I have to give credit to Saczilla for this. Tonight I was chatting with him about some marketing techniques. Saczilla showed me this article from ABC. Now normally I wouldn’t be showing this sort of thing but I don’t think a lot of affiliates take the time to find pages that they shouldn’t advertise on.

You need to make sure that you put negative keywords and block out specific URLs that are not conducive of your website or your niche. If you are trying to sell someone on “acai berry” don’t let your ad appear on a site that is against acai berries.

I was running an ad for one of those wedding giveaways. It was strictly for the content network. I let the offer run for a couple weeks before Ruck yelled at me and told me to find out the sites I was appearing on. Did you know that your advertisement can be in english yet you will show up on non English websites? It’s ridiculous how Google can tell you that you are going to target a related site yet your advertisements pops up on a niche site in the opposite direction. I was showing my “Wedding” advertisement on a “Super Cars” website! And the worst part about it was I was receiving clicks. How targeted do you think that was?

Remember to always add negative keywords and to block out URLs. You can literally take a non profitable campaign to profit just by doing this one little thing that can take less than 30 mins.

Now… Get back to work.

I wanted to take some time tonight (and possibly over a few days) to talk about setting up your business. Now you may think that this isn’t necessary… And to be honest, for most it isn’t. For most people reading this right now they will never go anywhere with their “Make Money Online” venture. I encourage you to read this post only if you are serious about working for yourself and not for “the man”. Also as a side note… This is geared towards US affiliates/marketers. And when in doubt please seek professional legal advice. This is meant to be a guide not the bible on this subject.

So with every great venture we do that involves money, we invoke laws upon ourselves. Unfortunately are also need to protect ourselves FROM these laws and protect ourselves WITH these laws. Here’s what I mean. There are laws that are set into place that can harm you financially if you do not follow them. At the same time there are laws set in place that will protect you financially if you do follow them.

The key to setting up a legal business entity is to avoid costly mistakes and legal problems. Now this doesn’t mean that if you make $10 a month from Adsense that you have to follow these guidelines. For most affiliates starting out in this business you are fine not setting up a legal entity. However, I strongly suggest affiliates making enough income to support themselves to form a legal entity.

Their are several different types of business entities that an affiliate can form. The main 3 are these: Sole Proprietor, Limited Liability Company, S-Corporation.

Jim over at theNetFool.com contacted me recently.  He had a nice little proposal for me that I was down to try.

Over the next 15 days Jim and I will try and see who can get the most RSS subscribers to their blog.  I really agreed to do this little contest so that I can be motivated to post more.  There is nothing like victory to move you along.

Basically the looser of the contest will have to clean out his toe jam on live camera and eat it by the spoon full… Yeah that was sick sorry… No the looser just has to make a post about the winner. A “review” of sorts for the winners blog. It’s not too bad, but its enough to get me to give it a shot.

Here are the screen shots from the 15th of January verse the current results!

	Starting Results	Current Results
CashTactics
theNetFool.com

**I’ll get the screen shot of those numbers up asap.**

In any business, networking is a key to success. When I went to Affiliate Summit West, I didn’t really go to speak with the merchants or networks. I didn’t even go to see the different speakers. Instead, I went for networking. I went to meet the blog owners of the blogs that I visit and to also meet the readers of the CashTactics(tm) blog.

Here is a list of the other blog owners that I met.

• AdHustler – This guy is way kool.  I first met him at IanFernando’s IANteract Dinner. His blog has some gems in it I definitely suggest you check it out if your interested in learning how to “hustle ads”.  AdHustler is someone you should get to know, especially if your lost in the desert.  This boyscout knows his stuff.  :P
• IanFernando – Ian’s all right… he’s really just a 5 ft. wanna-be ethug… Na I’m just playin’.  Ian’s pretty awesome!  On Sunday Ian hosted his IANteract Dinner sponsored by Paradigm Media.  I hung out with him a couple of times.  He is really knowledgable in different strategies for PPC marketing.  On tuesday Ian spoke about keyword blasting.  I didn’t have the opportunity to see him speak because I was heading off to the airport.  But if you get a chance to see the video’s from the summit I would recommend checking it out!
• BennyTejeda – Benny is secretly a geek. The funniest thing is that he really isn’t an affiliate marketer.  Instead Benny trades forex. It’s funny when you see Benny tell people what he does.  They always ended up looking at him like he is crazy.  Benny knows a lot of the Jersey marketers so he basically goes to the conferences with them. Check out his blog for some tips on Forex.  I know I’m going to be hitting that resource.

Okay guys here is the $5 off month to month with PPC-Coach.  Again he gave me the option of $10 off first month or $5 of every month.  So, I chose $5 for you guys since most people seem to be staying for more than 2 months.

Here is the link.  This will expire on the first of febuary! Click Here <—– That’s the link to get you $5 off.

If you want to be really nice you’ll Click Here FIRST :)

Targeting a specific demographic for your advertising can really help you improve your ROI. Facebook and Myspace have demographic targeting already set up. But how did we target those demographics before those two social networks came out with their advertising platform?

So, before I begin I am going to select an offer that we should all be familiar with.  The offer comes to us from Convert2Media and is the “Acai Berry Detox (Top Converter) (596)” Go ahead and take a good look at that offer.  When I see that offer and try and think of the person that would want that product I immediately think of a middle aged, over weight, white female. Lets take a look at what the demographics actually are for this offer.

For this we will once again refer to Quantcast. In quant cast I will type in the actual URL of the offer. Not my affiliate link but the actual root URL for the site.  Unfortunately not all sites will show up in Quantcast.  But more the most part the majority of top converting offers will.

According to QC the website serves mainly African American women between the ages of 12-34.  Really all ages will fit but the majority come from 12-17 and 18-34 (Young Adults).

Okay now that we know who the website serves we can feel safe in assuming that female African American young adults buy this specific brand of Acai Berry.

Did you know that in Adwords you can target specific demographics?  This serves on the content network only and does not work for the search network. This is how I did my advertising in the past for Facebook and Myspace.

• CD837 – 31
• CD850 - 8
• CD857 - 48
• CD866  - 1218
• CD1087 - 8
• CD2669 - 735
• CD2851 - 29
• CD2873 - 213
• CD2874 - 1
• CD2955 - 104
• CD2996 - 86
• CD3174 - 8
• CD3284 - 948
• CD3437 - 1

Congratulations to CD2669.
PPC-Coach hasn’t given me the discount code yet, but as soon as he does I’ll get it to you!

Happy New Years guys and gals!

I mean Year. It’s the end of the Year!

This year has definitely been a productive one. I hope that everyone had the opportunity to start at least one project (hopefully more!). While everyone gives their end of the year best or worst list, recaps their progress on goals, or tells you to have a good New Years… I instead will tell you this…

Get a good CPA. If you made decent money this year and have an LLC or Inc I hope you have your duckies in a row.  My CPA set me up this year to pay myself minimum wage while giving myself bonuses throughout the year.  This cuts taxes WAY down.  Now I am not a CPA and so I say don’t take my advice until you speak with your CPA about this.

Here is the little trick.  (This is for Texas, you’ll have to check your local tax laws on this.) The IRS needs to see your business grow.  They also need to see that you are paying yourself.  So you pay yourself the least amount possible.  Either minimum wage or a small salary.  While the Government takes out their federal, state, and selfemployment taxes on that money, they cannot take the self employment tax out on bonuses.  Now… I don’t know how this works but my CPA said that I can be saving 50% of my taxes by doing this.

Don’t forget to write off your home, car, phone, electric bill, water bill, Internet bill, any time you go out to eat and mention work… The list goes on.  As an LLC I have some 300 write-offs I can use.  The key is to get as many write-offs as possible, while not going broke doing it.  Just be practical and again… Talk with your CPA.