickbank salespage? Go straight to their order form?? There are MANY benefits to this beyond the Stomper Simple method..
 
After surfing the web a bit yesterday, I accidentely fell on the solution! Here is what Lynn Terry from ClickNewz says: (ok this is copy and paste to make sure you get the technical details right - hope thats ‘kosher’ in the blogosphere)
 
Typically, when you are promoting a ClickBank product as an affiliate you will use what they call a “hoplink” to the merchant’s sales copy. That hoplink tracks the click-through’s and you get credit for every sale in the form of commission.
 
In the rare case that you want to bypass the merchant’s sales copy, you can set up a direct link to the checkout page that will still track your referrals. Here’s how you do that…
 

clickbank.net/sell.cgi?YOURID_MERCHANTID/ProductNumber/ProductName
 
You will need to put the “http://” in front of that, and also make sure the link comes out all on one line - it breaks into two lines here on this page, but you want to make sure to create the link with no spaces or breaks.
 
There are 4 things you need to edit in that link:
 
YOURID which is your ClickBank ID
MERCHANTID the merchant’s ClickBank ID
ProductNumber
ProductName
 
The product name and product number can be found in the merchant’s original checkout link. What I usually do is view the merchant’s sales copy page, then click View > Source in my browser. This brings up the source code for the page, and you can locate the order button and analyze their order link.
 
Lynn also suggests asking the merchant for permission.. and testing it out! When you click to purchase at the bottom of the purchase page you should see your affiliate name in brackets at the bottom.
 
Thanks Lynn!
 
The next trick is to figure out how to not have others steal your clickbank commissions.
 
Speaking of Stomper Simple - all the participants say that the best part were the relationships created. I added like 30 names to my skype and chat regularly with 3 of them and of course everyone knows my new friend George! Certainly worth the $1!!

P.S. I want to give you one more trick than I promised in this post. Here goes … it’s to do with spying on your competitors ads … If you could check EXACTLY what keywords your competitors are bidding on in Google adwords and find out how much they are paying per click, how many ads they are running, and what is converting for them you would probably think you would have to Google to find out that stuff? NO! I use a software called Affiliate Elite. What will Affiliate Elite do for YOU? All the stuff I mentioned in the second sentence of this paragraph! And as well as seeing what ads your competitors are using how much they are paying etc. you can also use it to find potential affiliates to promote your products - clever eh? Check it out.

 
Yeh.. you know me always trying out for something. I was looking to find the link to show you for my latest
 

 
What is an affiliate thief? Well it could be you and me.
 
2 categories:
 
1) Clickbank Thief. Deserves its own category. Most affiliate programs DO NOT allow you to purchase and earn for yourself a commission, or rather, spare yourself at least 50% of the expense. Clickbank does. If you notice affiliate marketers pining for your purchase with their amazing bonus offers, it is in large part due to this.
 
2 caveats:
 
a) In order to receive the money from clickbank which you accrue while buying items with your own affiliate link, you need to have made sales through several money mediums, 2 types of credit card, + paypal, so unless you are actually also selling to the public at large, you will have a hard time getting hold of your money… ( I speak from experience People!)
 
b) When it comes to Internet Marketing, once you are clued in enough to realize you can legally do this, it is usually since you have purchased so many IM products and still not found success or that which you find worthy of devoting enough time. Honestly, there should be some allowances for those people who are really interested in testing out a new product, but keep saying NO MORE BUYING, but cant help it every time a product launch is froth with irresistable copy, and underneath is really a sub par product, that you somehow already own something similar in your OWN NAME in a jumbled up collection of products you bought resell rights for!
 
2) Human Nature.
 
People do NOT like to see others succeed. I dont know why. If you knew that an item would cost the EXACT same if you were to click on their link and help them earn a few bucks, or if you were to clear your cookies, or open up another browser and NOT buy it through their link.. then WHY oh WHY would you NOT help the individual who sent you there? I find myself guilty of this if it’s a fellow IM’er who I know and I dont want them to know that I am yet again purchasing more products.
 
Human Nature is a funny thing. When I was auditioning for the NEXT Internet Millionaire Reality Show, I asked people in the Stomper forum (during my trial membership) to vote for me. One woman wrote.. I gave you a 9, since I wanted to reserve the right to give someone else a 10. Lady you can give us all 10’s, I mean GEE WHIZ… some people… none of those videos deserved even a 9 !!
 
Sorry for that little tangent…
 
I recently read a report that recommended using http://www.pinurl.com to mask your affiliate links and allow your link to be cookied and avoid people working HARD (yes, some people spend time on stealing your commissions, with NO benefit to them whatsoever).. You just paste the affiliate link and they supply you with a nice truncated code that is indiscernable.
 
For example. Lets say I wanted you to sign up to Clickbank, so you could sell the items from their marketplace and make tons and tons of money , but instead of mentioning the word Clickbank, I would refer to it as ‘a treasure trove of available affiliate products with skyrocketed commissions that will result in easy no brainer residual income for you’ (good copy on the fly eh? ). YOu may be intrigued to click. So which link would get you more:
 
http://pinurl.com/27i (What pinurl provided for me)
 
or
 
http://theresults.aff20.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=BLOG (the actual affiliate link)
 
or
 
http://andreayager.com/recommends/clickbank.html (this is a very popular way to indirectly bring visitors to a site via an affiliate link)
 
or lets be honest… after seeing one of the last two choices, would you just click http://www.clickbank.com and cut out (at not cost to you) the affiliate marketer?
 

P.S. I have been testing out different solutions to combat affiliate thief’s. The first Affiliate Cloner is really easy to use and creates really short and sweet links.

The second, Affiliate Link Cloaker is like the Ferrari Enzo of tools to fight the affiliate theif’s. I have been using it for nearly 1 year. It’s really good at creating professional links that don’t look like affiliate links. Go beat up the affiliate thief today and make them cry rivers and earn more cash!

 

Perhaps if I were using my Blog as the medium I originally intended, and offered a product review for the new product launched yesterday called sitestealer, … perhaps then I would be a better affiliate marketer!
 
However, I cannot, in good faith, promote a product where I could not make it through the sales letter to discover what the product is even about.
 
I do think that I used to read these sales letters from start to finish, so did I get more lazy, did the letters get longer, or do you have another suggestion why I cannot even force myself to read a page, thus preventing me from promoting it??
 

P.S. - check out sitestealer for yourself and let me know It may just be an awesome product!

 

I was sitting down with company this weekend, and was asked, as I am often asked…