So a few weeks ago Frank Kern told me he was getting some crazy ass ROI on marketing to internet marketers.

I noticed I was seeing his ads on almost every single page I was on, on facebook.

My assumption is that he is not marketing to the entire universe, but to those he already knows dig internet marketing or know frank.

San Diego is turning into a crazy hot bed of the biggest internet marketers in the world.

It reminds me of what happened in the bay area, and then later in Seattle.

Cool they are all coming to here to join me now, I don’t have to travel any more.

To capitalize on this, in a totally non monetizeable way, I have set up the La Jolla surf club.

Totally free, open to any and everyone involved in RIS, Random Internet Shit.

I wanted to target those who are interested in internet marketing and live in San Diego, or La Jolla.

Unfortunately, this was not very many people.

So I went after those, and still am, that live in the area and are interested in any one of the below.

So far in the past few days I have spent $5.90 and have a CTR of .177 which aint bad.

We had two people sign up for the event from the paid clicks, at a cost of $3 each.

Can you imagine the value of having an internet marketer come to an event you are throwing,

which is surfing at the beach.

I don’t know about you, but if I sign up to go to someones event, I think they are pretty cool,

and feel at least a little in debt to them, so would do them a favor.

If I was actually selling something, I can see this would have been rock star.

I paid $5.90 for 21 clicks, which is 28 cents a click, for internet marketers, which is usually an expensive group.

Here are the actual ads if you want to steal them.

I am going to be selling some shit to internet marketers in the next few months, so will probably try this strategy again then, unless you guys have burned it out!

If you have some names to add to my “interest list” for my targeting, let me know in the comments please.

UPDATE

A few hours later, I have gotten some more keyword ideas sent to me. As of 4:34 a.m. here is the updated list.

If you live in La Jolla, San Diego, or Southern Cali somewhere, check this out,
La Jolla Surf Club

On to video shit!

Last weekend I got to spend the day at Andy Jenkins house.

I think I was invited to be a backup speaker in case someone didn’t show or something.

By the way, being at Andy’s house during the shooting of his live bossathon was a networking Disneyland. I just stood in the kitchen, eating Andy’s food, hanging out on the couch in his bedroom talking to people, and meeting some huge players I had never met before.

There was a guy there no one knows about, and who’s name I won’t even say, who turns out is the copywriter behind many of the biggest launches in the business.

Food was great, the guys coming in and out the door rocked, and did I say the food was great?

It was super cool watching Andy film, and even more to learn when the Uninteruptable Power Supply broke, thereby interrupting the shooting. It was cool to watch Andy as the Director/Producer of the thing handle the crew, and handle the situation during LIVE T.V.

It reminded me of what early T.V. must have been like.

So long story short, last year I watched the Mini Video boss promo. I learned a ton. I implemented what I learned, and made some serious sales off of it. I rarely try to sell anything now without video.

I spent the weekend with Amish Shah, and Trey Smith at their seminars, spent about 6 hours personally with Mike Filsaime, and been in lots of contact with Mike Koenigs the past few weeks.

If you don’t know these names, you should. Each of them in their own way are making millions per year with online marketing. And they are all using video. They are all talking about video. They are taking over huge parts of internet marketing with video.

If my wife wasn’t asleep right now, I would be making this as a video instead of typing.

The game has now become not, should I use video, but instead, what is the best way to use video to sell.

So I got into the full fledge video boss, and saw all the categories. When I clicked on one of the modules, and the parts inside I was overwhelmed with how much video there is.

I took one thing I suck at which is lighting, and looked to see what I could find. Sure enough, multiple videos. I watched one of them, and immediately learned something simple that is going to help me a ton next time I shoot.

So this course has my unreserved, 100% recommendation. It’s two thousand bucks. If you are involved in internet marketing, and even make $20 an hour,  the $2,000 is a bargain, because it cuts out the study of things you don’t need, and saves you spending dozens of hours like I wasted, because I didn’t know the right type of camera to buy.

Just on the technical stuff, it would have saved me hundreds of hours over the past few years, if I had owned this. That doesn’t even count the increased sales.

If you suck at actually doing stuff, and won’t use it, then don’t buy it.

If you actually do internet marketing, and want to learn the basics of video, or get way better fast, and are actually making some money now, then it may be your rock star item.

I can’t believe it but it has a 30 day refund period. I know for a fact that the first videos will help you a ton, as they did me, on story telling and sales, so if nothing else give it a shot. “But only if you are really going to use the stuff.

Much Love,
dk

P.S. I have my own info product hopefully coming out in July or soon, so stay tuned!

P.S.S. If you want to buy Video Boss, use my link.

I’ve been a little perplexed lately about the whole “LOCAL” goldrush.

If you know me at all, you know I started with local internet marketing, way back in…1999. LOL

At big conferences like Pubcon, I was one of the first people to be asked to speak on Local SEO. At the time, it never made any sense to me why it was a big deal. All I would do was tell people to do cool shit to get links to their website with their city name in it, and then try to entertain them.

These days you see Groupon with all its copiers, Mike’s Main Street Marketing killing it, Yelp going nuts, and the super stealth secret sauce I have been working on that you will see soon.

It makes a lot of sense looking back on why it was so hard at the beginning as a local marketer trying to go big online.

Along the way I had to learn programming (at least a little), SEO when no one knew what it was, Social Media before it even existed, and just to help our little Chiropractic office kick ass in the local La Jolla market

So I been thinking and thinking and thinking.

This may sound simple, but it was profound enough for me to want to share this.

All marketing is ultimately local.

Every purchase is made by a person. That person has to be somewhere. Local marketing is simply another way of saying, we finally got our technology down well enough that we know where you are.

It is no more than an increased granularity of knowing what your customer is up to.
Where they are, has a lot to do with who they are and what they are into.

10 years ago my wife and I also discussed a lot about what was going to happen to local stores.

Well most of it has happened, so I might as well let everyone know what the end game is. 🙂

Everything that can be delivered online will be. In fact it almost is there now, with books, music, video etc.

The next step which is coming will happen with durable goods like clothes, lawn mowers etc. There is no reason to waste physical space with inventory at malls. They always can keep a little inventory for people who want to buy in an emergency.

The physical space for selling durable goods will be used only for demonstration of products.

Imagine walking into a toy store, and instead of it being lined with boxes of toys, it is instead a play area for kids to play with the toys until they find the one they love the most. Or instead of you trying on the same clothes you are going to buy, “who tried that on last?” the clothes are simply trial ones to look at, try on, and then order.

Car dealerships can become tracks to try the cars on, not big lots of cars to walk through.

Maybe all of that won’t become exactly what will happen, but I know you will see more and more of it.

I sure wouldn’t be investing in or buying any retail commercial real estate the next decade.

Big business should, and is slowly, moving toward customization of products, moving inventory to low rent areas.

While I am at it, I will let you know the other secret to this.

People have a need to socialize and interact in person.

Facebook is cool, but still doesn’t cut it for a warm look in the eye, or a fist bump.

Places like a chiropractic office, or a coffee shop allow people places to get together.

I expect movie theaters to continue to drop out as people watch more and more good content at home.

What I have been thinking on, and I know some people will create, will be some new ideas of ways people can meet and interact, offline.

Things like skating rinks, and bowling alleys will get busier.

With all of our creativity and technology, I also think we can can create some new ideas of ways we can interact live, that no one has even thought of yet.

So, like I have been saying since the beginning, let’s take this super cool technology we have been working on, and figure out ways we can make the world better.

.

I remember the day of 911. I went to the dentist and listened to it on the radio while my tooth got drilled.

Shitty stuff having 2,000 people die. I met the moms and friends of some of them.

That day I remember looking around and seeing everyone around me in shock, sluggish, out of it.

I tried to do my best to rally the troops. I got my staff all pumped up and positive, and looking at how we could help, but I saw something that really had me concerned. The rest of the world around me looked like they had just been kicked in the balls.

We watched the stock market crash, then the housing market, and the recession.

My blog tonight isn’t going to make any difference to what is about to happen. The stock market is going to surge. Everyone is going to pull their heads out of their asses, and they will get a bit more motivated again. In fact, a bitchen side effect is probably that “mental health” drug sales will decrease as well as America goes back to being happy. All of these are fine things. I look forward to my stocks doubling over the next year.

And yes, I think the special forces guys are bitchen and kick ass. I get the pleasure of treating quite a few of these guys, to get them ready to go out and kick ass on a regular basis. Laser targeted operations like this are inexpensive and can be very, very effective at implementing foreign policy. This also may very well prove to be in violation of international law, which is not an example we should be sending.

The big lesson from this is not pissing people off, by killing them and taking their stuff. Not a single one of us Americans would be o.k. with Mexico coming in and taking our corn, or our wheat, or taking control of the redwoods. We would not tolerate Belgium coming into the U.S. and setting up a military base here that we would not be allowed to remove.

The reason extremest Muslims are pissed at us, is a story that goes back to the crusades when the Europeans were going in and kicking ass on the Muslims. Sure the Muslims had taken over Jerusalem back then. I get it. The problem is that Europeans, (now Europeans and Americans), have been going into the middle east to grab stuff we wanted ever since them. If you keep taking oranges from your neighbors yard, they will get pissed off.

The old Christian value of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is a great one. Setting an example on a global scale, that you would expect your next door neighbor to follow with you is also a great idea.

If as a country we violate the law, and are criminals abroad, don’t be surprised if our kids learn that is cool and an o.k. way to take an advantage.

So as we all get rich, and we go into a decade of prosperity, yes things are going to get better now, can we really all work to reinforce good ethics, good manners, and treat the rest of the world with the same kindness and respect that we expect from them?

Hope I didn’t piss you off to much reading this.

Rock and roll, long live America, and lets all have some fun now, play some football, go surfing, chase hot chicks, and make some money, what do you say?

Oh, and while we are at it, lets make some really bitchen stuff that makes us really proud to be Americans.

Here is a short list of things to work on:

1. Inexpensive source of Electricity.

2. Desalination that doesn’t create a lot of pollution.

3. Better recycling techniques

4. Excellent, fast, safe public transportation.

5. Oh, and when you make money, save it, the economy will suck again in 10 or 20 years.

Let’s do it.

I am a strong believer in market forces. No matter what political opinion you have, the market corrects everything. It is all based on the fact that if there is more of something, we consider it less valuable, and it sells for less. If there is very little of it, and we want it, then it goes up in value. Facebook ads are a perfect example of this, as we all bid each other up and down on the little postage size section of screen on Dutch women between the ages of 40 and 45 who are interested in travel.

5 years ago I bought a little floor cleaning robot called Scooba that rocked my world. The more I studied the company, the bitchener it seemed. They made fricken robots! And they did real stuff like clean your floor or clean the pool. They also made ones that went out and blew up the homemade bombs, I.E.D.’s which is wicked cool to blow up with a robot instead of a Marine’s foot, or worse yet, some little Iraqui kids foot.

As I checked more on this company it turns out they have been cash positive profitable year after year. They took all of their profit and invested it in research, and built better shit. Nice, my kind of company. They make robots, that do valuable stuff, and reinvest their profit in making the products better.

I was sure as the war drug on that their stock would go up, but no, just sat there.

Today it fricken skyrocketed. It went up something like 10% just today, 25% year to date etc. etc.

Eventually real stuff goes up in value to its real value.

Another thing is markets go up and down and up and down.

Time to go back to finding foreclosures to buy 😉

(all of the above is my ideas only, not truth, and yes of course I own I-robot stock, duh.)

I like Amish Shah. He is a bright guy, drives a Ferrari, hangs out with Frank Kern, blah, blah, but I LOVE his wife!
She is intelligent, classy, gorgeous, a dentist, a great listener, and she spends a lot of her life helping others when nobody knows about it!

Well, a lot of people are going to know about it now.

She is part of a group that goes to Africa and helps the people of an African village in Uganda.

They will be providing basic dental help to folks who really need it.

As America becomes tougher to live in, and the third world improves, it becomes more important than ever to reach out and help others.

Pretty soon the far away third world will be completely our world.

Let’s continue going back to the old style of America, where we are looked at as creative leaders, and the ones you go to, to help.

And lets face it, if you donate a few bucks to Pujah, you might even get the attention of the guy in charge of her internet marketing, dk, Amish Shah.

Go here to read more about it, be a fan, and buy a few sterile syringes, or some filling material.

I get hired by lots of companies for my honesty. Truly, if you are willing to lie and cheat the consumer, it is more possible to make more money in the short term. That just isn’t the way I roll, and it would never work in the long term because eventually you will get caught by the government, or just run into something truly lousy with a customer.

I have been studying a lot of Frank Kern’s materials lately, and you can see how truly honest he is being in his videos, and marketing. The guy is straight up in your face telling you exactly what he is doing and why, and encouraging you to be that honest and direct. I love it.

So here are a couple of funny, and maybe a little scammy? things I came across from my bank and on facebook. I will let you be the judge.

I go to log into my Bank of America corporate account.

I get this screen (click to see it), not as a pop up, but as the only screen in the browser. The only edit I have done, was to cut it down. there were no other ways I could see to click out of it, or move on to my account. It is full size, but your browser will probably show it reduced. Download it to get the full effect. LOL

There is the obvious red button option at the top to DONWLOAD NOW, exactly as I would have put it, minus the girl in the bikini pointing at it.

But what if you want to go on to your account, and just check your balance? It took me a good 30 seconds to find that link.

It says they are not selling anything, but simply trying to protect your PC. Reviews online show it is pretty benign, other than the fact that it can give users with infected PC’s a false sense of security. OK, so maybe B of A is not trying to make any money off of it, but it definately shows you an example of how to force someone down a sales funnel to download something.

I personally would have closed the browser window and gone somewhere else, except that I needed to check my account!! LOL

The next set of ads comes from facebook. I am back to doing a fair bit of facebook work this month. There are two ads on this page, both taken at once, that really grabbed my attention.

First lets look at the top one, the Gap Baby Photo Contest. The reason this caught my eye was that it was being shown constantly, over, and over, and over. I could not help but notice it.

I thought, wow! with the Gap, one of the largest online clothes retailers in the world having a photo contest, that they are spending at my estimates something like $10,000 an hour on, then this must be huge! They must really know they are getting a huge ROI on it.

I then study the ad carefully to see what I can learn from it. Ohhhh…. greatamericanphotography.com,

G.A.P., get it? Gap, G.A.P, Great American Photography?

So obviously if you tried to pretend you were Gap the clothes manufacturer, you would get busted, but if your company name already is abreviated that way, well, Trademark Attorneys?

So these guys are either gonna get in a bunch of trouble, are geniuses, or don’t realize that G.A.P. will be assumed to be the same company as Gap? You decide. 🙂

The next ad is the one on the bottom.

Your typical Istock photo advertising becoming a Video Game tester. But wait, that 13 year old black kid playing video games looks kinda familiar. Hmmmm. Oh yeah, What’s up Snoop?

I really like some of his recent music, but if he needs to make extra money testing video games, god bless him.

Ricky Ahuja hooked up with me at Affiliate Summit in Vegas a few months ago. He is a Purpose Inc fan. He is also a Sikh. Sikhism is a lovely religion that first learned about in college. Their fundamental beliefs are in faith and justice. (I love a religion that includes justice!) Protecting the religious rights of others, and and preventing all discrimination of all races is a fundamental precept of Sikhs. I remember learning in college that Sikh’s were used as bodyguards for European royalty for centuries, and were the last group allowed to carry weapons onto airplanes, because of their fame of honesty and integrity. You will usually know a Sikh when you meet them as their last name is usually Singh. Also Sikh’s wear turbans, but they come from the north of India, not the middle east. So don’t look like a typical American, (Or European) and assume that anyone in a turban is from the middle east ;).

I asked Ricky about monetizing Indian traffic. His response was so complete that I decided to post it as a blog.

Ricky is founder, and CEO of the Affiliate Company, Affiliate Venture Group.

How To Monetize Indian Traffic – Guest Blog by Ricky Ahuja

To be frank with you, Monetizing Indian Internet traffic is not an easy task. And it is not the same methodology that works with any other countries traffic on the Internet. India is a huge country and it is growing in terms of Economy, GDP and a strong presence in the World map and of course the percentage of Internet users.

You can check out here the standings of Top 20 countries in terms of Internet usage. I am sure you will be astonished to see India in the 4^th position globally: Internet Usage – Country wise

Surprised? You should be by this time. Well, Internet Marketing has a long way to go before it truly becomes fruitful in India. So if you have a website and you have traffic, I will tell you the best possible methods to monetize the traffic.

1) Google Adsense

With no second thoughts I can tell you that there is no better way to make money online unless it’s from Google Adsense clicks on your blog or website. The majority of the Internet users from India are online because they are in search of information in all possible topics that you can think of. Since Google Adsense is a contextual based advertising you can easily get clicks on the ads and make money with every single click.

Hold your horses before you learn one more fact about Adsense clicks by Indian internet users. You cannot expect more than 10-70 cents per click since advertisers on Adsense network don’t shell out money to a great extent like that of other developed countries. They rightfully do that because the chances of an Indian clicking on an Adsense ad and then purchasing something online is almost zero.

The Reason:

Now I will mention why the Indian Internet scene is like this though the Internet users are of great numbers. Indians are very paranoid about their safety online and even if they have a credit card they might have not used it even once on the web. This trend will eventually change in the coming years for sure but until then you just cannot simply ignore the Indian web traffic.

The above data is not true with every single website and blog on the internet. If the niche that you are into is competitive then the cost per click will be much better.

The ad placement on your blog or website must be really good because the more clicks you receive then you will be making more cash. All said and done it’s your website and you should take a wise call and experiment with Adsense a lot before it can fetch you any significant income.

2) In-text Advertising

Advertising companies like Infolinks and Kontera can also fetch you good amount of money provided you get huge amount of clicks. The cost per click is way too lesser than Adsense but if you don’t have an Adsense account then this may be your best alternative.

In-text advertising should be carefully gelled on your website because it can look very distractive and your users might get annoyed easily. Do not hyperlink more than 4-5 keywords or phrases in one single page. You should use in-demand keywords to get advertisers target your website more. By doing this you will also increase the cost per click from In-text advertising companies.

Good thing if you have an Adsense account already approved because it is ok to use In-text advertising along with Adsense. There is no policy that restricts you from using both the methods on the same website. So you don’t have to worry about getting banned from Adsense.

3) Affiliate Marketing

You have to be very picky about what type of affiliate marketing programs you will be promoting on your site. Unless you have completely analyzed the Indian traffic that you are getting on your site then there is no possible way you would be able make any significant money from affiliate marketing.

The things that you should take into account about the India traffic while using affiliate programs are:

1)   The top pages accessed by Indian users on your website. You can use Google analytics to find this out.

2)   The entrance keywords to that particular topic that is read most.

3)   Top exit pages on your website.

Once you have an idea of what your users are seeking then contact your favorite affiliate network (might I suggest Affiliate Venture Group ;-)) and ask them what they have for international traffic. Often times, these campaigns may be kept private so truly dig in and sell your AM on your international traffic. Dig a bit deeper, you will see many emerging Indian based affiliate networks and it is these guys who are positioning themselves for success.

These are just some of the generic things that you should be aware of before monetizing your website. This is true with any sort of affiliate program because without knowing what sells on your site you just can’t sell anything at all!

In my experience, lead based CPA programs works very well. Matrimonial/Dating, free downloads based programs also attracts a huge number of clicks and it can convert very well.

Other online services, downloads related to Movies, games, music and other free stuffs always converts very well with the Indian traffic. You can also advertise programs related to Free Antivirus, antispyware, antimalware and host of other PC security programs. Registry cleaners can also fetch you fair number of hits because like everyone else Indian internet users are also very much concerned about their computer security.

Anything which is free always works out well with the Internet crowd and it’s no different with the Indian users. Actually it works better than you expect, that is, if the offer is attractive enough.

Conclusion

My advice to you is do not ignore the Indian segment because they are truly expected to be “the next big thing” in the coming years. It is even estimated that India will be a super power by 2020; furthermore, it is expected to surpass China very shortly in terms of economical abundance.

The money is there, it’s just that newer ways have to be adapted to make the advertisers spend and also make the Indian users buy more online. With the changing trends Indians have finally come out of the closet and started booking movie tickets online. Not just the movies, even other sporting events, concerts and other party events.

Groupon’esque like sites have been leading the Indian market for the past few months. This is definitely something the advertisers should think of getting into. Internet marketing is an emerging phenomenon in India, so being a website owner you should start experimenting with the Indian traffic and make the best out of it.

Your feedbacks and suggestions on this topic are welcome. Do share your thoughts on this subject. Hope this helps you in monetizing your Indian traffic.

Ricky Ahuja is the CEO of Affiliate Venture Group, a leading affiliate network that offers over 10 years of experience in the online marketing and lead generation industry. He also runs a successful blog at www.rickyahuja.com and feel free to follow him on Twitter

The earliest dictionary ever found, was written in what is now Syria, and there is possibly one older than that created in China.

It has been the historical efforts of overly inquisitive geek lords such as myself to clarify what has not yet been clarified.

In 1604 an English school teacher by the name of Robert Cawdrey wrote the first dictionary in English, so his students could finally understand WTF they were talking about.

Then from 1884 to around 1928 with the major contributor, William Chester Minor, a convicted murderer who ended up in a prison for the criminally insane, the Oxford English Dictionary, a 12 volume set that really says what’s up with the English language even to this day.

Affiliate marketing on the other hand is kind of making it up as we go along.

When I started going to Affiliate Marketing conferences I started hearing shit tons of 3 letter acronyms, from CPA to CPM to CPL or CTR.

When I stated working with facebook, I really needed to get a handle on these. Before then it was simply looking at how many people did what from the comfort of my own coffee table, but now I had to communicate with kinda official people who I needed to understand.

Lately it has become even more important in the affiliate space, as I have had to get a bunch of new offers to play with.

Today I went into LinkShare’s Lead Advantage console (I get a buck fitty if you sign up and make a sale LOL). Lead advantage is LinkShare’s lead acquisition area. A lead is simply someone who’s info you have captured, who might turn into a paying customer at a later date.

I really like LinkShare because they seem to be doing a good job filtering out the unethical crap that is deceptive to consumers that I won’t run. Jamie, who hits a lot of the conferences for linkshare is a bright guy, who has helped me a ton over the years. Linshare as a company rocks, and seems very honest, I am just going to use them as an example of something confusing, but in no way intend this to be a bash.

When I was looking around today I found a whole bunch of really cool looking CPL (Cost Per Lead) offers on LinkShare’s Lead Advantage.

I am a fine print reader, I even read insurance policies and mortgage documents that no one else does to make sure I understand what is up.

So before I started running the offers, I read the terms of service on them.

At first some of them jump out as slam dunks, like one of the offers that pays out at $178 per lead, or so it seems.

When you click on the link to the lead, you find a simple, required name, and required email, form where the phone is optional. Wow, that should be easy to make money, right?

Well if you go down further, you will find that there are other forms the visitor can fill out, that require more information. None of them I saw required a credit card. This will be important in a minute. These more extended forms ask for things like your city, and require your phone number. These forms are a little more inquisitive, expose the viewer a bit more, and I am guessing will have less people fill out.

There is also a place to make a phone call without clicking on anything. This means that they have to be giving out a new phone number to each lead, which they very well may. (Can’t check it from where I am writing this).

Now here is the odd part?

The terms of the offer state on the LinkShare site, “A lead is commissionable when consumer completes form & credit card is verified.”

So I don’t get the credit card part. When would you enter a credit card on a lead generation? I give out my credit card # to my bank, or if I am booking something for sure, or buying something, not if I am kinda sorta interested. So I am guessing? that this offer pays out when the user buys, which would make this offer a Cost Per Acquisition, CPA offer.

Again, I really like LinkShare and want to use this as an example of the semantic confusion found across most of the networks. This offer may very well make some people a lot of money, but it does not appear to be a Cost Per Lead offer. The payout is so high, that even being a cost per sale, it still may make a good ROI, I have no idea?

I know this just splits semantic hairs, but we have already had some strong surprises with other CPL offers in general, when it made no sense that 100 qualified users had clicked on the ad, and no one had filled out the lead form. Well, this explains part of it.

Other CPL offers on LinkShare are straight CPL

An example is “Total Injury” which looks like a true CPL offer.

The fine print says, “A lead is commissionable when a consumer completes a form with valid information, and contact information is not later determined by the Company to be a “dispute,” “dud,” or “duplicate” of an individual already in the Company’s or Included Networks Participant’s database.”

which means that if someone fills out the form, and was really an injured person looking for help, and not allready in their database, then you get paid.

See the offer here, (especially if you have been injured I get $14 ) LOL

This is a true Lead. A lead is someone who very well might be a customer, but is not yet.

Personally I love marketing like this, developing a list of people, developing a relationship with them, and then selling them shit they like.

To get this straight CPL means Cost Per Lead.

CPA means Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action, depending on who you ask.

Cost Per Acquisition means the cost per obtaining a real paid customer, which is the end of the sales process when they plunk down the money.

Cost Per Action can be anything from a click to a form fill to a sale. So when you are on the conference floor of Affiliate Summit and someone is spouting out CPA, it makes sense to figure out WTF they mean by that.

This happened in the SEO industry as well and has turned into a cluster F%$k. I have pretty much given up on arguing this point, but SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It originally meant putting things like tags in your header and arranging your site so the search engines would dig your site, and rank it well. The second people started working to get links from other sites, it was no longer SEO, but something else. Now some people use the term SEO to mean just about anything you can do online to increase your sites ranking in Google or sell stuff.

It is o.k. that terms evolve.

“Consider” as I understand it, originally comes from the Latin, Con Sidare. Con means with, like Chile Con Carne. Sidare meant with the stars. Back in the day, if the old Roman dude wanted to figure out whether to plant barley or Millet, or whether his daughter should marry Claudius or Brutus, he would go in the dead of night to the local astrologer who would consult with the stars. So, honey I am going outside to consider this meant, to go get a reading from the local astrologer.

It is o.k. if the word changes over time, it just messes with you if you can not keep up with the changes, or if there is no central place for clarification of words, like a dictionary.

This favors the brave and the smart in the affiliate world. Since there is no straight definitions or intellectual papers being written on the subject yet, it actually favors those with a quick mind, more so than those with big degrees.

So keep riding them ponies boys, we are still in the wild west!

If you want more definitions, go read Genos nice little affiliate glossary.

When using paid ads such as facebook or any other paid advertising (I am currently using other sources), there is an interesting phenomena that takes place. To get an ad that works takes testing, lots and lots of testing. I hung out yesterday at the Ads4Dough event with a bunch of guys who are spending hundreds, to thousands, to tens of thousands of dollars per day on ad spend.

Everyone agreed that none of us were any good at writing ads that were far superior to lessor marketers. It is simply that we were willing to write and test more of them.

If you come up with an ad, and traffic source for a dating offer that pays you $10 for a lead sign up, then you need to spend about $20 or $30 to figure out if the ad you wrote is working. This is called statistical significance. It is worth learning the math on this, or at least deeply understanding it, and knowing how to use an online calculator that checks it for you.

So for the average guy, he can afford to run $30 tests 20 or 30 times to find an ad and a traffic source that works. This is totally doable if you are willing to work a regular job, and spend this $900 over a month or two depending on your salary. Then when you find something that works, you keep feeding more money into it. If you live frugally, and test lots, then eventually you will most likely eventually find something that works.

You don’t see many affiliate offers with $6,000 payouts, or even $1,000 or even $100 payouts. I think one of the reasons for this is that you better have very deep pockets to do the testing.

I was either lucky or unfortunate enough to have a product, super high quality chiropractic treatment, that has a decent payout for our office. Basically it takes a ton of work to really fix someones spine, with lots of staff, overhead, student loans, blah, blah, so it costs some money to do well. As a result when I test market, I need to spend a ton of money to find an ad that works. It is only the fact that I had gotten to help facebook, and got to do a bunch of testing in the process that gave me faith in facebook ads, and the fact that I know the exact value for each conversion in our organization that gave me the courage to work out the marketing on facebook.

Without my vast experience with facebook ads, and certainty on the math of it all, as a chiropractor I would have been terrified to even test it to the level it needs to be.

Each time I run a facebook ad, I need to spend a ton more money to test that ad, than I would if I were testing dating ads, or some other offer.

I am sure I could sell 10 million dollar private jets on facebook, but whoever was funding it better be willing to spend a million or so on each test while we are working out the marketing.

This is also why I don’t like taking on clients unless they have a ton of money to play with.

If the person has a product with a $100 profit per sale then they better be willing to spend $200 or $300 per test, and be willing to do 20 or so tests to maybe find one that is profitable. Then if it did not work, what then? It doesn’t mean that I suck, or that facebook ads, (or whatever the channel) sucks, it is simply that we did not come up with the right ad yet. The right ad is there, but you better have the fortitude and bank roll to ride it out till you figure it out.

I can see why back in the magazine days they usually did not use direct response. There is no fricken way you could have tested enough to make a working ad back then unless you were lucky or a genius.

I remember in direct mail days, I used to have to spend close to a thousand dollars to do a test. The one product I sold back then was a little under $100, and I spent many thousands of dollars before I got lucky and got one that had an ROI.

Shoemoney at my first Elite Retreat was the one that first opened my eyes to the benefit of knowing exactly all of the profits and costs of the product that I was selling online, compared to most affiliate marketers. It took me years to understand what he meant by this, but boy is he right. When I am selling a mortgage offer like I have been working on lately, I have no idea how much profit that advertiser is making, so I don’t really know how much I can afford to spend on the ads, and then negotiate if I am a little negative. He was right, that those of us with our own products can dominate because we know just how far we can push our spend. It is kind of like a huge game of group poker.

The upside of selling something expensive is that you are not going to have as much competition.

There are ways to mitigate your risk on this, such as getting leads instead of sales. But ultimately the guy who owns the company is going to have to pay for all of those leads, to find the one gem he is looking for, so he better have balls of steel.

Good night, and good luck!