And now for something completely different… A GURU LAUNCH!

I’m sure you’ve noticed that I don’t generally jump on board all the big “guru” launches that come down the pipe.  I have a variety of reasons for that but the bottom line is, I just got wind of one that actually has me “cautiously optimistic”.  I haven’t gotten to actually use the product yet since it’s not released, but it definitely fills a need I have in my own business, and I’m betting you do too.  It’s called – wait for it – Kajabi.  Yeah I know, ka-ja-what??  Don’t ask.  Just go with me here.  It looks like something that could give systems like InfusionSoft a real run for their money (and if you’ve followed me for more than a year or two you probably know about my debacle with them… but if not, head to http://tooltrainer.com/tools/blog/infusionsoft-customer-service-sucks and you can read all about it) and is being built specifically for online marketers who are technology oriented.  Sounds like me all right!

I don’t know a whole lot more than that yet, but head over and watch the fancy shmancy Andy Jenkins produced video (no optin or anything required… whew!) and you can get all the dirt, or at least what they’ve released so far.

http://tooltrainer.com/kajabi

I’ve heard the pricing on this is going to be very very reasonable as well, which I’m excited about because paying for all the separate components to do what Kajabi promises to do, is really expensive and tremendously frustrating!  I plan to kick the tires of Kajabi as best I can once it launches, though how I’m going to do that with all the other stuff I have going on… well that’s another issue!

Jonathan

Fellow marketer Troy over at TroyNotes.com posted a heads up regarding a new clear explanation from the FTC, regarding their recent guideline additions & changes.  I strongly suggest you visit Troy’s blog post and have a look at the FTC’s summary and FAQ post.

There’s one issue however that I don’t feel they addressed at all… their entire focus seems to be on people (primarily “bloggers” whatever that actually means) with websites that discuss and link to various products and services.  That’s all well & good, but what about direct linkers?  What about affiliate banner campaigns?  What about the myriad of cases where the marketer has no “website” at all and is merely buying paid placements somewhere and linking through an affiliate link, to the advertiser’s own website?

Is the affiliate in the wrong by doing this?  Do we have to have an intermediate redirect page that says “I am an affiliate and you have been sent to a page where i will be paid if you buy something”?  Sounds pretty silly to me, but since they seem to have completely skipped over this, and since I do as much direct linking as I possibly can… I think it’s worth raising the question!

What are your thoughts on this?  Do you do much direct linking?

Jonathan

Boy this was sure a busy weekend.  In addition to reading through all your applications to my consulting club, I got so fired up by A.M. Khan revealing to me the potential of remarketing, that I set up several PPV and banner campaigns to start collecting data.  Now I’ve got to send welcome emails to everyone who’s been accepted into the club, as well as notify everyone who bought AIC how they will get my bonus video.

Whew!  You guys & gals keep me on my toes!

So here’s the important bits:

1)  Those of you who have applied to be in the consulting club, as of this morning I’m caught up on all submissions and will begin notifying those who are accepted shortly.  If you didn’t get accepted, sorry about that… for one reason or another I just didn’t feel it was a good fit for both of us.  Don’t take it personally!  =)  There is a waiting list that I will put everyone else on for the future, in case I accept some more people or others cancel.

I’ve got room for some more people so if you’re still thinking it might be a good fit for you, go submit your application right now.  I’ll stop taking applications soon, probably this week.

2)  For all of you who just purchased Adtext Image Creator through the $97 special, I’m collecting data now in order to create the bonus video for you.  I want to have as much to show you as I possibly can so just be patient.

My intent with the video is to show you a complete start-to-finish waklthrough of adding remarketing code to a PPV campaign, building remarketing lists, and creating the banner campaign to go with it.  For sheer simplicity I’m not even using AIC for this demonstration.  Using it will give you much greater flexibility and ad coverage, but I would have to make this a complete training video on how to use AIC as well and I’m just not up to that right now.

By the time you finish watching the video, you should be able to build your own remarketing lists without any difficulty using PPV or actually any traffic source of your choosing.  From there, it’s up to you how well you can convert them from your Adwords content network campaigns.

That’s it for now… oh one other thing, I just got wind of something a couple friends are doing that also sounds really top notch.  I’ll write about that separately.

Jonathan

Thanks to everyone who submitted an application for my private consulting club. I’ve been scanning them already and will be going over them in depth this weekend, and begin sending acceptance letters to those that are the best fit. If you don’t get accepted at this time, I’m going to keep your information for future reference so that if I decide to bring on more people later, I can revisit with you and see if you’re a fit at that time.

There is still time to apply, I doubt I’ll get through all the applications this weekend alone. After reading the original post on the subject, please do apply if you think it will benefit you. Nothing to lose and you might just get in!

Jonathan

For those who just want to skip to the point and make
a decision, here’s the short version:

I’m offering private 1-on-1 consulting via Instant
Messenger as a monthly subscription, to help you out
and answer whatever questions you may have in your
online business. I am only accepting 100 people at
this time. To apply go to
http://tooltrainer.com/consulting.php right away.

Now for those who like details…

I’ve been asked countless times over the years, if I
do personal coaching/mentoring or have a membership
program, etc. The answer has pretty much always been
“no I don’t and no I don’t.” Don’t get me wrong – I
love the idea of personal coaching and spending that
kind of time & attention with someone to make things
happen. But the time commitment on my end is
enormous, and to make it make any sense for me I would
have to charge a massive fee, which then wouldn’t make
sense for the other person (I don’t want anyone
starting from that much of a hole!)

If you’ve ever put a support ticket in my support
desk, or sent me an email, you know that I actually
answer things myself. I also have people helping me
on those occasions when the volume gets to be too much
(like on a launch or something) but mostly I do my own
support. I’m very hands on that way.

You may also know that I can *usually* solve/fix just
about any problem online, from simple HTML errors on a
page, to complex PHP scripting, to database setup to
scraping, pinging, automation, whitehat, blackhat, and
just about everything in between. I’ve become the “go-
to-guy” for a number of people that are much higher
profile than myself, because they know I can
troubleshoot and solve damn near anything and always
have a creative solution to a problem. I guess all
those years I spent doing software QA and testing for
a living taught me something eh?

I’ve been wanting for a long time to come up with some
sort of program where I could be available to more
people, to do what I do best in helping them out and
removing the technical obstacles from their path. But
like I said before, personal coaching just requires
WAY too much of my time and energy, and I *do* have a
life outside of the online world (or at least I like
to pretend that I do! LOL)

So suddenly it hit me. I’ve got several “big”
projects I’m working on, including some that are
outside of the marketing space entirely. This means
I’m at the computer almost all day anyway creating
content, coding, directing my employees, handling
support, etc. Why couldn’t I handle a few more chat
conversations at any given time, and still get my
other things done as well?

I think I can!

So here’s the idea: I’m going to offer personal,
private consulting via skype to just 100 people, to
test the waters and see how it goes. When people ask
me to do personal consulting I normally charge
$500/hour to get on the phone with them. However the
fee for this is much less because it won’t be as all-
consuming as the phone, and I’m working it into what
I’m already doing anyway.

Here’s what you get:

* A private skype ID to contact between my “office”
hours. This will be for member use ONLY and I won’t
talk to anyone else on it.

* The ability to contact me and ask me any questions
you have about your business or anything you’re
doing. Note that this does NOT include questions like
“How can I make some money?” I’m not doing this to
take people who have never made their first dollar
online and make them superstars. This is for people
who are already doing SOMETHING, that will benefit
from having my expertise available day in & day out to
help them solve technical issues, refine & perfect
ideas, critique landing pages or sites, suggest
solutions to tracking issues, etc. etc. The
possibilities are near endless.

My goal with this program is to be able to take
whatever problem or challenges you’re currently being
stopped by, and remove them so you can continue on
your way. And I’m *REALLY* good at this. =)

I don’t tend to tolerate excuses when there are
solutions sitting right in front of us, so be prepared
to have me all but force you to move forward!

Here’s what is required of you:

* Fill out an application. Many thousands of people
are being exposed to this opportunity, and clearly I
can’t accommodate everyone. I will review the
applications and personally choose the 100 individuals
that I feel are best suited for this. The others will
go into a waiting queue in case anyone drops out or I
feel I can handle a few more.

* Be respectful of the fact that you are almost
certainly not the only thing I’m focusing on at any
given moment. Most of the time I’ll respond within
minutes, but like I said i do have a life, and if I’m
across the house, or out running errands, or rebooting
my computer, talking to someone else, on the phone,
etc. then it may take a little while for me to
respond. Just leave all the information you possibly
can in skype and I’ll see it and respond just as soon
as I can.

* Don’t use skype as a telephone. I’m not offering
private telephone consulting. If you want that, I
will be happy to charge you $500/hour. When I speak,
I can’t do anything else… I can’t multitask, I can’t
type while I talk, etc. If by chance *I* think
something is best communicated by voice, then I may
request that we go audio, but it’s solely at my
discretion. If you ring me without me requesting you
to, you’ll go to the bottom of the priority list.

That’s about it. Fairly simple stuff I think but I
want to again make it clear that this is not personal
coaching. This is personal problem solving. Think of
it as having me for a private mastermind partner who
knows how to solve just about anything.

Personally I’m tired of info product launches that
just give more “clutter” to people when they’re
already overwhelmed and lost with what they’re doing
now. I want to cut through some of that, and help a
group of people actually solve problems, defeat
challenges, and move forward in their businesses. All
while I continue to do the same for myself!

Here’s a note someone recently sent me who has been
receiving just the sort of help I’ll be giving you if
you’re selected to join:

[5/17/2010 8:45:41 AM] I owe a lot to you my friend.
You helped my business quadrouple this year!
[5/17/2010 8:45:50 AM] so a big THANK YOU!

Once you’ve read all this and feel that this is
something that will benefit you, simply head over to:

http://tooltrainer.com/consulting.php

Fill out the application form there and I’ll get in
touch with the 100 accepted members with more details
soon.

Looking forward to helping you!

Hopefully the video says it all. This is something that’s incredibly important to me lately. Make sure you have a plan for your digital assets.

Jonathan

Well, the spammers have finally gotten to me.

Even though I have Akismet and have taken all sorts of precautions in my htaccess file to block spammers from my blog, I still get dozens of spams a day easily and always have to look through them for the occasional false positive.

So, I’ve had it. I’m switching my blog to require registration in order to comment. It sucks that I’m making you sign up for yet ANOTHER place… I really wanted to leave the blog more open to encourage interaction and discourse. But the spammers are pissing me off. I’ve even seen spam recently from some people I know.

I could write an entire post on this, but I wish people would think more about how annoying it is for a “real” blog owner (as opposed to automated junk blogs not intended for real reading or enjoyment) to have to wade through comment & trackback spam, before firing off their automated spam scripts that are mostly unsuccessful anyway. I know an awful lot of marketers who employ web and blog spam as an everyday tool in their business, and I know that it “works” to whatever degree. But just because something works, does that mean it’s a good thing to do?

I haven’t done any mass web spam type stuff in a couple years. I’m fascinated by automation and so I do play with technologies that can be used for these purposes, but I refrain from using them in my business because I’m also on the receiving end of what they do, and I don’t like it. If I don’t like it done to me, why would I do it to anyone else?

End of rant. Sorry again for making you register. I’m afraid the quantity of comments on this blog is about to drop to near zero.

Jonathan

Just got this email from Yahoo… mighty interesting things appear to be brewing. I wonder what it will all mean!

–

Dear Advertiser,

Yahoo! and Microsoft have now received regulatory clearance to form a search alliance. This is a significant milestone and an exciting first step in our combined effort to help you reach even more customers with greater ease and efficiency.

What’s Ahead

There will be no immediate changes to your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Both companies are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial to you as possible. Our aim is a high quality transition of advertisers and partners in at least the U.S. prior to the 2010 holiday season. However, we may wait until 2011 if we determine this will be more effective. Approximately three months in advance, we’ll begin providing you with detailed information about what to expect and how we will assist you.

How the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Will Benefit You

Once implemented, the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance will enable you to:

Reach more customers.
• Reach up to 150 million searchers(1)9 and get approximately 62% more search volume(2) than on Yahoo! alone through a new, unified search marketplace combining the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks.
• To help drive future growth in search volume, Yahoo! will continue to significantly enhance the search experience on our leading web properties.

Save valuable time and effort.
• You’ll log into one place–Microsoft’s adCenter–to manage campaigns, for greater efficiency and a better ROI.
• With just one buy, you’ll reach users on Yahoo! and Microsoft sites, as well as other premium partner sites.

Benefit from rapid innovation.
• Yahoo! will deliver new features and innovations to the world’s favorite online destinations, content, and web products used by hundreds of millions of consumers to connect to the people and things that matter to them most.
• Microsoft will innovate the underlying technologies that drive high quality algorithmic and paid search results.

We appreciate your business and look forward to bringing the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance to you. In the meantime, please refer to the resources below:

Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo!

1. comScore custom data, December 2009
2. comScore qSearch December, 2009

For anyone who’s been trying to reach me for the past 2+ days, I’m sorry to have disappeared.  My main computer has been acting worse and worse for months and finally got to the point where it was SO messed up (don’t know what… antivirus & whatnot found no problems… no fragmentatino, etc.) that I had no choice but to backup, format, and reinstall windows from scratch.

I’m sure you know how insanely painful that can be if you use Windows! it’s taken me totally offline for just over 2 days and counting.  Hope to be back up by tomorrow…

So if you have a support ticket or email that has gone unanswered by me, that’s probably the main reason.  I’ll be in touch ASAP!

Jonathan

EDIT:  It’s been quite some time since I wrote this review, but there was an unexpected twist just the other day.  I was contacted by someone I had never spoken to before, saying that he was a partner of the guy behind PPVO but that he was not involved with PPVO itself.  He felt it was the right thing to do, to give me my refund even though it wasn’t really any of his business.  Quite surprising, but I applaud him for doing the right thing by his new partner.  I’m letting the post stay up, but wanted to amend it with this new info as of August 2010.

---

So I’ve had a lot of people ask me about my experience with PPV Optimizer.  If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a desktop Windows application that promises to save you money on your TrafficVance campaigns, by maintaining your bid position for as little cost as possible.

Sounds pretty good right?  Well I sure thought so and I bought it immediately upon hearing about it, despite there being no trial version at all and no reviews or information about it anywhere.

First, it was a couple days before I got my software.  They have you send the money to a paypal address, and then MANUALLY send you your license information & download link whenever they get around to you.  This should’ve been sign enough that there would be issues ahead.

Once I got the software and installed it, I discovered that there is no documentation on how to use it at all.  Literally NONE.  No manual, no online help, no videos, nothing.  Granted it’s a pretty spartan program that isn’t terribly hard to figure out, but still… software should include instructions folks.  That’s just basic as hell.  It includes a brief readme file that tells you to set up a couple of specific things in your TrafficVance account, but that’s all.

Overlooking that, I got into their user forum… it was a pretty quiet place with only a few posts to be found, many of which had to do with issues getting the software to work as advertised.  Another sign of bumps ahead.

Finally I began running the software to see what it would do… problem was, it didn’t do anything.  I could see it downloading all my campaign data, and it claimed it was optimizing things, but in reality nothing was happening.  No bids were changed, and the software literally didn’t do a damn thing beyond download my campaign information.

I posted in the forum, and spent days screwing around with it to make sure I hadn’t made some sort of weird error on my end.  I also sent emails to the creators and after a few days, finally got in touch with one of them.  He seemed to not believe me that it didn’t work, falling back on the old “well nobody else is having this problem” line.  I assured him I had done everything he asked me to do re setting up TV, etc.  He still insisted it was probably user error… and I even accepted that maybe it could be, but I asked for more technical help to determine it one way or the other.  I was told that they normally charge if it turns out to be user error, but that they would “waive considering the potential biz relationship we will have once this app is finally working on your end”.

Flash forward 4 days later… I finally get to talk to “the programmer”.  Normally I would think this is GREAT because I’m dealing with the source… the guy who actually coded the thing and there can’t be anyone more knowledgeable than that.  Right?

Well it turned out that he had never used TrafficVance and didn’t even know how they worked.  No joke.  This is the person who wrote the code to interface in some very intricate ways with TrafficVance… and he’s never seen their interface??  WTF?!

So we did some screen-sharing sessions and he looked at all sorts of things on my system and after several hours of this, determined that – surprise surprise! – there was actually a bug in the program and it was NOT user error.  He rolled a new build for me to fix the issue, and PPV Optimizer started working.

Sortof.

Almost.

Not exactly.

It got most but not all of my bids… it would just randomly fail to update certain ones.

Then it would spontaneously quit.  No errors.  No messages.  Just… gone.

Can you imagine the potential devastation to your campaigns if you were relying on this thing to manage them bidding for you and it suddenly quit??

I messed with it for the next 2 days and ultimately decided that it just wasn’t stable enough for real world use.  It worked sometimes… but that won’t cut it for a tool of this nature that requires 100% uptime and a zero failure rate.

Plus frankly, it’s just not that complicated of an application.  It doesn’t do anywhere near what I initially expected… it does NOT bid to CPA targets, it knows nothing of a conversion value, has no logic controls for settings up rules, etc.  It ONLY adjusts your bids as low as it can, to hit a desired ranking for a given target, without spending more than a given amount.  At least, it’s supposed to.  The fact that it is as relatively simple as it is and still so unstable, doesn’t give me the confidence I need to use it in my business.

Now pay attention because here’s where things start to get really lame.

After finally having 2 days with the application “working” (such as it did) and a total of almost 4 weeks after my purchase, I decided that I would request a refund.  I’m not a huge refunder, and if this had been a $79 product I probably wouldn’t have bothered in case it was improved upon in the future.  But this thing is $500, and that’s a nice chunk of change I could be doing a lot more productive things with.

So I requested a refund via Skype, and this is how it went:

[11/3/2009 6:56:39 PM] Jonathan van Clute: howdy
[11/3/2009 6:57:51 PM] Jonathan van Clute: Well, the developer did finally get PPVO to work, but it’s still somewhat unstable and not quite “there” yet in my opinion.
[11/3/2009 6:58:00 PM] Jonathan van Clute: Though it saddens me to do it, I’m going to have to request a refund at this time.  I’ll keep tabs on the development though and possibly give it a try down the road when it’s got a bit more maturity to it.

[11/4/2009 11:41:07 AM] PPV Optimizer: i’m sorry but we don’t refund
[11/4/2009 11:41:16 AM] PPV Optimizer: espeially after 1on1 sessions have fixed the app
[11/4/2009 11:41:32 AM] PPV Optimizer: we can do what we can to get the app working 100% for you
[11/4/2009 11:42:05 AM] Jonathan van Clute: what?  It’s not stable… the product doesn’t work as promised, even after your coder identified a genuine issue with the app (you’re welcome for my expertise btw… maybe I should send in a bill for the help!)
[11/4/2009 11:42:16 AM] Jonathan van Clute: I was not able to properly evaluate the program until it worked
[11/4/2009 11:42:20 AM] Jonathan van Clute: which took weeks
[11/4/2009 11:42:22 AM] Jonathan van Clute: not my fault at all
[11/4/2009 11:42:40 AM] Jonathan van Clute: now that I’ve been able to actually evaluate it, I can see that it’s not stable enough for me to rely on in my business
[11/4/2009 11:43:15 AM] Jonathan van Clute: How is that anything other than a standard customer evaluating your product.  Since there’s no trial version, there is no other way for anyone to know if it works at all or is pure vaporware
[11/4/2009 11:43:31 AM] Jonathan van Clute: I’ve got a ton of people asking me about “does this work” and so far I’ve just said “hold on… I’ll tell you soon”
[11/4/2009 11:43:45 AM] Jonathan van Clute: What would you like me to tell them?
[11/4/2009 11:43:54 AM] PPV Optimizer: the application works, i have several people using it including myself that has it working no porblems
[11/4/2009 11:44:18 AM] Jonathan van Clute: welcome to software development.  Just because it works for you and a few others, doesn’t mean “it works” period.
[11/4/2009 11:44:30 AM] Jonathan van Clute: Your own developer acknowledged that there WAS a problem with the app
[11/4/2009 11:44:33 AM] Jonathan van Clute: it was nothing on my end
[11/4/2009 11:44:38 AM] PPV Optimizer: we don’t give trials because of how exclusive we are making this application
[11/4/2009 11:44:39 AM] Jonathan van Clute: it required him to roll me a custom build
[11/4/2009 11:44:49 AM] PPV Optimizer: the program is only supposed to be handed out to a few people
[11/4/2009 11:44:51 AM] Jonathan van Clute: then you should honor a reasonable refund period
[11/4/2009 11:44:55 AM] Jonathan van Clute: like anyone else
[11/4/2009 11:46:17 AM] PPV Optimizer: well like you said when we you first bought the app that was weeks ago
[11/4/2009 11:46:21 AM] Jonathan van Clute: look I’m not going to argue with you.  Either honor my very reasonable refund request, or don’t/
[11/4/2009 11:46:25 AM] Jonathan van Clute: right
[11/4/2009 11:46:27 AM] Jonathan van Clute: and it NEVER WORKED
[11/4/2009 11:46:28 AM] Jonathan van Clute: not at all
[11/4/2009 11:46:33 AM] Jonathan van Clute: until the other night
[11/4/2009 11:46:39 AM] Jonathan van Clute: and I kept asking for help
[11/4/2009 11:46:40 AM] PPV Optimizer: and I had my programmer step in and fix the issue for you
[11/4/2009 11:46:40 AM] Jonathan van Clute: repeatedly
[11/4/2009 11:46:47 AM] Jonathan van Clute: yes and now I’ve seen other issues
[11/4/2009 11:46:49 AM] Jonathan van Clute: the app is not stable
[11/4/2009 11:46:52 AM] PPV Optimizer: what else is wrong with the program?
[11/4/2009 11:46:53 AM] Jonathan van Clute: he even acknowledged that he knows that
[11/4/2009 11:47:01 AM] Jonathan van Clute: xIt randomly shuts down
[11/4/2009 11:47:04 AM] Jonathan van Clute: no reason
[11/4/2009 11:47:06 AM] Jonathan van Clute: no error
[11/4/2009 11:47:08 AM] Jonathan van Clute: just disappears
[11/4/2009 11:47:12 AM] Jonathan van Clute: it also misses bids
[11/4/2009 11:47:19 AM] Jonathan van Clute: the dev knows these are issues
[11/4/2009 11:47:27 AM] Jonathan van Clute: but for now they are issues I’m not willing to put up with
[11/4/2009 11:47:38 AM] Jonathan van Clute: if I’m relying on this thing to run my campaigns, it can’t just quit
[11/4/2009 11:47:39 AM] Jonathan van Clute: ever
[11/4/2009 11:48:19 AM] PPV Optimizer: well if thats the case I ill issue a refund then
[11/4/2009 11:48:26 AM] Jonathan van Clute: yes that’s what I was saying originally
[11/4/2009 11:48:27 AM] Jonathan van Clute: thank you
[11/4/2009 11:48:42 AM] Jonathan van Clute: it’s not stable enough to use in production right now in my opinion
[11/4/2009 11:48:42 AM] PPV Optimizer: but if spots fill up and you ask for the application again theres nothing i can do, you understand ?
[11/4/2009 11:48:44 AM] Jonathan van Clute: maybe later it will be
[11/4/2009 11:48:46 AM] Jonathan van Clute: but not yet
[11/4/2009 11:48:50 AM] Jonathan van Clute: I’d call it a working beta
[11/4/2009 11:48:54 AM] Jonathan van Clute: yes I understand

It took some arm twisting, but they eventually agreed to give me the refund after all.  That was November 4.  It’s now November 18 and despite repeated reminders in Skype and Email, they are ignoring me and NOT issuing the refund as promised.

So the bottom line here is… PPV Optimizer doesn’t work reliably, has no documentation, was written by someone who has no idea how to actually use TV or what we do as traffic brokers, and they won’t give you a refund if you’re not satisfied with it.

I’d call that a huge mega thumbs down if ever there was one.

If you take a roll of the dice with PPV Optimizer, be prepared to lose.

Jonathan