I just got back from the Athletics Olympic event tonight held at “Bird’s Nest” stadium, featuring some qualifying, semi-final, and final events– including the 200M world record setting time of 19.30 by Jamaican runner Usain Bolt:
I scored a great ticket for the event, Sector A, Tier 1, Row 24, right next to the finish line and medal ceremonies! :)
Tonight I grabbed a Argentina v. Brazil semifinals soccer ticket. It was a pretty fun game to be at, considering these are two of the best teams in the world facing off.
Here’s a short video:
Tomorrow I’m hoping to get a ticket for the track & field finals.
Overall, the atmosphere in Beijing is fantastic and I’ve met a lot of fun people :)
So I’m sitting at home yesterday in Shanghai, thinking to myself “I’m 10 hours away from the Olympics in Beijing.. I have an internet business.. I’m getting my butt to Beijing!”
I call my superhero Chinese friend Jay, and within 2 hours I have a train ticket and a booked apartment with high speed internet in Beijing for a week!
I arrived this morning, dropped my bags off in my apartment and logged into Craigslist. There are dozens of scalpers selling tickets between $50-$4000/event. I got a good deal on Row 5 seats to go see Weight Lifting :)
After that, I headed to the market to pick up some groceries:
Interesting stuff.. But not really my taste!
I’ll try to pick up a few Olympic tickets while I’m here. Maybe check out the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and a few other places.
I’m already enjoying Beijing a lot more than Shanghai. They really did a fantastic job revamping the city for the Olympics. Beijing is also the cultural center and has some trees and parks (which is rare in Shanghai).
I’ll try to keep you guys updated in the next few days.
I just received word from Shawn that ALL the Affiliate Summit slideshows are now online!
Of course, check out my friend Amit’s Super Affiliate Presentation. His presentation is titled “PPC Super Affiliate Strategies You Must Know”
Amit covers some excellent tips. Especially review the slide on bidding strategy by position. He makes a well taken point that if you bid too low, your keywords may be in poor position for many of the top converting terms in your niche.
Therefore, you should raise your bid prices for keywords in position 8+ during your “testing period.” After a month, you can optimize/delete the poor performing keywords.
I just started reviewing the slides so I’ll let you know if I find some gems.
There are hundreds of affiliate networks. On each network, there can be hundreds of affiliate offers.
How do you possibly figure out which affiliate offer to promote?
Here are a few of my evaluation criteria:
1) Does the offer have brand equity (Is the company well known?)
I suppose this isn’t a requirement, but I’ve always had success promoting branded offers. I tend to stay away from email submit/zip submit offers which often have shady business practices.
The reason is to reduce risk. Why promote a sketchy offer (usually hosted on a shady affiliate network) that might not pay you or will “shave” your leads.. when you can just as easily work with a reputable company on a legitimate network?
2) How much search volume is in the niche?
Use the new Search Volume feature in Google’s Keyword tool & make sure that the top keyword phrase for your niche has a search volume of at least 2,000,000+++/Month.
I would rather take a big bite out of a big pie than play in niches with little search volume. There are plenty of great niches with high search volume. Why would you want to artificially limit yourself and make it more difficult to expand your offer in the future?
3) Are other affiliates having success with this offer?
This is huge and it’s taken me a long time to learn. Try to find offers that appear in Adwords over a long period of time. I use iSpionage for this type of competitive analysis.
Again, the reason is to reduce risk. Let other affiliates waste their own money on untested offers– just watch how long they stick around in PPC.
4) How much value does the offer provide to users?
When you are providing value to others, you will do well. This applies to life and to choosing affiliate offers. If you find an offer that actually provides legitimate value, it will be more long-term and stable– and makes good business sense.
5) How large is the “Keyword Universe”?
I’ve discussed the concept of the “keyword universe” in the past. Dating has a huge keyword universe because there are millions of phrases people might type into Google when looking for dating information. However, “swimming pool quotes” has a poor keyword universe because there are very few ways to describe the topic/offer.
So what criteria do you use for choosing offers?
I’ve been a subscriber of Digitally Imported for about a year.
They have a wide selection of radio stations available in 128k for free (contains annoying commercials).
For $4.95 a month (via paypal), you get access to their high quality, commercial-free, 192k broadband streams.
I highly recommend their Sky.fm Contemporary Christian stream which is phenomenal! It features a massive collection of 24/7 192k streaming inspirational music, which is what I’m usually listening to while I work :)
