For those of you who may be relatively new to pay per click advertising or simply the Google Adwords model in particular, here is a helpful video that will explain to you just how the model works.

So everyone knows that knowledge is power, and I myself have been on a reading binge the last month or so, soaking up information like a shamwow… you getting this camera guy? Anyways everyone has their own set of must read books that has helped them in some way or another, and I am no different.

I made a list of books I’ve read that have personally helped me gain both financial freedom and valuable insight on personal wealth and well-being.  I feel that these books more than others I’ve read influenced me the most and left the most lasting impression on my thought process and my business life in general.  So I present to you:

Books for Affiliate Marketers & Entrepreneurs

Four Hour Work Week – Main concept follows an 80/20 rule, where 20% of your work/actions account for 80% of profits (campaigns, keywords, affiliate networks) – you should be finding the most important ones and scaling/optimizing. Stop wasting time on the meaningless pursuits.

Think and Grow Rich – In the original Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937, Napoleon Hill draws on stories of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other millionaires of his generation to illustrate his principles. This is carried on into the 21st century where many of the principles still hold true today, and can be very powerful for getting yourself in the right mindset.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad – This book tells a story about a man who was raised by two different households, and two different mindsets. One an educated dad stuck in the proverbial “rat race” and the other a college dropout who simply understood investing and how to work with “smart people”. To sum up this book in one word, outsourcing.

The Long Tail - In the most important business book since The Tipping Point, Chris Anderson shows how the future of commerce and culture isn’t in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but in what used to be regarded as misses–the endlessly long tail of that same curve. Inspirational book on finding those niche niches.

The Snowball – The biography of one of the richest men in the world, and possibly one of the smartest investors that ever lived.  Although not written by Warren Buffet himself, it is still a great read that will put you in the mind of this invesment genuius.

There are obviously way more books out there that I am missing, so if you have any *must read* books that I missed,  leave a comment and I’ll be sure to check em out.

When you get down to the core of affiliate marketing, you will come to realize that its all about your ad copy and your landing page.  Sure you can try your luck at direct linking, but for the most part your conversions will suffer and you will lose money and time again and again.  A quality landing page can be the difference to a profitable campaign and a big loser. There are several things you can do to help make your landing pages better, and to convince the surfer to follow through with your offer.

• Split Test – When you first start running an offer, its always a good idea to have several mock up landing pages to use to drive traffic to.  Use these as a base from which to test your conversion rates and find out what is and isnt working.  A lot of the times a simple lander is better, while other times the longer review ad copy landers prove more effective.  You need to find out if the niche your targeting falls into either of these categories and stick with the one that works.  Affiliate marketing is all about going out and seeing what works, dont get lazy, testing is KEY.
• Avoid Distractions – When your targeted visitor comes to your page, you want to make sure that there is a bold call to action.  Giving them multiple options and outward links is distracting and can cause your surfer to not follow through on the offer.  Make sure there is a clear, concise directive and if you have multiple objectives (ie. acai & colon cleanse), try using a seperate landing page for each of them.
• Above the Fold – While a spanning page with multiple reviews and reasons why the user should sign up for your offer may be a good thing, more often that not it is better to keep the sign up/order now button above the fold in plain sight so that the user knows that you are selling something and makes a painless decsion. Often times the surfer can be burdened by an encompassing sales page that is drawn out and confusing, stick to the K.I.S.S. philosophy and you will notice the difference in your bank account.
• Avoid Extra Elements – Having too much graphics or too much text on your lander can make or break your sales.  Avoid over-using graphical elements such as animations and images that simply do not contribute to your objective of the page.  This can take away your visitors attention and eventually lead to a failed conversion.  Try and keep the visitors attention by using a blend of text and imagery that flows naturally.
• Navigation/Outbound Links – Your best bet is to keep the navigation either off page or in the footer area so that the user doesnt become distracted and navigate away from your offer.  If you have more information or in-depth reviews to offer the surfer, give it to them in an AJAX pop-up or CSS based slide down content so that it keeps them on the page and only helps to upsell the offer you are targeting.  While you can go the route of having no external links whatsoever, this is frowned upon by Google and will usually end up getting your page penalized.

So that it, hopefully these tips will prove effective in making your landing pages even more profitable, and increase your conversion.  The main thing to remember is to keep trying different things, and that no matter how simple the offer may be, it is always better to sell the surfer before they follow through to the signup page.

The main reason why personal review blogs like Becky’s weight loss worked so well is because they utilized all these elements, with an effective ad copy telling a personal story to play upon the visitors emotions.  Mix and match different ad copy with an easy and direct call to action, and you will see much more profitable landing pages for your all your campaigns.

If I missed anything feel free to comment and let me know what other methods you utilize to increase conversions on your landers.

Aaron Wall over at SEOBook has recently released a great tool that I am just diving into called the SEO Toolbar. So far this thing looks great, its got a bunch of nifty features as well as an SEO X-ray tool and a competitive analysis tool which look like they will be really useful. The competition tool can track data from Compete, Google Trends, Quantcast, Alexa & SEMRush as well as show PPC destination urls.

What would happen if you smooshed together many of the best parts of Rank Checker, SEO for Firefox, the best keyword research tools across the web, a feed reader (pre-populated with many SEO feeds), a ton of competitive research tools, the ability to compare up to 5 competing sites against each other, easy data export, and boatloads of other features into 1 handy Firefox extension? Well, you would have the SEO Toolbar.

Some of the main features listed are:

• Google PR
• Yahoo linkdomain/pagelinks
• DMOZ/Yahoo/BOTW Directories
• Archive.org Site Age
• Compete.com Uniques
• SEMRush.com Traffic Value
• Competition Analysis
• SE Rank Checker
• SEO X-Ray
• Keyword Suggestion

And that’s not even half of it.  There are tips and techniques available for the more advanced SEO’s out there, as well as a generalized section for the total newbs.  All in all I think this will be a great plugin, and might even replace my Google toolbar and SEO for Firefox altogether.

For a full list of features head over to the download and overview page.

Okay, so it’s been awhile since I dropped a knowledge bomb on you fools, and I figure I need to start writing quality content rather than posts on how much alcohol I was able to consume, or how many girls I was able to… well you get the point.  So I am gonna kick off my 2009 with a guide for the seasoned affiliate marketer looking to branch out and add another stream of income to their reservoir.

I have a “bunch” of automated blogs that I just leave on autopilot building themselves 3-4 posts a day using some nifty software (we’ll get to that), and slowly but surely increasing in organic rankings and traffic. One such blog I have done no promotion whatsoever, just some onsite SEO and blast off.  After about 2 months its already getting 150-180 unique’s daily consistently.  While this may be nothing to write home about, it still banks me a dollar a day ya heard. When it comes to online marketing, you should know by now that its a number game, and without the numbers you just wont have the moolah.

Now in terms of monetization I find it best to make sure the blog doesn’t look like a spammy automated blog (duh), so I don’t put ads on the homepage, I just scatter them on the inlay pages and hope that the surfer stays on the site long enough to click. Automated blogs are great for adsense earnings because they do all the work for you once you put the initial effort in. $30/month per blog is not bad either for no promotion. Note: On all of my blogs I make sure to only post 3-4 new posts daily, others have said you can get away with 6-8, but Im not greedy and I want them to look as natural as possible.

Installer Software

WP Mass Installer – One of the best mass installers for WP, just fill out the required fields and your up and running.

BlogSlammer – Recently came across this, purchased it and am loving it. It costs $129 and you can literally setup a blog in 2 minutes FLAT using Blog Creator. Which is great, and really helps when it comes to scaling your blogs. You also get 9000 articles when you buy it which come in handy for your content needs.

Now down to the nitty gritty insides of my wp-content\plugins folder. I’ve compiled a list as well as some of the software I use that make my life pretty easy, and hopefully yours too.

Content Generation / Scraping

Caffeinated Content for WordPress – Instant content. Targeted content. Automatic content. No this one isn’t free boys and girls, but what good things ever are.  $77 for this invaluable plugin that will give your blog a ton of legit content and serve it any way you want it.

WP Drip Feeder – This plugin automatically drips content onto your blog, this one isn’t free either, but more than affordable @ $45. Theoretically you only really need 1 of these, but I’d opt for both since it makes for a more natural looking site.

WP-o-matic – Takes fresh content from RSS feeds.  This one is free so you pretty much have to grab it.

WP VideoTube – If you drive traffic from youtube, or are in a niche that uses video heavily, then you cant go wrong with WP VideoTube. This one goes for $30 – $60 depending on how many keywords you want to target, I got the lite version for $30 and its fine for me, but you may want more functionality.

Content Spinning

Now you have a few options when it comes to spinning your content.

JetSpinner – I recently found out about JetSpinner which is a totally free article spinner that has worked pretty nice for me so far in testing, and for $37 a month you can use their JetSubmitter service to submit all those articles to 641 directories as well as some bonus features for JetSpinner. Not a bad deal at all.

WP Spinner – The end all of article spinning in wordpress.  I have been using this for almost a year and I love it. I believe it is $97, well worth the investment.

Must Have WP Plugins

Google Analytics – This is a freebie and a must have to track activity/statistics.

Google XML Sitemap Generator – . This creates a Google friendly sitemap for your blog, in seconds. It can also make a robots file, which is mega useful for Wordpress MU blogs.

Global Translator - Just because they speak another language doesn’t mean they can’t click our ads.

Platinum SEO Pack – There are few SEO packs that are available, I have used All-in-One for a long time, recently switching over to Platinum’s and I haven’t looked back since, a really sweet plugin that you must have.

StatPress – Way better than Awstats, WP Stats, Google Stats, hell I think Statpress is even better than Mint, which says a lot. This ones free as well, so you cant go wrong.  Statpress is a must have to make your sites better, and to know where your traffic is coming from, as well as which pages are doing better than others.

Privacy Policy - This free plugin keeps you from getting bitch slapped by Google. 99% of blogs/autoblogs, fail to add this simple yet vital plugin to their blogs, thereby disobeying Adsense’s Terms of Service.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade – A must have free plugin for busy marketers. Just a few clicks and your wordpress install is upgraded to the latest version, kinda makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

PingCrawler – A really nifty plugin by Eli over @ Bluehatseo, basically it automatically pings other blogs when you make a post, which is really useful for driving traffic to your blogs. Get Linkcurl for WP2.7 blogs.

WP-Affiliate – Automatically setup affiliate links for insertion into your posts on the fly.

Auto Social Poster – This is the first one on this list that isnt free, but thats for a good reason.  This plugin will allow your posts to be submitted to 18 social bookmarking accounts/sites.  You pay for posts.  5000 is $49 their most basic package, and for the guru there is a million for $299.  It really depends on how much you are pushing, but this one is a must have for building traffic & backlinks.

Adsense Deluxe – Obviously you might need some sort of Adsense ads management, and this does the job, better than Adsense Manager.

WP Database backup – A must incase you lose your database.

Redirection – A neat plugin that simply redirects your 404 pages to the page of your choice. *cough* affiliate link *cough*

Wordpress MU – Wordpress administration of all your blogs from one admin panel. Pretty freakin sweet.

There are a few others like akismet, and related posts, but those are so common place you should already have them by now.

Make sure that when your setting up your blogs, you make unique ad units for every blog, otherwise it will look odd that you have the same ads on every site. Go for 4-5 posts per day per blog, there is no need to rush your content creation as the crawlers usually index rather slowly anyway.  You risk being de-indexed if you rush, so you will have invested all your time for nothing.Also make sure to use unique class-c ip’s so your blogs are on different ips. Something I didnt touch base on is cloaking, so I’ll save that for another day, but it shouldn’t be too hard for you to lookup on the web now that you have all of this information.

If there is anything I missed or you guys know of other/better (or worse) plugins/software feel free to post them in the comments below.

I had to break this recap writeup into several posts because the trip was just too epic, and there was so many things going on all the time that I wanted to make sure nothing got left out. Although that might be hard to do considering the amounts of alcohol I ingested during my stay.

Well I made it back in one piece with a mild migraine a little bit of disdain for coach seating, but all in all no complaints since I didn’t end up in the Hudson.  So after touching down in Vegas, taking a cab from the strip to the palms, I was greeted by a sexy latina maid who obviously didn’t know she would be cleaning my room at the end of the week, and impromptu handed me a full bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum.. A nice start to my trip Id say. From here I cruised to the strip, checked out the AVN porn convention, met kid rock (who’s girlfriend was undoubtedly checking my shit) and proceeded to stumble over to rain nightclub in the palms where I was zombified but still managed to enjoy the flaming atmosphere.

After my eventful Friday night, I prepared for the first actual full day, and the arrival of my fellow affiliates and networks.  I woke up late, then headed over to the Rio where not too many people had arrived yet, so I got into the 1/3 hold’em game and made a couple hundred before heading over to TGIF to meet up with a bunch of my fellow affiliate elites.  I was greeted by Eli from bluehatseo who insisted on hugging it out bitch, over the proverbial handshake.  Nick Mattern aka bbwolfe was shit wasted talking shit about some WP Plugin, and a few other guys from #cakes chat were there kicking the shit.  I pounded back a few drinks, then prepped for the Wickedfire pre-summit meetup.

Wickedfire Pre Affiliate Summit Meet Up (Tangy,Lacrosse_20, Me, Bryn)

After the initial meet-up, and meeting a lot of really cool people with money on their mind, I headed back to my room where I had to get ready to meet-up with HustlinGrind for my first night of mayhem. Suited up I strolled by about 100 people waiting to get into Rain Nightclub @ the Palms, where Paul Oakenfold was set to tear up the club. I was lead upstairs to a skybooth where the gold patron was already poppin and the party was gettin started.

Oakenfold Performing

Flames from above the dance floor

At this point the actual affiliate summit hadn’t even started yet, and I was having the time of my life.  The club was amazing, and I was already partying it up with some great affiliates.  I left the club early for an after party with some ladies who apparently didn’t want to stop because they had the insight to show us around town, and proceeded to drive us over to Studio 54 at 5am for an all nighter.

Definitely not a bad time for my first full day of ASW. Day 2 didn’t start until late partly due to the fact that I didnt get in until 7am.  So for the first full day of the actual conference I only really went for about half an hour, met some AM’s, got some free beer to fix the hangover, and made plans for that evening as it was already late afternoon by the time I was leaving the summit. About 10 or so of us were at the Rio waiting for a shuttle bus that took us to the Advaliant red rock mansion party, where supposedly 80 dancers awaited (yeah right).

entering the red rock mansion

Upon arriving at the red rock party, we were greeted by free cigars and an open bar, not a bad opener if you ask me.  As for the promised dancers, well they were nowhere to be found, and it was the usual affiliate marketing sausage fest.  I mingled for a bit, met some cool people, played some pool, and got my fair share of the open bar. I stumbled my way over to a couple poker tables they had set up only to find out they were playing for FREE?! (A giant WTF goes off in my head)

one of the poker tables

I proceeded to infiltrate the game and convince everyone to put $20 down, since no one wanted to play for more.  After much deliberation we got about 9 players in the game, and I was off and running.  I musta had luck on my side, because I played like a total donkey and somehow took it down. Around the time I was finishing the poker game, the man, the myth, the legend, Nicky Cakes showed up, too bad for him though, he brought his girlfriend.

From here I went outside to find the usual crew of hoodlums up to no good.  We decided we were gonna take a limo to Body English @ the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, which sounded good to me, since I was pretty drunk at this point, anywhere with girls would suffice. It also proved for a good photo opportunity.

eric aka tangy pimped out

lacrosse_20 & cracked content totally gone

me and mystery the PUA

I decided to convince Mystery the big pimp dude to roll with us, figuring his skills would surround me with glorious women all night, but boy was I wrong.  The guy decided to hang out with this one chick the whole night and didn’t share with any of us.  Anyway we got to the club, they said they were full until I demanded 5 bottles of goose, at which point we were promptly let to a private booth a couple booths down from E-40.  Pretty much everything at Body English was a total blur to me, all i remember is running around with a bottle of Greygoose and bringing girls back to our booth, total madness.

Once the smoke had cleared, the club was closing and everyone was heading their seperate ways, except for me, Rocco (ironlogik), mystery and his chick.  So we went upstairs to the 11th floor where there was an apparent after party in one of the suites. We somehow lost Mystery and his chick but wound up inside this private suite with a live DJ and a bowling alley, not to mention girls dancing on poles and total debauchery everywhere.  I cant remember much, but what I do remember was bowling a strike between some hot girls legs, somehow, and this is one of those stories that stays in Vegas.

rocco (iron logik) and some ladies

After getting back to the palms it was about 8am and I was shit wasted, I walked up to the roulette table and put $100 on black just to see if I could hit, I mean I had bowled a strike earlier and won a poker game piss drunk, I should be able to do this. But alas the casino edged me out when it bounced out of black into a red square at the last second, my signal to go pass out.

Day 3 rolled around and I finally made it to the conference around 3 in the afternoon, once everything seemed to be dying down, and after such an epic night i was simply taking it easy.  I hit the conference for a bit, grabbed some affiliate schwag, and then went to the poker tables to try and recoup my losses from the previous nights festivities. After a few hours and up a couple hundred I left the poker room at the Rio and met up with team Canada and shoe money’s crew for a limo ride to spearmint rhino, spared no expense.

Upon my arrival to the rhino we got a bottle of goose, and just lounged back and tried to resist the temptation to drop thousands of dollars on scantily clad women.  I find that if you just talk to the hired guns as if they are normal people, you can end up getting much more than a lap dance if you know what I mean.  Ten free lap dances later I got up to find everyone missing, cue the Vegas girls I had met down there to come pick my drunk ass up.  We made our way back to the palms where there was a shitload of people trying to get into the Copeac invite only party, of which I forgot to get an invite for.  After attempting to bribe the bouncer to let me up and failing miserably, I went to the playboy club for some drinks and more scantily clad women (of which there is no shortage in Vegas).  At this point a bunch of people were gathering to head over to XS nightclub which was apparently one of the hottest new spots in Vegas, I however was totally burned from the last two all nighters and decided to crash early, or else I wouldn’t make it through the next day.  And so drew an uneventful close to my night.

The last day of the conference allowed me to sober up a little bit from all the past days/nights festivities and recoup for what we actually came to Vegas for, networking with affiliates and networks.  I hit the floor early and made a point of talking to and meeting my AM’s from Neverblue, Maxbounty, Copeac, A4D and C2M.  Out of all of them, Id have to give C2M the nod for being the coolest, most down to earth network out there. With Ads 4 Dough a close second.  They dont bullshit when it comes to your offers, and they are straight up and will simply tell it to you like it is, something that has dissappeared in this industry.  So its nice to meet some real people in this industry that aren’t just money hungry and only looking out for themselves, because lets be honest here, none of those networks would be anywhere if it wasn’t for their affiliates.

After about 3 laps of the exhibit hall, and about 30 business cards later, I decided to call it a day, and headed back to my Palms suite to see what kind of trouble I could get in that evening.