Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

Like  most people who run successful campaigns, I aint going to give it all away to you. But I am happy to give you a glimpse.

Some details in this article are faked, so you can’t rip off what I am doing. Overall it teaches the lesson though.

We just hit a big home run for one of our clients. They sell a high end product which costs around $12,000 per sale.

Let me walk you through the aggregate guts of what happened over the weekend.

This is for a national campaign.

You can see what happened with one of the campaigns above.

This is one of the pre-formatted reports available in facebook advertising.

It is a summary of what happened over the past 4 days with this campaign.

The first thing that is so remarkable to me is the total. There were over 6 million impressions.

That is a hell of a lot of looks at it.

There were only 1,176 clicks, which yeilds an average of .019% CTR. That means that only 2 times out of every 10,000 times people saw the add, they clicked on it. To me that is like standing on a street corner and showing your flyer to 10,000 people, and only 2 people pick up the flyer and look at it. That would suck.

In this case we paid over a $1.09 per click, that’s the CPC part. If you were trying to run a dating offer, or get someone to sign up for an online game, or buy a slap chop or some such thing, then this would be way too expensive.

If on the other hand, you are skipping the affiliate companies, and a company is selling directly to a specific group, a highly segmented group who are willing to buy the product directly without any middle men, then $1 a click can work out just fine.

The whole trick of course is to target just the people you want to see your add. You need to make sure they are the type of people who can afford your product, and make sure they are the type of people who will buy your products.

Selling High End

Figuring this out is not particularly easy, and it is not particularly cheap to figure out. Someone who knows what they are doing, can still easily spend $10,000 or more on tests before they figure out how to “crack the code” on how to do it. Figuring out how to sell high end items with facebook, is not for the meek, or those with shallow pockets. Once you figure out the basics, it is much easier with each new product.

I spent over an hour this weekend talking to Shoemoney about this subject. I am now in the process of creating a series of products to show the world what I have learned about this subject over the past year. If you are interested in facebook advertising, stay tuned, and I will show you the ropes.

The campaign above? I predict all of those clicks will end up creating probably only one or two sales, but each of those sales will be around $12k. Nice. But still, over 6 million impressions to get that one sale, something to think about.

Thank god we’re not cutting down trees to do this.

For me personally the talk I did at Affiliate Summit on Facebook Advertising, was a big deal for me.

From stage I estimated there were about 250 people, plus those standing in the back.

I was told that they were actually turning people away at the door because we were overfilled.

It was an amazing experience.

The anticipation before the event for both speakers and attendees was high because of the big controversy, so I was excited to see what happened.

The acoustics were a bit odd and the speakers had a bit of difficulty hearing the audience’s questions.  Lyndon Reid said the audience could hear just fine. The lesson learned was to get in there an hour early and do a sound check, or I should have invited the questioners up on stage with us. Will do that from now on.

No guns or knives showed up at the session which was also a big plus!

When I looked at the audience I saw John Chow (must read his disclosure) and Tim Ash, the conversion guru, who are both heroes of mine. Tim has the Conversion Conference. promotion code – CCW503. Tim is THE expert on conversion. I expect some real heavy hitters both speaking and attending.

The honest truth is that a lot of people who speak at other conferences are not necessarily the ones with the most experience, or expertise.

At Affiliate Summit I was in the company of some extremely heavy hitters which were,

1. Alex Schultz who I call an executive at facebook but he keeps saying he is not one.

Alex was/is an affiliate marketer, heads up a huge part of facebooks advertising area, is a brilliant individual, and is extremely influential at facebook, and can teach you how to make a paper helicopter as well as a Burning Smurf (you will die with this one, and no-one will be responsible but you!).

2. Mark Colacioppo of Globalizer. Mark is one of the people I most trust in the affiliate industry. He runs a legitimate company, with some good offers one can make a little money off of, and in my dealings with him has been generous and honest. If you want to play with some of his offers you can try to sign up here to be a Globalizer Affiliate. (No promises you will be accepted.)

3. Shoemoney. Do I even need to mention who he is? OK, so go get on the shoemoney system waiting list already would ya? Eventually we all will be signed up so you might a well do it now! Jeremy initially stepped down from the panel due to, well, you probably already know! I begged him and begged him, and he finally agreed to go back on the panel. This was great for me because having him sit next to me both gave me more credibility, and he also drew any projectiles from the audience.

4. Me dk

5. Markus Frind who started plenty of fish. According to his bio, his dating site gets over 100 million visitors per month. That is over a hundred more visitors than purposeinc gets each month. I had never met Marcus, but heard about him during the controversy and wanted to form an opinion myself. First off here is Marcus’s blog. Sitting next to me on stage, Marcus and I shared a microphone and he appeared extremely polite, and pleasant pleasant. I got to meet a handful of his staff including his right hand, one of the main programmers of his site, and some of the regular workers. Everyone was very nice, and had nice things to say about Marcus. I also heard from a very, very credible source that they thought Marcus was a genius with social media. Well obviously! Look forward to getting to know him better in the future. Marcus also turned out to be an excellent photographer at a moment that was one in a million.

Alex speaking, Mark, Jeremy, dk, and the teacher looking on. Photo Credit - Markus Frind

Because the pack I spoke with was so high caliber, I brought with me a presentation to help level the playing field a little.

I honestly had no idea how it would be received.

I managed to get the audience to laugh repeatedly, which I was very proud of. I even got some fairly strong applause after my talk.

I have received a dozen or so requests for the presentation, and John Chow has been gracious enough to post it on his blog. To top off the honor of being on that panel, was the honor of having my presentation posted on Johns blog. I have wanted to meet John literally for years and met him for the first time at Affiliate Summit. Very approachable, fine individual.

Here is the facebook advertising presentation if you would like to see it.

The cat may have just crept out of the bag, and is chasing a bunny.

When I have more info, I will let you know.

All I can say is yes, the Epic/Azgoogle Playboy party  was the best party I have ever been to and one of the absolute best nights of my life.

Every field I have entered, within a short time I have been at or near the top of that field. This is not an exaggeration, but simply a statement of fact. This goes for everything from skateboarding, to surfing, life-guarding, dating hot girls (back in the day), skimboarding, being a chiropractor, training chiropractors, SEO, Holding Internet Conferences, and now working my way up in the internet business world and helping to establish the viability of Facebook advertising for real advertisers selling quality products, and not doing too bad for the amount of time I have been on the field.

The above is not an attempt to impress you, or to give myself confidence, but simply a statement of what has happened so you will understand where I am from, and where this blog is going.

Each field I have entered, I quickly scanned the scene to find the expert in the field. Not surprisingly this guy has often been a bit controversial. The list includes a group of guys who did not compromise, were brilliant in their fields, and literally created and shaped their industries.

In skateboarding it was a guy named Steve Ruffing, not someone you will read about in the history books, but a guy who was decades ahead of everyone else. In skimboarding it was Connaly Ware. In lifeguarding it was Mark Williams (rest well my friend out in the ocean you loved) and Scott Mc Clung. Being a chiropractor it was Dr. David Singer who literally brought this whole natural health care lifestyle to the masses, in SEO of course Matt Cutts, at Facebook it was the guys who run the show at Facebook, and then the internet entrepreneurs.

When I started studying about internet marketing and business, and how to make money online, there was this one mythical figure that kept popping up. Some people loved him. Some people hated him. He was definitely not afraid to stir up a little controversy. I went on a campaign to get to know him, and learn from him.

One famous day about a year and a half ago, I sat in a very humble coffee shop at the Stratosphere hotel, when there were no conferences in Vegas that day, and listened to this Shoemoney character for about 3 hours.

shoemoney 1 week before release of shoemoney tools 52nd floor palms hotel hefner suite

During this talk he laid it all out. He explained how the money was being made. He explained the sneaky ways, the honest ways, and what was really behind the who’s and the why’s. This previously complex field became clearer and clearer the more he talked. There was no way I could have taken notes, as there was just too much data. The guy was like an encyclopedia. At that moment a few things happened.

First I realized for sure, no question this was the guy. He was the real deal. This was the one. He had his finger on the pulse of an entire industry, and smell flowers from the pucky so fast I could barely keep up.

The other thing that happened, was that in the sea of infinite complexity of the internet I started to see the patterns. It was that moment at the end of the Matrix where Neo starts to see the code behind the illusion, and not just the pictures.

After that moment, it has all become a lot easier. A lot easier! I have met guys who have been playing online 5 times as long as I have who don’t get it. When I hear a new business idea, I can see how it fits in with the whole industry.

I’ve also noticed Shoe intimidates the hell out of most people. Guys come up to me regularly and ask me to introduce them to Shoe, or ask me questions about him, often when he is standing 10 feet away.

So why am I going over all of this? Well number one it is a good blueprint on how to become a success.

More urgently though, Shoe is now taking on 500 students through his new system.

I have insight on this system, because I am one of the speakers on it. Didn’t get a cent for it but I owe him so much I would do anything for the guy.

You now have the chance to do what I did. You have the chance to spend time with him. Every week, multiple times, while he guides you step by step on how to make money online.

This is not a get rich quick scheme. They don’t work consistently. What this is, is a chance to have access and insight to Jeremy Schoemaker, Shoemoney, and his inside group, where you can learn how to make money online just like I am. Maybe not get rich over night, but learn the fundamentals to build a solid online business, and know enough to become a real player in the field.

Check out how to make money through the Shoemoney system, then come back and let me know what you think.

Each one of us who went was given one of these to take with us

Time: 3:30 a.m.

Location: The hardest party to get into at Affiliate Summit,  The Epic Ads Party @ Hugh Hefner Suite at Palms Hotel

Who: dk and un-named Playboy Playmate

The winner for dinner, is Daniel Boulud, on Saturday January 16th at 6:00 P.M.

(News Flash – Fight Club with Robert Drysdale 6X World Champion in Brazillian Jiu Jitsu added on Satuday at 3:00, see end of this post!)

Daniel Boulud has amazing food. It is comfortable as hell. You can just order drinks, or have a full dinner in the lounge very comfortably. Dress is business casual, probably save your Shoemoney t-shirt for the poker tournament. Please RSVP here

When we ate there for my wife’s dinner the food was out of the world, but I did not try their burger. Their Burger is $30, and is supposed to be out of this world, with Foi Gras on it, truffles, and is supposed to be to die for. I am definitely getting that! The salads and other food there are out of this world as well. This is the only place in Vegas I know of with a Michelin Star. These are from the French food rating company, and to earn even a singe star takes gourmet restaurants decades to accomplish.

Everyone in the Affiliate Marketing and Internet Entrepreneurial world is invited!

This is where all the cool kids will be on Satuday night before the poker tournament!

Please RSVP here

Fight Club! On Saturday, before dinner at 3:00, we are throwing a Fight Club at Shoemoney and my friend, Robert Drysdales gym. Robert Drysdale just texted me and gave me the thumbs up. We got lucky because he was  going to be out of town, and just changed his plans. It is $75 per person, which is a hell of a lot less than his usual fee to train someone. Sign up through RSVP link above. All are invited, space is limited.

I’m pumped about affiliate summit next week.

It’s a tougher, slicker, smarter crowd than most of the conferences.

If you are going to Affiliate Summit next week, please click on the link at the bottom of this and vote on what events you want me to organize.

Big thanks by the way to those kicking in to sponsor these events. So far we have the Barbara and Greg Boser at 3DogMedia, Danny DeMichele, Neel Greer, and Lyndon Reid.

I am picking Daniel Boulud in Vegas. (Wynn hotel still gets no links from me because you can’t link to specific pages).
I ate there with my wife on Christmas eve for her birthday and unreal food. It feels the way Vegas is supposed to feel. I think most restaurants are lousy for get togethers of large groups, because with big tables in between if there are more than 4 people, you can’t really meet new people easily.

The lounge at Boulud is super comfy, with lots of chairs and booths, and we should be able to pack in around 100 people before it feels crowded. I plan on getting their $30 burger which their NYC restaurant is famous for. The lounge has small tables, couches, chairs and a bar, so those who want to have a drink and eat can order and eat, and those who choose to just drink, can drink and still mingle. It has a very casual feel, so it will be very conducive to good talk, meeting new folks and talking business. It is also very upscale and comfortable where you will be comfortable sitting on the arm of an eating friends chair, staring at their girlfriend, and stealing one of their french fries. Just getting a drink here is totally o.k.

The place is downstairs below all the funny umbrellas right next to the lake. Take the curved escalator down and head to the right.

My first thought for Vegas was club X/S. They spent I believe 150 million dollars building it, and it is considered the hottest club in the world right now. I went there a few months ago with Andy Liu and hung out with his Seattle tech scene friends. This is also where I ran into Mark Wahlberg out in front. Just to get in and have a guaranteed place to sit, works out to be around $200 per person. Hot club, but of course loud as hell and not always the best place to talk.

All of the items on the survey are super flexible and people can just roll in and out. The exception is X/S which is we need to cover in advance so it will require an early commitment.

Affiliate Summit is so bad ass that it is literally exploding with parties. Some of my biggest sponsors are throwing parties of their own, so I don’t want to cross schedule over them, or at least as little as possible. If you have not been before, and are not already on the lists, then make sure to check in early at the booths of the companies throwing the parties and ask for an invite.

I am planning on doing some MMA training at Robert Drysdale’s studio if Robert is available, and possibly at one of the other gyms, Coutures with Randy or one of his guys, or TapOut with Shawn Tompkins depending on who is available. If you want to come and train with us, totally beginner stuff, fire me an e-mail so I can put you on the invite list. Expect to pay around $100 per person. (dk (at) Purpose Inc (dot) com

Please follow the link below to the survey, and let me know what sounds good.

Click here to take survey

A year ago I decided to go hardcore into facebook advertising. Thought here was a new growing field in the Internet Entrepreneurial world. Sounded easy. I have extra money I can throw around while on the learning curve. I have 20 years plus experience marketing, as well as a nice series of home runs in internet marketing, and tons of sales and marketing experience offline.

In my helping Shoemoney I got well connected with some of the Facebook executives. Figured I was ready to roll.

I figured there still was and still is a huge tidal wave of advertising money rolling toward facebook both from the offline world, and from other online sources. This turned out to be true, and I am sure it is going to increase 10 fold quickly, and then another 10 fold after that.

Around the same time I went to an event I had never heard of called Online Marketing Summit here in San Diego, honestly not expecting much, only to be blown away by a talk by Tim Ash on landing page optimization, also the name of his book. I then pawned a copy off of him, and went to work learning the science. The timing on this was amazing. Tim by the way is a genius, and if you have $20k plus to spend on optimizing a landing page, he is THE guy for the job. If you have an extra 100 hours, no exaggeration, then pick up a copy of his book and study it inside and out. I question how many people have actually mastered the entire book, I haven’t yet, but even knowing well half of it I feel head and shoulders above most people at that game.

This proved excellent timing because just as I was playing with facebook advertising I was having the experience of having trouble getting it to work. My website, bodyabcs.com which both Matt Cutts, and Shoemoney have tried to get me to change since it continues with it’s 1998 Enom template design, but honestly it converts so nicely from google traffic that I doubt I will ever change it. The problem was when I sent facebook traffic to the site it did not convert at all, zero, zilch.

So I got Shoemoney and his dentist to agree to let me copy the site they had built and tested. They created a site that converted like crazy to a point that they apparently had to turn off the marketing to it because he could not handle the patients. So I have learned a bit of html, and can even do a wordpress install from scratch, set up the database, do 301 redirects, and all the basics. When it came time to actually copy a site, I realized how much I still did not know about html and css.

I literally ended up spending over $1,000 and even more importantly over a month of time getting a site set up that was an exact copy of his. Obviously with my chiropractic office I had to modify the pictures, and the text to make sense, but still kept it the same as Shoemoneys dentist just as close as I could. Finally it was done, I started running campaigns and sat back to see all the success.

Still nothing.

I changed up the campaigns, demographics, images, changed, changed, changed, and still zilch. Not a single patient (customer).

Back to the drawing board. Now the search began for a programmer who could crank out little mini sites to test what worked. I figured this would be easy. Every one I worked with made way too big a deal out of each site, and was unable to crank out a quick one or two page site overnight which is what I needed. One guy in our industry I met with was right in the middle of creating a program that would modularly build a site for you, but as far as I know it is still not live yet.

Along with the fact that every time you run an ad variation on facebook, it took quite a while to enter it all and wait for pages to refresh, the whole thing ended up being very, very time consuming to test.

Along this time, I had the good fortune and truly what I considered an honor to get to help facebook with their SEO and marketing. The guys and gals at facebook have been great, have let me see the inside of what they are working on, and have me absolutely convinced that they really deeply care about the user experience more than they do about the company being profitable. I am extremely proud of my relationship with each of them, and the work they do.

Right in the middle of all this Shoemoney pointed out a guy who he said had just mastered all of this. Shoemoney told me this guy had worked out a software that interfaced with facebooks advertising page, and could crank out ad variations without having to sit in front of your computer. Then I met the guy, and he confirmed what Shoemoney had said. I was blown away, and figured I had years to catch up with his work. The guys name was Dennis Yu.

Just for the record, since I have been away from my blog the past month, the entire record of my relationship with Dennis is as follows. Had dinner along with 10 other guys and Dennis at Elite Retreat two years ago. Talked to him for 15 minutes at Adtech last year when Shoemoney was talking him up when they were working together. Dennis drove to San Diego and bought me breakfast  some time last summer, and gave me around $100 worth of California Pizza Kitchen certificates just as a gift. Dennis came to thinktank, paid for two people but came alone. Then later I refunded back the extra person he paid for since he did not use it. Then Dennis and I had a snack, and talked a half an hour, at the W hotel the weekend of the Azoogle party. Dennis and I also exchanged a fair number of e-mails, mostly talking about how helping small businesses with facebook could make a very positive difference. I also called one of his clients to see if I could help him, and after talking to their client I recommended that Dennis’s in house guys and the client himself could help the guy more affordably than I could.

Then I started to hear and read the battle unfold online between Jeremy and Dennis.

So back to the facebook story!

Along the way I finally found a programmer that could make these micro sites to test conversion quickly and at a rate that I could actually afford.

Since then we have been testing, testing, testing.

I have run ads now and gotten sales, clients, or leads for a ton of different industries.

I have done facebook ads now for

- National Building Contractors

- Roofers

- a Church

- a Coffee Shop

- my Chiropractic Office

- a National Travel Site

- Affiliate Offers of many types (Got a tear in my eye when I sold my first Slap Chop, thanks George and Jaime!)

- etc. etc.

It has now gotten to a point where I e-mail Mihai my programmer, or leave him a voice mail message, and when I wake up the next morning I have 20 or 30 new sites he built during the night for testing different landing pages.

The reason I tell this story is to point out that this stuff is still not that easy.

We worked out the marketing for the chiropractic office using facebook, but it took a year. That was a year after all of the connections and knowledge I had before that. I would give the average chiropractic office 4 years, or maybe never, to catch up to where we are regarding the subject right now.

SEO took me a year to learn, and then another year to really master how to get the right type of quality links. The subject of link baiting is one that I am certain now, that most people will never learn.

A month ago my server told me to stop loading thousands of images, and dozens of videos at a time. I spent some time researching options and went with a small company called JC host. A friend of mine, who is a systems admin for one of the busiest sites in the world offered to help in the migration, I also ended up getting two good PHP guys to help, and then finally needed paid support from Gallery2. It wasn’t easy to get the site over here, but I think we are good now with a big dedicated server with lots of images and video to come!

The online world kicks ass. It is tons of fun. The riches and rewards are there to be discovered. But it still aint easy. I know the group that reads this blog does know how to do it which puts you, us, in a great position.

If you want to see the type of work I have been doing, come to my Facebook presentation at Affiliate Summit. I twisted Shoemoney’s arm and begged him to join me now that Dennis Yu is not going to be there. I will let Jeremy make the official announcement. Jeremy really is an amazing expert on Facebook advertising, and the session would have been much less without him.

We are still in the wild west, and I don’t see that changing soon.

For those of us brave enough to persevere through the explosions, and broken bones, the view from the top is amazing.

There is still a stiff barrier to entry.

This gives those of us here, and in the game a huge advantage.

So I have mastered the first big step of facebook advertising.

Let’s see what mountains I can find to conquer this year!

I asked Tovio to write this up for us. It is a guest post on hotel options for ASW.
Also, to prepare for Vegas, please watch this video on how to give a lap dance.
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Now that I’ve recovered from PubCon, I’m looking forward to Affiliate Summit West, which takes place in Las Vegas January 16-19. Whenever I find out about a conference in Vegas the first thing I try to figure out is which hotel I’m going to stay at. ASW takes place at Rio, so I started my search based on that location for 4 nights stay starting January 16th. Unfortunately Rio is already sold out for Saturday, so that won’t be an option. Here are some options to consider:

Gold Coast and the Palms are close enough to the conference to walk. Gold Coast is the closest hotel and has some great rates – from $216 for the four nights, but it’s a pretty basic hotel and casino and is off the strip. Unless you have a really tight budget I wouldn’t recommend it. The Palms, which is across the street from the Gold Coast and Rio, is oriented toward a younger, hip party crowd and I found rates starting at $596 for the four nights.

If you want to stay at a really nice Strip hotel with short taxi rides (and who doesn’t), try Caesars Palace or Bellagio. These are both high-end hotels that will be a bit pricier for the four days – Bellagio starts at $706 and Caesars from $685. For more budget-friendly Strip options, I would go with Monte Carlo ($417), Luxor ($360), or Excalibur ($289). These are all comfortable hotels that are really good values.

The place I have decided to stay is ARIA. This high-end hotel’s grand opening will be on December 16th and it will feature not only luxury, but great technology in the rooms. I can’t wait to stay there. They have a “Winter Special” with rates from $786 for the four days, and offers a $75 resort credit. Vegas offers some great deals on hotels and you’re sure to have fun no matter where you stay.

Toivo Lainevool – VegasHotelSpecial.com

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Tovio is not sponsoring Purpose Inc for Affiliate Summit, this is simply a post of info. None of these hotels gave me a dam cent for this either!

First off, you guys are fricken rock stars with the donations for the poker tournament.

Over the past 48 hours I was sent over $46,000 worth of prizes for the Affiliate Summit West / Purpose Inc. poker tournament.

No kidding, $46k. LOL

I know I owe you a lot of photos, and a lot of video, from thinktank, and Pubcon. I have literally about 1000 unpublished photos, and some funny as video of me fighting Robert Drysdale (6X world Jiu Jitsu Champion), and making a girl disapear, cut in half, levitate a table etc.

I blew up the server, and overloaded it with big files. We are currently figuring out the best hosting company to use. We are currently looking at IP House, who Shoemoney uses, and loves, and will make a decision this week.

Then I expect a week or so to get it all grooved in, and then expect massive numbers of photos of your favorite events showing up.

Danny D’Michelle and Neil Greer have kicked in some seed money for me to get my Purpose Inc. thing on in Vegas during ASW10, but I will need some more cash sponsors if you guys want me to pull something truly amazing off. Otherwise Danny, Neil and myself will just sip Louis XII at Lavo watching the world go by!

I am still getting the ASW thing down like I get Pubcon, but last year was off the hook.

Full disclosure? Everyone is giving me (or at least the poker tournament for the National Breast Cancer Foundation) everything!

So stay tuned for stunning photos, with hot chicks, vegas, sports, surf, and video of me making a jack ass out of myself. I also have an idea I am working on where I will need many of your help, so stay tuned for that too!

If you want to be a voulunteer and help out with the poker tournament, I am going to need people to hand stuff out, keep things organized etc. You will need to help for about 4 hours or so, and the only pay you will get is me yelling at you to do better work. Just e-mail me if you want to help.

And for god sakes play, the prizes are unbelievable. You may win something you can’t use, and can ebay it to someone who can.

A little Vegas? Bring it on!