Ian Fernando » Found Out

Selling Space, How to Really Make Money and Fund a Movie

Ian — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 03:40:27 +0000

I just saw this trailer on Facebook and it is about making money by selling product placements and advertising. The movie was also funded by product placements and advertising. Since I am in the advertising space, it was an interesting trailer to watch because I sell space on this blog. The idea of the movie is to fund a movie production by means of other companies buying ad space or placements in the movie.

Just watch the trailer…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Even if you are not a marketer, this trailer shows you you can get anything funded by big advertisers. Lets us this blog as an example, affiliate networks advertise on this blog because I am an affiliate marketer. A lot of my audience are affiliate marketers and the demographics are online marketers. It would make sense for an affiliate network to advertise on this blog. I remember the first time a network approached my blog to advertise.

Morgan Spurlock goes around finding advertisers to buy space or product placements in his documentary movie. Surprising a lot of brands decided to pay Morgan to have their products in his movie. These big corporations are only looking for exposure while Morgan literally becomes a human billboard.

After watching this trailer I was like damn that is the typical internet and how marketing works. When you turn a magazine page, that sexy girl with a New Victoria Secrets thong has been bought on that specific page. When you go to conferences and trade shows, that space on the floor has been bought. When you read this blog, those banner ads are bought.

Looking at all forms of advertising, we pay money to get the best exposure, we fight for more space, for our products to be placed where the eyes can view them. Google Adwords we fight to be the top 3 ads. Facebook we just want to be added in the ad rotation. CPM buys, we pay for a set of views. The list can go on.

Look at these ad networks they sell traffic, essentially inventory of space to be sold for views. Same concept.

The fact that advertisers and companys’ actually paid to put their brand in a movie, which paid for itself, is simply amazing. If you have a site and you have affiliate banner ads, you may want to think about and reaching out to advertisers to see if they would like to advertise on your blog. If you have a health product, reach out to small nutritional supplement companys and ask if they would like to advertise on your blog.

Essentially this is what Morgan did, he went to corporations and spoke to, I assume, their marketing department. He pitched and got them to say yes or no. In either case I thought this video was worth a share, especially if you are a marketer.

Top 25 Influencers in Performance Marketing

Ian — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:33:41 +0000

I just found out, I am on an infograph image. This image consists of the top 25 influencers in performance marketing. This infograph is base on several social stats from Klout, PeerIndex, Google mentions, etc. I am glad to be on this list and be part of the top 25 influencers in our performance space.

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

Steve Jobs, the Internet Shall Miss You

Ian — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:50:48 +0000

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

Keyword Research iPhone App Review

Ian — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:51:05 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

I just downloaded this keyword research app for my iPhone and I thought I would do a review and share it. It is a pretty straight forward app and it provided some very good results, like really good results. Keyword research is important, if you are on the go this is a great app for just traditional online marketers. It is a very simplistic app but it provides you with amazing results.

Above, I did a video review of the app because I thought it needed t be reviewed from a user point of view. Apparently, the video didn’t come out with its best quality – so this post is born with some screenshots from my iphone. Here are some screenshots of the keyword “lose weight”.

The first shot is the traditional keyword report. The report shows you the keyword searched, the CPC, competition factor, results, and visual bars. It is a quick overview of the keyword.

The next screenshot is the related keyword report. Keywords that are related to your original or seed keyword. The results it pulls is amazing. It doesn’t pull 50 results or 100. It looks like it is pulling about 1000 keywords. Will have to ask Corey to confirm but it def pulls in a lot of keywords. Also the results that it pulls is amazing, some really amazing long tail keywords.

I believe the 12 month trend starts at January to December, I have to confirm with Corey as well but looking at this specific keyword “lose weight” December – February is a very popular month for users to try to lose weight. So I def believe the 12 month trend starts from January and ends at December.

Just like the seed/original keyword, each keyword has volume data, the CPC, competition, and search results.

The other part that i like especially if you are on the go is you can email yourself some of these keywords to your personal email or to anyone you want to. For example, since I do travel, I can email specific keywords to my VAs and tell them to target these targeted keywords etc. Which is I think crucial especially if you are on the go.

The app is very simple and straight forward. It just produced amazing keywords which is great. I can go from this app to my domain app and register a keyword domain all on my iPhone. Love technology.

Want to download this app, Scan the QR code below and get the app on your iPhone right now. I use the Red Laser app to scan barcode, but you can literally use any bar code scanner on your phone. It should be able to decipher the code and then forward you the the link to download this amazing app.

Add Value to a Free Product and Charge for It!

Ian — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 22:03:04 +0000

I just stumbled on this amazing video and thought it was worth a share and it definitely is because it shows how perceived value marketing works and how curiosity is a strong call to action. Sometimes free just doesn’t cut it. Why get something for free when you can a deluxe version of the free item. It also mean there are ups to a paid item, for example free bonuses or upgrades.

Perceived value is an interesting concept when selling an item, why does it cost that much more. It just builds a curious factor in all of us. It tries to answer the question why. This is the reason why a lot of information courses are more pricey because it adds on curiosity.

The video below is a great example… this one person intrudes a person “Free Hug” campaign and post his own Deluxe Hugs ad for $2! He literally puts himself side by side with the Free Hugs person and competes for traffic.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The best part about Deluxe Hugs guy is he is selling himself, making himself more genuine and even mudslinging the Free Hugs person. Not only is this person hugs are free, he just walks around waiting for people to come up and get a free hug. He is even putting his ad in front of the end user but not selling. While Deluxe Hugs is selling himself and explaining why his hugs are better, in fact 100% better.

It shows you how curiosity is in everyone because everyone knows hugs can be given for FREE, but why pay? The users in this video are asking. They are curious enough to ask and even more curious to even try/purchase a deluxe hug! It is just the perceived value of the hug. Standing next to the Free Hug person, a lot of walking customers were curious to just ask what is the difference.

Everyone knows free is free – nothing to it. When you put a price on something such as hugs, why? It just plays in your head because naturally hugs are free. You get a hug from your parents or aunts and uncle, you never expect your grandmother to ask you for $2 for a hug!

Naturally your mind is really curious about this action. Let’s take another example, TVs. TVs are TVs they just display something on screen. What separates other TVs from other brands? Again curiosity plays in and you start scavenging the internet for reviews, features, benefits etc. You literally spend time trying to find the difference between 2 products.

In this video, a full marketing campaign is going off. Deluxe Ads are better because he ads swing, it is 50% longer, he puts love and is vocal. Free Hug person just gave out hugs. Again everyone knows what a hug feels like, so saying it is free isn’t anything new. Put a price on it and now it becomes an interesting topic.

…the $20 at the end, kind of was like whoa…

In either case, no matter how many hugs the free person gave out, he went home with no money. Deluxe Hugs earned $36 for an hours worth of work.

Don’t Upgrade Your Facebook Fan Pages

Ian — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:35:46 +0000

… rambling and hungry… not a good mix.

So this kinda of ticked me off. I use Facebook Fan Pages a lot for landing pages and obviously for my websites. I just upgraded and man I am in pain because it ruined my landing pages using the FBML App. The FBML App allows me to utilize HTML and CSS in a customized tabbed box. It also allowed me to create a facebook gateway, meaning I get to tell the end user to LIKE the page before getting a download. Incentivizing the traffic.

Now, I think they did away of that option. Allowing you to specifically show what “tab” to show when a new person arrives to the fan page. This was helpful because instead of showing the wall, I get to show a custom design or landing page to the end user. It provided an instant landing page, very helpful to all marketers branding and creating online recognition.

Since I just upgraded, everything is broken, not broken but only showing parts of images. My landing pages are usually full graphics, now with the upgrade the width of the Facebook Fan Pages are now 495 from the original 525, it sucks.

The new fan page designs are mocking the new profile upgrades we all received in the past, having the images at the top and the wall feed, etc. I do not know why Facebook is doing it this way as it isn’t a personal profile, it is a fan page. I may understand fan pages for public figures but what about websites? It doesn’t make sense to create a Fan Page similar to a profile.

Some other distinctions I found is you can log in as your fan page, since you are the admin you technically can switch who you want to be, pointless I think. Another interesting part is I share a link on Twitter about how to target facebook tabs.

So now this sucks for any company using Fan Pages as a landing page. Now Fan Page contest won’t be productive, branding will not be as powerful, capturing leads will not be doable, just a lot of down sides for marketers.

The best part about the Facebook fan pages is using it as a gateway and a upfront poster to incoming traffic. Directing traffic to the fan page wall will not help in any companies branding at all. Maybe I couldn’t find the option to show specific tabs to non “likers”, but couldn’t find it and I thought it was the most powerful part of a fan page. In any case my fan page landing pages are useless, now time to adopt.

BTW March 11th, no more FBML it will be all iframes…

On March 11, 2011, you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app. While all existing apps on Pages using FBML or the Static FBML app will continue to work, we strongly recommend that these apps transition to iframes as soon as possible. Lastly, we want to be clear that our deprecation of FBML does not impact XFBML, such as the tags that support social plugins.

source

FBML was the best part as well for all companies and businesses, it allowed to do so much. I wonder how companies like Lujure adjust to this change, since their services was all based on providing custom FBML tabs to companies.

Social Media Made $5100 in Just Under 36 Hours

Ian — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 16:36:33 +0000

The power of social media is one powerful traffic source, I mean Facebook has 500 million users that means 500 million prospects! It is a fact that social media traffic can be very powerful to any new website or affiliate offer. It takes the power of others to recommend a compelling site or issue.

One issue that is very compelling is Jason Rubacky’s mother. Jason created a donation website for her, Save Jason’s Mom. She is ill and Jason would like her to get better. In just under 24 hours Jason was able to generate $2,500 in donations.

That is amazing to generate that amount in a short period of time with just social media. He is reaching out to his network, twitter, and facebook. Those are the sources he has been using and it has helped with his donations.

Now in just under 36 hours, Jason Rubacky has generated $5,100 of donations for a his mother. His mom is a very important person to him and by creating such a site he is definitely showing his love.

I first heard about this when Jason hit me up and just asked me to share. I read the original site and I contributed to his cause. Family is a very important part in one person’s life. I personally am very family oriented. Even though I may have my own ups and downs, family will always be there. I even go out of my way to visit my cousins across the US to just say hi. For Jason to want his mom to get better shows the bond they have.

Jason Rubacky is one person you want to get to know in the affiliate industry, he is also the reason why I am doing CPS offers recently than the traditional CPA/CPL offers. He has also shared a lot of insights and is one person that gives more than he can. If he had a plate of food and saw you were still hungry – he would give you his plate, the utensils, the table clothe, the table itself, the chair, and if possible the waiter/waitress waiting on you and anything else that he can. He just gives.

He is an influential person in the industry and one that always goes out and helps more than he can. I even went out to Chicago to just visit him and show my appreciation for the help he has contributed to my own business. Te time he spends with his daughter and own family is priceless, I was fortunate to have witness it myself.

If you have the time head over to Save Jason’s Mom read the issues she has and make a decision to donate, more importantly help a great friend and person. I Did.

Take My Money, Play Me at Poker During #ASW11

Ian — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 15:35:38 +0000

Man Affiliate Summit West is approaching and there are so many events that are starting to take place. One is DK’s Poker Tournament which is happening on January 9th 2011. It will be a full formal poker tournament held and run by the Mirage.

The game is Texas Holdem and it is $100 to buy in. This is going to be a game to remember and I will be visiting the tables, right after my IANteract Dinner. I was given the name “Jersey Card Shark” and DK well is just DK. So if you are a high roller, baller, pimp stacks, etc – then sign up for the poker tourney that is happening the first night of Affiliate Summit West!

Watch the video below:

BTW, I really don’t gamble. Keywords is the game I play!

New Format for Facebook Sponsored Ads

Ian — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:07:24 +0000

I just switched to the new Facebook layout. So far its ehh, really not that impressive but I guess it takes getting use to as usual. With the new changes to the layout, I also noticed the ads to be setup differently. Now, I think this will effect CTR, good or bad not too sure yet.

The other interesting part is the ads are all horizontal on personal profiles and not fan pages. The fan page ads are still setup vertically but the Facebook group ads are also setup horizontally. As I browse Facebook more I am only noticing this with just profiles, groups, and events. These are the specifics that I noticed where the ads are horizontal.

As far as just fan pages, it is still vertical. Below is a screenshot of how the ads are now formatted with the new Facebook layout upgrade. If you have upgraded your Facebook account to the new profile you will probably noticed the change and format of the ads.

If you have not upgraded your Facebook account to the new layout, you can upgrade here.

Here is a screenshot of the new ad format of the your ads. Again this is happening to the new Facebook layout and not the prior layout. This does not affect also the ads which populate on fan pages.

Are these ads affecting your CTR? I wonder if this is just a small change or if these changes will be permanent. I am also curious if they will roll out the change to the fan pages and if so the dimensions of the fan pages will again change.

As far as me liking the new profile layout… I am kind of missing the tabs at the top, overall everything seems to be almost similar just some new features that are added to make you aware of the person you are viewing.

Other than that it’s something I guess I will have to adjust to. As far as ads, it will be interesting to see is there is a CTR fluctuation.

What do you think of the new Facebook layout and the new Facebook Ads format?

Switching Servers and the Nightmare I was In

Ian — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 01:36:48 +0000

As you all know I swear by WiredTree and I greatly enjoyed the service and customer support. It has been a great 2 years with them. So if you want to get a dedicated server with amazing support, WiredTree is the place to go.

But the internet is changing and a lot of things are now moving to cloud service. On this site and some of my other sites, I use Amazon S3 to host my files. I do this because it is important my files are always being seen and there is no lag in the bandwidth. I find this very important when I do video.

So to keep up with the internet and to even cut some cost, I switched over to Storm On Demand. In the past I was looking to switch everything to Amazon Web Services, but the structure was way too confusing for me. I even look to go with Rackspace Cloud. The problem with both, is it may not be able to run some of my scripts I have to run my business.

So I decided on Storm On Demand…

I was at Ad Hustlers Yearly Summer BBQ and he brought up server stuff and he said he was in need of something to run his massive traffic. Something he can pay for the traffic being used, instead of just a fixed bandwidth each month. He started to talk about Storm On Demand a Liquid Web Company.

I personally know friends who do not like Liquid Web because of the term ‘Heroic Support’. I was going to even switch to Liquid Web for my servers before WiredTree. Since I trust my peers, I decided to stay away from Liquid Web. Since Storm On Demand received Ad Hustler’s approval – I gave them a try.

They were very polite and very responsive via email, especially when it came to migration. They even asked me when the is the best time to do the migration. Everything went smoothed, until I had to change IPs from friggin 1and1.

Headache… video about 1and1… done on 10/13/10

Click here to view the embedded video.

At this point I started to rethink my switch, I didn’t mind paying for what I was paying on WiredTree. I never had any issues with WiredTree, it almost felt like a bad break up… sighs. Cutting cost and upgrading for speed ability to partition your servers is just an amazing concept.

Storm on Demand migrated all my sites for me. The problem is my sites instantly crashed the new servers. It took just under 36 hours to get everything stable and another full day of me making sure scripts work, sites responded, etc. I got noble heroic support from Liquid Web. My account was given to 2 admins, one working on one issue and the other on a separate issue – making sure they don’t cross each other. Now that is whats up.

I even received a phone call from their supervisor and he explained a lot of this to me. I am not an admin of any sort, I know a bit about servers since having my own but getting education from a supervisor was amazing. Especially he took the time to pick up the phone and call. He explained the functionality of their service and he even walked me through the main dashboard.

So my headache wasn’t throbbing so much.

Most of the time we were on email support and response is amazing – rapid response. They really catered to me and made sure my decision to Storm On Demand was the right choice. I definitely appreciate it.

So with the switch more stable how is the speed? I did a speed test after 24 hours of stability and this is what I received. I use pingdom to do this test. The test on the left is an archived test from when I was on WiredTree.

Pingdom Test:

About a 4 second improvement, BUT if you start browsing the site it seems the content is only changing. The full site doesn’t seem like it is loading every page you go to. I definitely notice a change in the speed and the way my sites load. My scripts and custom made tools are all working fine and even faster.

Switching over to Storm On Demand definitely cut my cost and also improved my website speed. It is a win win situation. I may be getting an ad on server because I do put load on the box. I am waiting for a report or follow up from the supervisor as he is monitoring my traffic to see if I should even get it. In the end I may end up getting another server on Storm anyways.

There will probably be a followup post and do a full review about Storm soon.

One bad thing – no affiliate program for Storm on Demand. Sighs.