You’ll want to read that and come back to catch my Friday Interview with her.

She’s not only one of the most knowledgeable SEO and analytics-based marketers I know, she’s someone you want to keep an eye out for.

In this interview, I squeeze the truth out of her, as she reveals…

• How she started out as a spammer, earning $500-800 a day as a newbie
• How she’s moved on to building real businesses, one of which is projected to reach $1m in value by Feb 2009
• The strategies she uses to employ her goals, and how she builds her network
• If you’re wondering about her “Internet Marketing Party Girl” moniker, I’d like to think I played a small part in that too.

She’s appeared on the cover of Woman’s World which is more popular than Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and Forbes.

I don’t think she’s publicly talked about some of the stuff covered in the Friday Podcast, so you’d want to check it out below…

I first met Rachel on the Warrior Forum when I purchased her WSO (Warrior Special Offer). For a new Internet Marketer then, she certainly put out a great product on niche research, keyword strategies and putting your marketing campaign together.

A Drexel/UPenn grad, she’s also a member of the Phi Eta Sigma honor society, so I guess you might say we’re fellow “nerds”.

But then again, I think she’s a tough chick (can I say that?), having made a looong road trip from Philadelphia to LA to pursue her Internet Marketing goals.

She already has a successful membership site under her belt, YayFood – a caloric cycling/weight loss/weight management community – which has been featured in Women’s World magazine.

Although I’ve not met her yet, I have an intuition that she’s pretty hyper – going by her blog postings, and her penchant for T Harv Eker’s seminars and workshops.

She’s currently hanging out in LA, leading the Sex and the City Lifestyle (set in LA, rather than Manhattan) – getting hit on by Cuba Gooding Jr. (We’re still waiting for that follow up post, Rach…)

And hamming it up with the likes of:

Eben Pagan, creator of the Altitude program (and also known by alter ego, Pick Up Artist guru David Deangelo)

as well as

4-Hour Workweek Author Tim Ferriss and Rachel Rofe

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After Affiliate Summit West, I’ll be headed to LA, and perhaps have a chance to meet up with Rachel.

If I do, I’ll certainly post an update.

Just take a look at the signs of the times:

• Implementation of stricter quality measure (eg Google Quality Score) to clamp down on “thin” sites. Especially hit hard are single page landing sites.
• The noose tightens. You can get somewhat around the QS issue with an about us, contact, privacy page and sitemap. But you can be sure that the quality control noose will continue to tighten.
• Expansion of the PPC and Affiliate market: Just like in the dotcom days, you’ll have fools rushing in, especially as PPC and affiliate marketing start to go prime time. Already, the “pseudo gurus” have shifted from pimping “Adsense in a Box” products to “CPA in a Box” products. [I’ve looked at a number of these products and the only person making anything from them, is the guy who sold it to you].

So is some “guru” out there going to exploit this market by issuing a free “Death of Affiliate Marketing” report?

If so, stay as far away as you can, because most expensive advice you will ever get is “free advice”.

I was reading Jim Lillig’s post “Performance Marketing Makes Sense” especially the part where he says:

“I believe engagement is to blame. The final frontier of advertising is to connect a product (and ultimately a brand) with truly interested consumers in a relevant, meaningful andlasting way at a time when they have the propensity to purchase or consider a purchase.“

In my opinion, it’s very much a “chicken and egg” issue.

If you’re promoting $1 or $2 zip or email submit offers, you’d be wondering what level of “engagement” you can work on, especially if you’re running at a 30 – 50% margin at best (or $0.30 to $0.50).

Granted some of us have the priviledge of getting Super Affiliate payouts which are double, triple or even higher than the posted rate, but what about the average affiliate?

You have a couple of options, and both aren’t exactly easy to take action on.

The first is to promote higher value offers in the $20 – $100 range. It’s typical to see something like a $1 zip have an EPC of $50 on the affiliate networks ($50 average commission per 1,000 clicks or 100 clicks depending on the network), while a debt consolidation/mortgage offer with a $100 payout has a $5 EPC.

Huh?

What I believe is happening is that affiliates are sending PPC or other traffic through a thin content site or scraped content site to the affiliate offer.

While a crappy content page might make a zip submit campaign viable (simply because the lure of a free Xbox360 or iPod makes the content redundant), you’re going to get killed with a high payout offer.

With a more sophisticated offer like debt consolidation or a high payout biz op offer, you’d need to construct a focused content page, and pre-selling may involve educating the prospect and motivating them to take action, rather than send them direct to the landing page.

So the first option is to promote higher value offers (and more importantly, understand the mechanics of closing the sale.

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The second option is to go beyond the pay-per-view or pay-per-lead business models, and instead focus on business models which have a built-in incentive to continually engage your customer.

I understand that a number of CPM business models are coming into vogue again, and having operated web properties at one of Asia’s largest online content networks, have to say that it’s viable only if you have:

• A strong brand (prefably within the top 3 in your niche)
• Access to lots of cheap traffic in huge quantities

I’d probably stay away from CPM business models simply because I prefer the high value market, rather than the mass market.

So what business models are on the table?

Continuity-based business models, the likes of which marketers like Kirt Christensen and Ryan Deiss have developed. Membership-based models like my friend Rachel Rofe have introduced like her YayFood weight management membership site.

If you’re spending the bulk of your time building up the relationship in the beginning and putting in an incremental effort to maintain that relationship (and collect a monthly subscription fee), it gives you the resources to engage your customers.