Super Affiliate Marketing Blog

It is with great sadness and deep regret that I write this entry about my friend Jai Rajkumar. Many of you may not have known him, but he was a dear friend of mine and a great affiliate manager at Azoogle. I say this because I learned yesterday that he had passed away over the holiday weekend. After hearing the news, I was in complete shock. At first I couldn’t believe it, and figured I’d start my Monday as usual with an IM or call to Jai to chat about what we did over the weekend, how our hockey teams were doing, and then on to business as usual, but this was going to be the first Monday for the rest of my days in which it would never happen again.

Usually I have no trouble writing up a storm on something that’s on my mind, but this topic is not just a topic, it’s a farewell to my good friend Jai. I am still in shock about it, and can’t get over the fact that he really is gone. Jai was honestly one of those stand up guys. The ones that would volunteer to help you out even if it meant cutting into his time. He was always there for me, and I am glad to have been there for him. I’ve only known Jai for four months, but we built up a strong friendship from the start, and it feels like four years now instead.

I must say, even with all the sadness I feel from his passing, I want to focus on the good times we had. Jai had a great sense of humor and an even better taste in music. We shared a lot of common goals in life, aside for becoming wealthy and prosperous, we both wanted to become active in starting a family someday and being apart of our children’s lives as much as we could. You can always tell a strong, smart, and well respected man by the way he treats his friends and the family values he had growing up and ones he speaks about for the future and for me, Jai was every bit of that. An overall strong guy. Very well liked, very much respected within our business and someone you could always talk to just for the hell of it. We had our good times with very few bad, but he always came to me with great ideas and solutions on how I could better my business and self. I respect someone that can speak about what’s on his mind, and that’s one of the main things I always liked about Jai.

To the family of Jai Rajkumar-

Jai was a dear friend of mine, and I have never heard anyone speak a single bad thing about him. He had a spark about his personality which made him instantly well liked by everyone who met him. I can’t even to imagine the grief you are suffering over his loss, but I want you all to know that he made a big difference in my life, during his life, and now afterwards. I will miss him for years to come, and will never forget the friendship I was able to share with him. I thank you for raising such a great guy, you did a great job, and you should be proud of him, what he accomplished in life, and what he may have had for the future. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you, but it is said that a young son is only a mere reflection of his parents, so I hope to someday see you and tell you in person, how much I liked Jai, and how sorry I feel for the loss of him within your family. It’s times like these where we need to focus on the celebration of his life, and try our hardest not to focus on why or what we could have done differently, because let’s face it, if Jai were still alive right now, he would want us to remember the good over the bad. That’s the way I knew him, and I thank him for all I’ve learned and the times we spent together. I truly mean this, he was a great guy, and I will never forget him.

The following is short list of business related items as my last words to Jai.

From a business perspective I will miss…

…Our constant flow of innovative ideas for the future.

…How you poke fun at me for dropping out of Columbia.

…Introducing you to all of the right people to further increase your portfolio of whales.

…Bouncing project ideas off you for your always honest and sometimes critical opinions and advice.

The following is more of a personal note, as last words to Jai so that I can seek closure over his loss.

Jai my friend, I will miss…

…Speaking with you every Monday morning.

…Discussing business dreams, goals, and aspirations.

…Plans to go to Europe in the spring time for the big trance festival.

…Plans to quit smoking cigarettes with you in fall 2007.

…Bothering you about the Toronto Maple Leafs losing to the New Jersey Devils.

…Our long chats about changing the world and the industries we are so passionate about.

…Introducing you to new trance DJ’s and songs.

…Arguing about food preferences.

…Comparing our religions and wondering why we can’t all just get along.

…Joking around with you.

…Your Saturday night text messages of “Jon, where the hell are you already?!”

…Our debates on politics, religion, people in general, and how many kids are too many kids to have.

…Learning from you.

And most of all, out of everything else… Hanging out with my friend Jai Rajkumar.

Jai… You will be forever missed, by me, my company, by Brandon, and everyone else who had the great pleasure to meet you and see what a great guy you were. Thanks for being there for us, and with that said, we will never forget you old man.

Jai Rajkumar

A Canadian, a sports fan, a business fan, a music fan.

A heart of gold and a personality that no one will ever replace.

A brother, a cousin, a son, a grandson, a friend.

1979 – 2006

Rest in peace my friend, you will be forever missed by all who had the great pleasure of knowing you.

We are planning an industry wide memorial for Jai Rajkumar, who was a great friend to us all. I’m collecting short notes from friends in the industry, clients, anyone who knew Jai, so email me if you want your note to appear in the memorial. If you have a photo of you and Jai, or just of Jai alone that you’d like to submit for the slideshow memorial project, please email me at navyseals AT gmail.com. We will present it to his family to show what an impact their son made on our industry before and after this horrible loss.

Bookmark to:

Comments(8)

I tell ya, I never thought the blog posts and WickedFire threads about arbitrage would blow up the way they have, but I guess that’s just the power of webmasters and their constant thirst for knowledge in making cash online, or “the next big thing”. I decided to do some market research, a bit more extensive than I first did when I blogged about it, to really see what was out there and if there were any signs that the market was changing.

Good news everyone. Arbitrage 2.0 is nowhere close to being diluted. I am just shocked to see how many old arbitrage pages and full sites there still are. When I refer to arbitrage 2.0 I’m talking about sites/pages that are full of content and have some adsense or YPN ads here and there, but that’s it. Not referring to those old arbitrage styles where it’s owned by some domainer buying cheap clicks and sending it to some script page with a makeshift search engine xml feed where someone clicks and they make $0.30 from it. Let’s be realistic, if you go that route you can make a lot of money I’m sure, even with Google Adwords and their new crackdown on those types of arbitrage sites. But it’s such a lazy “let’s see what happens” approach. I really do love how arbitrage 2.0 is done by so few people and how it’s such a long term, cheap way of making money.

First off, very few people blog about or even know about it, so that’s always a good sign. Second, with the tens of millions of niches that exist out there, there is just SO much room to work with. Even if you find some reeeally small niche that gets very little traffic and advertisers, you can still make bank on it, and probably contact those advertisers and sell them on cpm buys for a blog you can make or for your arbitrage site too.
End result, the market is still completely untapped. Hard to believe too, because I honestly thought with all of the research I was doing that I would come across some really nice looking pages that rival the ones we use, but to no avail. Good for us, being the small crowd of arbitrage 2.0′ers that is. I think over the next two years or so there will be a bigger shift and you’ll see a hell of a lot more sites out there that do it, but nowhere near the millions that exist for the current arbitrage crap out there. So if you are waiting to see what happens with other people, pop onto WickedFire and just look at all of the guys on there trying it out with $100 or less, and you can see that it works on a small and medium sized scale already.

One day I will probably end up posting up a case study of some sort on how arbitrage 2.0 went from a little nothing idea, and transformed an entire industry, because it definitely has the power to do so. It’s good for the publishers because it makes us some easy bank. It’s great for the 2nd tier crappy ppc engines because they still think their traffic is worth something, it’s great for Google and YPN because they are able to deliver targeted traffic to their advertisers, thus increasing their advertising revenues, and it’s pretty damn good for the searcher himself, because instead of being shot to some other lame looking makeshift engine, he can read through an article two of content and clickthrough to an advertiser who can probably facilitate his needs better than we can, thus getting what he actually searched for in the first place. Yay, winners all around.

Bookmark to:

Comments(3)

I’ll keep this post real brief and simple. We have been given a ton of expo hall passes to Affiliate Summit West coming up in Las Vegas on Jan 21-23 2007 at Ballys. I want as many WickedFire members there as possible. Not only because I want a huge turnout at the conference itself, but because a lot of you really need to go to a conference and do some networking. Plus, let’s face it, it’s a shitload of fun!

So if you are an avid reader of my blog, or know anyone that may wish to attend the event, go to WickedFire, join up if you aren’t already a member, and send me a private message. I’ll respond back with a link and an exclusive code good for ONE free expo hall pass.

If you want to go for the sessions, sorry, but we are fresh out of those $1500 passes, so instead, the best I can do is offer you an exclusive WickedFire 50% discount. So for $750, it’s not too bad of a deal, and not only can you do some networking, but then you can see what I look like in front of over 1,000 people when I do my live audience Q&A there on the 22nd. Greeeeeat.

I do have to mention this too: If you are NOT an affiliate/publisher of any sort, don’t try and get the pass, because it will be void at the door, and that would just suck for you, since it’s probably going to sellout really soon. This offer is NOT for affiliate managers, or any type of employees for any networks, consultants, seo firms, all that garbage.

There you have it. Spread the word, and come to WickedFire before I am given the word by Shawn that they are sold out for the show.

Bookmark to:

Comments(1)

The time has come my friends to sellout. Yes, I know I’ve said many times I would never do so, but sometimes you get offers sent to you that are just too good to turn down. Since the creation of my blog I’ve been getting offers to allow advertising on here from many different sources, and until now, I’ve turned every single one of them down. Why? Because as much as I love making money, I always saw it as a tacky thing to do, to put ads on a site when I didn’t like or approve of the advertiser. So why will I be accepting ads on my blog now? Well, simply put, from my research on forecasts and projections (not the weather), I stand to make about $150,000 from December 2006 - December 2007 from ads on my blog. Sorry, but there’s just no way I’m going to turn that down. I can easily turn down a few grand here and there, and feel honored that someone would be willing to spend that kind of money on here, but in the past, the readership wasn’t as strong as it is now, and quite frankly, I was just too wrapped up in research for some of the biggest non-blog related projects in my career as an internet marketer.

I feel that now is a good time to sellout and accept ads on here. Plain and simple. I also feel as if I am a lot better connected with larger industry services and products so that I can command a higher price and at the same time stand behind what they offer. I know I’m known for someone with little ethics or morals, but even now, I won’t accept ads from advertisers who promote something I think is fake/fraud, or just plain crap. You won’t see ebook shit on here, ever, because I will never sellout THAT much.

One of the reasons I labeled this post with the topic up there is because I wanted to compare how to sellout properly without people hating you for it or thinking differently. I’m sure most of you will agree, accepting ads because I stand to make six figures from it is a wise choice and you’d do the same, but what about people who sellout because of greed or stupidity? I’m not saying Aaron Wall or Shoemoney are stupid people, because they are not, and even though I have a lot of respect for both guys, I do think their little seminar that’s charging $5k per user is a bit much. These seminar things are a good idea, I know they are, because they always seem to make a lot of cash, BUT, there is a line that needs to be drawn here between reality and just plain bad judgement.

I’m sure many of you have heard about the “Elite Retreat” that is going on next month. They are charging about $5k total (I think the price is actually $4k+) per person who comes to the event in Texas, and for that amount of cash you can ask or find out how to do everything they do. These types of seminars are usually done by the ebook guru crowd like Yanik Silver and Joel Comm as a way to sell some DVD’s and passive income cashflow systems for god knows how much more, so I really hope that the Elite Retreat is not going to go that route, because then my friends involved with this will lose a hell of a lot more of their reputation and respect points from not just me, but tons of other people in the industry. If it were my call, I’d scrap the whole damn thing, and just put more ads on my blog or get back into the consulting area, but then again, I am not them, and they are obviously doing this as a quick payout. If they do have a sell out crowd of 30-35 people, they each stand to make about $30k-$50k each for two days of work, which by any standard is pretty impressive, but then again, are you really getting your $5k worth when going to one of these things? One of the reasons I feel that this is poor judgement on their end is because they are also associating themselves with someone I dislike a lot, a person named Lee Dodd. Who the hell is this guy, and what can he possibly know other than how to make money from crappy forums and jacking ideas from other people? PLUS, and this is a major plus, Lee Dodd went and registered the domain for their little Elite Retreat, but failed to realize that the .com for their seminar is, and get this, is actually a domain name for a gay mens club in Portugal!! Yes, I did in fact laugh my ass off when someone on WickedFire pointed it out, and even more so when Quadszilla from SEOBlackHat blogged about it calling it Pink Hat SEO. You’d think that an expert in their field would do some simple domain research and see if the name of their seminar coincided with the name of some “Gay Portugal’s Best Kept Secret”. Hahahahahahaa, yes that deserves one hell of a laugh, and I hope Jeremy and Aaron laughed as well, because even if it was an honest mistake, it’s one hell of a funny one!

In closing, I’ve kept out of the huge threads on WickedFire about the whole Elite Retreat bullshit, mostly because Shoemoney and Aaron Wall are buddies of mine, and aside for their bad judgement call on this, it’s their own choice to go forward with it, and I’m sure they will be getting a hell of a lot more shit from others, so they certainly don’t need it from me. But overall, if you guys are reading this, be serious, because by you guys doing this thing, you are probably losing a lot of respect from a TON of people who may no longer respect you the way they do, or who will just pass you guys off as another Lee Dodd trying to make his way into a cutthroat industry as a self proclaimed high earning guru who no one respects.

In the wise words of Alice In Chains, when Metallica came back with their new haircuts in the mid-90’s - “Friends don’t let friends get haircuts”, but here’s my variation of it:

Friends don’t let friends run shitty bullshit seminars that can and most likely will hurt their reputation in the long run.

That’s all I’m going to say about it, and I will not take part in the bash fest that exists on WickedFire and in other people’s blogs, because again, even though it’s a bad call on your part, it’s not my place to rub it in. Listen to the majority of the people, not the 30 something idiots willing to shell out $5k in desperation to get help for their “I just want to press a button and make a million bucks overnight” quest.

I may have sold out by agreeing to allow ads on my blog, but I will never sell out in a way that would ruin or tarnish my reputation with some quick payday, or some queer ebook, because I’ve said this time and time again, I’m in this for the long haul, and $30k-$50k for a seminar is just not worth it to me to fuck over people of their cash. I’d much rather take cash from advertisers rather than the people, which is why I scrapped all plans on charging people for the WF resource area (which is still scheduled for a launch as soon as the programmers move their asses!).

PS - AD:TECH NY was amazing, and I’m going to blog about that next, as soon as I can remember what happened in my 3 days of no sleep and too much caffiene and Adderall. Nonetheless it was one hell of a fun and absolutely amazing for networking opportunities, but I am so psyched for Affiliate Summit West, because when it comes down to it, as much as I love hanging out with the ad network friends, affiliates are my people, and to go somewhere with the affiliate to advertiser ratio at 17:1, that’s just got to be so much fun!

Bookmark to:

Comments(9)

Figured I’d blog about something that made me feel all warm and nice inside. I’ve been getting lots of IM’s and emails from readers and members of WickedFire about how they read what I wrote on PPC Arbitrage, and how instead of just sitting around reading, they put it into play. Not only has it been paying off, nicely too, but it’s actually helping all of these smaller and medium sized webmasters get over the hurdle of “I want to make at least $2k a month on auto-pilot”. I promise, this is not a pitch for an ebook or some killer system to wealth and riches. This is actual stuff that is working. I have never charged a dime for any of the information either, and don’t plan on it!

How much is needed to be successful at PPC Arbitrage? Not a lot. Most of the guys doing it have created their site with AdSense or YPN, which took them a few hours, which is expected with your first site/page, because you’re not used to it just yet. But even so, a few hours of making a few pages on some information topic they don’t really know all that much about, slapping the contextual ads on there, and then driving traffic to it. So, aside for the work amount, the cost is so basic too. All you need to do is just prove it to yourself that at it works before you allocate a larger budget to the project. Typically, people will invest about $100 to maybe $300 at most. It’s up to you if you want to burn through that budget in a few hours, a few days, or a month. Most people let it run for about a week, and almost everyone sees results immediately. Sure, you may have to wait on a net 30 basis to get your check, but when you compare it to anything else, it overrides it so quickly.

Just to prove how goddamn easy and quick the ROI took, a friend of mine tested a small site for some weight loss drug called Hoodia. Put up the content, slapped the ads onto it, put some links to affiliate products as well, and that was it. He had already cleared $50 in profit within the first 20 minutes. He used some Tier 2 PPC traffic, which comes pretty quickly, especially for a topic like that. The positioning of ads was very creative, but everything stayed within the rules of Adsense. Again, he wasn’t doing this as a form of making cash for himself, it was strictly as a test to prove that what I said works, and does so very well.

Here’s another example. A friend of mine who happens to own a very large ad network, obviously doesn’t need to money, but likes to dabble in all sorts of interesting and creative ways to make money, put up an information site on mortgages and loans. Very popular and expensive topic, no need to tell you guys that. Typically clicks for it will cost about $9 on Adwords for almost every major keyword on the topic. He took traffic from one of the 2nd tier engines, Searchfeed I believe, pushed some traffic to it, and now, in month 2, he’s averaging $5k a month. Not bad at all. I think his total investment was a little over $2k for both months combined!

In the second example, my friend used a practice that I mentioned a few times to other people as a way to make even more money, or maybe convert the non-clickers of your ads into clickers, because again, that’s all you want them to do. You aren’t building it to make them come back time after time for updated information, because there will be none. All you want them to do is clickthrough to the advertiser who can either supply them with better, more accurate information, or a product/service that they are already looking for. So back on topic, using different forms of contextual based advertising and maybe tossing in some affiliate links on the sides is a good way to go. This way, if the user has no interest in your ads that they can tell are from Google (which aside for people within our industry don’t really notice this stuff like we do), they may click on something else. Perhaps you should add some Adbrite ads, or maybe something like Intellitxt or Kontera. Even Chitika ads can do well if it’s targeted to something in the shopping or consumer electronics area.

My point is, just because you’re making a site for something like arbitrage, doesn’t mean it has to look like it’s a MFA page (MFA - Made For Adsense). Spruce it up a bit with more ways to make cash, things to compliment the ads in ways that may not look like blatant ads, but can still drum up lots of clicks. Alright, you may not make $1 a click from it, but I’d rather make $0.15 a click instead of zero. You’ll see, it will hike up your profit margins.

In closing, I’m really glad people are using the advice I give, and not just making assumptions about it, or bashing it without trying it. I will always catch shit from people who disagree, and that’s fine, but 99% of those people who usually disagreed, never even tried it. Of all of the people who have tried it and failed, it was a minor failure and they usually go over where they failed and how, fix their mistakes, and poof, back on the horse they go, and into the ranks of success stories. So if you hit a snag, keep trying. We aren’t talking about investing a ton of cash here or something that you can lose your shirt over. It’s simple trial and error. Pick a topic, make a page/site, slap some ads onto it, spend $100 or so on some cheap 2nd tier traffic, and watch it go.

Want to pay me back for the advice? Just link to my blog with the anchor text “affiliate marketing blog”. That’s all I ask in return. Also, it would be nice to see or hear about more success stories, and even failures that became successes. If you find that you’re in a rut and can’t break into profitability, join WickedFire and post your problems. There are SO many people there that were new like you just a few months ago that are no doing this as a form of generating cash for other projects, or even as their primary income source. It may sound rude, but please don’t email or IM me looking for advice, because I’ll delete and ignore it.

With that said, goodluck everyone!

Bookmark to:

Comments(15)