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Here's my video newsletter for June 2009:

1. I'm still banned from YouTube... and have send them some e-mails, filled out their online form, sent them a tweet and send a snail mail letter... any other ideas?

2. The AM2 Platinum retreat was awesome but I only joined for the networking. Make some products first, build a list, start making money, then go to physical seminars, and THEN join a club like AM2, in that order.

3. Add Contact (PHP form mail with your physical address listed on the page) and Privacy (use a legal form generator) pages in small text at the bottom of your pages to improve your Google quality score if you do any pay-per-click.

4. You really need to switch to Gmail if you're bogged down with e-mail management.  Heck, forward your existing mail to Gmail and try it out.  The secret is using the Archive function.  Read a message and archive or delete... or reply to a message and archive.  But don't let your inbox contain more than 30 messages at one time.

The big question to cap it all off: My next product is going to be huge, different than anything else I have put out before, higher priced than anything else I have put out before.  What do you think it is?  Comment with your guess below.  Leave me 10 comments and I'll drop the next hint on you.

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Hey guys, I'm finally back from the Action Seminar which I co-hosted with Mary Wilhite and Jason Fladlien. It's been a long week. After hosting that event in Dallas for two days I hopped on a plane directly to Chicago for three days at the AM2 Platinum retreat.

I'm not allowed to talk about AM2 (non-disclosure agreement) and filling you with a bunch of takeaways from the Action Seminar wouldn't help you as much as a single point, so here it is. It's something Dale Maxwell, one of our students, put into words better than I could:

Don't ask ten cent questions! Ask $100 or $1000 questions.

If you can find the answer in a Google search, you shouldn't ask it.  I'll still answer if you ask it, but it's a way better use of your time and my time if you ask me the tough questions.  ("What's a blog?" is not a tough question.)

The first day of the Action Seminar was pretty fun... Jason and I both spoke twice, Mary Wilhite spoke, Marc Harty and Jeanette Cates spoke.

The second day was an all-day mastermind session. It was pretty cool when Jason dictated copy to David Burch (one of our old students). At one point we created a free report, squeeze page, and thank you page for Roderick Martin -- including a Flip video of him thanking people for opting in and asking to call his phone number for a free consultation.

Yes, we even uploaded that Flip video to YouTube right in front of everyone and watermarked it. It was pretty cool.

But the rest of the crowd didn't have anything specific to ask. They'd spend 5 to 10 minutes explaining every little detail of their business, and then ask, "What now?" Which was annoying, especially when Jason and I are internet marketers.

We spoke about product creation, time management, passion marketing, video creation, and e-mail marketing so why ask something completely unrelated to those things? I'd rather people asked questions in areas where we were experts so we didn't have to guess. I'm good (probably one of the best) at fast infoproduct creation, fast PHP programming, fast copywriting.

But offline marketing?  I won't touch it.  Nothing wrong with that... it's just not my area of expertise.

Anyway, that's me catching up. Do you ask ten cent questions or thousand dollar questions? Comment below and hit the submit button within the next 5 minutes.

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Hey guys, I'm back from AM 2.0 in Dallas and I'm still getting caught up on customer support issues.

I talked to Ryan Deiss the first day (I saw him speak in Dallas last year but I never got a chance to say hi).  He said, "How business?"  I said great, that I just had my first $30K month in February and that I quit my day job of three years (first and only job out of college) to attend the event.

Later that night, Armand Morin was talking to a group of people so on my way out to dinner, I fist-bumped him (my standard greeting) and he said: "Robert, double your prices.  You'll double your income instantly."  Basically, if you wanted to buy all of Armand's products it would cost you $15K.  To buy all my stuff (not including webinars), probably about $1K.  He gave the same advice to the rest of the group the following morning.

You got it, Armand.  The first product I'm doing that with is Action PopUp.  The price was $27 for the last several months, it's now $37 and it will be $47 before the end of this month once I wrap-up my new popup training course that'll go along with it.

1. This weekend was one of the best events I've ever attended.  Armand mentioned Action PopUp onstage and Ray Edwards mentioned WordPress Letter to a bunch of people.  I didn't get to meet Michel Fortin... maybe next time!

2. My goal was to have 10 webinars scheduled by the end, I left with 5.  I'm still happy.

3. March 2009 was my SECOND consecutive $30K month (actually it was slightly over $32,000).  February's goal was $30K, March goal was $31K, so now my goal for April is $32K.

4. I launched Enhanced Sales Letters and WordPress Letter just before leaving.  The night I left for the airport, I cleaned out my PayPal account and came back to an $11,000 balance.  Not bad for my first week of full-time self-employment.

5. I joined AM 2.0 Gold, the $500/month program that gets you into these seminars.  My goal is to upgrade to AM 2.0 Platinum within 10 days.  All you need to do is prove you made $100K last year (done -- in fact I've made about $80K just in 2009), and complete a 100-point checklist that all "professional" web sites satisfy.  I knocked out 58 of those 100 points in about 20 minutes this morning.

6. Armand showed a super-secret AdWords technique that my business partner is already implementing.  At the bar, DJ Dave Bernstein shared six networking strategies that made the whole trip worthwhile.  The following night I used just ONE of those techniques to pay $46 for $120 of alcohol.  Good stuff.

Bottom line: Go to seminars, know what you want out of a seminar before you go, actually make mistakes and use the stuff you learn, and most importantly... hang out at the bar every night even if you don't drink.  You'll make some connections and have a heck of a lot more fun sitting at the computer in your hotel room.

What networking events are you attending this year?

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Hey guys, I'm still at AM 2.0 in Dallas.  It turns out Michel Fortin and Stu McLaren didn't make it.  But I did get to meet Armand Morin, Ray Edwards, Ryan Deiss, and a chunk-load of other people.

Last night we did a networking event, everyone in the room rotates and you get to spend a few minutes explaining yourself, what your biggest problem is, and what you get out of the seminar.

Hardly anyone shared their numbers which sucks.  I want to know how much your last product launch was even if it only make $100 or how much you made last month online even if it was only $50.

It's all 80/20 rule... 80% of the stuff in your business usually is a waste.  But if we're listening to you explain your business we don't know what 20% is making you the most money... if you don't share numbers!

I shared a couple of income numbers during the session but since no one else was doing it, it felt like bragging, so I stopped.

If you're at these seminars and you haven't make any money online, freaking tell us that too so the people you talk to can get you on track.  Share income numbers if you're trying to get advice, because that's the most important thing.

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I'm back from my trip from Affiliate Incubator 2008 Dallas.

I learned a lot, and here's my tip for attending seminars: Take whatever notes you write down and turn it into a PDF report, that you NEVER show anyone else.

Not only does it train you to keep pumping out 5 to 10 page reports, the information becomes a part of you because you retyped it and revised it.

If I had a clone who wasn't able to attend the seminar, I could just hand this document over to him and he would have all the info without having to attend.

I'm a pretty rare note-taker.  If you're a smart enough businessperson you know that 99% of what's being said doesn't apply to your business, but I still wrote about 10 pages of notes.

I took the best of Perry Belcher's AdWords tips, Ryan Deiss' continuity management, Mr. X's time management secrets, Frank Sousa's traffic tips, Russell Brunson's "moving the free line" and article marketing stuff, and Anik Singal's affiliate marketing techniques... plus some stuff I learned from chatting at meals and made it into an 8 page report.

To be honest, I walked out of all the other presentations to avoid information overload.  There's only so much information you can absorb over a weekend, and with seminars I always avoid the newbie oriented stuff.

Now I've torn most of the pages out of my physical notebook and I have stuff to do for the next 30 days to keep me busy.

To be honest, looking back over my report, I'm going to ignore about half of the tips on there because I know I just won' t have time for them.

Knowing what NOT to change on is even more important than knowing what to change in your business.

Anyway, my friend Jason Fladlien wrote up a quick report of his own about the 8 mistakes he saw being made at these seminars.

Some of these are truly classic, like the SEO guy and the "60 Second Rule."  If you can't make a decision about something, give yourself exactly 60 seconds to decide.... even if it's the wrong choice.

P.S. No, I didn't get to meet Russell, but I did meet Stu McLaren, Joel Christopher, Big Jason Henderson, Blake Milton, Bobby Walker, and more.  It was great to see Eric Louviere again, and Marc Harty talking about mini-days.

P.P.S. I'm also on an article writing frenzy, setting aside one hour per day to write 7 articles... before I come off this seminar high.

Today's Question: What's your best post-seminar productivity tip?  How do you get back on track, and maintain that seminar high?

I need my ten comments... if I don't get them, I'm never attending another seminar ever again.

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The other day we went over some stuff you can do to promote products as an affiliate, but what can you do to get others to promote YOUR affiliate products?

As of this writing, I sell 48 different products from one Clickbank account. Affiliates only account for about $1,000 per month of my income, but hey that's a free $12,000 per year on top of everything else so it's definitely worthwhile.

I'm sure the seminar will have some kind of non-disclosure agreement, so I don't want anyone to think I'm passing on something from the seminar... which I haven't attended yet. Let's get my affiliate MANAGING tips out in the open right now.

Affiliate Management Tactic #1: Offer High Commission or Recurring Commission

I joined Amazon.com's affiliate program, the first BIG affiliate program on the net, in 2000. They offered 15% commission on DIRECT sales (if you linked right to that product) or 5% on SIDETRACKED sales (you link to that product and the person buys something else on Amazon.com).

Screw that. If you are running a pay per click ad campaign, the sales letter you're promoting converts at 1%, the product costs $30, and you get 50% commission, your maximum bid would have to be 15 cents just to break even. 10 cents per click if you even want 50% profit.

Likewise, if that same vendor offered 75% commission, you could bid up to 22 cents per click. If they offered a $297 upsell, and 10% of buyers took the upsell, that brings the "average" product price up to $56.70 and means you can bid up to 42 cents per click.

Introduce backends: upsells or one-time-offers, thank you page offers, recurring commissions, anything to give your affiliates more money... and they'll be able to afford sending the serious pay-per-click and targeted traffic your way, instead of the usual "setup a blog and post to forum" half-assed effort.

Give free access to the product after a certain number of sales. Incentives for the top affiliates... plasma TVs and MacBook Airs... but only if it's a big launch. Russell Brunson gave an H3 Hummer to his top affiliate once! Show affiliate leaderboards to get people clawing for the top spot.

Affiliate Management Tactic #2: Provide Banners and Solo Ads for Affiliates

When I give affiliates something to promote, I create a page for them where they can fill in their ID and it shows them their affiliate link and a solo ad branded with their ID. I do this using JV Plus.

A solo ad is simply a quick e-mail your affiliate can cut and paste to send to his list. It doesn't have to be long, just 250 words. Find the best bullet points or the biggest benefit/takeaway and write a SHORT article about it. Tell affiliates they can post it on their blog, submit it as an article, send it as an e-mail, do whatever they want with it.

468x60 sized banner ads are also popular but for me (not being a graphics-oriented guy), the solo ad is most important.

Affiliate Management Tactic #3: Remove Distracting Links

Remove opt-in forms, squeeze pages, offsite links from pages affiliates will send traffic to. I just had this argument with Ben Prater about an opt-in form he had on a sales letter I was promoting as an affiliate.

If I'm sending affiliate traffic to someone else's site... it's not leading to a sale... and it's building someone else's list without giving me credit, I'm GIVING away subscribers. Your list is your baby... your affiliates value their own lists as well.

What's your TOP TIP for getting affiliates to promote your products? Give me ten comments, below and I'll increase the affiliate payout on ALL my products across the board from 50 percent to 60 percent.

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I'm attending the Affiliate Incubator seminar next week (Sept. 25th - 27th 2008) in Dallas, Texas. I'll probably learn lots of things about promoting stuff as an affiliate.

Affiliate marketing is pretty cool, you don't need to worry about product creation or customer support, you just send traffic to the vendor's page and then get your commission.

My own products sell the best to my list ($2000 to $4000 launches all the time) but I have been known to send $500 e-mails on a regular basis. Recently, I promoted the legendary Ben Prater's "iPhone Secrets Exposed" package.

That landed me 8 sales on a $397 product with 50% commission. You do the math... that's 1500 bucks from a couple of e-mails, probably 20 minutes of work writing the follow-ups. Those e-mails were so good that Ben incorporated them into his sales letter.

Let me empty out my brain with what I know about affiliate marketing already...

Affiliate Tactic #1: Have a List Already

It's simple, you can't expect any big profits unless you have a list of leads you've built yourself and more importantly, qualified buyers. Write up a quick 10 to 20 page report, record at least 20 minutes of videos and price it at $7 to get lots of buyers. Make sure to capture an e-mail address after the sale.

If you can get just 100 people to buy that $7 report, you can safely assume you'll score one affiliate sale... if you promote a complementary product to that list.

Affiliate Tactic #2: Think of Something They Didn't Think Of

I learned this one watching Todd Gross promote affiliate products. He promoted a product called "Floating Action Button" ... it's just what it sounds like, shows a hovering box that moves as you scroll. My Action PopUp script does the same thing.

Instead of giving people the usual sales pitch about popups, he showed how cool it was to place a YouTube video on the floating button, giving your sales pitch in the corner WHILE they read your sales page, and you urging them to click the order button.

All I see Big Jason Henderson do when he promotes affiliate products... records a video of himself (either screen capture or talking head) going over the benefits, then he watermarks his affiliate link to the bottom of the video and blasts that video out to YouTube, Revver, Vimeo, all the video sites.

When I promoted "iPhone Secrets Exposed" I just thought of what Ben left out of his sales letter...

E-Mail #1: You should be in a SPECIFIC profression... i.e. iPhone programmer instead of a regular programmer. No URL yet, just warming them up.

E-Mail #2: Code iPhone apps to get a recurring income on subscription fees... I just looked at Ben's bullet points and asked myself, "WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME when I create an iPhone application?"

E-Mail #3: Are iPhones an untapped resource? What would you do if you invented YouTube, MySpace, before anyone else. If you don't code an iPhone app is it like letting the next Facebook pass you by.

E-Mail #4: Statistics to blow them away. There are this many iPhone users, this much profit from the AppStore, this many applications (low competition).

That's it. I could have fired that off as one e-mail but I spaced it out into several.

This tip goes without saying: Don't promote the same launches as everyone else and don't use the samea cut-n-paste affiliate messages as everyone else.

Affiliate Tactic #3: Proper Redirects

Don't promote your naked affiliate link. Get a simple script to send traffic from a link like http://www.robertplank.com/recommends/some-affiliate-program so it's not totally obvious you're using an affiliate link.

Actually what I really prefer is, I register a .com domain and use that as a redirect. It's only 8 bucks, and I've got some really good ones. For example, Jason Fladlien's 7 Minute Article product is on a domain name called "InstantContentCreation.com" ... but I grabbed up 7MinuteArticles.com and redirected it to my affiliate URL.

I'm sure Affiliate Incubator will have a lot of newbie-oriented info like, promote recurring products... how to calculate the Clickbank refund rate or statistically decide if a product is worth promoting... how to make a squeeze page and a viral report. How to add your own crazy bonuses "Gary Ambrose" style.

But if I can find out just one thing I don't know, the trip will be worthwhile (just like everything).

What's your FAVORITE affiliate marketing tactic? I mean marketing AS an affiliate, not MANAGING affiliates... we'll get to that later.

I need ten comments on this post... add yours below... or I might stop creating products for good, and only promote affiliate offers.