Okay… it's been a looong time since I last posted to my general blog. It's time to get cranking again. I'm not dead just very busy working on some new stuff.

Recently I've been working on a handful of very big projects. One of them (the biggest one) is falling apart with the partners. Several months of work going down the drain. Frustrating. It could be good news for you, though… since some of the tools I've developed over the past 6 months will probably now be released to the public instead of to my partners.

But that's not what I'm most excited about right now…

For the past few months I've become increasingly frustrated with "traditional" internet marketing. Soooo many people are jumping into the game. Most of them are not the brightest marketers around. And it seems to be having 2 effects on my traditional IM business. Costs are going up (which has been the trend for awhile) and quality of both products and prospects appear to spiraling downward.

I'm seeing double and triple the refund rates on many of the products I promote as an affiliate. It's frustrating. And combined with higher traffic costs it really eats into my margins.

CPA offers provide some relief, since there aren't refunds… but it just means the networks are shaving more aggressively.

So I'm in the process of making some dramatic changes to my business… and you should probably at least be thinking about these things. Don't misunderstand… the IM Opportunity is still very much in play. I just feel like the focus and tactics required to capture it are making a significant shift. More on that later.

I don't have all the results in on these changes yet… but I'll let you know how it goes.

First, I'm moving almost entirely away from the typical presell-to-affiliate landing page selling process. I'll explain more about what I'm doing and why over the next few days / weeks. Early results are encouraging.

Second, I've all but dropped the "mainstream" traffic sources (AdWords, Search PPC, SEO). I am focusing about 80% of my efforts right now on various content networks (primarily Google content and placement networks) and virtually untapped markets like mobile advertising (specifically the iPhone, for various reasons I'll explain in later posts). I'm also doing some interesting things with contextual ads that is truly wicked-cool. Stay tuned.

I'm also experimenting with a handful of alternative monetization methods. I may share more about those in future posts. I may not. We'll see.

The point of all this?

I think affiliate marketing is shifting. It's been several years since the last major shift in the industry. It's time again.

Too many newbies are coming in and using the same half-dozen marketing strategies that are old, tired, and much less effective than before. Even newer methods like CPV (or PPV if you're a Gauher follower) are becoming saturated and increasingly competitive and expensive.

Those of us who re-think their strategies now and are willing to experience a little pain in testing and experimenting will be well rewarded. 99% of the industry is looking in one direction… and for the handful that are willing to look in another there is tremendous opportunity.

But we have to figure the new stuff out.

That's what I'm working on.

I'd love to get your feedback and questions on new forms of marketing and traffic. Specifically mobile, content networks, CPV, and a couple of other options I'll write more about in the near future.

Also… a little tidbit at the end of my post… I'm in active negotiations with Chris to buy his AdGrenade business. I have some ideas for how I can integrate and extend his technology (which is heavily based on my own code) in products like Image Ad Builder and an upcoming product of mine. I don't know where the discussions will lead… but I'd love to get your feedback on that, as well.

Lastly… I'd love to get some *very* early feedback on what you think of this… I've been toying with the idea for awhile now (based mostly on your requests) of creating a braintrust/mastermind group that is all about emerging technologies and automation in internet marketing. Basically a lab where I share my ideas and, importantly, all technologies and software I am working on. My goal is to create a repository of asymmetric warfare tools and information for internet marketers.

The upside? You'd be in on some seriously slick ideas and tools with regular, live contacts with me and the other braintrust members. And I do some cool things that never make this blog or any other public forum. (This is where I start my evil, mad-scientist laugh that creeps you out… but makes you really want to be on my team.)

The downside? It would not be a cheap, one-time only purchase. It would definitely be membership-based and strictly controlled. It would not be a good fit for someone struggling with basic internet marketing. It also would not be passive. If you're not actively using it to make money I don't want you in the group wasting a spot that could be more productive for everyone. I would expect members to participate and give feedback and contribute ideas.

What do you think? Comment here or send me a private email.

I know… lots of info for a single post. And I violated a basic marketing rule of one idea, one action. But screw it. I haven't posted in a while and I want to get back and get a pulse on where you're at. Feedback?

Maybe it’s just me… I’m certainly open to that… but it sure seems like people are slinging more and more absolute garbage products into the IM arena.

The marketplace has always been flooded with me-too copycats and retread strategies.  I’ve come to expect that much.

But recently it just seems like way too many products are being released that aren’t much more than thinly veiled money grabs without even an attempt to provide any real value.

In the prior 2 years I can probably count on 1 hand the number of IM-related products I returned for a refund.

In the past 2 months I’ve returned at least 10.

And just to be clear… I don’t typically return a product for poor quality.  I return products when I’m upset because I feel like I was robbed.  Lied to.  Taken advantage of.

It’s getting worse.

I don’t know if it’s the economy we’re in, or what.  I can see that more people would be desperate to sell their firstborn to make a quick buck.  And certainly more people on the buying end are gullible enough (and *want* to believe the hype) to pony up for just about anything.

Seriously… as an internet marketer, tell me how much you trust *any* product review on the internet these days (except mine, of course ;-D).  Too many internet marketers are willing to lie, cheat and steal their way to a dollar.

And in the process our word is meaningless.  And it’s only a matter of time before the general public realizes the same thing.

Our willingness to act as highly paid prostitutes will eventually bite us square in the ass.

Whether it’s increased regulation and scrutiny (already happening) or decreased consumer trust and compliance (also already happening) we are mortgaging our future for a quick buck today.

If we can’t police ourselves I guarantee someone else will come in and do it for us.  To our detriment.

The challenge for me is… what do I do about it?  Call people out by name?  Not my style… or effective.  Bitch and moan and complain (you know… like this blog post)?  Pissing in the wind.  Boycott products?  Please.  No one would care.

So… what to do?

I have a few ideas.  Some are pipe dreams.  Others I may actually take on.

Does anyone even care?  Or are we all too busy standing on our respective street corners looking to turn just one more trick before everything collapses?

Some people are just dumb.  Or maybe it’s just that they’re lazy.  Or possibly ignorant.

Sometimes when a new product is launching and I want to get more info about it to see if it’s something I want to promote.  Often, it’s hard to know a lot about a product with today’s vogue pre-launch page being something really mysterious and promising killer results without really telling you anything.

So awhile back I started using Google to help with my research.  I do a site search to see what pages Google knows about.  It’s a quick and easy way to see if there are affiliate pages, alternate landing / squeeze pages, special reports, etc.  It can be surprisingly effective.

By the way, if you don’t know how to do a site search on Google just type in “site:targetdomain.com” in Google and it will show you every page it has indexed.

In the process of doing this I’ve discovered that there are a *lot* of publishers out there with premium content being indexed by Google and available for the world to see and access… if they know about Google site search.

Basically all the stuff they’re selling… free to the world.  Sometimes it’s the sales thank you page… with links to all the content, of course.  Sometimes it’s a premium content signup page… which is funny.  The publisher went to the trouble of protecting the content… and left a trusted signup page exposed to Google.  Dumb.

At first I would email the site owner and let them know their content is exposed to the public.

But it’s so freaking common that I’ve stopped even doing that.

Is your content exposed?

Search your site and find out.  There are a lot of ways to protect it.  Find one and use it… or get comfortable with giving your content away for free.

And to all the info-product publishers who leave their premium content exposed to me… thank you for paying your stupid tax.

I like Howie Schwartz.  He does a lot of cool stuff… especially with SEO and free traffic.  And those aren’t my strong points, so I like to watch what he’s doing.  He’s smarter than me when it comes to that kind of stuff.

So I’m watching one of his free videos today.  And he’s showing off a function that I think is part of his Black Hat is Back membership… I don’t remember, exactly.

But what he showed was totally cool… And it’s something you can do with Laser URL.  Granted, it’s the poor man’s version of Howie’s automated stuff… but it works and it’s free.  If you want a more advanced tool then check out Howie’s stuff.

To me, though, every bit as important as the tool is the mindset he exposes.  I *LOVE* it.  So sneaky.  And so freaking smart.  He basically exposes a way to leech free traffic ideas from the most competitive and advanced marketers in the world.

I was seriously blown away at how simple the method it.  I’m talking stupid easy.  And obvious.  And I can’t believe I never thought of doing it or using the tools I already have (like Laser URL) to do it.

I hate getting scooped on sneaky cool ideas.  I love knowing them, though… especially when I already have a tool that lets me use them.

I had to make a few minor changes to Laser URL to get it to do what I wanted.  That means you’ll probably have to download the latest version to see what I’m seeing in the tutorial video.  You’ll need at least version 1.2.8.23.  Earlier versions will work… they just won’t have some of the features I added to make the information a little easier to work with when using this trick.  Still free.

It’s *not* totally automated like Howie’s tool is.  I might do that at some point.  I want to play around with it more.

Watch this tutorial video I just made to see what the trick is and how you can use it.  I made the video after only playing with the idea for about 15 minutes… so it’s pretty off-the-cuff.

I hope I explain it well enough in the video.  If not, please ask in the comments.  I don’t have a link to Howie’s video handy (gotta go back and check my deleted email), but if I find that again I’ll post it to the comments.

Here’s the sneaky SEO tutorial video…

And here’s the link to download Laser URL.

Sneaky.  Sneaky.  Sneaky.

Leave a comment with your thoughts.

This post started as a reply to Bryan in my “Cat’s Out of the Bag” post.  It got long and it’s useful information so I promoted it to a post.  It’s a good look into how I use the strategy Amish exposed and, more importantly, my mindset when it comes to gimmicks and tricks in marketing.

Here’s Bryan’s original comment and my reply…

**********

Hi Matt,

If you are scraping from wikipedia relating to a keyword for your Iframe Magic page, how come google does not recognise it as duplicate content?

If a complaint was made to google by their scouts or your competition the site would inevitably be slapped.

How could you get around this Matt?

Thanks Matt

**********

@Bryan… The duplicate content scare is mostly a myth.  There are definitely ways to get penalized for trying to game google with duplicate content and syndicated sites… but most marketers will never suffer from it.  I won't go into any more depth here… but the duplicate content penalty isn't what you think.

The second statement is my bigger concern.  Human reviews are always a roll of the dice.  I have yet to have one of my hidden content pages slapped.  And while I can't say exactly why that is, I do have some theories…

1. I consistently rotate content, pages and offers.  Most of this is just the nature of marketing.  I rarely have a single offer run untouched for more than several weeks at a time… usually far less.  And typically these “cheater” pages only stay up long enough for me to get to #5 below.

2. I only use public domain "scrapes" for my content.  Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, articles, etc. are "clean" ways of getting content.  Search results are questionable, but can be effective.  I stay away from blatant site rips.

3. I routinely use content cloaking on my landing pages.  The content cloaking is more of a by-product of how I present my landing pages, though.  I optimize by keyword and rotate different content based on the search keyword.  That means my ads typically point to a "clean" landing page that is dynamically served with different content based on different user agents and sources.  It's a little complex… and considerably more advanced than the script Amish shared.

4. I know and understand that Google at some point will probably take measures to make this less effective.  They are doing stuff like that *all* the time.  I can't sit around wringing my hands over what they might do tomorrow… when I know something that works today.  That's a common mistake I watch people make all the time.  Frankly, it's one of the reasons I was irritated when Amish made the video… exposure usually leads to closure where Google is concerned.  And then I'll move on to something else.

5. Because of #4, I don't rely on this for a significant portion of my sites or offers.  As I mentioned in my post, I use this mostly for quickly testing markets and establishing back-end conversion ratios.  If the numbers prove hopeful (which most don't) I "graduate" the campaign to dedicated landing pages and a more complete marketing effort.

I started doing this as an improvement on the Commission Blueprint method taught by Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey.  The whole process led me to create the spec for Ad Grenade as a way to throw up massive amounts of campaigns very, very quickly… and without having to create landing pages for everything.

Most of those campaigns are losers.  That’s just the way it works.  I’ve learned to hate wasting my time creating entire campaigns that will simply never make money.  It’s slow, expensive and frustrating.

So instead I start off with a cheater campaign that I can get up and running with essentially a small amount of keyword research and nothing more.  I start the campaign with cheater landing pages and a basic keyword list exploded by Ad Grenade.

I really just want to see the traffic, costs and conversions for the keywords.  I may tinker with the ads… but mostly I want to know if it’s worth my time and energy to build out a complete campaign for a product.

Most keywords and cheater pages bite the dust within a week.  Those that survive typically get a complete makeover into first-class landing- and pre-sell pages.  And the cheater pages are gone there, as well.

Every once in awhile I find a keyword that I can’t improve on with my own landing pages.  On those rare occasions I’ll run that specific keyword through the cheater page long-term.  I can probably count on my fingers the number of times that’s happened.  (By the way, there’s a hint in that paragraph about an AdWords trick that gets around just about all of Google’s limitations).

Okay… does that make sense?

In a nutshell… Yes, there’s risk to doing this.  No, you shouldn’t be afraid of Google.  Yes, you should take action.  No, this isn’t a magic long-term cure all for stupid and lazy marketers.

There was a meta tag error in the original iFrame Magic template that was distributed.

I’ve just uploaded a new installer with the fix.  You can download the new iFrame Magic here.

By the way… while I’m on the subject…

I’m considering building out iFrame Magic into a full-blown templated landing page generator with all my iframe tricks (which is where the name came from).  Most likely it would turn into a paid product… although I don’t know that for sure yet.

Would you be interested in a landing page generator that would take the technical side of landing page generation out of the equation?

Just to be clear… this wouldn’t spit out automated landing pages.  You would still need to provide the content.  This would simply make creating the landing pages much easier.  Plus, it would use some of my tricks to get better quality scores and would work seamlessly with something like Ad Grenade.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions then let me know.  It’s something I’ve been kicking around for awhile.  And it would be different for me because it would really be my first software project just for my users (i.e. not a variation of something I’m already using in my business).

What do you think?

So I’m messing around with Twitter now.

I’m surprised it took me so long.  I’ll play with almost anything with an API to see what kind of cool stuff I can do.  Mostly I’ve resisted the urge because I’m fundamentally opposed to the “texting generation” that can’t hold a normal conversation without texting 20 times.  Text whores.

Irritating and disrespectful.  And I was afraid Twitter would be like entering a whole world of them.

Okay… so I’m messing around with it and here are my initial impressions.

I actually really like the format when it’s done right.  I’m a big Lance Armstrong fan and his tweets are very informative during the Tour de France.  I am starting to see the potential for what can be done with the platform.

He’s just one of a lot of people that participate and engage in a really positive way.

I also like how many tools are available and the creativity of twitterers around the world.  What seems ridiculously limiting at first really forces creativity to surface.  I also like the community-created standards.

Of course, there’s one huge, glaring problem with Twitter.

The spam and bots are ridiculous.  It’s the wild west out there.

I’m hoping that openness also ends up being the good news (I’m experimenting with some of my own stuff over the next few days).  But *most* people are doing it all wrong because they contribute exactly *zero* value.

Look, if I want to get updates from an RSS feed I can subscribe to it myself.  That is not value.

Neither is following everyone under the sun and hoping for a courtesy- or auto-follow.

Neither is spamming me with blatant offers and promotions.

And the follower pyramid schemes?  Please.

Folks, like any other medium, there has to be real value at some point.  Has to be.  And right now Twitter is absolutely overrun by stupid, lazy marketers who contribute no positive value.

They are takers.  And they threaten to ruin my experience.

And there are also a few very intelligent *lazy* marketers.  If you want to know how to make money on Twitter, follow them.  I’ll try and build a list of tweople I think are worth following and share it at some point.

I intend to be one of them.  A giver.  Contributing real value to the conversation.

Follow me @mattharward.  Ask questions.  Share tips.  Marketing, technical, or otherwise.  Or just drop a tweet letting me know how awesome I am

I really want to see how well the platform can work as a medium for helping others and building a trusted reputation.

Plus, it would be nice to have a few followers that aren’t bots or porn stars

Oh Snap!

Amish Shah’s “$50,787 Trick” Video irritates me to no end!

I have a little trick I’ve been using for quite awhile now (probably more than a year) that works really well on Google AdWords.  It’s a little bit of a sneaky hack… and I’ve never been slapped or penalized for doing it.

In fact, I get great quality scores.  And it’s super easy to do.  And… Get this… I don’t even have to create a landing page.

I usually use it to test keyword lists and new markets I’m considering getting into.  I also use it to establish baseline conversions for new affiliate products I’m thinking about promoting.

But now someone went and posted a video that completely exposes a simplified version of what I’m doing.  Son of a *#&$@…  Stupid marketers!

Of course, they only uncovered a *part* of what you can do with this trick (or I should say they only revealed a part).  I don’t know if they know the whole trick… but if not they’re awfully close.  And, of course, *I* might not know the whole trick.  I’m open to that as well.

Anyway, the only reason I’m even posting about this is because you’re probably already getting bombarded with emails to watch the video.  I figure it’s not even worth trying to hide it anymore.  I may as well embrace it.

If you haven’t seen the video yet here’s the link.

Yes, you have to opt in.  You’ll want to anyway because then you can also get the necessary files to make it work.

It’s a video by Amish Shah (of HexaTrack fame).  It’s simple and he covers everything you need to know (it’s not just a teaser).  Then he actually gives you the files you need to complete it.

Wait For It…

Of course, you know I wouldn’t be posting about this just to blow up one of my closely guarded secrets (I really am irritated Amish let this out).  I’ve also got software that automates it for you.

The software I use does quite a few more tricks.  But after watching Amish’s video I trimmed it down and modified it to use his files.  Now you can use my software to automatically generate the landing pages for you.  Watch the video and you’ll understand.

You can download the software from this link.

There’s no documentation yet, but it’s pretty easy to figure out if you watch Amish’s video.  You won’t have to do any of the editing or HTML source stuff that he shows you, though.

Eventually I may reveal a few more secret things you can do with this tricky little tactic… but not now.  We’ll see if Amish spills any more of the beans first

Oh yeah… and before you can use my software you’ll need to download the files that Amish gives you and put them in the templates folder of my program.

I just rushed this out today so let me know if you have any problems with it… I wasn’t planning on doing this until I watched the video last night when Gauher Chaudhry forwarded it to me.

And, can I just say it again?  SNAP!!!

So yesterday I bought the Google Cash Sniper course that just came out (my affiliate link and the direct link).  It teaches a pretty cool way to get organic traffic from Google.  Nothing earth-shattering… but some neat twists that I like and I’m anxious to try out.

That’s not what this post is about, though.  As I was watching the tutorial video on keyword research I just broke out my own custom software and realized I had way more power than the average marketer when it comes to quick and easy keyword research.  And I intended to make it available several months ago.

And then I got in my big accident.  And nothing ever made it out the door.  I haven’t released any new products since then (although I have more on my plate than I ever have before).

So I spent today cleaning up my Keyword Sniper program and making it ready for release.

It will join my other utility software as a freely available download (for now).

I don’t want to take a bunch of time explaining it, so here’s a relatively quick (15 minutes) video showing you a little bit of what it can do.  There’s more to it… but I probably won’t get around to creating full-blown documentation for a little while.

You can download Keyword Sniper here.

It’s a work in progress and is designed to reflect the way I do keyword research.  So there’s a lot of stuff it does that you might not need.  And there’s probably some stuff it doesn’t do that you want.

If you’ve got feedback (good, bad, or otherwise) then post a comment here.  If you have a feature you want to see in the software, let me know.  I’m always looking for ways to get better as a marketer.

And… back to my original paragraph, it works great as a 1-stop SEO research tool for something like Google Cash Sniper.  I had to make 1 change to the software to work exactly like GCS shows… but it’s ready to rock and roll now.

If you’re implementing the GCS method I’d love to hear your experience with it.  I’m not likely to get any free time to mess with it for several weeks still.

A few weeks ago my middle daughter (Holly) decided she wanted to run for student body president of her school for next year.

She was nervous and didn’t “want to stand out” much.

Ummm… how’s that going to win an election?

So after pestering her for over a week she finally let me *help* her with her campaign.  Yeah, baby!

I immediately set out building a buzz campaign for her.  Easy pickings since I was targeting grade schoolers

We immediately ran into roadblocks when her school nixed most of our original ideas.  Here’s what stuck…

She was very nervous about her campaign speech.  These days they record them to video first, then broadcast them over closed-circuit TV to the classrooms.  She’d never done anything like that and was concerned about getting it “right”… which is apparently code for doing it exactly like her 4 competitors.

After *much* coaxing and coercing I finally got her to do something the students would be talking about for awhile.  (By the way, in case you can’t tell, I was *waaaay* too into her election… I would take it as a personal affront if she lost).

She did an American Idol parody for her election speech.  A little nervous… but she nailed it.  That was 2 weeks ago and the kids at school are *still* quoting her from it.  Success.

The week of the election I decided to build the buzz-factor a bit.  Every Friday I go to lunch with one of my daughters.  Election week I moved it Monday and showed up with a surprise that immediately got the social network going…

Apparently anytime your dad tattoos a campaign ad on his bald head and shows up for lunch it’s an immediate topic of conversation and “walk by” viewings in the cafeteria.

Here’s the cool thing… the tattoos were barely readable from a distance (I’d do them different next time), and it didn’t even matter.  The word-of-mouth was so powerful that before lunch was over everyone knew what they said.

Throw in the t-shirts for Holly and her friends for each day election week and you have a pretty good buzz campaign.  (Of course, it helps tremendously that Holly has the popularity and personality to even be in the discussion to begin with).

Result: Holly’s the new President-Elect of her school for the 2009-10 school year.  That’s hot!

Even better… I got to talk about marketing and persuasion with all three of my girls.  That’s hotter!  I don’t get good opportunities to do that very often.

Plus, as an added benefit, I got to crush little fifth-graders along the way ;-)  It’s just like competing against stupid search marketers on the content network!  Woohoo!