SFI AFFILIATE TEAM-BUILDING ON STEROIDS!
13th May 2012- I've promised to give away 15 affiliates to 3 members of my team in June.
- I've given away 4 affiliates to 4 member of my team so far in May.
- I've gave away 60 affiliates to 12 members of my team in April.
- I gave away 101 affiliates in December 2011. (A Record!)
Click the banner to join my team...
Affiliate Power Group
Looking Back At The Affiliate Power Group 2008 Summer Competition
The mentors of the Affiliate Power Group (APG) have just started a new Internet marketing competition for their members. I think this must be the fourth competition they have held, and the second one this year. The current competition challenges participants to develop good backlink-building practices and the winners will be those who score most points for performing clearly defined backlink building tasks that improve their search engine rankings.
The first APG competition was held in the summer of 2008. In this article, which I’ve just moved from the old HTML version of this website, I talk about the first year of the Affiliate Power Group and about how I managed to win the competition in 2008.
The APG Is Set Up
Back in February 2008 six Internet marketing experts teamed up to form a mentoring group for struggling Internet marketers.
The mentoring group was originally known as the PPG but eventually developed into the Affiliate Power Group, or APG.
As someone who had who was determined to build a business working from home on the Internet, I was very interested to hear about the APG, although I must admit that I was also a bit sceptical at the outset..!
Anyway, the prelaunch lifetime membership offer was so good that I jumped at it and was one of the first people through the doors when they opened!
The APG Works!
Within a few months of joining the APG and applying their training to my business, I stopped LOSING money online and started MAKING money. Sure, it was small commissions here and there to begin with, but my monthly income has continued to go up while I have avoided wasting my money on stuff that doesn’t work.
It’s all because I have had both expert guidance in what to do and what NOT to do, and have been motivated to put in the work needed to succeed.
The First APG Competition
Six months after their launch, the mentors announced the “APG ‘Summer’ $500 Giveaway Competition” which ran for six weeks from June 1st until July 15th.
The aim of the contest was to see which APG member could make most progress with their business in that time.
We had to provide our Alexa.com ranking at the start and finish of the competiton. Other factors that were measured included:
- Backlinks
- Appearance of website – Changes made, etc.
- Articles Written and published
- Blog Posts
The other thing we had to do was to report our activity each day on the competition thread of the members’ forum.
Forty members entered the competition, so the thread quickly grew as people filed their reports each day.
Halfway through the competition the “Current Top 10″ names were announced and I was pleased to see my name on the list. None of us knew our exact position in the top 10 rankings. They were listed in this order:
- GT Bulmer
- Johnny Paramedic
- Ying
- David Hurley
- Ros Bott
- Tanny Lahah
- Bill Shultz
- Ina Smit
- Jim Suzak
- Matt Helphrey
When the competition closed on 15th July we had to wait a few days while the mentors sorted through the mass of information and boiled it all down to produce the final results, which we received by email.
I was quite sure that my campaign had gone off the boil and that another member had come up through the field to take first place. I expected to see Tanny in second place… But when the results arrived in my inbox and I opened the email I was amazed to see the following:
Drum roll please………
Let’s get right to the point. You want the winners and here we go:
1st prize: $200 or 1 Year Subscription to the APG ($197.00 Value)
DAVID HURLEY!!!!!!
Well done David!!!! This was a very hard choice as there are a lot of deserving people….
2nd Prize: $100 Worth of Site Updates from Suzanne Morrison of your choosing
MATT BELOCK
3rd Prize: 5 Unique Never Distributed Articles by the Jeff Team (Schuman and Casmer)
ALAN THOMAS
4th Prize: 10 SFI Affiliates From Mal Keenan
JOHNNY PARAMEDIC
5th Prize: 7 SFI Affiliates From Jeff Casmer
TANNY LAHAV
Congratulations to EVERYONE!
Wait Just a Minute…….hold on……let me look……oooooooooooooooooooo
MORE WINNERS??? We decided to award even MORE Prizes that were not originally in the Prize List due to such great work by alot of people…..
Who are these extra winners?
JIM SUZAK & INA SMIT
Each of you have won 2 articles written by Cynthia Minnaar. Guess what? She has already pulled your main keywords and will target those when writing these articles for you. They will be unique and you will be the legal owner and copyright holder to these 2 articles per person!
Great job!
OHHHHHHH Stop it PPG! MORE WINNERS!!!! REALLY??
GT BULMER and MATT HELPHREY
You EACH of You have won 3 SFI affiliates each from Mal Keenan!!!!
See folks? We at the APG really do care about your success. We had 5 prizes listed and we gave away 9!!!
All of you did great work on your business these past 2 months and that hard work will be rewarded as we approach the busy season which is fast approaching.
Dont stop working….
Dont stop believing in yourselves
Because the APG believes in YOU!!!
Congratulations to ALL WINNERS and to ALL MEMBERS!
The APG Staff
So how did I succeed in winning the APG competition?
One answer might be “by the skin of my teeth”! It was certainly a close competition as all the competitors mentioned above made a big effort and a lot of progress.
My Strategy…
My strategy was fairly straightforward and based on focus, effort, and support. I prioritized the building of backlinks, posting of articles and blogs, and after that, improving my website.
FOCUS: I was determined to do something every day, even on the days when I was busy with other stuff. I therefore divided jobs between “high input” and “low input”:
HIGH INPUT: Article writing and submitting; writing blog posts; improving website
LOW INPUT: Forum posts, blog comments, stumbling and social bookmarking, Squidoo comments, TrafficSwarm clicking.
SUPPORT: I helped keep myself focused by reading books such as Permission Marketing
I had two days per week which I could dedicate more time to the competition, and on those days I did high input stuff, such as writing articles and blog posts.
I used Submit Your Article to rewrite and distribute articles. Submit Your Article proved to be the jewel in the crown of my campaign.
Once an article was published or a blog post posted I got into the habit of bookmarking it and pinging Blogger.com blog posts.
During the days when I was busy teaching, editing articles for the local newspaper, consulting, and dealing with Japanese-Games-Shop.com orders, I would lower my sights and concentrate on the low input tasks unless I was feeling exceptionally energetic!
With this new-found focus a couple of nice little bonuses came along:
1. I was very impressed with three-times Olympian Ruben Gonzalez‘s presentation on one of the motivational DVD’s I was watching, so I contacted him and ended up cooperating with him on an article promoting his and my website.
2. One of the APG competitors announced that he had won the Evancarmichael.com forum posting competition and that caused me to investigate the forum, which led to my becoming a moderator, and then going on to win the July posting competition!
3. My sales volume increased! Before I joined the APG I had a few people sign up to the free stuff, but virtually no sales. In May I used an APG recommended technique and began to have some success selling affiliate products. Sales continued through June and July, and I also had sales from various other links on my Website and from Squidoo.
It was interesting to see what the other competitors were doing as well. Some people were concentrating a lot on directory submissions. I wanted to answer that attack so I subscribed to Directory Maximizer, but never found the opportunity to use it!
I also wanted to start using another article submission service because at the time of the competition SubmitYourArticle limited subscribers to just 8 articles per month, so I signed up to ArticleMarketer.com and posted a couple of articles… however, because I took out a free subscription everything took a lot longer to process and the articles were not distributed until after the competition had closed! (NOTE: SubmitYourArticle now allows unlimited article submissions per month.)
With less than two weeks remaining, I began to shift the emphasis of my activities towards improving my website.
By now, I was also getting tired, and I noticed that Matt Belock was really starting to produce some good results and that he and some other competitors were making impressive progress up the Alexa rankings.
In response, I drew up a list of nine targets to keep me focused, and then drew a line graph to chart my progress and spur me on.
The nine objectives
1. Publish 10 articles
2. Post 15 blogs
3. Post 30 blog comments
4. Post 50 comments on non-PPG forums
5. Stumble 30 sites
6. Bookmark 15 sites
7. Upload 5 articles to my website
8. Submit site to 75 directories (using directorysubmitter.com)
9. 500 TrafficSwarm clicks
Results
1. 3 articles 
2. 5 blogs 
3. 30 comments 
4. 50 comments
5. 8 sites
6. 0 sites
7. 2 articles
8. 0 directories
9. 500 clicks
As you can see, I fell far short of the optimistic targets, BUT just because I had written down my aims and made a graph meant that some nights I would stay up an extra hour just to get one or other of the lines on my graph moving up towards some of the targets!!
However, by the end I felt that Matt, Tanny and some of the others would be ahead. In fact, I was not even sure that I would still be in the top 10!
So, when I saw the result, with my name in the no. 1 spot, I was both delighted and, just for a while, speechless!
The competition has been a great experience for everybody who stayed involved. It gave us a good idea of what is needed to succeed on the Internet, and it also improved our ability to go out and do it.
Without the APG, I for one would not have made half as much progress in 2008 as I have. But I am also aware that there is still a lot of work to be done and progress to be made.
Happily, though, because I am a lifetime member of the APG I have six top-class mentors and a great bunch of dedicated fellow marketers to guide me through to success.
David Hurley
P. S. If you are starting out online and you want to find a reliable way to succeed within a modest budget and are looking for reliable guidance from a team of Internet Marketing experts who really have your interests at heart, then I suggest that you take a look at what the Affiliate Power Group is offering – you can try it out for $1 for 10 days to see if it is as good as I say it is.
Why Internet Marketing Coaching Makes Sense If You Are Determined To Achieve Internet Business Mastery in 2011
Happy New Year everybody!
Have you written down your New Year’s Resolutions for 2011 yet?
Have you drawn up an Internet business plan for the coming year?
If not, now is the time to think about what you want to achieve as an Internet entrepreneur in 2011.
If you did not achieve Internet business mastery in 2010 and are determined to succeed as an Internet entrepreneur in 2011, then you should think seriously about finding a professional Internet marketing coach to help you achieve your goals.
I have written elsewhere about how Internet marketing coaching helped me to set up and run a successful Internet business. Having someone look over your shoulder either literally or virtually can be extremely effective. If you are a frustrated Internet marketer, then why not resolve to turn the situation around in 2011 with a virtual coach, just as I did at the beginning of 2008.
In the New Year of 2008 I joined a new Internet marketing coaching service called the Affiliate Power Group, and one of my Internet business coaches is Suzanne Morrison.
In today’s guest blog post, Suzanne talks about what an online coaching service can offer clients.
Over to you, Suzanne.
Internet Markting Coaching
by Suzanne Morrison
Professional coaching can apply to a great many situations. This can include sports, academics, or business related manners.
In this discussion we will assume you may be interested in receiving professional Internet marketing coaching to help you to become more successful in your online business. There are many qualified professional coaches who work with clients on a one-to-one basis.
While it is certainly possible to receive professional coaching face-to-face, you may want to consider finding a virtual coach. A virtual coach is someone who will mentor you through a variety of Internet-related media including private forums, email and videoconferencing.
A lot of virtual coaches also offer standardized training methods such as video courses, ebooks and so forth, in addition to one-to-one support by private message on a coaching forum, or by email.
Many people have received excellent additional training and support by emailing questions to their virtual coach. The coach then responds and the interchange continues until the information has been clarified.
Another good way to receive a more intensive form of online support is through videoconferences. A videoconference gives the student an opportunity to “meet” the coach online through a video link.
The student and the coach can see each other and exchange information on a real time basis. This provides a sense of immediacy and can be much more effective than simply sending email messages and waiting for a reply.
However, keep in mind that this type of professional coaching can be much more expensive since the coach needs to be available at a given period of time which has been established between the student and coach. At the same the kind of support and effectiveness is outstanding and the student can receive instant input and feedback.
There are many ways to find a professional virtual coach. Again if we focus on Internet marketing coaching, you can find many qualified candidates through an Internet search.
They can be listed at sites like guru.com or elance.com. However, it is important to emphasize that you study and evaluate the services of these professional coaches very carefully.
You should ask the coach for referrals/recommendations. While they will tend to provide you only with glowing reviews, you may get a sense of their coaching style and effectiveness with a variety of students.
Using the services and support of a good Internet marketing coach can greatly improve your effectiveness as an online marketer and help you to build a successful online business.
Suzanne Morrison is on the staff of the Affiliate Power Group where they help people learn affiliate marketing. Check out their affiliate marketing coaching if you need help making money as an affiliate marketer. It offers help on doing affiliate marketing the right way to make money online.
Review Of The Affiliate Power Group By A Lifetime Member
The Affiliate Power Group is an online coaching group aimed at both newbies who want to start making money online and more experienced website owners who need help getting more traffic and sales.
If you are considering joining the Affiliate Power Group you probably want to find out more about it before signing up. As a lifetime member of the Affiliate Power Group, with 3 years' membership under my belt already, I can give you some insight into what you'll get for your money and whether or not it is right for you.
What do Members of the Affiliate Power Group Receive?
Read the rest of this entry »
How An Affiliate Marketing Blog Helps You Promote Affiliate Programs
In today's article Suzanne talks about how an affiliate marketing blog will help you to promote your affiliate programs.
If you want to make money promoting affiliate programs on the Internet, a good way to do it is to set up an affiliate marketing blog. Here is how I suggest you do it...
Read the rest of this entry »
New 2012 Edition!
Click the book cover to get your FREE COPY & start receiving my free traffic tips newsletter..
