My Trip Down To Silicon Valley

I was down in Santa Clara last week to speak at the Internet Income Summit. It was a three day Internet marketing event and I spoke on two of days on the topic of CPA marketing with PPC and PPV traffic.

While I was in California, I decided to take a tour of all major Internet companies and saw where Yahoo, Google and Facebook have firmly planted their roots.

With the number of dot com companies all over Silicon Valley, I can see why people move here because the motivation to create a dot com success is definitely here.

The Google complex is massive with over 40 different buildings that house their tens of thousands of employees.  To think that a company that only started about 10 years ago could go on to become one of the largest companies in the world is credit to Google for doing something right.

On the other hand, Yahoo seems to be a company with no clear direction. Their facility is nowhere near the size of Google`s and it looks like they are struggling to find their purpose now that they have inked a deal with Microsoft to have Bing.com power their natural search results.

Above is a picture of me standing behind one of the many Google signs placed outside each building.

I did get a chance to stop by and meet with Revenueloop.com, which is a CPA network that I have been working with for years.  Their office was located directly across from Google, so that in itself is motivation enough to grow. 😉

Leave your comments on your experiences in Silicon Valley.

It is amazing to think that none of these companies would exist if it wasn’t for the Internet.

Best wishes,

Gauher


Starting My Twitter Journey

About six months ago I thought Twitter was stupid.  I have changed my mind although I think it is still over-rated.

I have started experimenting with my own Twitter account at:

http://www.Twitter.com/Gauher

I barely tweet, but noticed that if I do place a URL about something, my followers do actually click.

This got me thinking about Twitter as an effective communication tool (if not abused).

I spent some time trying to find out marketers who know Twitter really well.  I found a lot of marketers with tens of thousands of followers, but something did not make sense.

I see numbers like this:

23,543 Followers and 21,435 Following

Having over 20,000 followers is impressive, but how the heck do they follow over 20,000+ other people.
Everytime they hit refresh, they must end up with a new page of tweets.

Then the BS detector went off.  Ding. Ding. Ding.

Upon further investigation, I didn’t realize that their are tools out there that allow users to auto-follow other users when a user signs up to follow their tweets.

Great way to inflate your follower numbers.  But the problem is that these are not *real* followers.  You are just attracting other people who also want to inflate their numbers.

What I see happening is that the users with the most *real* followers will have the best opportunity to monetize with Twitter.

Twitter reminds me of a book written by Seth Godin titled “The Idea Virus”.  He writes about finding people who *influence* your niche the most and getting them to spread your idea.

The Twitter users with the large followings will be the influencers (i.e. Oprah).  If you could just get one of these influencers to tweet about your product or service, what would that do for your sales?

Something to think about.

I am also looking at other ways people are monetizing with Twitter and will include that in a little report I am putting together for you that details my Twitter experience.

But I think the companies that are going to make big money are the ones that build secondary Twitter services.

Here are a few good ones.

TweetDeck
http://www.tweetdeck.com
You can customize your Twitter experience by creating your own tweet browser that can also include Facebook.

TweetBeep
http://www.tweetbeep.com
Anytime someone mentions your name or product on Twitter, you can get an email alert.

TwitterCounter.com
http://www.twittercounter.com
This is like a huge data center for what is happening on Twitter.

FutureTweets.com
http://www.futuretweets.com
You can actually send out tweets in the future.  Very similar to an autoresponder.

And the list goes on!

I will place all these great Twitter resources and more that I have discovered in the nice little report for you, so stay tuned.


10 Free Traffic Videos (Bite-Size)

I have created 10 free really short traffic video to help people get started with driving traffic to CPA offers.  i find that the biggest struglle people have with generating money online is getting traffic.  I hope these short videos open up your mind to the endless possibilities for traffic generation.

http://www.cpahotspot.com/index2.php?ref=14

Cheers!


Free 89-page “The Insiders Guide To CPA Marketing Profits”

I just released one of the most comprehensive guides on CPA marketing.  It basically explains how the CPA (cost-per-action) industry works and how you can make a great deal of money by promoting CPA offers.

It also covers a multitude of different traffic sources that you can monetize and I do go into some advanced pay per click strategies.

You can download this free report by clicking on the link below:

www.CPAHotSpot.com

Cheers!

Gauher


Who’s Email Do You Read?

I came across a post the other day on a popular forum asking for tips on creating a subject line that generates a higher open rate for an email.

That really got me thinking.

Is it *really* the subject line that gets you to open up the email or is it really the name in the sender’s field?

Seriously, think about it.

If you are on multiple Internet marketing lists, then most of the marketers sending you emails are already trying to use all the subject line tricks in the world.

For example, a while back when some marketers talked about using the headline “Bad news…” in your ubject line to get a higher open rate, almost everybody killed this to death.

But using sly subject lines is only going to get you so far before your list starts realizing that there is very little substance in the email content related to your subject line.

I don’t know about you, but the first thing that catches my eye is “who” sent the email.

I think *that* dictates the open rate of an email.  At least it does in my case.

If your buddy Billy, who always provided you with good information, wanted you to meet him to tell you a big secret versus Bobby “the scum bag” who always made false promises who had a similar secret, who would you go see first?

This reminded me of an email I sent out a few weeks ago with a link to an interesting article in Inc. magazine.

Here is the link again:

http://www.inc.com/ss/how-make-10-million-home-4-easy-steps#0

This talks about providing a “good user experience” in order to develop a following.  Once you have accomplished that, the money will follow (as in the case with Markus’ Plenty Of Fish dating site).

Now I have been thinking about how very rare I email my lists, but I am sure you appreciate the rare emails versus pitching you with something every other day.

You are on my list and a countless number of other marketing lists for *one* reason.

To learn how to make *more* money.

Now if I don’t provide you with that or at least point you to the right resources to help you achieve that, than I am not providing a “good user experience” right?

And if I don’t consistently provide you with a “good user experience”, I don’t think it will matter what I put in the subject line.

As soon as you see my name in the sender’s field, you will think twice about opening my emails based on my past performance.

Now, let me ask you this if you have a list and it doesn’t matter what niche it is in:

“Do you provide a good user experience?”

If the answer is “no”, this might be the reason why you have a poor open rate.

Cheers!
Gauher