You can check out the recording from the hour long session: (Note: the volume was increased after a few minutes)

I mailed Ruck a bunch of the most common questions I receive on the blog and he answered all of them during the session.

Some highlights from the session:

• PPV (pay per view) traffic: The majority of users are targeting on a domain level. If you spend some time thinking through, a keyword-based bidding strategy might work. (Especially since some affiliates are doing $1 million off of that approach)
• Getting started with PPC (pay per click): Go with Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM), Microsoft Adcenter if you’re new. Use features like YSM’s bulk upload and Adcenter’s upload features to save time. Also look at image ads, as the competition is lower in most cases
• Keep at your campaigns: Unless you’re lucky, most affiliates will lose money on a campaign before it breaks even or turns a profit. Then again 95% of affiliates quit before their campaign becomes profitable. The difference is at C2M, the affiliate managers are ex-affiliates themselves, so they can give you feedback on refining/optimizing your campaigns. (note: you should have worked on your own campaign and brought it as far as you’re able to before talking to your affiliate manager. Going to your AM and asking them to handhold you from start-to-finish is likely to get you yelled at or labelled a “noob” in their books)

Becoming a sucessful affiliate is a process and you need to work your way there. Although you may hear the advice to test 3-5 offers, note that these should be within the same niche (ie: dating, weight loss, biz op). Trying to cross into too many verticals at the same time is likely to burn through your budget.

Focusing on a single vertical and testing/rotating multiple offers within the same vertical will give you a better idea of the performance/behavior of the vertical and move you towards building a proftable campaign.

There’re more coaching sessions scheduled this month and possibly a couple of “spur-of-the-moment” sessions coming up.

In addition, C2M maintains an active coaching forum and the affiliate managers are available for consults over instant messenger.

Their compliance efforts to weed out fraud affiliates also means that new affiliates might have a hard time getting in.

You can check out:

• Convert2Media
• Ruck’s previous appearance on the Friday Podcast

Ruck’s next webinar is scheduled for 8pm CST today (NOW)

You can also check out the Affiliate Marketing Tips series.

One of the most frustrating experiences for affiliates is working with affiliate managers who don’t understand the affiliate industry.

With the turnover prevalent among affiliate managers in the industry, it’s not surprising to have an experienced affiliate manager be suddenly replaced by a brand spanking new affiliate manager who’s just a couple of weeks (or sometimes even months) in the job. I can’t vouch for the training that they’re received, although from the looks of things, I get worried when the affiliate rep has no clue what a SubID is, how a Postback function works, or what an “incent site” is.

If you find yourself assigned one of these managers, you could be in pretty big trouble. Especially if they’re nice (or at least trying to be).

You might have an affiliate manager who IMs you at the start of your day to ask how things are going, and maybe even tell you what they did after they got off work yesterday. In their minds they’re being friendly, or even “nice” to you.

It’s likely to be a deathtrap and probably fatal to your income and earnings, because they’re not helping you become a better (and more proftable) affiliate.

Real advice in my book comes in the form of tips or feedback about a feature you might not be aware of, or even recommending third party services that might be able to help you bring your campaigns to a new level.

In my past experience within and outside of internet marketing, the best advice I’ve received are from people who’re willing to give you the uncensored truth (which usually comes with a painful sting attached), but will ultimately help you become a better person (or affiliate).

It’s hard to find someone who epitomizes the approach than Convert2Media’s Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman.

Some will read his postings on the affiliate and internet marketing forums and think he’s a total jerk, who probably ought to keep his trap shut. He’s probably been responsible for more than his fair share of reducing wannabee super affiliates to tears after he’s given them a piece of his mind.

Take this nugget from Ruck’s recent blog post to the “secret” to being a successful affiliate:

Here it is, in all of its glory.

Take keywords related to your offer and put them into a search engine. Look at your competition. Dont copy them because that shit is seriously lame and the more this happens, the more our lack of creativity sinks to a level where people outside of Affiliate Marketing refer to us as “scumbags”. Look at your competition, analyze them. What are they doing that you could do better? Find that out about them, and do it.

The lesson here is this. Nobody is going to give you shit. Nobody owes you shit. If you think anyone in this industry owes you anything, you need a serious wake up call. Unfortunately for you, that wake come call will probably come later than sooner.

–

So if you can “handle the truth” and you’re one of the “few good men”, you might be one of this blog’s readers who’ve mailed me to say they’ve listened to the Friday Podcast I did with Ruck multiple times. And it’s something they keep going back to because they get more out of every listen.

Having been an affiliate working the marketing spectrum from whitehat to blackhat, it certainly helps to work with an affiliate network who knows what they’re talking about, and more importantly, can give you not just feedback, but offer promotion ideas.

Convert2Media (C2M) delivers on those counts, with Ruck personally posting offer promotion strategies with the C2M forum, and having launched a coaching system through their coaching forum about a month ago.

It looks like they’re stepping things up a notch with a live video training conducted by Ruck personally through the livestream video network and in a recent mailing to affiliates, there’s mention that July will feature a number of new video training (this is Ruck appearing on screen, vs a bunch of camtasia screencaptures).

I haven’t had an opportunity to catch the previous video training session that Ruck conducted and it doesn’t appear to have been archived, so the best bet might be to sign up as an affiliate and make the time to attend the session.

Because there might very well be some golden nuggets in the upcoming session.

Links:

• Sign up as a C2M affiliate
• Friday Podcast featuring Ruck

http://whoisandrewwee.com/convert2media

A presence on multiple internet marketing and affiliate marketing forums, Ruck is a warehouse of knowledge, having been in the affiliate marketing trenches and having seen the good and bad parts of the industry.

Ruck’s known for his brutally frank, no-BS approach to speaking his mind. You either love his honesty, or in the same breath, hate him for showing the ugly side of things.

I’d been looking forward to talking to Ruck for some time and got him to share his thoughts during our call.

We talked about:

• How he got started in internet marketing
• His role in participating in forums and starting the CashTactics blog (now operated by Kris Trujillo)
• His views on the affiliate industry, especially on the recent FTC press conference
• How to look for hot niches to promote in affiliate marketing
• How to build your affiliate business
• Convert2Media’s recent adjustment in sub-affiliate recruitment incentives
• Important facts every affiliate needs to know about scrubbing and shaving
• Convert2Media’s upcoming coaching programs for affiliates
• C2M’s next evolution as a full service internet marketing agency

Check out the podcast below:

Links:

• Convert2Media
• Convert2Media on twitter
• Convert2Media blog