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.

I realized that I am not a part of Generation Y or sometimes called the Millennials. Instead I am a Gen X-er, those who were born between 1965-1979. I was only a month and a half away from the Gen Y cut but oh well.  I basically distributed a press release last week announcing the influence and power of the Millennials in this year’s presidential election. I wrote the comprehensive, yet simple to read Student’s Guide to Voting with the knowledge that I was a part of the Millennials.

I hope college kids will find the free guide useful as it was written with sincerity.

I came across this BusinessWeek article on the “missteps” of facebook and how they got a bit too ahead of themselves. I’ve been waiting for a long time for such article to be published. The article was so-so but I enjoyed the reader’s comments. Zuck’s arrogance and aloofness doesn’t bother me (what can you expect from a 23 year old paper billionaire) but the cockiness and intent of revolutionizing the advertising world with their Beacon project was a bit far off. AND, I quote from the article “The Harvard dropout has created one of the fastest-growing and arguably most innovative Internet companies since Google.”

WHAT???

How can an over-hyped, viral marketed, annoying social Rolodex be innovative and revolutionary? That statement puts Facebook behind Wordpress and the wonderful world of blogging, RSS, Wikipedia, Digg, Flickr and Youtube - Sites that actually bring value to the web!

The developer’s platform was a neat idea, I’ll give them that. But how can the small guy compete against VC backed companies like RockYou ($10M investment) and Slide? Do these 3rd party companies even have a business model?

Back to facebook - I guess people enjoy getting “poked”, graffiti on their walls and re-connecting with long lost friends they weren’t even that close with. Heck, even I have an account I visit once a month. I wish for the hype to deflate and have them focus on building a real business. Best of luck to them.

The business climate on the Internet is TOUGH!!!

Books that were published a couple years ago on traffic, conversion and SEO are now mostly outdated. In 2004/2005, you can rank really well just on reciprocal links. If you wanted one-way incoming links, all you had to do was submit your article to submission services. There were thousands of directories you can submit to for one-way links. Content was king back in the day and if your site had unique content, links were almost guaranteed. Just as recent as 2007, you can easily find and buy quality links from sitepoint, digitalpoint and even ebay.

What Happened?

1. Google - Search giant cleaned and tweaked their ever changing algos. A lion’s share of the directories lost their Page Rank, reciprocal links carried almost no significance and article submission services suffered from duplicate content. They also created FEAR amongst link buyers and sellers with the punishment of banishing from their index.
2. Webmaster Greed and Fear - SEO used to be a niche, almost secretive and the majority of website owners knew little about it. In 2008, ALL of my friends who own websites, even the non-commercial ones knew basic SEO principles. Graphic and website designers who at one point despised SEOs are now offering SEO services. Everyone knows that you rank based on your links and anchor text. Of course, this got Google worried and thus executed the actions above. This also led to one of man’s greatest flaw, greed. People are getting stingy with links. It’s getting so much harder for webmasters to link to sites. Maybe it’s because they are afraid of Google’s penalties or they know that sites rank based on links so they decide on preserving their link juice. Two years ago, I got highly authoritative links, one .edu, just by ASKING. These days, it’s not going to happen…even if you paid for it!!!
3. Pollution, Spam and Content Authenticity - I’m very skeptic (optimistic pessimist) yet sometimes I am easily fooled by spammy, fake content. Everyone is jumping the work-at-home, make money now, get rich quick on the Internet band wagon while providing no to very little value to the web. I’m sure you’ve come across the long, colorful, bulleted, numbered and oh so hype-up sales letter written in a Meth lab.

Strategies You Can Apply

• SEO is getting tougher by the second. If you are launching a new site, it helps to invest in pay per click advertising. Prior to doing so, make sure your website is conversion oriented, useful and has a nice custom design.
• Write killer content that will blow your target audience away. By audience, I am referring to websites that will link to you. Seduce their interests with your writing.
• Learn the basics of PR and “tie” your website to controversial topics so people in the know will recognize you. This is lesser spammy form of link bait.
• I was going to write submit your story to Digg, but last week, they changed their algos so it will be a lot harder to get traffic there.

Ah, so many books so little time. It would be totally awesome to have a Spring time book reading retreat in the Swiss Alps. It’s not going to happen this year but maybe in 09. Anyway, I thought it was time to refill my mind with new knowledge because change is faster than ever before and old rules underperform. Via my Amazon.com affiliate link, I got the latest books on marketing, Internet marketing, business strategy and even a book on the history of capitalism.

 I think I’ll start reading the one by Mike Moran, “Do It Wrong Quickly” then reward myself with the “History of Capitalism” by Michel Beaud. After these two, I’ll just randomly pick a book and start reading away.

When I finish, I’ll write a summary that covers the main points and share it with everyone.

I was able to finally review the contents of this package. I’ve always been a fan of trend spotting due to my fascination on how ideas spread and the creative minds behind them. It also delivers a wealth of ideas for future business pursuits. The section on open source footwear and ubiquitous e-commerce got the wheels in my head turning. It’s truly overwhelming when you consider the amount of ideas and products that’s currently being produced and marketed. Unfortunately, most will not make it past prototype development.

I was taught that the simplest definition of marketing is to create demand. Is that theory still true today or are there other “dimensions” beyond creating demand?

This was a defunct group that I took over a few months ago. It’s been around since 2002 and although it had over 200 members, they were mostly inactive. I decided to add more stuff on my plate and committed to have the first meeting in over a year. It was interesting because slots were filled up fast and as soon as someone dropped off, another one took over their place. I just hope I don’t make fool of myself.

Areas of Discussion

The cheesy title of this meeting is “How to Boost Traffic & Turbo Charge Your Blog in 2008″

We will discuss major challenges in blogging including:
1. How to Generate and Grow Traffic
2. Building a Large Subscription Base
3. Monetization Strategies
4. Technology
5. (I will leave this open for you guys to suggest)

I have done very little, actually no preparation for this meeting. I want to wing it and speak from the heart. I fear public speaking and if I had to memorize a subject that I should know about already, then I feel my knowledge or interest is artificial.

I hope to do well and help as many as I can.

I’ve always been fascinated with blogging and how it’s lauded as a great tool to spread ideas and all that stuff. Many have tried it but end up quitting after not generating enough traffic. Technorati alone follows over 44 million blogs so it’s really competitive out there.

Passion Blogging is the Newest Fashion

A HUGE plus is to start a personal blog about a topic or topics you are passionate about. Don’t think of monetization as that will lead to your disappointment. Who cares about the low traffic. Blog for fun. Learn how to write better. Practice the art first and everything will fall into place.

Ask yourself:

• What am I truly interested in?
• What are things or events that inspire me?
• Who annoys me the most?
• What do I want to learn?
• Why are we here?

Even if you are an obscure anti-social hermit who hates everything, you can still write about…how it’s like being an obscure anti-social hermit, the origins of your hatred and how you prefer it to be that way or how you would like to change your lifestyle and escape your dark, dull world. Regardless, there will be a group out there who will share the same interest as you. In fact, that hermit example is probably not a saturated subject and you can immediately own that niche. But I hope I don’t rank for it

The True Benefits of Blogging

Making money isn’t one of them although it’s nice to have more! Remember, this is my personal blog and I have no intentions monetizing from it. Why did I start it and why am I writing this? To me, the ultimate reward is to be able to write about anything I want. It is truly liberating because I get to pour what’s currently on my mind to this virtual diary. Another benefit is improving my writing skills. They are rusty right now but the more I write, the more I develop my writing style and voice. Being able to build a community whose members share similar interests can be rewarding as well.