Many times I have been asked who some of my earliest mentors were online.  I can say without a doubt that one of best mentors I have had is Jimmy D. Brown.  If you have been online for just a short period of time, then you probably have never heard of Jimmy.  If you have been online for as long as I have, then you know Jimmy D. Brown as a marketing legend.

To me, Jimmy is the man.  He set the bar high in the early 2000′s when it came to over-delivering.  For the longest time, I was a member of his “List and Traffic” membership site and every month the guy over-delivered and all I was paying was $10 a month.  Some of his stuff was easily better than stuff costing $497.

So why am I writing and Jimmy today?  Today Jimmy just released a new product that allows you to create a membership site in less than 90 minutes.

Click here For More Details

Jimmy has never been in the limelight or done a major product launch, but every major IM marketer knows who Jimmy D. Brown is.  His name goes with quality and giving the customer more than what they paid for.  I bought the package because the content is worth the price alone.

If you are a Jimmy D. Brown fan, I want to hear about it in the comments section.

Best wishes,

Gauher Chaudhry

It has been almost 14 months since I last did a webinar with Mike Colella and his success with media buys. Since then he has gone on to do some monster days with media buys and most recently did over $50,000 in affiliate commission in ONE day sending banner traffic to Clickbank products.

The interesting thing to note is that he did no use the Google content network at all and some of the traffic sources that he did use were completely new to him. This is real evidence of the large amount of traffic that is available outside of Google.  Below is a replay of the webinar if you missed it.

To take advantage of Mike’s discounted offer on Adbeat, make sure that you Click Here

Feel free to leave your comments on the webinar below.

To your success,

Gauher Chaudhry

I was cleaning up my hard drive earlier this week after finally switching to a MAC computer from a PC.  Over the last decade, I have collected a large number of marketing ebooks and reports that have been just sitting on my hard drive.

There are many that I have never read and others that I just skimmed in the past.  But there was one book that I remember reading years ago written by Joe Vitale that I stumbled upon.  The ebook is called “The Greatest Money Making Secret In History” and I remember devouring it the same day that I downloaded it from the Internet.

The secret of making money, as revealed in this ebook, is not as obvious as it seems, but in my experience – it works.  I have practiced it for years and have seen huge returns in my own businesses and fortunes.

Some key points about this secret:

1. It’s the one thing some of the wealthiest people on the planet have done and are doing.

2. It’s the one thing written about in various ancient cultures and still promoted today.

3. It’s the one thing that will bring money to anyone who does it but at the same time most people will fear doing it.

The ebook is free to download and I highly recommend that you take some time out to read it.

Download The Greatest Money Making Secret In History

Cheers
Gauher Chaudhry

Amazon is one of the largest web sites online and they command a lot of traffic every month.  In fact,almost 40% of all their search results can be found on the first page of Google results.

Recently I had the opportunity to review a course created by 25 year-old Matt Clark showing anyone how they can build a long sustainable business using Amazon.  In fact, he is making as much as $100,000 a month just leveraging off of Amazon’s traffic.  Amazon traffic is practically 100% buyer traffic meaning that it is well qualified for anything that you may decide to sell using Amazon’s sellers platform.

Matt has created a system, that can be duplicated by anyone, showing how he makes money on Amazon.  He essentially covers three main areas of making money with Amazon:

1. Drop-shipping

2. Wholesaling/PLR

3. Kindle

Matt started selling on Amazon a few years starting with just $100.  Although he covers Kindle, this is an actually a small part of his entire Amazon business.  Matt shows how he jumps on a variety of opportunities and makes thousands of dollars in just a few days.   He jumped on a comment that Dr. Oz made on his show and was able to generate $4,750 in sales on Amazon in just 72 hours.

Matt goes over all the mistakes that he made in the last two years.  He has had different Amazon accounts cancelled and had to deal with dead-beat suppliers.  He will show you how to avoid all of this.

You can learn more about Matt’s course by clicking below:

Amazon Money Machine

Wishing you success,

Gauher Chaudhry

If you have been quietly raking it in with misspellings on Google Adwords, well that is about to change.  Google Adwords just recently announced that they will be changing the way they handle exact and phrase match and start to include misspellings and plural forms of keywords that you are bidding on.

Google claims that 7% of searches are misspelled and this will give advertisers an opportunity to get more clicks. As an advertiser, you will have the option of opting out of this new program by logging into your account and turning this feature off.

Now the big unknown is how does this affect advertisers who are currently bidding on misppellings?  Who gets priority?  The advertiser bidding on the mispelled keyword or the advertiser bidding the highest amount for the correct version of the keyword?  Since Google wants to squeeze every cent out of their Adwords program, I am fairly certain that it is the later.

So for all you advertisers who are bringing in cheap clicks via misspellings, it looks like the honeymoon may be coming to an end.

Comments?

Gauher

The biggest challenge that I have found when it comes to building an online business is time management and having certain skills.  Trying to be my own graphic designer, traffic generation specialist, copywriter, accountant, etc. has proven to be a big waste of my time and slowed down the growth of my business.

One major fear that people have is hiring quality talent or outsourcing tasks to other people.  I had this same fear until I realized that if I don’t get other people who are better talented to do certain tasks, my business is doomed.

I have written a special report for you that shows you how you can tap into a specific online resource and hire talented people for just a few bucks.  And in the majority of cases, they will do a much better job then you could have ever done.

Click Here To Download The Free PDF Report

I think that another major reason that people balk at hiring others is because they think it is too expensive or don’t have the money.  But you need to remember that we live in a global online world now.  You can now hire great talent online from countries like India and the Philippines.

In fact, I have full-time workers who are thrilled that I am paying them $1.50 per hour.  And they do specialized things much better than I could ever do, ultimately freeing up my time.

If you are not interested in hiring people full or part-time, you can simply hire people do do small tasks or small projects.  Make sure you read my free report.  It will take you just 10 minutes to consume the information, yet have a huge impact on how you plan to grow your business.

Click Here To Download The Free PDF Report

Please comment below after you have read the report.

Wish you much success,

Gauher Chaudhry

Social media crises have been popping up all over the place. From big brands like McDonald’s, Qantas and Susan G. Komen, to small, homier brands such as Boners BBQ and The Circuit Factory – no one is safe from an attack and the scariest part is that no one knows when one’s about to hit.

What is a social media crisis and how will one affect your brand?

A social media crisis, like any type of crisis, happens when uncontrollable events are taking place that will have a damaging impact on your brand, your brand’s reputation or your business’s bottom line.

I’m not talking about a little complaint posted on your Facebook wall by an unhappy customer. I’m talking about a series of uncontrollable events. It could stem from a mistake made within the corporation (De La Fontaine), a hopeful campaign gone wrong (Chapstick, Groupon, Wotif), a botched product or service, a change in direction or policy that your customers and market disagree with (Susan G. Komen), or any other number of unfortunate situations that cause your customers, fans and prospects to take to social media voicing their discontent and sending their message into a potential viral frenzy.

How can you protect yourself?

A poorly handled crisis can ruin your brand’s reputation for life, just look at Susan G. Komen. That said, the goal in a crisis is always to overcome and resolve the situation in the least amount of time – with the least amount of repercussions to your business.

So if you can’t foresee a crisis, and if it can have a substantial negative impact on your business, how are you suppose to protect yourself from one?

The best way to protect yourself from, and overcome a crisis is by equipping yourself and your team with:

• The right social media crisis mindset
• A strong social media crisis plan

Understanding how to perceive a crisis and learning how to react and respond to one, gives you the unique opportunity of not just being able to recover from one, but to actually turn a social media attack into a positive opportunity for your company.

The right crisis plan will:

• Allow you to regain control of the situation
• Teach you how to use a crisis to reconnect and strengthen your relationship with your customers
• Teach you the proper steps to responding to an attack – and how to optimize that response for maximum views and find-ability
• Understand what your customers and fans expect of you during a crisis
• Permit you to leverage the powerful help of your still-happy customers to come to your defense during an attack
• Leverage a crisis to gain from some positive PR
• Teach you how to document and analyze the events of a crisis so that you may continue to empower your brand for the long-term

So how can you learn all of these extraordinary ways of protecting your brand without it costing you a ton in both time and money?

There’s one solution out there that takes you from A-Z in developing the right social media crisis plan, teaching you everything you need to know in order to come out of an attack with even more happy and loyal fans then you had going in. It’s called the Social Media Crisis Academy.

What is the Social Media Crisis Academy?

The Social Media Crisis Academy is an all-inclusive online training program that takes you through each step of developing the right crisis plan for your company. This easy-to-follow training course is the only solution you need to make sure that your company is protected from a social media crisis, should one unexpectedly strike your brand.

Nobody wants to experience a fire, but we all prepare ourselves with fire drills none-the-less. The same goes for a social media crisis. Nobody ever wants to experience one, but odds are that we all will one day. The Social Media Crisis Academy makes sure that when that day comes, you’re prepared and empowered to turn a crisis into a positive brand opportunity!

The right crisis plan won’t take loads of your time to prepare, but it will save you from irreparable damage to your brand – and that’s worth investing in!

To find out how the Social Media Crisis Academy can help you protect your brand from a social media crisis, click here!

Are you prepared for a social media crisis, should one strike your brand? Have you ever given it any thought? I’d love to hear from you, share your comments with me below!

—

Bio: Melissa Agnes is a social media crisis specialist who blogs daily about protecting your business from social media attacks. She is also the creator of the Social Media Crisis Academy, an all-inclusive online training program that takes businesses from A-Z in developing their social media crisis plan. You can connecting with Melissa on Facebook and Twitter.

Recently I decided to do some media buys using BuySellAds.com.  BuySellAds.com is basically a self-serve platform that allows you to buy banners on specific web sites.  I decided to promote CPAHotSpot.com in order to generate more leads for my CPA marketing list.  I ended up spending $199 to have my banners placed on three specific web sites for a total of 30 days.  The results ended up being pretty dismal.

The ads generated only 50 clicks from 240,381 impressions, which is a horrible click-thru rate.

There are two main factors that I believe resulted in the poor click-thru rate, which were a poor initial control banner and not optimizing the banners enough times.  I ended up only totaling two banners against each other and if I had continued to improve on the banners, I am sure the 50 clicks could have easily been 100-150 clicks before the campaigns ended. To make matters worse, I messed up placing the tracking pixel, so I am not sure how many of these 50 clicks even converted into subscribers. Doh! A great learning experience.

Watch the video below as I walk you through the results.

Comments?  Please leave them below.

Gauher

I just recently had my Google Adsense account disabled after having it been active for over eight long years.

The reason?

Google sent me one of those canned auto emails below:

–>

Hello,

After reviewing our records, we’ve determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we’ve found it necessary to disable your AdSense account. Your outstanding balance and Google’s share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.

Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the effectiveness of Google’s advertising system, particularly the advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we’ve taken, how you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information by visiting

http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

–>

What do they mean by my account “poses” a risk of invalid activity?  I think basically it means that I have not violated anything, but my account poses some sort of risk of generating bogus clicks.  The email doesn’t even tell me which of the dozens of sites I have running Adsense ads is causing the risk.  But Google is known for not telling much of anything when they ban advertisers and publishers.

At first when I saw this email, I was a bit annoyed.  But after a few minutes I just chuckled because I couldn’t believe how badly Google treats their advertisers, publishers and customers.  It could be very easy for one of my competitors to come to one of my web sites and generate bogus clicks on the Adsense ads.  Would that be my fault?

Since my Google Adsense commissions generated about 0.000001% of my yearly revenues, it really doesn’t mean anything to my overall online business.

Now, if you are using Google Adsense as your primary source of online revenue, then you better think twice about switching over to a better revenue model.

With a business model revolving around Google Adsense, you have absolutely no control.  They can literally shut you down overnight whether you are making $1 or $100,000 a year in Adsense commissions.

I have heard horror stories of people having their Adsense account shut down and losing tens of thousands of dollars in commissions (Google doesn’t bother sending you any past commissions).

Over my long Internet marketing career, I learned that the best way to build a successful online business is around a model that gives you a lot of control.

I love paid traffic because it is controllable and predictable.

I create my and sell my own products because I control the front-end and the entire back-end.

I have built dozens of email lists in various markets because I want to have control over my prospects and my customers.

You can’t have any of that if your business model revolves around another company or individual that can close you down.

My advice:

1. Buy targeted traffic

2. Build an email list (if anyone tells you that email is dead, get off their list!)

3. Sell your own products (that add value) to your email list.

Build a business around this business model and I guarantee you will be successful.

Does it require a lot of work?

Yes!  There are no push button solutions to building a long sustainable business.  Just dedication, persistence, motivation and good old fashion hard work.

I think having my Adsense account may be a blessing.  It will allow me to work on other parts of my business that are more rewarding and profitable.

If you are currently making money with Google Adsense, you should continue to work on it – but only as a supplimental source of revenue (i.e. filling in excess ad inventory).

You never know when you might get the same email.

Feel free to share your own Adsense story.

Cheers

Gauher Chaudhry

I recently ventured into buying solo ads on other email lists in order to gain more subscribers.  Over the years , I have built up my lists from paid traffic and product launches and wanted to see how effective buying a solo ad would be.

I ended up purchasing my first email solo ad through Ashley Gough at http://ashleygough.com/soloads/ and went for the package of 500 clicks for $180.

This works out to $0.36 per visitor.

Ashley was easy to work with and had my solo ad sent out within just a few days of me sending the $180 ad cost.  This was just a test experiment and I have to admit that I didn’t write very compelling copy for the solo ad.  Here is actually what I sent to Ashley to email out:

–> Start

–> End

Now that I look back at this copy, it was pretty lame.  But since Ashley guaranteed 500 clicks, I figured only the real interested individuals would click on my tracking link.

Here were the results.

Clicks: 584

Opt-Ins: 101

One-Time-Offer Sales: $54.00

So I basically paid ($180-$54 = $126 / 101 = $1.25 per opt-in)

Considering on average that the life-time value of a person on my CPA marketing list is about $10.00, I thought that these were great results.  I do plan on buying more solo ads with Ashley and other lists that sell solo ads.

If you are struggling to build a decent opt-in list, I recommend buy ads in other targeted ezines to capture more prospects.  You can always subsidize your ad buys by placing a one-time-offer on the “Thank-You” page of your opt-in process.  I don’t recommend buying solo ads and sending them to a sales page, you will be much better of in the long-run by using solo ads to build a list.

Comments?  Enter them below.

Cheers
Gauher