I am proud to say that I am the black sheep in the family. I think differently from the rest of our family and relatives. Especially when it comes to the country’s state. I never see that the Philippines is in bad condition but instead, the situation we are facing today is a lot more of an opportunity than a curse. I will always hear my dad tell me “Gago, naghihirap na ang Pilipinas!” or my sisters say “Kuya, ang weird mo!” just because I’ll say and debate to them that the Philippines is not in a bad state.

I was watching tv with my kid sister. The tv show was about different marine animals. Then there’s this marine creature that’s called Mantis Crab/Lobster. This creature can see heat & light under the sea. In which the narrator says “only they can see things that other marine animals can not see“. Looks like he have thermal camera on its eyes and night vision too. Then I said, “Wow, that crab can see things not all fish can see. He’s weird!”.

You see, people will judge you by how you see the world. What the crab can see that other fish can not see is not something weird, but a gift. If you see things differently than others you should be happy. I know a lot of people will just stay quiet in one corner just because they have a different view in life. Marconi was put in a mental hostpital because he said he can talk to people from other town without using wires. And now, we are using the product of his vision, the cellphone & wireless communication.

Let’s take the Philippines for example. A lot of people will be ranting about high gas prices, economic depression. As we all know, these things comes in cycle after a few years. It will go down and up. But what’s important is when there’s a bad situation happening, there’s always a new opportunity coming up. So to give you a hint, during the economic depression, stocks are low, which is the best time to invest! When the stocks got high again you’ll get a good amount of profit.

In an affiliate marketing perspective, because of the economic set backs, companies are lowering their advertising costs. Big companies can easily dominate the PPC arena just by bidding insanely high, that most affiliates can not compete. Because we are in a world wide economic crisis, these companies need to cut the cost and bid low. This is the best time for affiliates to get the best of the profit because they can now compete with merchants head to head price wise.

Do not be afraid to be criticized by people just because you think differently. Most of the time, thinking out of the box is where you’ll find great opportunities waiting for only those that are brave enough to think & act that way.

I’ve been sitting in my office thinking, there has been a lot of people jumping into affiliate marketing and find themselves confused and down as to why they can’t earn money from it. First of all, making money online is not just about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is one of hundreds of ways to earn money online. It’s just a preference. I know a lot of people earning thousands of pesos per day in adsense, paid reviews, paid to click and filling online surveys and more. Affiliate marketing is just one of these ways. No other thing is better or best its just how you decide to focus and grow and be good at what you do.

First thing, if you want to dive in this industry there are things you should check first and evaluate your values if you are really into this industry and if you want to make it big. Though the promise of huge income is present in affiliate marketing, there are also consequences in return for the big prize:

• Affiliate marketing is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t want to spend money, this industry is not for you. You can lose a lot of money in this industry (big money) especially when you’re starting up. The figure below suggests that I must bid Php1,809 per click to show my ads.
• Long Hours Of Work. If you can not devote 16hrs - 24hrs working in front of the computer just to test out a niche for months and find out that it is not profitable, this is not for you. Affiliate marketing is an on going process of testing out everything. You want to know if you’ll earn big bucks in this particular niche? You have to test it for months. There is no guarantee that you can get your money back. Well, that is business. But once you got that particular niche that are doing good, it can give you money for years without doing anything.
• Frustrations. Most of the time, you’ll be dealing with google and their algorithm. Slaps are as natural as any affiliate marketer experience this. Most of the time, you’ll get slapped every week and your site will be black listed. After spending months developing the site, you have to make another one again, and again and again. If you are easily discouraged, affiliate marketing would be hard for you.
• You must be creative. People who are earning big bucks in affiliate marketing are very creative people. They know that everybody is doing this and that and that gives him the motivation to do another thing (might fail or succeed) but its worth the shot. You may lose time and money in the process but its really worth it.
• Tough Competition. If you’re doing adsense sites, you know that competition is fierce when it comes to optimizing current events. You may earn big money for that but because of competition it will diminish. Now multiply that competition by a hundred folds in affiliate marketing. Competition is not really bad. Its also a way to know how much money you can earn in a particular niche by knowing how much competition there is in the niche. Which can save you time in the long run.
• There is no one way to do affiliate marketing. I am guilty of this. When I started out, I sought out mentors that would teach me how to do affiliate marketing. What I learned from each person I asked is that, there is no one way to do affiliate marketing. You just have to know the basics (which you can get for free on the internet) and get out there and do it. Do not be afraid to lose money and fail because everything is a learning experience. Then after that, you will develop your own way.

Almost all people will judge you by how much money you make and if you won’t tell them how much, they will ask you what you do. Then they’ll try to make themselves look better than you. This is what I experience when I attend reunions or alumni homecomings. Just like my friends says “Payabangan lang yun”.

I am not mad at these people. I find it amusing. And it make me feel happy that people are happy with what their status in life are. Think about it, would you rather hear a sad (poverty) story from other people? Or a story of excitement of success?

To make themselves even feel good, I always put myself less successful than they are. It makes them talk about more of themselves. Its fun. They will ask, what’s your job? I will answer, “I stay at home & I have no job.” I never really lied because, what I’m doing is not a job, but a business.

Then here comes people that will talk about their failure. These are people that I really don’t want to listen to… Because you are always in command of what you can accomplish. So when I hear people that they only make this much in their job. They should print out this list.

The top 24 according to the U.S. Department of Labor

1. Surgeon: $181,850
2. Anesthesiologist: $174,610
3. OB/GYN: $174,610
4. Oral and maxillofacial surgeon: $169,600
5. Internist: $156,790
6. Prosthodontist: $156,710
7. Orthodontist: $153,240
8. Psychiatrist: $151,380
9. Chief Executive Officer: $140,880
10. Engineering Manager: $140,210
11. Pediatrician: $140,000
12. Family or general practitioner: $137,980
13. Physician/surgeon, all other: $137,100
14. Airline Pilot: $134,090
15. Dentist: $132,660
16. Podiatrist: $111,130
17. Lawyer: $110,590
18. Dentist, any other specialist: $106,040
19. Air Traffic Controller: $100,430
20. Computer and Information Systems Manager: $100,110
21. Marketing Manager: $100,020
22. Natural Sciences Manager: $97,560
23. Sales Manager: $96,950
24. Astronomer: $96,780

Since Filipinos love to work in a high paying job AND likes to go abroad to work. This might help others in finding the right job for them and the salary of their choice.

It has been quiet for a couple of days in this blog because I’m busy learning things more about affiliate marketing. I just found a great resource that can help me improve my campaigns and its not free. I’ll just have to try it out first before blogging it here.

Anyways, I’m also messing around with offline stuff and I was being convinced into joining in an MLM (Multi Level Marketing) business a.k.a. pyramiding. Now, pyramiding is not illegal. Though most of them are. There are still some legit MLM companies out there. But this post is not about how to spot a scam MLM company but about how they sell.

A friend of mine in college experienced being recruited in an MLM company back then and when I told my story to him, he said that the “sales pitch” of these sales agents are all the same. We laughed and talked about it “Pare yan din sinabi saken noon eh, ganyang ganyan yun!”. Taking into account that this friend of mine got recruited 3 -4 years ago. If their not changing the strategy, it only means one thing, its EFFECTIVE! Let’s enumerate their sales pitch strategy a.k.a. marketing strategy that makes MLM companies (and even scam companies) successful.

MLM Sales Tactics

1. Rags to Riches. They will first start the conversation of what’s their situation years ago before they got into their MLM company. They will tell you all the saddest story from being a highschool drop out to a dog died experience. Just to make you feel that they are just an ordinary person like you that have their ups and downs in life. Of course, you will be interested to know that how this guy got to own a BMW if he’s just a high school drop out? On to our next tactic.
2. The Doubts. They will then tell you how they found the company and how hesitant they were at first. They will tell you that they are just like you that are skeptic and don’t want to spend money for the MLM company. They will blurt out the reason, “I have no money”, “I don’t trust the company because it might be a scam”. The sales agent is already putting his self on the customer’s shoes. He knows about the doubts and that builds rapport. This is a very good psychology because the people being persuaded to join might already be in doubt. The sales agent already did the work for them to clarify the doubts by presenting certificates of legitimacy, business permits, pictures of the president of the company shaking hands with a prominent figure.
3. The Hero Shot. This time, the sales agent will brag about WHO are the people already joined the MLM company. They will name names of celebrities, generals, political figures or people that are already rich. This will give the clients an idea of how “exclusive” this company may be.
4. The Opportunity. This is the fun part as most bloggers in the internet do this (me included). Post the earnings. This will give an idea to the client of the earning potential IF they join the MLM company. They will will show you Php100,000 check amount of money earned per day that its funny how we see our eyes got big but not bigger than the amount of money they have. They make it sound so easy by comparing it to a normal day job. They can earn Php100,000 per day and they will point that out compared to a normal day job. They will show you their BMW’s, introduce you to their youngest millionare teenager just to prove to you that its the shit. They will say to you that you are given an opportunity to change your life by joining their MLM company. This is a psychological tactic that makes the client feel in control. Now that the client is in a trance. It’s time for the next part.
5. The Challenge / Call To Action. They will flatter you. Tell you something like this “You, <your name>, you are intelligent, you know how to grab and opportunity when you see one. This is an opportunity that we are giving you, its all yours for the taking…”. This will most likely result to the person joining. Because no matter how hard they think, they will not see any reason why NOT to take it. The business is legit, check. Earning potential is big, check. Make it look easy to earn, check. This is how many people get scammed. They forget the fact that the reason why these agents want you to join is not about helping you. But its about the money.

We can learn a lot from their example as most of these principles are used in internet marketing.

I am not against MLM because I believe that its a really great marketing strategy. A lot of successful businesses started as MLM. It really opens opporunity for small players to do business. But the fact is, it is against my belief in business. Business for me should be for the long term, that even my 8th generation grand child may earn from it. In MLM, there is no way it could survive 10 to 20 years from now. Once the flow of sign ups stopped, the PYRAMID will shatter. And the ones that will get affected are the ones below. It’s not really helping people build a business, but a legitimate way to take someone else’s money.

Harrizon Gevitz is a 16 year old successful affiliate marketer that has a Black Amex Card. What’s a black amex card you say? It’s nothing, you just have to spend $250,000 (11 Million Pesos) per year to get a Black Amex Card. XD

This kid is sick but rich. We noobs have a lot of things to learn to get to where he is now at an early age.

Today marks the end of the early bird tickets for Graphika Manila 2008. Being a web designer, I am always happy to attend conventions like these. And tomorrow you may buy the tickets at regular price. I bought mine together with my close friends and after buying the tickets, we sat down with coffee on the table on the nearest Starbucks and tried to catch up.

Two of my friends are still employed they have already realized that working for a day job is not the way to financial freedom. They already decided that I should lead the group. But I was happy that someone took the effort to lead and volunteered to lead us in this venture simply because I will have more time for my own business and most especially, I would like to see how my teammates will “strive” to make their lives better. I know that if we become successful in this, it would be a very good success story for them.

We have talked and joked around but one question that pops into my head is that, “What’s your retirement plan?” In being an employed worker, you don’t have to think about this and its not really a problem. When you’re in a company, they already decided what you will have, after you served the company almost half of your life. This is what my father has planted into my brain for years, “Pick a company with a lot of benefits”. I was happy that he said that to me. Through that question, I realized that, the greatest benefit that I could have for my life and future of my family is freedom. And I can never ever get that freedom until I retire. So what’s the use? Will I ever enjoy that freedom, if I am old?

Enter Entrepreneurship

Then I realized that the financially free people have their own business. People that are not only proud of their family, their sons, and achievements but actually proud that they can enjoy life as early as possible. The only drawback is that, you have to work waaaay more than a normal person. Think of it like having to work for half of your life everyday just to achieve financial freedom at an early age. This is a tough consequence that life throws at us. And sometimes, we will have to think about it all night. Until the sun rise and then you have to work again. Until you got tired of the same old things again and again shall you realize that life wants you to take it. So, I did. I damn took it.

Being an entrepreneur gives you the power to decide what kind of retirement plan do you like. Do you want to spend all your living days in a yacht sailing the pacific, traveling the world, dining in the finest restaurants around the world and meeting gorgeous women? We all heard of this and we envy it. But not all people are willing to sacrifice everything to achieve this. What do you have to lose? What are the consequences? You’ll only have to give up your job, being ridiculed for a couple of months because you have no job, hearing sarcastic comments of friends because you constantly fail with your attempts in business, unpleasant reputation, laughed at, tell you that you’re lazy and why not get a “real job”, will say you’re just wasting your time because of your wild dreams, weird, introvert, antisocial (lol) and most importantly, being dead ass broke. If you have a thick face of steel then you are on track. All these things are temporary. You know there’s a lot better life for you if you work hard enough to make it happen. Its a hard decision, I know. I have been there. But think of it this way, would you want to play safe and work for the rest of your life? Or you want to take risk today and be free for the rest of your life? If you already took the first step in achieving your retirement plan, you are already ahead of the pack. Because 90% of people, even though they read books or articles like this, won’t even do shit to follow their dreams because they are afraid of the consequences.

Disclaimer: This is NOT a paid review.

If you guys watched the reality show Top Affiliate Challenge, you must’ve noticed that most of the challengers runs offer on COPEAC despite the fact that you can run any affiliate network in the contest. CJ is one of the biggest affiliate networks out there, why does the challengers used COPEAC?

I gave COPEAC a try and registered. The sign up process is easy, all you have to do is fill up the form with your phone number, they will verify your application automatically. You will receive the verification number on your phone.

1st Reason Why COPEAC Rocks: Account Managers

Once I got accepted, I was greeted by my account manager. He was quite friendly and willing to make money with me. We even set up a goal to make at least $500 where HE will help me make that money in a month. It is quite helpful to talk to your managers as you can learn a lot, especially if your a newbie. It’s like a friend mentor that can help and earn money with you.

2nd Reason Why COPEAC Rocks: FREE Landing Page Design

Ohhh I like this one. Being a web designer, I do love designing web pages. But sometimes, if you are new to a market, you don’t know what should be the design of a page that could attract the target audience. You have to research for it first which takes a lot of time. Luckily, COPEAC have a landing page design service that is free for all affiliates! And I must say that the quality of the designs are top notch (coming from a web designer myself).

It’s also quite helpful for people who don’t have any idea on how to design landing pages!

3rd Reason Why COPEAC Rocks: Rotating Creatives

If you get banners from an advertisers, you are limited to only one design. Since, affiliate marketing is about testing, you want to know which banner design attracts more clicks or conversion. You have to test each and every banner available. This will take time for me if I constantly change the banners. But with COPEAC’s rotating creatives tool, I can automatically rotate the banners and test each and every banners, and of course, track which one is converting.

COPEAC earned my good impression to be one of the leading provider of services that could help affiliate earn more.

You may sign up on COPEAC using the link.

Have you ever experienced having to decide on what keywords to optimize, what products to promote but still, the money isn’t coming in? I have, and through my experiences, I have come to find out that there are 4 factors that should be met, to have a successful campaign in affiliate marketing, blog or any other online business.

Market Research

People are using the internet to find what they need, what they need to know or need to buy. Therefore, it is only logical to think of the search term they enter on search engines as potential market. Like for example, web design is a market and affiliate marketing is another market. And these market may be subdivided into different sub markets like real estate web design, small business web design or web 2.0 web design. If people are entering those keyword terms in the search engine, they want to know about those terms or buy products related to those terms. It only makes sense to know which keywords are used by the market to buy a product or search info about the product.

Searches

Are there people looking for a product or a solution to their problem? If there are, there is opportunity. Like the Law of Supply and demand.

Competition

I used to be afraid of going to competitive market. Simply because I am still noob at this that I look for market that are high in traffic and little to no competition. I have come to find out that this is wrong. The best market out there are those with high competition. Because many people are there, the market can sustain the spending of your competition in advertisement. I am now more afraid to take on no competition market because there must be a reason why no people are in there. Maybe the market isn’t buying.

You can easily do a market research by using google and their tools. One of the best tools out there and is free is google’s keyword tool at google.com/keywords.

Traffic

Bloggers are master of driving traffic to their site. They are good at creating and spreading buzz all over the intarweb. I am always amazed by how good they drive traffic to their site that my server crashes. I’m not mad or anything, just amazed. But with regards to this topic, are we getting the traffic that are related to our market?

There are 3 kinds of traffic

1. The Browser - People that are just passing by. Probably a friend or someone that knows you that want to check out your site from time to time. Maybe they buy, maybe not.
2. The Iffy Traffic - People that are on the edge of buying but still hesitant. They arrive at your site and decided to buy later.
3. Trickle Traffic - These are people that are ready to enter that credit card details. Trickle traffic is sometimes defined as low but laser targetted traffic.

With this in mind, are you getting the best quality traffic from the search engines?

Conversion

So you have a market and you got traffic going to your site and the people visiting your site are the right people. The next question is, are they willing to spend? There is no other way to test the market for conversion rate but to promote something and test it out for a week. Sometimes I will use amazon affiliate to test the market out or pepperjam offers. If someone buy within a month’s time, you know you got a winner market. According to survey, for every 200 visitors you should get 1 sale, this is to know if the market is feasible.

Product

Once you got your market, drove traffic to your site and you know that people in the market are actually buying, its time to find a real product. This can be your own product or services or focus on promoting affiliate product.

As you can see, the 4 factors should be done accordingly. People sometimes jump to the next phase as developing the product first before they promote and drive traffic to the site. Or they drove traffic to their site first before actually knowing if there are people searching for it. The good thing about the internet is that, you can never guess.

I’m excited for my new dedicated server. They are still on the process of setting up things that I still have to wait for few more days. I was totally working like a dog all day with web design jobs and tried my best to NOT SLACK at home. This is really hard, see, when you are in the office, you can not slack because your boss will make rounds and you’re too scared to be caught. If you’re at home, no boss will gonna catch you so I always always find myself slacking, watching movies, videos and playing games.

Here are some of the things I did to lessen my slacking habits.

1. Make A To Do List - I always keep a handy dandy notebook by my side to put up my task for today. I divide them by 2. Those that are pending works and those that are needed to be done today. I always limit myself to only 5 tasks everyday so I will still have time to… slack off, take a walk or do some exercise. Since its been raining for the past couple of weeks, I just went and worked some more.
2. Cancel All Noise - I have with me a headset that can cancel noise. In the house, my siblings are all noisy and the television is a big distraction. I’ll play a soothing music or just put the headset on so I can hear silence. This keeps me focused.
3. Momentum Is King - Momentum is a powerful force. Basketball coaches knows that. So you should also. If I know I am hyped to work, and I already did all the tasks, I do some more. Momentum is great as it makes you feel like you’re on fire.
4. Keep Your Work Times - Allot time for your work. If you’ll work for 8 hours today, do it. Separate work from personal life. If 8 hrs should you work, try not to do anything for personal reasons by that time and let the whole family know about it. Put a “Shhh… Genius at work” poster on your office door so everybody would know. LOL
5. Always Keep A Bottle Of Water By Your Side - Standing up and going for a drink is a distraction. I get to past by the television to get some drink which distracts me and makes me want to sit down and watch the television. I see to it that my bottle is full so I won’t get interrupted.

This work ethics applies to any kind of work. Should it be home based business, freelance jobs or working in the office. How about you? Do you have some tips?

So I decided to stop all my 4 campaigns and focused on only 1 campaign that’s making most of the profit. Why? I have limited funds and I might not eat for a long time if I continue with all those campaigns.

I was not sure at first if I should continue this campaign. It is saturated, competitive and the keyword bids are fucking high. I’m talking about $2 - $11 average cost per click. But after asking many affiliates, they said that “If you’re breaking even or losing just a couple of dollars, then you have a winner“. I am making conversions but losing a couple of dollars a day $1-$12 a day. So I guess it is ok, I just need to tweak it more.

Now another issue is about the saturated market. I’m still new to ppc affiliate marketing and having to choose this competitive campaign I’m doing right now, I’m actually not sure if I would hit it big. Back then, when I was using just SEO on competitive niches, I was laughing my way to the bank with untapped, long tail keywords. But things are a little bit different in PPC. Since most affiliates said that I shouldn’t go for it because its saturated, I thought to myself, if many people are there, maybe there’s a lot of money to support those affiliates and their campaigns and the pie keeps getting bigger because more and more people are jumping into it. There is money in saturated market. Think porn. So that got me motivated in going for saturated market.

Well that’s just me, I never listen to advices anyway especially if its negative, we still have to test and risk right? Then we think, analyze and decide.

I’m also planning on buying a new dedicated server. My sites are going down quite frequently with other blogsites aiming for current events traffic and my affiliate sites getting huge traffic from PPC. I’m quite happy actually. Not because my sites are crashing, but because I know its time for expansion. Man, I love this industry.