Thad Roe

So, I’ve been up all night working and got a bug up my rear to share some quick thoughts that I felt would be helpful about how improve your effectiveness with affiliate marketing or internet marketing in general…

Self Observation is One of the Best Learning Tools You Have!

When I think back over the past year since I started affiliate marketing, I realize that pieces of the puzzle really started to come together…and still do…when I step back and carefully observe or retrace my own steps when I buy something online.

I really feel doing this regularly has made me more effective when I build new affiliate campaigns or improve existing ones….and even though I do this full time now…I am constantly learning and trying to improve.

I’d really encourage you to start doing the following if you aren’t already…

…the next time you purchase something online, sign up for something, or even just fill out a form for a free trial…carefully observe yourself and think about:

1. What steps did you take to get there?

2. What kind of search term did you start with…and what search did you end with?

3. What information did you expect to see when you searched that term?

4. Did you feel the page you ended up on was helpful? If so, why?

5. Were there any pages or sites where you immediately hit the back button? Again, if so, why?

6. Were there still questions unanswered on any of the pages or sites you visited?

7. What led you to your final decision?

I gotta tell you…making a habit of this has taught me soooo much every single time! I learned something new twice now in the past week just from observing my own online shopping habits.

Do this on a regular basis…watch other people do it…and I guarantee it will help you become a better marketer by allowing you to visualize things from your customers point of view.

Peace Out,

Thad

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Well, it’s been a while since I updated this sucker, but my good ole’ redneck marketer buddy Travis at www.bummarketingmethod.com showed my blog in a fantastic video he did today about Onlywire, which you can check out here:

Travis Sago’s OnlyWire Video

So I figured it’s a good time to do an update here, and it’s waaay past due anway.

Well, I’m happy to report that June 30 I was able to kick my $120K/yr day job in the nuts and do Internet Marketing full time thanks to the killer instruction and support I got at Wealthy Affiliate, run by Carson and Kyle, two amazingly helpful and honest guys. It’s where I met Travis too, whose guidance also was VERY key in helping me ditch my job.

I have to say the freedom of being an affiliate marketer and running your own business from home is pretty damn sweet! I ain’t nobody’s bitch no mo.

For anyone reading this who wants to quit their job too….pleease don’t feel like there is some big underground secret to affiliate marketing, or that you have to be incredibly smart. I can tell you firsthand that’s just not the case at all. I’m not that smart and don’t feel like I know any major secrets. But I will tell you what I feel are the major ingredients to being successful at affiliate marketing and what has helped me:

1. Effort! - Affiliate marketing is not a get rich overnight deal. It’s a skill that you learn just like everything else…through learning, doing, failing, and getting back up to learn from your mistakes and try again.

2. Understanding People - Basically, if you’re gonna sell shit to people, you have to understand them, and understand them well. This is really just a matter of doing good research, studying, and listening to your target audience. Go to places like forums where they hang out before you try and market to them…understand what they really want and why.

3. Sell Stuff People Already Want to Buy - Stick with hot markets, hungry markets…where people are desperate or ravenous. The thing is, everything people do is to either avoid paid or gain pleasure. Imagine a spectrum where at either end there is extreme pain or extreme pleasure. Target people who are close to either end of that spectrum (without crossing over into illegal products). If you’re marketing something like…I don’t know…wicker baskets, there’s not a lot of passion or motivation going on there and people are just indifferent about that stuff. Not that you can’t promote wicket baskets profitably…it’s just much more difficult.

4. Focus - Pick one method of promoting something and learn to do it WELL! For me it’s been Pay per click. For others, maybe it’s SEO. But just pick something and get really good at it. This industry is full of distractions and it’s tempting to buy one crappy ebook after another promising you the fast track to success….don’t fall for it!

5. Think BIG - Affiliate marketing has HUGE potential…even for the little guy like me. When I first started I used to feel like I couldn’t find anything to market, now I don’t have enough hours in the day and have trouble deciding what i want to promote next. Also, set BIG goals for yourself….it really does make a difference and expands your thinking as you grow your business.

6. Don’t Give Up! - I see a ton of people who decide they’ll give Affiliate Marketing a try. They’ll join a great site like Wealthy Affiliate, and proceed to just bail on the whole thing after they try a couple things and fall flat. No one gets good at anything if they just give up at the first sign of trouble or a few little obstacles.

Read this funny post by Amit at SuperAffiliateMindset to see what I’m talking about: Why Some People Will Never Succeed at Affiliate Marketing.

And along with not giving up, a good way to put things in perspective is to compare starting an affiliate business to starting a traditional brick and mortar business. Think of all the time, sweat, and money someone puts into opening just about any other kind of business! By comparison, affiliate marketing is the easiest thing in the world. Also, the leverage and potential is so massive…what other sales or marketing industry can you promote just about anything, at any time, to people all around the world?…it’s truly amazing when you think about it!

Anyway, that’s probably enough rambling for now…I’ll try to update things a little more often, since I have plenty of free time on my hands now…well, theoretically…LOL

Peace Out,

Thad

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Sooo, it’s been quite a while since I posted here. Been a little busy.

Thought I would make a post about the Google Adwords Slap today, which heavily relates to overcoming obstacles as an Internet Marketer.

So anyway….another Google bitchslap today. Although part of the slap people are feeling may be a technical error on Google’s part, I’m loving it when this stuff happens. Competitors throw their hands up in the air, say “I f*&king hate Google”….I’m out.

To me, overcoming obstacles and adaptation are essential business traits. When you find yourself up against a boulder….dig in and find out how to cope with the problem….or even find ways to take advantage of it.

With Google slaps, anyone willing to roll up their sleeves and make adjustments, is going to be far ahead in the long run. The thing about it is, as I’ve clearly learned at Wealthy Affiliate relevancy sells online….and Google is always trying to produce more relevant results, both for search engine results and ads. They are always forcing us to be better marketers if we’re willing to adapt.

Something similar happened recently in one of the industries I’m promoting….kind of a slap of sorts. Many affiliates and marketers threw in the towel, but I am sticking it out and definitely seeing the benefits.

So if you are serious about being in business for yourself…..always take the attitude that you will open a big ole can of whoop ass on anything that stands in your way!

Thad

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Wealthy Affiliate Video Tour

I feel I owe most of my profitability breakthrough with affiliate marketing to the fact that I joined Wealthy Affiliate back in August. It was such an amazing turnaround for me after signing up and getting involved in the forums. Being somewhat new to affiliate marketing, the advice I personally got from Kyle and Carson and everyone else at Wealthy Affiliate has really been second to none in getting help with building my business.

Above anything else, it’s soooo priceless to have a place where I can go to every single day and use it as my affiliate marketing “lifeline”. Reading all the affiliate books in the world won’t give me that kind of help, especially when I’m feeling a bit stuck and don’t know what to do.

People are often skeptical of joining a new support program for affiliate marking as they have fears of getting ripped off or getting into a scam. I can personally testify that Wealthy Affiliate is definitely different and is not just another guru site preying on people to get their money….but it’s hard for any non-members to really see that before signing up.

That’s why I decided to log in under my own account and record my own “sneak preview” video of Wealthy Affiliate; so you can have a look for yourself and see the real value you can get as an affiliate marketer…..

Click Here to view the Wealthy Affiliate Video Preview

Thad

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I’ve been waaay behind the 8 ball on tracking my campaigns properly. I’ve been doing some all along, but not throroughly. What I’ve learned through the tracking that I’ve done though, is that it’s such an important key to boosting your profits.

In just a few days of setting up some more comprehensive tracking, I’ve already seen a jump in conversions by almost 200%. It only took me a couple days to realize where I was missing opportunities and to adapt. In a couple cases, it was just a matter of putting some additional links in other areas of my sites.

I know from now on I will be much more religious about tracking my stuff. It’s so important to know where your visitors are going on your site and to know where your sales are coming from. If you know that information, it’s not too difficult to take a breakeven or even losing campaign and turn it into a profitable one.

Thad

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There’s one thing I’ve noticed which is a huge mistake by most new affiliate marketers out there…and I made this same mistake myself at first. It’s failing to target people in the late stages of the buying cycle. Too often, new marketers will target keywords and build ads around general browsing or research terms.

If you notice one thing that most successful internet marketers do, they always go after people who are almost ready to buy and have cash in hand. I see this as a common theme over and over again with expert marketers. They are capturing people late in the buying cycle. If you are paying for clicks on Google, Yahoo, or wherever, you want to make those clicks count. We all want traffic, but if you aren’t going to get conversions out of it, that is money down the drain.

Often times, new marketers will target very general keywords out of desperation to get more traffic. This is a death sentence. You really want to make sure you are going after the keywords where people are looking for something very specific. Terms where they are likely to click on your ad and think “damn, this is exactly what I was looking for”. Bidding on terms like “diamond jewelry” is a complete waste. A much better term would be more along the lines of “1 ct diamond platinum ring”…or even more specific than that. Individually, those terms are not going to get huge amounts of traffic, but when you build many ads relevant to those very specific terms, the traffic will add up…and so will the conversions.

Get people when they are ready to buy. Think about your own search habits when you are ready to whip out your credit card…you will be much better off.

Thad

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If you run pay per click ads on Google, you may have noticed some problems with your keywords the last few days. Google went through another round of changes in their relevancy algorithm which caused a lot of keywords to go inactive.

I love when things like this happen because it means that many advertisers will just get frustrated with Google and go away. I try to look at things in a positive light when changes happen. I always take the attitude of adapting to the changes. The more difficult it becomes for other marketers to do business, I can take advantage of it by just adapting to the changes while they sit around pissed off. This is something that’s true for any business really….do what your competitors are not willing to do.

So what do you do with the new changes that Google implemented? Quite simply…stop using direct affiliate links or single landing pages and start building mini-sites with pages that are linked together. The more original and relevant content you have with just a handful of relevant pages will help tremendously with Google. If your domain has already been flagged as being of poor quality or having a poor user experience, you may want to consider getting a fresh domain name or creating a subdomain.

Again, the more you do the extra work to adapt to changes like this, the more you will be able to get a leg up on your competitors.

Thad

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Mike Filsamine just launched a viral marketing campaign with a free report titled “The Death of Internet Marketing”. You may have seen a few emails yourself with people trying to get you to download this.

What is it all about?

First of all, even though he pays people $1-$2 for referring people to download the link, I’m not even going to post a link here because I don’t want to participate. I won’t promote things that I don’t believe are of value to most new or intermediate marketers out there.

This report is really just for internet marketers who are into promoting other internet marketing products and the whole oversaturation of so-called gurus out there. As far as that goes, the report is spot on. He is also correct about some other things like adapting to the changes and evolution of internet marketing in the “make money” arena, but that is really all I got out of the report.

In regards to affiliate marketing in other major industries besides the “make money” crowd, internet marketing is far from dead. This is the main reason I don’t think Filsamine’s report is valuable to most internet marketers out there, especially new ones. If you are new to internet marketing, the last thing you should be doing IMO is selling products to other internet marketers or getting very involved in the make money market. It’s just a huge uphill battle and requires a lot of skill. Not that you can’t do it, but it requires far more expertise than most new internet marketers have. The thing is, there are many many HUGE markets out there that make the “make money” market look like an anthill.

This is the problem with most affiliate marketing products, guides, and gurus out there. Most of the time, the only thing they really teach you how to do is to go out and market their own product.

My advice if you are fairly new to affiliate marketing, just stick to the time old advice of finding a hungry market, find out what they are hungry for, and give it to them. And stick to other industries besides the “make money” market. Do a little research out there…you’ll find there are many fantastic opportunities out there to make money in niches where the market is very hungry. Check out trends on Google trends and Technorati…look for problems people are having in the niches your are researching. Find people that are just dying to find a solution to a problem or get their hands on new information related to their hobby.

The last thing I will say is to not get sucked in by all the gurus out there. Don’t let your desire to make money online suck you into every new “make money” product out there. If you have chosen to work on affiliate marketing, stick with it and really dig into some niche research. I see so many people who try something for a couple weeks and if they are not getting rich right away, they move on and spend more money on another guru’s guide on getting rich overnight.

Making money online is not difficult, but it does take work and you will not get rich overnight. Find a proven way of making money that you enjoy and stay focused on it.

Thad

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Since I’ve started to actually generate profits with Affiliate Marketing, I can easily zero in on a few key concepts that anyone just getting started should take note of. I would not be making a dime without following these tips:

1. Research, research, research. Most of your time should be spent in this stage before trying anything. You need to identify a niche market that is hungry, find out what they are hungry for, and give it to them. You can’t do this without adequate research on your target market. Do your research before picking a product to market.

2. Stay small and ultra targeted when testing a new market. Everyone wants tons of traffic but affiliate marketing is about conversions. First test out the target market in a small way to see if you are getting conversions, then expand from there. It’s much easier to track and test a small campaign with a few keywords than to just push out a large campaign all at once.

3. Provide searchers with value. Think about your role as an affiliate marketer. The merchant is relying on you to bring customers to their site. If you are not providing some value along the way, why are you even there? You have to pre-sell the product in order to get any kind of decent conversion rate to be profitable. The value you add could be anything from a review, to a price comparison, to a free guide which explains how to use the product. The bottom line is to help people find what they are looking for and how to find a solution to their problems.
4. Put yourself in the shoes of the potential customer. Really stop to think about what process you would be going through if you were searching onlin to find a product or solution. Visualize yourself as that person and structure your campaign around that to really hit the hot buttons.

5. Learn to build landing pages. Not only does that help with making sure Google sees your ad as relevant to the keywords you are advertising under, customizing your own landing page is where you provide value. A review, a comparison, or information on how a particular product would help solve a problem. If you just direct link to a particular merchant, your marketing options are fairly limited. For example, say you think product X would be great for new mothers, but it’s unlikely they would be searching for that product. Your landing page is the bridge to show new mothers how product X can help them solve a problem.

6. Learn the ins and outs of the major Pay Per Click services like Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN. These networks should be your bread and butter and convert very well. However, use them the wrong way and you will waste a ton of money on advertising. As an affiliate marketer getting started, Google Adwords is really the best place to get things going. The best guide I’ve found to master the Adwords system is Beating Adwords. You will learn how to strucure your ads properly, bid on targeted keywords, and pay far less per click than your competitors do.
7. Find the hot markets. If you are starting out, it will be much easier to sell water to a man dying of thirst than to sell him a fur coat. Finding desperate buyers in hot markets will get things going for you much faster. However, when going after hot markets, make sure you stay ultra targeted.

8. Avoid bidding on keywords that are too general. If you find a hot topic like search engine optimization and are trying to sell seo software, bidding on general keywords like “seo” is going to send back to your day job in a hurry. You have to get more specific and bid on keywords where people are further along in the buying cycle, like “buy seo software”.

9. Do what other marketers are not willing to do. You have to be a better marketer than the next guy. Do your research and put in the extra work to do things like write an article on the topic, buy the product yourself and make a video of how you use it yourself, create a free downloadable eBook, etc.

10. Leverage the power of email marketing. If you are not capturing your visitors email address, you are throwing away huge amounts of money. Most people do not buy on the first visit. Research shows it takes between 5-7 contacts before a person makes a purchase. Not only that, you have the lifetime visitor value. The ability to contact someone for free over and over again has incredible power to make you very profitable. The best guide I would recommend to learn how to leverage the power of email marketing is called Inside the List.

Following these tips will save you a lot of time and money and will get you on your way to profits in a much shorter period of time. Don’t make the same mistakes I made when you are just getting started.

Thad

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Over the past year, I’ve been searching for ways to break away from being employed. Well, I guess that search has been going on longer than that, but it’s really just been this past year that I’ve begun to take some real action. I had been waiting too many years to come up with that one big idea that would make me rich, meanwhile passing up many small opportunities to generate income on my own. Ultimately, I decided that I needed to start doing something, anything, to start becoming more independent with respect to my time and income.

I burned through a bunch of ideas like eBay and so forth. I won’t bore you with the details but I finally decided to pursue Affiliate Marketing as a way to start generating passive income. It really seemed like the best way for me to start making money on my own in a fairly short amount of time. Also, the opportunities to diversify and spin off multiple income streams in virtually unlimited with affiliate marketing.

I started to take action and dig into affiliate marketing back in July. It was a bit of a struggle at first and I had a big learning curve technology wise. I spent a lot of time just figuring out all the mechanics and learning how to build web pages. Affiliate marketing is definitely not as easy as most make it out to be, you definitely have to put a lot of effort into it. It’s not just slapping up some ads on Google and waiting for the cash to come in. However, once you have the key concepts down, it’s not that hard….but you have to stick with it and learn from others who are successful.

Since I started, I have built up a passive income of around $2000/mo since July. This really started to come around to a profitable level in September and October and now I am adding and building it up every day. I really credit most of this success to joining Wealthy Affiliate. The help and resources provided there are pure gold and it’s an amazing community of both new and experienced marketers.

I still have a lot of learning to do but I now feel armed with all the core essentials to keep cranking out profitable campaigns. Don’t underestimate the importance of learning from other experienced marketers.

Thad

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