Nerd Wealth

I’m starting pretty small since I have absolutely no idea what type of response rate to expect. I believe I’m getting 280,000 print impressions for $618 (if they accept all my bids) and 195,000 radio impressions for $438.

I went after smaller markets on both just to keep costs down. I have separate response methods for print/radio so I should get a little performance gauge that way but other than that I’m not doing too much fancy tracking. I just want to see what the ROI is like on this first $1000 to determine how aggressively I want to go after this.

Update #1: Got my first publisher response on the print, rejected my offer for being too low. My offer was $134 (right around google’s suggested offer line) and they wrote back asking for $212. I decided to pay it because it was the biggest paper I’m targetting in this initial test. Also FYI Radio ads are running 5/10 to 5/21 and print are running 5/19 through 5/23 in different markets.

If you run a Google Television ad with a weekly budget of $2000 for 4 weeks, they will give you a credit for up to $2000 that you spent producing the ad.

Yes, that still requires you to spend gobs of money, but if you’re going to do it a free $2000 is pretty nice of them.

Details Here

I really mean to keep up with this thing, honest. Here’s a summary of the projects that have been keeping me too busy to post:

Catching Up from Vegas
LeadsCon + Extra Stay was like 6 days, had a whole ton of voicemails & emails & blahblah to catch up on.

PPC Arb Project:
I really am not that active in PPC and kind of hate it so this has been coming along slowly. I have a niche ppc sponsor that is doing great on the meager organic traffic I have to one of my sites. Yesterday’s stats on one page, for example: 2 pageviews, 2 clicks, $2.27 earnings. I set up my tracking and started doing some keyword gen, but it’s obvious I need to put a lot more effort into boosting my quality score. It also appears traffic is lower on some of the keyphrases I’m targeting than I thought (based on past organic rankings for the same phrases). I really only spent one night (8pm-5am) on getting this whole thing set up, so hopefully a few tweaks and I’ll be in business.

Lead Arb Project:
I’ve been excited about this for awhile but it’s been slow to come to fruition. My developer on this got caught up on something else and is now on vacation but managed to heroically get it done for me before he left. I just need to set up another front end site for it and turn the traffic on, but haven’t gotten to it yet due to some other disruptions, namely:

Super Sore Throat:
This came on Monday night and hasn’t gone away yet. I barely ever get sick and usually get over it in 1-2 days so this is really starting to frustrate me. Went to the doc on Thursday he told me to keep taking mucinex and suck it up so bleh. This came on right as I was staying up late working on:

Super Lame Contract Renegotiation:
I have a development/marketing client that I’ve had for a number of years. I am on the tail end of a 2 year contract with them that’s worth ~50k/yr. It’s a nice account and I love the people but I’ve really outgrown it. My 5% revenue share isn’t really motivational enough since I get 33-100% on the rest of my projects. They really want me to stay involved though and I don’t really want to throw the whole thing away so we’re trying to rework the deal so that I just do consulting and manage the BPO but am not personally responsible for any labor/deliverables. It’s kind of awkward because I think they’re expecting my compensation to come down with lesser duties but it’s not worth me taking it on for anything less because of how much money I can make if that time is spent on my own projects.

Since sore throat was able to postpone super lame contract renegotiation, my ADD kicked in and I started on another project. For lack of a better name, I give you Expensive Mixed-Media Campaign of Likely Fail:

I’ve been dying to play with Google Radio/Print and also AdReady, so I’m taking an offer I picked up in Vegas and giving it a whirl. I plan on doing an in-depth case study on this for you guys, so I’m not going to get into it too much now. I’m not actually pessimistic about it, but I have 0 experience with radio, none with display ads, and almost none with print. It’s sure to be a summer blockbuster extravaganza of trial & error.

In other news I am also trying to hire local developers (as posted below), build up my IRL business (starting to feel need for safety blanket), and working on a new site / marketing plan for an Autism charity a friend of mine is starting. OH OH OH Also working on a new business plan for a real business in the insurance industry that is super exciting and will probably make more money than anything else I’ve ever done. I’ll let you guys know about that when it’s up.

If you own a thinkpad and it ever fails to boot and simply shows a frightening black screen that says “Fan Error” on the upper left, never fear, rmk has a fix for you.

1. Power Down Laptop (I think this happens automatically)
2. Lift laptop up with right hand, keeping screen open
3. Find Fan (Back Left Corner, you can see the copper fins inside the vents
4. Strike laptop case near vents several times with heel of left hand
5. Power Laptop back up, it should work

This has worked for me 3 times in a row. If it ever fails I plan on using compressed air aimed into those vents.

I’ve only done this a couple times before and have always ended up regretting it, but I think I’m going to start hunting for some local staff. I’ve got awesome contractors I work with on my internet marketing projects and outsource-worthy web development contracts, but I always end up with the smallest, most tedious stuff landing on my desk. I find it so hard to do programming or site updates for $xx/hr when I’m concocting plans to make $x,xxx,xxx/yr that I end up just procrastinating on both.

I like the local service business because it’s reliable and people actually pay their bills in a timely manner (I’m so sick of NET30 I could yell bad bad words at the wall). It’s also refreshing to work on short term, definitively-solvable problems that cause people to say “thank you” when you’re finished. Those of you that have seen multiple internet projects through their entire lifecycles (including gruesome deaths) will also understand that it can sometimes be gratifying to point to something physical and say “that’s what I built.”

There is a local campus of Miami University right by my office, so I’m going to make some fliers and post them there and in the local coffeeshops. I hope that will do the trick, since the last set of contacts I got through a craigslist ad didn’t net me anyone within 45 miles of my office. Wish me luck.

Wellpoint, a big health insurance company (I believe the own Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield among others), had 128,000 records pulled from a data source that had been been publicly accessible for 12 months. From the sound of it, it was the company’s full records on customers, including ssn, medical information, prescription drug information, etc. I wonder if the lack of security was a HIPAA violation. It will be interesting if irresponsible data practices start costing companies more than just negative PR.

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NerdWealth.com is proud to announce the opening of our new forum. I have asked some of my closest friends in internet marketing to join up and create a thriving community to exchange ideas and help each member continually step their game up.

To make sure the forum stays serious, I am charging $19.95/month for membership. If you want to see what you’ll get for the money, check out the recent posts I list on the blog (hopefully I’ll do a good job keeping these updated) and feel free to take a peak at the forum listings. The monthly fee is billed through paypal and you can cancel any time.

To join, simply register, then manage paid subscriptions. After completing the paypal transaction, be sure to click the “Return to Merchant” button. Once you’re back on NerdWealth, give paypal a minute to post your subscription to the forum and you’ll be ready to rock. If you pay by eCheck, your membership will not be activated until the payment clears. If you have any issues with the process, shoot me an email to rmk at this domain.

See you on the forums!

I just got back last night from Las Vegas. I went out last Tuesday for LeadsCon and then stayed out for the weekend to go to a couple of parties (including Hugh Hefner’s Birthday @ Playboy/Moon… wow what an overcrowded nightmare).

The convention was absolutely the best I’d ever been to. There were several hundred attendees, but the expo was only a very small part of it (30 exhibitors I think), so no one really brought out affiliate managers or booth babes… nearly everyone I met was a VP/Director/CEO.

It kicked off Wednesday afternoon with a panel on lead quality, which I really enjoyed. I don’t deal in Mortgage, Auto, or Education leads, which are the largest and most mature markets, so learning about lead scoring, predictive modeling, and tracking used (and hoping to be soon implemented) in those verticals seemed like taking a peek into the future of my verticals.

The next session was a “competition” where 7 companies had 7 minutes to present their new business or product, then an award was given to the most innovative. The winner was SocialMedia but my hands-down favorite was AdReady. AdReady lets advertisers create their own creatives online using a slick web interface (and building off of existing templates that are presented to you along with existing CTR & performance data). It then communicates with several ad networks to get your campaigns all set up for you. You can see all of this technology without even signing up, so go check it out.

After those two sessions was the expo/happy hour. I was able to meet a few more cash advance lead buyers (which I was looking for) and some list managers (which I also need). After the expo I went to dinner with Peter Vogel of Memolink/CPA Storm, Scott Rewick of LSF Publishing, Matt & Lauren of Clash Media, and Jon of Pontiflex. The food (bone in filet @ 9 steakhouse) was incredible and Peter, our gracious host, selected some great wines. Everyone I met was awesome and we had a lot of fun at Ghostbar afterwards.

Thursday I managed to get to the show in time for the first 9am session and stayed for all but the last one and expo (ran out of gas and had to go get a nap). I learned a ton at the sessions and particularly enjoyed the panels on incentivized leads and live transfer leads.

The party Thursday night was at LAX, sponsored by Oversee.net. We had the entire top floor and a bottomless supply of gray goose, veuve clicquot, and don julio tequila.

Friday we had a couple more sessions with the show wrapping up around noon.

I was able to find contacts for nearly everything I went looking for and took 14 pages of notes & ideas during the panels (I think that’s more than I took in a typical semester of college). I can’t wait to go to the next one.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that lots of the CPA networks all use the same software (that I’m really not a big fan of). While reading some blogs today I stumbled across a PHP Class written to log in to all these networks and gather your stats for you. You can find it here.

I’m not really a big fan of Las Vegas, but I can’t seem to get away from there lately.

At the end of last month, I went out to Affiliate Summit West with my friends from Incentive Dollars. We were only around for one day of the show, but since it was small and we had Expo Only passes, we didn’t miss out on anything. Nothing remarkable transpired, though I got got meet a few people I’d been dealing with for awhile (quite randomly, too) and lined up a potential buyer for a database I might sell.

I used to think there wasn’t much point in going to these conventions. We all know how easy it is to do business over aim/email and everyone is pretty comfortable working with people they’ve never met nowadays. Ad:Tech NYC back in November was the first one I went to, and I was amazed how quickly you can get things done in person. About 30 minutes into the show we stopped at a both of a company I was dealing with and I walked away 15 minutes later making an extra $300/day. I was also quite happy to find out how much more forthcoming people are when it comes to discussing ideas and trends when you’re face to face.

I am really excited about LeadsCon. I’ve been working in the insurance & finance lead space for a few years, and it’s been undergoing a lot of changes lately. The program looks fascinating and I’m sure I’ll learn a lot. It’s also exciting to know that I will have some overlap with probably every exhibitor there.