After years of working in Internet Marketing, we lagged in the party of joining PPC. Its not like we never did PPC, however most of our efforts were focused on blackhat side of PPC.
So this week, decided to change the equation for once and all.

Got our good friend kickass Affiliate Manager Brandon at XY7 (BTW in language of Barry, Brandon is biggest yes sir of Affiliate Marketing. He is always there for us?) He supplied us an excellent converting PPC campaign.

This was our first week, so we decided to play conservatively. We set aside $1500 for first week experiment. In coming days I will explain in detail about the processes we followed.

Created campaigns at adwords. The results at adwords were the best. However we realize that we are too late for adwords party.
Created campaigns at Facebook. I am in love with facebook ads.
Myspace was very painful. No doubt they are bleeding. They don’t accept foreign advertisers. And No means No. We got excellent support from XY7, then even talked to MS to get us approved, however mySpace policy is not to collect money on the table. Also they do not accept any gift visa cards, any virtual card. Nothing. In order for you to spend money on myspace you have to have a proper American Credit Card. What a great policy. Anyway we have created an account with MySpace using Barry’s personal credit card, but indeed the policy at MySpace sucks. However it can be a blessing in disguise. Since MySpace is such a dumbass in accepting advertisers, there is little competition compared to other platforms.

So that’s all had been my first week effort.
In initial few days lost some money. Overall at the end of the week, spent close to $1400 and made $1250. Overall a loss of $150, that is not bad considering we had learning curve.
In coming week, experiment will be on with new campaigns and trying out second tier places as well.

Then in March, will setup a target of spending $20 K in PPC.
All is well.
Nitin

I thought Apple will comeout with a sexy iSlate, instead it came out with an ebook reader iPad. Man even the name sucks.
Anyway here is my wishlist for the next generation iSlate.
1.    Should have a small detachable keyboard (Just basic keys like we get in qwerty keyboards of smartphones.
2.    Should be able to work in LAN, wireless and all other possible Internet / data transfer connections.
3.    Should be an open system.
4.    Must provide connectivity to other systems when connected in a Network.
5.    Should provide support to some wireless data backup device.
6.    Should be able to read any SIM so that if required, it can even work as very smart phone
7.    Less all attachments should work like an ebook reader. Must have facility like e-ink for easy ebook reading. Seamless integration with all online Book Stores.
8.    Seamless integration with all Media files.
9.    Obviously will have a camera that can be used to take images/ record videos and also can be used as webcam.
10.   Touchscreen with support of Wireless Mouse ( I should be able to use iSlate while drinking / having snacks without worrying that it will spoil the screen).

11. Interface to watch TV on the move.

12. Obviously all other regular featured that iDork offers.

~Nitin

Today Shoemoney has launched its system with lot of fan fare. Below is my honest review to SHoemoney system.

First off unlike many other IMs (including Barry) I am not a shoemoney whore. Agreed the guy has X factor and maybe he is numero uno Internet Marketer in current Internet world, however there are few things about him that really tick me off.

Having said that, every year we start at least one projects based upon things discussed by shoemoney and we always make more than 100 K by scaling that project. Indeed he doesn’t talk something very innovative, but he is the guy who speaks the language of experience. I personally have been always a very good follower. I never made much money reading other so called net marketers, however with Shoemoney I always made money for simple reason, he writes the language of experience.

So when Shoemoney started the Shoemoney system, it was time for me to get excited. I know for sure that our next big idea will come out of this system.

The system is available for $197 per month subscription. The price is a bit steep for most of the net marketer.  I personally have no issues paying $197 a month as this will guarantee that not all Tom Dick Harry can join and kill a money making technique by doing it incorrectly.

Good thing is he is limiting total number of people to just 500. That is a very wise move. This will ensure some exclusivity.

What to expect?
Do not expect anything out of blue moon. Most of the people who can spend $197 a month, already know all money making techniques. However as I previously mentioned, with shoe he is the guy who shows the way how he really made the money and by my past experience when I did the same I also made the money.  It is very unlike other SEO gurus who will talk all the basic techniques and when you do the way it is written on their blog, you end up making $2 a day.

Currently there are just 2 videos. One that we already had seen and the other is also very basic video for creating google account. However it is just the beginning and I have very high hopes with this system.

Click here to join Shoemoney system. As always is our policy, it is an unpaid review and we are not an affiliate of shoemoney. When you join the system using this link, we don’t get paid a dime.

It’s good to see finally Google is catching up with Bing. Now they have introduced Google Real Time Results. When you search at Google for current hot topics, along with regular results, it shows a constant updating box carrying latest updates from twitter, news sites and other relevant places. This box keeps on getting refreshed from time to time.

Also it gives you option to click on Real Time Results. If you click on Real Time Results, you will land to

http://www.google.co.in/search?q=dubai+world&hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enIN324IN325&tbs=rltm:1&tbo=u&ei=P-slS7ihEsuIkAWrxbmnAw&sa=X&oi=realtime_result_group_more_results_link&ct=title&resnum=14&ved=0CEUQ5QUwDQ

Here are couple of observations.
1.    Service is still in beta phase. You do not get the box always. For example I searched for “Boston” couple of times. 50% times I did see the box, remaining times there was no Real Time Results Box.
2.    Unlike Bing Tweet results, G results are filtered. For example they don’t display all the tweets . They display selectively. Either it is random or based upon some algo, I am not sure. In first glance as of now it looks random.
3.    In my humble opinion, now google has turned more into displaying links of other sites. It has more turned into a scrapper site itself, the types that it always frowned upon. Make a search on term Boston and you will see, Youtube results, Map Results, Product Results, Advertisements, Real Results, News Results and on and on. Gone are the days when there was the value of regular search results. Also even regular searches will have Wikipedia mandatory. So going forward google has turned into a collection of links from all different sites.

4. You see the box only in Google US ( I may be wrong. But I don’t see the results in Google India).

Nitin Tripathi

The same day Tiger Woods ghost ride his whip into a fire hydrogen AND a pole just a few feet from his house, the news of that story caught fire on twitter trending topics and in 1 hours there was over 50,000 twit’s about the topic making it one of the top trending topics I have ever seen.

Twitter’s Trending topics has a lot of potential to grow as its a cool feature and with alittle imagination, it could be something special.

Another cool thing about twitter’s trending topic is its a great place to find and friend people with the same interest as you. For example, if you love watching “The Hills”, all you have to do is just do a search for “the hils” and start up a convo with people who are talking about The hils there.

Twitter, what a phenomenon………………

Barry Tubwell

Twitter will either sellout or simple be replaced in the coming year or so. Why, well for one thing they have no viable Business model to speak of and for another it would be a simple thing for one of the big 3 search engines or facebook to simply create there own bigger better twitter and sign up all there current subscribers to it.

Who would benefit from doing this the most? I would say BING.com. bing has made it clear that they want a big share of the search biz and creating there own twitter and releasing it on everything microsoft related would be a killer blow for twitter.

Facebook on the other hand would be a perfect fit for what they already have going ( the biggest social media website in the world).

Yahoo…..its to late for yahoo, they are toast in more ways then one plus they shipped off there search to bing.com.

GOOGLE…… if google ever makes there own twitter (which you can bet they are working on rightnow) it will be all over with. it would be like everytime you turn on your pc you will see google/twitter/adsense in one shape or form (Yuck).

In closing, my advice to twitter is to make a deal with bing.com and head for the hills….Beverly hills that is .

Barry Tubwell

Hello everyone! I have decided to start a series of reviews on affiliate networks based upon my personal experiences. The reviews are more geared towards the prospective of Power Affiliates.

Very first in this series, I will review Affiliate.com

We used affiliate.com real good during the good ole time of ringtones advertising. Like all aggressive Affiliate company, they had aggressive affiliate manager, who will run every extra mile to help you out.

They offered weekly payments via wire to me in India (though later I think we went for ACH in US only). They were cool with all the methods as long as you tell them in advance.  Obviously many techniques used during that time are now frowned upon and most of the power affiliates will swear that they have never used those promotional tricks – In reality everyone lives with time. However good thing with affiliate.com (then Cpaempire was they were cool dudes with laidback attitude).

Once we hit the daily cap of the campaign on a Sunday. Also the owner got worried as he thought our conversion rate was very high. So they paused the campaign on a Saturday night. Barry was able to talk to  our manager and he in turn was able to talk to owner and get whole matter resolved in minutes. That is called efficiency.

Weekly payment worked like charm, never had to remind them.

At top level, most of the affiliate programs have same offers. Though Affiliate.com’s specialty was ZIP / EMAIL submit offers. Also once you start showing the volume, they were always willing to negotiate better rates for you.

At times we faced the situations where we felt that either Affiliate.com or the advertiser is scrubbing the leads. However our affiliate manager was always on our side and genuinely went after the advertiser that they are scrubbing the leads.

However once our affiliate manager left the job, our relationship got ended. Later in passive mode of income they got a few complaints on our promotional methods, there was not much that I can do.  The new company terminated my account and never paid the pending money. To give them benefit of doubt, at that time I was making very little like 300-400 a month and I never really pursued with them.

Till date we maintain an account with them ad we keep on getting calls from them. Whenever we need something, we call them and they are more than willing to help (though in recent time we have yet to really use them effectively).

Overall a nice company to work with. Scott Ritcher is the man >)

Nitin Tripathi

These a days team at Google is busy in coming out with lot many different new products. At times it is making us, the advertisers very confused with terminology.
First they had Google Adowrds Local Extension. Where-in your address can be displayed in ads when someone is searching for you. It is just extension of Google Adwords.

Then they started Google Local Ads. Available on a fixed price per month. Currently they are testing it in beta phase at SF and San Diego only.

The difference in these two was, in adwords extension, you see just the address, whereas in Local Ads, you will see a blue balloon on ad as well as on the map.

Today, while searching for Plumber Montery, I started seeing blue balloons in adwords extension as well. First I thought that they started Local Ads all over the country, but later I realized that it is just regular adwords extension.  So now I am at total loss of understanding. There is essentially no difference in adwords local extension and local ads, so why will anyone advertise at adwords and pay $4 a click, when I can purchase Local Ads at just $50 a month.

But oh wait. This is just available in Google Chrome only. On Firefox, the search displays still old format.

Lol So now another feature of using Google Chrome. You will get adwords local extension with balloons.

My request to big G – Please don’t go Yahoo way. We appreciate your concept of keeping it simple. We understand that you are a corporate now and all that big stuff. But please keep it simple. Don’t confuse us with tens of different formats, same advertisement being offered with two type of google ads, different ad formats on IE, Firefox and Chrome. Please go the way you are famous for, that is SIMPLE way.

Notice 1 & 2 in blue balloon. Also notice 1 in blue balloon in map as well – This is on Chrome

Same search on Firefox. No blue balloon – Just a Plus sign and address

Nitin Tripathi

Hah. I just love Internet World. Seems like Shoemoney vs. Dennis Yu episode is not going to die anytime sooner.  Here is original post of Shoemoney. Then Dennis response. Now Jeremy’s counter response. Also here is response of Dennis at our blog.

Once again I will try to analyze Jeremy’s post logically.

First off my advice to Jeremy – Life is too short. Never make personal enemies. Every dog has his own day. As of now reading your second post to me it seem like due to whatever reason it is a personal enemity or personal grudge that you are carrying against Dennis.

To me, latest post has two main points. One is to say that people in Blitzlocal’s Board of Advisor do not know Dennis ‘very’ well. Understood. If tomorrow Jeremy makes a post against Barry claiming him to be a drug pusher, my comment also is I don’t know Barry ‘very’ well.

Actually to me it is very clear that all people mentioned on the list were the friends / acquaintances of Dennis. Even son of one person was working in Dennis company. In the world of Internet and even in company law, there is no specific designation for advisors. Advisors are the people who advise you / your company. Reading all the posts in my mind I have not even a bit of doubt that all three people were knowing Dennis and his firm ‘quite’ well if not ‘very’ well. Had that not been case, these people should have sued him long back for using their their name falsely on Blitzlocal’s web-site.

Jeremy has indeed made some very serious allegations against Dennis regarding extortion. Since Jeremy claims to have the list of people who have contacted Jeremy regarding extortion attempts by Dennis, probably it will be wise for Jeremy to contact FBI or at least post names of the people so that a strong legal case can be made against Dennis.  However I have a doubt in my mind that why these powerful corporate / people (They can call Jeremy direct) does not have even the most basic mind of going to Police / FBI against an attempt of extortion. Rather they are coming to Jeremy asking his suggestion on what to do. Jeremy also should have taken this matter very seriously and instead of wasting time on writing on the blog, being a good citizen he should have immediately called the appropriate authority. If you know a crime is being committed and you do not report it then in essence you are supporting the criminal. So again all I say is if indeed extortion had happened then take legal course of action instead of just mud sliding.

The other thing that caught my attention was Jeremy’s strong insistence on Plenty Of Fish founder Markus Frind ‘s involvement in the company.  Hah is it merely coincidental that these two people share enmity since wayback in 2006. Check Shoemoney vs Markus in 2006

It is possible that Dennis may not respond at all, however going by the nature of the post written by shoe, I will expect Dennis to respond to it.  Though Dennis clearly commented at our site that to him it really does nto matter if he gets visitor to his blog or not, whereas shoemoney is more famous for his blog. Let’s see what’s there in store.

Disclaimer #1: Barry is Loyal puppy to Shoe .

Disclaimer # 2: I am as independant as Bloomberg

Disclaimer #3: We don’t know any of these names mentioned on my blog either personally nor as a company we ever did any business with.

Peace!

Nitin Tripathi

I always make a point not to slam someone when you are having a current bitter experience. In that case, most of the stuff you write becomes too personal.

However, since so long I wanted to slam cj.com and today they gave a chance.

I used to use cj during good ole days of 2003 when there was no alternate. Just CJ, Befree, valueclick, linkshare. Later CJ swallowed Befree and Valueclick.

Fast forward to 2009, cj still lives in 2003 mode. Publishers do not carry any value at all with them.

Before I go into my personal experience, here are a few top reasons why I quit using them. I am no biggie still I used to do a consistant 3-4K a month in 2003-04.
1.    They started charging $10 per month to publisher if your account is not producing any revenue. Haha never heard in web’s history.

2.    Eventually your account will be shut down if you were not using them and then you have to open up a new account with all your approved advertisers gone.

3.    Working with cj, no news is good news. Never will cj call you with their ideas of how can they help you increase your traffic / revenue. They will only call on the slightest suspicion and will put your account on hold.

4.    Affiliate Manager – Cj does not even know if this term exists. There is no personal touch at all.

5.    Campaigns – If you get rejected by any advertiser, there is very little that cj can assist. Compare it with XY7, we talked to our affiliate manager Brandon. They were not having an exact campaign for us, they took the pain to find out the campaign exclusive for us and they are taking pains to even change the graphic etc for the campaign.

6.    Payments – Totally on the mercy of advertiser. They have all rights to extend your payment. Once advertisers review your payment, extend it, then clock it, then lock it, then close it, then whatever it, then you will get in the queue of getting the payment. Then probably you will get payment on day 75-90 of when you generated the payment. Hah if you are spending money on PPC, you are indeed screwed for big time.

7.    Compare with any other affiliate program. The moment you start doing $100 a day, the affiliate manager will start following you. You will get a raise. You can negotiate the rates. You will even get the weekly wires for as little as $1 K a week. I got that while dealing with Azoogle, copeac, cpaempire, xy7, millnic, hydra and a few others. With CJ if you make $1 K a week, get ready for your commission to be extended for another month and then be ready for the dreaded email from their quality people.

8.    After very long time I used CJ in the month of September. Made may be $150-$200 (After stopping the campaign in passive earning though I made like $700 at cj). Obviously in the month of October, commission got extended. Hah now after 75 days of actually generating the revenue I have been asked by CJ to prove from where I generated traffic. Obviously I stopped using that campaign same time when they extended the commission. Got a very good deal from Randy @ Pricelinepartnernetwork. They pay me weekly and currently I am doing over 5K a week with them.
And that is my experience who has been using cj on and off since 2001.

Haha. Oh yes By The Way when they acquired valueclick same thing happened. Valueclick owed me some very little amount, not even worthwhile doing follow up (like $80-$85). So I simply forgot that money and never really followed up with valueclick. After 5 years, two months back started getting some nice emails regarding my past due and was asked to update my profile immediate like within 24 hours. Obviously spare $80 does not byte. Updated the profile and all such, nice email communication – But no money.

Heck I am done with them for good. If they pay me my remaining $700 good else it is not even worthwhile to follow the paper tail with these morons.

Nitin Tripathi