This post really gets me going. A little over a year ago, Convert2Media was started. A little over a year ago, this publisher began his Marketing and Advertising Career online. Through the months going forward from the start, this publisher and I met and he began publishing with C2M. From the start I saw strong characteristics of a hungry publisher. When you have been doing it as long as I have and then turn around and manage a few hundred businesses online for people, you pick up REALLY quick who’s serious and who’s not. As agreed, I have permission from the publisher to write the following post but I am going to leave his name and specifics out for privacy reasons.

First off, this publisher achieved $1,128,000.00+ change in the month of June. An incredible feat by any means but what is truly remarkeable is that he’s only 21 years old and been in the business for a little over a year. I’ve had the pleasure of working with this publisher VERY closely over the course of his work with C2M and I would like to share some tips and characteristics about this publisher for the people who are looking to reach a level such as this.

I would first like to start out by sharing some of the things he DOESNT do:

1. He doesnt bitch or complain. He understands how I run C2M and he trusts that I am going to get with him on any problems he may face. Much like I treat every publisher in the event of something happening.
2. He doesnt post or read shit on forums. Seriously, this is THE #1 downfall or thing that kills productivity. The amount of disinformation on the net is ridiculous. I’ve coached, managed, moderated and spent more time than most in forums and even my communities to know that 99% of the people talking, are full of shit. He knows this too. The amount he earned alone, reflects that. When you are earning a million dollars a month as a publisher, there is not a whole hell of lot of people talking in forums that you can trust to take advice from. It doesnt make sense at that level to take advice from a 1K a day earner. (Nothing wrong with that number BTW, you get the point).
3. He doesnt concentrate on trying shit that is not advised. Seriously, after talking with him tonight, over 90% of his income was with a SINGLE offer. He doesnt spend time jerking around testing. He utilizes his resources wisely. ( Such as C2M advice, his traffic reps, his intuition).

Some of the things he does do:

1. He concentrates heavily on optimization. I dont think a single day has gone by in the last couple of weeks where he hasnt made a change to his campaign. He’s always concentrating on a higher ROI whether it being changing ads up, landing page critique or how to get more out of his traffic sources.
2. He listens. Period. Enough Said. He asks a question, I tell him. He takes ideas and suggestions and he tries them out. We’ve switched offers multiple times in his vertical and he is never afraid to give something I recommend a shot. This takes a lot of faith because I have shot him duds, and I have shot him winners. In the end he understands and trusts that I am trying to reach the same goal he is.
3. He has his cashflow in order. This is something that very many dont really get. I’m not going to go into his spend amounts but he has taken upon himself to better himself in terms of credit and keeping the cashflow going. This even means coming to me for early payouts or getting him money whenever he needs it.  A lot of publishers are afraid to ask for that but you ABSOLUTELY must. If I know you are making an effort I damn sure will be more flexible. If you are screwing around then I’m the type of guy that isnt going to take you seriously. Sounds harsh right? It is.
4. His work ethic is tremendous. This goes in hand with traffic, cashflow and optimization. He’s a robot that doesnt stop. I dont know exactly what his goal is, but I’m pretty damn sure he hit one of them this last month. Constant moving and building your business is what it takes. At 21 and producing those kinds of numbers, I’m honestly VERY surprised he still sits there and talks to me at 2 am and often beats me in the morning getting on AIM.
5. He understands the Industry. He knows that this could all end at any time. Affiliate Marketing can be a crap shoot especially with FTC Regulations, Search Engine slaps, offer instability. He knows that he has to move as fast and smart as possible to make every dime he can, while he can.

You know, after adding up the numbers and talking with him tonight about this post, we both had a little reflection. For me, I remember when C2M started. We were the 300+ Direct Track network to start up and I took a lot of shit from many who said we wouldnt be anything. I know in this industry that I dont have to be the best to make a ton of money and I really dont care. C2M exists because of it’s publishers. Publishers who have stuck by us thru the thick and thin like this publisher. Knowing you had a small hand and getting the priviledge to work with someone of his marketing caliber is simply amazing. I thank you for sticking with us thru it all. I only hope we can continue doing what we do and helping even more publishers reach their goals as well. Hopefully with the upcoming video broadcasts I will be providing, we will get to have more monthly millionaires very soon.

People are starting to realize more and more what we are about.  I would also like to thank Andrew Wee because I know he understands FULLY what we are about. To all the pubs who work with us, we appreciate you more than you know.

C2M loves you all. - Ruck

It’s that time again. C2M (thanks Steve!) has organized another meetup on June 27th. Last month was the first meetup and it went great. I cannot remember exactly but I think there were around 2 dozen people there. Join us this month again.

Join us Saturday, June 27th, at 1:00pm at Gators Dockside located in Dr. Phillips to meet and network with your fellow local internet marketers.

Gators Dockside has some of the best grilled wings in Central Florida and was voted best sports bar because of its “close-to-the-action” big screen TVs and friendly staff. Gators also has free WiFi and pool tables.

We will be discussing PPC, Social Media, Media Buying and anything related to Internet Marketing and making money online.

It’s been a long time coming since I posted something people found useful. To tell you the truth, I lost my mojo. The network has grown at a phenomenal rate over the last year and thru it all, I truly lost all motivation to write. Something happened the other day. Something in me just clicked and I vowed to get back up, dust myself off and ultimately quit being such a puss.

For all of you MSN Adcenter/Bing publishers who use this traffic source, I dedicate this post to you. If you are not currently using this platform to buy traffic from, please sit back and enjoy the show. It’s about to get split wide-the-f#ck open.

DISCLAIMER: The examples used in this post are for example only. I think you can appreciate since I manage about 500+ publishers businesses now, I cannot reveal actual keywords. Still, if you give what I say some thought and then manage to actually put some effort into it, I’ll bet making money with MSN/Bing is a helleva lot less stressful than Yahoo or Google.

Relevance IS NOT Key - When I speak about relevance, I would like to reiterate something that I had my MSN Account Manager specifically relay to me last year. I was specifically told to keyword stuff my landers. Pretty broad vision dont you think? This still holds true today even.

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords.

Having the keywords on your page is vital. If you are an automated lander maker then this is simple. Go specifically with one keyword per landing page. You can hardly go wrong there. However, with working with C2M you are generally in the larger markets because that is where we are accustomed to operating and can help you more. We dont piddle around in “niche marketing” and all that jive. We deal specifically in large markets where the competition is fierce. We do this because there is a ton of money there. So with that said, keywords are the driving force on getting ads approved.

Stay away from url targeting, mispelled keywords?

This next part might sound confusing, because frankly, it is. A lot of publishers like to bid on high traffic urls and even misspelled keywords. One thing I have realized over the years is the MSN Bots are part retarded. What happens is that the bot goes to your page and determines the relevance. The bot is not much for caring on domain urls, extensions or expansion phrasing. If you are going to do this, dont risk the whole adgroup not getting approved. Do each one separately.

Stay away from the word free - I cannot stress this enough. While C2M is predominately rebill and CC type offers, I have had my fair share of help optimizing hundreds (probably close to a thousand) campaigns on MSN. Trust when I say, do not use the word FREE anywhere. If you are getting away with that, by all means congratulations but I assure you from the banning of grants and acai, publishers have cut their own throats and the industry itself down to not being able to advertise those offers all because they cant leave out a simple word. Sooner or later, you are going to get the ax advertising with the word free if your offers are not.

MSN doesnt really care for most rebill or even email submit type offers. If the consumer is fooled from the lander all the way to the offer, MSN does pick up on this. So be careful of your wording.

Finally, A Word On Volume - This is really the kicker on MSN/Bing. If you do managed to get stuff approved and thru, now you have the low volume thing to worry about. With MSN, try going a little broader. If you are advertising in the weight loss market let me give you a few examples:

• Flabby
• Flab
• Fatness

At the time of this writing, I saw a single competitor. Pretty cheap bids on weight loss keywords when you are the only advertiser right? Now the job is took take the knowledge and get started.

How about attacking keywords in the weight loss market that is predominantly women such as:

bikini

Do you know according to the Adwords External Keyword Tool that the word “bikini” is searched approximately 16,600,000 times monthly? Did you also know that I saw ZERO creativeness for a weightloss ad regarding this keyword in MSN/Bing? A word like that is worth testing when understanding that the average percentage (60%) of US women are obese. Not overweight, OBESE.

Let’s review:

1. Keyword stuff the page - It’s encourage by them (YAY)
2. Create specific pages for domain url bidding and expansion type phrases
3. Dont mislead consumers
4. Tackle high volume keywords in the market that no other advertiser is paying attention to.
5. 5. Attack related keywords that a market is filled with predominatly and test keywords relating.

Happy Hunting

Tonight at 6:00 pm Eastern I will be streaming live from the C2M mansion. I really dont know how this was going to go and from some of the streaming and video going on that I have seen so far, it’s been really dull. I enjoy going and visiting and shooting the shit with affiliate marketers, advertisers and other networks but in the end, it’s really dull. So I decided that a Q&A Session will be streamed live this evening.

I am still working on the channel but we will be ready to go. So far, I can accept 50 people in the channel but I am working on getting the restrictions lifted. I’m anticipating quite a few people to show up just from telling a few people already.

This session is strictly a Question and Answer session. I’m not getting on to screw around or anything like that. If the questions run out, I will be hopping off to watch the Nuggest hopefully beat the Lakers. If the questions keep rolling, I will keep streaming. If you have something on your mind in regards to marketing, affiliate marketing, SEO, PPC, whatever, come give me a shout.

Hope to see you there. –> LiveStream –> Convert2Media Channel

From C2M to all of it’s publishers and advertisers, we just wanted to say Happy Memorial Day Weekend. You are probably out on your jetski or boat, having a family barbecue or something and I am yet again sitting in the office and blogging. Ha! Anyway, we hope you have a happy and safe memorial day weekend along with the holiday itself.

A couple of updates and reminders here to start. First off, Convert2Media (thanks to Steve for organizing this event) has established a Meetup 202 event each and every month. Next Saturday, marks our first Meetup. From discussions over the last month since the organization of the event, I have been told by publishers from Texas, Ohio and Canada that they will be attending. That’s pretty incredible to come all the way down here for 1 day. I think the word got out that when I get in social environments, I tend to drop a few tidbits about marketing. One of these tidbits in Las Vegas at the past Affiliate Summit in January took a publisher from xxx earnings monthly to mid xx,xxx earnings monthly. I’ve got a few things up the sleeve to give out at this meetup so I hope to see you there. Here’s the info one more time:

• Saturday May 30th
• 1:00pm at Gator Dockside located in Doctor Philips
• Contact Steve or I if you need more directions

Coaching And Communication:

This is a more complex thing then a lot of people think. On one hand, I have a ton of publishers asking, inquiring and telling me to get my ass in gear on the coaching program. On the second hand, I have established publishers who really HATE this idea. I’ve even had publishers threaten to stop working with us should I create such a thing. On one hand, it seems a bit ridiculous, however on the other hand, I completely see their point of view. With that said, I have every intention and so does my team to create an environment where aspiring affiliate marketers can come and learn and established affiliate marketers can pick up more tips, techniques and information to further their business.

With that said, I’ve gone from releasing a full blown coaching program to a much more elaborate setting. Some of the things you will see is that the old forums are longer going to be used. We have switched the software we are using to vbulletin and you can signup to the new forums here. With a full blown coaching program out there, I know for a fact from running communities and owning previous communites before that a boatload of time will be wasted from people soaking information and never doing anything with it. Sounds harsh I know, but I’ve got years in coaching, forums, and managing affiliates that proves this. So, I’m taking a much more hands on approach.

With the new forums, you are encouraged to ask your specific questions there. You are guaranteed a response. Convert2Media has gone to great lengths in bringing managers with publishing experience so even if I somehow dont make the question, you are guaranteed a response. Is there any other place online where you are guaranteed a response? The forums are just a solid place for community discussion. I’ve also got a few other things coming such as:

• Skype Conferences - Topics are being drafted and sessions created as we speak
• Online Webinars - Same as skype but I can host more people.
• uStream - Yes, I will be hosting a weekly uStream session. In this session you are welcome to come and ask questions or discuss things related to affiliate marketing. I will be speaking live on there.

We are still continuing the IRC Chatroom but things will be changing there as well. I am wanting a bit more organization there because it’s practically dead there most of the time so there will be group training, techniques and tips given out there regularly.

So the coaching program is still a go but now I’ve changed it to kick out time wasting and tire kicking. Now it’s to a point of you making a little effort. You ask the questions, you get the answers. Remember to signup to the new forums here and let’s get started.

Have a great weekend - R