I finally took a look at Jeremy’s black ink project. There is some really good info in there. In fact there are things in Black Ink Project that I was hoping to learn at elite retreat that I didn’t. The short of it. Sign up. It is totally free (but you should participate and share). Hurry before Jeremy changes his mind.
Seems that everyone is doing an office tour.
Amit has his new place in florida
Zac has a blog post showing lot of people’s offices…
Paul showed off his new house.
So… I can give into peer pressure. Here is my house/office:
“You know what I can’t figure out? How is it that all these stupid neanderthal mafia guys can be so good at crime, and smart guys like us can suck so badly at it.” - Michael, Office Space
Here it is. Smart people sit around being smart and thinking up all sorts of cool ideas and projects and so on. They have all these great ideas for making money, curing cancer, w/e. But that is just it. They think about it too much.
The secret to success is getting off your rump and actually doing something. Sure being smart and having good ideas helps a lot. However without actually doing something with your great idea you won’t ever succeed.
Most smart people think and think and think about great ideas. (Some are really good ideas and a lot of the ideas are garbage–but don’t tell them that 
) The point of all this is: don’t sit around brainstorming all day. Brainstorming is good for a while, but eventually you need to actually try things.
You will fail. A lot.
But with each failure you are closer to success.
Here is another poop related analogy.
Kid 1 is put in a room filled with poo and a shovel.
Kid 2 is also put in a room filled with poo and a shovel.
An hour passes.
Kid 1 (is smart) is sitting there bored and wants out. “It is just a bunch of poo. I am wasting my time.”
Kid 2 is covered in poo and smiling brightly and digging all over the place. “With all this poo, there has to be a pony in here somewhere.”
Now eventually kid 2 will figure out there is no pony. (But if there was a pony how dumb would Kid 1 feel?)
Summary
This is a short video I made of how keyword tracking works. Some people were asking me about it. I figured this should be a decent enough overview of how it actually works.
Questions? Comments…
White board Episode:
I think affiliate marketing should be moving more towards full sites about a particular product/service. Instead of just linking to a site you can use API’s and direct server posts. This will let you make a real website about a product (not just a redirect page). You can then even help people reach their goals (if they couldn’t qualify for the initial offer)…
Video is below:
If you want my to whiteboard anything else feel free to contact me.
You can contact me via Twitter or Email (john @ johnhasson.com)
I am sitting in the Denver airport at the delta crown room watching N’West and Minn play, but I was thinking about PPC and my plans for the future. Really PPC is not the end game. It is the beginning. There are lots of different ways to gain traffic, PPC is just one of many.
So what is the endgame? In my mind it is a site sustainable by its users. Users come back to your site over and over because you fulfill a need, not because they saw your ad.
Using PPC in a “big plan” site would be a way to get users, but the litmus for the traffic coming to your site will be generating a user that returns on a regular basis. (What do you think many of the places you have been driving PPC traffic to in the first place are doing? 
)
In summary, sure… making minisites and sending PPC traffic to it is all fine and dandy, but to move to the next level you need a site that people go to on their own without ads.
A high adwords quality score and good website design go hand in hand. While clearing out all my emails I ran across a few gems that I had saved.
10 Principles Of Effective Web Design
and
10 Ways To Increase Your Adwords Quality Score
as with anything, always verify what people say. Either by testing things yourself or checking to see if others agree or disagree with them.
Vlad seems to think that CJ’s EPC is pretty much a joke. I do see where he is coming from.
Affiliate Managers using CJ seem to lean on a high EPC too much. So if an affiliate with a high volume of traffic but low conversions comes along, it can skew their averages and lower their EPC. They think that this will cause them to lose out on new affiliates because no one wants to work with a loser.
There is some truth to this. So what do you do? Well first of all make sure you have a relationship with whoever you are running a campaign for. Make sure there is a real person behind that CJ offer. (I admit I am guilty of NOT doing this from time to time) But if you can build that relationship up, you can find out what kind of traffic and people they are targeting. I personally like to talk to them on the phone, a 5-10 minute conversation can yield plenty of useful information.. what has worked for them, what hasn’t and where they are trying to go. It gives you direction when targeting their offer(s).
My thoughts on Jason’s thing, all the other things and the PPC Ask an Expert session I hosted.
Seriously. I get the weirdest emails. But sometimes I get absolutely great emails from Affiliate Managers.
