Go Change the World
Peter Nguyen
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A360 Announces Their First Million Dollar Challenge Winner
06 days
Exciting news! We have announced the winner of our Advertiser360 Million Dollar Challenge!
Basically the rules were simple. Members go through Advertiser360 and then applied what they learned to start your own Internet-based product or service. The first member to start a new campaign and then generate their first million dollars in revenue wins. The winner gets a chance to spend one-on-one time with me in person with no limits what they could ask.
Although we have had a ton of our members who came in contention, we had one who did it first. GK Pai started his campaign on July 25th and by December 2nd, he broke a million dollars!
He generated most of his revenue starting a nutraceutical campaign and some of it came from a work-from-home program he created. What was more impressive was that GK bought Advertiser360 when he was only 17 years old! I had the privilege to spend a few hours of one-on-one time with GK in Dallas on January 19th.
For those of you who have bought the course and are on your way to hit your first million dollars, don’t worry, you can join our A360 Million Dollar Club. Just let us know once you hit your first million dollars.
Advertiser360 was created for exactly this: to provide the education needed to unleash your inner millionaire. We have had such an incredible response from our members and countless requests each week to open it back up.
We do plan on have a re-launch of our improved Advertiser360 course privately over the next couple of months, so please stay tuned…
P.S. After spending 17 days vacationing in Vietnam recently, I had decided I should post more, so expect more free content and updates a little more regularly! Only the good stuff though.
Why Innovation Matters
1146 days
With innovation and technology speeding faster than ever, it’s a tough target to keep up with. And if you can’t stay innovative, you can quickly be left behind. Find out the five innovation principles that will help jumpstart your inner creativity and deepen your pockets.
Every business dreams of leaving a legacy. These days, making it pass your first year is tough enough. Many forward thinkers have ideas that they hope could change the world, but hardly any will ever see their dreams come true. Hard work and focus is just the vehicle that might get you there, but innovation will be the gas that will keep your engine running.
Boston Consulting Group surveyed 1,060 executives and found some convincing facts about what are driving big businesses today. Innovation remains a top strategic precedence for many companies, with 72 percent of executives ranking it a top-three strategic priority. More than half of the execs were dissatisfied with returns on investments in innovation. Although blue-chip CEOs may be spending huge budgets on innovation, should not mean small businesses cannot compete with them. Small businesses can adapt and react quickly, and often don’t get toppled in the deadly process of killing innovation with “no change” attitudes from risk-averse shareholders.
Donald Sheelen, an innovation consultant, has created and managed over $1 billion worth of innovative products. “Innovation is the lifeblood of any organization.” Sheelan emphasizes that “without it, not only is their no growth, but, inevitably, a slow death.”
Only two-thirds of new small businesses survive at least two years, and just 44 percent survive at least four years, according to a study by the U.S. Small Business Association. Here are some innovation principles that every entrepreneurs should consider if they don’t want to be another startup casualty.
Jump the next curve.
Great innovators are not trying to do things ten percent better; they are trying to do it ten times better. Innovation is the act of introducing something new. The power of the web means startups no longer have to build global infrastructure to reach a worldwide market. This allows for companies like Google, eBay, Facebook, and YouTube to scale their businesses unconventionally fast. They have jumped the next curve and invented new curves to jump on. They are reorganizing how society operates in brilliant and novel ways. It is their awareness of what’s upcoming that are allowing these young entrepreneurs to be worth billions.
So how can you start thinking like a great innovator? First off, you must be versed on what are the latest in innovation. The success elite are lifelong learners. Talk to your customer or potential market and ask what they want. Consumer-centric innovation may be the most powerful way to raise a company’s innovation success rate because you are producing exactly what your customer wants.
Get fresh eyes.
Most entrepreneurs never think outside the box because they are trapped under their own self-created glass ceiling. The busy daily grind with stress pollutes their natural creativity. Take the time to re-evaluate your goals with some fresh lens.
Start by switching roles. This is a good way to learn and understand what is out there or in there. If you are the manager, become an employee. If you are the product manager, become the product. Change your perspective. This bit of role playing will allow you to find new innovative ways to look at the same problem, and find a solution that you never thought existed before.
Stuck with a creative block? Try beginning your day with Starbucks in one hand and a pen in the other. Build a daily routine brainstorming new ideas first thing each morning to get your creative mojo going. Before the hectic day starts is when you are most creative and your mind is less cluttered and strained.
Swim in the blue ocean.
In the groundbreaking book, “Blue Ocean Strategy”, authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne say that a major focus should be on creating competitor-free market space. Unlike “red oceans,” which are well-explored and crowded, “blue oceans” represent “opportunity for highly profitable growth.”
For example, take Cirque du Soleil. They took an old circus model, which catered toward middle-class families, and created a phenomena focused entirely on the upper-class, Broadway audience. Cirque du Soleil eliminated the cotton candy and expensive, circus animals. Instead, they rented high-class venues and crafted a themed storyline underlining their astounding acrobats and performers. They were able to reconstruct the market boundaries for an aged circus industry and have sense entertained over 70 million people.
Start looking across time, alternative industries, or complementary products or services. Your goal is to find the customer values of today, then re-evaluate traditional, outdated models and their old values. Are you after a market that is small enough so that larger competitors are not already going after it, and big enough so that if you’re successful, you can reach critical mass and profitability with it? Once you’re on to something, you can start paddling in the open waters.
Think big. Start small.
If you are going to change the world, you cannot do it with boring products or services. In the “Art of the Start”, Guy Kawasaki suggest “your goal is to catalyze passion…the only result that should offend (and scare) you is lack of interest.” He also recommends you not doing it alone. Most successful companies are started and become successful with at least two “soulmates.”
Your positioning and messaging should be simple, elegant and deep. It must be easy enough that your grandma would understand, and intuitive enough for a fifth grader to figure out. If your business model cannot be described in less than ten words, start over until you can.
Move swiftly.
Busyness does not create a business. Don’t spend all your time trying to find the perfect business model and the perfect big idea. Marketing guru, Seth Godin, speaks of it in his book, “The Big Moo: Stop trying to be perfect, and start being remarkable.” Your goal isn’t for perfection initially. It just needs to be attractive to a large group of people.
Most businessmen would suggest that you must understand your market very well, understand your product very well, and then go as fast as you can. Make as many mistakes early on and react quickly. This will be your best way to be able to compete with the business giants.
The revolution of forward-thinking innovators has just started. The race to build creative, innovative companies will be decided who will choose to start and who will finish strong. Perhaps one day after all, more people will be leaving a legacy.
Fail to Succeed
0183 days
“I have not failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison
Failure. Man’s biggest fear and what most try a lifelong journey to avoid. It’s not so much the event, but more so the sting and disgrace when it does happens. But who said temporary pain is always bad, in fact, what doesn’t kill you makes your stronger, or at least, that’s what they say. What most people do not realize is the bittersweet secret of failure may keep them from becoming truly successful. If it were not for failure, we would hardly see great success. Most people are not just lucky enough to get it right the first time.
With success books filling business best-seller lists, very little is ever mentioned about failure. I guess I could understand that failure does not make for glamorous conversational pieces.
With unemployment rates at an all-time high in the past few years, Corporate America is worried for their job. Sometimes it takes a closed door for people to finally get uncomfortable enough to take a chance.
Albert Einstein once said “you cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.” Failure will wake you up to solve new problems by giving you a new level of thinking.
Why People Don’t Succeed
Fear is the strongest emotion of all. Most people will stay in their comfortable job dictated by the fear of failure. They might be sitting on the next big idea, however, their chance of failure, even if it was calculated risk, will keep them from making their dream become any glimpse of reality. The limiting belief of being failure-free not only keeps us from failing, it keeps us from succeeding.
Once we understand that we are totally responsible for our own actions or inactions, we can be motivated to take control. The biggest problem is that most people don’t take the time to define exactly what it is that you want. Fear is perpetuated time again when you’re unsure of what you really want. It’s easy to quit when you were never sure it was for you or not.
Napoleon once said, “he who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”
Stay on Course
One of the greatest myths is that it takes only hard work to be successful. Before you jump out with the sharks, first figure out which pond you want to swim in. Perseverance is important, but bouncing back on the right track is even more important.
Our focus should be set in the right course that suits both our affinity and ability. Someone who is tone-deaf should not strive to be a professional singer no matter how passionate they might seem. Likewise, just because you have a special talent, without passion, you are quick to quit once the first major roadblock happens. Merge these coupling with right timing in the market and opportunity, whether given or created, and you found your sweet spot as an entrepreneur.
Virtually every goal is achievable once you start treating failure as a lesson learned instead of a dead end. Most people will end up quitting when they are just a few yards from the end zone without ever realizing how close they were. The most mentality of the most successful entrepreneurs is not if they will succeed, it is just a matter of how soon it will happen.
Lifelong Learners
Learning is cognitive and experimental. The school of hard knocks will teach you more about business than any business school can. When both are being done simultaneously, peak learning is taken place.
“Nobody strives to be a failure. At the same time, there’s no better education for an entrepreneur than failure,” says Nicholas Hall, serial entrepreneur and founder of Startupfailures.com.
Personal development guru, Anthony Robbins, suggest that the ability to act through personal power is the foundation of success. That is what separates the great from the good. They are able to take action because they have unlimited themselves from the fear of failure and pushed forward boldly and strategically. Robbins teaches the principle of ‘CANI’ (constant and never-ending improvement) for life and business as part of your path to success.
The fear of failure can be overcome by anyone who changes his or her way of thinking. Treating failure as a lesson learned, instead of mistakes to be quickly forgotten, will get you in the right mindset to get started and will be able to make you do things beyond your present ability. Failure is part of success; those who try to avoid failure will avoid success.
I know personally for me, I’ve failed many times over before I was able to get it right. I had the focus and mindset that I was never going to give up until I finally made it. And it was that sort of perseverance was what has made me successful.
Some Pretty Big Failures
Thomas Edison who is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S patents to his name. When he was a boy his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything. When he set out on his own, he tried more than 9,000 experiments before he created the first successful light bulb.
Walter Disney was American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, and animator. Disney started his own business from his home garage and his very first cartoon production went bankrupt. A newspaper editor ridiculed Walt Disney because he had no good ideas in film production during his first press conference. The Walt Disney Company now makes average revenue of $30 billion annually.
Henry Ford’s first two automobile companies failed. That did not stop him from incorporating Ford Motor Company and being the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the production of affordable automobiles in the world. His combination of mass production, high wages and low prices to consumers has initiated a management school known as “Fordism”. He became one of the three most famous and richest men in the world during his time.
Akio Morita, founder of giant electric household products, Sony Corporation, first product was an electric rice cooker, only sold 100 cookers because it burned rice rather than cooking. That didn’t stop him from trying. Today, Sony is generating $66 billion in revenue and ranked as the world’s 6th largest electronic and electrical company.
The Future of Affiliate Marketing
0200 days
by Peter Nguyen
in Personal
Lately, I’ve been getting asked what I feel is the future of where the Internet marketing and affiliate marketing space is headed towards. I realized this back in 2009 when it all hit me one day.
The best way I can simply explain is by splitting the affiliate space into three main components: advertisers (the person who owns the product), affiliates (all the guys who get paid a commission to market the product), and the networks (the middleman who brings the advertiser and affiliate together).
Each one of these three components makes a pretty decent margin with all the revenue they generate. I’ve been fortunate enough to be on all three sides.
The affiliate makes anywhere between 25-50% net margin afterthey get paid their CPA or commissions from the advertiser and subtract the cost of getting the traffic to the advertiser’s site. The network makes their 20-35% margin for being the middleman. And the advertiser makes their 20-40% margin long-term each customer they acquire. Of course, all these margins vary depending on the industry, type of product/service, etc., but you get the point.
Now what if you eliminate the network and went straight to the affiliate? Or even better, what if you already knew the affiliate side and now learned how to properly build your own online offer/campaign? Not only do the margins increase, but more importantly, you can dominate the industry. How so?
Let me give you an example. If most of the affiliates are capped at paying $0.50 per click in order for them to make their margins and still be profitable, then they will try to get as many $0.50 clicks of the same type of traffic. They can’t really go much higher, or else their margins start to dwindle. They don’t have much room.
Now if you’re an advertiser buying your own traffic directly with no affiliates or network, raising t to $0.60 or even $0.70 should be no problem. This will allow you to get more traffic than anyone else and get the larger market share. These direct advertisers will almost always win at the end.
Now we are many years away from that happening, but it’s happening more and more each day. Not only myself, but I know other advertisers who are doing this exact thing. There’s nothing holding them back and they are some of the biggest and most successful people in the Internet marketing space.
I’ve been told that learning to be a super advertiser is the “holy grail” of the affiliate space because you have complete control of your destiny. I’d have to agree.
3 Must-Know Principles to Become A Super Advertiser
3279 days
My “Aha!” moment as an advertiser was learning that EPC is key, not only to understand my side as an advertiser, but the affiliate side, as well. This EPC formula is what affiliates use to find out how much money they will make for every click they send to an advertiser (or the product-owner).
EPC = CPA x CR
(Earnings Per Click) = (Cost Per Acquisition) x (Conversion Rate)
For example, let’s say we are selling a product and for every sale we will pay $10 to an affiliate. An affiliate accepts these terms and sends over 100 clicks, 3 of which lead to the purchasing of our product or service. Since 3 of the 100 clicks converted, we know CR is 3% and the $10 per acquisition is the CPA.
EPC = CPA x CR
EPC = $10 x 3%
EPC = $0.30
So the advertiser would have paid $0.30 for every click sent over. It is important to understand that affiliates will generally look to make a 50% margin, which means in this example the affiliate would be limited to paying for traffic worth $0.15 a click.
It also imperative to understand, as an advertiser, that affiliates are on a quest to find the highest EPC possible. If an advertiser is offering a $0.30 EPC, like in the example above, and another advertiser is offering a $0.50 EPC for the same sort of product, why wouldn’t the affiliate send all of their clicks to the second one?
Many advertisers rely heavily on affiliates for large amount of traffic to their site. This amount has a direct correlation to our ability to have the best EPC within their industry or niche. In fact, your entire emphasis if you want to become a successful advertiser should be these two main things:
1) Getting the highest CPA possible.
2) Getting the highest CR possible.
Think of your CPA as your backend – it’s how much it costs to run your business. And think of your CR as your front end – this is the customer’s experience on your website to want to purchase.
The reason why I am treating both CPA and CR as equal is because when it comes to EPC, they are. It does not matter whether you increase the CPA by 50% or the CR by 50%, either way; they both affect your EPC equally.
For example, let’s say our company has a CPA of $20 and a CR of 2%. Our EPC at this point is $0.40. But what if we wanted an EPC 50% higher than $0.40, which is $0.60? We could either increase our $20 CPA by 50% to $30 or we could increase our 2% CR by 50% to 3%. Those adjustments would affect EPC equally, and to an affiliate they are exactly the same. Below the formulas represent this important concept:
(EPC x 150%) = (CPA x 150%) x CR
(EPC x 150%) = CPA x (CR x 150%)
Now that we understand that CPA and CR have equal effects, what can we learn from this? The first thing I want you to think about is margins. If we have a CPA of $20 and are making $38, then our margin or what we get to keep is $18. If, however, we increase that CPA to $30, then we are not left with much. You could however have the exact same effect by just increasing your CR from 2% to 3%.
Many advertisers make the mistake of not putting enough emphasis on their conversion rate because they just focus on their CPA. But you need to focus your time on the one you can increase most in the same amount of time.
There are really two main things you can do to increase your CPA.
1) Increasing your profit for every order
2) Increasing your margins that you are putting on the market
How can you increase your profit? Well one way is just to increase your price. However in doing this, you might lower your CR. The easier thing to do is lower your costs. You can do this by buying things wholesale, working directly with manufacturers and/or building relationships with partners.
There is also not just product cost, but overhead and overall costs, as well. The guys with the leanest businesses, who have reduced start-up and ongoing costs, will eventually become the winner. They have higher margins and therefore can offer a higher CPA.
Another way to increase profits is through up-selling or cross-selling other products. When your customers are buying two or more products, rather than just one, it helps to increase you’re ATV (Average Transaction Value).
How can you increase your margins? You may have heard a lot of offline business people putting 10% of their revenue into marketing. I’m not saying you can’t do that, but some of the biggest advertisers, direct response or affiliate marketers, are using 20% – 40 % or more of their revenue for marketing.
The Internet can be sometimes a pretty expensive medium to acquire customers. However, the bright side is that you can get a ton of more users through the Internet. Not just from your neighbourhood or general area, but nationally or even worldwide.
But because there is so much exponentially growing traffic, the Internet is a very competitive medium. That means that the ones who are putting out higher margins into acquiring customers are the same ones taking the bigger market share of their online niche.
For example, let’s say your ATV is $30 and you were using 10% of your revenue to attract new customers. This would give you a CPA of $3. Let us also say that you have a CR of 10%, giving you an EPC of $0.30. If you increased your marketing margins to 30%, the result would be an EPC of $0.90. This is a significant jump and will result in you being able to take a much more significant market share. You can’t be too stingy and not put enough of your budget into marketing. A lot of advertisers don’t realize this and are therefore unsuccessful in their campaigns.
Every aspect of your website, from your landing page to your checkout, can help increase that extra 0.1%. This is just as important as increasing your margins or lowering your costs when it comes to increasing your EPC. To illustrate this, research some of your biggest competitors and find some out the best practices that are working for them.
You want to try and level the playing field when you’re first entering a market. I regularly research what my competitors are strong in. If they have an immaculate site, then they will have a high CR. If they don’t, then they likely have a high CPA. In order for you to compete, you have to match them or have similar numbers or outright beat them.
There are hundreds of various traffic sources out there and not all advertisers know all of these sources. Keep in mind that you have to constantly be optimizing your site to increase your CR, because your competition will. You need to study your competitors’ trends or upcoming competition, and see if they are changing. Continue testing to stay on top of your market. Strive to have the highest CR and CPA and ultimately the highest EPC. In the affiliate and Internet space, EPC is king. The one with the highest EPC will have the most traffic and generate the most revenue.
3 Key Factors
Volume (EPC)
I have shown you that having the highest EPC will provide you with a large share of your market. What I want you to ask yourself is how big your market really is. You may have a high EPC but if your market is too niche or specialized and without any volume, you may not get the traffic to generate revenues you want.
Being niche is important, but the biggest money is in tackling the bigger markets with verticals like diet, weight loss, teeth whitening, and business opportunities (i.e. how to make money programs). The fact is that most Americans want to lose weight, have healthier skin and whiter teeth. You want to be somewhere in between to start.
When you cover a broader market it gets you higher volume. If you are too niche or specialized you might not have enough traffic. Keep that in mind as you are analyzing which type of market you want to get into.
Cost (CPA)
If you are going into a market without a direct source from a manufacturer or distributor that your competition may have, then it will be difficult to compete on a CPA basis. Whether you are selling a product or have some type of online service, you must establish necessary contacts. I have a rolodex of importers and exporters, direct manufacturers and business connections that I’ve built over the years. Such connections can come from all over the world and they can help you reduce your costs. Finding cheap ways to start your businesses, phone lines, mailbox, virtual offices, and so forth are all important factors, as well.
Conversion (CR)
When doing competitive analysis, make sure to look at your competitor’s conversion rate. If they have a phenomenal brand and attractive site, then you must ask yourself, can I compete or get a similar conversion rate? You might be able to, but you will need a great designer and programmers to build your brand.
The two best ways to increase your site’s conversion are focusing on these two things: 1) increasing motivation (you should read Robert Cialdini’s Influence to learn the 6 Principles of Persuasion) and 2) removing friction (your site’s usability and addressing all your customers’ major concerns).
I did a 2-hour presentation at Gauher Chaudhry’s (creator of PPC Formula and PPV Formula) underground seminar in Toronto last November, 2010. I am making the seminar available only for a limited time for Direct Response readers. Be sure to check it out here!
My Perfectionism Disorder
01149 days
What most people would love to have to be more goal-oriented, provide better quality output, or have a higher standard in life, I think over the past year, I have nearly perfected the art of perfectionism. My life is so balanced, so routine, that when I deviate anything elsewise, I get disheartened, uneasy, and strive to be even more perfect. I tend to forget to enjoy the moment and the greater things in life as I’m always striving for something more. I need contentment.
After doing much research, I’ve learned the problems of perfectionism and have slowly seen it seep through in all aspects of my life. I will not get close to many people because I don’t want them to see any of my imperfections. I have not only an unrealistic expectation for myself, but it’s downfall is that I do the same unknowingly for other people, as well. Biblically, perfectionist tend to be more like Pharisees. “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:24) We tend to nit-pick on all the small mistakes of ourselves and others, we most of the time miss the bigger picture altogether.
Although I claim to overcome the fear of failure, but I live my life never wanting to never make any small mistake, which in turn, never sets me up for any failure. Perfectionism is paralyzing. At times we perfectionists are aware that we fight a losing battle. We know that our best efforts can never produce our idealistic dreams. “Even if I’m good at this,” we think, “I may not be very good; I may not be the best.”
Afraid of not winning all the battles, we win none of them. Afraid of not being the very best, we fail to achieve our personal best. Unwilling to put up with life’s frequent imperfections, we experience little of life’s just-as-frequent joys.
I have a problem…there…I finally realized I had one to admit it. But I’m not going to sit there and complain, I’m going to do something about it. Perhaps this is me trying to perfect the imperfections of perfectionisms, but I know what I need to do to overcome this. So, today, I am spending the entire week trying to be imperfect. I have made a “Screw up list” to try and make as many mistakes, get out of my everyday norm, and just live life imperfectly…