Super Affiliate Marketing Blog

Well.. as I wrote on WickedFire, I’m going to host a live WickedFire Lightning Round tonight at 7:00 PM EST for an hour. Lightning rounds are VERY fast paced and allow you to ask questions and get answers right away in real time. The topic is “anything internet marketing”. So if you have ANY questions you want an answer for, I’ll do my best and answer it for ya. The only requirement is that you be a member of WickedFire.com which is free and takes a whole 2 mins to register for! That’s it. So tell your friends, and get your ass down to WickedFire forums. It’s been a pretty long time since the last one, and a lot of people have questions.

WickedFire Lightning Round

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Alright kids.. so you’ve been waiting for the answer to the $1M over the weekend post I made a while back, well, I think it’s been enough of a wait, but I have to ask you to wait one more day, because instead of releasing the information here, I’m going to be a guest on WebmasterRadio.fm’s show Good Karma. Kinda ironic too eh? Someone like myself who doesn’t seem to give a shit about karma on a show labeled good karma? Ha!!

I’ll also be giving away FREE passes to Affiliate Summit East in Miami (July 8th-10th 2007). If you’re not a member of WickedFire, and just been a lurker, you best get your ass to the registration, because the VIP WickedFire party sponsored by Copeac is going to be fucking insane. It’s going to be in a mansion on a private island. The only way to get to it is via a yacht we are renting. Lots of free food, booze, music (private DJ), hot women, and networking. All the must-have ingredients for a great party!!

So tune in live tomorrow at 4pm EST at www.webmasterradio.fm for the Good Karma show with Greg Niland and me! We’ll be throwing it down and having a really fun time. Not sure if we are going to be giving out many tips, but if you can come up with some good ideas or questions for the show in their live IRC channel, you get a free pass to Affiliate Summit East 2007 courtesy of WickedFire.com. Not a bad deal!

This is going to be funnnnnn!!

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I rarely make posts not affiliated with affiliate marketing or the business of internet marketing, but I just had to express my love for JetBlue today because of how they took a serious and almost potentially reputation damaging issue and turned it into a positive change and experience. Whether something similar to this ordeal happens in our industry (happened to me over the last 2 weeks), damage control is something not many people ever address or pay much attention to, and it’s really something we can all learn a lot from.

Last week, NYC and the rest of the North East had one hell of an ice storm and snow storm. It was brutal. Of course delays were bound to happen at airports, but this one stuck out like a real sore thumb because of the way JetBlue handled it, or didn’t. The reason focus went towards JetBlue Airlines is because they’ve only been around for 7 years, but their track record is amazing. Their service, prices, flights, planes, staff, crew, safety and experience is top notch. There have been many times where I could have flown in business class on American Airlines or Delta, but chose coach on JetBlue, because their coach is just like first class, but without the shrimp cocktail and wine. The flights are always good, the staff always friendly and accomodating, and they are also witty and funny people, which I like a lot. So back onto topic, the reason people were making such a big deal out of JetBlue is because their delays carried over for not just a few hours, but 3 or 4 days! While over 30 million people fly with them a year, and this only effected 10,000 or so, it became a serious issue because they let a lot of the planes just sit on the runway for up to 6 hours! I know if I were forced to sit on a plane on the ground for 6 hours, regardless of how long or short my flight was, I’d be pissed to no end.

Naturally, the media had a field day with this, but after everything went back to normal, JetBlue did something no one saw coming. Instead of just issuing a press release or press conference saying how sorry they were and blah blah, they decided to make a change. Not just any change, a serious one so that it would never happen again, and if by some chance it would, the customer would be overly compensated. No airline, ever, has done this or gone to this extent as quickly as JetBlue did to make a change. This is why I will continue to fly only with JetBlue as often as I can.

So what did they do that was so spectacular? Well, first off, they issued the normal statement saying they were sorry. Normally a company does something like that, the media eats it up, pokes fingers for a week, and then the story is dead and entered into the large history books of errors and screw ups made by that airline. Instead, JetBlue’s CEO and Founder David Neeleman did an interview with The New York Times, and expressed his feelings, almost un-censored about what happened. Yeah that’s impressive, I know, but it doesn’t stop there. They have also decided to change the way they do things and restructure their HQ staff AND their airport staff, as well as add new training programs so to address the issues at hand and any future ones.

But wait, there’s more!

JetBlue has gone even further and made something they call “JetBlue Airways - Customer Bill of Rights”. What the?! Are you serious?! Yes, they are quite serious. So what is this bill of rights to the customer? It’s pretty much their way of saying: if we screw up in any way, shape or form again, and you are not satisfied, you’re going to get comped immediately, either through  free flights and vouchers, or get an actual check from them for up to $1,000.

What other airline has ever done something like this. Even the ones who crash more often than a drunk driver in a parking lot. All they ever do is settle it quickly, issue a statement and press release, and move on. This is why I love JetBlue, and you should too. Here is an airline that really wants to change the way business is done. Not to mention they are the only airline that buys brand new planes, flies them for 2-3 years at most, and then sells them to the major carriers only to buy new ones all over again. For me, flying brand new planes vs old ones is a serious safety precaution that they are willing to invest heavily on.

The moral of the story here is that JetBlue could have taken the usual wussy route. Admitted they screwed up, done the press releases and interviews, and then said “better luck next time”, but instead they accepted full responsibility, and made serious changes, quite publicly too, to address the matter and make damn well sure it never happens again.

Here’s the link to the official page for JetBlue. A video from their founder/CEO, and an outline of the new customer bill of rights program. Kudos to you JetBlue, you’ve done good here, better than any other airline carrier ever has, and you will be remembered and trusted for it. Not to mention your competitors will be even more jealous of you guys now than ever before, but screw it, you guys deserve it and they don’t. Hey American Airlines, take note of these guys, they rock.
I compare this story to something that happened to me and WickedFire over the last two weeks. We had made some serious mistakes over the last few months, and let people do what they wanted. After cracking down a bit, we quickly realized where we were at fault and made the necessary changes and as the owner, I publicly admitted and apologized for what had happened, to all parties, both at fault and not at fault. I also did something I haven’t done in a long time. Ask for advice from everyone and anyone. The results were amazing. At first the experience had got me down, low enough to the point where I was considering selling off WickedFire and walking away from the whole project. But my drive and passion for it and for a changing industry kept me afloat. Not to mention the overwhelming amount of support and advice from members and non-members of the forum.

Instead of just making some blog or thread posts about being sorry, it sparked a serious change in the entire base of WickedFire. From changing jobs and staff positions, to adding a completely new team that we had never considered doing before. We’ve made serious changes, all in hopes that it was the right decision and goal to meet for the future of both WickedFire - as the community, and for the industry.

We’ve started to take a very serious and aggressive approach to changing how things were done before into how they should have been done before things started to head downhill. Like any musician, I never wanted WickedFire to become some one hit wonder and then die out in a year or two. I’m here for the long run, and now I’m glad to say we are finally acting like it too.

Thanks to everyone for your advice, comments, feedback, and support. I definitely could not have done it without any of you. Keep the comments, feedback and ideas coming, I’m reading everything and exploring lots of new areas and ideas we never considered before.

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This is quite possibly one of the only times I will ever show a deep down sensitive side of myself on a blog post ever. So read it and take it to heart, and maybe you’ll understand what I am feeling about it. I would also really appreciate any advice anyone can give on the matter. I’ve been reaching out to friends in the industry and peers alike. This isn’t a cry for help or a pity post, this is more like a “what the hell is going on and what should I do about it?!” thing.

Over this last week or so, some shit has hit the fan on WickedFire. Without getting into all of the drama and details, the gist of it is that I banned a few key people who were doing nothing but harassing the shit out of me and other members, and just overall bitching about everything. Apparently their friends didn’t take it too well, and a sort of online lynch mob was started. Trying to neutralize the situation, I complied with many of their requests to answer a list of questions. Some of them were just plain stupid, like asking my height. This is the list of “serious questions” I requested from them. At first I wasn’t going to answer any of them, but after some deliberating and asking the advice of some friends, I decided to go ahead and try to do anything within my power to defuse the situation and come to an agreement.

Well, needless to say, even after answering their questions, and drafting up some big changes with the staff of WickedFire to increase the quality of the posts and threads, these “friends” of mine decided to go off and start their own forum. Which I’m not against one bit, but the betrayal started when I came to learn that they were deleting their posts on WF that were of quality from months ago, and used WickedFire to contact other members to get them over to their new forum. This is where I draw the line of diplomacy. I called one of them, and his childish response to it was “I was bored, and you deserve it”, then hung up on me.

I now hear that they are also stealing a lot of the original WF ideas I had, and confided in some of them with, for their new forum. I still don’t know WHY they are doing this, aside for the excuse that they are saying “WF sucks” and “you suck”.

So what should I do about this? When someone wants to go visit other blogs or forums, and start their own thing, I have no issues with it. But when you start to fuck with my business, and all of the time, and money I’ve spent building my forum, only to undermine everything with no real reason, except that maybe he is jealous or seeking the spotlight too by doing a lot of this screwed up stuff to generate that lynch mob effect again, what am I supposed to do? Sit by and watch? Or get up and do something about it?

So I call on everyone who reads this blog and is a fan of WickedFire to give me advice. Either by posting here, or IM’ing or emailing me, and tell me what you think should be the next course of action. Because right now I feel as if a friend of mine has deliberately backstabbed me for his own gain/benefit for reasons he won’t even tell me, or doesn’t even have! I should probably also stop listening to Metallica - Seek & Destroy and Master of Puppets too, as they make me want to do some very not nice things in retailiation. But at this point, I really don’t know how to handle this correctly, and I definitely do not want to make any longterm mistakes that would ultimately effect any potential peace talks with them.

Here’s your chance to be heard and to give me expert advice or just regular advice on what you think I should do. I appreicate all advice too, even if it’s constructive criticism.

PS - I’ve been in bed with the flu for the last few days, and although I’m feeling much better, I may not be on for a long period of time, so be patient if you’re expecting a quick answer back from me. Thanks in advance to everyone!

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I really don’t like updating my blog all that much because it takes away from my daily activities and work schedule. But I will attempt the impossible and try to update it at least 15 times this month. I know some of you are waiting for a few of those make $1M in a weekend posts, but, you’ll just have to wait it out the hard way for now.

Nothing but the stats eh? Well, the reason I dubbed my blog topic as this is because I am working on, well I should say almost finished with the next section of the WickedFire resource area. It’s the Statistics part on the far right on that lovely flash nav bar at the top of the page.

Let’s face it. As an affiliate, or even from the advertiser’s end, we all live and die by our stats. You know what I’m talking about too, so don’t even pretend to deny it. When your stats go up, you have a better day than if the stats are creeping at some low numbers. It’s all about stats it seems. Even for SEO’s and SEM’s, we want nothing but stats. So how can I make your day a bit better other than confusing you with this post? Well, I probably can’t make you earn lots of cash this way, but I can certainly help your floundering ass!

I’ve been compiling, no joke, an absolute shitload of data from a number of very helpful affiliates both big and small, that were kind enough to send me their affiliate stat averages based on campaigns and across a large network of different ad networks. At first, poring over it wasn’t too bad, but being surrounded by numbers for so many hours at one shot can make anyone want to open up notepad and write “all work and no play makes Jon a dull boy” 5 billion times.

Wait, where was I going with this.. Ah yes, blame the Adderall for that last bit, but really, I’m going to be releasing weekly or bi-monthly (that’s every 2 weeks for you retards) documenting the averages, stats wise for the top converting offers, on their respective types of traffic being used. Following me still? I hope so, because I’m not going to explain it much more than that. You’ll basically be getting access to a list of data that none of the networks would ever share with you. This is coming straight in from more than 20 different affiliates of all types of calibers so that you, as an affiliate marketer, can make a wiser decision on which campaigns to run, and which not to run, and for which type of traffic too and from which network to use! Ahhhh so much data!! Take it from me, please!

So yeah, you get all of this for free too, so don’t offer me cash, unless you really want to. Everything like this is always free for everyone to use on WickedFire.com (see, I linkbait plug on my own blog too!).

I’ll have the final data up and running as soon as my programming team gets the section up and running. For now, all of the data is ready to go, and as trigger happy as I am to release it right now, that wouldn’t be very fair, because then I’d have to do it all over again for the boys and girls at WickedFire.

Fine then, you got your damn blog update with useful, or somewhat useful news and information. Now get back to work and stop hanging out on mybloglogs, youtube and the useless forums out there.

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