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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.
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<?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']);
}
?>
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10 CommentsPost by admin
It’s not only us internet marketeers that get their pages slapped by Google!
Watch this, this is hilarious!
20 CommentsPost by Gioom
Since september 2009 there has been a outrageous banning wave going on on Google Adwords accounts. Literally tens of thousands of people have found their account in the morning not showing any ads whatsoever anymore. Some of them got the dreaded mail from Adwords telling them it was done and over with. Their accounts were suspendend and they Google would not accept any anymore in the future. But there were also a lot of people who didn’t get any notify at all, and they had to find out that they had been suspended by either calling the Adwords department or mailing them.
Now, I’ve had my fair share of problems with Google too in the past and I have to watch every move that I take ther. Altough I have been advertising with them for more than 3 years and spending millions I have never been assigned a account manager. I think that’s too crazy for words, but luckily nowadays I have somebody with Google who I can talk to about my campaigns and he helps me out on a number of tasks.
Anyway, back to the banwave. So now that things have seriously tightened over at Adwords, how can you make sure you don’t get a ban and lose your business? Let me sum up the most important and obvious ones:
- Do not run any rebill offers. Many, of the advertisers that got hit ran rebill offers such as acai berry’s, colon cleansers, bizz ops, teethwhiteners etc. This is a NO-GO anymore for Google. I’ve heard of instant bans when you try to run those campaigns.
- Watch out for repeated trademark violations. This happened to somebody I know personally. He tried to get round trademark restrictions by being creative with them. Like removing spaces, typo’s and that kind of stuff. If they catch you doing that, game over buddy.
- Do not run similar offers on multiple accounts. A lot of us try to boost revenue by just copying their landingpage to another domain (maybe make minor changes), then copy their Adwords account onto a new account and let it run to gain more revenue. This might have worked in the past, but Google is coming down on those. Have heard multiple stories of people who had their account suspended because of this
- Do not run Google money tree or similar programs. Google has banned every single account that promoted Google money tree or any other affiliate oofer that mispresented affiliation with Google, even if it was way in the past. Stay away from these!
- Watch out for poor campaign performance. Google always wants the highest quality search results for their users, if your account(s) consists of mainly campaigns with poor campaign performance or low quality scores, they will suspend you.
- Avoid reviewsites. Altough this hasn’t been proven, it seems that a lot of bans had to do with people running mainly reviewsites. Google doesn’t seem to like these too much and will protect itself with giving you a ban. What is proven is that reviewsites get slapped a lot and people tend to just copy them to another domain and try again. Do this too many times and it’s banning time baby!
These are the things I heard and read about that are probably the causes for the massive banwave. But besides these major points there are also other violations that may result in an instant ban such as:
- Iframing websites
- Redirecting websites
- Voucher fraude
- Illegal adult content
- Ripping competitors pages
- Outpricing competitors
- Malware or virusses on your websites
- Poor content on your website
- Link farming
So, you really going to have to watch yourself not to get banned for whatever reason. What I tend to do nowadays is to let an Adwords specialist check my page and campaign and get the thumbs up from them before I start running it. I chose to do this with Live Adwords Support. This way you can have the chat sent to you by mail so you will always have prove that you got an OK on your campaign.
You can also contact them by phone on 1.866.246.6453 or easier to remember 1.866.2GOOGLE.
9 CommentsPost by Gioom
Besides Search Engine Strategies New York this was the first real show I went to since I started doing affiliate marketing back in 2006. SES NYC was pretty cool, also because it was my first trip to the Big Apple, but MAN, ASW was THA bomb! I almost went last year but because of a last minute cancellation from a friend that was supposed to go with me, I decided to drop out as well. Now I know what I missed! These are the guys that went with me this time.
Hein van der Wielen, director of BlueMango.nl, Frank Rovers, CEO of Feltron.nl, Me and Frank Raaijmakers, CEO of Amdir.nl
So, I know this shows have to be about doing business, learning a thing or two and especially networking, but what impressed me the most are the insane parties we went to. But more about that later. So we came in at wednesday but the show didn’t start untill sunday, so we had some time to spare. We checked in in the Venetian and we had a pretty nice room. It was called the ‘Rialto suito’. Altough it was nice and spacy, it was sooooo noisy! When the party people came in around 4′ish when we were doing some serious sleeping to overcome our major jetlag, my sleeping was over and I was tired the entire next day. Happened to me 2 times, then I decided to wear earplugs at night. Shame on you Venetian.
Anyway, we played some poker at O’Sheas which is an AWESOME place if you want to play FUN poker or craps! Everybody is having a good time overthere and they do not take things too serious like they would in other big casino’s. Definitly go there to play some 1-2 Texas Hold Em, you won’t regret it! Also we did some tasteful dinners and nice clubbing around the city.
Then sunday the show started. Because one of us had to leave on tuesday for a meeting we decided to get gold passes instead of platinum passes because we had to miss the tuesday anyway. So on sunday we attended 3 sessions. One about effective social media techniques, one about monetizing blogs for affiliate marketing and SEO and one that was called ’start monetizing your blog today’. Well, I can say, those sessions didn’t help me one bit and I think most of the people were quite dissapointed about these sessions. Even for a beginner this was pretty basic stuff and nothing new or revealing. Especially the first one, which I had high expectations for, was very dissapointing. ‘Don’t spam twitter’. Come on guys, we want want to hear techniques that can be applied to social media campaigns that drive your bank account to insane figures. But nothing of that. Unfortunately. From what I’ve heard the platinum sessions were a lot better, so the next Affiliate Summit I’ll be sure to hang around for the full 3 days.
We also went to the meet market, but it was SO packed that you couldn’t even say hello to the people you knew overthere. Crazy time! I did get to meet Markus Frind, Founder and CEO of PlentyOfFish.com though, the biggest online dating site in the world.
At night we had Copeac’s ‘Party like a rockstar’ party at the Tryst in the Wynn. Beautiful club, not too big, just right, but not too many people there unfortunately. The party was good and we got to meet 2 other dutch marketeers (which you don’t come across too often in the USA). They are with 4people.nl and do a lot of emailing. It was nice hanging out with you for a bit guys!
After that we went to the XS in the Encore. My god! This nightclub was INSANE!! Decorations were sooo beautiful, the sound was good and the atmosphere was just amazing. What more can I say. We had a GREAT time there!
Monday was a hard day for us. We were sleepy from all the partying, but we had to go out networking on the show again. So this day we mainly exchanged cards with various companies and people and I got inspiration on many new projects by just walking along the booths. I already got a lot of emails and calls from people who want to do business, so that’s good!
After the show we were so sleepy that we decided to take a little powernap. This turned out to be a 5 hour sleepfest. Markus Frind invited us over to a party at the Palms in the early evening. Missed that. After that there was this amazing party thrown by Azoogleads in the Hugh Hefner Skyvilla. Unfortunately we couldn’t go there as we had another party by Clickbooth right at the same time. As you can see by Steve Hall’s picture’s, this was a HOT party.
The Clickbooth party was crazy too. It was called the ‘Hangover party’ and it was shot in one of the 4 rooms the actual movie was shot in. Like the movie there was even a chicken in it. Awesome! We had a really good time there with our friends over at Clickbooth.
And that ended our trip to Vegas. We headed down O’sheas for a quick round of craps and then we headed out to the airport and had a 16 hour flight home. YUCK!
It was an amazing time and show and I hope to see you all at the next Affiliate Summit East from August 15 – 17!!!
7 CommentsPost by Gioom
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My Goals For 2010
5 CommentsPost by Gioom