For example here is a screenshot of all the cities Google says there is reach, from  county in New Jersey.

Now there maybe some good traffic which can be captured. Even though Google Adwords can not tell the populate or reach of the area doesn’t mean there isn’t traffic there. Granted Google may pull their location for ads being searched in their location doesn’t mean it will always be covered.

To properly cover all these ’empty’ areas is to create a radial target. Zoom in the map and decide what city you want as a center axis and enter it in Google’s geo targeting tool, hit enter. It does not matter if the city you use as a center point is already targeted, you just need an axis for your circle. The default is a 20 mile radius, but you can go as low as 10 miles. Once you do that you will see an additional overlay over your original targets. It should look similar to this below.

As you can see the circular radius targets the non targeted area produced from the first screenshot. It allows me to extend my reach to these areas, even though they maybe less populated or have little reach. Since they are still within the reach of the other cities the client is targeting, this overlay reach will help with the campaign. If the client wanted to only target selected cities then this strategy will play no part. Since they are targeting a county, this will work well.

This simple overlay radial targeting will help increase reach, even find leads which Google thinks their maybe none. In essence you want to get a good reach of users or visibility to your ad. You just do not know if these ‘gapped’ areas will not produce a lead to your client.

I would probably say to use this strategy only if there are missing areas within your map. I would not use this strategy if there are missing areas outside. It would defeat the purpose and the client may not travel out that far from their office or target area. If you are missing cities that are already surrounded by cities targeted already then it would make sense to include them by using a radial target.

Related posts:

1. My Ad was Seen: Intro to Adwords
2. Check Everyday for your $50 Adwords Coupon
3. Comparing Google Ad Planner with Quantcast

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.

Related posts:

1. Forget About the Big Screens: Blogging the Movie
2. No Annoyance in the CPS Space
3. Advertise Your RSS on IanFernando.com – A New Innovation

Ripples got me a bit curious about how it works and who are the true social influencers. Te only problem I see and my buddy Ad Hustler brought it up at adtech is assuming everyone using Google+, which isn’t true. You still have the social battle between Facebook and Twitter. Google+ is just getting into the social game and so far a lot of people are using it.

I have yet to find a purpose for Google+

The idea with Google+ Ripples is to see who is influential. Take a look at this screenshot below. Within my Google+ profile I saw users commenting and re-sharing one of Brian Clarks links. Infact, it was a link which he reshared from I assume someone he follows. From this screenshot below you can see that Brian shared a piece of web content to users, to which another user decides to reshare it. (the bigger circle sticking out on the lower right hand) This Louise person has enough influence that it affected another person.

view ripple

It was interesting to see who are viewed as a trust figure and an authority. For someone to look at their content and reshare it and influence them is a pretty strong attribute in the social space. Let’s take a look at another image or someone more figurative, the Dalai Lama. This image below shows his influence on so many users, which in turns show up other trust worthy users.

The Dalai Lama, has influence so many users, of those users another set of users influence another set. One being a pretty big worthy user to trust. These circle within a circle definitely show who can be influenced and who is the influencer in this specific social media vertical.

view ripple

Ripples doesn’t just help you find who your top social users are, but it also provides stats about the audience. You can see some audience statistics like language, giving you an idea who the demographic users are. Another is the chain reaction, basically what i was explaining above. Not only can you see who are the top re sharers, you can see how often it was shared per hour.

Google+ Ripples can help you start creating relationships with users that can help your business. Imagine if one of your content had a high chain reaction or ripple effect to others out there. It can be compared to Twitter retweets, how often ca you get your content retweeted and reshared? If you start creating relationships with your top influencers, you can captivate a big audience in a short amount of time. Also its free traffic.

I found this Google+ Ripple to be very interesting. Even though Google+ does not have a huge audience just yet. I personally haven’t notice internet marketers using Google+. There isn’t any apps, downloads, tools, even ebooks towards Google+. This shows me it still has a long way to go before it can compete with Twitter and Facebook. Though ripples is definitely a great way tot get in touch and create relationship with highly prized authorities in any niche, just how many authority figures are actively on Google+.

Ripples is definitely something to keep an eye out for, it is helping you find out who can boost your traffic to your blog or products pretty rapidly.

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The more prominent one is when you are just about to leave my blog, an overlay will present you with the ability to download my affiliate guide. Essentially it is just a click gesture which is faster than typing in your email address. I also have my Facebook Connect Application on my landing page for the affiliate guide as well with the option to utilize a traditional webform.

Here is the overlay… You probably seen my sexy face…

After a blog reader decides they want to continue, they click on the download button. The only action that is needed from the end user pint f view is the verification with Facebook. Facebook then stops the user and then asks them again if they want to confirm access to their email address. Here is the screenshot…

All the end user have to do now is click on allow. Simple and they are then subscribed to my blog mailing list. The email address of the user from Facebook is worth more than a traditional optin email address because of its authenticity. A user with a Facebook profile is probably using their real email address and the one they check regularly.

This method proved to be the best way for me to gain more optins from this blog. The plugin that I used for this is called WPSubscriber. It is a very thought out plugin which has a ton of options to get users to subscribed to your mailing list. I found after I implemented this plugin my optin rate quadrupled my daily traditional short form optins. Truth.

WPSubscribers is definitely a great plugin to utilize when trying to leverage users on your blog. It is a very simple plugin to use, but it is also pretty advance as well. For example the Facebook Connect Application part of WPSubscribers took me a while to figure it out. I needed to email the creator of the plugin to get some assistance and they helped me fairly quickly. Great support on their part.

With using Facebook Applications, you are actually creating an app (hence the name) for the user give you access to their information. This allows you to retrieve their email address and name after they have verified your app within Facebook. This is why I added my caricature picture and the text Ian Fernando Blog, giving assurance to the reader.

You setup your WPSubscriber plugin after you setup your Facebook App within Facebook. Once you setup your application in Facebook, you just input the credentials into WPSbuscriber and you are ready to increase optins.

There are also many uses I use this plugin for (maybe another blog post), but mainly to get the attention of my blog readers and giving them a benefit of the download. I also do not let the popup happen when the user enters my blog. I personally find that annoying. Instead I let the overlay popup pop when the user is about to leave the blog post.

My train of thought is this, if someone enters my site they are here with interests to read my blog post or see some pictures. Quickly prompting a blog reader to subscribe increases time on site stats, because of the form redirect, and it also breaks their patience. They enter your blog to receive information, if they are done you can prompt the popup to provide more information. Which is why I have set my WPSubscriber to set when the user is about to leave my blog. Maybe worth a test?

There are a lot of these popup scripts out there, but WPSubscriber is definitely worth the investment as there are so many uses for it. With so many features such as footer optin boxes, header optin boxes, display hidden content, registration subscription, analytics, etc. There are literally a lot of options and features within this plugin. As I stated earlier this plugin is easy to use but it can also be complicated when you want it to be. With so many uses you can start increasing your optins from your blog pretty quickly and overnight.

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2. Blog PopUps? Why Not SlideUp?
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I got a couple emails asking what associated marketing was from one of my posts, so I decided to explain it.

Just a couple days ago I showed you my CTRs for my Facebook Campaign, which took advantage of a buzz. In that post I talked about how I brought a specific item or in this case color, to represent something. That something can be a person, brand, item, groups, etc – it can be anything. This is why a lot of big brand companies spend so much time and even money on the right brand logo, slogan, color, etc. They want to make sure that this logo will surpass years of bombarded media.

The video above talks about how I created the campaign and how I use association to my advantage. One good example that happens offline is when you are with a group of friends, a person or a cop will quickly categorize you base on your surroundings. It is just an instinct to survival and it happens all the time. We often think and judge someone base on who they are with because it assets the situation.

Another simple explanation is in advertising. We are always looking at a logo or some item that represents a company or brand. Car logos we continuously see everyday, on the road or commercials. It is being embedded in our minds that this is a Cadillac, this is a Chevy, etc. We have such good brand recognition, we can point out a logo without the company’s slogan. By the mere fact we consistently see a brand or logo means we are neurologically programmed to just know it.

Apple does a great job at this and several other big companies. Now lets take a look at my ad below:

As you can see I used orange as the associated variable. My reason for this is Mayweather wore orange trunks, orange shoes, orange gloves. So in the end users will know that Orange = Mayweather. This specific campaign was wrap around the buzz of the punch. As you can see I created an orange border around the image campaign while also showing the orange gloves. I didn’t have to put Mayweather in the image at all, the color orange is already doing that for me.

Even though the fight was an obvious of who is fighting who, I can extend this campaign way pass the actual fight date and users should still remember orange = Mayweather. Remember during the 4 weak rounds, orange sticks out and it is consistently being fed to the end user. This in turns just neurologically embeds who is who by the color of their trunks.

So that is what associated marketing is about. I hope I answered your emails for those that asked about it. It is a simple concept that can be utilized for any sort of marketing campaign.

…. btw wrote this quick ….

Related posts:

1. Facebook CTRs: A Sucker Punch Campaign
2. Why Do Clickbank Info Marketers Suck So Much at Marketing?
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Taking advantage of these quick small trends can result quick cash flow. These trends can last a week or might last just a couple hours. It depends how you want to market around these trends. Is there a CPA offer I can promote? What promos can I run that is relevant to the trend? How can I make an affiliate offer or product relevant enough? etc

One big question is spotting trends. There are several sites out there which watches search results, social streams, and popular news. The importance among these sites is what is repetitive among all of them to find a good topic to promote around. Below are 5 sites I use to spot trending topics.

Google Trends is a great place to start since it is the biggest search engine. There are great trends which you can pull and do more research on. The best art about Google Trends is the fact you can search historical data on your keyword or topic. This gives you more insights about that specific topic, helping you create a new campaign base on historical and trending topics.

Youtube trends is a great place to be if you want to know what is going viral. Videos rapidly can go viral within minutes. Taking advantage of these small trends, which can last 48 hours to a week, can help you create the right campaign about topics the Youtuber is talking about. One aspect I have used Youtube trends is finding popular videos and watching to see if they go viral. If they do I create a campaign targeting that specific video only.

Blog Pulse is a great place to compare trending keywords. They have several categories where they organize trends. Organizing by keyphrases, websites, videos, blogs, etc. It is almost like a single huddle for all things trending. I like to use their keyword or topic comparison tool. This way I can see which trend will do better over all or which topic will last longer over another.

Yahoo Buzz is a great tool to find what is happening in the Yahoo search engine world. You can see there is a big difference from search terms when using Google Trends. One thing I do like is the Decliners section of Yahoo Buzz. Decliners are trends that has started falling off. This makes for easy campaign creation that is still somewhat trendy but I bet no competition.

Trendistics is more of a tool comparison. Providing you historical social data on your topic. This is important because you want to see or estimate how long your topic will last. This is more of a research tool, but it does have trending social topics from #hastags to topics. So it does show you what is trending and you can definitely use it to find popular social topics.

There are other popular sites out there to spot trends and popular news topics. You have to wrap your head around that trend and see if you can create a good campaign which users can interact with or better, take out their credit card. There are a lot of questions you can ask yourself to see if a campaign will work. The most important part is finding a relevant enough offer to promote and compelling enough for users to engage with.

–> What trend tools or sites do you use to spot trending niches and topics?

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2. Banking Off the Trend of the Jonas Brothers
3. Blog StartUp: Adword Campaign for Traffic

Sunday at Affiliate Summit I spoke on a panel about something that is pretty controversial in our industry. The panel was about 2 different styles within the affiliate industry. The title of the panel “Industry Clash: Balancing CPS & CPA Marketing“, a really good panel for discussion. The panel included, Jason Rubacky, Logan Thompson, Greg Hoffman as the moderator, and me. The panel discussion was a very good way to let other affiliates understand both parties and both sides.

This topic was brought up to Greg’s attention by doing some sort of search on the powerful Google and an old posts and video popped up. The blog post title was “CPS affiliates why can’t we be friends“, it also got a lot of feedback via the comments.  From this post, Greg decided to bring me and other affiliates to balance and to bring more light to each side.

I do a lot of PPC marketing or paid traffic, while the CPS side of the industry a majority of these affiliates deal with SEO and organic rankings. Though both sides deal with both traffic sources, we on the CPA side tend to be more watchful of traffic sources. We want to know where we can advertise and how we can get prime spot on specific sites.

This thought of testing traffic sources puts us on the cutting edge of the industry because we always want new traffic sources. For example, I am always testing traffic and you can read a good amount of them on this blog. I tested LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, Findology, AdMob, etc. I am always wanting to know how each of these traffic sources differ from one another and what similarities they have.

During our panel, there was a heated battle between me and Jason Rubacky. I brought up some points about how CPA affiliates are the ones who can turn a garage business into a corporation literally overnight. There are specific health pharmaceuticals that are now established because of CPA marketers and have yet to merge to the CPS side due to the fact they know they can not get the type of monetization a CPA marketer can bring.

Logan even stated he has done CPS marketing with paid traffic via Facebook, making it profitable. I personally was not able to make it profitable, case study here. It may have been my methodology or it just wasn’t doing or performing well at all. Either way it won’t discourage me from trying again.

One interesting topic I brought up is about how both sides look at traffic. An SEO CPS affiliate is all about getting traffic, as do CPA marketers. The difference is how we monetize that traffic. A SEO CPS user will get 1000 users to their website and convert only 10%, while a CPA paid traffic gen affiliate can get 100 users and convert at 10%. There is a difference on how we look at traffic and how we monetize that traffic.

The reason is the CPL space always think in terms of their traffic as money going out vs money coming in. For example if 1000 users ended up on a landing page and only 300 converted over, we ask ourselves why didn’t the other 700 convert over. From there we start testing vigorously and trying to find out why that traffic didn’t convert.

There are some good points to CPS and it is a reason why I am trying to learn that side of the industry. For example virtual real estate. Greg pointed out there is an affiliate who is literally on vacation everyday because of his affiliate sites that have been growing for over 10 years. Amazing, but that took time. Since we as CPA affiliates are more on the trend of traffic sources, we can make money now.

I personally am impatient, this is why I have given the SEO side of my business to someone who is good at SEO. I want to have virtual real estates and this is how I think I should grow my business especially after understanding what I have learned from the CPA/CPL side of this industry. Understanding the demographics and reactions from all the traffic sources I have tested puts me in a great spot to understand human nature when building up a virtual real estate on the interwebs.

In the end, affiliate marketing is marketing. How we monetize the traffic is really up to the marketer.

BTW here is the slide to our panel:

Related posts:

1. Affiliate Summit and My Busy Schedule!
2. Affiliate Summit East Recap for 2011
3. CPS Affiliates, Why Can’t We Be Friends?

I think in Affiliate Summit West 09, there was a private affiliate meetup with a lot of affiliates and guest speakers talking about online affiliate marketing. My speech was taking dating offers and asking the affiliate network or advertiser to white label the offer. I talked about how it can give the publisher more control and provide even more quality leads to the advertiser.

I then found this site, Anastasia Affiliate Program which offers white label dating campaigns.

I decided to look at Asian Beauties because for some reason our industry likes Asian girls. So I looked at the backend to see how fully whitelabel this platform and offer truly is. Once I signed up the setup process is very simple and straight forward. You are asked to start naming your site and chose a subdomain for your dating campaign.

One great attribute is you can point your new site to a domain, branding your domain. This makes your offer unique as it can help with branding and ofcourse recognition n the internet. With this you can also upload a new logo than the traditional Asian Beauties logo, making it truly white label. You customize the slogan and the most interesting part which will be upgraded soon is the language.

You are allowed to currently chose English, but once they implement the language feature you can chose from German to French. If you have done any dating international offer, it is important to create landing pages with the proper language of the international traffic you are targeting. It just brings in better leads.

Once some basic information is provided about your new white label Asian dating offer, you then pick from 1 of 4 templates. Each templates has a lot of Asian women on the home page. The best part is you can chose what type of Asian women you can place on the home page vs the gallery page, Thailand girls, Chinese girls, or Filipino girls.

You can also display specific girls base on your targeting. For example you can also just show girls for a specific zodiac sign, smoking, eye color, drinking, ages, etc – you can control what type of girl shows up on the homepage or galleries. This is great especially if you are targeting a fixed demographic of males that are only interested in girls that are of specific height and for a specific zodiac sign. Very powerful.

You also can decide how many girls thumbnails can be view able from 50 images to more than 200! This gives you full control of how your dating campaign can look like. Even though 4 templates is pretty low, you still have control over the content and the galleries.

I believe they will have more templates soon.

With your white label site almost done, you also control the content and what you want to say across to your traffic. Below is a screenshot of the multiple parts of your white label site you can control, literally almost every part. You can use their default text, customize it, or just rewrite the whole content yourself, this is your site you can control.

This pat is important as copy in itself is important, you need to captivate the end user enough to show interests and then enough interests to turn them into  lead. Having control and testing your own copy can result in some great commissions for your own dating offer.

Other than just creating your own white label dating offer, they have a set of tools you can start pushing to help get your offer out. They have pre made banners, advertising tools, and ofcourse high commissions.

I always try to get a whitelabel offer, since it gives me the opportunity to test their LP vs what I thunk would convert better base on my own past experiences. Especially since dating is a saturated market but still profitable, having your own offer/campaign can help you increase your earnings. You can grow a brand which can be powerful in itself.

Take a look at Anastasia Affiliate Program and see their other white label dating offers, Asian Beauties is just one of other dating campaigns which you can white label and control. Having this ability literally gives you a better advantage over other affiliates.

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We are moving into a mobile space right now, a lot of users have cell phones, a big majority have a smart phone! As marketers we need to adjust to this and make sure we can reach our traffic whether they are looking on it from a standard FireFox browser or their iPhones. For example I have a virtual card on IanFernando.Me.

It has all my information and it is the only business card I need now. When someone scans my QR code, 2 things happen – there is a check that see if it is a smartphone or not, then redirects to the proper page. Since users can go to my virtual card form their browser, I still want to make it browser friendly and attractive.

But if they are viewing it on their cell phones, I want to make sure they get access to the right information fast. I do this by creating a mobile friendly page or in the case of my virtual card – a mobile friendly service that houses my information. You can visit my virtual card on your phone and it will redirect you JumpScan, a service that holds my contact information on a mobile friendly page.

In order to do this, I use a code that checks the screen size of the browser and then redirect the user if necessary. The code below is added to the TOP page of my html page. This code will be the very first line of defense to mobile users, making sure they are sent to the right page.

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
if (screen.width <= 699) {
document.location = "http://jumpscan.com/ianternet";
}
//-->
</script>

This small snippet of code says if the screen size is LESS than 699 in pixels, redirect to JumpScan profile. If you go to my JumpScan profile from this blog, on a standard browser you will see a standard and browser friendly page. If you viewed it on a mobile device, you will a very friendly mobile landing page with my contact information. This is why I keep it on JumpScan.

You should take advantage of both parties and redirect users base on the type of browser they are on. DO not permanently switch to mobile as a BIG majority of users will still be PC/MAC browser base traffic. You should cater to your users and make things easier for them. For example ability to watch videos, load times, smaller image file sizes, etc. There are a lot more you can do to optimize your website to cater to mobile users.

I know I personally work on my iPhone a lot and I tend to view emails and websites on my phone. It bothers me that I have to magnify the website I am looking at to see and understand what I am looking at. Making everything easier for the end user is the best way to gather leads and make sales.

Use the code above and paste it ABOVE any other code of your website and redirect it to mobile friendly services such as JumpScan or download and edit mobile friendly themes. If you are using WordPress, just use WPTouch to turn your blog into a mobile friendly theme.

In either case mobile marketing will have to be part of your marketing model.

Related posts:

1. Engaging Mobile Users with QR Bar Codes
2. Mobile Marketing with QR Codes, Right and Wrong Ways
3. Cross Reference the Advertisers Landing Page!

One thing I quickly realize is some QR codes are too crowded, meaning the barcodes are much tighter and smaller. I personally have done QR marketing on this blog, with dating offers, on Facebook, etc. So the most important factor is the barcode itself, if it is unscannable it is useless.

I tried to scan a QR code within the magazine for Lending Tree and it was unscannable. The reason is because it is too crowded. Each little black square is tightly surrounded by another, there is very little white space, and it just doesn’t look appealing. I took a snapshot with my iPhone and here is the image.

Try to scan this QR code below. I personally use Red Laser (iPhone) to scan any type of bar code. Were you able to scan the barcode? Probably not. The barcode is just too tight.

The reason why this barcode is heavily crowded is because there is a lot of information on it. Either there is a text message or a long URL. Those are the only reasons why I think this barcode is overcrowded. I will not know for sure unless I am able to pull the information from the QR code itself.

Lending Tree was not able to pass their message to their consumers with this QR code.

Now still browsing through the magazine, I found other QR barcodes and they are much more appealing and easier to scan, almost instant. This is because there is more white space surrounding the barcode, the bars are much bigger, and it looks attractive to scan. It doesn’t look crowded, more importantly it is usable.

Now scan the barcode below to see what USPS wants to relay to their consumers.

Even though I posted these pics on this blog, you should be able to scan 1 of the 2 QR codes. As long as the image is clear and it isn’t crowded, then the message can be relayed to your users. This QR code was a successful campaign because it was a shortened URL, giving the QR code more room to expand its blocks, meaning bigger squares and more white space.

It is a big difference when trying to get users to interact and they are not able too. From this quick small comparison you can see the big difference in the bar codes and why which one failed and the other was probably more successful.

Here are some tips on how to get your QR code easily scanned:

• Use small direct messages – long messages will just crowd your QR code
• Use shortened hyperlinks instead of messages, if they are on their phone most likely they have internet
• Access to FREE QR Generator to see how your code can look like and appeal to users
• If you want users to know your contact, send them to a virtual card (IanFernando.Me) – I have a mobile version as well.
• Make sure you have your sites optimized for mobile friendly phones, iPhones and Androids.

These are just small steps when getting into the mobile marketing space, there are a lot more variables to look at. In regards to QR codes, these are some steps which you should think about when doing any type of QR marketing.

Mobile marketing is still a young infant, learning everyday and ready to grow. We have to think a couple more steps ahead when handling such a new born marketing method.

BTW… were you able to scan the first QR code? What did it say? Leave it in the comments.

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