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Before we start this post, for all the non-Convert2Media publishers who dont know me we may need a flash of credibility here.

<Insert credibility here>

1. I myself was a publisher for 3 years making a living online. I know the grind. I know what is possible from the Affiliate trenches.
2. I coach, train and manage millionaires. From Yearly Millionaires to Monthly Millionaires – I’ve had the priviledge of working with them.
3. I Moderate one of the largest Internet Marketing Forums Online which has quite a few Millionaires that I know personally.
4. I also own my own Internet Marketing Forum which it very self contains Millionaires.
5. I attend Tradeshows and meet new Millionaires every trip from places such as Affiliate Summit and Adtech.

There’s something about a Million Dollars that just get people’s brain a bumbling. Mr. Green (which btw is one of the few blogs I read) posted a great post the other day How To Become An Affiliate Millionaire In Three Years.  I read it 3 times because there is so much there, that is so true. I wanted to touch on what I felt were a few keypoints that he posted.

• Surround Yourself With Smart People – This goes without saying. There is a special aura with successful people. Matter of fact, I’ve met a lot of assholes in my day but not one of them was a Millionaire (that I know of). Typically, the high rolling affiliates that I meet are open to suggestions AND criticism. Matter of fact, most of them feed off criticism. Anything that is pointed out to them that they could do better, they eat this up. This goes with having a huge pair of kahunas as well as the ability to process criticism in a positive manner. Forums and mastermind groups are great but if you want to meet some badasses, try to get out to a trade show here and there. You would be surprised how many millionaires you can find at Affiliate Summit and Adtech.

• Get As Many Distribution Channels As Possible – T R A F F I C  I S  K I N G. Period. You need to gobble up every traffic source you can. The Net changes at an alarmingly quick pace. Regulations, site guidelines, affiliate competition. It all plays a huge role in how long that successful campaign will last on a traffic source. Besides, the “dont keep your eggs in one basket” rings true. Sadly, I saw a lot of affiliates over the last year completely stop affiliate marketing because Google closed their campaigns. Fuck Google, the grass is greener without them anyway. Trust me, I see amazing things every day from Publishers who dont even bother with them.

• Be An Unrelenting Machine – I have a famous phrase that gets repeated to me at almost every show. I dont even know where this phrase is at but somewhere in my journey online I once type out “Nobody owes you shit, Nobody is ever going to give you shit”. It baffles me how many people come to me at tradeshows and repeat this to me. You have got to develop a mindset like nobody else can. Failure is not an option, no matter how much you quit, no matter how much money you lose, Failure is not an option. Committment is 100% or nothing at all.  Make a plan, set goals, achieve them, scale. Dont ever stop. Dont ever get comfortable. I’ve gotten comfortable before and I cant tell you how much of a bitch it is to come back from nothing to something. However, it can be done, I’ve done it. Repeatedly.

• Always Keep Your Door/Inbox Open – This one was very compelling to me. You never know who you are going to meet, you never know who you may end up talking to at 3 am. The Internet is a funny thing. You might feel alone because you are always online working on your business but guess what? There are thousands of us just like you doing the same thing. You are not alone, but you have to be open to meeting people and talking. Opportunities present themselves at the weirdest moments, you have to be prepared.

• Stick With It – Never give up. Man, I cannot stress this enough. I watch people give up every day, but I also see new people everyday come in. If this shit was easy, everyone would do it. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s probably going to be the hardest shit you ever try to accomplish but dammit, it can be done, it’s being done. There really are no secrets in this business, just a lack of information and knowledge you havent acquired yet. Keep working, you will get there. Instant Success rarely exists. You are going to have to work for it and possibly go thru hell to get there but that’s what it takes.

Thanks again to Mr. Green for the awesome post. In closing, I want to leave you with my Facebook message that goes along with everything that I have said. Read it, learn it, do it.

I Do The Things Most People Wont, I Sacrifice What Most People Cant, So That I Can Live The Way Most People Dont.

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This is a small continuance from the previous post – Getting Traffic For Submit Offers Example.  We had two questions asked in the comments:

1. Tips on staying off the scrub
2. Traffic sources

I decided to answer #1 here on the blog, however, I will be releasing a private resource only available to Convert2Media Publishers regarding traffic sources later on this week.

What’s a Scrub? Basically in the email submit sector of the industry (actually all over the industry in whole) there is what is called a “scrub”. Basically, some advertisers will apply a scrub to not accept a certain level or percentage of traffic. Now from my experience as a publisher and network owner, I’ve seen 3 types of scrub:

• Global Scrubs – Applied to affect the entire offer across every channel of distribution of traffic the offer is receiving.
• Network Scrub – Applied from the Advertiser explicitly to a certain network running the offer
• Subid Scrub – A subid is a specific number every affiliate of a network is assigned. Some advertisers have the ability to scrub by exact affiliates.

Now the typical cliche to STAY OFF THE SCRUB would be to deliver HIGH QUALITY traffic, but unfortunately no matter what you do as a publisher in your promotion methods to try and deliver this type of traffic, you could in fact still face a scrub. That’s because Email Submits are owned by various companies and these companies dont always run their offers and scrubs the same ways. I’m not going into who’s who, and who does what around this industry but I will give you some tips here on how to stay on that email submit profitably for a period of longevity.

Tip #1 – Never Use These Two Words:

“Free” and “Official” – Sure it make you look like a legitimate authoritative figure in your ads and the word “free” will probably get you a ton of clicks but to be honest, most advertisers run a registration path on the backend of their offers that either require more information or users to complete other offers to receive the gift they are receiving.  Stay away from both of those words on every level of your promotions. From landing pages to ad copy.

Tip #2 – Instead of a scrub, taking a lower rate

This will be between you and your affiliate manager. You AM is the negotiator for you. You find a hot offer with a considerable ROI but are facing a scrub from the advertiser because the quality is making them profitable, then negotiate a lower rate and see if that helps.

Tip #3 – Dont Use Deception – This is simple. Dont say anything that the offers itself doesnt promise. Dont offer something in return for filling out the offer. This will get you nailed quicker than anything. That lead is almost 99% of the time..worthless to the advertiser.

GETTING THE MOST OF YOUR TRAFFIC:

The three simple tips above will help you maintain a higher quality lead validation but sometimes even that isnt enough. Like I said, you have to be creative in this space. Getting the most out of YOUR traffic BEFORE the offer is going to be a deciding factor in the longevity of your campaign as well. Here are a couple of tips regarding that as well:

1. Capture the data yourself first – First things first. If you run search engine traffic, you are going to have to have a real site with content regarding the offer you want to run. However, you can run traffic to any page you want.  Building a small email capture page is ideal. Capture the data yourself first so if you do face a scrub or lower rate, you still have your future mailings to rely on a bigger lifetime value of your leads.
2. PrePoppable Email Submits – This is pretty simple but a little hard to find. Ask your AM if you can get a pre-poppable version of the offer you are running. Almost always, you are going to run at a lower rate though. The value of a user typing in their email address into an offer is so much greater than a user giving you their info first, then having the form on the offer pre-populated with their email address and hitting submit. However, at a lower rate running a pre-pop you can do some amazing things. You capture the data yourself and you save time for the user not having to type their address twice.

Nothing ground breaking here. Nothing new. Just in a format easily readable so you can get more out of your email submit campaigns. In the end, like always, you are at the mercy of the advertiser. You need to know who your working with and how well they manage campaigns like these. For us, we’ve identified and cut the advertisers and networks who provide email submits with global scrubs. Those offers are highly brokered everywhere and work the same. You fire up one day at 30% conversion rates only to find in 24-48 hours you are at maybe 5-10%. Stay far away from those.

Second, if you run an offer on network A and face a scrub but split test the offer on Network B and stay steady on conversion rates for a week or longer, most likely network A is facing a network scrub. Not dogging anyone here but the negotiations level regarding these offers at that network is shit. Work with someone who will do the right thing and perform these negotiations versus saying “oh well, it’s just an email submit”.

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Not a day goes by that a publisher hits me up regarding Email Submits and Zip submits. “Ruck, how can I scale this?”, “How can I get traffic to this”? As old as it gets, I never miss an opportunity to razzle dazzle a newbie or prove someone wrong. Ok so, there’s a ton of information that could follow here but honestly, I’m going to do one example here and if it doesnt teach you how to open your mind and be more creative, then I guess submits arent your cup of tea. However, I challenge you to clear your mind, pay close attention and read this more than once if that’s what it takes because from owning a network and working with affiliates all day, I can tell you for every 1 affiliate who cant make this work, there is going to be hundreds if not thousands that do.

Here we go:

The offer I’m going to use from C2M is a zip submit - 3021 $250 Grocery Gift Card – Preview.

First off, I need you to CLOSELY look at this offer…

CLOSER…

Why? Because the first targeting tip is right in your face…

You see chips Ahoy, Tropicana, cheerios, Coca Cola?

Ok, but hold up here because I want you to be able to scale big, and targeting those without REALLY thinking is going to cause you to miss out on a lot of traffic. What are those products exactly? Cookies, Orange Juice, Cereal, Soda Pop.

Ok now we are on the right track!

• Ruck: What’s in a grocery store?
• You: Groceries Ruck
• Ruck: Yea but specifics newb
• You: what like milk, bread, vegetables?
• Ruck: DING DING!

How about this. Develop a keyword list of stuff you can think of in a grocery store. Say bread, milk, cheese, soda pop. Wait, people search for this stuff?

According to Google here is approx. Global Monthly searches:

1. bread – 16,600,00
2. Milk – 20,400,000
3. Cheese – 20,400,000
4. soda pop – 201,000

Jeez, right there is more than enough volume to get that tickle in your groin but let’s get deeper into this. Harder, Smarter, Faster. That’s how you win this game.  Let’s take a look at the keyword “bread” because there is an absolute ton of types of bread out there and guess what? More volume yay!

1. pumpkin bread – 201,000
2. sourdough bread – 110,000
3. wheat bread – 368,000
4. banana bread – 1,000,000

Holy crap! That’s just a few too. Think about milk, soda pop, cereal. The list goes on. There are many “TYPES” of groceries. So to recap, target grocery keywords, then target “types of groceries”. Check.

Moving along…

Now we have brand names. Let’s look at Cereal, off the top of my head I think of “kellogs”, “raisin bran” “fruity pebbles” (My favorite FYI), “special K”. There are so many brand names of cereal it’s unreal. Same with milk, bread, soda pop. Do you see what I am getting at here? People searching for there everyday + Grocery Gift Card = New Lambo next month.

Moving along…

Now we have 3 targets here:

• Grocery Words
• Grocery Word Types
• Grocery Word Brand Names

What else?

Start all over, search the big 3 search engines and scrape every url from the first two result pages. Scrape the results for grocery words, grocery word types, grocery word brands, and then when you’re done with that, scrape all those newb ass competitors who think they know what they are doing and take that traffic too. If that doesnt keep you busy next year in scaling and developing a large marketing strategy for such a simple offer, I honestly am worried about you.

Read it over an over again, think of what’s in a grocery store. Specific products, break product into specific types, break products and specific types into brand names. I bet we circle back next year at this time and you dont even scratch the surface of the available traffic for such an easy offer. Which amazes me when I hear someone “balling” with such an offer at a few hundred leads a day.

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Another 5 months have come and gone and now we are a month away from yet another Affiliate Summit.  We’ve been going to the summits for a few years now and each time, we get more and more business. If there is one show that sets the tone for us every 6 months, it’s Affiliate Summit. If you are going to the summit and would like to meet up with us, schedule a time with your AM, one of the partners or even myself starting today. I can almost guarantee within the next two weeks we will all be booked. It’s that way every show.

As with every show that we exhibit at, the keg will be on tap and you will most likely see the occasional affiliate, advertiser or agency rep making a monkey of themselves after having a few too many. If you are coming to the Summit, make sure you stop by the Meet Market Table #75 and Booth # RG 2012. This year we got the bar going along with sofa’s to relax on. See you there!

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It goes without saying, if you are working in the Performance Marketing Industry or another sector of Affiliate Marketing, or hell, being an advertiser as well, one skill you must obtain, refine and possess is copy writing skills. Now one could say, “I like to outsource that part” but I really got to bring you down to earth for a minute. Adcopy is YOUR SELLING point in this business. Whether you are writing content for websites, writing up presell landing pages, running ads on Search Engines, running a media buy, running your own offer. It doesnt matter. Adcopy skills are a must.

I want to share some of my tips here for adcopy. Now with adcopy, I consider to be almost anything you may write online. I hate tooting my own horn here, but honestly…

I’m one captivating motherf$cker…

Almost anything I put out there for the public web is NOT ONLY read, but it’s commented, complimented and solicited elsewhere. The only work I do is creating the content itself and the content is syndicated by others.

Why is that? What does this mean? What can I learn from this?

First off, the reason my content gets talked about is because I’m real. I’m not a robot, I’m not an egotistical A-Hole (although i used to be) looking for a pat on the back. I have the not “give a shit” attitude. Either you will like or you wont, but either way, you ARE going to talk about it.

I want you to read the above and apply it to your own content. It’s important, it’s critical, damn in this business…it’s vital.

An Example –

I just discovered your “zero to hero” series and I gotta say its pretty great man. Also it answered my question about the autoresponder that I sent you. Seems like I should go check out more ruck archives. Keep sharing bro.

I got that on Facebook the other day. Honestly, I sat back saying “Where the hell did he find this, and more importantly, when the hell did I write it?

That comment stemmed from a free report I wrote AWHILE back here.

What I am saying is that I write stuff that gets remembered. You should too. Originality pays the bills. Write something that people remember, and you have something that will always bring people to YOU, not you to them.

Here are some tips on becoming a copywriter that will help you to sell more online. No matter if it’s content sites, ppc campaigns, media buys, emailing. Pay attention.

1. BECOME THE TARGET – This is crucial, that’s why it’s first. See the #1? = Crucial

Super duper Adcopy comes from those who put themselves in the shoes of the ones they are selling to. This requires a few things:

• Know WTF it is you are giving away or selling.
• Go back to the basics – If you dont know the basics of marketing, I’ll toss you a freebie here –> PROVIDE A PRODUCT OR OFFER THAT FILLS NEEEDS.
• Identify your uniqueness – The tough one here. What’s different about your product? Your offer? Your approach?

Sit back, become the consumer. What is your problem? You already have the solution but now you need to think like the consumer. What, When, How? You can fill their needs obviously, but you will never be able to do it without encouragement, calls to action, a sense of urgency. Split test ways how to do this, and you will come up with a winning formula on how to get consumers to believe you.

Identifying your uniqueness can be a multitude of things. This could include a unique approach to your landing page which nobody is doing (or hasnt copied yet HA!). This could also include promotional codes for discounted shipping, giving something away BEFORE offer completion ( do not confuse with incentive marketing)  or hell something as simple as looking at your competitors ads and instead of offering something (such as benefits), ask a question that you can help with within your adcopy or content on your page.

Adcopy gets the clicks, clicks get the money. But you cant get either until you become good at catching people’s attention.

Tired from vacation, more to come later.

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