In the mobile world people continued to get more and more creative, I remember buying media promoting “Crush” and “IQ Tests” initially these offers only mentioned the $9.99 per month pricetag on the very bottom in the page in hard to read text. I don’t know the exact chain of events in the Quiz/Contest type mobile offers but now these offers display the pricetag on each and every page of the simple “quiz” as well as on the confirmation page (A user receives a text with a pin, they have to confirm it on the website) there is a huge check box requiring users who wish to subscribe to check which states they understand the charges. Surprisingly to this day at EWA we continue to subscribe thousands and thousands of people each day on those IQ offers.

Promoting Dating campaigns on Pay-Per-Click used to be the easy thing to do, it racked in a ton of cash for me.. I remember promoting Singlesnet, Fling, and tons of other sites using Chat Keywords . These advertisers wanted my traffic so badly, They continued to beg for it. Than one day singlesnet and true told me to Pull all of my chat traffic (which was all of my traffic). I remember for months getting hounded by Affiliate Managers about running dating traffic again, when it was virtually impossible for me to get any traffic on Non-Chat Keywords. Now Dating is thriving once again, and is one of the most consistent verticals out there. When I go Google “Dating Chat” I see no affiliate ads which in my eyes is a crazy loss of opportunity, too bad the advertisers hate it so much!

Im going to keep on going, discussing the changes of Rebills, Credit Reports, Debt Consolidation, and tons of other changes I’ve seen in this industry soon. There are simply too many topics, verticals, and changes that I’ve seen to discuss in one post!

I fly out on Sunday-Wednesday and I’m pretty excited to meet with the EWA Network Team at the Wynn. I’ve started planning a trip full of meetings and Dinners so even though I’m not 21 I’ll be keeping very busy!

My primary roll at EWA is establishing/managing relationships with our advertisers. This position has me searching high and low for new relationships to establish at the conference as well as managing and growing those existing merchant relationships. I def. maintain those relationships at this show more than the other shows where I can actually go on the conference floor and Biz Dev all day long!

If you will be in vegas and would like to meet up shoot me an e-mail to harrison [ at ] eaglewebassets [dot] com and we can schedule something.

Enjoy the show if your going.

-Harrison

I’ve been traveling quite a bit lately for work all over the country focusing on the business development aspects of our network and having a blast at the same time. Meaning, if your an advertiser, E-mail me ;)!

Just a side note, Last year around this time I decided Blitzlocal was not the path I wanted to go on, Marketing online Balling style is how I do it and I split. I have absolutely nothing to do with blitzlocal in any way shape or form; and I’m very glad to say that.

Enjoy your holidays everybody I hope to see you all in Vegas at Affiliate Summit. I’m going to try and be more active on my blog from now on.
-Harrison

• Sign up a couple local businesses, charging $500 a month for advertising on Facebook. That will buy you enough traffic to dominate, Facebook for your client’s geography– more on that in a minute. Avoid folks who sell products– they must be local. Also avoid real estate, insurance or financial offers, where there is a lot of competition. You can only make money as an affiliate doing what others don’t do.
• Get the money up-front so you’re not having to front the cash– tell them you’re not a bank, if they complain. If you can take a credit card, even better– so you don’t have to chase them each month or play the “check is in the mail” game.
• Set up one campaign with 5-6 ads targeted to your city on users that are 23+ years old. College kids don’t spend money on professional services. You can try out a few ads that have interest targets– but odds are that this will restrict the available traffic down to almost nothing– but try it. Bid 20 cents a click– Facebook will suggest a dollar or so, but ignore that. Spammers are not targeting this finely, so you can get the traffic much cheaper than them, as well as much cheaper than Google PPC. Set up subids in your tracking urls so you know which ad drove the click and conversion in your Google Analytics (which you’ve installed on the client’s site).
• Set up a landing page just for the client– it can live on a subdomain of your site or the client’s site. If the client can’t get you access to their site or if it’s a pain, you just host the page yourself. Put the phone number HUGE on that landing page. If you don’t know how to do landing pages or are lazy, just send traffic to the client’s homepage– but it won’t convert as well or be as trackable.
• You must have an offer or phone number so you can track conversion. You can have a special with a coupon code of “FACEBOOK” or require that they mention they saw the ad on Facebook. Thus, when prospects call or come into the office, they are telling your client that your facebook advertising campaigns are effective. If you want to really hit a home run, get a phone number that is unique to the web– BlitzLocal does this, as does Google Voice, which is GrandCentral rebranded.
• Sit back and prepare to be amazed: There is so little competition on Facebook for legitimate ads that it’s easy to dominate for Denver liposuction or Boulder massage, even if you’re only targeting the city and age group. Your client will be calling you soon because his or her friends will be telling them that they see them all over Facebook– plus clients will be saying they saw them on Facebook!

If you want to learn more about local advertising on Facebook, see Dennis Yu,who is CEO of BlitzLocal.

Let’s first start with what great leaders DON’T do– use filler words, passive language, and wishy-washy terminology. Um, ah, actually, you know, basically, and like are the most egregious violators. How can anyone take you seriously when you’re using those words in every sentence? “We’d, uh, like to, um, start this project, you know?” Sounds like they’re asking for permission, since every sentence ends up in pitch. You know those people I’m talking about, where every sentence sounds like it’s a question? Almost as bad are folks who end their sentences in “so….” They’re indicating they’re not done, yet don’t have a continuation to their thought.

Can you imagine if someone came up to you and said, “Uh, well like, I was thinking that perhaps we should like do this Facebook advertising platform that basically would, you know, let advertisers buy fans, so…..” Not exactly motivating, is it? Don’t laugh, since more people than you think– perhaps even yourself– talk like this. Try this wake-up exercise– listen to a friend and yourself in conversation. Watch how many times they, as well as yourself, use any of these words. You’ll likely find that it’s so subconscious, you don’t even notice how often you do it.

Leaders of all types, on the other hand, use definitive language. Most of their sentences, when talking to other people, start with verbs and imperatives– Let’s, now, today, we should, go, and so forth. This is not something learned in a ToastMasters Club, although I’d highly recommend that you join one to practice your impromptu speaking skills. Rather, it’s a reflection of a mind that is singularly driven towards a goal. You can tell– these folks get right to the point and use action words. The density of verbs in their language is far higher than others. They’re pushing to the next step. What’s next to do?

Joseph Schumpter coined the terms “entrepreneurship” in 1913, which literally means “creative destruction.” You have to actively be destroying something in the status quo, which draws emotional ire from whatever you’re destroying, yet recruits folks who believe in your cause. Are you an entrepreneur making things happen with your language? Or perhaps you want to but things just aren’t happening? Consider what your cause is and whether your every day words inspire folks into recruitment.

Affiliates frequently ask me how I became a super affiliate at 15 years old, given that I’m not a programmer and have plenty of free time for hobbies and travel. At Affiliate Convention, I’m going to show you what it takes, and it’s probably not what you think. I’ve been where you are and I can show you the way out. Hint: it has more to do with your relationships and ability to execute than it does your programming expertise (you can hire that) or how many great ideas you have (if you implement none of them, so what).

I’ll give you just one tip of the dozen that I’ve prepared, as a teaser to my full presentation in 2 months– having real world clients through your own Internet marketing company gives you access to more data and insights that you’d ever get through your own campaigns, plus, you can use their budget to develop tools you can use on your own stuff. When you are the agency of record, you become the exclusive advertiser, no other affiliates get to compete with you! You don’t have to worry about others stealing your ads or bidding against you. You have full control over the landing pages and even negotiate the payout. And, you have greater consistency of earnings, since you own that relationship, instead of trying to beg for a nickel payout bump among the thousands of others doing so, too.

So come join me and 1,000 other affiliates in Denver in a couple months and we can all learn from each other. If you have any particular questions you’d like to have answered, just post them right here and I will do my best to respond to every one of them.

I’ll keep writing tomorrow. My new sleep schedule is regular, asleep early and awake early :p!

Harrison

We’re going to visit his offices and spend a few days seeing the sights in Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore, and New Delhi. I was just in India a few months ago. Earning and burning some miles, baby!

Tim (consultant): We have a direct relationship with Google and will get you traffic on Google via SEO and PPC.
Me: How do you do that? And what is SEO?
Tim: Well, we have a direct relationship with Google. We create articles and get them certified by Google.
Me: Certified articles? Do you pay for that and how does work?
Tim: When Google comes to your site, they see that we are optimizing it and that we are certified. We have to pay Google for that.
Me: So forgive my ignorance, since I’m not that technical– is that like AdWords? I didn’t know you could pay for natural results.
Tim: Let’s do a search on “web design”– those spots on the right are PPC, while the natural search results are on the left. Google sees what pages are ours and gives us priority.
Me: Really– so that wikipedia result in the first natural spot– how much are they paying to get certified?
Tim: Wikipedia doesn’t have to pay.
Me: Really? How do I know what is certified or not– can you show me examples? Can I pay Google more to have our articles certified faster?
Tim: Well we have a lot of clients, so what we’d do for you may be different. We’re not able to pay for expedited certification.
Me: Isn’t your practice of buying links considered “black hat”? I don’t want to get banned or anything.
Tim: We are completely ethical. Only experts in SEO are allowed to work at {SEO_company} and all are certified.
Me: Whew– because I’ve heard some horror stories from SEO companies that flat out lie to clients. And who am I to know what’s true or not?
Tim: Happy to educate you on these issues– I know they’re complicated, but you’re learning quickly.
Me: Great– please send me a proposal covering what you guys can do for us.

After the call, the “SEO expert” sent me a couple canned proposals– both reflecting ZERO thought or customization, except for a find/replace on prospect name. This guy spend ZERO effort on tailoring the documents to the site I mentioned. There are a lot of good search engine optimization companies out there, and it’s charlatans like these that give the rest of us a bad name. How can we help clients see the real, earnest folks from the total fakers? The company that called me (name withheld) is a major agency, by the way.

Harrison

With vastly more information being available to advertisers for targeting, the advertising platforms that rule in 5 years from now will not the ones that dominate today. Search will be more than showing results based only on what someone has just typed into a box– it will encompass who they are, their preferences, what their friends like, and what people like them like. Socially-aware search is still a pipe dream, but we’re starting to see examples of it in early social advertising platforms, however crude the earliest examples are.

Beyond advertising, social data can answer questions such as “Do you know a reputable dentist in Santa Barbara?”, “What political blogs do you think I’d enjoy reading?,” or “Where can I find a cool fedora hat?”– questions that search engines cannot answer properly today.

So how do brands and direct marketers take advantage of the wealth of social data that is now available? How can that drive smarter ads and new forms of interaction? I need some clever examples to demonstrate how social media is changing the face of advertising. Send me your examples— they can be something currently being done or ideas for things that could be possible.

A couple examples I intend to use are from Me.dium, a client of mine that is a social search engine>— plus SparkPeople.com, a community for weight-loss that relies heavily on points-based interaction. Tell me what you think and you could win one of 5 LeaderClicks T-shirts!

Deadline for submission is October 2nd– just a few days away. Post your responses here or send to harrison@gevirtzmedia.com