Hey Gio

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.

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.