I just got to play with the new AdTextGenerator 2 moments ago… in fact I still am.

I am absolutely FREAKING OUT OVER THIS.

Obviously I don’t have any monetary results to show yet but I am absolutely flipping my wig excited over this thing.

More to come, I hope to have some more concrete measurable results from using it later this week.  I will leave you with this…

ESPECIALLY if you have GCD, ATG2 looks like the missing link.  NO JOKE.

Stay tuned…

Jonathan

OK gang this is REALLY weird.

As many of you know, I switched to 99.999% PPV traffic over a year ago and pretty much haven’t looked back.  That being said, I occasionally throw up a PPC campaign on a whim.

Last year (I forget when exactly but it was definitely QUITE a while ago) I put up 2 campaigns on MSN, since I hadn’t used them in ages and they had improved quite a bit.  Both campaigns were to offers on CX Digital.

Well the campaigns weren’t profitable, so I stopped them after a while.  I had uploaded huge amounts of keywords (like 50k or somesuch insanity) and got a lot of traffic, but couldn’t find anything converting consistently enough to even optimize it.

So flash forward to moments ago.  I haven’t logged into my CX account in eons as I’ve been working with other networks instead.  But today I remembered an offer they had so I logged in to look it up.

And what do I see in my stats for today but TRAFFIC!  Specifically almost 2,000 clicks on 2 offers I’m not even running!!!

I figured some kind of mistake had been made - OR I had a stray campaign running somewhere that I’d forgotten about that was probably costing me a fortune!

In a slight panic, I looked at the subids of the offers to see where they were coming from.  Lo & behold all clicks were from MSN!  I was sure I’d shut those campaigns off last year but (again slightly panicked) I logged into MSN to see what kind of spend I’d been looking at.

Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.

Absolutely not one cent spent on MSN since I shut those campaigns down last year.

So back in CX, I looked at my traffic for the month…

7,000 clicks!

For the year?

41,000 clicks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At .05/click that’s over $2,000 in free traffic.

I have completely confirmed that I have not been charged a single red (or any other color) cent for this traffic.

So MSN appears to be filling inventory with campaigns that are shut down.

This is potentially a REALLY BIG DEAL!!!  Here’s what I suspect could be going on:

A PPC network (especially a content network) has page impressions as their product demand, and ads as their inventory.  They MUST fill that demand, because if they don’t then their publishers (the website owners who are displaying ads) don’t get paid, get unhappy, and eventually will stop participating in the network and the whole thing will collapse.

So networks are sometimes faced with an awkward situation:  They have loads of demand (lots of searchers or visitors needing to be shown ads) but not enough inventory to fill it (active campaigns put up by advertisers).

When this happens with Google, you get those PSA (public service announcement) adsense ads, that no website owner likes to see because it means they aren’t getting paid for those clicks.

So I believe MSN may actually in such dire need of inventory, that they are actually running inactive campaigns just to keep the inventory filled.

This is pure speculation of course, but I’d love to hear from anyone else who may have phantom traffic coming from their MSN account when the campaign is inactive.

41k clicks for free certainly doesn’t suck, though in this case they didn’t generate even a single conversion.  Makes me wonder what other free traffic I might be able to get out of MSN though…

Jonathan

What is it about July???  Maybe it’s a summer thing, I don’t know… but I did my first video about a product in July of 2007 (SpeedPPC & Affiliate Radar) and it seems like every July now, there’s a massive flurry of awesome products coming out for online marketers, especially those who use PPC.

So I just got wind of some specifics about the upcoming AdTextGenerator 2, and it sounds MIGHTY sweet.  Here’s the highlights:

No longer is it primarily an AdWords ad generation tool.
But, it’s now a complete pay-per-click secret weapon
to dominate Yahoo and MSN as well.

New features include:

* A redesigned campaign creation process to
give you more freedom and better results from
your campaigns.

* Built-in “Keyword Mixing” tool that automatically
adds hundreds of targeted keywords to your campaigns.

* Swipes ads from Yahoo and MSN and not just Google.

* Pulls up to 50 ads per keywords (increase from 8).

* Built-in filtering tool weeds-out untargeted ads.
This makes uncovering targeted killer ads to swipe
much quicker and easier.

* Gives more freedom in how your campaign is structured.
With a few clicks you can generate one big ad group for
your ads, a group for each keyword (recommended), or a
group for each group of ads.

* Generates ads that DON’T have high-click-thru-rates
for more options and a full picture of all of the
competing ads for each keyword.

* Uncovers and swipes local ads only (regional campaigns
are becoming MUCH more popular).

* Assigns the same ad to multiple keywords for lightning
fast editing (optional).

* Plus, a more advanced interface to make creating your
campaigns just the way you want it a breeze.

So the launch is apparently coming up quite soon, and as soon as I get my hands on v2 you can bet I’ll put up a quick video showing some of the new stuff.  This sounds like a huge evolution beyond version 1, which I also liked quite a bit.

Full review to come undoubtedly!

Jonathan

I know I’m going to get asked about this, so as a preemptive strike, here’s what (admittedly little) I know:

PPC Classroom is reopening their doors again for a short time.

They’ve been around for a while now and offer some pretty good training from the ground up on running PPC campaigns on Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Bing.

Personally I think PPCC is appropriate for the absolute beginner with no PPC knowledge, to the intermediate marketer that needs some more help and tips.

If you already own and understand Pay Per Click Formula or are already making solid profits from PPC marketing, then this probably isn’t for you.

Let’s cut through some of their sales hype (and believe me THERE WILL BE HYPE!  LOL):  Yes, some of their students have made money using their training. That happens with a lot of different systems if people take the time to learn and more importantly, put it into practice.

Here is the great thing though… they’re giving access to their system for less then $10 for the first month.  They’ll send you a training DVD in the mail, and all you pay is the shipping.  Along with the DVD, you’ll get access to their “9 Essential Modules” for PPC.  These are the kinds of things that often sell on Clickbank for $97 or more.

The modules include:

Market Research
Keyword Research
Direct Linking, Landing Pages, and Sites
Adwords Campaign Set Up
Landing Page Design
Google Quality Score
Launching and Checking
Split Testing
Bid Optimization

And of course they also provide other bonuses materials and tools inside.

Obviously they’d like you to stay on as a monthly “Inner Circle” member.  Some of the things they provide for those members are additional training modules (over 18 as of this time), and access to their member forum which is quite active. They even have professional PPC Classroom Coaches that are in there all the time answering questions and providing help with campaigns.

If you’re one that is struggling or looking for help on your campaigns directly from PPC experts, this is a good way to get that help for not a whole lot of money.

If this is something that fits your needs and you will use, check out their free report on the “5 Deadliest Mistakes” and then claim your “free” DVD (Shipping costs $7 US - $10 International) and access to the training.

Personally I’m a PPCFormula/PPVFormula guy but I know not everyone has the capital to start out there (over $2k for both with the tools).  PPCC is a great way to “get your feet wet” without having to commit a ton of cash up front.  You might decide in a few months that PPC isn’t for you, but at least you haven’t invested thousands of dollars to find that out!

http://www.tooltrainer.com/ppcc2.html

OK it’s just too small of a world.

Backstory:

I have many LPGen customers & users that I’ve gotten to know only through email or maybe on a webinar at some point. Many of them are beginners at all this “make money online stuff” but some are extremely advanced underground marketers that make outrageous sums of money. Obviously I especially like talking to those people.

Anyway, one of these is a guy I’ll just call “J”. We’ve never met in person, but we’ve spoken via email and chat quite a lot. Over the couple of years I’ve known him this way, he’s shared a lot of amazing info with me. Tricks, tactics, “secrets”, etc. I know with a high degree of confidence (short of him giving me logins to his accounts) that he makes a TON of money online. Way way WAYYYY more than me or most of the other people working online in affiliate marketing.

I’m talking 5 figures DAILY.

So this is a guy that when he speaks, I listen to what he has to say. Not all of the tricks he’s shared with me are things I’m willing to put into practice… let’s just say he’s willing to push the edge of the envelope a bit farther than I will.

www.tooltrainer.com/styles

But that doesn’t negate the brilliance of the stuff he’s shared with me.

Now, flash forward to this past weekend. I hadn’t heard from J in quite some time… and all of a sudden he pops up again! It had been so long that we had a lot to catch up on. While we were chatting, the subject of Amish Shah’s upcoming seminar came up.

So here’s what completely stunned me:

J: been a long time
J: Amish was telling me he has been speaking with u
Jonathan van Clute: Yeah we chatted the other night
Jonathan van Clute: you guys buds?
J: underground buddy
J: shh
J: lol
Jonathan van Clute: You gonna be at Amish’s seminar?
J: im hosting it
Jonathan van Clute: no way?!
J: im black hat styles
Jonathan van Clute: oh man
J: lol
Jonathan van Clute: I gotta find a way to get my ass there
J: foo sure
J: so yeah its been hectic
J: we got some gangsta stuff in the pipes
J: just insane

So talk about a small world… J not only knows Amish and lives near him, but he’s HOSTING THE SEMINAR!!

This is crazy… these guys don’t generally crawl out of their cash caves long enough to talk to anyone about what they do.

Needless to say, I’m now feeling like I have GOT to be there. Unfortunately I won’t know for sure if I can make it until pretty last minute, as I’ve got some other commitments around the same time. But I’m definitely going to see what I can do to bend my schedule around enough to go.

In case you missed it, Amish just interviewed J “Styles” as part of his promo for the seminar. They blurred out his face so I *still* don’t know what the guy looks like… LOL… but I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out who he is at the event.

www.tooltrainer.com/styles

Check it out… the interview of course doesn’t have time to really dig into specifics, but I think it’s intended to give a taste of what’s going to be taught at the seminar. Sounds like it’ll be pretty good stuff.

They also say they have some sort of massive automated software to run their business, and are giving away 50 licenses for free. That sounds prtty amazing, though I’d have to see it before I could really pass judgment on it.

Oh Styles gives away a pretty slick trick right at the very end of the video so make sure you get ALL the way to the end or you might miss it. It’s regarding international traffic.

Anyway check it out and let me know what you think. I know in the last year there have been a lot more huge money claims being made… gone are the days where $100 or even $1,000 per day seemed like a good earning. Now it’s $50,000, $100,000, or more.

Do you believe these numbers? Are they for real? WHat’s your take on all this?

www.tooltrainer.com/styles

Oh and if you’re thinking of coming to Amish’s event, let me also add that I don’t think you should unless your business is currently earning at least $10k/month in profit. I just don’t think it will likely benefit anyone below that level. I could be wrong but that’s my feeling at the moment!

Jonathan

I dunno about you but I’ve been getting hammered with emails
abut Amish Shah and his $50,000 trick video.

Well of COURSE I went and checked it out… who wouldn’t,
right?  If you haven’t seen it you can opt in & watch it here:

www.tooltrainer.com/amish

Well maybe I’m jaded, or too smart for my own good, or
something… but I wasn’t blown away.

What I saw was a basic combination of cloaking, referrer
cloaking, and iFraming.

Nothing earth shattering to me (and probably not to any
advanced LPGen user either).

I even had an issue with something claimed in the video.  I
have to be honest with you here, I STRONGLY disagree with the
claim in the video that “Google loves this!”  I would say it’s
true that the Google BOT loves it - after all Googlebot is just
a stupid program and can be pretty easily fooled.  But Google
itself will most certainly NOT love this trick.

That’s not to say it won’t work.  I have little doubt that it
would work great (and a creative LPGen user can probably see an
easy way to FAR surpass it pretty easily).  But it’s definitely
not something Google (the company) would be thrilled to have
you doing, in order to game their Adwords system.

So why is Amish even doing this?  Why reveal something so
profitable (and even give away the script to do it along with
20 niches, PPC adds, keywords and all for free)??

Because he’s holding a seminar.  Yep, it’s all a lead in to an
expensive weekend with Amish where he’ll supposedly reveal all
his secrets, blah blah blah.

Gee, can you tell I’m jaded???  LOL

Fortunately for me, I actually have met Amish before and have
direct access to him via chat.  So contact him I did.  I
called him on the guru thing and holding a seminar… I figured
this is just going to be another of those “thin” seminars (I’ve
attended my share) that don’t really reveal a whole lot, and
that convince rank beginners they’ll make millions tomorrow if
they just implement some technique.

Basically, I gave Amish shit.  Hey, I figured I knew him well
enough to razz him a little bit!

But to my surprise, here’s exactly what was said (typos and
all!):

[7/15/2009 11:26:11 PM] Amish Shah: im doing it for the REAL
people
[7/15/2009 11:26:13 PM] Amish Shah: cuz im suck of this guru
shit
[7/15/2009 11:26:18 PM] Amish Shah: and these half ass cpa
products
[7/15/2009 11:26:26 PM] Amish Shah: provide some damn value
[7/15/2009 11:26:26 PM] Amish Shah: shit
[7/15/2009 11:26:31 PM] Amish Shah: so my whole seminar
[7/15/2009 11:26:33 PM] Amish Shah: is my business exposed
[7/15/2009 11:26:34 PM] Amish Shah: inside out
[7/15/2009 11:26:38 PM] Amish Shah: and how i run it
[7/15/2009 11:26:43 PM] Jonathan van Clute: very cool
[7/15/2009 11:26:58 PM] Jonathan van Clute: When is it again?
[7/15/2009 11:28:06 PM] Amish Shah: aug 28-30
[7/15/2009 11:28:08 PM] Amish Shah: u should def com
[7/15/2009 11:28:29 PM] Jonathan van Clute: damn… how much is
it to attend?
[7/15/2009 11:28:45 PM] Amish Shah: $4k
[7/15/2009 11:29:03 PM] Jonathan van Clute: and you swear it’s
real value?  lol
[7/15/2009 11:29:07 PM] Jonathan van Clute: not that I’m jaded
or anything
[7/15/2009 11:29:39 PM] Amish Shah: ya man
[7/15/2009 11:29:40 PM] Amish Shah: the real deal
[7/15/2009 11:29:45 PM] Amish Shah: the second video will talk
more about it
[7/15/2009 11:29:57 PM] Amish Shah: more about business
[7/15/2009 11:30:00 PM] Amish Shah: and strategy
[7/15/2009 11:30:07 PM] Amish Shah: but ya man..everything from
media buys
[7/15/2009 11:30:07 PM] Amish Shah: to ppc
[7/15/2009 11:30:10 PM] Amish Shah: to ppv
[7/15/2009 11:30:12 PM] Amish Shah: to landing pages
[7/15/2009 11:30:15 PM] Amish Shah: to hiring employees
[7/15/2009 11:30:19 PM] Amish Shah: managing them
[7/15/2009 11:30:22 PM] Amish Shah: making your own cpa product
[7/15/2009 11:30:22 PM] Jonathan van Clute: yeah that’s awesome
stuff… I bet you still get plenty of newbies who haven’t made
their first buck yet asking how to get a good QS
[7/15/2009 11:30:23 PM] Jonathan van Clute:
[7/15/2009 11:30:37 PM] Amish Shah: thats why this price point
is $4k
[7/15/2009 11:30:40 PM] Amish Shah: weed out the newb
[7/15/2009 11:31:39 PM] Amish Shah: and my video before launch
[7/15/2009 11:31:47 PM] Amish Shah: im gonna straight up say
[7/15/2009 11:31:53 PM] Amish Shah: if you are new to this
business
[7/15/2009 11:31:55 PM] Amish Shah: dont come

We chatted a bit more about his business, what he’s been up to
(some BIG stuff…) and where he’s heading next.  I gotta say,
he kinda blew me away.

So I’m reconsidering my initial jaded opinion of him holding a
seminar.  Amish is WAY beyond me in terms of business success,
and if he really is willing to share how to build things up to
the kind of level he’s at - and he’s really going to aim this
at the “high level” folks and not those who are just starting
out - then I may just have to take a trip to San Diego soon.

When I met him last year, I instantly liked him because we have
several similarities (not the least of which is the long dark
hair LOL!) including the fact that in high school we both made
a killing selling candy to our fellow students and we both got
into trouble using computers when we were kids (though he got
in a LOT more trouble than me ;).

If you run into me somewhere, remind me to tell you my candy
story.. it’s pretty dang funny.

Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that from what I know
of him, Amish is a genuine guy who is extremely smart and has
made outrageous amounts of money online, and knows about
scaling up, employees, and all that “next level” stuff.

Remember that this isn’t for beginners… so if you’re new to
internet marketing, building websites, or are looking for help
in setting up a PPC campaign, etc. this probably is the wrong
venue for you and would be a waste of your money.

But if you’re in the position where it’s time to move to that
next level, this might just be the right event for you to
attend.

If nothing else, it’s worth getting on Amish’s list as he does
share some pretty good tricks & tips (even if I don’t always
agree about how Google will feel about some of them!

www.tooltrainer.com/amish

Let me know what you think about this!

I just got this, it’s a little short notice but if you aren’t already acquainted with Gauher and PPCFormula, make sure you’re on this call!!!

–

Join us for a Webinar on April 2, 2009 at 8:00pm ET

Hey!

This is da bomb so don’t miss it.

There is one man in affiliate marketing who has earned the respect
of all marketers big and small. His name is Gauher Chaudhry and he
is joining us for our next webinar.

Gauher has trained thousands of marketers with his PayPerClickFormula.com
course. He knows exactly what people need to do to succeed in affiliate
marketing.

Hundreds of his students work with us already and have learned how
to really prosper online.

On Thursday, April 2, 2009 join us as we interview Gauher Chaudhry and
discuss exactly what he does in his affiliate marketing business.

You will be amazed by the creativity, ingenuity and just plain old
smart marketing that Gauher and his students bring to the game.

Crawl over broken glass if you have to, but make sure you don’t miss
this call.

I GUARANTEE that the information shared on this call will change
your online business.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/792648393

Date: Thursday, April 2, 2009
Time: 8:00pm ET to 9:30 pm ET

See you on the webinar.
Be There!

-Harald Anderson
Director of Search Engine Marketing
Clickbooth

This is crazy. It’s well past midnight, and I still have to take out the trash for collection in the morning.

Why on earth am I still up???

It’s entirely my own fault. I got sucked into some training videos. I was just going to take a quick peek. A few minutes, tops.

But not this time… I’m sucked in, and I think you might be too. So I guess I had better explain myself. I absolutely had no idea I was going to be posting this tonight. I had no intention of doing so, I was just curious more than anything… but now I’m excited.

Let’s go back in time a bit shall we? Do you remember all the completely outrageous hype that surrounded the “Google Cash Detective” a couple years ago? I think it was about 2 years ago… I can barely remember now.

Anyway, it was hyped up as the hottest thing since sliced bread. It would make you a bazillionaire overnight. It would make your bed. Cook you breakfast. Clean up after the dog. You get the idea.

And I gotta say, I was very intrigued. The concept seriously appealed to my analytical nature. I mean - think about it… what if you could actually download every adwords ad, for millions of keywords, every day, for a long time. Holy cow, you’d know exactly what made money, instantly!! The Holy Grail of online marketing finally realized!

Unfortunately at the time, I was seriously strapped for cash, and it was not cheap… I just couldn’t swing it. Months later some cheap imitators came along and I bought one of them… and hated it. Returned it after 30 days and decided that “spy tools” were a total load of crap. I still feel they are fundamentally flawed and won’t make anyone rich overnight.

HOWEVER… I still think the basic idea makes sense:

* Gather intelligence.

* Analyze the data.

* Make decisions.

* Act.

In my book, that’s a winning formula.

So what’s the point? The point is… there’s now a Google Cash Detective 2 and this time I got in (thanks for the heads up Mike!!). Like I said it was really just curiosity… I didn’t expect to be particularly blown away. Sure it would probably be pretty interesting, but… I’m pretty jaded about the latest PPC fads at this point.

And then I watched one of the videos. And then another. And another. And…

And now I’m wide awake and it’s 12:28AM and I still have to take out the garbage!!!!

I’m a big advocate of staying focused, of not getting distracted, of not chasing every “shiny object” that comes along.

But I have to admit, this one is really, REALLY shiny. I think I’m going to have to take a bit of a detour and implement it. They have come a LONG way since the original, where I heard a ton of horror stories about it not working, crashing, not delivering, etc. etc. etc.

All I see now is one highly evolved, smooth, absolute monster of an intelligence weapon. I only personally know one tool that might rival this, and it’s not public.

However GCD2 is once again NOT an inexpensive product. This is absolutely not for the beginner on a limited budget. But if you have the pockets for something like this, or are already a seasoned marketer… you’re gonna want to see this. Like, NOW.

Check it out and let me know what you think… I will definitely write more once I’ve deployed some campaigns and have some personal results to share.

http://www.tooltrainer.com/gcd

Damn, why did it have to be so shiny???

Jonathan

So I have it on good authority that this isn’t really a “PPC to CPA” course at all, though it does contain information on driving PPC traffic to CPA offers.

Apparently it has a very big social media component - specifically about creating/leveraging Facebook applications.

I don’t know more than that but I am VERY curious to see now, as I’m not aware of any course having come out about monetizing facebook apps.

42 minutes to go…

Jonathan