How easy it would be if I could say, a doctor, lawyer, engineer, IT consultant, architect, etc … but working as an affiliate is kind of vague isn’t it? When explaining it, I usually refer to amazon, as they were one of the pioneers of affiliate programs. I explain to them when they are surfing the web and they see an amazon book on a website, well if they click on that book it leads them to amazon, and if they buy, the website owner gets a commission etc… If that doesn’t work, then I will talk about one of the myriad of offline referral type companies and referral commissions, refer a friend to your bank = get $25, car insurance referral = get a free gas card, etc…

That being said, I still have to answer the question, What I do for a living. I’ve used the following in describing my profession:

• I’m an affiliate marketer
• I sell things online
• I manage websites
• I own an online media company
• I own a home business
• I’m an entrepreneur
• I own an internet business

I’m ready for a new one now, so if you have any ideas, share.
(and no not a spammer )

In relation to the last post, google credited my account, THANK YOU!

It’s simple to use, just enter your core keywords into digg and hit search. The most popular headlines that match your phrase come up. This is definitely not an exact science and is not a piece of software that will spit out perfect ads for you every time, but it will definitely get your juices flowing and make you more creative. Feel free to play around with the advanced search features as well.

For example take ‘weight loss’, below are 7 of the top 10 results given:

Notice anything special? 6 of these seven all have numbers in their headlines … Hmmm that must be important. Anyways, just wanted to throw this out there. I’m sure some of you can use this. You may also want to check out my post Ad copy: rational vs. emotional.

I know there are a handful of other tools on the web that are similar to help you out with ad copy, feel free to share if you have any.

I guess having a big tax bill is a good problem, but what is the government going to do with my money but throw it away after some failing company or how about into the black hole of social security. That is one good thing though, about having your own entity as a business instead of self-employed. You can save a lot on social security taxes. (Here are some standard deductions for small businesses)

I have an S Corp., and the way it works is, say you drew a $50k salary throughout the year from your company while your business made $200k in profits. That 200k flows through to you ultimately but is not taxed on social security which is about 15%+. So you just saved about 30 grand on taxes because you had a business entity setup. Same with the LLC I believe.

If you are heading into the realm of doing this full time or are starting to make decent money with affiliate marketing, it can only help to setup a business entity. Choosing an LLC or S Corp. is up to you, but the benefits are mostly equal.

(Disclaimer: I am not an accountant and know nothing about taxes so do your own due diligence)

Going to add this to my bucket list

(Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with PPC or affiliate marketing, and is just my humble opinion )

Yesterday there was so pretty significant news, that shows how bad the economy really is. The FED announced that it would be buying up our own long-term Treasurys as will as other mortgage-backed securities about 1.2 Trillion worth.

And the market rallied, as the government and the FED step in to save the day … again. Yippee everything is OK, right? I don’t think so, and don’t let the media fool you either. While I don’t want to sound like Mr. Doom, it is only prudent to act and protect your wealth and savings and NOT depend on the politicians of our day.

So, what does this mean?

Think about it, no other country out there wants to buy our debt anymore which keeps our economy running, so the FED says, that’s no problem we will buy it … the problem is they just print the money out of thin air. That does not create any value but destroys it. It destroys the purchasing power of your dollar and ultimately the value of it. It doesn’t matter if you have 100 grand in the bank, it is all getting diluted.

And this is on top of all the other silly things they’ve done since the start of this mess, the bailouts, stimulus packages, buybacks etc…. The only stimulating that is going to do is stimulate massive inflation down the road.

Now the US is no Zimbabwe, but take a look at their inflation over the past several years … Started off with a 200,000 dollar note and just recently issued a 100 trillion dollar note!! That’s nuts!

Ok enough of the rant, just mad when I continue to see all of this happen as it WILL affect everyone whether you are following this or not. Just wanted to let my readers be in the know … protect those PPC profits!

I apologize for just disappearing, I got a handful of emails asking where did I go. Nothing special, just that I really wanted to focus on my affiliate business. Back when I was writing, I was spending a lot of time trying to make my site look pretty, checking my RSS stats, optimize my site for SEO, etc… In terms of ROI, that really amounted to nothing, compared to time invested in building campaigns, testing new offers, and the like. Lesson learned.

Anyways, giving the blog another shot.

So what have I been up to?

After Affiliate Summit in Boston in August, I hunkered down and started to build some big campaigns. Before that I had plateaued for awhile. But since then, I have been able to more than double my net income, which was a huge milestone for me Looking to do even more than that in 2009.

Been working on acquiring premium domains/websites to supplement my affiliate business. I’ll try to talk more about this in a future post.

My wife and I just got back from a 10 day adventure trip to Costa Rica … Amazing experience! We went with GAP adventures, which was nice because with them you can pick and choose which activities you would like to do, and it is not a set schedule throughout the whole trip. We got to go rafting, kayaking, canyoneering, zipline and canopy tour, nature and wildlife hikes, etc …

Here I am rappelling down a 200ft waterfall

Ok, I trust everyone is working hard, especially in this economy!

Good to be back

Ever heard of Jean Paul Sartre?

He was a French philosopher, other than that I don’t really know too much about him. Anyways, he believed that people become confused or uncertain when faced with too many choices. The more choices we have in front of us the more paralyzed we become by our own anxiety. “When we are faced with too many options a confused mind will do absolutely nothing!” Is this you?

When I started out in affiliate marketing, this was me. Even sometimes now, I have so many ideas in my mind or campaigns I want to test out, sometimes I can spend an entire day active but not productive. What has helped me is writing down a to do list every night, what I want to accomplish the next day. Nothing big, just small tasks I know I can most likely get done. Example: Make new landing page for X Ad group, setup outsourcing project for web content, upload remaining keywords to Y campaign, move Z campaign from adwords to Yahoo and MSN, etc…

Optimizing Your Headlines

I listened to a great webclinic put on by Marketing Experiments about the importance of headlines. If you struggle with headlines, this is a good intro in writing effective copy as well as a a good refresher course on how headlines can help or hurt your business. Here is the link.

Develop Your Own Niche

Chad over at CDF Networks made a good post, about how to use your skill of marketing and paid search to create your own niches. I’ve actually thought about this before, good to see someone actually putting it into action. This is something I’ll have to just write down on my future to do list! Check it out here.

US Economy Kaput?

I love to follow the equity and currency markets and read a handful of blogs about various financial topics. If you’re into this take a look at the following article Treason at the US Treasury about the takeover of Fannie and Freddie. Interesting read. Either way I hope you guys are protecting all those PPC profits you’re making I’m pretty pessimistic on the US economy & the dollar overall.

There was an interesting story on CNN, in case you missed it can be found here. Basically, some college student over in Egypt was covering an anti-government protests, got arrested, sent a ‘Twitter’ on his mobile saying “Arrested” and this got the ball rolling to get him out of jail.

Interesting indeed! I’m still reluctant to signup as I see Twitter just another distraction of me to ‘get things done!’ Maybe I’m just a little too old, who knows.

Thoughts??

UPDATE:
I just got a Twitter account …
http://twitter.com/ppcfool
so follow me