By the way, a Ponzi scheme, being a socalled pyramid scheme, is defined by the wiki as:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors out of the money paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit. The term, “Ponzi scheme,” is used primarily in the United States, while other English-speaking countries do not distinguish colloquially between this scheme and other pyramid schemes.

Now usually those investors are attracted by a high percentage of return. But here I’d like to focus on the main part of the definition: ‘returns … paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit’. With Madoff’s fraud an amazing 50 billion dollars puffed away in thin air.

Well, I’d like to tell you about a Ponzi scheme where almost 11 Trillion dollars will evaporate very, very soon. And the ultimate crook that is capable of such an outrageous, mindblowing, world destroying amount of throwaway money is called … (drumroll) … the United States of America!

Believe me, this isn’t a linkbait article, this is about information that you usually do not read about in regular media. Firstly let me point out that the debt of the USA is rising at an enormous ratio, especially the last few (do I hear Bush?) years. Although that may still sound familiar.

Here is a link to the Wiki article about the US national debt. But you’d better look at the graphs on this page, where you can see what happened since 2002: the debt has risen from 6 trillion to almost 11 trillion dollars (01082009). The actual, current amount can be seen at the national debt clock site.

In the graph above you can see who owns which portion of the US national debt. There are a lot of small owners, 22.7% are foreign (international) owners and over 40% is owned by the Federal Reserve. Of course a debt should be backed up by reserves and or by profits. But the US have no ‘profits’. Almost every year there is a deficit, which means spending exceeds revenue. And so the US debt grows.

But hey, what about the Federal Reserve, I hear you say? The Federal Reserve is a banking system, with twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation acting as fiscal agents for the US Treasury. Now the US Treasury has assets (securities) in worth of 835 billion dollars. But. Over 80% of those securities are owned by foreign investors, i.e. that’s loaned money (bonds etc.). Those investors get a yearly return paid by the interest.

You see how my analogy of the 11 Trillion Ponzi Scheme fits into all of this? Eleven trillion dollars of US national debt are backed by 167 billion (835 - 80%) of direct securities. And no profits. And an ever growing ‘army’ of investors. The US needs to lend (print?) more and more money to pay those foreign investors their interest. And to pay the 60% of investors that own the US national debt their interest. And what would happen when those (foreign) investors want their full investment back? The total collapse of the US and the US dollar!

So why is the dollar still such a relatively strong currency? Well, the main reason is because crude oil is paid in US dollars. The whole world is backing up the dollar, because the whole world lives on crude oil. For their cars, for plastics, for paint and for a whole range of products made out of crude oil. And this is part of the technical details of the US Ponzi Scheme, which you can read about in this interesting article and this very interesting video about how this came to be.

Be amazed!

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But there are many questions among affiliate marketers on how to do this the right way or if it even works. Recently I found that Perry Marshall has embraced Shelley Ellis as a content network specialist. And when Perry recommends her, you can bet she is really good. So I nosed around a bit and found some interesting material. At her site she gives a nice example of the power of the content network and the traffic and conversions you can get:

As you can see in the ‘general’ example, where general search and content campaigns are compared, the content network traffic is 100x higher. Of course the clickthrough rate is lower but still, clicks are 600% higher, but more importantly the ratio between clicks and conversions (conversion rate) doesn’t drop, when compared to the search campaign. And that’s tells you that the content network can be very, very profitable!

Of course, the right way of targeting is very important here. So I nosed around a bit more and found a radio interview of Shelley Ellis by PPC Rockstar, where they delve deeper into the technical aspects of targeting the content network. Hear it for yourself and find out the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, I think you will like it!

By the way, she also talks about using social media networks, like MySpace and LinkedIn, in combiation with a content campaign. If you were told to never use them, listen carefully to what Shelley has to say …

Finally, here is a link to a case study by iCrossing (a company where Ellis has worked and did some client content campaigns) about the integration of search and social media. Social media are becoming more important by the minute and you’d better find out the best ways how to use them, because people online are relying more and more on social media for advice and to make their buying decisions!

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The last few months have been full of financial turmoil, but I see a new year ahead of us that’s full of money chances. You may have lost money on Wallstreet, you may have problems with your mortgage and the prices of food have risen. But businesses will drop prices now. I just read that airline tickets are going down, because travel agencies need to sell more. Car prices will probably go down. Oil is down 75% since last July. And that all is just the beginning.

Christmas selling has been varying. High ticket items were down, but Amazon reports record sales for this season (secret tip: this Amazon sales report is a very interesting read anyway for affiliate marketers, you will get a lot of information on what’s hot and really sold well during the last few weeks). And although Wallstreet has slipped 35% or so, the last 10 to 14 days professional traders have been ignoring bad news an have been buying, relatively cheap, stocks in masses.

I have been diving deeper into stock trading the last few weeks and will write about it in one of my next posts. Until then. Enjoy!

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Several people have found solutions (which all started with a post from GA Experts) to show the exact keywords that triggered your ads, that either work with filters or with javascript. Knowing the real keywords visitors are using can help you in several ways:

• find terms to add to your negative keyword list.
• expand your original keyword list.
• discover and add new adgroups.
• find ways to optimize your ad and landing page copy

But the problem is that the details in the screenshots or descriptions I found vary. I have experimented around a bit and can now give you the exact settings that will make this work. Others say that this solution doesn’t work anymore … well guess what? It still does!

The Real Google Analytics Data Exposed …

Before you start check that Analytics is connected to your Adwords campaigns and Auto-tagging be turned on (find it in: Account preferences: edit tracking). Now we are going to add a new profile (you do not want to overwrite any core data, so a new profile keeps everything intact) in Google Analytics.

1. Create a new Analytics Profile

Select Add a Profile for an existing domain, select which domain, and enter any name for the profile you choose. For example: ‘Real Keyword Data’.

2. Create the first filter

Important: create the two filters in the order given here, otherwise it will not work! Now locate your newly created profile and click Edit under the Settings column. Then click Add Filter.

Just copy and paste the following settings, to avoid typing mistakes:

Field A -> Extract A: Referral: (\?|&)(q|p)=([^&]*)
Field B -> Extract B: Campaign Medium: (cpc|ppc)
Output To -> Constructor: Custom Field 1: $A3

Be sure to copy all other settings as seen in the screenshot.
Click ‘Finish’.
You should now be back on the profile settings page where you can see this first filter has been applied to your detailed analytics profile.

3. Create the second filter

Locate your new profile again and click Edit under the Settings column. Then click Add Filter.

Just copy and paste the following settings, to avoid typing mistakes:

Field A -> Extract A: Custom Field 1: (.*)
Field B -> Extract B: Campaign Term: (.*)
Output To -> Constructor: Campaign Term: $B1 ($A1)

Be sure to copy all other settings as seen in the screenshot.
Click ‘Finish’.

It may take several minutes, but then you can start digging. In your new Analytics Profile Report go to Traffic Sources -> AdWords -> Keyword Positions or to Traffic Sources ->Keywords and you will see your normal keyword list and in parentheses the exact term that triggered your ads!

This is powerful stuff. And it makes you wonder why this isn’t normally available in GA (well, of course we know why not, Google would lose a lot of clicks). Let me know if it worked for you too …

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Available only for residents of the USA, unfortunately. And just 1M signups. Be sure to sign up before the registration deadline on December 31, 2008—the sooner you sign up, the more opportunity you have to earn tickets!

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Congratz to Jordan. Another winner of the Affiliate Blueprint version 2. Jordan has received the blueprint campaign guide with all the details for a ringtone campaign, that has already been running and working. It is as simple as copy and paste and watch things rolling. This campaign is fully scalable to other adgroups and countries, the potential income is massive!

If you also would like to have a chance once a month of winning this blueprint campaign, subscribe to the contest to receive my newsletter.

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All you need to do to grab a free copy of this awesome CSS book is follow @sitepointdotcom on Twitter.

Or you can go to this page and enter your email address to receive a download link.
Thanks Sitepoint, great offer

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One of the top tools I like and use is MSN Audience Intellegence from MSN adCenter Labs. Lets say you’d like to promote a dog training ebook from Clickbank. First thing to do is keyword research, one of the best being the AdWords External Keyword Tool. For example you start with entering ‘dog training’ (after selecting your market and language). This gives you a big list of related keywords.

TIP
Pick the ones you like (3-4 words tend to convert better) and enter these again. You can repeat this process to build a huge list of very related keywords.

Now to get an idea of the buying market, take 2-3 of the best fitting keywords and enter these in the MSN Demographics tool. As an example I used ’stop dog from barking’.  Now you get a nice breakdown of gender and age distribution for your keyword(s):

This data can be very helpful. When you use MSN Search to advertize you can directly target specific demographic areas and raise or lower your bid accordingly. At the moment this is not possible yet with Google AdWords. But what you can do in AdWords is use this data in the content network for selecting appropriate sites to advertize on. It is called the Placement Tool. To get there, click on ‘Add placements’ in your content campaign and then on ‘Select demographics’. You will see something like this:

In this screenshot I already selected several demographic options. You can even use an ad filter, for example for sites that have banner ad placements available. After setting your options, just click on the ‘Get Available Placements’ button to get a list of websites to target for your specific demographic needs.

Another cool tool, that can do the same and more is the Google Ad Planner. I will not explain all options here, for an introduction visit Ad Planner Support. They have some excellent videos with tutorias. Let me suffice to say that once you have compiled a list of sites that fit your need with the Adplanner Tool you can export them and use them for your content campaign.

Use these tools, experiment with them. And when you know or work with any other great demographics tool, please comment on this blog.

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Now with normal ads you wouldn’t want to use this, because it will raise CTR, but very probably not conversions. Then I had to think about AdSense ads. I know that according to AdSense Policies it is forbidden to encourage people to click on the ads in any way. In fact I looked it up and here is what it states:

Encouraging clicks

In order to ensure a good experience for users and advertisers, publishers may not request that users click the ads on their sites or rely on deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. Publishers participating in the AdSense program:

• May not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as “click the ads,” “support us,” “visit these links,” or other similar language
• May not direct user attention to the ads via arrows or other graphical gimmicks
• May not place misleading images alongside individual ads
• May not promote sites displaying ads through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites
• May not compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behavior
• May not place misleading labels above Google ad units - for instance, ads may be labeled “Sponsored Links” but not “Favorite Sites”

So my assumption was correct. But when I read this very carefully, and take it very literally, it would be allowed to use the text “Do not click this Ad”, at least as pure text and maybe not as a graphic. I wonder if anyone ever tried this, because you may very well assume that CTR on your AdSense ads would rise quite considerably.

Of course this is all very hypothetical thinking, more like a joke, and I don’t want to encourage anyone into actually doing this. But if someone has heard of this exact ‘method’ being used somewhere,  let us all know and comment on this post.

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Jeremy is all about delivering quality, both to his advertisers and to his students. He has been teaching since the last 2 years, first with Quit Your Day Job (QYDJ) and High Performance Affiliate Marketing (HPAM), which both were highly succesfull eBooks and both had a very active forum of participants.

But he realised that for a lot of affiliates, reading eBooks and getting advice in forums just isn’t enough. They need more!

So he created The Black Ink Project (BIP), which ‘takes you by the hand’ with step-by-step tutorials, 15 downloadable videos, examples and even templates to download. I have personally attended BIP1 and BIP2, which were free for a select group of affiliates, to test things out. And I can tell you one thing: Jeremy Palmer really delivers! His videos are excellent and to the point, he explains every step of the affiliate marketing process in full detail. And he seems to be always around in the forum to answer your every question.

You can read in full detail what TheBlackInkProject is about at the actual sales page. But before you go there, I’d like to make it interesting for you to buy yourself into this course through my blog link.

My Bonus: Get your Investment Back within a Month

The Black Ink Project course could easily be sold for up to $500+. But Jeremy offers it for $97. No hidden fees. No monthly fees. Nothing else to buy! And you will get a copy of PPC Classroom, a comprehensive 238 page guide to paid search marketing. That’s what you get from Jeremy.

When you buy through my link, my bonus will be a copy of my Affiliate Blueprint v2, a blueprint of one of my campaigns, which already brings a profit of $100 per month with just 2 adgroups. Every month, subscribers to my newsletter have a chance to win this. But as a buyer of The Black Ink Project you will be sure to get a copy. So within 1 month you can  earn your investment back. And after that you will be able to continue to make money with this bonus.

To be sure that you buy through my link, first clear all cookies in your browser (how to do this), then click this link, scroll to the bottom of the sales page and press the ‘Buy Now’ button. You are then taken to a secure page. Please check that on the bottom of this page it says: affiliate = omdboost.??? (the ??? can be anything, I use it to track my links).

When, after buying, you send your receipt to support at onlinemoneytip dot com, you will receive your bonus after 60 days. Why 60 days? Well, Jeremy has a 60-day 100% money back guarantee. This is great for you, of course. If you are not completely satisfied with the course, you will get your money back within the first 60 days. But I will lose my bonus for referring you. To avoid this cash-back happening, you will get my bonus after this period, when I am sure that you are completely satisfied with your product.

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