Strategic Marketing At Warp Speed

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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.

This week I receive an email from some random guy asking me what made a super affiliate “super” or a guru a “guru”. And to be honest with you… I had no reply for the guy. Instead I have spent the last two days delving into the depths of the Internet to find out what made a guru a guru and a super affiliate super.

Unfortunately everone online has their own opinion on this subject. So I’m going to try my best to give my interpretation of these two terms we hear so often online.

First lets start off with a Guru. This one is easy. The definition of a “Guru” from dictionary.com is this:

1. A trusted counselor and adviser; a mentor.
2. A recognized leader in a field.
3. An acknowledged and influential advocate, as of a movement or idea.

Okay… I took out most of the definitions it gave. The term “guru”, when it was originally created, referred to an intellectual or spiritual guide/leader.

So when it comes to Internet Marketing who can we call a guru? ummm That’s a good question. These days there are so many “guru’s” that its hard to set apart those that are real leaders or guides against those that are looking to resell you information. Mike Filsaime… He isn’t a guru in my eyes. He’s a business man. An entrepreneur. But a guru… no… sorry. John Chow… He isn’t a guru either… He’s an entrepreneur. Shoemoney…entrepreneur. Will from PPC-Coach…Guru and entrepreneur. Ralph Ruckman over at Convert2Media… He’s a guru (although he’ll argue differently) and entrepreneur.

Thanks to all who participated in the contest event and to Direct Agents for providing the free passes. The 2 winners have been selected and contacted to receive the free Affiliate Summit West passes. If you didn’t win this time, be on the look out for free pass giveaways in the future.

Best of luck to each of you in your affiliate marketing endeavors.

Winners Are:

1. Ryan B.

2. Matt L.

Yeah you heard that right. Coach has given me the opportunity to give away 1 lifetime membership to the webs best PPC program. That means you get unlimited access to the Tools, Vids, and Forum, for the next billion years (if you live that long).

PPC Coach is hands down a leader in PPC training. They aren’t specific to CPA offers which is nice. Not everyone makes money via CPA offers. There are several people in the site that are using PPC Coach to just better their own personal online store success.

In my opinion the point of PPC Coach is to become successful using Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN  Adcenter. The tools inside include a poll generator, a tracking script, a campaign creator that will export to the three main PPC engines, daily budget calculator, max bid calucator, and more!  Thats a lot.  Now the one tool you don’t get is a keyword tool.  But if your inside PPC Coach already you will know that they stress a free method  (Google External Tool) for learning purposes.

So now you know a little bit of the benefits of PPC Coach.  Here is what you have to do for a chance to win.

Make sure you are signed up with Convert2Media.

For every $10 dollars you make from the time this post becomes live (6:50PM CST 12/15/08) to January 1st when I wake up (normally around 8-9AM CST), you will have one chance to win the lifetime membership.  That means that if you earn $100 you get ten chances to win.  Now… If you get $11 I will round up so you get 2 chances to win.  That means that even if you make $0.30 in the next 15 days you will get one chance to win. Just remember… Every $10 rounded up will get you a chance to win.

“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
-The Godfather

This is mainly for those of us that have our own products out there. If you don’t have your own product I suggest getting one. There isn’t anything better than making 100% profit on a product your selling AND having hundreds, even thousands of affiliates promoting a product for you!

So lets jump right in and begin talking about boosting up your response rate for email marketing or your own little lander.

The best thing that you can do is to offer free samples.  So what are some things that you can do? Giving a 3 day trial run or even a demo version of your product is the best way to accomplish this.  Now I know most of you probably don’t have your own product.  This demo version is often given on CPA offers as well.  Have you see the $2.95 sample pack of acai berry!? These guys know what they are doing.  They are getting people to buy into their product with a sample pack.

They can’t necessarily give away free samples of acai berry.  That would be suicide for them.  So what they do is they get a credit card number for a sample pack of acai berry and then in 7 days they hit them with the actual cost.  The sample pack is what drew them into the offer to begin with (that and Oprah).

Now, what are some other things that you can give away to help make your offer more irresistible?  A series of training videos, user manual, members forum or chat, unlimited support, unlimited updates for the life of the product.  There are all kinds of things you can add to make your product look outstanding to people.

CashTactics is proud to hold a drawing on behalf of Direct Agents for not 1 but 2 FREE Affiliate Summit West Silver Passes to the conference event taking place on January 11-13, 2009. If I was to talk about one of the biggest turning points in my business, the first thing I would think of is the contacts I’ve made and the networking I’ve done. Making friends within the industry you are trying to build a business within is a very vital aspect in becoming successful and you should start immediately, it will put you way ahead of the learning curve! If you would like the exciting chance to win one of the FREE passes, please read ALL the details that are written below.

First, let me briefly talk about the company that is providing the 2 Free ASW passes. To be completely honest with you, I’ve never personally used them, at least yet. Their name is Direct Agents, they have been in operation for over 5 strong years and are continuing to grow rapidly. Just this year they doubled their office and client base, which says a lot! What I’ve noticed about Direct Agents, are the many exclusive offers they carry and each person I’ve talked to whether on the phone or through the internet has had an amazing attitude and focus heavily on one on one interaction with publishers, that’s a HUGE help especially for new affiliates. The biggest thing that has impressed me with them has been their selfless generosity, they didn’t ask me to write this, I actually offered because a company with characteristics like this is who you want to work with. Just an insider tip, some of their hottest offers right now is DirecTV, Fandango and USO. Each of these offers are goldmines!