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I just listened in on the FTC call regarding Economic Stimulus Scams. While I don’t promote these “grants”, I wanted to listen in as this is a step by the government in regulating the affiliate marketing industry. Here’s what’s going on:

This was a press conference warning consumers that these are scams, and announcing that the FTC is working with media companies to stop these ads. The ads show photos of Obama or Biden informing the user to get their grant money to payoff their mortgages, debts, etc. They mention the economic stimulus plan, which consumers think they can get money from (wrong!). The ads direct users to commercial sites, not government sites (official government sites end in .gov).

Sites that were called out include presidentobamagrants.com and jessicasmoneyblog.com. They charge $1.89 or so, but then will charge the card $99 plus $49.95 / month for access to this debt information, and also enroll the user in a debt website, which also starts charging the card. In 1 year, the card will be charged over $1,000.

Consumers need to know the US government does not charge for grant applications, and does not charge to give access to a list of available grants. If you’re looking for a list of government grants, visit grants.gov.

So Facebook had reps there, and the FTC spokesperson specifically mentioned Facebook and Google as advertising networks working with them by pulling ads. Consumers who see these ads are urged to report them to the FTC and / or the ad network.

The second topic was phishing / spam messages, where users fill out a form, or download some software (malware) and end up having their identity stolen. Simply put, don’t open these emails, don’t download anything, and just delete the messages.

For information on the stimulus plan from the source, visit recovery.gov.

Into the Q&A: are there any legal actions being taken? No comment.

If the small print is there, is this illegal? Well, illegal & deceptive are 2 different things. The FTC is reviewing these on a case-by-case basis. Deceptive marketing techniques will be challenged by the FTC and the courts will decide if it’s illegal.

What’s going to happen to deceptive sites? Either: don’t do this, don’t do this & other things, shut down the website, or give money back.

Finally (well, before I hung up), Facebook mentioned users may report these deceptive ads by clicking on the thumbs down icon by an ad, then selecting if the ad is “misleading” or “objectionable”.

It’s been mentioned before, but if the affiliate industry doesn’t self-regulate, the government will step in & regulate things for us.

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

It’s time for a quick story… I’ve been involved in affiliate marketing since pre-2000. I made my links with BeFree, CJ, Amazon Associates program, etc. Unfortunately, I focused on all the wrong things & missed some of the golden years. However, in late 2007 I decided to get back into it, and started reading up on what’s going on in the industry. I joined some groups, a couple forums, signed up for some courses: all of which were happy to take my money & not show me how to be successful (how could they, since affiliate marketing is contantly changing, and all these people are concerned with is selling their product?).

Then I saw the Black Ink Project by Jeremy Palmer and decided to sign up. After all, it was FREE. Can’t beat that! So I joined, along with many, many others, and participated in class (with a few others – not as many participated, compared to those who joined). Jeremy walked us through chosing a niche, building a site, promoting the site, etc. On August 28, 2008 I started promoting my new website, based on the principles of the Black Ink Project. That day, I spent $5.76 and made $38.10 in revenue. The potential was there. The next day, spent $1.21 and made $14.85. Day 3, spent $1.93 and made $52.95. In the first three days, I profited exactly $97.00 (this is important – you’ll see why later). Since then, things have really taken off. I’m not going to get into details… only Jeremy, my buddy Steve and my wife know how well things are really going.

I’m still adding onto my original site, while building out a 2nd “Black Ink” website and going through the pre-planning / SWOT analysis on a third. I call them “Black Ink” websites because they follow a specific design format and the niche is chosen through a process which helps find the most profitable niches available. When you signup for the Black Ink Project, you get this information.

You’ll also find a few very active members on the forums, and who are regularly in the live chat sessions. I’ve met some great people this way, and we’re always helping each other with the various projects we’re working on.

So if you’re looking to get started with affiliate marketing, and are wondering what’s the best way to go at it, take a look at the Black Ink Project. The cost for the class today is $97, which if you recall, is my profit from the first three days of starting to promote my Black Ink website. There’s a 60-day money back guarantee on the Black Ink Project, too, although you’re not going to need it. If you follow Jeremy’s instructions, you’ll be profiting more than that pretty quickly.

If you sign up, send me an email and I’ll even help you along (but only if you promise you’re going to follow Jeremy’s advice, step-by-step). Forget what you think you know, check your ego at the door, and signup for the Black Ink Project.

Affiliate marketing isn’t difficult, it’s just a lot of hard work.

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Better late than never… I’ve been real busy since Affiliate Summit West 2009 in Vegas, which is why I’m so late in posting my summary. Well, it’s finally here!

Saturday
On Saturday I flew out of Buffalo direct to Las Vegas via Southwest. While at the airport, I caught up on numb3rs from the previous night. Gotta love that Sprint broadband! The flight was long, so I listened to Dan Brown’s Angels & Deamons on the way there. I’ve read it years before, and with the movie coming up, I figured I’d listen to it this time around. While on the plane, I also pulled out my Garmin GPS and got a signal, so I was able to see where we were, and how fast we were going (450 – 515 mph).

After landing, I got my rental car, drove to the Wyndham Grand Desert and checked in very quickly. The room was nice & big, which made me homesick right away. I unpacked then called the AsSeenOnTVNetwork.com to see what we were doing for dinner. I had a quick rest, changed, then headed off to dinner.

Dinner at Simon in the Palms with Todd Farmer, Lisa Picarille, Jim Kukral, and Johnny Mathis, Adam Riemer & Pete Altieri from Livemercial. This dinner, “just thrown together” (quote by Adam) spoiled me as I don’t think it gets any better than this. The appetizers were all amazing: Salt & Pepper Calamari, “Tator-tot” sushi, some sort of soy bean (I’m sure I’m missing something). I ordered the Tandoori Arctic Char which was incredible and the table shared sides of mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus, creamed spinich, and macaroni & cheese. As I sat back enjoying this meal (which I’d rate in the top 5 of my life… maybe #2, behind brunch at Brennon’s in New Orleans), I thought it couldn’t get any better, but then the desert came out.

While the cotton candy was a nice touch, the comfort foods such as homemade snowballs, “Hostess” cupcakes, and Rice Krispie & Fruit Loop treats really topped the evening. Unfortunately I did drive there, so I didn’t join in on the wine sampling, but believe me, it was tempting. We had some great conversations, already making deals, and even tried to get Billy Mays on the phone, but he wasn’t home. Ah, too bad… Billy is the man! Thanks, Livemercial, for a GREAT dinner and I look forward to working together this year.

We left dinner at 10:30 PM, which, to me, was 1:30 AM, so I skipped the Buy.at party. I had to get some sleep, which didn’t work too well, as I woke Sunday at 4 AM (my body thinking it’s 7 AM). Luckily, I was able to get back to sleep before waking again at 6:30, brewing some Tim Horton’s, and getting ready for a long Sunday.

Sunday

Sunday morning I caught to bus (yes, John, the public-transportation-bus!) to Mandalay Bay and the CAMA Brunch at the House of Blues. The CAMA picked a great venue, and we had some excellent networking, great food, followed by some amazing gospel music. I met up with Mike Buechele, Tyler & Chantal Patton (TCP Global Solutions) and Ron Bechdolt, my mentor from ASE in Boston. It’s great talking with these guys online for 6 months, then finally meeting in person for a few days before going to our own corner of the States and chatting online again for another 6 months. Well, that’s how it typically happens, but it turns out that Tyler & Chantal are pretty close to where I’ll be in February, so I’m looking forward to seeing them & their family in a few short weeks.

I checked in to #ASW09 and hit the meet market right off the bat. I couldn’t stand the meet market in Boston, as it was EXTREMELY crowded and loud. However, the room this time around was MUCH larger and, since I went early while there was a session going on, I was able to run through it pretty quickly. I then went to Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink session, which was a great recap of the Black Ink Project. Jeremy ran a bit over, so he didn’t get to talk too much about Black Ink 3, but he generously gave all participants a free membership to the new session. I’m looking forward to working with Jeremy once again. There was a long line after his session, and I had to get to the next one, so I didn’t stick around.

The next session was John Hasson‘s about automating websites & PPC management. John’s a pretty geeky guy, so I’m sure some of what he was talking about was WAY over the heads of the participants, but after about 10 minutes, I knew what I needed. Once the Q&A started, I took off. Sorry I didn’t stick around, John, but you taught me enough to get started now – thanks!

I killed some time before meeting up with Jess Luthi, Matthew Wood and some other UK chaps at the Irish pub in the Rio for a round of drinks. Since I first went to Affiliate Summit in Miami with Paul, I’ve been seeing these guys at other Summits & keeping in touch online. They’re a great bunch and I’m glad to see them regularly.

Whew… I then ran across the casino to Lucky Strikes Lanes for a quick appearance at the oneNetwork Direct cocktail party. This may be my favorite network-sponsoed party I’ve been to so far, and I’m truly sorry I had to leave early. The oneNetwork Direct staff had these fancy bowling shirts made up, and the lanes were all reserved for this party. The nice thing about this was that everyone there had some relationship to oneNetwork Direct, which means we were all involved in software. It made networking very easy, as we now had 2 things in common (the one thing we all have in common is the weather, which is why so many people like talking about it). While I was bummed I had to leave early, I was excited to be heading back to Mandalay Bay & the IANteract Dinner.

The IANteract Dinner is put on by Ian Fernando. I started stalking (following) Ian before Boston, and we met up in Boston and have kept in touch ever since. There were people at the dinner that I’ve never even seen before, but once I learned who they were, I recognized either the blog name, or Twitter username, etc. I ended up sitting next to a Forex trader and PPC affiliate and had some great conversation (well, he couldn’t talk much as he may have partied a bit too much the night before – most of these guys party MUCH more than I do). It turns out we were staying in the same resort, so we shared a cab back and I crashed pretty early Sunday night.

Monday

Monday morning I woke up, showered, looked out my window & saw security had my rental car open. That can’t be good… turns out someone decided to smash the passenger window open, grab the GPS charger / mount, and take off. The glove box was open, too, so I’m guessing they thought the GPS was in there. So that slowed me down a bit, having to go see Gill Grissom, file a report, go back to Avis and exchange the car. No, I didn’t get the additional insurance, but between my own insurance and coverage by American Express, I should be fine.

I arrived at the Rio & made it to most of Gary Vaynerchuk‘s keynote. Too bad I missed breakfast I then hit the Exhibit Hall for a bit, met with a program manager from oneNetwork Direct to talk about a product of theirs that I’m starting to promote, then went to Wil Reynolds session on Whitehat Linkbuilding Strategies. Wil had some great ideas, and I’ll be sure to go back to this presentation whenever I do a day of linkbuilding.

After that session, I had lunch with John Hasson, who happened to win one of my iTunes gift cards, and then met up with the guys from Football Fanatics. Now I don’t do much with them (they’re the main source of content on CollegeGolfBalls.com) but Jason’s always been helpful, giving tips on how to improve the site and regularly checking in. They’ve got this amazing data-feed, which makes building sites a breeze.

I walked the Exhibit Hall a bit more, met with a couple program managers, then went to the first half of the session on Landing Page Testing. I caught the 2nd half of this session in Boston, so I figured I’d put it together on this trip. I left a bit early, though, to go to the Meetup202. The 202 Group put together this imprompto meeting for 202 users, where I got to talk to many of the people that I only saw across the table at the IANteract Dinner the night before. I was looking for Bryn, but didn’t see him… Bryn is organizing the 202 Meetup in Toronto, which I hope to join as soon as my travels slow down.

After the meetup, I dropped in to the Pinacle Awards then drove over to the Palms with Jim Krugal & Lisa Picarille to make a quick appearance at the AsSeenOnTV / Livemercial cocktail hour. Adam Riemer hooked me up again, and even made sure I won a Buxton Bag! After a quick drink & some great networking (Looking forward to further chatting with @MatthewBredel), I registered for the Football Fanatics poker tournement and sat at the table. I was doing fairly well, playing a bit conservative but taking some big pots. Scott Jangro was at my first table, and I was very close to putting a bounty on him, but then he lost a couple of pots. Our table was broken up, and the new table I was at had Angel Djambazov playing at it, and he was dominating the table. A few others dropped out, and I finally had to make my move when I had Jack-Ace suited clubs. The flop drew 2 more clubs (one a Queen) and I went all-in. Unfortunately, 4 to a flush is basically nothing, and Angel’s pair of Queens knocked me out. Angel went on to winning the entire tournament, so if I’m going to be knocked out by someone, I’m glad it was him.

I stuck around for a bit after being knocked out, then went in search of some food. A group of players also knocked out were heading to N9ne Steakhouse, so I joined Brian Littleton, Scott Jangro, Todd Crawford, and Stephanie Lichtenstein for a bite to eat. It was a bit more than a bite to eat, honestly. Thanks for the meal, Brian! After dinner I walked past the poker room, but by that time, the affiliate crowd had all left. That’s ok… it was after midnight & I need to get some sleep.

Tuesday

I made it to breakfast on Tuesday, but then skipped the “Ask the Experts” session to spend some time speaking with Emilio with Andy Rodriguez Consulting and the nice people over at ShareASale. While there, I tried my chance at SkiBall and scored a whopping 140 points (in 5 balls). That was good enough for a stuffed panda bear on the spot, and turned out to be a high score for the day, and I won a really nice cork dart board.

I attended the session, “Super Affiliate PPC Marketing Strategies” before lunch, but sat in the back as I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay. After the three panelists and moderator introduced themselves and answered 1 planned question (which took 1/2 hour), I left. I’m getting annoyed at sessions where the speaker / panel have nothing planned, so they just take questions from the crowd.

Lunch was very light on this day, and I have to say I was disappointed. Meals at Affiliate Summit are always good, and this one was too, but it was a bit simple compared to what I remember from past Summits. Mike and I ate together, and I got to say goodbye to Tyler & Chantal before they headed home.

I went back to Classroom C for “Advanced Optimization for Landing Pages” after lunch, which was a good session. I wish the Google Rep (Trevor Claiborne) showed how to set up their optimizer, but I’ll have to figure that out for myself. By this time my crappy Q battery was dead, so I took the phone & charger to the charging station and dropped it off to be plugged in for 45 minutes. This is a nice feature at Affiliate Summit and I hope it sticks around.

Finally, Ian Fernando’s “The Art of Keyword Blasting” finished up the day. I don’t think some of the attendees knew what they were getting into, but it was a good overview. Again perhaps a working example would’ve been nice, but I’ll take what I learned & put it into practice. When the questions started, I took off to get my phone and found I had a message from Share A Sale about the dart board! I picked that up, did a quick interview with Jason Rubacky at Football Fanatics then met Josh at the Rio’s lobby bar.

That sums up Affiliate Summit… although my Vegas vacation continued. This post is long enough, so I’ll post the rest later. Photos will be posted, someday (once I add commented & geotag them).

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 9:49 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Hey everyone… I’m going to have a real simple contest during Affiliate Summit where you can win a $25 iTunes gift card. No purchase necessary, but you must be present to win. Here’s how to play:

1. Find me, and trade business cards. I mentioned earlier that I’ll have some really cool cards, and I was super-excited when I got them. I ordered a few decks of personalized Bicycle playing cards, with all of my information on the back. These cards are sweet! So pick a card… any card.
2. Then you have to follow me on Twitter. Easy enough… go to http://twitter.com/esnagel and click that little “Follow” button.
3. Watch the tweets! I’ll be chosing the winning card from a full deck and tweeting the winning card. For example, I may tweet “If you have my 9 of diamonds, find me at lunch to claim your $25 iTunes gift card”.

Now for some fine print… I have 9 decks of cards, meaning about 450 business cards. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. I’ll bring along my boring cards for the fish bowls, and save the nice ones for networking.

I also have only 6 iTunes gift cards. I’m giving away 2 per day. So if 3 people with the winning card find me, only the first two get the gift card. Also, you must have the card before it’s named the winner. You can’t find me after I tweet that, then rummage through my decks of cards looking for the winning card. Finally, winners will be announced via my twitter account, so be prepared to share your twitter username with me.

This is a fun contest… not a multi-million-dollar lottery, so I’m not making up a long list of rules. Don’t throw a hissy over it.

Start collecting cards once I land in Vegas (on Saturday the 10th). I don’t know where I’ll be Saturday night, but Sunday morning I’ll be at the CAMA Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues. Then onto the Meet Market.

In the end, I’m using this as a networking tool. We trade cards, chit-chat a little, and take it from there. Who knows… networking is what Affiliate Summit is all about!

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

With 2008 wrapping up, and 2009 right around the corner, I thought I’d review my 2008 goals & resolutions.

Affiliate Marketing

• I’d like to win a contest… nope. The merchants that I work with don’t hold these types of contests. It seems contests are only held by CPA networks these days (you know, the guys with the exclusive offers and highest payouts) and I don’t do much work with them. I either need to drop this goal, or start working with those CPA networks.
• Attend Affiliate Summit East in Boston – done!

Fitness

• 11% body fat, or lower – done! But I’m sure I’m over that now. Maintaining 11% isn’t easy.

Finance

• Max out savings accounts – not yet. I still have time to fund mine, but I didn’t get anywhere on Laura’s or the kids’.

Other

• Watch less TV. Nope – in fact, I probably watch more now. I lessened the impact of TV by putting one in my office, so I can have it on while I’m working. Some people listen to music, I watch (listen to) TV. One result of this has been that I stopped watching Heros – I couldn’t spend an hour reading all that Japanese translations. To make things worse, I installed FIOS recently and now have like 85 movie channels for the next couple of months.

In all, 2008 was a good year. I joined the Black Ink Project back in April, followed the directions line-by-line, and in August my website. Back then the Black Ink Project was free, but today they’re charging $97 to join. Believe me, it’s worth it. In fact, my first 3 days of having my site launched, I made exactly $97 ($32.34, $13.64, $51.02). Since then, it’s done much better, even giving me a day with $1,000 in revenue! I’ll be continuing what I learned from the Black Ink Project as I expand my affiliate marketing websites in 2009.

I’m currently working on my 2009 Goals & Resolutions and will hopefully post that from my new laptop on Jan-1.

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 10:58 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Finance, Fitness, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

About a month ago, I noticed a new program on CJ, DonorsChoose. They were paying 4% on all donations made through affiliates. I looked around a bit, and came up with an idea that I’ll outline in detail for you. The reason I’m giving it all up is because DonorsChoose didn’t like what I was doing, so without putting up a fight, I stopped promoting them (I also only made a couple bucks). It wasn’t wildly successful like I hoped it would be, but it’s an idea that can be used elsewhere, so here we go:

First, find a merchant that people relate to… one that they like visiting. DonorsChoose was a good one because people like supporting causes like this.

Next, this merchant needs to have news coming out regularly, and make it available via RSS. In this case, I used the DonorsChoose project feed.

OK, so I went over to Twitter and signed up as DonorsChoose. That was the part they didn’t like. While it wasn’t specified in their T&C that this wasn’t allowed, they felt concerned that their “brand could be easily mis-represented on a site that (they) have limited control over.” In reality, they had full control over the content on the account, as you’ll see later, but everyone sees things differently.

By now you should see what I’m doing… I’m going to syndicate their RSS feed onto this Twitter account. So that’s what I’m doing, and here’s how I did it:

First, I had to read the RSS feed. There are lots of ways to do this, but I use xml2array. I then read the feed and if I find a unique title, I change the URL to deeplink through CJ (for added fun, I use the DonorsChoose Project ID as my SID), make it tiny, then post to Twitter. Sounds complicated? It’s actually pretty easy.

Here’s the script that does it all, and here’s the table that’ll store the items that have been posted (used to make sure they’re unique)

CREATE TABLE `DonorsChoose` (
`cTitle` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`cURL` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
UNIQUE KEY `cTitle` (`cTitle`)
)

After a few tests (I recommend if you’re going to do this to have a “testing” Twitter account before you post to your real one) I started to syndicate the projects feed to Twitter. I simply set-up a cron to run this script every 10 minutes.

Amazingly, after a few hours, I already had a follower! An easy way to figure out who to follow is to search Twitter for your merchant name (ex: search for DonorsChoose). These people are already talking about you and will likely follow you back. Slowly, you’ll get more and more followers this way, and more and more clicks through your affiliate link. Of course, if you really want to get a ton of followers, watch this video on How To Attract 500 Followers on Twitter in 24 Hrs.

So there you have it – an RSS feed deeplinked through CJ (you can easily change this for ShareASale) which is then syndicated to a Twitter account.

Why am I releasing this? Well, like I mentioned earlier, DonorsChoose didn’t like what I was doing. While I still argue that they had complete control over the content in the Twitter account because I was simply syndicating their feed, they didn’t feel that way. So instead of putting up a fight, I just turned off my script and handed the account over to them. I didn’t need to waste anyone’s time by arguing with them.

What other merchants can you use this idea with? Here’s some ideas:

• World Society for the Protection of Animals (ShareASale)
• USO (CJ)
• Yahoo! HotJobs (CJ) – for example, register BuffaloJobs and syndicate this RSS feed.

It’s probably better to register an idea, rather than a brand name. Even if they don’t explicitly say you can’t use their name on Twitter, they may not be happy when you do.

So this is my Christmas gift to you… a complete script which can easily be changed for other, similar programs. If you need help customizing this script, leave a comment or email me.

Merry Christmas!

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.