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I must admit… Dan Areily, author of Predictably Irrational really is the man. Kicking myself for jumping on the bandwagon late. These internet marketers are making mega moolah from his teachings big-time. Check it out and comment on the video below and let me know your thoughts.
Cheers.
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This concludes the end of the year. And as year-end traditions go, those irresistible “best-of” lists are everywhere.
For fun, I decided to do an internet marketing edition of one of those lists. I know it’s a little indulgent and more than a little incestuous due to the tiny size of our niche, but I bet you’re a sucker for this as much as I am.
So the Best in Internet Marketing 2009… Here’s an overview of the various categories:
Without further ado…
I know I’m cheating by including 2 marketers instead of one. But these two are inseparable and boast of some of the best “good cop, bad cop” chemistry since the Lethal Weapon series. Awesome marketing insights and sharp-as-nails business acumen make them the marketing role models I wish I had years ago. These guys are the real deal.
Mike Hill has been the secret weapon of many, many multi-million dollar corporations. He has pioneered a lot of the CPA offers we promote today, and has paved the way for Acai Berry, Teeth Whitening and Colon Cleansing to become the million-dollar niches they are today. He’s also a really big-hearted person and has even given me an unforgettable wedding gift.
Some people call him the top CPA affiliate marketer in the world. I’m inclined to think so. His manic testing, grasp of human psychology and business smarts have put him way above the level of many other established marketers in his hyper-competitive domain. Recent props from Frank Kern will propel his already shining star even further.
The MindValley boys are going to be speaking at Yanik’s Underground 6 event next year. And now… the doors will be flung open to those whom I feel to are among the world’s top underground online marketers. The only reason I know about this is because I used to be copy chief for these guys. These guys are all about marrying Silicon Valley-level technology, world-class email marketing and topgrading to create 6 figure DAYS on a regular basis.
He’s on this list because he’s the man behind 2 of my top 2009 products WordPress Direct and CPA Ninjas. I rarely follow other marketers so closely. I even more rarely buy something a marketer’s put out. Most people produce derivative info or badly-coded software but whatever this guy handles is top notch. Learned a ton and Wordpress Direct is my single best investment this year, and I make plenty.
He’s not one of those guru types but he’s introduced a whole new way of doing continuity programs that’s going to revolutionize the way we do membership sites in the years to come. Called Association Marketing, his 80% stick rate and other staggering figures make mincemeat out of the far inferior forced continuity models introduced by Mike Filsaime and Russel Brunson of yore.
There’s an old internet marketing adage that says “all you need is one idea to put money in your pocket”, and you see this on countless IM sales letters. Well, the reason is that it IS true. Carrie gave me just one idea in the early days of the business to come out with my flagship product the Twitter Salvation System, and we have hundreds of buyers since. Plus, of course… She has an iron-clad grasp of personal branding and social media.
These guys are synonymous with the words “Speed of Implementation”. In the space of less than 12 months, I’ve seen them churn out no less than a whopping 22 products between them. With them, quantity doesn’t compromise quality though, and these guys are a boundless guide to smart resourceful strategies that you don’t need a lot of money to implement.
In my opinion, the former Stompernet CEO has ascended to the pantheon of the email marketing Gods where deities like Frank Kern, Matt Furey and Dave Dee now reside. And that’s for starters; his SEO and e-commerce teachings have already become the stuff of legends. After all, making $25,000 off of a fake sword site really deserves recognition of some sort.
Though not as well-known as Amish Shah, Aymen or the rest of the CPA Cartel, he has successfully cut a swath as a really smart superaffiliate to watch out for. His mastery of little-known licensing strategies and Web 2.0 marketing has brought some much needed innovation to the tired affiliate marketing space.
I consider Perry a friend. I know his name has been synonymous with controversy over the past few years, but I still consider him one of the most brilliant marketers of his generation. The next Vincent James, I dare say. So imagine my shock when all his social media accounts got deleted and the revelation of his retirement from the IM scene was written on his blog. You’ll be sorely missed, Perry.
Those in the scene know Google ain’t the biggest fans of us online marketers. But what they did next was just balls out insane. In the sweeping move that may change the face of the affiliate marketing landscape forever, they shut down a 100,000 AdWords accounts of online marketers — both spammer and legit. Overnight, entire income streams disappeared. “What next?” seems to be the question on everyone’s lips for 2010.
There have been a lot of nasty rumors and wild speculation surrounding the circumstances, but let’s not go there. All I’m going to say is that he was the face behind one of online marketing’s biggest innovations in Stompernet… Thus, forever ends the era of those awesome StomperNet emails and pop culture references.
The one thing I missed about working for one of my previous companies was their content management system. They could set up an entire website structure in under 10 minutes. Now… technology has caught up because we can now do the exact same thing with Wordpress Direct. Of course you need to upgrade to Platinum membership in order to enjoy an optimal CMS experience. But I believe every penny spent is worth it. You can get it here.
People once paid underground marketers like Jeff Johnson $25,000 to learn SEO tactics that now SENuke can do on autopilot in a span of 15 minutes…At a fraction of the cost. The single most powerful linkbuilding and SEO tool on the market today, it can easily take the place of your local SEO company. Huge learning curve, but the search engine rankings are worth it. You can get it now.
CPA marketing has been the rage this year. This says something: As much as CPA marketers make a ton of money, the product owners are making much much more as they tap into their army of insane super-affiliates. CPA Tsunami is brilliant underground marketer Mike Hill’s gift to the world… On how to set up your own CPA marketing program so that you don’t have to worry about traffic again. Thank you, Mike.
To continue the CPA marketing craze… There has been a slew of CPA affiliate marketing products released throughout the year with exorbitant price tags attached… Ranging from the painfully mediocre to the plain darn excellent. The best of the lot to me is CPA Ninja–Marty Rozmanith and Matt Trainer have excellent chemistry together, and Trainer’s Excel tricks have revolutionized the way I set up my AdWords campaigns forever.
As a highly-paid email copywriter, I have seldom come across email marketing products that are any good. This $97 package by Ryan Deiss is a hidden gem among the slew of overpriced product launches. His ninja autoresponder tricks are really cool, and have directly impacted my income more than any other product out there. It’s still available, so get it while you still can.
Clickbank has long been the default starting place of the fledgeling affiliate marketer. In 2009 however, marketers have flocked over the CPA networks instead. Why? The simple reason that a simple Zip/Email submit converts far better than trying to squeeze a sale from jaded prospects. The maths is staggering. CPA is here to stay.
As with any industry growing up, oligopolies and monopolies will form. Whereas the internet marketing scene was the Wild, Wild West a few years back, it’s now resembling more and more the dog-eat-dog offline world. The early adopters who are now the “top dogs” have banded together to form an invincible faction with mailing lists and money in the millions. Good business sense. Not so good for the lone rangers.
For far too long the IM scene has had no checks and balances. Unscrupulous marketers have run roughshod over consumers with their forced continuity and upsell hell over the past decade or so. As a consumer, I have dealt with non-existent support, terrible coding and rehashed products so much that it has sadly become an industry norm. And in comes the Salty Droid, a blog detailing the various scams and scandals of the industry. He may be vulgar and a tad mean-spirited, but he’s a much-need breath of fresh air in a scene plagued with chicken-hearted sycophants. Read his rants here.
And while the Salty Droid is the voice of the grassroots, the FTC is the governmental enforcer part of the equation. To be honest… I sometimes see the FTC as an inconvenience. No more high-converting testimonials with specific results… Disclosures everywhere, etc. Yet it’s one of those painful-but-good-for-you necessities because with no guidelines, there’s just going to be wanton abuse. So a grudging thanks FTC, for keeping us honest. 
Twitter and Facebook. Facebook and Twitter. 2009 is the year of social media. Every other day there seems to be a breaking news story on Twitter, Facebook and other social media services. Social media marketing is indeed revolutionizing the way we do business. Even for an obscure Malaysian marketer like myself, it has catapulted me into stratospheric heights that otherwise would not be possible.
5 years ago, the internet playing field was indeed a level one. Your average industrious work-at-home mom or the unemployed bum could succeed in online marketing, given enough determination and a Clickbank ebook. Unfortunately, times have changed. With newly-loaded online marketers employing an army of article writers, backlink builders and bloggers, the one man army does not really stand a chance anymore. You need sufficient cash and stringent tracking and testing in order to compete… Now, the online marketing scene is like any other industry–competitive and cut-throat, where only the strong survive.
I was one of the first few who hopped on the local marketing wave long before Jeff Walker and Frank Kern exposed it to the world–and I’ve profited greatly from it. Most small biz owners don’t know the different between a squeeze page and SEO. So grab these low-hanging fruit by using your knowledge, experience and expertise to charge lucrative consultation fees and stop competing against the Mike Filsaime’s and Aymen’s of this world.
If you’re an existing product or business owner, there’s no better traffic tactic then turning to the CPA networks to lend you their army of SuperAffiliates. PPC… SEO… Article marketing… All these pale in comparison to the sheer awesomeness of “having a daily product launch” (as Mike Hill says). That’s how obscure niches like teeth whitening and acai berry are now multi-million dollar industries. Once you have an offer that converts, you don’t have to worry about buyers’ traffic ever again.
By the same token, being an affiliate now is really not advisable. Did you know that if you’re using AdWords, there’s an option where you can make Google your affiliate? Offer them commissions, and they will auto-optimize your campaigns while spelunking profitable new keywords for you. The big problem? When Google perfects this formula, they’ll probably start cutting out the middlemen–i.e. affiliate marketers. All the more reason for you to launch a product-driven business and let other affiliates worry about Google’s next destructive move.
Face it: Google is arrogant. They’re probably have cause to be proud because the money-loaded corporations have jumped on board and they don’t really have to take care of the needs of the small business owner anymore. Plus, their shutting down of a 100,000 affiliate marketing AdWords accounts isn’t creating any more goodwill. Good news: Google only represents 15-20% of the web, so there still a big and lucrative playing field outside of them. CPV, CPA and contextual marketing… Explore them all.
Of course, what’s a Puppet Master post without a plug eh? 
Here’s some of the best-selling products we have released this year.
The grand-daddy of Twitter marketing. The Twitter Salvation System has been purchased by the gurus themselves, pleasantly surprising me in the process. Mark Joyner calls me a “Twitter genius”, click on the link to find out why.
What happens when you combine forbidden persuasion with Twitter’s real-time power? Twitter Mind Control, that’s what. Use these sneaky psychological triggers to boost sales, attract prospects or carve out your niche. Your call.
There’s a lot of BS out there on using Twitter for affiliate marketing. Follow-spamming your prospects while spamming them with endless Clickbank offers is far from best practice. Here’s my tested and proven method to shovelling in big fat affiliate commissions to your bank account–no black hat or illegal tricks.
If you want to take your affiliate marketing to the next level, you should take a look at this. Judging from the number of the most prominent affiliate marketers who bought this course, the Puppet Master’s take on Bum Marketing will turbo-charge your SEO and article marketing like no other.
This email marketing home study system is one year in the making. One of my buyers told me that they can see themselves making money utilizing even a fraction of the content. Most email courses are either crap or expensive, this may be the best bang for your buck if you want to enjoy profitable autoresponder marketing for the new year.
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The Grammy’s are upon us once again.
Of all the nominees in the running, the one that has caught my attention the most is Lady Gaga.
In case you haven’t heard of the eccentric entertainer, you probably been living under a rock. In fact, in the news recently there was outrage over the fact Lady Gaga couldn’t be nominated in the Best New Artist category due to a technicality.
Having said that however, she had a decent haul of 5 nominations, including Record and Album of the Year. Yet what’s even more remarkable is how rapidly she rose to fame in such a quick time. Within the space of a year she has been hailed as the next Madonna and is on track to becoming one of the fastest rising stars of all time.
This reminds me a lot about affiliate marketing on Twitter, strangely enough. For one thing, I believe Lady Gaga is one sharp marketing genius. But here’s the other 3 quick explanations of the similarity between Lady Gaga and Twitter affiliate marketing:
Love her or hate her, you definitely can’t forget those crazy fashion statements courtesy of the Haus of Gaga. And that’s in a existing crowd of extreme fashionistas. In the same manner, your tweets need to stand out in the sea of noise. Promo and advertising tweets are just going to be plain ignored in a realm where every spammer has taken advantage of Twitter’s ease of registration and has tweeted the heck out of your already overwhelmed prospects.
To me, Poker Face is one of the catchiest songs of the year. And that single epitomizes the rest of Lady Gaga’s catalog. Great dance songs that add color to people’s drab lives. Your links must do the same thing. It must add value and flavor to your follower’s life. People are not going to stick around to click on your promotions unless your Dell, Zappos or something like that. Give them a reason to stay by consistently tweeting cool inks.
Have you ever seen Lady Gaga’s performance? Her spectacular theatrics are more performance art than anything resembling a conventional concert. In the same manner, you got to adopt the same attitude when it comes to your promotions. Your affiliate marketing efforts cannot be the same as anyone else, or else it gets treated with indifference. How come 2 affiliate marketers can tweet the same promotion and one makes 10 times more? The difference lies in the secret sauce revealed below…
In the Puppet Master’s brand new creation True Twitter Riches… You’ll learn these 3 “Lady Gaga secrets” that will turbo-charge your affiliate marketing efforts on Twitter.
Inside… You discover:
Sound good? Go here to check True Twitter Riches out when its still on the market:
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In this article, I’m about to reveal the real reason why your response rates are so low on Twitter.
I mean… It’s probably a common problem among us marketers. We hear about how easy Twitter is in driving traffic. So we go on Clickbank, Commision Junction or Sponsored Tweets and we start tweeting our offers…
Easy, quick money right?
WRONG! Here’s the puzzling thing. Even though you might be driving tons of traffic. The conversions seem to be middling at best, and non-existent at worst.
Somehow, what the critics say seem to be true. PPC… Blogging… SEO are all better for affiliate marketing…
Twitter is just an overhyped piece of junk.
Well… I say boo to that. I make my living nearly exclusively through Twitter. And affiliate marketing is a large part of my income. So here’s the shocker…
The only reason you’re not making money on Twitter is because you’re doing it wrong.
And you know something? I don’t blame you at all. You see… The problem isn’t a technical one… Or a missing Twitter marketing tool… Or not having the right software… Here’s the real reason…
Sounds way out, doesn’t it? Yet its only when I bridge the mental gap between consumer and affiliate offers did my conversions skyrocket like crazy.
That’s why they call me the Puppet Master… Because I’m borderline obsessed with the persuasion aspects of marketing. And that’s how I get the kind of conversions other marketers envy.
My friends… Let me introduce you to a simple concept known as Frame-Of-Mind Marketing. The fundamentals can be articulated in one sentence:
Here’s what it means.
Your prospects are in different frames-of-minds at different points of their online experience.
For example… If they’re checking emails. They do it because they’re in work mode or they’re checking out the latest info either from a friend or a newsletter they subscribed to. That’s why commercial email open rates are plummeting across the world. It’s simply because the emailed person isn’t in a mood to buy.
On the flip side… E-commerce sites are doing roaring business after Black Friday and Cyber Monday… Why? Its because the prospect’s frame-of-mind is DEAL, DEAL, DEAL. They won’t stop until they buy something, anything.
In sharp contrast, when your prospect gets on social media sites like Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter… They’re there to connect and check out the latest viral videos and cool articles. In other words, they sure as heck ain’t thinking about purchasing your newfangled thingamajig.
The worst thing you can do in using Twitter for marketing is to send Tweets that link DIRECTLY to the sales page! That’s why people get turned off when they click through to yet another Clickbank site and send your account to a one-way trip down the Spammer’s blacklist.
If you want to do well on Twitter, your links MUST match your prospect’s Frame of Mind. Well, how do you do that?
Create landing pages that match the “Twitter favourites” your prospects both eagerly click through and retweet. These special pages are the backbone that my Twitter affiliate marketing business is built on. And they’re the SINGLE BIGGEST REASON whether you’ll make 17 sales or no sales at all.
You’ll get these exact same landing page templates that have fueled my affiliate income engine in my brand new product titled True Twitter Riches. It’s my top secret system of making affiliate marketing dollars on Twitter.
Imagine… Won’t it be great to send out a 22 second tweet and make enough commissions to have a nice Christmas holiday in some exotic locale? You’re only 3 seconds away from discovering one of the most surefire ways to make money on Twitter.
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ADMIT IT: Who here is actually successfully using Twitter for affiliate marketing? Who here is actually making a killing with every tweet they put out?
If you’re one of those who sheepishly put up their hands, don’t worry, because you’re not alone.
Frankly… Judging from the kind of terrible affiliate marketing examples plaguing the Tweetasphere, I don’t blame you.
It’s almost like Twitter’s ease-of-use and real-time function is both its biggest blessing and curse. Sending one tweet takes only 20 seconds or less. And making even tens of dollars from such minimal effort seems rather alluring. Yet the end result is a lot of noise and very little conversion. As a result, you get travesties like:
It really shows the level of cluelessness in the social media scene, doesn’t it?
I don’t mean to bash my fellow marketers perching on my high horse. Nosiree. After all, I myself was guilty of those sins once upon a time.
And yes, I didn’t exactly get rich using those despised tactics either.
I have since reformed. And I have now tested and tracked my wait to rapid Twitter profitability.
I must confess… I’m not making millions of dollars from using Twitter for affiliate marketing. There are FAR SUPERIOR ways to increasing your bottom line.
Yet done right… You can make a nice supplementary autopilot income on Twitter… Provided you know what to do…
I’ve been working on something that helps the average marketer become a Twitter Superaffiliate. After humiliating trail and error and intense testing and tracking, I have discovered a template for affiliate marketing on Twitter that’s both effective and profitable.
Remember, you could be one tweet away from fattening up your holiday earnings that you can use whatever way you please.
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