Danger Brown » internet marketing

Learn to spell or die broke.

dangerbrown — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 07:03:30 +0000

Spelling errors might be costing you half of your sales.

I’ve been a closet spelling/grammar/punctuation nazi for years. When I read a blog post or sales page with what I consider significant errors, my mind is completely sidetracked. I stop thinking about your message, and start thinking about what needs to be fixed. If you have grave errors on your page, I think you are stupid and sloppy and won’t consider buying anything from you.

I know lots of affiliates with poor skills are successful, but you’d be more successful if you eliminated these mistakes.

I’m not the only one. This article from the BBC inspired me to finally say what I think. The article alleges that in one case, they saw sales double after correcting an error on a sales page. Of course, one split test is inadequate, but I’m confident that there is truth to it.

What are you going to do about it? If you want to improve yourself and your sales, follow my affiliate link here and educate yourself.

Amazon book: Grammatically Correct: The Essential Guide to Spelling, Style, Usage, Grammar, and Punctuation

P.S. I don’t claim to be perfect. I overuse commas and I know I sometimes make other writing mistakes.

Earnings update January 2011, $6.2K net profit

dangerbrown — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 07:03:11 +0000

January has been crap for me. It’s the worst month I’ve had since about 8 or 9 months ago.

Here are the totals for my January 2011 Affiliate marketing efforts.

Total Spent: $6662.13
Gross Profit: $12,837.00
Net Profit: $6,174.87
ROI: 92.6%

Though I can make the excuse that my niche (financial) tends to crap out in the winter, I’d expected to scale things up to compensate for that. My MSN campaigns have suffered from several slaps and I’ve been trying to adjust my landing pages to keep MSN happy. Just about 7 days ago I implemented a change that has slightly hurt my ROI but has so far kept the slaps away.

I’m getting sick of these slaps and unpredictable volume. I’m getting real interested in moving into other traffic sources.

Running a backhoe instead of my business.

dangerbrown — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 06:07:45 +0000

Shot these videos yesterday. Needed to rent a backhoe to tear up my front yard and put in a new drainfield. I also tore out a foundation from an old outbuilding and dug a new trash pit.
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I spent the last 2 days on this thing. Man, I really need to be working on my campaigns.
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Big thanks to Jon Volk for interviewing me!

dangerbrown — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 05:23:58 +0000

I was honored to be included in Jon’s affiliate interviews friday. Thanks Jon! If by some incredible chance you don’t already know who he is, he has a wonderful blog sharing the secrets of the internet money making universe. Check it out. The interview I gave is an 18 minute long video. He has lots of questions. I tried to keep it short.
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Yesterday, I got a pile of emails…. my phone was ringing. I didn’t get one bit of regular work done. Couldn’t even get this blog post out. A contributing factor is that my entire family has a cold. I just want to stay in bed.
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So if you’re curious about the technical details of shooting the video for that interview read on. Warning!! Boring stuff ahead. Disclaimer: Those are affiliate links. I get paid a bit if you buy one of these things.
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I bought a Kodak Playtouch which shoots HD video. It worked OK as I shot a few videos for work and personal, but after less than 2 hours recording it failed. Screen freezes up and nothing works. You have to take the battery out to turn it off. I returned it for that reason. So I don’t recommend purchasing it. To be fair though, the product was only just released, and a firmware upgrade would probably have solved the problem.
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Anyway, I had never shot or edited HD video before. I wound up buying Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10.0 after trying 4 other editing programs I already had. Nothing could handle the larger file sizes. Also, note that I first tried Sony Vegas 9 and it didn’t work for some reason. But 10.0 worked great. It’s pretty impressive software with a lot of capability.
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Then in order to send the file to Jon and his crew I had to shrink it down from the initial 4GB to 1.2GB. It needed to be under 2GB to upload to Vimeo.
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Good news for the future, my wife just bought a Canon Rebel T2i. With extra lenses and cases it wound up being about $1550 all together. It’s a regular camera, but has a reputation for shooting superb HD video. It even has an external microphone jack making for better audio. I’ll be using that for future video blog posts.
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But if you’re on a budget consider a Flip Ultra HD. It’ll work best in environments without a lot of background noise though. It’s internal microphone has it’s limitations.

Should a newbie spend money to attend industry events?

dangerbrown — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:56:07 +0000

If something is a networking event, it might be worth it. But you may find that people are interested in reciprocity. In other words, people making a living this way aren’t generally interested in talking to novices. Everybody including you goes to these things hoping to network with people more successful than themselves. I still think industry events might be worthwhile for you, but don’t get hurt feelings if you get the polite brush off from a few people.
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Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that these things can be a lot of fun!
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Affiliate Summit West is the biggest and best event.

I’ll be attending that one in January.
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I was also invited to participate in this one in 2 weeks which is nice because I only had to pay for my plane ticket. I’m really looking forward to golfing on the beach. It’s very generous of Shareasale to put on this event. I haven’t done a tremendous amount of business with them, but do have a near future project of some scope that will focus on their offers.
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This is a good resource for events. http://events.webpronews.com/events/2010-10/

I would list Affiliate summit West, affiliate summit East, adtech , pubcon , and SES as being the main events. Each will have a different focus and feel.
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There are also smaller, more expensive, exclusive events like Elite Retreat and DK’s Thinktank. If you can afford the time and money to go, I’m sure they are wonderful events.

Thing is, if you’re a newbie, maybe you could justify going to 1 big event to get a feel for how real the industry is. But these things cost good money to attend with plane and room etc. Until you are making decent money, I think you’d be better off finding local monthly or weekly meetups and networking close to home. You’ll probably get a better return on that investment.
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You should be building your skill set right now.
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To have any long term success in this business, you’ll need:

1. To be able to at least build basic web pages and host them, or use wordpress themes which still require some html tinkering

2. Basic image editing, (like resizing, cropping pictures, adding borders).

3. A traffic strategy that works for you. Choose a paid source or SEO and start experimenting.
4. Sign up for my newsletter. Because I care about you and your success.
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Which is your favorite networking event? Do you have some advice for the newbies? Please comment!
P.S. A shot of some party girls from an industry event:

Tell me how to make money online please!

dangerbrown — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:56:27 +0000

I had a friend e-mail me this morning about ‘how do I get started making money online’ and below is my response to him. About 30 seconds into it, I realized I would turn it into a blog post. That allowed me to be a bit more generous with my time.

Here it is:

“Regarding business: There is a steep learning curve and infinite different ways to make money on the net. I sort of fell into 1 thing that worked for a while and while it worked I spent months reading and learning how to do other things.

Affbuzz is a great resource. It syndicates blog feeds from dozens of internet marketers like myself. Many of them more successful and some of them have good resources. Mind you that when talking to internet marketers, they are in the habit of making money and that includes making money from you.

Don’t spend money on ebooks etc. There is more free information out there than you can ever get through. Though sometimes gurus will present concise information in a way that saves you time. If you buy an ebook, you aren’t buying the information, but rather they presentation of that information.

Years ago, I, like most people, thought that all that ‘make money online’ crap was just a bunch of scams. Now that I’m making a living with the internet and have learned the ins and outs of the industry….I’ve figured out that about 90% of the ‘make money online’ stuff you see promoted is actually legitimate. You don’t need to buy it though because all that info is out there for free.

You can take a look at a recent post of mine about how to get started making money online. There are some links to resources in there. I caught a little flack for listing digitalpoint and warriorforum. They are filled with novices and people trying to sell crappy e-books. But I still think that for people who know nothing, that they are of some value.

Rule #1 with them though is that you must NEVER buy any of those ebooks they’re selling.

Rule #2 90% of the folks on there don’t actually make any money online and don’t know shit. You have to learn to separate the crap from the gold.

So, there are lots of resources out there. Again, mark affbuzz on your favorites and you can spend months reading all the blogs linked to from there. I’m a straight shooter. If you find a strategy interesting, or find yourself tempted to buy and ebook. Ask me about it and I’ll give you the straight dope on whether I think it’ll work for you.

Personally, I only use www.Wickedfire.com and affbuzz and some of it’s associated blogs. Also, I like webpronews which has some high production value videos.

Webpronews is more for general ‘state of the industry’ news.

If you go to wickedfire, just lurk and don’t post for a while. But read the stickies. There’s some gold in there. Watch out for the dickrolls and the porn on that site though. Some of it’s pretty nasty. Don’t visit wickedfire from work or with your kids in the room.

But seriously, drop me a line and I’ll share with you regarding strategies. I can’t impart knowledge that’s taken me years to acquire in a single post though. If you want to make a living online it requires commitment and passion and months of work and perpetual learning.

I’m going to turn this e-mail into a blog post now

Have a good one!

Danger”

I hope some of you find this information useful and that you make 10x as much as I do this next year!

How do you get started making money online?

dangerbrown — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:28:31 +0000

Here is a snippet of an e-mail I got today.

……”I was looking at your website and it looks great.

I have to ask man…do you have any recommendations for a internet marketing ‘starter’? I’m sure you get asked that alot but I really really want to do something online, just a little lost on direction.

Any advice would be sooo helpful…….”

Here is a copy of my e-mail response to him. I realized he’s right, and this is what I generally tell folks that ask me where to get started.

“Hi [removed],
I’m sure it might sound evasive, but you’ll need to find something that fits your personality and resources. There are infinite ways to make money online. Also, by resources I mean not only money but skills and time, etc. By personality I’m thinking risk tolerance and interests.

Digitalpoint forums and Warrior forum are good resources for beginners. Abestweb is nice. Blackhatworld is good too. Wickedfire forum is pretty harsh. If you go there, only lurk for several weeks. They tend to be hard on newbies.

I would advise you to keep your money and avoid buying e-books, etc. All the information you can buy is available for free elsewhere. When I was getting started, I stumbled upon something that let me make enough to scrape by and spent about 3 months reading Digitalpoint forums. Like 14 hours per day….7 days per week. Now, I spend almost no time in forums. I just do the shit I know how to do to make money. But if my shit quits working, I go back to the forums.

Good luck bro!
Danger

P.S. When you’re ready to start building money making websites, get some good hosting and sign up for some affiliate networks.”

Now, I’m sure he just wanted me to tell him to do exactly this and that and cash in, but I’ve come to believe advice like that isn’t really practical. You gotta find something that fits you, that you will enjoy doing. Also, the internet is ever-changing and to be successful long-term requires broad enough knowledge that you can reinvent your business models often.

The secret to success in all things, including making money online.

dangerbrown — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:20:51 +0000

Kaizen is the secret. It’s a Japanese philosophy of constant and never ending improvement in all things, all facets of oneself or one’s business. I had practiced this philosophy for years before I even knew what the word meant. I am always trying to be a better man, a better father, a better friend, and a better business man.

How you can implement kaizen to make more money online?

1. Always be learning.
Expand your knowledge and skill in SEO practices, advertising strategies, web design, copy-writing, analytics, cash flow management, time management, etc.

2. Always be improving upon your successes (and failures).
Constantly split test and improve ads, landing pages, offers, traffic sources, keywords, business relationships, etc. etc. etc. Split test, improve, and track results in everything you do with internet marketing, forever!

3. Aways be networking.
If you can afford it, go to industry events and meet new people. Participate in local events and meetups. Most urban centers have affiliate or SEO meetups. If there isn’t one in your area, start one. You don’t need to be an expert to organize a monthly meetup.

4. Be relentless.
Never give up! Never surrender! If you have a setback, take a moment and try to figure out what went wrong. Learn from your mistakes. Then try again with a different or improved strategy. Live, eat, and breath IMPROVEMENT. As long as you’re constantly improving, you will eventually attain greatness.

In a big business corporate sense, kaizen often refers to aggressive cost cutting which sometimes has negative human impacts. For instance, lower level employees working all night (for free) to correct mistakes or meet deadlines. Cutting employee benefits, or reducing quality to increase profits is not congruent with my philosophy.

Be careful when dealing with people not to “glean the field”. This is a reference to a Christian belief that farmers should leave some remnant crops on their fields for the poor, widows and orphans to eat for free. Use the philosophy of kaizen to improve yourself and your life while continuing to live in abundance with others.

Do you already practice kaizen? Have I left something out? Tell us about it in the comments please!

Affilate Convention Denver 2010 starts today.

dangerbrown — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:06:50 +0000

I live a few hours from Denver and am getting ready to head out this morning. I’ll be getting there about noon so will miss some of the 1st day. Affiliate Convention is a pretty small affair and hasn’t been the best received in the community.

I debated at some length whether I would attend again this year. But decided I might as well. I met a few people last year that justified it. I’m really only going for the networking, but I’ll sit in on a few sessions as well. Sure, you can make friends in the industry long distance, but nothing really compares to shaking someone’s hand in person and sharing some experiences like lunch, dinner, or a drunken bender that lasts into the night.

Sorry, I haven’t been updating my blog very often, frankly it is because I’ve been too busy with my family. We just had our 5th child 10 weeks ago. Also, if I’ve been at my computer, I’ve generally been working on scaling up my stuff. I used to give updates about my income monthly and have really been remiss about that.

Here is a general update: Things have been pretty steady over the last year. Increasing a little bit every month. Last month I made about $8,600.00 net on about $16,000.00 gross. I have a goal of making $30K net in September. Cash flow has been one of the biggest factors limiting the rate I can scale things. I’ve finally reached the point where I have enough business capital to scale things as fast as I can do the work.

Affiliate marketing earnings November 2009

dangerbrown — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:01:49 +0000

November was OK. I didn’t scale up too much, but did make a little more money than last month. I’m only working on campaigns that I feel will have a long stable life. I want to be in a position to take months off as my wife is due to give birth on about April 5th.

November money spent:
$5,179.30

November money earned:
$13,153.32
$151.76 referral income from Market Leverage
=$13,305.08 total gross profit

$8,125.78 total net profit for November

Looking forward to December my goal is to net $15,000. My strategy to achieve it is to focus on increasing ROI….specifically I’m working on reducing my CPC and using the surplus to fund new campaigns. Also, I’m working on increasing CTR and Conversion rates.

Go back in time and see my affiliate marketing profits for July through October 2009.