Ian Fernando » Mistakes

Snowboarding Taught Me the Lessons of Failure

Ian — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:34:23 +0000

Right after I got back from Affiliate Summit West 2012, that same weekend, I went out snow boarding with a couple friends. I have never been snowboarding before and I felt it would be a good experience. Now that I am back in Jersey I wanted to write about it and explain how trial and error relates to my and all internet marketing experiences or life in general.

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.

CTRs for my Hurricane Irene Ads on Facebook

Ian — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:43:58 +0000

First of all, I hope is well with whoever was effected by Hurricane Irene. I know there are still a lot of people without power and communities still flooded. I wish you and your families all the best.

While news stations and radios are creating hype around Hurricane Irene, I thought to myself – can I help people by promoting something relevant? I called up several advertisers and I was unable to get a specific offer I wanted created. So I went over to Clickbank to see if there was something I can promote. There was.

I was a bit reluctant to even push a Clickbank product because I personally tested Clickbank products on Facebook and it doesn’t do so well. Also there was also another reason why my ads didn’t work, I’ll get into that in a bit. I found 2 info products about surviving during an event like a hurricane. It had high gravity and it looked very promising. I also found another ebook about the top foods you need to survive during a hurricane.

These 2 info products looked very promising, as teh data provided by Clickbank looked. So I decided to push them on Facebook. The reason for choosing Facebook Ads as a traffic source is because I imagined a lot of people would want to see how their relatives and friends are doing during this event.

Here are my demographics I targeted:

United States – Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut
Age 30 and Older
Categories: Parent, Engaged, Baby Boomers, Parents with kids 3-19 years.
Additional Categories: Charity Causes, Health and Well Being, Outdoor Activities, Traveling
Total target: 4,098,180

With a frequency of 1.6, I was able to get a decent amount of clicks to my ads. My ads took a while to get approved and I only ran the campaign for just a bit to see what kind of reach and clicks I would get. I wanted to see if users are willing enough to take out their credit card to learn how to survive.

Here are my CTRs for my ads:

Things I could have done to improve this campaign:

Started this campaign 1 week prior to the event instead of 24 hours
Created borders around the images
Split test different variations of the image with border color and size
Whitelabel the CB page with custom LP and Order button

The first bullet, is probably the best because 24 hours users are in frantic mode. I also was thinking users would be in such an emotional state they would want to find out how to help their family in anyways possible. It backfired and learned my lesson here. Everyone is in a mode where they want to make sure they have everything, this ebook would have probably helped users prior to the event. Have I started this campaign 1 week ago, it may have converted well. My reasoning is users are in a mode where they are still uncertain and are probably doing research on how to make the best during this extreme weather.

That was a lesson learned for sure. I personally didn’t see much relative ads during Irene, so there was no competition at all that I saw.

Get Access to a TradeMark Database and Avoid C&Ds

Ian — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:18:50 +0000

When it comes to promoting a product or brand online, you feel the need to use the company’s brand or name in your domain or even your set of targeted keywords. The problem is you can get in trouble, so the best thing to do is stay away from using the direct name or brand of the company you are promoting. It is the safest way to make sure you do not get a cease and desist from a law firm.

…. or you can just simply just look it up to be 100% certain.

When it comes to Google Adwords, bidding on trademark terms is a no go with Google. Even smaller merchants that are trademark will watch and even ask you do not compete with their keywords and phrases. Last year and years pass, I received C&Ds for multiple reasons, one being I used a trademark term with my marketing. I remember my first C&D a couple years back, the memories.

There are many companies that will say they are trademark, just so you do not compete with their terms. If you have a domain that has their name or brand, you are technically competing with them and they do not like any competition with their trademark names or brand.

To be specifically certain and to never get a C&D, use this specific site to make sure a company or term is trademarked. Simply go to USPTO.gov and on the homepage click on Search Marks.

The next screen you will simply just chose “Basic Word Mark Search” and the next screen you enter the trademark term in question. You will either get the actual Trademark information or you will get search results. The results may either include your term in a quote or slogan that other companies may have use.

The most interesting part is to see if trademarks expire. The sits gives a lot of information about your search term, when it expired, when it was registered, what the trademark term is about. There is a lot of information to look at.

With the online industry changing rapidly in the past 2 years, this is a good source to have when considering buying a domain, doing your keyword research, labeling an ebook title, etc. It keeps you out of trouble from the law firms and the bigger companies, and believe me sometimes it is a pain to deal with the law firms.

The site also provides a lot about copyrights, patents, IP enforcements, and their social profiles. Definitely browse the other sections which can give you insights about your own brand and company.

Use this site to your marketing advantage, I started heavily using it because I want less C&D in 2011 or to avoid them all together. So before buying that exact match domain, check to make sure you do not have a trademark phrase, brand, or term in it.

700 Clicks and My Simple Basic Mistake

Ian — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:41:39 +0000

It’s Tuesday and I did this video yesterday. So the video is gon to say Monday, so that is that. I complained I got 700 clicks and didn’t get any results. Well the reason is simple, I didn’t double check! When it comes to upgrades and changes, you think everything should be good to go. That may be the case but you should make sure to double check and make sure to test it first for yourself.

With many changes and upgrades with WordPress, Prosper202, and other tools you use that require upgrades and updates – you want to check if everything is still functional because if it isn’t you are going to lose money. It was my own fault that I spent the money and didn’t see any returns because I didn’t check.

Checking the upgrades and updates you do will assure your own success.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Again, this weekend – 700 clicks with no conversions really got to me and I didn’t even bother to pause it and check it this weekend, hoping it would be just a minor issue. Come Monday I was just now curious as to why nothing converted and not even a click within the lander.

Found out my lander was just showing half the site… sighs.

The reason for this was the upgrade to WordPress 3 and it wasn’t pulling the content from the database at all – took me an hour to figure out why it wasn’t pulling the content. I fixed it and now the lander is back in business!

Lesson learned – check everything and check your upgrade changes, making sure everything is working the way it needs to be.

Your Tracking Link Got Removed!

Ian — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:34:04 +0000

…well not your tracking link but mine was. A tracking link is the affiliate link basically a network or advertiser uses to track your performance. Last week I started to work directly with a new advertiser that I met at Affiliate Summit East: NY. I told the advertiser what kind of traffic I am doing and how I do it. He was looking forward to work with me and so then I followed up with him.

After just 3 days of testing his offers, I realized my traffic dropped exponentially. I emailed the advertiser directly and asked what happened. I got a whack response stating my traffic was immense in such a short time frame. The problem I had was I told him the type of traffic I was doing. Also this source of traffic is so new that no network accepts it or very little.

I explained that to him my traffic and where it was coming from and how I test it. Apparently he didn’t like the traffic and that sucks, so he decides to just remove my link or dead it. No redirect or email stating it was removed etc.

This sometimes happen with network where they do not notify you of change, but they are redirected to a landing page or a more successful offer.

Now, working with advertisers can be good and bad. I know my buddy Jonathan Volk had a post stating why it is hard working with advertisers. I agree to a lot to what he got to say but sometimes advertisers want just your traffic and will do what you basically say.

A while back I was running another niche, in the UK and it did nicely. I was able to edit the LP and get new LPs made. I had control. The problem is the advertisers can not pay weekly’s most are net45. While sometimes the advertisers will give you top payouts, it may also be the top payouts on other network but sometimes have the same offer with similar payouts.

But sometimes you do get a higher payout than most. It really depends on the advertiser. But the thing to be learned here is to always watch your traffic and your conversions. Compare traffic reports from your inhouse with the advertisers.

There are advertisers where you can trust them and work with them directly without knowing you will be put under the bus. While there is a lot of advertisers that are hard to work with and do not want to pay or even want to help you or even take your advice, then those are the ones you do not want to work with.

Luckily, I personally have not been burnt while working with an advertiser. There are advertisers that want to work with you directly. I get emails all the time and even calls. Just the other day I got a call about this car payment insurance, which sounds really interesting.

But personally, venturing out of the network may not be safe but there are some benefits to it. You can work independently on the offer and even get permissions to alter the page to make it convert.

Again, with anything you are promoting – make sure you watch and compare tracking. Vsibility is important!

Cross Reference the Advertisers Landing Page!

Ian — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:34:21 +0000

Another flaw in affiliate marketing is the fact that landing pages need to be cross referenced in multiple browsers. This will either lose your prospects or gain them, I mean if you go to a landing page that looks like trash or unorganized most likely you will leave.

Remember first impressions are important, especially if you are making a landing page, better yet an advertisers landing page should have done their research to put in time and effort to cross test their offer across all browsers. I mean this is important because you need to assure yourself that every person viewing your landing page or offer will properly be viewable in whatever browser they are using.

Well, I was looking for some IQ stuff lately (cause everyone is banking off it), I decided to go into a more well known network and found a good landing page or offer. Everything looks good within IE and FireFox, but when under Safari it busted! I was like boo!

The above picture was within a Safari browser and lately a lot of people are switching to Mac, so just had to make sure it works on the default browser, Safari. It seems it was in an iframe, one url being the tracking site or page.

Now how do you cross check among browsers, maybe you only have a Mac or maybe you just Windows? Maybe you just have the standard Opera, IE, FF, Chrome combination? What about older versions or these, or maybe Linux browsers?

Well there is a powerful site that I use, BrowserShots.org. Browsershot.org is a powerful little tool that takes a snapshot of your landing page, offer url, or any website url and provides you a screenshot of it.

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

source: browsershots.org

I suggests looking at all your landing pages and if you are direct linking look at the final url and plug it into browsershots.org. I always use this site when testing my LPs or looking at offers I want to promote. If you start with an offer knowing that it is going to go bad in IE 6 then you wasted your time on that offer and even money on traffic.

So always check before working hard on a campaign or offer. Always check your landing page against other browsers and always check the advertisers, even though they should be doing it on their end.

It would be a good idea also to check your analytics to see what type of browsers your prospects are viewing it in, if you are creating a direct link via iframe or using your own landing page.

How To Immediately Lose $100 in 1 Minute

Ian — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:03:48 +0000

So I started out with a new ad network earlier today knowing that I think the traffic source would be there and knowing that it would make sense to run a specific offer on there. So I tested 3 offers, only the first one which was approved got the surge of traffic. Within literally a minute, I have already spent $100! I had to just pause my campaigns because I needed to know how fast those clicks came in and how, where, when, why – all the necessary affiliate questions.

While I was watching my prosper202 spy window just seeing the surge of traffic, I was pretty sure it was the new ad network I was working with. My whole spy view on Prosper202 was just filled with the same campaign, what a surge of traffic literally within minutes or might be seconds I launched the ad on the network.

Below is a screen shot from the network, which shows the impressions and my CTR – which cost me 100$ pretty fast, literally in seconds after I launched and it got approved. I saw the pop up notification from my Thunderbird saying it was approved, then a minute later another email notification saying I need to fund my account! I was like DAAAAAMMMMNNNN.

So I had to look at my other stats that related to this traffic, luckily prosper202 has day parting. You can see it was withing 2 hours but I think I might have been caught at the 00:58 and 00:02 mark of the hour. I remember starting the campaign and waiting for it to get approved. Well below is the quick surge of traffic and the death of it.

Some issues remains questionable, like my clicks didn’t match up with the network I was advertising on. I have to call them up on this situation, what is considered a click on their end vs impressions.

So lesson learned here. When starting with a new ad network, make sure you know their platform very well. Prior to starting with this new ad network, I did call them to ask questions. I got the basis and the information I needed to hear. I signed up ; got approved, started a campaign and immediately lost. Definitely a lesson learned.

The lesson learned here is pretty simple, good thing I started small first, I would have been piss at myself if I funded it with a larger amount. But get a better understanding of the ad marketplace or network. This way you can see and have a better understanding of how your ads are counted as impressions, who they are targeting, what is considered a click, etc.

When starting with an ad network or advertising marketplace make sure you…

Call them up and talk to a person that is knowledgeable of their system
Ask about their traffic
Ask about how clicks are considered and same with impressions
Ask how the network displays your advertisements
Start small with an unfamiliar network
Ask what is the the best way to start on their network

There are other things, make sure you ask so you understand how their system works. Since this is a new platform and a new venue for the advertising world – it was a good learning experience with the network – but I will be more careful now when advertising on a new network.

Finding new traffic sources is always fun!

>> task to do >> call ad network to get a better understanding of how they display ads

I Seriously Hate Internet Explorer!

Ian — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:26:10 +0000

So last night I launched a new site, I am actually still tired and didn’t get much sleep. But I launched my new site TwitterBanking.com. I will talk about this tomorrow or maybe later today, but it is just a simple squeeze page. The problem is I created it from scratch and I always work in FireFox or Safari, so any changes or testing I am doing I view it in both those browsers. I just do not think anyone uses IE anymore.

I even tweeted a comment about how I hate IE and I got a ton of response via twitter:

from aroussi: @ianternet IE Sucks. Here’s why: http://tinyurl.com/57vm83
from blackbottom_com: @ianternet ya -IE 6/7, Safari 3+, FF 2.0.0.16/20, 3.0+, and all the CSS intricacies, I’m usually tuckered out.
from blackysky: @ianternet feel you for IE or I hope IE8 will be more like firefox
from: quirkyjessi: @ianternet I couldn’t agree more!

But last night while at launched, I got an email saying it looks messed up in IE. I decided to check and to my astonishment here is what I saw:

As you can see the dashed table is pushing into the sidebar, the reason for this is because the form button is extending too far out. So it pushes everything that is on the sidebar at the bottom of the table. I am too ashamed to show the whole site, but you can see it in crap action in POS IE!So lesson learned always test LPs in other browsers. The problem with me is that I usually outsource this all and I do not have to really worry because they do all the testing. But since it was a simple squeeze page I am creating, it should be easy right – so I did it. I was all super happy that it was getting traffic already and receiving optins – until someone emailed me how crappy it looks in IE.

According to analytics only 13.73% of my traffic is using IE, the majority is using FireFox! I still have to consider about the 13%, gah. But the site should look like this – click here.

When I find out it was all F’ed up I was too tired to try and fix it, I will probably end up giving it to my programmer to fix it and stuff. But lesson learned always cross test browser compatibility with your sites, landing pages, sales letters, etc – because it does matter.

You can be losing traffic, that small 13% can be the best buyers in your lists! So you really have to cater to all your traffic and make sure their user experience is the best – create that brand and credibility right away, with that you can easily grab attention.

So make sure you split test all your sites in multiple browsers – after I found that the site wasn’t looking good in IE, I Googled ‘cross browser testing’ and found a really great site called Browsershots.org. What this specific site does is actually load your website in a browser, I guess on their backend and take a snapshot of it – providing you a screen shot of your site in multiple browsers.

It is pretty cool because you get to chose the browsers from Google Chrome to third party browsers such as Avant and Opera. There is a huge selection and it puts it in a queue for process, then you refresh the page every so often and it spits out a screenshot of the site. Great tool for your arsonal.

So to me there were some browsers that it does not work with at all, like old versions of Opera (who uses opera?), obviously IE all versions except 8 <- didn’t know there was an 8. But overall FF took the chain and definitely made the site the way it is suppose to be. If your not with FireFox, go download it now!

So later today, I will be adjusting it – my programmer is already busy with things so I may have to do it – but it shold be a quick fix I think, if not to my programmer it goes too.

Welcome to IanFernando.com 2.0

Ian — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:21:15 +0000

Another IanFernando.com Facelift has been implemented for 2009. I took a survey of my readers and a lot of you stated that the theme was just too cluttered, the home page anyways. So I decided to go a head and find another theme that would help with the clutter but keep the community sense of my blog.

I decided to go ahead and use the Arthemia Theme from ColorLabs Project. The theme has a magazine style and blog style to it. The biggest complaint I received from my old blog style was the clutter of the front page, so I wanted to change that a little bit but also have dedicated spots for specific posts. Arthemia allows me to do just that and let recent posts be posted on the front page. There are some loses such as the random posts, the forum rss feed, and other aspects but there are going to be changes for 2009.

Since this is a new theme, there are still a lot of things that I am playing around with, for example the thumbnails, I want to give a default thumbnail so its not just text you will see. I will also be adding a free email report subscription at the top, I have joined a new email system other than aweber as well. You will also notice some new changes within the posts as well.

The posts will have related readings on the far right of the blog post, which may distort old pages with images or posts that maybe shorter than usual but it was a change I wanted to implement. Also at the bottom you will notice a small footer of link such as an rss button, tell a friend, etc. Trying to get the blog to be more social, some aspects such, may still be the same such as the hiding of the comments, until you click on a link.

You will also notice I added the google friend connect to this blog as well. I want to see how effective it will be for this blog and see how many people actually will login to claim their face on IanFernado.com!

The theme is currently still being worked on through out the week, until I get it the way I want it. Below is the screenshot of the old design, let me know what you think of the new design and I hope that it will be better suite for my readers, since you told me what was wrong I hope I satisfied you with the new design.

Let me know what you think or if you want the old design back, remember that I am still working on the small quirks.

Competing with my SEO Keywords with PPC

Ian — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:11:04 +0000

I noticed something in the past 2 days. Keywords that are being generated via a website and an offer that relates to those keywords, which I am currently running. As you know keywords are generated everyday, brand new ones are generated everyday. There is no way a company or software that can give you the best keywords out there as many are being made every minute. For example a standard “stereo bluetooth headset” is a pretty good keyword but someone can add model numbers, brands, colors, size, etc. There are so many other variations of keywords for the general keyword.

Well I noticed via analytics that my site was being ranked number 1 in the SERPs for about 500+ keywords. I will show you how to grab these keywords, later on. I then realize one of my offers can relate to those group of keywords. I exported those keywords and added them in the Adwords Editor to upload to my account. I gave it a day and then realized that the keywords were not converting.

My Theory:

Since I was ranking #1 in the SERPs for these specific keywords, I am competing against my own sites. SO what, I compete against all the other sites as well. Then I realize that my site was providing information, where the offer was providing the information as well, but with a payment. Interesting.

My Analysis:

I looked at the stats more and noticed repeated IP addresses from both the offers and my website. I then thought to myself:

They went to the website, hit back went to the offer
Went to the offer, hit back went to the website

Interesting. I figured I would be able to leverage my own website’s keywords to benefit my own campaigns. Looks like it did not. I noticed low return today and was kinda shocked at that. I had very targeted niche specific keywords, but users were very specific to the keyword they didn’t bother completing the offer.

So these 500+ sets of keywords turned into negatives for the offer I was running. Now I believe that my site was providing the answer, where the offer was providing the answer for a price and FREE obviously won. I was kinda of disappointed that I saw the clicks but not a high conversion.

To me this was a mistake for me, I should have just let my site take in all the traffic. I just wanted to find a way in which my offers can benefit from the new set of keywords that were generated from my website. Maybe if the page did not provide so much information, the offer might have converted? Well in anycase I added the offer link at the bottom of my page to see if readers would filter through and then convert.

Click here to view the embedded video.