As I was with a friend, he fell once hard and said he would go to the bar and warm up. That was 1 attempt and 1 fall. Before I go into the explanation of what I am talking about, I want to show you my boarding skills…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yes, you know you like how I ride the green hill! Straight professional! lol.

Anyways. If you watched the end of the video, I explain what I am about to write. Basically you need to fall to be successful. How many times did I fall before I got up and did it again. My buddy I was with, went once and fell hard. After that he went to the bar and waited for me. I continued to keep falling and getting back up to do it again.

Falling is life, in order to be successful you have to fall and sometimes you fall harder than others. Some fall give it a rest then get up again and do it, others are so determined they get back up right after they fall. For example I fell and I just got back up and finished the hill. I didn’t wait nor did I think about how hard my next run is going to be. I simply just did.

The fact of life and internet marketing is about falling or failing. You have to fail at something to understand what to do next. I didn’t take lessons and it was my first time snowboarding but fear didn’t stop me. I took the risk knowing I can get injured, crash into other people, and just look plain silly. That didn’t matter because I wanted to gain the experience on how to snowboard, plus i thought it would be better than skiing.

Could I have taken the lesson to speed up the learning curve? Yes but sometimes, especially for me – I like to learn from my own mistakes. Unlike my buddy of mine, he fell once and went straight to the bar to relax and safe. I simply went back up the hill and continued to board.

As you can see there are 2 types of people. People who are just satisfied and secure, knowing they don’t want to hurt them selves anymore or risk takers and people who do. This past weekend gave me a perfect example of how I look at our affiliate marketing industry or internet marketing industry as a whole. From noobs to experts, we fall in every category similar to those snowboarders and skiers.

Everyone wants to be successful at something, if its gaining more muscle, being a professional snowboarder, or more appropriate to our industry is making money online. It was a HUGE problem last year and I called out every Clickbank Guru out there. Funny part is the info launch craze died out, thank god! These ‘gurus’ pledge they can get you making money overnight just by hitting several buttons and you are done, when in fact that is not true.

Take my recent snowboarding falls as an example, did someone hand me an ebook? No. I went out there and did it. I accepted failure and got right back up and did it again. Yes, coaching and lessons can help but I bet I would have still fell until I learned how to properly shift my weight around. Internet marketing is a process and can not be taught overnight to make quick money. Yes there are mentors and tutors out there, but again you still have to make your own mistakes.

There are so many quotes out there about failure and success. They all lead to one goal failure is an option and it is a must to learn your own true success.

Related posts:

1. Even Drunks Know, Failure is the Mother of Success
2. Steve Pavlina is a Failure too
3. Stop Being a Failure and Start Failing!

• Focused on Software Creation – 2011 I started to shift a bit of my business in the software creation vertical. Creating sites like SplitPiston.com and OfferSnitch.com. I find it fun to solve the problems I have encountered in affiliate marketing and creating solutions to my problems. I have had these softwares for my own use for almost 2 years and in 2011, I decided to share it with everyone.
• Partners, the Bad and Horrible – This year I went through multiple partners and it was hard to keep momentum going if the other person is not sharing that same passion. It is a good thing I have contracts with these partners where I can void and cancel their partnership with me if I feel they do not perform. It has been a struggle to find good working partners that share the same goals as me, even the passion to make money online. Good people are always hard to find.
• Gained Weight, Damn it! – Sitting in front of the PC for almost a full day has developed a minor gut. Even thought I work out during the week, it hasn’t stopped the growth of this mass in my mid section. I plan to adjust my business around a healthy environment by trying to do less in front of a PC and being more active. Let me know your solutions to this mid gut section crisis.
• Hang Out Groups in NJ – After I have created the IANteract Meetup in NJ. I decided I should have something separate from the meetup. A group of marketers where we can just hang out and meet at bars and talk about life and business, if it does come up. I have surrounded myself around more people like me and I want to grow my mind as well as my business, so I had to filter the time I spend with my friends I grew up with to my affiliate and entrepreneur friends. These hang outs created a strong bond among the Jersey affiliates such as Gabriel Cano, Rohail Rizvi, Justin, and many others from the group. We actually can go out and no one complains about the use of money.
• Started Local Consulting - Since working in at the co working space at Launchpad, I have created a good relationship with 2 other offline marketers. Since they specialize in the offline space, their clients ask about online marketing – that is where I come in. I help their clients with their advertising campaign from Google Adwords to starting a social influence program. In many cases I ended up helping their client grow on the internet.
• Top 25 Influencers in Performance Marketing – In November I was surprise to learn I was one of the top 25 online influecers in performance marketing. I was honored to find my name among other performance marketers in the space.
• Traveling and Conferences – I haven’t done much traveling in 2011 nor have I attended much conferences either. I always attend Affiliate Summit as it has proved to be one of the best conferences to be at, as well as ad-Tech. I also will be slowing down my attendance to these shows this year and in the coming year. I also want to expand in the Internet Marketing conferences space more and attend other conferences geared towards that vertical. Even though I love the affiliate and performance space, I think I need to expand a bit more.
• Learning the Advertisers Side – I have met up with my buddy Rich Gorman a lot this year and talked about the advertising side and the legal issues that have been happening. He has showed me a big deal of the advertiser side and how he has been running his business. He also introduced me to his circle of friends, which have proved to be a great use to my own business.
• Focusing on too many things – In 2011, I think I focused on waaaaayyy too many things from my own internal campaigns to creating my own offers to attempting to learn seo. 2012, I want to just focus on 2 things and that is it and kill those 2 things for this year.  My problem, I always lose concentration on one project and then when an idea posp in my head – I work on it for 3 days then continue or catch up what I was doing 3 days prior. I want to complete these 2 goals for 2012 and do a great job at it. I think multiple projects are good, but focusing on 1 or 2 things will yeild better results. What do you do to help with your focus?
• Shifted Servers Multiple Times - I moved my sites to 3 new servers and took them off Storm on Demand. I went back to WiredTree and also put some sites on SolarVPS. I also took the rest of my domains from 1and1 and bluehost and put them on Name.com and NameCheap.com. It took some time for the transfers and the merging but the headache is done and they are now in places where I want them to be. If I only knew how t do this when I first started in the online space.
• Working with way too many Advertisers - Focusing on too many things also brings up working with too many advertisers. Every advertiser is looking to get a share of my traffic and it has been hard to filter who I wanted to work with. I felt advertisers and affiliate networks act the same, always finding to get your traffic. Towards the mid year of 2011, I decided to only work with 4 advertisers direct. In 2012 I want to shrink that as my business will be shifting in 2012.
• Creating Virtual Real Estate - Beginning of 2011 I started to learn SEO and create virtual real estate. I have been buying a lot of domains over the months of 2011 and now I need to grow them. I went through several SEO specialists, VAs, oDesk employees, etc and have yet to find someone worth to keep on for more than 3 months. I did find one person and I will be meeting him at Affiliate Summit to see how we can work together on helping me create my own set of online virtual web properties.

Related posts:

1. Affiliate Summit West 2011 for the Wynn!
2. ad tech New York 2011, Recaps, Pictures, Bigger Business
3. The Only Place You Get to Network on the Beach

I want to compare Christmas or the Holidays to affiliate marketing. These 2 are very similar to each other. We do not see one as a marketing concept and the other as a holiday, maybe you can if you buy gifts everyday. But what our eyes see doesn’t necessarily mean what they mean. I am here to break it down and explain what I see Christmas is from a marketing perspective. I will then break down affiliate marketing from a Christmas perspective.

Christmas with Marketing in Mind

• We Dress to Impress – Dressing up during the holidays feels festive when in fact we are just dressing up to present ourselves. Acting as a landing page, we spend time in shopping malls prior to Christmas and see what will work best. We mix and match, try on different ties. We want to make sure we look good at our holiday party or family gathering. Our dress is technically a web design, colors and prints matter. Another aspect is gift wrapping, we dress gifts so it looks appealing and creates a tense curiosity when the end user receives it. Even at holiday parties, you want everyone to look at you. This is similar to make sure you ad creative/copy is effective enough that you get a lot of eyeballs looking at it and eventually clicking on your creative. At the holiday party, you want all the ladies talking to you. We even dress our homes with lights and elves so it yells out – I have Christmas JOY to the world. In essence, it can compare to traffic and your website – yelling out – I AM HERE.
• Save money to buy the perfect gift – New affiliates know how hard it can be to get started in a market where you need to have money to make money. Some people save their money to start a simple Facebook ad campaign or an Adwords campaign. When Christmas is on its way, we save our money and put things on layaway. We have to have money to get an item for a person you care about. From a marketing point of view, we save our money to buy traffic sources, virtual assistants, servers, etc - technically we do not see these as well – the money is going to someone else. The gifts we buy are for the other user, we never see them again – especially if they are cousins and nieces. With lead gen, we do not see the generated lead again. We save money for a quick conversion, but will never be able to monetize that lead again.
• Don’t want to Disappoint – In the end it s about the conversion. We want to see that smile on and we want to make sure your family members don’t go to Wal-Mart to return something that you didn’t even buy at Wal-Mart. Our goal as human beings is to make someone else feel better, we share and exchange laughter and enjoy each and everyone’s smiles. That is the goal, that is the conversion. We do so many things from saving up money for your husband, daughters, dads, and siblings to making sure we have the perfect gift.

In the end any holiday and life is a marketing venture. We want to impress everyone, we dress up with how the world will view us. We go on dates to find the perfect person. Every day is a race to be better than another person. You can say you do not care what people think, but in actuality you can’t help it. People judge you and that is a fact. Why do stores pay thousands even millions to get a perfect logo, slogan, commercials that don’t convert, etc – we put ourselves out there so people can judge us. In the end we want to also create a sense of joy and happiness.

Marketing with Christmas in Mind

• I buy myself Gifts everyday! Need more explanation?

Have a great Christmas weekend and Happy Holidays!

Related posts:

1. Happy Holidays All
2. Affiliate Marketing: Percentage vs Per Lead
3. Some Marketing Holiday Tips

Looking back from the start of when I first started to where I am now, I am proud of what I have done. This proves you can be at the top with dedication and love for what you do. I definitely love this space and glad to be a top influencer in this industry. Just being categorize with these great marketers is an accomplishment in itself.

I am #20, now I am driven to be #1!

Source: Impact Radius

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1. Presenting at the Performance Marketing Expo
2. Performance Marketing Expo Wrap Up and Panel
3. Rotate Offers Base on Performance

When 765 width Fan Page was the shizzy back in the day, I wanted to have themes for these pages. I use Facebook Fan Pages as actual mini websites to capture leads and to drive traffic to an affiliate offer. The only problem is I was consistently creating my own. There was no template or even a basic template to start off with. I decided I would create such a marketplace and I bought an amazing domain, but haven’t done anything with it until now.

Introducing Fan Page Themes!

This is a project that I recently started. When I was researching for Fan Page templates, I kept finding WordPress engines and ‘guru’ style templates. Garbage. I wanted something that was authentic and brandable. So I asked my designer to create a simple one for me and he came up with a really simple and nice concept. I thought, I bet we can turn Fan Page themes into a WordPress style theme marketplace. We would remove the ‘guru’ concept everyone else pushes because fan page themes targets everyone from music artists to home gardeners.

Growing a brand online is easier than ever especially with the power of social media. Facebook, being one of the biggest social platforms out there is a great place to start to grow a brand or an online presence. But sometimes it is hard because there is no presence, so with a fan page the brand recognition is automatically brought to life. I thought that if a user has a brandable page, they can be easily trusted.

Fan Page Themes is a marketplace of themes and templates for Facebook Fan Pages. It isn’t a wordpress plugin where you can create a fan page from within your WordPress site. These are actually themes in which you can download and easily install within your new Fan Page. We have a community forum and easy directions to follow when installing and creating your first fan page.

Fan Page Themes are…

• a great way to quickly brand yourself
• pre made templates, so you don’t spend hundreds on a designer
• simple. Quickly install it right after download
• fresh and clean, quickly relating to the end user
• fun!

With the new changes Facebook is doing with their Timeline, branding will be more important for big businesses and your online venture. If you are a musician or a blogger, with the new changes Facebook is doing – online presence will be the most important. How brandable are you and are you utilizing your Fan Page the right way?

… we have an affiliate program too!

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2. Case Study: Utilizing Static FBML Facebook Fan Page
3. Webinar: Get a 74% CTR with Your Landing Page

Yesterday while I was at the gym I got a message from a friend saying that Steve Job passed away. I wasn’t shock at first because I thought an innovative person would still be innovating. I check twitter and facebook, my streams were filled with Steve Job articles, news, tweets, quotes, etc. He really did pass.

While I was on the treadmill reading all this information, I thought to myself wow, it is serious. I looked back at my first apple product which was an iBook several years back. Now I have a good collection of iPhones, iPods, iPad, and recently a MacBook Pro. I am just breaking into being a fully Apple’d out person. Steve Job did a great work to help my internet business become more accessible and mobile. He did great work and that is why he will be missed by the world and by us, internet marketers.

For us internet marketers and everyone who enjoyed his products, a man of innovation left us, giving us more powerful Macs to do faster and more work. Access to mobile computing via our iPhones and iPads. Even for the young marketers, iPods providing entertainment in a nice handheld machine. Steve combined everyday lifestyle with the joys of entertainment. He saw and visioned what he wanted, then made it reality. Making his own personal life personal with machines which he then shared with the world.

It is the reason why so many internet marketers are so tech savy. Steve made it easy for even our grandparents to enjoy life with family by utilizing a camera and a machine to talk to distant relatives and friends. Making this a personal machine instead of a workload box of circuits. This is why Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Accomplishing so many things in his short 56 years in life amazes me. From a college drop out and being fired from his own company, then re-entering and making it more amazing is just a wonder of awe.

From a speech…

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

- Steve Jobs

This quote is such a strong quote. Everyday he asks himself a serious question, changing his thought process. If his answers were no too many times, he needed to change something and that he did. As entrepreneurs, do we ask this to ourselves everyday? We tell ourselves we love what we do, but if death was staring you in the face would you still say the same thing?

Steve Jobs influenced us all in many ways in not just innovation but his determination to be better than everyone else. Do we strive to be better than the next or just be satisfied? This quote is very strong to him knowing he had pancreatic cancer. So everyday he took serious to an extra level. Making sure he met his goals and innovations that he invisioned.

Watch the speech below, it is where the above quote came from…

Click here to view the embedded video.

1955 – 2011, Steve Jobs

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1. Jobless Worries – Turn to the Internet
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As I read the internet I find myself learning new things and challenging my brain. I needed it. I learned that bookmarking is important to SEO because it can you sites indexed quite rapidly and you do not even need a bunch of accounts, just 3-6. So I decided to create an auto bookmarking script with iMacros.

It took me a good half day to learn iMacros and understand it fully. For example, you do not want to click on a hard link – you want to open that link within the address bar. These small smart moves definitely stop me from re editing the script, which previously gave me errors.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video done on iPhone

There are a lot of macro base submissions like Sick Submitter which I also used in the past. Since I only needed 3-6 social bookmarking sites, I created this macro just to challenge my brain a bit. The video will shows you…

1. Clearing out the Cache – just in case I am logged in
2. Closing all tabs
3. Opening the first bookmark site
4. logging in
5. entering the bookmark information from a data file
6. opening a new tab
7. closing the old tab
8. then opening the new bookmark site

It repeats this step several times, as SEO is tedious might as well create macros to do these tedious tasks. With Sick Submitter you can create these profiles within the system or purchase profiles from the Sick Submitter community. This small exercise was a great way to challenge my brain to do something new. I definitely like learning new things and enjoy a new challenge, so this was a good exercise and beneficial for any SEO efforts.

There are so many auto submitters out there, but creating something on your own is much more fun – I personally think anyways. It gives you the learning ability and challenges your brain. But off topic this video I found while learning iMacros is what inspired me to do iMacros. It auto creates accounts and then bookmarks.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy the video. Let me know what you think.

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1. Overview of Mass Social Bookmarking Services
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Just these past couple days, Rich Gorman of DirectResponse.net, invited me to hangout with him Cliff and Tom Cohen, a legal affiliate attorney, to grab some drinks. Rich was actually in the city attending the DMA conference in NY, so we decided to meet up. Glad we did.

We ate and had some drinks and while we did I tweeted my followers what questions they would like me to ask the FTC lawyer about the affiliate industry. We talked about where the industry was 3 years ago and where it is now. Tom Cohen was one of the lawyers that was on Smaxor’s Ads4Dough FTC Q&A webinar a couple months back. An amazing Q&A webinar.

Since I had the opportunity to ask him direct questions, I did. I asked him about international affiliates, networks vs affiliates, whose fault it really is, evasions, etc. It was a great dinner with great people and friends.

So after all this, I talked to Rich about starting my own products and we were in discussion about this for a while. He gave me great pointers, a rough estimate of how much an investment would be, design, type of offer, CRMs, merchant processing, etc. He gave me a lot of answers to my noob questions.

This is my first step getting to that space and it feels like it is my first time jumping into the affiliate space, not knowing anything and just doing things as they come. Even though I some what know how that space works from the affiliate point of view, it still has it’s own ‘environment’. There are a lot of things to consider, especially if you are doing your own biz opp, health offer or whatever it maybe.

Things from regulations, to testimonials, to support, to CRM, charge backs, etc. There are a lot of things that can go wrong and which you as a business need to support. Rich has helped me and told me what it takes and how he does it. Taking this information and then using it to my own knowledge definitely puts things into perspective on how I need to look at it and cater to my business.

So far, I have research merchant processing and fulfillment. The best part is there is a local fulfillment service by my house and I met with the owner of the service. She gave me some great insights on how things work and how we can work together. Besides that I also was thinking about investing in a product already out there. I was actually approach about this too, we met and discussed his numbers – then I brought this attention to Rich and he gave me what would be the best move in my situation.

I also talked to my buddy that I met at DK’s San Diego ThinkTank and see what his thoughts are about the whole advertiser world, since he also started being the advertiser. He gave me some great insights and resources to read up on, his mistakes, and what to read up on.

So far the help and resources Rich has provided to me has been great – Thanks Rich! This is going to be exciting for sure, make sure to stay tuned for more updates on my blog!

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I started this because I wanted to surround myself with friends that are in the industry and where we can share the same insights of marketing, especially affiliate marketing. I don’t mind hanging out with my friends, but I can’t discuss money with them. For example, if I tell them I had a bad day because I lost an X amount in a week. Their remarks are not supportive and it then becomes a joke, “You could have given me $X,XXX”. Some of my friends respect what I do and I def enjoy their company, others is a different story.

The mindset of my friends are totally different from an entrepreneurs mindset. I love my friends and no disrespect to them, but sometimes it is hard to discuss my passion for the internet with them.

… so the NJ HangOut Meetup has been created. It allows me to network and friend entrepreneurs in the NJ area. This way I can ping the group and see if anyone wants to ball out. Traditionally, a response I would get from friends is they do not have money, they are broke, they just paid their bills. Understandable. Now I can hangout with a group of friends who is always about making more money and expanding their business.

The Hangout consists of some affiliates like Rohail Rizvi, NJ advertisers, and even an NJ affiliate network – CPA Staxx, which I have yet to meet. There are others as well that do big numbers in the affiliate space and some are also starting out but at least have done affiliate marketing.

The purpose of the hangout is to grab a beer on a weekend, relax, and talk whatever is on our mind. Not only do these hangouts become just a weekly networking event, it becomes a close circle of friends who enjoy the industry and enjoy talking about marketing. I know personally I have grown attach to the group, making friends and enjoying everyone’s company. We don’t always talk business, we talk about life, vacations, clubbing, and everything in between. The group isn’t JUST a networking event, but more of friends you can talk in depth business with.

Preview of the HangOuts:

Our hangouts are becoming more of a place to hangout with friends who enjoy the industry and become close friends. I have a tattoo on my arm saying:

“He that walks with wise men, shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” – Proverb 13:20

This is true and I got this tattoo done because I started going back to the old me. I started hanging out with friends that are not as driven as me and are in situations that I do not want to be part of anymore. It was a chapter of my life and I want it to be just that, a chapter. I wanted to keep a reminder to myself, who I hangout with I will become. Making sure I am with the right people at all times.

This is also another reason why I travel a lot to multiple trade shows and conferences because I am surrounded by people who are passionate about the internet industry as a whole.

I will never leave or forget my friends I grew up with, I even invite some to these hangouts in hope they can get some encouragement to do even more. Without my circle of friends that I grew up with, I do not think I would be in my situation now. So I will never forget who they are, especially the ones who support what I do.

They say you are who you are base on your surrounding environment and this is the case with friends and people who you are with.

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I also am in the learning phases of becoming my own advertiser and I recently signed contracts to get somethings moving. I am pretty excited about the moves I am doing but its a painful experience. With affiliate marketing, I can throw a campaign and see my ROI fairly quickly. With these new projects, its slow – especially if I am reinvesting my own money.

I have been learning a lot of new marketing methods and even taking in new advice. For example, with these softwares it really doesn’t appeal to users that are starting in the online space, more so to marketers who already have a business – B2B. Most of the signups have been businesses rather than actual affiliates or marketers that are starting out.

Expanding my personal business has been talked about on this blog multiple times, but it is so easy to make money with affiliate marketing that I lose track, forgetting I want to move into other parts of marketing. Now that I am actually moving into other venues, I find myself relearning and understanding contracts, business discussions, forecasting long term, leveraging my network etc. I am even learning how to appeal more to b2b and in the past I never promoted to a b2b audience. So this is a first and learning is always a good part of online marketing.

Each phase has its own learning curve, just like when I started out in affiliate marketing, it is all about just jumping into it and learning as you go. Since I have a very good knowledge of how the affiliate space work, I can think with a much more experienced mindset than rather jumping into the idea. In the end, it is still a learning phase for sure as I am jumping in. I am only taking the knowledge of how I do lead gen, affiliate marketing, traffic diversification, etc.

I have been doing affiliate marketing for almost 5 years, being at my first Affiliate Summit was in Vegas of 08 (never missed one yet). I want to challenge myself, I mean I started to learn SEO in the beginning of this year. Such a sllloooowww process btw. I just want to expand, grow, and learn.

At this point in my marketing career I am a noob, learning and absorbing the different parts of marketing or the business side of what goes behind the affiliate marketing such as the advertiser side, the lead broker side, etc. I know how to find an offer and buy traffic base on demographic, then target the audience base on site or keywords, etc. I know how to generate leads and make money online.

Don’t get me wrong I love affiliate marketing, without it I wouldn’t know how to optimize traffic, find traffic, monetize traffic, learn how cpms work, learn to create direct response landing pages, etc. Affiliate marketing is a great place to learn everything about marketing, especially the paid traffic side. Even more so the friends I met along the way, an amazing asset by itself.

Ye shall be known as – noob.

Related posts:

1. Growing and Expanding Out of Your Affiliate Business
2. Affiliate Industry Has Been Shakened But NOT Skerred!
3. Consider Yourself a Noob, Newbie, Newie or a Quitter!