This is a very limited time chance to get some really good free training on PPC marketing from someone who does this himself every day to make the bulk of his substantial income.

http://www.payperclickformula.com/webinar.php

It’s free, but will only be up another day two.  So if you aren’t already a member of PPCFormula and you’d like to basically get a lot of the nuts & bolts of it all for free, make sure you check this out right away!

Jonathan

I don’t know how many people even know about Looksmart, but they’re one of the larger 2nd tier PPC engines.  They do have a lot of traffic and it can be a whole LOT cheaper than Adwords for the same clicks.

Click the “Looksmart Video” link on this page to learn how to set up a looksmart campaign.  If you’re into PPC at all, this will be a valuable 14 minutes and 47 seconds!

JVC

P.S.

Make sure to sign up for the free Webinar Gauher is going to be holding, on the same page.

Does PPC Still Work?

Amazingly, I get asked that question fairly often.

And I say amazingly because I tend to assume that by now, people must realize that traffic sources don’t work.

We work THEM!

And without exception the people that I know who make a good living via PPC, work very, very hard for it.

This stuff is NOT EASY.  I don’t care what anyone tells you.

I suspect that nobody knows that better than Gauher Chaudhry.

As you probably know if you’ve been around me any length of time, Gauher is a “guru” in the PPC game, having created the PPCFormula course that changed many of our lives as far back as 2007.

In the years that I’ve known Gauher, I’ve watched him totally rebuild his business from scratch several times.

I’m talking about a guy who does 7 figures a year in PPC-generated commissions, and he’s rebuilt it all.

More than once!

But what’s even more remarkable than that, is that he hasn’t just managed to recreate his business each time (usually due to the nature of the game changing in some fundamental way).

He’s made it STRONGER than last time!

And here we are, today, in late 2011, when a lot of people I’m sure would tell you that the PPC game is “over”… with so many stories of account bans and slaps, it would be hard not to listen!

But Gauher’s doing better than ever.

And believe me, he’s not sitting on the beach with his laptop sipping a margarita!

He’s hard at work, every single day, nurturing his campaigns, building new ones, testing new ideas, and optimizing his data.

If there was an award for “Hardest Working Guy In PPC”, I’d say give it to Gauher!

His PPCFormula course has been closed for quite some time now, but that’s about to change once more as well.

Gauher has totally overhauled the course, with case studies of exactly what he’s doing NOW, in 2011, that’s working for him.  PPCFormula 3.0 is about to launch.

I was one who took him up on the offer of “early bird” access to the new content earlier this year, and I truly must say that if you want to have the best shot at success with PPC – especially if you want to promote CPA offers – then PPCFormula 3 is the smartest way to go.

Check out the free video Gauher has just posted, where he walks you through the entire process of setting up a PPC campaign on one of his most profitable traffic sources, that almost nobody is talking about.

Sign up for his list and I’m certain you’ll get some really valuable tips from him even if you don’t decide to buy PPCFormula 3 now.

One last word of caution before I sign off… PPCFormula 3 is not “cheap” and in my opinion it shouldn’t be.  The price reflects the caliber of people who have trusted Gauher as a teacher, and it’s worth many times the price for those who are willing to do the work.

I’ll say it again – FOR THOSE WHO ARE WILLING TO DO THE WORK.

This stuff isn’t easy, but if you will put in the time and the focus, it could change your life like it has so many others’.

Be well!

JVC

Yep, at long last… I’ve had my hands so full with my new WPGen WordPress Plugin and helping out my VCS community members, that I hadn’t buckled down to get this new version out to the beta testers!

But at long last, here’s RC3.1.  There are a few important new features I wanted to make sure you knew about as well, so I’ve covered them in this video.

As always please report any bugs, conflicts, or suggestions and I’ll see what I can do to work them into the schedule.  I have a few more relatively small things planned for the 1.0 release but this version is pretty close to final.

Thanks all!

Jonathan

If you were on the LPGen webinar I did earlier (actually yesterday now as I write this at 1:30 am) or couldn’t make it and are waiting for the replay, there’s been a delay.

Fortunately the recording isn’t lost entirely, but it’s definitely being difficult.  I’ve now had to re-screen-capture the entire webinar (at regular speed) not once, but TWICE.  And since it was just shy of 3 hours long… that’s 6 hours just in re-recording, plus lots of swearing and hair-pulling in between.  I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that this has now happened to me with GotoWebinar recordings twice (no it’s not the “wrong .wmv format” issue) and I will never again take it for granted that GTW will “just work” as far as a simple recording goes!

Anyway, it’s fixable but a huge pain in the neck and since it’s now well past midnight and I’m ready to pass out, I’m going to have to finish this later in the morning.  Sorry about that, replay to come soon.

JVC

I gotta say, the guy(s?) behind ProfitsTheme continually impress me. Check out this extremely slick new tool he/they’ve been working on.

I actually had a chance to beta test this, albeit only briefly as I’ve been just a bit busy. Overall, very impressed with this, and my beta version didn’t have a bunch of the features I see are in the final one.

Check out the “Facebook Connect” feature. I’ve actually incorporated this into Easy Prepop already myself, but was saving it as a surprise announcement… but what the hell, seems it’s not such a unique feature after all (though my implementation is… more on that later!)

Anyway, it’s going to be launching at a 60% discount which will just make it stupidly cheap. If you’ve ever had even the slightest need for a popup plugin for WordPress, then this is the obvious choice as it does SO much more than the other popup plugins I’ve seen or tried.

Oh and as I always say, if this doesn’t directly fit into your near-term plans and money is in ANY way tight – pass on it. Even at a bargain price, it’s not worth anything if you won’t put it into use.

JVC

In case anyone reading my blog has run into this, I thought I should share the only “solution” (workaround) I found.

On the iPad, using the iPod app (how confusing is that anyway??), you may notice that the silly little album artwork thumbnail, actually COVERS UP some of your playlists if you have more than a few, and you can’t scroll down to get to them no matter what you do.

Essentially, you LOSE 4 or 5 playlists forever!

Turns out, if you tap in the search field to bring up the keyboard, then close the keyboard, it will allow you to scroll to the bottom of your playlists.

Took me a while but I finally found the solution on the Apple support forums.

Hope this removes some frustration for someone else as well!

JVC

P.S.

I went to an event this weekend and didn’t pull my laptop out even ONCE!  The iPad was able to do absolutely everything I could have needed to do on the laptop, and then some.  FaceTime is AWESOME!

Well here I am again finding myself in the unenviable position of having to be a “typical consumer” and being utterly overwhelmed by the information I find by googling.

I was recently given an iPad 2, and I’m really trying to give it a fair shake in being something that’s more than just a cool toy, and is actually USEFUL to me on a daily basis.  So far, I think it has real promise after adding a few apps and a stylus.  But I’m struggling with being able to take it with me wherever I go.

For that, I need a case.  But holy crap there are a lot of them out there!

I already know I don’t want a “pouch” type case – I don’t want to have to take my iPad completely out of the case in order to use it.  I prefer the “folio” style cases, where I can just flip open a cover and start working.  Still there are so many of THOSE and boy do they range in price.

I’m pretty price conscious – I don’t like to spend a lot on accessories if I can help it – and so I first went over to eBay.  Found a zillion sellers (mostly in China) with all sorts of cases, including many exact knockoffs of some of the expensive brand-name cases for a lot less money.

I settled on a very thin, no-frills case from a US seller, for a whopping $7 shipped.  At that price I figured I could take a chance.  It looked good “on paper” (i.e. on the screen) and I felt it should do the job.

Well it arrived this morning and I have to say – it’s pretty much a piece of junk.  I’m not sure I’ll bother returning it as the postage and time involved might not make it worth the effort.  But this is definitely not “the one”.

For starters, the iPad doesn’t even stay in the thing.  It has a felt-ish backing that is obviously supposed to hold the device in place and keep it from slipping out, but it barely does anything.  There is nothing really holding the iPad in, so it could easily slip out in normal use.  Also the case opens “backwards” with the iPad on the left and the cover on the right!  I expected it to be like any normal folio containing a pad of paper, with the heavy pad on the right and a cover that you flip over to open.  Also due to the iPad slipping, you can’t use the “kickstand” mode at all or the device will fall out the bottom.  Oh and the cutouts for the buttons are a joke – you have to fumble way too much to try and find the button inside the cutout.

OK so those are my complaints.  But now I appeal to the rest of the world (or at least those that actually read my blog…) – what is truly the best iPad folio case, and why?

My only absolute requirements are:

1. It come in black/grey/silver/something plain and subtle
2. It hold the iPad firmly in place without any risk of it slipping out
3. It have workable cutouts for the buttons & such

Ideally I’d like it to be under $30.

Let the suggestions and opinions fly!

Jonathan

Hi everyone!  I’ve had a lot going on recently so I figured it was about time for a summary.

So in no particular order…

1.  WPGen (LPGen on WordPress) is nearly complete! I’ve made a beta available to my VanCluteSolution.com members and am getting feedback on stability, etc.

This has been an extremely tricky project, largely because WordPress and LPGen both do a lot of complex URL rewriting, and getting them to play nicely together was anything but easy.  But also because WordPress has so many possible themes and plugins people can use, that it’s impossible to test for all of them.

WPGen has all the features of LPGen plus some new ones while I’ve been at it.  It’s going to be made available free of charge to all current LPGen-X owners.  This means that if you never upgraded to LPGen-X in the past, now is the best time ever to do it.  The cost is only $100 and that gets you the latest & greatest plus access to the WPGen beta (and of course the release version once it’s done).

WPGen introduces some pretty awesome possibilities with WordPress, that have never been available before.  Especially when paired with specialty themes such as ProfitsTheme, not to mention all the plugins out there, the combination of WP and WPGen become a lot more than the sum of their parts (and especially SEOs are going to be very interested in this)!

If you haven’t already seen it, here’s a sneak peek I gave of WPGen a couple weeks ago.

Existing LPGen owners can upgrade to LPGen-X here and get WPGen for free.

2.  Easy Prepop is getting closer to a releasable 1.0, but has been much more challenging than I expected. I’m hoping to release another beta shortly now that WPGen has finally reached beta status too.  There are some major new features in EP that I haven’t talked about yet but will soon, that are going to really rock some people’s world.  I can’t wait to show you!

3.  I’m working on the next case study for my VanCluteSolution.com members.  This one is all about list building with paid traffic, and based on the 4-part outline I already posted, it’s going to be rather “epic” once it’s all done.  I’ll probably end up with something I should sell as a stand-alone course once it’s complete, but for now the only way to get access to it at all, is to join us in VCS.  I’d love to have you as a member of the community so by all means, come check it out!

4.  On a different note, I recently got an iPad 2 (it was given to me, I still don’t think I would ever be willing to pay for one) and am trying to figure out real-world uses for it.  I mean sure it’s a very VERY cool toy and is fun to play with, but I want to see if I can really USE IT in my business.  To that end, I’d love to hear from you if you use an iPad, what your favorite apps are (no games though please, I don’t need more distractions! and how you use it in a business context.  Accessories too… anything you find indispensable.

That’s it for this update, but I’m sure I’ll have more to tell you about soon.  Stay tuned!

Jonathan

I released the original LPGen software almost 4 years ago.  And since that time I’ve been asked if there would be a WordPress version.

I always said no, largely because I wasn’t up on WP development techniques enough to want to tackle it.

This small amount of trying I did do, made it clear that this was just not gonna happen.  Wordpress seriously does not want you monkeying around with its URL rewriting, and since LPGen is SO heavily rewrite dependent, I gave up.

Well a few weeks ago I had a flash of inspiration (blame Jason Katzenback!  LOL) and went into overdrive, tearing LPGen apart and rebuilding it in WordPress’ image.

And now I know… I mean REALLY KNOW… why apparently nobody had done this already.

IT’S SERIOUSLY DIFFICULT!!!

There are so many possible scenarios and ways things can be set up with permalinks and plugins and more… that I almost – ALMOST – wish I hadn’t had this bright idea.

But, too late… it’s extremely close to being done, after 9 formal beta revisions and a lot more “internal” versions of my own.

And if I do say so myself… it’s pretty damn awesome.

Plus it opens up a huge number of possibilities to add to the mix, since WP already can do so much without having to code from scratch.

So anyway, just wanted to throw this out there… LPGen for WordPress (WPGen?) is coming – SOON!

Jonathan