Bankruptcy to Millionaire

Traffic Secrets review SUPDATE August 11 2008: I have received my copy in the mail. I am working my way through all the DVDs. Then I will give my full and complete thoughts on the product. But as of right now. I’m thoroughly impressed. Thevideos are complete, clear, and informative. Getting through more than 1 a day is tough, because there is SO much information in each CD to be absorbed. The videos play in a Flash player, so they can’t be ripped to MP3’s (at least not in a way that I’m familiar with). So that’s a disadvantage to those looking to listen on the go.

More in the coming days…

As you probably have no doubt heard Traffic Secrets has been released yesterday. To much avail. I’m sure this was a HUGE launch for John Reese and his newly founded Income.com.

I’m always skeptical of large intenet marketing products however that offer “traffic” in an industry that is every changing–how long are these “secrets” going to last. However, since I was fairly impressed with Traffic Secrets 1.0 several years ag, I would at educate myself on the second version of the software.

John Reese is a very respected member of the internet marketing community (minus his whole blugrush debacle… but they can’t all be winners right?). And he’s made TONS of money in the internet arena. So he at least knows his stuff. But how much of this stuff does he share in Traffic Secrets 2.0?

Well, when I saw the pre-launch emails and videos, I was expecting a pretty thorough course, for around the same price that Traffic Secrets 1 sold for ($997 I believe). And at that price, there was little (read: no) chance that I was going to buy it.

But then yesterday as of launch time, I found out it retails for just $397 For:

• 12 Interactive CD’s covering everything from Viral Videos, Adwords Secrets to SEO Secrets, and Content Creation, and tons more. It’ll probably take forever to get through them all.
• A 377 Page Training Guide (that’s not small haha)
• Several “Blueprints” to help out as well
• And something he claims to be a “Step-by-Step” action tracker to success

All in all the New Traffic Secrets comes with a ton of content for a pretty darn good price (considering it was less than HALF The original Traffic Secrets). So I broke down, whipped out the credit card and am having it delivered.

As soon as I get it, I’ll dive right in, and give a full review of all my impressions.

But the fact remains, the course is probably a darn good bargain (even if you just get a couple of secrets out of it that help you grow even a small portion of your business, it’ll end up paying for itself) AND If for some reason I don’t like it. Ship I can ship it back for a full refund.

This means I have 0 risk to at least check it out. And it might just give me the tips and motivation to push me over the edge and start making some real money. Maybe it will do the same for you.

If you’ve been thinking about it, or if you’re just now hearing about it. You might as well at least give the letter a quick read and see if it’s for you. Even if you only think it might be, it’s probably worth a shot, as there is 100% guarantee.

Click Here To Read More About or Buy Traffic Secrets 2.0

I know many of you may have been wondering what in the hell is going on with B2M…

Because frankly, I haven’t posted much in the last month. So did I give up, am I not going to become a millionaire in 4 years?

Frankly, I quit blogging daily… because I wanted to focus on making REAL money.

I’m building Tacoma Downtown, my local niche blog. Which is proving to be more work than I ever imagined, I’m also DOMINATING so affiliate marketing programs. I am scaling out some huge tests, and am gearing up to make a lot of money.

I have learned so much that I am going to share with you that you can start learning some AMAZING tools to use with your AM or other marketing endeavors.

I will be gearing up several posts in the next week, so make sure to subscribe and check back often. You won’t be disappointed.

Until then here some suggested reading:

www.ericmitz.com/experiment

And unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve heard about Gyutae Park’s Internet Marketing Contest if you haven’t entered yet. I suggested you to. With over a $12,000 cash and prize pool, with more added what seems like daily. You’ll want a shot at some of these prizes.

Ok so. No. I have not fallen off the earth. Nor, have I fallen off the edge of the blogosphere. I have just been engulfed in a number of projects. The least of which is affiliate marketing.

First off, I’d like to give a big congrats to Eric at the $1000 Affiliate Experiment who earned $1000 affiliate marketing just 3 months after starting. If you’re looking to make money with BANS or PPC marketing. I suggest you give his blog a read, because he’s doing it everyday.

What in the hell have I been up to? Well, I’m putting one of the most complex affiliate programs I have ever done.

I found a niche that other’s are converting in. And then I found targeted keywords that NO ONE is bidding on (heh! Sorry, I’m not tellin’ quite yet…). I found out those key words are getting thousands of searches each per day. So the last two weeks I have spent building an optimizing my landing page, getting ready for me to scale.

I have been spending a few bucks everyday on PPC ads on adwords and Yahoo! Testing out the traffic.

As of right now, I have not had any conversions. However, I have been able to double my initial CTR on my ads, and I have been about to take my landing page from a 10% CTR to over 50%.

It has been one HELL of a learning experience. It’s exhausting. Exciting. And another “ex” word that I don’t even know.

I have been spending every night after hours in my office; tweaking, building, testing, changing. I must say I am learning a ton. I am confident that this offer, once structured correctly is going to convert very well and start making a good (hopefully GREAT) income. It is scaleable beyond belief. It’s not out of the question that I’ll have over 1,000 landing pages, if it starts converting for me.

I am doing everything I know that I can to push myself for success. Are you pushing yourself on a daily basis? Or do you just surf and read the web and pretend your productive?

Yesterday was a great day. As I’ve mentioned before I’m concentrating most of my efforts into my offline business for the next two weeks. This is to gain more time to put into my affiliate marketing efforts–as I’ll be making more money working only 8 hours a week, as I currently am working 40 hours a week. That leaves 32 more working hours to put in optimizing my campaigns.

But I just had one of the greatest experience with an affiliate network I’ve had yet. And I suggest that if you are getting started in affiliate

Read more »

Ok, well the moment of truth is here. These are the results from my Two Week Cash Challenge:

(I didn’t realize the numbers were so bad. I guess I wasn’t tracking as well as I should have. This is a true confession.)

Adwords Statistics

30,000 Impressions

464 Clicks

1.52% Overall CTR

$132.55 (*cringe*) cost

Landing Page Statistics:

46 Initial Opt-Ins

20 Confirmed Double Opt-Ins

Clickbank Statistics:

251 Clicks To The Product Sales Page

1 Sale (+24.55)

Total Two Week Cash Challenge Results:

20 newsletter subscribers

-$108.00

There you have it. My confession. I’m not buttering things up here. I did NOT meet my expectations, or my financial goal. Some may look at this as a failure. I do not. It was a great learning experience for me. I know many areas where I went wrong, and what I can do better next time.

What went wrong?

There were a number of things I did wrong. I did not optimize my ad groups enough. I just broke them down in to basic categories. This was a small issue, but it did effect my quality score.

My biggest issue was:

I did not optimize/split-test my landing page/opt-in form. Looking at my statistics now, I realize how truly terrible they were!!! It started out great in the first two days, and after that I kind of ignored that number. This was a huge mistake! I shoud have paused my campaign as soon as I noticed I wasn’t over 50% and started optizing the landing page.

If you are starting in affiliate marketing. DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. Constantly track your numbers.

Which has inspired me for my next challege. Stay tuned tomorrow. I am going to challenge myself, and YOU. If you can keep up, there is something in it for you.

If you challenged yourself, what were your results?

Ok, the January 28th deadline is looming for my $100 in one day profit.

I must say, I’m slightly disappointed in my results thus far. I am getting decent traffic, and decent opt-ins. (At about 5 opt-ins per day, at a cost of about $3 a day in advertising). I’m not doing anything major (I don’t have an unlimited budget).

But I am going to kick it up a notch. I am going to start looking for some free traffic (forums. Social media. Etc.) sources to pitch me free eBook. This will hopefully lead to a blow out sale that I am going to offer on the 27th for 24 hours to all of my opt-ins. I hope this leads to the $100 profit.

This blog is short, because I’m concentrating on taking action. What are you doing?

How would you like to discover exactly how I made money LAST NIGHT, WHILE I WAS SLEEPING?

Just three days after I threw down the challenge to ALL of my readers (it’s not too late to take part! Take action now!) I have been seen RESULTS. Yes, you read the right. CASH IN MY POCKET.

Am I going to tell you what I sold? No. Am I going to show you the eBook I’m using to promote it? No.

Not yet at least… affiliate marketing is a HIGHLY competitive field, and if I find a successful nice, I just CAN’T afford to give it up (and risk someone copying me). But what I am going to do is tell you what I did, to find success.

First, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m taking MASSIVE ACTION. And conditioning myself for success.

I was working on my projects after I got off of work from my “real job”. I worked until about 10 pm, writing a sales letter, setting up auto responders, etc. I created a long list of To Do’s in order of priority, and just got to it. I told myself I would NOT leave until what I got done what I needed to get done. In this case, it was a fully functioning site, with a download page, auto responder, opt-in form, etc.

(I’ll provide you with my resources for these items soon.)

So I got it up and running, and I woke up this morning to the following stats of my niche site.

(Note: I’m testing 4 out of about 100 ad groups. So there is HUGE room for expansion if the averages play out.)

I woke up to the following amazing results from 10 PM yesterday - 11 am Today:

• 28 click throughs on adwords ads. @ 1.9% CTR on my adwords ads (I’m paying LESS THAN $0.40 for each click!).
• 9 Email Opt-Ins to receive the newsletter, and free eBook.
• 1 Email Testimonial praising the eBook.
• 1 $24.55 commission (sale)!

So not only do I have a profit of about $19, I also have a start of a mailing list that I can promote niche products to!

I can’t wait to give a further update on all of the techniques I’m going to use to promote via email, and eventually snail mail. So make sure to subscribe to my RSS so you get all of these juicy details!

I can taste my first $100 day already! Are you head toward your goals, or away from them? If not toward why not? Challenge yourself for success!

- Tevin

P.S. If you don’t already, make sure you check out a GREAT AFFILIATE MARKETING Blog: UberAffiliate.

(Make sure to read this entire post, to get in on the challenge that will change your life.)

*cue fireworks* *cue marching band playing John Phillip Susa*

Well it’s finally here. Mark it in the history book, www.BankruptcyToMillionaire.com has hit the 3 Month Milestone!

With 62 63 Posts, 113 comments, and over 300 unique visitors a day. I am THRILLED. This blog has grown faster than I would have ever imagined. This is not a blog that I’m trying to get rich with, or trying to establish myself as the end-all know-all expert of everything.

It’s about my growth, and experiences that will lead me to my ultimate financial freedom. I am thrilled to hear the comments from you all, that talk about how you are becoming inspired to take MORE ACTION and to accomplish more, more often. Good work! Lets get there together!

I Challenge You To Change Your Life.

Lets face it. There are a lot of damn “Money Bloggers” out there. Some blogging about how to make money online (some actually do, most really don’t). Some blogging about how they are TRYING to make money online (which is only part of what I’m trying to accomplish here). But here’s the thing. Other than blogging about things. What in the hell are you doing to try and make some money?

I know I’m “trying” things. But as one famous puppet once said: “There is no try. Only do.” . And with that spirit in mind. Here’s the simple challenge:

Two Week Challenge For Cash!

“Do ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING in your power to reach your goal by 11:59 PM January 28th 2008.”

That’s the whole challenge. Now if you’re trying to make money online, you can either choose to embrace this challenge and put your destiny in your hands, you may choose to accept that your Destiny is in YOUR HANDS. You control your outcome. Or you may say to yourself like you always do:

“Oh yeah, I really need to do that. That’s a good idea. I’m definitely going to think about doing something like that myself someday.”

But here’s the sad reality (and I know this to be true. Because I said this to myself every time I had/read/thought of a good idea that I really knew I should take action on, but never did) is that you are NEVER going to take action with that attitude. If you always have a reason to not take action now, then when?

NOW is the ONLY time to take action.

So now I must set a goal. (In addition to write on this blog my goals. I am writing them BY HAND, ON PAPER, and posting them in front my computer. This way I KNOW exactly what I am shooting for every step of the way.)

My goal is to by the end of January the 28th to have had my first $100 day. That’s right: I WILL make $100 IN PROFIT by January the 28th.

Tonight is going to be spent researching the most effective and quickest ways I can implement to start making some money. Ideas I have:

• Find affiliate offer
  • PPC Marketing (Not working the way am doing it right now.)
  • Free Traffic?
    • Craigs Lists
    • Ebay
    • Social Networking?
      • Myspace
      • Facebook
      • Friendster?

• Proxy Websites
  • How are they done?
  • Can they still make money?
• Niche Blog Network
  
  • Travel
  • Wii
  • Ebay
  • Monetization?
    • Adsense
    • Affiliate offers?

• B2M
  • Can it be monetized?
  • Do I want to?

There you have it. That’s a general outline of where my mind is at. With massive SIMULTANEOUS action on one, or ALL of these things reaching $100 in twenty four hours should not be all the difficult with some thought.

Now, YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO! Just go do it. I’ll see you in two weeks.

- Tevin

P.S. Post your comments if you’re taking me up on your challenge. What are your goals? If you wrote a blog on what you’re taking action on RIGHT NOW leave a link. Just do it, or be left in the dust. Good luck everyone.

Ok this is the 3rd post in a series. To catch up please read these two first:

How I Accidently Made $88.50 with First Try On Online Affiliate Marketing

Inside: Uncovered Affiliate Secrets The Big Guys Don’t Want You To Know…

Caught up? Good. Now we’ll deal with the final portion. All the EFF UPS I made in this short but profitable campaign. These are mistakes I WILL NOT make again. A mistakes you should not make.

*note: pay close attention to the end of this post to learn how you can get 30 FULL DAYS of advertising on your site, for just $1!*

Mistake #1 - Always Pay Close Attention

Obviously my first mistake was setting up a campaign and not following it. If you ever set up a PPC campaign you should watch it like a hawk. How much are you spending a day? Is it converting? If I had been paying attention on a daily basis, I would have seen that I should have increased my $10/day budget, and would have made MORE SALES before I got “disallowed”.

Mistake #2 - Not enough research

Because I was not thinking through this campaign (I did it on a whim). I did not do enough keyword research. If I had. I would have had a TON more than just 2 converting keywords. I would have came up with many more search terms that would lead to people wanting to buy holiday cards, I would obviously make more money in a shorter amount of time.

Mistake # 3 No Testing

I did not split test the ads. I know from previous testing of clickbank, and some of my own websites. That I should capitalize the first letter of each word of the URL and ad the appearance of a subfolder. But I did NOT test that I should have:

• Headlines
• Copy
• Offer
• Display URLs (I’m testing this right now in my current campaign)

Google adwords makes testing INCREDIBLY EASY. So you should ALWAYS utilize split testing.

IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER WHEN SPLIT TESTING:

Only test one element at a time! Meaning: If you’re testing your headline, make sure everything else on your ad exactly the same. This way you know which one is better. Then once you pick which one is better. Change one more thing. Until you get completely optimized ads.

Please let me know if you have any questions on optimizing/split testing ads.

P.S. If you’d like to advertise on my blog for $6 through the end of March. I have only one spot left. Also, if you tip me $1 on the Scratch Back widget you’ll receive a text link ad for $1 for a full 30 days! Advertising for less that $0.03 a day!? You have to be kidding me that widget should be full by tomorrow!

*note there are ZERO affiliate links in this post*
this post is a follow up to How I Accidently Made $88.50 with First Try On Online Affiliate Marketing

I am going to uncover the secrets that many affiliate marketers do not EVER reveal. I’m going reveal my successful adwords campaign keywords. I’m going to show you EXACTLY how I achieved a 6.7% CTR. I am going to reveal the offer, and the exact method I used to turn a profit using Online Affiliate Marketing. Then I’m going to reveal MY COSTLY MISTAKES so you don’t make them!

You can take these tips today, and implement them TODAY to improve your already existing PPC affiliate campaigns. Or start a new one–and start making money tomorrow.

Step One - Find a Hot Niche

This one was easy. Christmas time. I wanted to find a Christmas offer. So I logged onto my newly opened CJ.com account.

Step Two - Find a Hot Offer to Promote in the Hot Niche

After about 15 minute of research if found Vistaprint.com was offering 50% off select items and free shipping on Holiday Cards. Commissions are 16-20% of each sale and 3.50-5.00 for each free claimed. Looked good to me to test.

Step Three - Start Adwords Campaign - Writing Your Ads (with your search terms in mind).

Ok, so I started my campaign. The offer was obviously a hot selling point, 50% and free shipping. So that should go in the ad. My ad looked like this:

click photo to enlarge

I knew my keywords would play around the “discount christmas card” search phrase (and variations on it. More on search terms in a second). So that was my headline, I didn’t want people to think they were free. But if they click on something that says “discount” they are likely to be looking to purchase something.

The ad accomplishes more than that. They also see that they can get them “LAST MINUTE” with “FREE SHIPPING”. This ad is chock full of features.

There is One More VERY important part of this ad to recognize.

Notice the URL. I’ve done numerous testing on other PPC ads and here are the secrets I’ve discovered with the URL. Capitalize each word in the URL. It’s not www.vistaprint.com it’s www.VistaPrint.com. This is MUCH easier to read what it is–some URLs look better than others.

But even more important is the appearance of a Sub Folder. The /christmas_cards portion of the ad. Now google is kind enough to allow you to put anything you want after the Slash (/) as long as the root domain stays the same as the destination URL.

This /christmas_cards will HUGELY increase response and Click Throughs because when they search for “discount christmas cards” (my #1 search term as you’ll see in a second), they /christmas_cards will be bold. This lets the person searching know this is a site that is RELEVANT to them.

Use the www.YourDomain.com/[primary_search_term] as often as possible when setting up your campaigns.

YES! This means more WORK when setting up your ad campaigns. Because you will need NEW ADS (and ad groups) for each of your primary search phrases.

Step Four - Adwords - Choosing Your Search Terms

click photo to elarge

These are the keywords I ran with my campaign (yes. There have been MANY mistakes made. I’ll touch on those soon). Notice really only two received any amount of searches. “Discount Christmas Cards” and “Cheap Christmas Cards”. Also Notice that my CTR is between 6.7 and 7.0% but my ad placement is a miserable 5-6! (This is because of the very strong ad/offer).

Also notice, that I bid 1.05 but only paid an average CPC of $0.90. I bid 1.05 because I thought it was likely that many advertisers bid an even $1, so I wanted to leap frog them (I have not tested this theory, so it may be completely invalid).

Because my primary search terms are located in the Ad. This ad is VERY ENTICING to the person searching. Not only that, because the way it is written, the person click is VERY LIKELY to buy, because the ad explicitly states they are clicking on something to buy!

Step Five - Check Your Results

click photo to enlarge

These are the sales I made after 5 Days of Running this offer. With a direct link to the offer. I did not use a landing page.

Step Six - Get Campaign Canceled by Google because they do not allow affiliate link re-directs.

These ads got canceled because Google does not allow your affiliate link to redirect to the home page. Lesson Learned - pay more attention and capitalize when something become profitable.

Where were my Errors?!

During the implementation of this campaign. I made MANY ERRORS. But I will say this in my defense. I thought I paused the campaign the second I had launched it, thinking I would make some tweaks. Then I completely forgot that it was running until the Big G sent me an email telling me it was “disallowed”.

I plan on doing an entire post on the errors I made, so you don’t make those same mistakes, and can start your own successful affiliate campaign.

But first I’d like to open it up to all of you.

Where did I go wrong. Did you notice any errors that I made, that I may not have noticed. Disect this campaign. Where did I go wrong? What would you have do to make it better?

- Tevin Anderson

P.S. If you liked this post, and think it will make you more money in the future–and you feel in the Christmas Spirit. Feel Free to Paypal me some Christmas Shopping Money :D.