Basically he got the full Canadian experience. Including but not limited to real beer, seeing bears and deer in the wild north, eating poutine, French pornography on TV at all hours of the day and of course Canadian Cigarettes.

Now, you may be wondering, why is this important?

It’s Simple, Really…

Face to face conversations generally mean much more than any electronic mediums – especially when building business relationships. Why do you think that people still fly from New York to Tokyo to meet business associates, sometimes even for seemingly unimportant meetings? That’s right, it’s because more can get discussed, drawn on napkins, explained with hand gestures or even reading micro expressions in person than online. All of this obviously leads to stronger relationships, and ultimately more money down the road.

While it’s easy to converse using instant messaging, telephone and other electronic methods they aren’t always the best. Talking face to face, often leads to more in-depth discussions, and aides in the level of trust that each person or business entity gives to each other.  Not to mention the fact that it seems every cat in this industry has ADD or ADHD, so jumping back and forth from topic to topic in real life can be easier to follow than online with the constant scroll. It sounds silly, but if you think about it I think you’ll probably realize it’s true for you too – why else would you pay all that money to attend the various conferences?

I do think that electronic communications are great for quick ‘hey, what was that offer again’ type things, but when getting right down to discussing business more can be accomplished in 2 hours of talking over beer than often can be done with 10 hours of IRC or Instant Messaging.

I think we got more conducted in 9 days, than we had for the past 2 to 3 months online. For real.

Why did I write this post? Because I think that many in the industry, especially the younger folk take face to face meetings for granted, and would prefer everything to be electronic. When I was younger, I remember my dad telling me to ‘make friends with your banker, don’t do everything electronically’ and that advice has saved me thousands of dollars. The same principle applies to affiliates or any business really. Getting to know someone in real life is better than just being a client number or contact on MSN.

Last night I was practicing my DJ’ing and at about 2AM a text message came into my phone from a phone number located in british columbia, but with no name associated with it. The text message said;

“Way to go dickwad, posting your phone number on facebook for all to see, you loser”

To which of course, I replied with

“Huh?”

And I immediately received this auto reply

“Welcome to Twilio SMS. For more information, see http://twilio.com/sms“

Maybe this is an old technique, but I’m not so sure. It looks to me like they’re scraping, or otherwise gathering information from Facebook users and spamming their cellphones. Using messages like this will surely invoke a response from most people, and apparently automatically sign them up to this Twilio service.

Brilliant? Kind of. Until they get caught.

Have you seen shit like this before?

Just the other day, it occurred to me that there’s only a only a few short months left before Affiliate Summit East is happening and that it’s just about time to start thinking about it again.

Last year was a blast, and my first ever conference in the Affiliate/Internet marketing industries so I was pretty green and didn’t really know what to expect. Now that I’ve been to a few other conferences and know a lot more about the industry, its politics and the people involved I’m sure it will be even better than my experience was last year.

This year I’m hoping to conduct a little more business and sight-seeing than partying. I’ve been to New York several times but never really took the opportunity to travel around the city seeing some of the more popular things so that should be fun and also a little easier on the liver than last year. Not to mention the pocketbook – 40$ for two gin and tonics, WTF?!@?

With parties having guest appearances by people like Biz Markie it’s certainly hard to not get caught up in running around town all night partying with your friends. Alas, one should remember that the primary goal of any conference is to meet people, get new ideas, and discuss business whether it be deals, mergers, or simply ideas for the future whether collaborative or not.

Last year I didn’t spend much time at the conference itself, instead I went through the exhibit floor meeting many of the networks and affiliates. However, I was still hesitant as to what I should have been asking or even talking about because I was still relatively new to the industry. So, instead I kind of sat back and watched as my Internet buddies did the talking and I absorbed the information I needed.

This changes as you hit more conferences and meet more people while of course learning more about the industry. This year I expect it to be even better than the past Affiliate Summit’s I’ve attended because I personally know more about the industry as a whole.

Flatly, this year can only be better because last time was fucking rad and I was newb.

This year I intend to meet more people on the floor and probably visit a few or more sessions if I can to see what trends the more experienced people are talking about, and just to network a little further into the scene. While the forum crowd is a great resource and many friends can be made, I’ve certainly met other people on a whim at a conference that have turned out to be better partners or friends.

Looking forward to seeing you all again, I’m sure I’ll think of more to write sooner to the conference.

And now, back to el’ grind.

Basically it allows you to manage multiple computers, with a single mouse and keyboard (and monitor(s)…). All this without the use of VNC software, or KVM software.

So, what’s this mean? Well, if you’re like me and have a bunch of computers humming along you may want this. For example, one computer that you may be using Traktor or Ableton Live on, one that you’re checking stats on and one that you do your work on, you can quickly and easily drag your mouse across to each of them when required.

No more flipping switches, or connecting over a possibly unsafe connection.

It’s free, opensource, and fucking awesome.

Synergy Plus - Share Multiple Computers without KVM or VNC

Like I said – pretty fucking awesome, eh?

Here’s the feature list from their site in-case you’re curious.

• Move your mouse easily between computers
• Requires nothing other than existing ethernet
• Copy and paste between your computers
• No need to press any buttons (unlike KVM)
• You can still use multiple monitors on the same computer
• Lock the mouse to one screen temporarily (useful for games)

You can grab the code here, and make use of it yourself.

Most of you will know a lot of these tracks, some will be new.

I might make some more of these in the future as I’ve already thought of 5 or 6 tracks that I forgot to include. Anyway, enjoy.

Here’s the tracklist;

1. Drake w/ Trey Songz & Lil’ Wayne – Successful
2. David Guetta w/ Kid Cudi – Memories
3. Dead Prez – Hip Hop
4. Rick Ross – Every Day I’m Hustlin
5. Eminem – Lose Yourself
6. Jay Z – Empire State Of Mind
7. Geto Boys – Feels Good To Be A Gangsta
8. Die Antwoord – Fish Paste
9. Gucci Mane w/ Plies – Wasted
10. Kid Cudi – Day N Nite Crookers Remix
11. Die Antwoord – Rich Bitch
12. Drake Ft Kanye West_Lil Wayne – Eminem-Forever
13. Lonely Island – I’m On A Boat (feat. T-Pain)
14. Jay-Z – Run This Town
15. MSTRKRFT (A-Trak Remix) – Bounce Ft. N.O.R.E.
16. Pitbull – Hotel Room Service
17. lil_wayne-drop_the_world_(feat._eminem)
18. Lonely Island – Like A Boss
19. YTCracker-Meganerd
20. ?? – Richie Rich Theme Song

Download Here;

• - RapidShare
• - MegaUpload

Note that these numbers are from November 2009 through Jan 2010, and I’m still working on this campaign so I still won’t be telling y’all what I’m actually running with. Look for a new case study coming up in the next few weeks or months. Probably months knowing my slackass style.

For this campaign I ran things a little differently. If you remember from my last post, what I did was have about 600 keywords spread out over a few ads in one ad group. This time though I did it differently and set things with a new method. I went with;

• 20 ad groups
• each ad group having 1 keyword
• 3 ads based around those keywords.

I ran with this formula on Bing and Yahoo, but with bidvertiser I just ran with the highest performing ads from the two networks combined with some simple math to calculate which was the overall best ad.

So, on to the numbers shall we?

BIDVERTISER

With Bidvertiser, as with all my previous attempts with them I had horrible click through’s with relatively high impressions. I know some people love bidvertiser, but I just haven’t figured it out yet. I probably won’t try much more with them till I’m baller like some of you guys and can afford to throw away money

Bidvertiser Spend: 12.54 Bidvertiser CPC: $0.96 Bidvertiser Impressions: 75,291 Bidvertiser Clicks: 13 Bidvertiser Sales: 0

Bidvertiser Statistics

YAHOO

As with the last campaign, I started out with Yahoo, and then once I started getting traffic and clicks I paused the underperforming groups and migrated the performing ones to Bing and Bidvertiser. I did see one sale, so I made some of my investment back on this one, but not nearly as much as I had hoped, especially with my highly targeted ad groups, and ads per ad group. I am still confident in yahoo though because I had relatively high impressions over this amount of time, however my CPC was way high, I wished it would get down to what BING was doing, but apparently not.

YAHOO Spend: $156.92 YAHOO CPC: $0.71 YAHOO Impressions: 37,193 YAHOO Clicks: 220 YAHOO Sales: 1

Yahoo Statistics

BING

This was hands down my best experience ever with PPC. I had 3 sales getting me around $144 before removing my initial investment of $2.12. This is simply awesome. I don’t know why it dried up but I will be going back and revamping the campaign to hit BING with again because I haven’t seen sales like this ever before, especially with limited impressions and very limited clicks. Fucking awesome.

BING Spend: $2.12 BING CPC: $0.30 BING Impressions: 198 BING Clicks: 7 BING Sales: 3

Bing Statistics

SUMMARY

So let’s total it all up.

Total Spend across all networks: $171.58
Total Impressions across all networks: 112,682
Total Clicks across all networks: 240
Total Sales across all networks: 4
Total Commission amount: $192
Total Profit: $20.42

As you can see, I was profitable. Not very much, but I was profitable. So, this campaign was definitely a win for a PPC newbie like me. If you remember last time, I was still 80$ shy of actually turning a profit, so even $1 would be a win for me at this point.

What have I learned off this one? Bing apparently fucking rocks, or I just hit the right market at the right time – I guess we’ll see on the next test. I do think I’ll drop bidvertiser indefinitely and probably yahoo too since my spend was so high compared to Bing. Yahoo, nothing much, same old shit – I just need to refine my process with them, and probably develop more ads along the way – I just ran out of money to keep testing.

Now on to more testing.

Last summer was my first visit to an Affiliate Summit, which I went to in New York City, I thought it was a great time, and a lot of people to meet – however, I was still pretty newb at that point so I really wasn’t sure what kinds of questions I was supposed to be asking, who I should be talking to or even the right lingo to use. So, I mostly sat back and just absorbed like a sponge and used that knowledge to further my business over the next few months.

Affiliate Summit West was completely different, this time around I knew who to talk to, what questions I should be asking, and most important, how to make myself more money and enjoy the entrepreneurial lifestyle of never setting an alarm, and working when, and where I want.

This time around I met a lot more actual business contacts, and discussed things with them. However, I will note that the partying in Las Vegas is a little crazy – if you really want to conduct business I would suggest New York over Vegas – while there may be more people in Vegas, there’s also a lot more opportunity to get yourself into trouble and not pay attention to the real reason we’re there – monies.

Also, I know this has been said before, but the amount of paid women in Vegas is pretty much disgusting. Who cares if you get a shitload of pictures with your arm around some woman that cost 1000 bucks an hour, if you think that’s baller because of that then you need to give your head a shake. Sorry guys. New York has a lot more – REAL – women, that don’t charge by the hour and are more than happy to talk to you about your nerdy business. Trust me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting down Las Vegas, or ASW – it was a great time and I’ll be going next year for sure. I really do feel that more business can be conducted in a little more relaxed environment like New York though.

Contrary to the previous summit I went to – I already knew a bunch of people this time so it was a lot easier to get around and go see the town, and meet more people in the extended circle of internet marketers that I chill with. So that was a definite plus to the whole experience, and the meet market was absolutely huge in comparison to what I remember from New York – not to mention the exhibit space. There were so many exhibitors present, that I had to go back 3 times to pick up all the free shwag (yes, we all are suckers for the free tshirts that fall apart after 3 washes aren’t we? – hint hint – buy better shirts exhibitors!) and to meet all the interesting companies that were showing off the latest and greatest products that we can help them sell.

To me, that was the biggest benefit of Las Vegas and Affiliate Summit – was that the sheer amount of people, exhibitors and speakers surpassed that of New York. Basically what I’m saying here is, go to Las Vegas to find a shitload of offers, and then hit up New York to conduct more business and get those offers sending dollars to your bank account.

But, what if you still don’t know where to get traffic for these wonderful offers?

Enter Ad:Tech. I wasn’t familiar with this conference until early last year – remember, I said I am still considerably newb compared to other folks out there. Anyway, I heard it time and time again, if you’re looking for traffic hit up Ad:Tech.

So, that’s what I’ll be doing this coming April with a few friends. These two conferences put together, from what I’ve heard anyway – are the best stepping stones into really ramping up business in this industry. Affiliate Summit for the products and ideas, and Ad:Tech for the traffic to run to your shiny new offers. It’s really a simple concept, but nobody ever said it to me like that so maybe this will help someone else out too.

I hope to see a bunch of you again at Ad:Tech, and the coming Affiliate Summit East in New York City.

Fun times brah’s.

These are lame, but always slightly funny