As we enter the middle of January 2017, it’s worth looking back on the past year.

More importantly, if you’ve been reading my content, you’d realise that the last entry was Jan 7, 2015.

So what’s happened over the past 2 years?

The last couple of years have been hectic ones, as I received more gigs to do project management and marketing in-house for various clients. While this meant less freedom as an affiliate running my own campaigns and developing and promoting my own products, it’s also given me an opportunity to work on projects with a bigger scope than I would work on.

As an online marketer working for yourself, there’s a tendency to work sufficiently to provide for your living expenses, buy a nice car and if you’re inclined, purchase a home and/or office and start paying down the mortgage on them.

Being involved in managing existing online businesses where the challenge is managing feature development, dealing with vocal (and sometimes irate) users, growing revenue and profit numbers, is sometimes a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants business. Even growth hacking (which seems to be the new buzzword for marketing) is a process of continual split-testing, pivoting to find validation, then starting the process over again.

In the process of trying to start a new venture about 2 years ago, I almost lost this blog and 9 years worth of content. But that update will come in a future post.

So what’s there to reflect over the past 2 years –

1. Always think and plan before you act: All of us have the impulse in us to want to do something immediately. What’s more important is to take a few minutes (or more), thinking through the issues, mapping out the project on paper, figuring out likely outcomes, and perhaps more importantly, figuring out contingency plans if things go south. So what is you see a terrible take-up rate for a new product or service? Can you recover from the initial launch? What’s your “Plan B”? Is there a “Plan C” if Plan B doesn’t work out?
2. Keep working towards the Big Picture (even in a crisis): Mistakes are part of the learning process, and whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger,right? Sounds nice in hindsight, but it doesn’t seem like a “learning opportunity” when you’re in the midst of it. On one of the projects, we rolled out site updates on a Friday morning. Bad idea. The service started showing system instability on that afternoon and the site crashed that evening. The bad news was that Friday and the weekend were the peak hours for the site (no, it’s not casual dating) and I spent most of the weekend managing the business’ social media accounts, giving updates, doing minor troubleshooting. Through the crisis, the users recognised our efforts at site recovery and giving regular tech updates and in the process, I believe we built a number of lifelong customers through pro-active tech support and customer service. So as a comedian once said, the word “problem” is also the same word for “opportunity” in Japanese. With that said, there are so many people out there with credit card “opportunities”…
3. Do what you say: So in the business world and in everyday life, people say lots of stuff. The fact is that 90% of it probably never gets done. When you say you will do something, then just do it. If you don’t know, or can’t deliver on something, then don’t make promises, especially if it’s beyond your control. If you say stuff just to make a customer happy, then imagine how UNhappy they will be when you can’t deliver on it. You’ll look like an idiot. If you can’t commit to a solution now, then be upfront and say that a solution is being worked on and that you’ll provide regular updates. Be sure to provide the regular updates. People are not likely to forget something (or let you off the hook) if the issue is bugging them.
4. Making mistakes and moving on: The surefire way to avoid mistakes and messing up is to do nothing. But the fact is that you can only learn something and build something by finding out what’s not working, then not doing it again (or at least not a third, fourth, fifth time…) Conducting a post-mortem, analysis, and deciding how you can do stuff better the next time is part of the growing process. Besides, if you bid $10 per click, instead of $1 per click on a traffic campaign, the lesson is likely to stick with you for some time.

So in summary, I’m back and will be posting stuff more often. Stay tuned.

Wait for it.

There’s more to the online business than just making money.

So, I often receive questions on my blog, in the forums on social media about how to get more stuff done with a limited amount of time and money.

I probably get many more questions centered around coming up with strategies to achieve your goals, finding ways to keep yourself accountable and importantly, getting the stuff you want.

I try to answer these questions when I can, but like you, I have a limited amount of time to get my own stuff done, spend time with my wife and kids and help others.

So I’ve done the next best things. I’ve compiled many of the questions I receive and identified the issues that affect a lot of people, then narrowed it down to the biggest ones.

I’m in the process of compiling these strategies into a lifehacking guide, or as the project is known the Geek Hackery Guide.

My goal is to come up with a resource that will help you become more efficient in your work and personal life. My plan is to come up with an easy-to-read guide that provides actionable steps and strategies that you can use to see results immediately.

Collab

When I was asking around my circle for feedback about my project, something interesting happened.

I spoke to my friend, Tamar Weinberg, who’s been a writer at Mashable and Lifehacker, focused on similar issues. And the more we talked, the more I realized how her ideas and stuff she uses herself would be a great match for my project.

It was a natural step to rope in an expert like Tamar, who’s already a whiz at social media and uses technology to achieve outcomes like an email inbox with zero emails. She has, what I feel is, a few secret sauce ingredients in her stuff, which I think others would get a great deal from.

So we’ve been collaborating on this project for a while and I’ve had a chance to look at some of her material she’s been preparing.

I can easily see myself implementing several of the her techniques in my own business and life.

Inner game

On my part, I’ll be focusing on my strength, the area of “inner game” – this is the world of thoughts and emotions that cause us to think and act the way we do.

You may or may not be aware that inner game sometimes acquires a bit of a bad rep, especially when it’s been linked to pick-up artists, who use these techniques to influence the behavior of women around them.

I think inner game is a neutral system, it can help some with confidence issues or procrastination issues to break through those barriers and get the results, or women they want.

In my case, I’m using it for a different outcome: To help you get the results in your work life and personal life.

What I will teach you is how you can hack, rewire and reprogram your “mindware”.

Once you have done that you can hack your behavior. This will change the results you can expect to get.

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Interested?

Here’s how you can participate.

1) We are launching this at an introductory price of $10.

You can pre-order it and get access to a mastermind group that we will running all the way till the product is released.

2) The product will be released on August 11.

3) And here is the interested part. If the product is not released by August 11, you will receive $50. We are using a number of our own mindware hacking techniques in our project. Part of it involves sending out a reward to you if we don’t meet our target. (How is that for motivation).

4) We want you to be 100% satisfied. If you receive the product and you’re not happy with it, just contact us and we’ll give you a full refund on your purchase.

5) We will close this offer at 100 participants. We have five already in, so there are 95 spots remaining. We are keeping it to this number because I have that amount to pay out in my Paypal account now. Also, it’s financially prudent to make offers you can keep and keep your accountable. But you should not go into debt to fulfil it.

6) Ok, we’ve made our offer. Now it’s time for you to commit. You need to pull the trigger. Take action now.
->(Update: the offer has ended. Stay tuned for future updates).

PS: After you sign up, I’ll add or invite you to a private Facebook group where you’ll get access to some goodies as you watch the project take shape.

The tutorials titled “Link Building for Traffic and Profits” are intended to give new and experienced marketers a number of techniques to boost your site listings in the search engines.

In addition to the new monthly update, there’s a core of foundation materials which will help you optimize your online business for growth.

Check out the: Internet Marketing Cookbook

PS: The linkbuilding module will be available till 30th September and will be replaced with a new module on 1st October.

Check it out here: Members Only Podcast

Content: Identifying key issues, especially challenges and problems within your industry and offering a solution to those questions builds your reputation as a problem solver. Experts are those with expertise at solving problems.

It also builds goodwill and encourage reciprocity and a “pay it forward” mentality from those who have benefitted from your advice (which leads to a viral/linkbait effect if they distribute/syndicate your content).

Content was one of the major issues that I discussed with veteran journalist and former editor-in-chief of Revenue magazine, Lisa Picarille, for this week’s Friday Podcast. It’ll appear on Friday.

One of the easiest ways to brand yourself is by starting a blog and start putting out quality content.

One major issue I have with bloggers, especially affiliate marketing/internet marketing bloggers is a tendency to excessively sell ad-space or run banners on their blog. If more than half the screen real-estate is dedicated to ads/banners, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Are you more interested in making money, or providing information.

Looking at your signal-to-noise ratio (content vs ads) and maintaining a 80% content : 20% ad ratio will create a great user experience. Going beyond a 50% content vs 50% ad ratio is pushing the limits.

Guest author and guest post: If you’ve established a reputation and are seen as credible, take the next step to approach the top 10 channels/outlets in your niche and offer to guest author on their site – whether it’s a news site, a content aggregator or a blog.

If you are known and the site publishes guest posts, you stand a good chance. If not, it’s back to step #1.

In the affiliate marketing context, specialist magazines like FeedFront which comprises an online and print edition can provide great visibility.

Public speaking: Speaking at industry-specific events and related events are a good way of getting your name out there. It’ll also help put you in touch with potential partners.

I know some marketers are reluctant to go this route because of a fear of public speaking. If so, start small as many of these events have small group discussions or breakout sessions. If addressing a couple of hundred people sends your heart rate pounding, you might volunteer to be a discussion leader for a small group session.

Networking (and following up): Whether you’re meeting people online, or at a face-to-face event, you’ll build up a network of contacts. The challenge that holds people back from more effectively leveraging on their connections is a failure to follow up. When was the last time you got an email or card within 24 hours of meeting someone?

If there’s a contact that could help you build your business, be sure to stay in touch, ping them when you have something relevant to discuss and the relationship will naturally develop.

Author a book: This may sound difficult, but if you’ve ever had a 2 or 3 hour conversation about a particular topic, that content you shared would easily fill a 200 – 250 page book.

On the average, speaking and consulting fees increase between 50-100% after you’ve had a book published (physical books, not e-books). So it might be worth the time and effort.

Build a community: Finding like-minded individuals and organizing them into a community is a good way to network, share expertise and work on joint projects together.

Finding someone to step up and set up a social network or forum is the major challenge because everyone is “always” busy. Instead of waiting for someone to take the first step, why not step up to the plate?

Integrity: This is the big one in my opinon. Do what you say. If you say you’ll do something, even if it’s as simple as sending out a list of bookmarks, you should do it. With the anonymity and virtual distance created by the internet, it’s easy to make a lot of promises and not keep any of them.

Instead, stand apart from the pack and followthrough.

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For tips on building your online business, check out the InternetMarketingCookbook. For blogging tips, visit Secret Blog Weapon.

If anything, the earlier attacks this week which took down Facebook and Twitter for a couple of hours highlights the perils of cloud computing (where you’re using web-based, rather than desktop/laptop-based software). A strategic strike, such as a denial-of-service attack can bring the whole system crumbling down.

Imagine not having access to a traffic campaign you’re running on a PPC, PPV network and not being able to access your affiliate panel off an affiliate networks interface, and you could incurring huge opportunity cost in your business.

One safeguard is to regularly schedule weekly backups of your data. Some web services incorporate this feature, most do not. Even if the service provides this support, it’s often a highly manual process.

If you’re backing up data on your own servers, getting your system admin to set up a series of automated jobs to backup your data every 24 hours can be a lifesaver, especially if things go awry.

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Another caveat – while web services have obvious advantages such as a great deal of portability, zero or minimal support costs and convenience, I’d stop short of saving critical data, such as passwords, or confidential data on them. The open nature of these services often incorporates easy access features which might also provide loopholes for others to enter.

If in doubt, store your data locally – after all it’s your business on the line.

I was reading through some of the newer business/marketing blogs and articles/content posted on the social networks, and the content out there is pretty incredible. “IncrediBAD” to pick a pop cultural reference.

There’re 2 components that go into good content – style and substance.

Most readers will intuitive recognize substance – when they read, listen or watch something and they learn something interesting, informative, or have better awareness of a topic – whether it’s weight loss, online dating, or a new hobby.

So some writers have gone the whole hog when it comes to providing factual information – practically vomitting a boatload of facts about a product or service, but massively failing when it comes to organizing the information in an easy-to-understand manner.

That’s where style comes in.

Adapting your content to your audience means you can present the same set of facts differently to different audiences – whether they’re newbies or familiar with your topic.

“Getting into the head” of your prospect can help you craft and shape your marketing message – whether it’s intentended to inform (if your prospect is early in the sales cycle), or convert (if your prospect is about to make a buying decision) – so you’re ultimately growing your business.

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If you’re not sure what should go into your marketing message, or how you should shape it, it’s probably a sign that you don’t understand your prospect yet, especially if you’re in a new niche.

Going back to the research phase, looking up questions/convos in forums focused on your niche, looking up Wiki entries and Yahoo! Answers may seem like drudge work.

But if you do it right, and are able to craft your message for maximum conversion, it’ll mean you’ll be able to kill it with content.

The one limitation I faced, similar to everyone else, is having enough time to work on my business and being able to answer questions that blocks a new marketer getting started.

It was at the Affiliate Summit earlier this year that I sat down with Danielle Nagami (AKA MsDanielle) to see if we could help create a resource site for newer internet marketers.

Enter the Internet Marketing Cookbook – a resource site/monthly newsletter that aims to give you access to tips and techniques to help you grow your online business.

The site will feature monthly updated content which build on MsDanielle’s strength’s in pay-per-click traffic, search engine optimization and other forms of traffic generation. While I’ll be focused on social media, product development and affiliate marketing.

If you’re a newer internet marketer, be sure to check out the:

–> Internet Marketing Cookbook

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Knowing how to promote a lead generation (ie CPA) offer effectively means knowing how the advertiser/merchant generates income from the lead offer. By matching the advertisers business model with your own, you have a higher chance of monetizing the traffic and leads you’re generating.

Here’re a couple:

Zip/email submit offers: Typically in the $0.50 – $2 range, these offers require a name and email address or zip code. Some form of bait is usually involved, such as a gas card, gift card, xbox, iphone or other item. Although it sounds like almost any lead will be able to get the prize, do note that they’ll have to complete the offer conditions to receive the prize. This might involve filling in a series of other CPA or pay-per-sale offers.

If you’re familiar with incentive sites, you’ll find that leads you send to a zip/email submit offer will be completing offers with an average payout of 2x the value of the “freebie” they’re receiving. If they’re getting a $350 xBox, they’ll likely need to fill in offers with an aggregate payout of $700 to receive the prize (or about a 100% margin for the advertiser).

While some marketers might have success in getting the same lead to fill in multiple email/zip submit offers, do note that because few of them might actually complete the offer and won’t be able to get the prize, you might face some unhappy users.

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Request for information/quotation offers: Offers like payday loans, real estate financing, credit repair lead generation offers might have payouts starting from $20, upwards to hundreds of dollars.

The leads that are generated might eventually be sold to a mortgage bond agency, realtor, financial institution or medical professional (depending on the offer), for a multiple of the bounty/commission payable.

Since a payday loan customer could be worth thousands of dollars to a loan agency (excluding the lender default rate for the moment…), the $100-200 commission paid per lead to the affiliate is an attractive proposition.

Besides going through a CPA network, some affiliates also negotiate directly with merchants/agencies for this type of lead generation arrangement. If you work on this level, you should ensure that you have paperwork in place, and (highly advised) a lawyer on retainer to protect your interests.

For newer affiliates, it’ll make more sense to go through a CPA network, unless you’re pushing enough volume (probably equivalent to a small CPA network) to justify the effort of doing the negotiation yourself.

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Subscription/Rebilling/Recurrent offers: This is sometimes a gray area in which you have fly-by-night merchants/advertisers operating in. A couple of bad apples can spoil the market for the rest of us.

Especially for CPA offers in the business opportunity (BizOp), cell phone ringtone/mobile download and weight loss niche, you’ll find fine print that states a customer will be billed $49.95 or $99.95 every month 14 days or 30 days after they receive their trial sample of business opportunity material or weight loss product sample.

In the light of this business model, the $20 – $50 payout looks like a bargain for the merchant, as the total rebilled amount to the customer can be upwards of $1,000 or more per year.

And before you write off this business model as unscrupulous, take note that several services you are already a customer to, like your internet service, cell phone contract, cable/satellite TV, power/water/gas utlities, newspaper, magazine, webhosting, domain names already function on a subscription/rebilling arrangement.

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Some affiliates will look at the business models listed above and ask “Which is the best type of offer to promote?”

There’s no best, only what works best with your own business model.

I tend to promote a mix of products that best suits my leads/prospects needs. I’ve a number of subscription-based products that I personally used that I recommend to others too.

Take a close look at the offers you’re promoting and do the necessary due diligence. As Brandon Adcock AKA Major BTA mentioned in a Friday Podcast, you should look at the sales funnel for offers you’re promoting, ask your affiliate manager to send you a product sample, or you could sign up for the offer directly from the merchant (don’t go through your affiliate link as it’ll be a fraud lead).

If an offer feels bad, or you don’t personally like it, you can pass on it and choose from the thousands of other offers in the marketplace.

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If you’d like to look at some of the affiliate networks I work with and like, you can check out my Affiliate Network review.

“If you want something to be done well, you need to do it yourself”

This is probably the most commonly cited reason why internet marketers find themselves doing everything themselves and have difficulty bringing in outsourcers or employees to grow the business.

Even working at optimal efficiency, you’re limited by 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Besides measuring your business by the traditional metrics of revenue (sales) or income (profit), the “quality of life” metric can sometimes be neglected.

Are you feeling worn out, even as you’re doing what you’re enjoying in your business?

Are you looking for opportunities to get out of your home office/office unit?

If you have these experiences, perhaps it’s time to relook at how you’re running your business.

The fact is with an average life expectancy of 77.7 years (according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention), you’re probably going to spend about half of your lifetime working. Why not make it a more enjoyable/profitable effort?

Here’s a simple test to see how indepdent your business can be without you: If you were to go on a 1 month long vacation, would your business continue to generate profits while you’re away?

If you’re working in sole proprietor mode, and are responsible for 80% of your business activity, things might come to a screeching halt if you were to go MIA for a long period of time. It’s also a sign that your business growth is limited by the 24-hour day, whether you’re working on your products/websites yourself, or project managing it with the aid of outsourcers/employees.

One way to get around this is to automate your business, although you will still require admin/technical support to make sure things are in order while you’re away.

The other way is to think “corporate” – not necessarily becoming an IBM (oops, Lenovo) in the making, but by bringing in partners/employees who have project manager responsibility – they’re given the mandate to run the business under a series of guidelines and meet objectives/targets.

With 2 young kids in my family now, I don’t have the same luxury of pulling “all nighters” to ensure that campaigns and products are launched on time, and the uncertainty of my schedule means that thinking and planning ahead are the keys to successfully executing a project well.

Working ahead of your schedule to ensure you have sufficient buffer to deal with business or personal emergencies is one way to maintain your A-game.

So while the Rorscach approach might work well in a pinch and when you’re just starting out, adopting a holistic “Watchmen” where you’re working with a team will grow your business and ensure it’s sustainable in the long term.

While surfing through the PepperJam affiliate network‘s list of merchants, I came across an interesting banner:

Because all the letters in the domain name are in lowercase, you’re open to interpret it in a different way.

One way could be “Blind Sex Press”. Leaving one to wonder…what is that?

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Using a series of uppercase characters can help visitors instantly recognize the domain and can help pre-qualify the traffic.

In this case the merchant, Blinds Express, could consider changing their creatives to read BlindsExpress.com, instead of blindsexpress.com.

Affiliates can benefit too, because it will increase the return on their marketing spend.

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Check out my previous post about the launch of the Pepperjam Network (PJN).

I invited Dina on the Friday Podcast to give her insight into intiatives like:

• What social media marketing means to Market Leverage
• Some of the past social campaigns that the network has led
• How the online social media projects tie in with real-world tradeshows and events
• Market Leverage’s new mobile application for affiliates
• The launch of the WhoIsAndrewWee.com Affiliate Challenge

Check out the podcast below:

Links:

• Dina on Twitter
• Market Leverage
• WhoIsAndrewWee.com Affliate Challenge
• Dina’s previous appearance on the Friday Podcast

Besides covering the basics of article marketing, Rachel also talked about some of the intricasies of:

• How you can use the “useful, but incomplete” strategy to get high clickthroughs on your resource links
• An update on her weight loss membership site which had received publicity as the cover story of Woman’s World magazine (more popular than Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and Forbes)
• The benefits of article marketing and how you can get more bang for your buck for each article you publish
• Recommended article directories, article submission services, article analytics and social bookmarking strategies to enhance your profits
• Incorporating press release strategies into your marketing campaigns
• Going the multimedia route to further boost your traffic generation efforts
• Her new meditation niche site
• Her new article-based traffic generation service

Check out the podcast below:

Links:

• Rachel’s personal blog
• Rachel on twitter
• Your Best Meditation meditation site
• Turnkey Article Traffic
• Rachel’s previous appearance on the Friday Podcast

In a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report, internet users in the 18-53 year old age bracket (as at 2009) represent a higher proportion of internet users, compared to their numerical percentage in the general population.

“Older boomers” aged 54-63, make up 13% of the general population and are on par, constituing 13% of internet users.

The “Silent generation” aged 64-72, who make up 9% of the general population, amount to 7% of internet users.

The “GI generation” aged 73 and older and are 9% of the population, only represent 4% of internet users.

Likewise, when it comes to media consumption, Twitter users tend to be more savvy with a high proportion reading their newspapers online or on cell phones or smart phones.

Unsurprisingly, internet users who don’t use Twitter are more likely to read print newspapers.

Attempting to demographically target older internet users might have see better efficiency through old guard media, while Twitter is an ideal medium, especially for the 18-53 year old demographic.

Likewise, similar consumption patterns are seen when it comes to accessing blogs and video news.

However, a group of “ambivalent networkers” are emerging from these groups – internet users who are otherwise savvy about using mobile devices and social networks, but conflicted about being connected 24-7.

“Social media fatigue” could be a by-effect of the volume of 1-on-1 communication that social media affords and having blackberry-like continuous communication coming through multiple social networks can be overwhelming. With the possible outcome of some otherwise net-savvy users going “off the grid” and going “social network” cold turkey.

If you’re like me, you might’ve given up on going to sites like MySpace, Facebook or even Twitter as frequently, with the hundreds of pending friend requests or a bursting inbox, creating a stressful, rather than pleasant social experience.

One possible solution: social network-focused meta search engines and more intelligent filtering technologies.

Else, there’s the very possible outcome of social networking devolving into the online equivalent of satellite TV’s “1,000 channels, but nothing to watch” syndrome.

Hence “pitching” and the launch of the recent TV reality program, Pitchmen, featuring pitchman Billy Mays, will provide some inspiration for getting your application accepted, your product featured or a consulting contract inked.

First the bad (or possibly good news), most will do pretty terribly at promoting themselves.

The #1 rule is pitch club (besides not talking about pitch club) is to see how your product or service benefits the person you’re pitching to.

Here’s a typical pitch I might receive:

Hi there,

Our company, XYZ, has launched a new service ABC, which your readers will find interesting. Can you do a write up about it? Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers!

Clueless in marketing

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Here are a couple of tips:

1. If you’re using a generic email and mass mailing it to 100 or more bloggers or webmasters via a social network or forum – make sure your history doesn’t show. Especially if you’re merely cutting and pasting the same message and sending it to a different recipient.
2. Making the assumption that your product or service is the greatest thing since sliced bread is a fatal assumption (unless, of course, it IS the best thing since sliced bread). Evaluate the market place, conduct competitive analysis and see how you stack up. If it doesn’t, go back to the drawing board or hire a consultant to help you out.
3. Kissing a blogger or marketer’s butt has been suggested as a strategy on some of the panels I’ve sat on. Unless you’re a n00b blogger, I don’t think this will work. Instead, if you go beyond just the superficial and instead look at creating a real connection (which takes time and effort) and show the person you’re talking to that you’ve invested in finding out about them and their background, they’re more likely to be positive and open about helping you out. If you can’t be bothered about this process, then don’t bother about contacting me.
4. Do what you say: I’ve been approached by a PR consultant about talking to reps from the eBay Partner Network at Ad:Tech San Francisco. I mentioned that I wouldn’t be able to attend, but I would like to talk to their representatives. The consultant said sure, let me work on that. No answer. I sent them an email, still no answer. So if you can’t invest the 5-10 minutes it takes to drop EPN an email, then should I be interested if you’re going to pitch some other client to me in the future? It’s a major fail in my books.

Cardinal rule: Do unto others as you’re like them to treat you. If you pitch, promote and brand yourself with a genuine interest to forge a connection and establish a win-win relationship, you’re much more likely to succeed in the long haul.