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a blog about direct response marketing.

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Timeless Marketing Advice From Gurus You May Have Never Heard Of

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The internet is a Direct Marketing Medium.

Meaning the principles of Direct Marketing
that have stood the test of time, should be a
pplied to any and every online marketing campaign
you put together.

Without exception.

You see, many of the truly great direct marketers
became great by actually losing money…

Lots of it.

So when they finally did start making hay, they
shared their success principles with anyone
who cared to listen, learn and implement.

British marketing expert and public speaker
Drayton Bird, likes to describe famous quotes
as “Distilled Wisdom”.

When it comes to testing, here are some wise men’s
quotes that will teach you everything you would
ever need to know.

And chances are, this could be the first time
that you’ve heard their names:

“Rule #1 of Direct Marketing – test everything.
Rule #2 – refer to Rule # 1.”

– Dick Benson, legendary direct mail consultant

“Test, test, test”

– David Ogilvy, Father of Modern Advertising

“Almost any answer can be answered cheaply, quickly
and finally by a test campaign. That is the way
to answer them – not by arguments around a table.”

– Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising book

“Advertising will never produce the results it can
produce until some sort of testing is brought
into the picture.”

– John Caples, Tested Advertising Methods book
(4th Edition)

“The differences in your split-run tests should
Scream – not Whisper”

– Victor Schwab, How To Write A Good Advertisement

“Testing is the lifeblood of every successful
direct marketing business. Test the big stuff first –
concentrate on elements that will make a big enough
difference.”

– Ted Nicholas, producer over $7.9 billion dollars in sales for himself and clients.

You simply cannot hope to achieve any kind of
meaningful success if you are not prepared to
run split-tests, regularly and often.

The men mentioned in this email are among the
true pioneers of Direct Marketing.

Scary what they could have achieved (over and above
their already impressive accomplishments), had they
been online in the same way we are today.

So do yourself a huge favor.

Immerse yourself in the teachings of these Direct
Marketing Greats.

Because they generously tell you what to do.

And then run YOUR own A/B tests using our easy-to-use
3 Minute Optimizer software

With it, you can run unlimited split-tests on
unlimited domains.

For less than the price of a pizza.

Click HERE to combine the proven lessons from yesterday…

With the cutting edge software we can provide you
with today.

C’mon, it’s time for you to combine legendary
(winning) methods with today’s split testing tool
that you’ll find very easy to use.

Get started with 3 Minute Optimizer here…

best,
Matt

Ps – How easy is it to use the 3 Minute Optimizer
software?

So easy that you can be up, running and testing
your campaigns in as little as 3 minutes!

Go here to watch a demo…

=======================

World’s Easiest Automated Webinar Software – Download Your Source Code Here

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So, last month, we acquired Strong Webinar, an automated webinar software company.

And the first thing I’d like to do with this acquisition is — open source the entire code.

The reason is not entirely altruistic. Sure, once you download this webinar software, you’ll be able to run your recorded webinar on autopilot. Quick and easy.

But we do have an ulterior motive, so to speak.

We’re providing tremendous value right now. So you will come back, again and again, to read our blog and invest in our products (we have a lot of cool things planned this year).

Cool?

Then click here to download the Strong Webinar software source code…

Take care,
Matt

The Affiliates Guide to Cheap VPS Hosting

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Web hosting can get expensive really quick, so in this post I want to talk about VPS’s and give you a nice spoonfed tutorial on how to set them up. We are going to be setting up a cheapo $5/month server running Nginx on Ubuntu. I learned all this stuff real inefficiently (took me far too long) so I wanted to write a very in-depth guide on VPS’s for all you affiliates and SEO’s out there who are looking to get cheap hosting.

First things first, what is a VPS and why would you want one? VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. It’s your own little computer (usually Linux) on the internet that will eventually (by the end of this tutorial) become your web server which you will use to host your websites.

What’s cool is that VPS’s are not just limited to being web servers. For instance, you could install VPN software on it which effectively cloaks your real IP address and makes browsing the internet far more secure from hackers. Instead of paying $5 or $10/month for a VPN service which you share with tons of other people, you can install VPN software (its free and called OpenVPN) on your own VPS so you have your own truly private VPN. There are also many SEO tools that can be run on VPS’s.

Maybe you are building a PBN and want to host each PBN domain on its own server (separate IP’s and all that) for as cheap as possible. Maybe you want to setup a Prosper202 tracking domain that can handle a decent amount of traffic for a new campaign of yours. I have a 1GB Prosper202 server that never crashed after doing some decently high volume Facebook campaigns (10 clicks/second at peak times). The only con is that you have to set them up and manage them yourself. But then again, that’s why I put together this post! To prepare you and give you all the information and resources you would need. For those who aren’t technical, you’ll be excited to know that we will be using a script called TuxLite that automates the entire server setup process. It’s very easy, all you need to be able to do is follow directions, copy/paste, and watch some Youtube videos which teach the basics on the Linux command line.

Ready? Let’s get started.
[Read more…] about The Affiliates Guide to Cheap VPS Hosting

A High Converting Funnel From Before I Was a Marketer

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This is a strategy and conversion funnel post. In this post I want to talk about a campaign I saw from back in the day before I knew what internet marketing was. I think the conversion strategy this guy employed was genius. Was it a “new” strategy? Nope! Not at all, but I hope that reading the story makes it easy for you to grasp.

[Read more…] about A High Converting Funnel From Before I Was a Marketer

An Easy SEO Technique to Get Conversions

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This is something that I do pretty frequently since it’s so easy. I won’t bore you with the intro, what you do is write review pages for the newest products/services out there that affiliates are pushing. If you’re familiar with CPA, you know first hand how often products drop-off and new ones pop up. A high converter will last 6 months-ish and then change their name or die. Since affiliates are pushing these high converting offers via paid traffic, LOTS of people are seeing their landing pages daily and debating whether they should sign up. Like most people, they immediately search for reviews. There is zero SEO competition for these keywords due to the simple fact that when a product is NEW it doesn’t have SEO competition yet. These keywords won’t show up in a keyword tool until it’s too late. As soon as 1 product drops off, affiliates update their landing pages with the “new one”. If you can spot and write review pages quick enough, you can get some super easy money rolling in.

Back in the day there was an offer called Swipe Auctions. I noticed the exact day they changed their name to Swipe Bids. Immediately I knew every paid traffic affiliate out there was gonna update their landing pages with the new name. I made a review page, spammed some links at it and made like $15,000 in 2-3 months from it. Was literally less than a day of work!

[Read more…] about An Easy SEO Technique to Get Conversions

How Buying Traffic Can Actually Help Your SEO

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Sounds crazy, huh? I know what you’re probably thinking… Google has publicly stated that buying Adwords Ads has no effect on a website’s organic rankings.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

The simple reality is this: Buying lots of advertising not only helps generate direct sales, it also builds your brand at the exact same time. The more you advertise, the more well-known your company/product becomes. And the more well known you become, the more links you get.

Example: Carfax

Everybody in America has seen the commercials with the Fox that says “Show me the CARFAX!“. If you live outside of America, let me assure you that people literally will not buy a used car without seeing the Carfax report first.

With Carfax being the biggest player in the ‘vehicle history report’ business, is it any surprise that they rank on the first page for keywords such as ‘vin report’ and ‘vehicle history report’? Of course not, people link to Carfax all the time because their name is synonymous with the service they provide.

It’s true that this is really hard to pull off if you’re an affiliate with no business/company/product of your own. What are you gonna do, create TV ads with huge marketing budgets for an offer you are promoting? No way, you would be missing the point. The point is, that advertising aggressively will inevitably lead to more links. This post is my way of trying to help you see the big picture.

2015 Update

Have you seen the ads for InstantCheckmate all over the net for the past 2 years or so? They are pretty brilliant media buyers. Now check Google for one of my dream keywords to rank for: background check. Just my reminder that SEO and paid marketing go hand in hand.

How to Get Landing Pages in 5 Minutes or Less

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Finding profitable campaigns is 100% about experimentation. If you test 10 campaigns, you may find a winner, but if you test 100 campaigns, your chances improve dramatically. It’s a numbers game. Your goal should be to test as many campaigns as you can afford.

Building landing page templates from scratch is one of those things that takes time. And anything that takes a lot of time hurts the numbers game you must play. So it’s nice to have a way of getting landing pages that requires no thought or effort whatsoever.

You know that section within your CPA network that you have grown to ignore? The advertiser-supplied creative tab, with all those crappy banners that don’t look like they possibly could convert? Pay close attention to the ’email’ creatives, those are usually pretty decent landing pages that are already pre-made for you.

Here’s an example of an advertiser-supplied email creative – just copy/paste it into your own page and in less than 5 minutes, you are ready to go! Don’t let the hassle of setting up landing pages hold you back from testing lots of campaigns. Once you find an offer with some life, then you can start testing all sorts of other landing pages, but to get started now, just use what the advertiser has supplied!

There ya go, a simple post that hopefully gets you to test more and find some winners for yourself.

Tax Season! Here’s Where to Get Tax Offers

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As much as we all hate taxes, tax season in the USA is pretty nice for affiliates. Why you ask? Because at this time of year TWO extremely solid offers pop up: TurboTax and TaxAct (among others). These are not your average CPA offers – they’re actually good and they provide a real service that adults need.

Where do you find these offers? They will probably pop up on a few networks in the coming weeks, but I noticed that W4 has them already! I’ve written about W4 previously in my post about what I think are the best CPA networks, but the bottom line is that they really do have the best assortment of offers of any CPA network. I highly suggest joining if you haven’t. CJ.com also has them too, but their payment terms are pretty long.

Why Tax Offers are Good

Scale and how easy they are to convert! Every adult in the US needs to file by the April 15 deadline. Of course not all do, but the responsible portion of the USA does, which is a massive number of people. With a tax offer, you don’t have to ‘sell’ them all that much. It’s mandatory they file, so it’s pretty awesome for us 😀 Even the crappiest landing page ever will probably still convert.

When I think of the size of a market, I envision a line of 100 people and try to estimate the percentage of people that would say ‘yes’ when asked if they are interested in [niche]. Take eCigs for example. Not all people are smokers, probably only 10-20%. So in a line of 100 people, you’d get 10% or so of people that would like to try an eCig. 10% sounds small, but a market that big is absolutely HUGE. It’s common knowledge that cigarette companies make billions of dollars. But taxes? It’s gotta be a lot higher. It’s a HUGE HUGE market.

Another example of the ‘100 people in a line’ test is fitness. Most people would probably respond with a ‘yes’ when asked if they’re concerned with their health and would like to become more fit/attractive. This is why health/fitness/beauty is the single biggest market for affiliates to play in. You can run ads on a general news website (high volume websites) and still, a significant portion of the people are interested. Running an ad on a general news site for something super niche like Adobe After Effects tutorials? Probably way less than 1% of the population is into that, so it wouldn’t work. I find the ‘100 people in a line’ test pretty helpful for my own personal purposes.

As far as these tax offers go, I’d run these on Facebook, especially as the deadline approaches! And sign up to W4 if you haven’t, they are excellent!

Don’t think there’s any volume on Bing Ads?

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Well, you’d be wrong!

It’s not a shit-ton of traffic, but keep in mind this is 1 exact match keyword in 1 country, and my daily budget is limiting the impressions quite a bit, probably 50% or more. Also, something you might want to know: Quality Score on Bing is almost completely worthless. Yes, you need to be relevant so their bot will accept the campaign, but the actual quality score is only an indicator of how well you are doing in comparison to your competitors CTR-wise. If you have a low QS, you simply need to work on your ad CTR. Pretty simple!

What about international traffic? I’ve noticed that Bing has traffic from the following countries:

  • USA (most, by far)
  • Canada
  • United Kingdom
  • Australia
  • …and others that you’ll have to figure out for yourself

Steal My Landing Page Templates That Convert From 43 - 55%

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