New and sometimes experienced internet marketers almost seem to go out of their way to sabotage their own success by taking the easy way out, even if they should know better.

A case in point – just because a forum allows you to post any question you like, and just because social media allows you to beep, chirp, tweet and post you like doesn’t mean you can avoid the routine of going to one of the search engines and attempting to find the answer yourself.

Remember the days predating the internet (meaning those of us born in the 1970s, 1960s and earlier…), when finding the answer to a question meant trudging down to your local library (or maybe local bookstore) and looking up the answer in a book? Whatever happened to that?

A lot of the growth of “content” on the internet is fuelled by the redundant questions asked over and over again. I bet Internet content would slim down faster than a power acai shake if the majority of excessive duplicate content were pared away, and redirects were added to the top 10 results for any query.

But laziness is not just limited to finding information to run your business, it’s sad that researching niches and marketing offers is given the lazy treatment, even when it has a direct impact on your income and ultimately your lifestyle. It’s choices like these that make it seem like too many marketers are driving at the first gear towards their destination (or goal). The problem is you might not reach there in this lifetime.

Here are some of the best forms of lazy marketing I encounter (and lead to this post being written…)

Clueless marketing: You’re new and don’t know anything. You’re too lazy to see what others are doing, or to consult another affiliate, merchant or affiliate manager. So you come up with some pretty abysmal Continue reading →

The end may be in sight for Facebook Application developers with Facebook’s recent and ongoing clampdowns on incentive CPA offers embedded within Facebook applications (about 99% are entertainment or game related). And with this latest move, is Facebook shooting itself in the foot?

Since 2008 I’ve had a hand in helping Facebook developers monetize their applications. The most common of which was selling “game gold” (or game character avatars, outfits, castles) primarily using Paypal as a payment mechanism.

The other forms of FB application monetization involved adsense (typically with a sub-0.01% CTR rate) or CPM ads (about $0.50 CPM). So it was pretty tough making decent money from your FB app.

Enter CPA offer-driven ad networks like Social Media, OfferPal, Super Rewards and Gambit, which offered CPMs of $10-20. In some cases, depending on the offer, CPMs of $50 were not uncommon. Not surprising that these were driven by Continue reading →

If you haven’t got your tickets for Affiliate Summit West 2010 (in Las Vegas) yet, you should take action soon (affiliate summit discount code at the bottom of this post).

Prices for hotels and air travel have been going up and will be peaking towards the end of this month (Nov).

Here’re the low down on Affiliate Summit:

What is it?

Although there’re other shows like AdTech, PubCon, Blog World Expo, these tend to have an offline marketing slant to them (AdTech), or aside from affiliate marketing, veer sharply into other directions like blogging, SEO, legal issues. There’s also another “free” affiliate conference, though I think you get what you pay for. In my opinion, it’s always good to go to a few shows to connect with the online marketing industry (and get out of the house).

For the biggest bang for your buck, especially for affiliate marketing-related issues, Affiliate Summit wins hands-down in my opinion. I’m particularly looking forward to the product datafeed and automation sessions at this upcoming summit.

The parties (at least 2-3 major ones every evening) are great for entertainment and even better with networking with your affiliate manager and other affiliates. It also helps not to get caught in a compromising position (whether with an adult entertainer, or falling on your face on the Vegas strip, and having the episode distributed on Flickr or Youtube…).

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Which pass should you get?

There’s 3 classes of passes available: Silver, Gold, Platinum. Which should you get?

If you’re skint, you can try asking your affiliate network or affiliate manager if they can sponsor your pass, or if they’ve spare passes. They’d typically give these passes to their top affiliates, so unless you’re already a baller (or if the manager is really kind), you won’t be getting a free pass. If you’re already doing well, why’re you looking for a free pass anyway?

Shawn Collins (@AffiliateTip on Twitter) has been giving out codes for free Affiliate Summit passes over the past couple of days, so you can try your luck at scoring one.

But back to the passes:

Silver: This is the entry level (cheapest) pass and gives you access to the exhibit hall, meet market and keynotes).

The meet market like a mini tradeshow/swap meet that runs on the first day (Sunday) for a few hours from noon to 6pm. The exhibit spaces are tables, rather than booths and you’ll see smaller networks and merchants and a couple of service providers taking space here. I enjoy this part of the summit because of it’s intimate nature. Also because there’s a seminar track ongoing during the same time, you’ll have to balance your time at the meet market with the ongoing seminar sessions.

The silver pass will also give you access to the trade show which runs on the 2nd and 3rd day in a different hall. This is where many of the big affiliate and ad networks will take up booths and have their affiliate managers try to get you to sign up with them. It’s a good place to find out about new networks, and especially if you’re having difficulty getting your affiliate application accepted, having an affiliate manager contact might help get your application approved.

Keynote sessions – there’re 2 of them – Dr Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, will be delivering one and Brian “Copyblogger” Clark will be presenting the other. I’ve attended the keynotes every year I’ve been to the summits and none of them felt especially spectacular, so your mileage may vary.

Your silver pass also gives you Continue reading →

I ran a promotion in conjunction with the launch of Gauher Chaudhry’s PayPerClick Formula 2 launch and had a bonus for buyers who bought through my affiliate link.

In addition, the bonus has been extended to those who had bought through the link that Gauher set up right after his appearance on the Friday Podcast.

The PPCF 2 launch has now ended and it’s time to put those PPC -> CPA marketing techniques to work and start scaling your online business.

I’ve been working out the details over the past week for the mastermind/coaching programs (including opening up a limited number of places to other PPCF buyers).

Besides adding some supplementary material to Gauher’s excellent course, I’ll be running a couple of CPA campaigns from start to finish, showing the planning, setup, implementation and optimization steps. Plus an additional campaign for a revshare/continuity affiliate program that many PPC marketers are not aware of (at least from the conversations I’ve had with a number of top affiliates in the past year).

Every 2-4 weeks, we’ll have mastermind sessions to do a forensic “CSI” audit on the PPC->CPA campaigns, so it’ll be something very different from the coaching/mastermind sessions I’ve seen.

There’s a couple of other goodies I have in store, and will publish details in the mastermind area.

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If you’ve bought through my link, please use the contact form to get in touch, so I can verify the purchase with Gauher’s team and get you set up ASAP.

If you’re an existing PPCF member and want to buy into the mastermind, you can get in touch via the contact form too, and I can give you the details.

If you look back at my earliest posts in 2006, you’d see that search engine traffic primarily through blogging had been my bread-and-butter source of traffic generation, which begs the question: why the shift to PPC and other forms of paid traffic?

Here’s the simple answer:  PPC gives you the scale to grow your business and target with precision specific geographical areas and demographic groups.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be the last to say “blogging is dead”, especially since I active promote my Secret Blog Weapon training program. I’ve seen customer values range in the Continue reading →

Note: This is a sponsored post.

The HasOffers affiliate network software which was launched in July this year, has been released with new versions which include self-hosted versions, allow users to host the software on their own servers, as well as managed and dedicated versions.

HasOffers is developed by Adapp (which is a sister company of the Tatto Media affiliate network)

In a press release, Adapp chief operation officer Lucas Brown said:

“We are always taking customer feedback, constantly improving functionally and introducing new features to the HasOffers platform. The development of HasOffers Dedicated Solutions is a product of that mission, designed to meet any and every need of large volume advertisers and affiliate networks, providing new possibilities for custom features.”

In recent months, HasOffers has incorporated features such as fraud detection (Fraud Score), including affiliate profile fraud, affiliate activity fraud and fraud reports.

From looking at the HasOffer user stats (located in the top right corner of their website), it looks like about 10-20 new HasOffers users are signing up each day.

There are currently about 1,600 users who are using the HasOffers software. According to Adapp’s Peter Hamilton, 20% of that figure are multi-advertiser affiliate networks, 30% are super affiliates tracking tiered campaigns, and the remaining 50% are merchants/advertisers promoting their own products and services.

When asked about pricing for the new solutions, Peter responded:

The pricing for the Dedicated Solutions varies greatly on the package and services a customer requires.  Start-up costs include the purchase of the server, so it greatly depends on the size of the network and their requirements for redundancy.  This solutions is targeted toward those who have a click volume of more than 5 million per month or require a unique subset of features.  Our hosted editions are more than sufficient for networks that fall outside of this.

For more information about the HasOffers platform, you can check out my earlier HasOffers product review.