Let me see if you can relate to this story. I was working in the private sector. It was an interesting job…except it wasn’t. The hours were long, the job was hard, and I found myself looking in a mirror after working sixteen hours straight asking myself, “is this what I dreamed of?”
I got off on a tangent when I started remembering some of my dreams, many of them involving me on a tropical island while someone else cleaned my kitchen…but that’s another story. Anyway, where I was working certainly wasn’t in my dream. So I decided to go back to school to get my degree so I could teach. Yes, teaching is a noble profession.
Teaching is also a starving profession. A profession where you can work very hard and still qualify for food stamps. While working on my degree, I became reacquainted with Ramen Noodles (thank you Nissin).
But I still wasn’t able to make ends meet. So I decided to take advantage of a program that we’ve all come to know and love…the STUDENT LOAN PROGRAM. I signed forms. I made promises. I got in debt. But, of course, it’s “good debt.” Yeah, right.
Now I’m at the end of the journey in the hallowed halls of academia, facing a cold hard fact…Uncle Sam wants his money, and he wants it NOW! I’m finally living the dream, except the loans I racked up during my college days aren’t nearly as much fun as I thought they’d be.
Yes, they are still “good debt,” but only like dental surgery is a “good thing”–it gets you what you want to have, but it certainly isn’t a lot of fun going through.
While going through school, I amassed just over ,000 worth of debt. Did I mention I ate Ramen Noodles while I did this? School is just expensive, and after a while, selling plasma loses its appeal.
I took out thousands of dollars in subsidized loans, unsubsidized loans, and unofficial unsubsidized loans. The first two were administered by the U.S. government, and the last was a combination of my two friends, Mastercard and Visa with their pal Discover. Yeah, I got some frivolous stuff, like peanut butter, oh, and that time I got water. But mostly this went for my education.
Okay, does this story sound all too familiar to you. Come on – fess up. You probably have been or are in the same situation. Let me be the first to tell you that the “student loan fairy” does not exist. And yes , you will have to pay back all that money you borrowed from the banker.
Sure the frat parties were great and the splurge of money on those tailgating weekends were definitely worth spending money on – but unfortunately there does come a time when we have to pay back these loans.
So how the hell do you pay off these staggering mountains of debt that may only have helped you make a passing grade D at best ?
Knowledge my friend – knowledge is the power to debt free life. Yeah, we sure did read “too much” in college but listen up – go read The Ultimate Guide To Student Loan Consolidation , even if its the last time you read anything.
Why ? Because dummy – if you don’t, you will stay in your pathetic financial situation making payments to someone else for the rest of your life. Why the hell would you wanna do that. Its your money – spend it on something YOU want to !
I sure lived with the “pay-check-to-pay-check” lifestyle in college and damn me if I’m going to continue to live like that.
How to Set Up an Affiliate Program and PPC Click Ads
This is a very special article contributed by Mark Ling, who online affiliates know as one of the kings of PPC and making internet millions.
If you haven’t heard about Mark already, he recently released a FREE version of his very popular affiliate marketing guide, Affilorama – Your Essential Guide to Becoming a Super Affiliate.
In his course he details step-bystep using video and by giving away his prized software, how he makes over a million dollars a year from affiliate programs. Visit Affilorama to check out his site.
Here is what Mark has to share with you today:
Hi, I’m Mark Ling and I am here to train you up so that you can become a “Super Affiliate” yourself.
Have you ever wanted to work from home, make thousands of dollars every week, and have more time for your friends and family?
Sound Exciting?
It’s all possible and it’s not as difficult as you think, so read on…
I’m going to start out by answering a very common question that I get from a lot of affiliates, no matter what product they are marketing online, in this case, the affiliate was promoting a learn to play guitar course…
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*Question* Re: Jamorama.com affiliate program
Hi Mark, I tried a campaign out for this on google adwords and dumped a few hundred dollars, but didn’t produce any sales or conversions on the click-through rate. If you have some recommendations on how to successfully market this better, I am willing to invest.
My google ad reads:
Step-by-step learn guitar
Discover The Step-by-Step Secrets to learning to play guitar
www.jamorama.com/affiliate=guitar
What advice do you have?
Regards,
Paul
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*Response*
Hi Paul. Thank you for your email, here is my advice for you:
1. Your maximum CPC is too high. Until you know what your conversion rates are for each search term you should bid no more than 12-16 cents per click. Also, remember that google doesn’t solely rank ad position based on the amount you spend per click. Sites with higher click through rates rank higher.
For example:
You are bidding 48c per click on ‘learn guitar’ and have a 0.5% click through rate you may rank #5. Yet Mr X is bidding only 22c per click and is ranking #1,… how does he do it?
Answer: His click through rate is 2.1% more than 4 times your click through rate. Hence he wins because he doesn’t have to spend as much per click. And google wins because they make more money as more people click on his advertisement.
In short, work on your click through rate BEFORE you start forking out lots of money by raising your price per click.
2. Your url doesn’t do anything to help your click through rate. I recommend purchasing a domain name from registerfly.com for about /year, and when you set it up, get it to forward to your affiliate link. Get a domain like LearnGuitar2Day.com or something. People will be MUCH more likely to click on an ad with a url like that, than “www…..com/affiliate=…….”
Remember, Google automatically charges you less money per click through AND positions your ad higher if you have a higher click through rate.
3. Remember to capitalize the first words of the domain name and remove the www, this ALWAYS increases your click through rate, eg LearnGuitar2day.com rather than www.learnguitartoday.com. We have split tested this on over 50 adwords campaigns, this is a proven winner.
4. For the title of your ad, try using: {KeyWord: Amazing Guitar Tips} – Make sure that you capitalize the letters “K” and “W” in keyword. And put in the { and } symbols. i.e. cut and paste the whole thing into your headline. What this headline does is place whatever the person searched for into the title of your ad, and if the what they search for is too long, it will simply display”Amazing Guitar Tips”. This is another proven winning strategy for increased click through rates and hence lower cost per clicks.
5. Re word your ad to be more exciting, perhaps: Discover awesome tips and techniques to playing guitar like a star
6. Do not place your bid on All Countries. Our research shows that the countries that have a 1% or better conversion rate are: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Netherlands, New Zealand, France, Norway, Italy, Ireland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Chile, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia, Estonia, Iceland, Bahrain, Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar, Bermuda, Kazakhstan, zambia, Antigua and Barbuda, South Africa
All other countries aren’t worth worrying about; they convert much worse and at best you will break even on them. Worst is Philippines, we get about 2-4000 hits a week from there and never get any sales.
7. Always split test your ads. If you create 2 ads, google will automatically split test them against each other and will work out which ad is working better for you. This will help you lots as by split testing your ads, they are constantly getting better.
8. Email your Google Conversion tracking code to the webmaster. This way you can see which keywords are converting well, and which ones aren’t. This will enable you to adjust your bidding amounts depending on which keywords you are bidding on. For example: “How to Play Guitar” has converted for us at 4 sales in 59 visitors (6.78%) this last week, whereas “Guitar Chords” has had a 0 in 1023 visitors conversion rate (0.00%). It is very important to keep track of this.
I hope these tips help you in your campaign. Apply these techniques to all your campaigns for whatever product you are promoting and you are guaranteed to get much better results. Remember, it’s better to only sell 3-7 a day of a product and be making double your money back, than to be losing money or break even.
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All the best, Mark Ling
P.S. If you have had good success with other affiliate programs, please, let me know. Also if you have any questions, feel free to contact me via the contact us form on my website, Affilorama.
P.P.S. Go get Affilorama – Your Essential Guide to Becoming a Super Affiliate right now. If it means that you earn an extra 0, 00, 000 a week. Isn’t it worth the investment? It even comes with a free 6 day e-course which can make you hundreds, right there.
Hey, Affilorama is free. You won’t want to miss this one.
Enjoy!
Ethan Parker is one of the Net’s most respected product review experts. He makes shopping easy: either buy it…or just try it!
Find more free advice articles and product suggestions that fit you at MyBuyOrTry.com.
Setup Your Blog Here: blog.HobbsWealth.com How to setup a blog For Custom blog design: Pro Blog Setups is my recommendation You can set up your own blog and start making money. You can get the whole thing set up in about 3 to 5 minutes, no joke. Just do the following and you are on your way: go to blogger and then the system will ask you for a blog title and then a blog address or URL. Searching for a URL that is not taken is probably the only delay you will run into. b. When you enter the URL you would like you then click on the availability hyperlink and the system will either say that URL is available or it’s taken in which case you have to try to find another one which has not been selected yet. There will be a little security coded lettering you have to enter and then click on the continue key. c. Now it’s time to chose the template you desire for your blog. It gives you several designs to select from. Don’t worry if you change your mind about a particular template because you can always go back and change it later even after you have posted some content. You can even change it right then if you like. Pro Blog Setups d. After you select your template you are up and running and ready to go with your first post. There are a lot of features and extras that can be added to your blog. For example Google adsense. These are ads place on your blog by Google which are consistent with the material you have written in your blog. If you write about setting and achieving goals … Video Rating: 4 / 5
