Inside the Secret Life of a Super Affiliate – Zac Johnson dot Com Let the Reign Begin

My good friend Joel Comm went live with the release of his latest book today, called “KaChing“. A few months back Joel Sent me a green big plastic button with a dollar sign on it, and when you push it, it makes a big “KaChing!” sound. This was for the pre-release of his KaChing book, and you can see the actual push button on the cover of his latest book.

Joel has pretty much been a mentor to many in the affiliate and internet marketing world. Having written many successful books already like the Adsense Code & Twitter Power, creating “The Next Internet Millionaire” and making a ton of money with the infamous iPhone Fart application, Joel has had is hands in every aspect of online marketing.

In his latest book KaChing, Joel talks about how to expand your business from being a daily headache and “job”, to creating a full online business that runs itself. No matter what profession you are in, if you are working for an hourly wage and killing yourself on a day to day basis, you are eventually going to wear out and top off on how much you can make. Turning your passion into profits is what Joel Comm is all about, and has been stressing for years.

With over 15 years of experience, Joel knows what works and what does. Using only what has worked in the past, Joel breaks the process down to five primary methods for building a business and making money online. While there are 8 chapters in the book that go into detail, a breakdown of the book and these five methods are shown below in simple, practical, duplicable step process.

* Defining your niche and turning it into success
* Creating and profiting from original content
* Creating and selling information products
* Becoming affiliates with web merchants
* Setting up membership sites
* Developing an online coaching program

Today is the official launch of Joel Comm’s KaChing and I just went over to Amazon.com to show how it’s doing in sales. It’s currently listed at 65 out of ALL BOOKS ON AMAZON! Right there in that one statement it shows the pure power and marketing behind Joel Comm.

Purchase your copy of Kaching today, or simply leave a comment (about Joel Comm or his new book) and you will be entered to win a free signed copy of the book by Joel Comm. The winner will be selected on July 31st, 2010.

Lebron James isn’t the only big name to hit Miami, Florida this year. IIR’s (Institute for International Research) Performance Marketing Expo will be holding their first event in September at the at the Eden Roc Renaissance in Miami Beach. There are several well known names on the keynote speakers list, including Michael Tchong, Kris Jones, Stephan Spencer and myself.

This will be the first time I’ve seen Michael Tchong speak at a conference since my very first affiliate marketing conference at Commission Junction University in 2000. Michael has always stuck out in my memory as an excellent speaker, along with being my first affiliate marketing keynote attended. If you can make it to Performance Marketing Expo, I would make sure not to miss Michael Tchong.

IIR’s Performance Marketing Expo is also running an interview series with each of the speakers at their event. My interview just went live a few days ago. I touch on a few topics on how affiliate marketing works, why affiliate networks are still the backbone of the industry and the importance of building a brand through blogging. Click here to listen to the free podcast.

If you are in the Miami area or planning to attend Performance Marketing Expo, be sure to leave a comment so we can meet up or say hello.

Performance Marketing Expo

Have you seen the new changes being made over at Google Images? If not, you should check it out. It’s actually pretty cool and more advanced than their previous setup. Google Images can be used for a lot of things… just to browser photos, look for relevant images for blog posts and many are using these images for ad campaigns like Facebook and more.

Improvements to the system include being able to view more images at one time, instead of having to continually click for the next page at the bottom of the results. Now Google Images displays 16 pages of content before having to click “more results”. You also have the option to scroll over the image to enlarge, or see what site is hosting the image.

Another change to Google Images that might not make a lot of marketers and web site owners happy, is when you click the image, you will be sent to the web site which the image is hosted on, but you will first see the site faded out and the image first. I would say this might not make web site owners that get a lot of traffic from Google Images unhappy because it’s another process to getting visitors to actually view your site. You can see this in the screen shot below.

As a user, I love the changes made to Google Images. The changes implemented have made it a lot easier to look through hundreds of images a lot faster, and when browsing a site after clicking on the image, you no longer have that annoying framed window on top.

Check out the new Google Images and let me know what you think.

Do you have what it takes to “Crush It!“? Gary Vaynerchuk does! I first met Gary at BlogWorld three years back in Las Vegas, then he was aired on Conan O’Brien that next night! Since then Gary has just exploded! It’s absolutely insane with the amount of exposure this guy is getting. From being a mastermind in the wine market, having billboards outside of stadiums, to having his own book deals, to his many TV appearances on shows like Mad Money with Jim Cramer, MTV, Dr. Oz and several times on FOX News, it’s just amazing. Gary is truly “Crushing It”, and making his way towards his goal of owning the NY Jets!

The following is my interview with with Gary, and from my Six Figure Affiliate Blogging ebook. You can download the full ebook for free at SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com, which includes over 130 pages of content and interviews with 25 highly successful affiliates and bloggers.

Interview with Gary Vaynerchuk

1.) Please tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in Belarus, in the former Soviet Union, and came to the US with my family in the late 1970s with basically nothing. I have two incredible parents that gifted me with amazing DNA that is responsible for everything I’ve been able to accomplish. I’m Director of Operations at Wine Library and winelibrary.com, host the video blog winelibrarytv.com, co-founded a consulting company called VaynerMedia with my brother AJ, and wrote the book Crush It!, which became a NY Times bestseller.

2.) When did you start blogging and how did you get into it?

In late 2005 I saw the Internet becoming more social, and saw video blogs like Ze Frank’s The Show and Rocketboom taking off. I had missed out on the whole blogging thing because I’m not really a writer, but I knew this would be the right platform for me. After the holiday rush, I started Wine Library TV in February of 2006 and never looked back.

3.) Besides financially, how has blogging helped your business and brand?

The show has brought a lot of attention to the business, but also to me. I started being invited to speak at conferences, and eventually to consult other personal brands and businesses.

4.) How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?

Affiliate was never the direction I wanted to head with WLTV. I could have made plenty of money with affiliate links to wine.com, but I went for a brand equity strategy instead of direct monetization.

5.) In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?

I wrote a lot about this in Crush It! As eyeballs continue to shift from print media to online platforms, there are billions of ad dollars up for grabs. Great bloggers that target a specific niche and have the chops stand to make plenty of money by selling ads.

6.) What would you recommend for a new blogger, that was only looking to blog for financial gain?

Make sure you are blogging about something you are passionate about. My litmus test is this: Can you come up with 50 blog topics to write about off the top of your head?

7.) Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?

I like to read TechCrunch and Mashable to keep up with all the latest developments.

8.) Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?

Right now I am really focused on building corkd.com, the wine social network which is becoming a big content play for wine related information.

* If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to download my free 130 page guide to “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging“.

Viagra, Dream Weight Loss Pills and anything else you could imagine… everything you can imagine, it’s out there, and it’s probably sitting in your spam folder right now. Do you really think you would be getting these types of emails for the past decade if they didn’t work? The honest truth is weight loss products, herbal supplements and pharmaceuticals is where the money is at.

The big spammers have been cashing in on these offers and mailings for years now, yet you don’t hear much about them getting caught or action taken against them. Instead, the recent focus has been on rebill offers and their fake testimonials and their relation to celebrity endorsements. The FTC is cracking down, but that doesn’t mean the flow of money in this market is slowing down, it will just continue to increase for those who are doing it right.

HealthConverter.com is an affiliate network that specializes in health and beauty products. Officially launched in 2009, but active since 2008, the majority of their products are based off the rebill concept, which might leave a bad taste in your mouth, but as long as these products and offers are portrayed correctly and don’t screw over the customer, they are actually legit. The rebill concept has been given a bad name with marketers pushing the likes of Oprah, Dr. Oz and Rachel Ray on products they have absolutely not association with, but the killer is how most of these fly by night companies would abuse the customer by rebilling them constantly before being able to cancel their free trial.

With that said, Health Converter has made a clear decision that they are in the health and beauty market for the long run, and doing what they can to keep everyone legitimate. It’s not only an affiliate at risk when using bad marketing tactics, but it falls back on the parent company as well. In a recent interview with Market Health owner Gary McNelley, Gary goes into details on how the FTC is cracking down hard on advertising tactics in this niche. Gary also recommends a law firm, and having your landing pages reviewed before going live. This is all to meet the standards of FTC and keep you (the affiliate), the advertiser and customer safe and happy.

Narrow Focus with Big Gains

We already covered how Health Converter works differently from other marketing companies, and tries to keep their affiliates and marketing efforts legit. For anyone promoting in the health and beauty niche, you should take a look at Health Converter. While many well known affiliate networks have a ton of offers to choose from in this area, Health Converter focuses only in health and beauty, and knows what works. The management of offers and financial handled by Health Converter can be broken down into the following categories.

- Tier 1 advertisers, such as Extenze, Hydroxatone, and Hydrolyze… these are all of the very well known products that you see advertised on tv.

- Tier 2 advertisers, which are lesser known products but still in high demand. These advertisers have to prepay directly to Health Converter for all leads. If prepaid funds are exhausted before the advertiser submits more funding, the offer is redirected to another product which is already prepaid.

- Affiliates and Networks; As mentioned, many networks have a numerous amount of health and beauty offers available, many of them being from Health Converter. You will find their offers on networks such as Neverblue, Copeac, Azoogle, Ads4Dough and more. High end “Big Pharma” (millions in ad spend) offers are also available within the Health Converter network, but on a private and accepted basis.

Why does all of this matter? Just look around at some networks over the past year. How many of them were thrown under the bus by fly by night companies paying out $50+ on a rebill offer, then not paying the networks. The networks paid out to the affiliates and got royally screwed, having to make up for the difference and even putting some networks out of business.

How to Effectively Make Money with Health & Beauty Offers

When I talked with Health Converter, it was important to discuss the best ways of promotion and how to get the best return on investment. As expected, it’s all about the pre-sell. Testimonials, review sites and “personal story” blogs are continually destroying the competition on conversion rates. You likely won’t see the killer numbers many did, back when the the free trial promotions just started, but there is still plenty of money to be made.

No need to point out any specific landing pages or urls, as you will still see these offers pushed on many major news, espn, social networks and high traffic entertainment sites. (basically any site with advertising on a cpm basic). Another huge method for promotion is PPV (pay per view) advertising. With the pre-sell landing pages on some of these offers converting so well, it’s easy enough to create a lander that pops under when visiting a site and the affiliate only has to pay pennies for each view. The high converting pre-sell lander, plus the high commission (usually $30-$45.. but up to $99.95) from free trial offers makes for a winning combination.

Keep in mind it’s not as simple as buying up as much traffic as you can for cheap, then throwing your lander up. It’s all about testing your lander, getting your pages in front of the right people and not buying crap traffic. If you would like more tips on creating high converting landers and getting heath and beauty offers in front of the right people, email my friend Justin at Health Converter and he’ll be more than happy to help you out.

Healthy & Beauty Vertical: Competition, Demand and Profits

With everything covered so far, it’s easy to see how many marketers might shy away from this market as it seems too volatile… but like most markets, that’s where the money is. The FTC has scared a lot of the competition away, but also leaving the door open for those remaining to succeed any more. Just a quick search on Google’s Adwords Tool shows nearly 500,000 searches a month for “Extenze”. That’s just for it’s direct name, think about the advertising opportunities when targeting relevant search terms, competitors and many of the other products available through Health Converter.

Another improvement that Health Converter has over the competition, is in their efforts to provide for the customer. Some free trial offers in the past were limited on what type of credit cards could be used to place an order. HC has offers that can accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express and even Discover card, while offering an easy cancellation process to the customer. This should open to a new market of customers, while improving conversions for affiliates. To top it off, all offers on Health Converter that support these payment processes, also have an unlimited cap for affiliate driving traffic. No more having to switch urls between offers and networks each day when you would hit your cap.

Health and Beauty offers available on their network pay in the $30-$45 range. As mentioned, most of these are on a free trial basis. Health Converter also makes weekly wire payments for any affiliates pushing $1,000 or more per week.

The bottom line is Health Converter is one of the big players in the health and beauty market. If you have any interest in breaking into this niche, worried about FTC guidelines, or even improving your current numbers, be sure to contact Justin, or simply sign up to their network at HealthConverter.com.