Damn I meant to put this up sooner but just plain forgot.

If you don’t already have SpeedPPC in your PPC marketing arsenal, here’s your chance to get it for almost half price:

www.speedppc.com/sneaky

They’re running a really short term special deal, I believe as of now there are just a few hours left. Go check it out and give them some feedback on their new site, and grab SpeedPPC version 4 before it’s really had it’s public launch.

Enjoy!

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

I’m totally slammed in preparation for the LPGen2 launching shortly, but I had to get this post out real quick between everything else.

If you haven’t seen the video where Amish walks through the use of his new Magic Bullet software, you’ve gotta check this out. No optin required or anything either… just watch the vid, then come back here.

 https://mbe.infusionsoft.com/go/g3/toolt…

Yes that’s an affiliate link. Duh. If you’re allergic to them, go here instead.

So, what’s your take? You think this is real? Too good to be true?

Well here’s the thing… I’ve spent a few days with Amish & Jay on a couple of occasions and man I gotta tell you, these guys know their stuff!! I’m not just saying this because I’m promoting their launch. They are about as cutting edge and “push the envelope” as anyone I’ve ever seen or heard of. I knew a lot of what their in-house systems were capable of (when I walked into their high-rise office the first thing I did was go straight to their huge whiteboard and study it intensely… LOL) but I didn’t really think they’d ever release it outside their own confines.

And the fact is I’m not certain that they have… I’m sure they have additional things beyond what they’re showing in their own version. What marketer doesn’t have a “special” version of their public tools for their own use?

But still, what Amish has shown so far is freaking insane. Being a software guy myself, I’m always a little skeptical when someone claims to be releasing the ultimate be-all end-all affiliate marketing tool that will do everything for you including squeeze your orange juice or make your coffee in the morning. But I’m optimistic that this is actually gonna deliver!

So the question is, does it really work? I spent a number of years back in the 90s as a paid product demonstrator for some high tech companies here in Silicon Valley, and I got very VERY good at publicly (usually in Vegas or Europe at various high end tradeshows) demonstrating software that could ONLY do what the demo required.

But nobody ever knew that because I always left them assuming that every button actually worked and that every feature I described would do what it was supposed to. Truth was most of the buttons would make the whole system crash!

No big deal because that’s the nature of demonstrating technology that’s still a fair ways away from release. But this thing launches in just a couple DAYS! Is it ready for prime time?

I’ve seen Amish present the Hexatrack platform a number of times, and it always SOUNDED brilliant! But over time I’ve heard from a fair number of people who were disappointed in it, either because it didn’t quite live up to the expectations that were set, or took too long to work out the kinks, etc. I have a Hexatrack account but I really never did much with it. Like so many other things, I just didn’t set aside the time to really figure it out.

But I gotta say that none of the Hexatrack versions that I’ve played with, could hold a candle to what I saw Amish do in Magic Bullet. This thing is a monster… it’s like Google Cash Detective, Keyword Rockstar, Adtext Generator, Prosper202, and a ton of other insane stuff all merged into one mega system!

Please note that I have NOT yet had my hands on the software, but you can absolutely bet that I will very soon. According to Amish, they’re apparently giving all Magic Bullet Seminar attendees free access! Talk about good value for the seminar cost… WOW.

So what about you? Are you impressed? Excited? Jaded? Do you just not believe a word any marketer says on principle? Personally I’m in the excited camp… though it’s going to be probably a month before I can actually set aside the time to put MagicBullet through its paces. I sure can’t wait to do so though… I wonder if I can create a plugin for LPGen to tie the two together… Hmmmm…

What do you think?

Jonathan

December has been an interesting month indeed in the affiliate marketing world. Mass account-bannings have seemed to be the norm, on a much larger scale than I recall hearing about before. And while some are pointing fingers at the truly scammy advertisers and scam products, the truth is that this latest sweep has hit people at all levels of adwords advertising, from the tiniest “little guy” to some big Goliaths. I know people who only ran a few Clickbank offers that got banned.

Personally I think Google has broader ambitions of shutting down affiliate marketing as a whole - but I’ll go into that more in the near future.

CPA marketing in particular has been taking a lot of heat as being responsible for this latest crackdown… and I don’t know if that’s completely undeserved. Let’s face it, an awful lot of CPA offers (but not all) are really sketchy at best.

But the fact is that you can go do a Google search right now and still find plenty of CPA offers coming up in the PPC listings. So obviously SOMEONE is still able to run these offers. Do they know something you don’t? That’s a very likely possibility… after all one of the biggest advantages in this industry is having specialized knowledge (and of course, then implementing that knowledge in the form of action).

So it’s definitely interesting timing then, that a couple of guys I mastermind with and am fortunate enough to call friends, are about to share some of this specialized knowledge with us all. You’ve probably heard of them already if you’re in the CPA game at all - Amish Shah and his partner Jay Styles.

Now I know not everyone is a huge fan of Amish and Jay - after all they are definitely “bad boys” of affiliate marketing, willing to do *almost* anything to make their business profitable. They are well known for saying things like “screw Google, they’re not the law” and opening up tons of Adwords accounts so that they can completely dominate markets. They’re known for mass-executing pretty much any profitable TOS-breaking trick you can think of.

But clearly whatever they’re doing works, because they’re still cranking away high volume CPA campaigns despite the most recent account shutdowns. I’m sure even they have felt at least SOME pain from the recent turn of events, but when your biggest problem is that your average daily revenue dropped from $20,000 to $15,000, then that’s a pretty “high quality problem” in my book.

So where is all this going? Amish has always dabbled a little bit in the “IM” world with the release of well known products like the original Google Goggles, his “The New PPC” educational video series (still on Youtube and filled with good info), the Hexatrack family of software products, and of course for this year’s Magic Bullet Seminar which was pretty phenomenal.

He’s now setting out to reveal exactly how his business is still cranking out over $14,000 per day average, in gross CPA commissions even after all the recent google slaps. I’m sure some of it is going to have to do with other traffic sources, media buys, that sort of thing. But he insists that they’re still going strong with Adwords too, and are going to give away an entire campaign - keywords, landing pages & all - so that you can see exactly how they’re doing it.

Like I mentioned already, Amish & Jay’s style (no pun intended ) isn’t for everyone… but if you’re someone who’s willing to bend rules occasionally and care more about profitability than “being nice”, then this stuff is probably right for you. If nothing else I’m sure the free content they’re providing will give you some solid ideas and maybe even an “aha” moment or two.

So check it out and jump on any nuggets you come away with… as with most of the information out there, it’s likely that most people won’t act on it so those who do stand to profit the most!

Jonathan

In case you missed it, Jay and the gang over at PPCLoophole have added a low-cost trial. For $4.95 you can get access to their training material and tools, including SpeedPPC 4.0.

It’s being mentioned all over the place and I’m certainly joining the chorus - but if you’ve been relying on Adwords for your traffic, you’ve either just been shafted or are pretty much just waiting for it to happen. Since SpeedPPC supports so many other PPC traffic sources, it seriously behooves you to learn how to use it effectively, and fast. There’s already a mad rush to other PPC platforms like Yahoo, Bing, and the 2nd tier engines… make sure you don’t miss out on what is actually a huge opportunity for some who lost their Adwords accounts. Check out SpeedPPC and start getting your traffic back!!

Jonathan

I got an email from Chris Carpenter a while back saying that GCD 3.0 was coming, but he didn’t tell me what was new and being a busy guy, I never did get the answer from him.

That is, until yesterday!

I got excited about Chris’ Google Cash Detective in the past but it was always just a hair shy of what I felt it really needed to be.  The raw information it contained was remarkable and my brain spun like mad on some of the possible things that could be done with it, but it lacked a few features - things I felt were pretty basic requirements - that it needed to really be something I would use on a daily basis.

It sounds like that time may have finally come.

Straight from the horse’s mouth, here’s a short summary of some of the new features in GCD 3, with emphasis added to what I’m most excited about:

First, all customers will get a free upgrade.  The new system
uses a different data base architecture and is much, much
faster than the old. It is also internally consistent which means
if you find a url, you can find it in every instance that it exists
in the database.  In the old version, sometimes you would get
a no data error message when you knew there was data there.

The coolest feature is that the system can tell when an
advertiser is using keyword tracking in their links.  It
uses the domain to group ads and therefore can pick
up campaigns that before would appear to be intermittently
run, but actually were the most sophisticated kinds that
are using split testing and tracking elements.

Now you will have access to campaigns with numerous
landing page urls that before would have seemed as
separate campaings.

Finally, you can sort the data using any and every variable
including dates which is key to dissecting what is actually
going on out there.

If you’ve used GCD in the past, you know why that last bit is in bold.  The most frustrating thing was that you couldn’t really filter by any criteria… you had to do a whole lot of mousing around and clicking on things to dig up information that should’ve been available en masse by simply choosing a filter and hitting a single button.  According to what I’ve been told, that is now a reality!  This will definitely have me back in GCD exploring it heavily.  I haven’t gotten to see this in action yet but it should be any day now that it gets rolled out fully.

I’m also particularly excited at the potential of finding campaigns that have a few keywords that are working, and running those keywords as seed terms through my KWBot keyword miner, and blowing up lists around those terms.  Since GCD is for the search network only, I think extrapolating to these long tail variations on the search terms, could be a good way to migrate a campaign onto the content network… or especially to other traffic sources all together.

Anyway, if you do affiliate marketing and haven’t checked out Google Cash Detective, you should really consider it.  It’s not for everyone but you’ll probably know in the first hour whether or not it will be of value to you and your business.

Jonathan

Today is a special day!  I got a note from fellow marketer and all-around good guy Matt Harward that his 40th birthday is this week!

If you don’t know Matt, you can find out about him on his blog at www.MattHarward.com and if you DO know Matt, then odds are you already pay attention to him on those rare occasions when he pops his head up out of his “cave”. 

Matt is one of those serious “underground genius” marketers.  I don’t say that lightly either… the guy operates on a different plane of existence from anyone else I’ve ever known in the online marketing world.  No joke… he has an exceedingly rare combination of extreme business smarts (how many of us have built and sold a software company for millions of dollars?  Not me!), extraordinary communication skills (how many of us have had our own radio show?  And I’m not talking on UStream either!), and technical ability (when I need “the impossible” coded, Matt is the first guy I go to… and he usually solves whatever it is within 48 hours).

So in honor of his first and only 40th birthday, he’s giving US a present!  If you’ve followed him at all you know that Matt makes absolutely freaking amazing tools and tends to just GIVE them away (sometimes I think he’s nuts but hey…  )

This week is no exception, and he’s giving away a killer private PPC tool and the information on what to do with it.

Go check it out as I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.  Matt is one of the few people that I can automatically endorse no matter what he’s doing, because I know he’s got amazing integrity and only puts out the best tools possible.

Matt is someone you absolutely want to pay attention to… you won’t hear from him a whole lot, but just consider him the “E.F. Hutton” of internet marketing.  When he speaks, people listen!

 http://www.tooltrainer.com/imwarfare

Happy Birthday Matt!!!!!!

Jonathan

OK, maybe not exactly a hot seat… but I certainly am gonna try to ask some good questions.

I’m going to be interviewing Gauher Monday night, at 8pm EST.  Being as I’m not one of his big success stories with PPC traffic (all his fault for teaching me PPV LOL), it will be interesting to see what he has to say to some of my questions.

I promise to make it as informational and interesting an interview as I possibly can.  Oh but I don’t know that he’s going to make a replay available so make sure you’re on it live if you want to hear it.  I know there’s over 100,000 people hearing about this already and only 1,000 spots on the webinar so, better get on early and hold your spot.

 http://www.payperclickformula.com/webina…

I’m really looking forward to it!

Jonathan

P.S.

Let me know what questions you would ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to work them in!

OK on the off chance that you’re reading this and somehow are NOT on Gauher’s mailing list already (and you really should be if you’re at all interested in making more money from paid traffic and CPA offers in particular…) I have just one thing to day.

GO GET ON HIS LIST!  LOL

OK but seriously… the thing I wanted to be sure to mention was a strategy that he turned me onto early this year, that allows you to have a second (or third, fourth, etc.) chance at converting your visitor into a lead/sale/whatever.  Bottom line - it works.

I mean think about it - what are your bounce rates like?  Like most everyone else I’m gonna bet they’re really really high, like maybe up in the 80% range?  That means 80% of your traffic just GOES AWAY!  And believe me they’re gone… not likely to come back again any time soon and if you paid for them, then that royally sucks.

But if you can make them stop and reconsider leaving, in a way that doesn’t HAVE to be obnoxious… you’d be hard pressed to not make more money with this strategy.

So go check it out… Gauher’s giving it away along with some other phenomenal material from his PPCFormula course, totally for free.  I know you’re gonna love it.

Jonathan

Wow, the last hour has really turned my world a little bit upside down.

I just got finished talking to Mr. Sniper (get the recording), the man behind most of the content in the new Aggressive Affiliates course  http://aggressiveaffiliates.com).  He’s doing some things that I actually didn’t think would even work well, and to devastatingly profitable effect!

I recorded the whole thing for your listening pleasure, it’s short but could have a tremendous impact on your bottom line especially if you do PPC marketing.  Check it out!

www. tooltrainer. com/ tooltrainer-sniper.mp3 (remove the spaces… Wordpress is being stupid)

This is really making me rethink a few things.  I’m going to have to study his material a whole lot more closely than I realized.

Jonathan