Hey Gio

Earlier this week, I received a box of teas from the cool folks at Leaf Spa.

I actually prefer teas to coffee due to my already high strung nature. Prior to trying out the organic teas from Leaf Spa, I thought all teas tasted the same and possesed that “vegetal” after taste. However, unlike the teas you get pre-bagged and packed in carton boxes, these bulk teas had a burst of flavor.

My favorite one is the Mango Black. Although it has more caffeine than green tea, the rich, dark flavor is unparalleled. It also has a hint of sweetness.

Ok so we pay a lot for our 2 bedroom loft with an open 2nd floor office space. I’m thinking of moving my operations to one of the bedrooms (the gameroom) next week. There’s been an addition to my scope of work and the new business model requires time on the phone.

Got my ass kicked by a sh*tty little 9 year old on Live. I don’t get these new games with fancy 3D graphics and moves. I’ve been playing the Street Fighter series since 1992 and all the sudden this kid born this decade kicks my ass.

My screen name on Live is WebYuppie. I’m going to practice all week so I can beat the crap out of that little chum.  My avatar looks constipated but whatever.

A nosedive CPM drop is something I never thought would happen. When I started publishing sites a few years ago, the agenda was to rank and keep ranking. The higher the CPM, the more competitive the industry. Since my goal is sustainability anyway, I went after a pretty competitive yet undeserved niche.

Everything was done best of breed - from design to content quality. Another reason I started the site was to warn a family member about the risks involved with this niche. That led to the creation of a graphic tool like no other.

It was a fair trade-off with the search engines where I enhanced user experience and attracted organic links. No black hat techniques were performed. I was subtle with the ads, there were no pop-ups, cookies or spyware.

I began to get some traffic, things were good and dandy until the beginning of this year…

A 70 percent drop from last year’s average CPM can really sting revenue. It was something I never prepared for because CPM varied by industry and remained a constant. Page impressions and click through rates were the two variables of concern once a vertical is targeted. It’s beginning to not be the case because now we have to factor in micro-economic trends that may affect advertiser’s budgets.

I got lazy and left my daily contacts on for two days. When I finally removed them, the right lens dried out so bad that it ripped off the tear producing membrane of my right eye. Although my eye was pinkish, it really wasn’t pink eye. Maybe I had a lazy eye. Get it? Har har.

This strange and somewhat painful incident led me to appreciate the significance of vision. It was really tough driving with one eye covered.

It was the funnest gift ever. Aaron is against the purchase of exotic cars that go up in value but he was nice enough to let me drive one for a day.

He originally chose the F430 but I told him that I wasn’t ready for that beast. We ended up with a ‘02 395-HP 360 Modena, 6 speed manual. The car responds obediently when I wield the stick up demanding for more power.

We drove from the Strip to Hoover Dam and Arizona.  There was a brief period when the car passed 120mph but this time, I wasn’t the passenger.

Ferrari owners have told me that dealers like pushing the F1/paddle shift transmission. As a manual transmission fan, I never understood why buyers would go for the paddle when driving outside a racing track.

I’m rekindling my interest in fountain pens. I got my first Waterman when I was 12 and now I’m starting with Montblanc. They make really good writing instruments but I wish the impostor market didn’t follow them.

Below, from left to right, I have 2 Lamy Safaris, S.T. Dupont Laquer Olympio, Montblanc LeGrand Meisterstuck, Montblanc Meisterstuck Solitaire and a Montblanc Meisterstuck 144.

ABSOLUTELY ACCIDENTAL.

It was a cheesy test campaign with a tiny set of KWs. It was organized incorrectly but I will admit that the landing page was conversion oriented and I wrote the copy myself. I have read so many books on conversion and I love making tweaks so I guess that helped out a bit. I still feel the 120% ROI was an anomaly because I haven’t done this long enough and I lack data.

I am anticipating a loss (cost of a new low-end luxury car) before I get the hang of this. Besides, advertising is considered a business expense so no real loss for me in the long run. Optimistic, no?

I’ll use this shite blog to record my progress.

High tech marketing - check!

Intellectual property licensing - check!

Product design - check!

(this one is OFF but led to the one below) Home remodeling - check!

E-commerce - check!

Clear hat SEO - check!

PPC and Affiliate Marketing - X

I have no plans on leaving SEO. It’s great but it does get a bit “YAWN” especially if there’s a backlog and we’re waiting on people. There’s something mystical and intriguing about these super affiliates using PPC. Unlike SEO, there is a great divide in income with Internet marketers pushing affiliate stuff. I see guys from digital point rejoicing from their $15 commission after losing hundreds of dollars on PPC. A poll on wicked fire put the majority towards the low-end of the earning spectrum. I guess this is true in most economies as well.

The super affiliates are the ones who perfected the art of testing rigorously, buying low, selling high, across a multitude of offers, against thousands of competitors with only THREE major advertising channels - Google, Yahoo and MSN. In other words, it’s f*ck*ng competitive and saturated out there. One super affiliate credited his ability to think out-of-the-box for his success. That makes a lot of sense to me because if you put in the numbers, it seems almost impossible to make a buck doing this. Then again you hear of folks making $5000+ a day, net, doing this exact thing.

Honestly, it boggled my mind and has piqued my insatiable curiosity. I want to learn this stuff but blind to know where to start. Should I focus on a certain geography, niche, offer, network, keywords, competition…..? I’m still in discovery phase and may or may not like what I will uncover.

Recently, I came across Adwords Course by KKSmarts and found it somwhat useful with the projects I will run.

Flew back from L.A. a few hours ago and with all the stuff I learned over the last couple of week, I don’t know where and how to start implementing the new found knowledge. First I want to thank John Kirker, everyone at Elite Retreat and Future Now for giving me the opportunity to attend the recent events.

Call to Action

What I loved about the Call to Action event is the in-your-face, here’s what worked for our clients presentation. Basically, most of us see websites as just that…websites. After the event, you will appreciate the fact that functional, persuasive and highly profitable websites are acually a series of planned processes. It blew me away and I will never see a website in the same manner again. Also, there is NO short-cut to higher conversions. I love this because fewer people will abuse and try to replicate it. Hard work, planning and testing is what the conversion game is all about.

Elite Retreat

I covered this cool event held in San Francisco with better details on this Seo Book blog post. I will be more involved with their Seo Training program in the future as well. It’s just that I have SO MUCH on my plate right now so my involvement there will increase slowly but gradually.

Jay Abraham Reunion

It was cool enough to see Jay in person. I spent thousands of dollars reading his stuff when I was in my early 20s. I even bought the Mastermind Tape series which I never got to listen to because I don’t have a tape player. My favorite speakers were Joel Epstein, Rieva Lesonsky, Chet Holmes, Andy Miller, Stephen M.R. Covey and Don Moine. The rest were teleconferences and I couldn’t feel the connection with the speakers through that arrangement. We totally missed the third day because Aaron had to catch up with work but we made up for it by having lunch with John and Damian Raffele at Zucca.

I also learned more about Aaron in this trip. He’s very much into search and other forms of online marketing where I am very interested and want to learn about other businesses/industries and study different business models. True the days were long. The conference started at 8:30 am and the real “networking” started at 8:30 pm. I am HUGE on networking/connection building. I don’t care what industry or business or product or service others are offering. I am INTERESTED in learning WHAT they do and HOW they do it. I also have fun meeting new people (especially business owners) whereas Aaron likes to stick to his circles. It’s funny how you learn more about your spouse through how you interact in business. There’s no right or wrong way to approach networking. I think it’s a matter of preference but unfortunately for me, we didn’t attend the late networking event. I guess it was fair to Aaron becuase he got exhausted before dinner started.