Login
Before the Affiliate Summit West I was barely using Twitter. Off course at the time I knew there were lots of people making a decent amount of money with it, but I also knew you have to have A LOT of followers to make some serious money and I didn’t have any at that time. But some of the sessions on the ASW about social media did get me interested in the phenomenon everybody’s raving about.
At one session they started talking about ‘hashtags’ and I looked at my friend (who is a Twitter addict) with a big frown upon my face and asked him what the …. these things were. He then explained the functionality of those thingies with the weird name. So for everybody that still doesn’t know what they do, don’t feel stupid like I did, but they’re used to categorize your post. For instance you put #marketing (where # is the hashtag) in a post. Later people can search on that hashtag and they will see all messages that have been written by other Twitterers using the same hashtag. Pretty neat.
At the ASW I did some tweets about the sessions and put the #ASW10 hashtag at the end of my message. And surely enough, soon the followers started pouring in. All super targeted visitors because they were all either at the Affiliate Summit or at least interested in internet marketing. So using general hashtags to get targeted followers is a pretty neat option.
After I tweeted about #marketing, #affiliate marketing, #internet marketing and so on I was gaining a few hundred followers. Nothing to get excited about yet. My next option was to try just following other people who are in the same business. I gathered a list somewhere on the net of all the internet marketeers that were using Twitter and I just followed them all. And that’s when things got serious… Within days I got over a thousand followers. Although that was fun, I saw that at that point I was following (and still am) more people than were following me. And that’s kind of a bummer because you want to have the followers/following ratio as high as possible. Also I used to actually read the tweets from the persons I was following. Now it’s just impossible to keep track of.
Then I decided to join Socialoomph.com. This website provides all kind of services, but as far as Twitter goes it lets you set automatic thankyou messages for new followers, schedule tweets, automatically follow people who follow you, unfollow people who unfollow you and a whole lot of other things. It also features banner auctions were you can bid on having your Twitter profile posted on their homepage for a day. I entered one auction and I bid $10 and won it so my profile was on their homepage for a day. I don’t have any idea how many followers I got from that, I only know I got 22 visitors to this blog from it through the link in my Twitter profile.
The latest thing I tried was Sponsored Tweets. It’s a neat system that lets you buy a sponsored tweet from a GREAT number of Twitterers, OR, if you have enough followers, lets YOU place a sponsored tweet and earn cash from it.
I decided to have 3 topdogs in the internet marketing business place a sponsored tweet for me. Shoemoney, John Chow and Jonathan Volk. I got some pretty interesting results back from it. Of course, the main goal was to get more followers, but it’s impossible to track how many you get from each but I wanted both followers and visitors to my blog so either action was fine.
Here you can see what the results were for this blog:
I won’t specify the prices I paid for it, but where I paid 100% for Shoemoney (92k followers), I paid 33% for John Chow (50k followers) and 11% for Jonathan Volk (17k followers).
Obviously Shoemoney delivered the most clicks with that much followers, but his traffic was least interested in this blog. They had the least amount of pageviews, least time on the blog and the highest bounce rate. Then came a surprise. Jonathan with ‘only’ 17k followers comes in and sends me 126 visitors with a high average time on site and a very acceptable bouncerate. John Chow delivered the least clicks but then again he is very active on Twitter so your sponsored tweet quickly becomes old. But his traffic liked my site best of all.
So, there are definitely some good opportunities in sponsored tweets, but you’ll have to try the different Twitterers out before you know anything, and my god, there are a LOT.
My next goal is to get some more followers too and do some sponsored tweets on my own. If you are not following me already, you’re missing out!!! You can follow me here!
2 CommentsPost by Gioom
Among my daily routine is one very important element I do every day because I think it’s crucial for your campaigns. What I do, is checking all of the competitors ad’s and what they’re doing on the places I advertise. This might be Adwords, sites I do media buys on or in this case, a big social media site.
So going along the ads and keeping track of the affiliates who have been promoting their offers for a long time, (because you know they’re profitable then), I came across a totally new campaign that I have never seen before. The ad said this:
Tried everything to lose weight?
Let America’s top Coven cast the Ultimate Weight Loss spell for you
today. Confidential service, guaranteed results.
“Weight loss SPELL”, excuse me? Did you say SPELL? What the hell is this? So obviously my curiosity got the better of me and I immediately clicked this offer. Then I landed in a magical world with high priestesses, warlocks and witches. Thise site reminded me of the good ‘ol days where I was running my level 60 mage around Azeroth in World Of Warcraft.
Anyway, so, what can one get at this site. Exploring a bit I immediately found out that they’re not kidding around with their spells! My god! So, you want to shed some weight? That’ll be $47, but of course you don’t want the standard spell, you want the very best they have to offer, the ‘coven spell’. Add another $235 then. Want to stop smoking? That’ll be $1069,- at least if you want the complete package, you COULD settle for less. But I think the best deal they have is the ‘Bags of money spell. Have this one cast and you’ll be driving a Lamborghini to your boat in Monaco in NO TIME, and it’s only $37.
Why the hell would they be advertising when they have the ability to have as much money as they want? They just enjoy scamming people or what?
Now, what do you think. Do you think people are actually falling for this? I know, desperate people do desperate things, but COME ON, you have to be freakin’ kidding me? I first saw this site online about 9 or 10 days ago and they’re still going strong with their advertising, so obviously it works. From a marketing point of view this stuff is genius, but even when I could make a ton of money with this, this is where I draw the line.
Now, if you don’t see any posts from me again soon, then you know those witches have gotten to me and casted evil spells over me. Muhahaha hahaha haha.
No CommentsPost by Gioom
Past Sunday it was Superbowl time. Now, I know for a fact that for millions of Americans this is the most important day of the year, but I’m not really interested in the sport. In no sports at all, hence my 260lbs. Anyway, what IS interesting, from a marketing point of view, are all the Superbowl commercials. This time I think the company that we all know so well, the big G, rocked them all!
Ok, so they had to pay a few bucks to show it, in fact 30 secs = $3.000.000, so with their 52 seconds it’s close to 6 million, but I know for sure that they were spot on with this one. Little had to be spend on the commercial itself, what the heck, even an intern that has 2 days of video editing experience could have made it, but I know for sure that this one touched a lot of people hearts. How cool is it to make you make up a story in your head by only showing searches and results.
I can only say one thing: kudo’s for Google for making this masterpiece!!!
7 CommentsPost by Gioom
If there is one marketeer / mindset guru that I absolutely worship, then it’s self-proclaimed “Lazy Bastard” Frank Kern. Since the beginning of my business he was one of the first “guru’s” I came across and till this day he is still by far my favorite.
Frank has something magical. I don’t know if it is his relaxed way of telling how cool his “shit” is, or that his shit is really that good, but everytime Frank Kern pitches something I end up buying it, no matter how expensive it is. I just found out he released a offer where you get to personally meet the man and together the 2 of your are going to look into your business and he promises to increase the results of your company with at least 600% if not more. Ok, it’s a shady $100,000 to get in that program, but at least you get picked up at the airport in his all new Rolls Royce Phantom coupé.
Anyway, to get back to business. I’m a member of his Mass control Monthly newsletter, which is always full of insanely interesting stuff that you can use on your business. So in his latest edition he tells about how to sum up your achievements, which you are the most proud of, of the past year. Then after that ask yourself 2 things:
1. Where do you want to go?
2. What’s been working so far?
So, I thought that might be very interesting so I decided to do this, and even print it out and hang it on the wall. So here goes:
My list of achievements that I’m proud of in 2009:
- Somewhere around april/march I had my very first 5 figure profit day. Not revenue, but pure profit. It took me over 3 years to achieve this.
- In May the media buys that I’ve been doing really took off and I achieved my first month with more than $250,000 in profit. Unfortunately that is still my best month to date. So something to work on in 2010.
- Also in May I bought something I thought I could never afford it when it came out in 2007. I’m talking about my precious, an Audi R8. I have had it tuned, it has 500 HP now, and it has an insane sound to it. I will post pics and movies later for anybody that might be interested in this. I’m so proud of it that I want to share so… 
- From a health point of view I had a breakthrough too. When I reached 277 lbs in november I thought it was about time to do something about that. I didn’t feel good, every move that I made was too much. I was just a lazy, fat bastard. So then I hired a personal trainer. We did some serious running, lifting and kickboxing (love that!). In the end I want to end up on 209 lbs, but that’s very far away still, but I’m happy to say that I already lost 29 lbs so far!
So, then it’s time to ask the 2 questions. First is, where do you want to go?
- For starters I want this blog to really kick in. I want it to become very successful and more important, I want YOU to be succesful through the info I will be sharing here. From a business point of view (because in the end we all want to make money, right?) I want to gather a massive list of followers on email, Facebook and Twitter.
- I told you I did very well with the media buys. Unfortunately lately I’ve not been doing so well with them unfortunately so I really have to work on it to get them going again.
- Last year I made my first steps into social media marketing. Although I had some small successes, this really has to kick off still. I want to really get the hang of this as I think there is MUCH money to be made there.
- Also I want to start my first webshop. Probably you wonder why I would want something that is so time consuming while I have so many other things to do. But I really want to do this and learn a lot from it. I have never setup a campaign where I did everything from the advertising until the physical shipping itself. I think there is much to be learned by this project.
- I want to reach the 209 lbs by may 28th (my birthday).
- I really love the new Ferrari 458 Italia. If I could afford it by the end of the year, I would be a VERY happy man. You’ll come to know that I’m a supercar fanatic, so you can expect some posts about new exotics once in a while too.
So, question 2: What’s been working so far?
- I started the blog on january 1, and the traffic is starting to come in now. I already got a healthy list and many Twitter followers. This is going in the right direction.
- The media buys HAVE been working, but I really have to kick it up a notch to get them going again.
- Social media worked, but also in this area I have to spend more time into it to really get to the bottom of it and get it seriously going.
- My PPC campaigns are still going strong. This is still my core business. They have been doing well for over 3 years now. However I had some good campaigns in the financial vertical, but due to some setbacks these campaigns have been lacking and I need to start all over with them again with new landingpages that fit better into the current demand.
So to sum up what I have to do in 2010: Get this blog going, get the media buys going again, step into social media marketing, improve the PPC campaigns, start the webshop, get healthy at 209 lbs and buy myself a Ferrari 548 Italia by the end of the year.
So, what are your goals for 2010?
5 CommentsPost by Gioom
I was talking to some guys in the business the other day about SEO. I told them about this little piece of script I found years ago that shows when Googlebot comes around your site to visit by sending an email to you. I was amazed that these guys had never heard of such a script or tool. I mean doesn’t everybody want to know when Googlebot has paid a little visit to your site?
Anyway, for all of those who don’t use this yet, this is the one I use. Just put it in your header, footer or whatever.
|
<?php
if ( strpos( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], ‘Googlebot’ ) !== false )
{
// The email address we want to send the email to
$email_address = ‘YOUREMAIL@EMAIL.COM’;
// Send the email
mail($email_address,’Googlebot Visit’, ‘Googlebot has visited YOURSITE.COM: ‘.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
}
?>
|
8 CommentsPost by admin
Subscribe!
Sponsor
My Quest For Twitter Followers
2 CommentsPost by Gioom