Affiliate Summit West Meet Market

Today was the first real big networking event for Affiliate Summit West. The Meet Market is made up of several different companies, each with their own tables. The Meet Market is a smaller version of the Exhibit Hall. This gives the opportunity for every one to meet after registration and for any companies who could not utilize the full exhibit hall area. Two years ago when the Meet Market was first introduced, I remember there were just a few tables, now the event is a big thing. There are currently around 2,700 registered attendees for Affiliate Summit West 2008… this should be exciting!

Since the Meet Market is located right outside the registration area, it’s a great opportunity to meet up with everyone attending the event. Here are a few pictures from who I’ve run into so far.

Longtime friends Shawn Collins and Rachel Honoway

BlogWorld CEO & Organizer Rick Calvert

Also met up with my Super Affiliate Panel partner Amit Mehta.

Official Affiliate Summit Blog Room Captain, Mark Wielgus.

Affiliate Summit Founders, Shawn Collins, a (Little Penguin) & Missy Ward.

Lastly, here is what a table looks like at the Affiliate Summit Meet Market. I’m pictured here with Dale from Things From Another World (tfaw.com). As you probably already know, I love anything relating to comics and marvel.TFAW’s booths are always loaded up with cool stuff and Dale always hooks me up with some goodies. They are always one of my favorite booths to visit! You can earn up to 14% of each sale, when you join the TFAW.com Affiliate Program.

Tonight I will be attending the MaxBounty Wine Cellar Party at the Rio, then heading over to the Shareasale Party at the Rio. Stay tuned for more pics and updates!

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Networking at Affiliate Summit West AffiliateDinner

Yesterday Reena and I arrived in Las Vegas for the start of Affiliate Summit West 2008. Once arriving at the Rio, we wee anxious to get to our room. I was hoping to get an upgrade, so they put me in a 1,600 ft suite! We went up to the room and it was like a flashback to the 80s! The size of the room was awesomely huge (but unnecessary), and it scaled the whole corner of the building. Unfortunately the bed and furniture were less than comfortable. We went back downstairs to to get another room, they then set us up with the same suite, but this time on the 38th floor. Quite frustrated, we just went to the VIP check-in and told them situation. We were finally issued a smaller renovated suite in their new tower… and everything is awesome now!

Now that we were all settled in, we were anxiously awaiting the Affiliate Dinner later that night. The guest of honor was “Brian Littleton” from Shareasale… so he was in for a roasting. In addition to taking several hits for his obsession with sweater vests, many of his close friends took time to celebrate and toast Brian, including a collection of funny videos from his staff and Shawn Collins and Missy Ward. The event was put together and hosted by Brook and Forest Schaaf. If was the first networking session for Affiliate Summit, so it was great to finally meet up with a few friends.

Brook awards Brian with “Affiliate Dinner Guest of Honor” Award

While at the Affiliate Dinner I was also able to meet up with Ian Fernando, Andrew Wee, the girls from NeverBlueAds and many more.

Myself, Ian Fernando and Andrew Wee

Next on the list is registering for Affiliate Summit, the Meet Market, then the awesome Shareasale party at the palms.

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Yahoo Success Center. $1.95 Shipping, then $59.90 a Month!

Are you aware of what type of programs or subscriptions you are currently promoting through affiliate networks… or a better question might be, do you even care? For some marketers (like myself), there is always a moral issue on what campaigns to promote, and which to stay away from. For other marketers, the bottom line is all that matters. I was reading through GoogleLady’s blog the other day, and noticed shes did a review on a new program called “Yahoo Success Center.” or “Search Success Center“… varies per network/landing page. Her post was mainly on the new program (which is available through a few affiliate networks), and how it’s setup to help you effectively setup a new business, using pay per click marketing through Yahoo. After reading GoogleLady’s review on the program, I wanted to look into’s details a bit further.

First off, the “Yahoo Success Center” (I won’t bother pushing this through an affiliate link, as I don’t recommend it) is currently available on at least two networks. One of them being NeverBlueAds, and the other is AzoogleAds. The program pays $28.50 per signup through NeverBlueAds and $27.74 through AzoogleAds. NeverBlueAds also shows that the offer is currently earning around .80 per click, across the network.

So what exactly is “lead” on this offer? For you to earn your $27+ commission, you simply need to get your traffic to submit their information and complete the 2nd-page with a credit card, which pays for the $1.95 S&H cost. Seems like a great deal for the customer, at first. Once you are a paid member of the site, “you will have immediate access to the Yahoo success center and will be able to begin setting up your new online business“. The only information shown on the main page is that you will receive a 14 day trial when you signup to the program. Once you fill out the main page with your user information, you are sent to the next page which asks for your billing information, and shows a $1.95 bill to cover the shipping and handling cost.

On the bottom of the 2nd signup page, if you are looking for it… you will see the following disclaimer/terms and conditions:

I have not personally signed up for this program, or went past the second signup page… but imagine how many people are signing up to this offer and not reading the fine print and expecting to only pay the $1.95 shipping, then getting nailed for $59.90 a month! I can tell you right now, “Yahoo Success Center” must be pulling in some decent conversion rates to pay $28.50 per 2nd page signup. The average signup only has to stay for one month for them to make a profit. This is a completely legitimate business, and if their backend / members area provides what they promise, then it may be a decent program. The site is also a listed Microsoft Certified Partner, for whatever that’s worth… it seems easy to get. However, I feel if this was the case, they wouldn’t have to hide the $59.90 a month billing so secretly.

A few days ago Mark from 45n5.com wrote a post called “Do You Promote Things You Would Recommend to Your Friends & Family to Run Away From?“. Basically his post was on the same topic of what I’m talking about now. There is a big difference between running advertisements on your blog or website vs. being a ppc master. When promoting through ppc marketing, you really have no branding and no one knows who you are (when pushing other sites/products). However, if you were to advertise or recommend a product like this on your blog, how would your readers feel about you afterwards? If your family wanted to try and make money online, would you recommend an offer like this? I’m not battling the offer… just the ethical issues behind how these companies pull in hundreds of members thinking they are only going to pay $1.95 for shipping… then start getting hit for $59.90 a month. Yes, it is the customer’s fault for not reading all of the fine print… but I would prefer to work and/or promote a company that doesn’t have to play with their member’s billing to make a decent earning.

When choosing an offer to promote, do you look into the program details before setting up a new campaign, or recommending it to your blog readers?

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Are You Ready for Affiliate Summit? It’s Here!

After months of anticipation and excitement, Affiliate Summit is nearly here. With over 2500+ attendees this time around, this will be the biggest Affiliate Summit yet. Even before the event has begun, excitement and frustration has ensued.. for everyone in the North East that is. Waking up this morning to a few inches of snow wasn’t too thrilling. Luckily for me, my flight is Saturday morning, so everything should be cleared up. Unfortunately for many others making their way to Las Vegas, delays and cancellations are just the start of their adventure to Affiliate Summit West 2008. Flight cancellations and travel aside, I can’t wait till Affiliate Summit finally kicks off!

I’ve got nearly 6 hours to burn on my flight from NJ to Las Vegas, so I will probably spend most of that time writing up some exciting blog posts. Over the next several days, I will also be providing full blog coverage from Affiliate Summit. Some areas that I will cover are the killer parties, networking sessions and exhibits area, which speakers I really enjoyed and any tips I come across that would benefit my readers. So in addition to my posts on the event, I also want to release a few non-Affiliate Summit posts for the blog as well. That’s where you come in! I still have another 10 hours or so before I leave to catch my plane, so start leaving comments or send me an email through the contact page on what you would like me to write about this upcoming week!

Once I return from Affiliate Summit, I will also have a lot of new features and updates to be excited about. I’ll also be releasing my new affiliate network and offers review web site. Once fully running, the site will be made up of hundreds of reviews on some of the best performing offers for you to make some extra money. All reviews will follow the same concept as my “CPA Spotlight” posts, but will be listed on their own affiliate directory site.

If you are attending Affiliate Summit for the first time, get ready… you are about to take a big step to bring your online business and networking to the next level, and I look forward to seeing you there! Make sure to attend my “Super Affiliate Strategies that Work” panel at 11:30am-12:30pm on Tuesday. In addition to myself, you will also get to see Amit Mehta, John Chow and Kris Jones in the same session. The second portion of this panel will be an open Q&A with the audience. How exciting!

Don’t forget, leave a comment or send me an email with what you’d like to see me write about over the next week on the blog!

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Insider Secrets to a Making a Million Dollar Web Site!

A few days ago I released my first post on “How I Made $860,538.38 PROFIT in 4 Months!“, along with the picture of my $306,373.24 check. Due to the massive exposure and questions generated from the post, I thought I’d bring you the second installment to How I Made $860,538.38 PROFIT in 4 Months! This time we will go with a Q&A theme.

What is the web site you made all this money with?
The site I was able to have so much success with is MySpaceNow.com. There is no programming on the site at all, and it’s made up of over 10,000 pages of content, such as images, myspace layouts and social networking applications/flash. Yes… you can imagine how long that took to put together. However, when you are seeing results, you just want to keep making your project bigger and better!

What is the current status of your site?
My myspace resource site is still running and still turning a decent amount of profit each month. The traffic is lower than it used to be, but that’s expected. I was one of the first to get into the “myspace resources” niche, and now it is more saturated than ever.

What is/was your site traffic?
I first started the site from scratch and with no traffic. The first method of advertising, were a few text links on a couple of my other sites. Next was to get the word out on MySpace and other social networks. Once the users started to grab content and link back to my site, it was golden. The high point for site traffic was around 185,000 uniques per day. Currently the site receives around 15,000-20,000 uniques per day. Yes, this is quite a drop… but as mentioned above, I haven’t focused on this site in over a year now.

Having Multiple Dedicated Dell Servers to Manage Traffic was a Must.

When was the last time you updated the site?
I’ve been quite busy with many other projects, so realistically, I haven’t touched or updated the site in nearly a year. Meanwhile the site still receives several thousands of visits per day, while also earning several thousands a month. My only maintenance is monthly servers fees, which are much lower than they were back when I was working on the site full time.

How did you make so much profit over costs?
The myspace site I created was a huge viral success. Once a few sites picked it up, the traffic was tremendous, and search engines were sending me a ton of traffic as well. Since I did not have to worry about marketing costs, I could focus on providing content, managing ad space, and making sure the site was always accessible. The main costs in running a site like this (outside of the hundreds of hours of time spent), are server costs. Over $100,000 was spent on shared hosting, buying new Dell servers and hiring a server management team to make sure everything was always running.

What were your advertising and hosting costs?
As mentioned, the site was pretty much all viral. After running the site for several months with no advertising costs, I decided to give Google Adwords a shot. I was able to target towards some pretty cheap traffic, since my Quality Score was super high, and this was a niche market that wasn’t oversaturated (yet) and click prices weren’t insanely high. Marketing through Google Adwords brought in over an additional MILLION clicks. Even after $27,721.89 in adwords cost, the site still had no problems clearing seven-figures. Hosting costs ranged per month from $300 (when first starting out), to up to $10,000 a month, before buying my own Dell servers and hosting myself.

I was able to generate over 1 MILLION clicks using Google Adwords!

What other ad networks did you use on the site?
In my last post, I focused on some of the big earners from the site, which were Yahoo Publisher Network, NeverBlueAds, CasaleMedia and ValueClick Media. Other earners on the site were InterClick (which is another cpm banner network), Miva (which provides screensaver/wallpaper downloads), Google Adsense (generated nearly six-figures in revenue), AuctionAds (I posted multiple times on my earnings with them), WidgetBucks (another new program, which I also posted earnings on)… along with a few other networks. All of these advertisers combined generated over seven-figures in revenue for the site… which clearly covered the hosting costs, making this a seven figure profitable site.

You made a lot with Yahoo, but what about Google Adsense?
Originally I had no expectations for the success of this site. I was providing a service and it exploded quickly. Once the traffic was flowing through the site, it was time to test different ad placements and to see what worked. Luckily, the Yahoo Publisher Program had come out (and accepted my site), just a few weeks after my site went live. I was originally running Google Adsense, then started running Yahoo Publisher Network instead. After comparing numbers, Yahoo was providing much better numbers. I would continually rotate advertisers on the site and see which performed best. While Yahoo earned nearly seven figures alone on the site, Google Adsense accounted for nearly six-figures in revenue as well.

Google Adsense in itself generated almost $100,000 in Extra Revenue.

Would you have sold your site if you had the chance?
The opportunity to sell this cash cow of a web site did come into play around the 7th or 8th month of it’s existence. I wrote a post about this a while ago, which was called “To Sell or Not to Sell“. While I was offered nearly a seven figure package deal for the site (more/less depending on performance), I’m still glad I never accepted their offer. The parent company that was interested, was purchasing up a bunch of Social Networking Resource & Entertainment sites… which they then all turned into crap sites. I also heard that this company screwed many of their “partners” on payments owed from their buyouts.

Why did you wait until now to post your check?
I’ve never been one to look for attention, or brag. The intention of posting my check was not to impress anyone, but to stress to everyone the possibilities before you. Yes, the check was received back in 2006. However, keep in mind… this blog is still less than a year old. I have literally spent the last year debating on whether or not I wanted to be put in the spotlight, if I was to post this check. But I decided to take the risk… my intention is the same as always, I want you to succeed, make money online and live the dream that us affiliates and ppc marketers are living.

Why didn’t you post your resource site in your original post?
The main reason why I didn’t like my resource site in my original post is because this is a blog, and it’s purpose is to keep people coming back and giving them more. A lot of people were leaving comments, asking what my site was. You were not being ignored… you were part of the process. Not only have I released my site information, but also how I promoted the site, my advertisers and actual earnings numbers.

Is this your only big and successful web site?
I’ve been making money online for over 11 years now, since I was 15… and have never had any other job. A one-hit-wonder I am not. Over the years I have adjusted to every market change there has been. I’ve done freebie sites, permission based email marketing, ran my own ad network along with my own network of entertainment sites. Was this site one of my biggest and fastest money makers? Yes! I saw an opportunity here and made the most of it. I am now focusing on several other different niche areas and projects.

Aren’t you worried people will copy your site idea now?
They say being copied is one of the highest forms of flattery… well, when you own a web site, and you’ve been copied… IT SUCKS… but, I’ve been copied plenty of times before. There is still plenty of money to be made in this market, but it’s also plenty saturated! You want to make a resource type site? I say “Go for it!”.

As mentioned before, I’ve been making money online for over a decade now, (since I was 15!) and have some close friends that advise me on what I should post and what I should not post on my blog. There are risks associated with everything. Some have warned me about giving away too much information. However, if I didn’t meet up with these people in the past, that took their time to help me along the way, I wouldn’t be where I am today… I only wish to do the same for you and all of my blog readers. Yes, it may be risky providing the amount of information that I do, taking risks and trying different things is how I got to where I am today. I’m willing to take that risk to benefit my blog readers.

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