John Hasson

Day 1 started out with me talking about PPC engines for an hour.  Lots of people were there and there were some really good questions asked.  I had a blast speaking on PPC.  Then I went to the meet market and walked around doing the “networking thing.”

I ran into a bunch of friends while there.  Lots of good times.

Ian Fernando put together a great networking event that about 20 or so of us attended just before the Share A Sale party.  John Chow was there filming everything.  Not sure if everyone there wants their name mentioned so I’ll leave it at that.  (Was a blast)

The Share-A-Sale party was pretty good, although the consensus was that their party in Vegas was a lot better.  It could be that the boat was so much bigger or that it was kind of rainy and wet.  All in all lots of fun meeting new and old friends.  I even found a bunch of people right in my backyard (Salt Lake City) that I’ll probably be talking to later this week.

Day 2 – The morning was spend in the exhibit hall doing more of the same.  I got a cool skate board but then lost it somewhere   I’ll try to go and pick one up later if they have any left.  I am here now in the Anatomy of a Great Affiliate Program learning from Ian and a few other people.  (Mostly I am here to see what Ian will do )

So if you are looking for me, that is where I am.

Tags: Affiliate Summit 2008 by John Hasson
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I like looking @ data.  If you read this then this may interest you.  All over the internet, you will see the reports of Click Through Rates per ad position: #1 is twice as much as #2 and so on.  I figured I’d to a quick SQL query of my data and see where I stood.  Here you see the CTR for Yahoo and MSN #1’s are 4% and 3.5% (I guess I fail at google ).  The numbers speak for themselves. I included the impressions so you would get an idea of the statistical accuracy (more impressions = more accurate)

WTF is up with Google you may ask? The past few months I have pretty much ignored google and have been focusing on everyone but them.  (Yahoo, MSN, and bunches of other 2nd tier networks — I would like to say that this was mostly so I would be better prepared for my speaking topic (PPC engines that work) at Affiliate Summit East — and that is partially true, but really I just haven’t been working Google over much.  Apparently I need to get on the ball.  Don’t worry though,  Amit will be giving a great presentation on working Google so that topic is going to be covered.

Some interesting things about this data.  Some of the really low ranks have a higher CTR then you would think. (See position 25 and 30 on yahoo)  Yahoo seems to give you a higher CTR them MSN in general.  But to be fair I don’t have the exact same ads in all three ad networks.

CTR Data For A Few Months

Tags: Affiliate Summit 2008, PPC, Pay Per Click by John Hasson
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I started using twitter at Affiliate Summit West 2008. But I didn’t really start using it till after that. I used it via SMS for a while (imagine having your cell beep every 3 minutes with a twitter update…). Then I moved to just web. Finally I got it to work via IM (the gtalk wouldn’t work with my google for domains account, but it did work with the fresh jabber account I made for it)..

So.. when I use twitter now, it is pretty slick. It more or less is like a chatroom for me. If I see someone I know talking to someone I don’t know I can follow them right from IM w/o even going to twitter’s site.

And somehow I have it setup so when I log out of IM it sends new messages via SMS, and when I log back in it turns SMS off automatically. (Maybe it just does that automatically )

So.. thats how I use twitter. I usually have it on, so a @johnhasson twitter will usually get my attention pretty quickly.

Tags: Advice, Affiliate Summit 2008, Twitter by John Hasson
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My thoughts on Jason’s thing, all the other things and the PPC Ask an Expert session I hosted.

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Summit 2008, PPC, Pay Per Click by John Hasson
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GeoTarget Domains..
CityNameAuto.com (for example)

Check the latin market

Tags: Affiliate Summit 2008 by John Hasson
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Notes From Keynote:
-KeyNote (unimpressive speaker, but I found one good ides from it)
How to do well
1) Find Spammy Site
2) Make a non-spammy version

When asked about what kind of affiliate marketing he doesn’t think is spam. He said:
I like ads to be labeled ads, and said in the same breath “I don’t know alot about your industry.” (when talking about affiliate summit) If he doesn’t know much about the industry, why is he telling us we are garbage?

Hey! I won $100

Tags: Affiliate Summit 2008 by John Hasson
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Wow, quite a day. Spent several hours at the Meet Market (where you stop by everyone’s desk to say hi and get to know people)–this is different from the booths and so on that all the exhibitors will have tomorrow. I met a ton of people there, traded cards with everyone. I had a few meetings already scheduled through contacts I made with the affiliate summit confab networking thingy.

The ShareASale party was a blast. I meet a lot of the “famous” guys in the industry. I’ll post daily pics for a while when I can. But right now, I am finally tired, and am going to crash.

Today was essentially running around saying hi to people I don’t know and finding out what they do and just trying to be a nice guy. It was the first time I have ever had to go and network at an event. Usually in the past I was just the tech guy and others were the networkers. It was a first for me and I completely enjoyed it.

My guide to networking (at a networking event–this won’t work at, say the movies):
1) Find someone who isn’t talking to someone else (they will usually be standing around looking– sometimes they are looking for a friend, other times they are just lonely)
2) Say Hi, I am John (use your real name, duh) and shake their hand.
3) Ask them what they do.
4) Care what they do, and just chat with them about it. (If you don’t care it is obvious– you can’t fake caring about people)
5) Ask them for their card, trade cards if it is appropriate.

Where else can I talk about subjects such as Snow in Minnesota, whether a guy with my same name looks like me (our noses are identical), Why the US and Iran have issues with each other, the finer points of industrial printer drivers, ways to drive PPC traffic, European affiliate marketing, video chat and holy cow.. so much other cool stuff I am probably leaving stuff out. Anyways it was fun, and much thanks to shareasale and everyone who helped in hosting it.

Tags: Affiliate Summit 2008 by John Hasson
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Ok, so I am going to Affiliate Summit 2008 in Vegas in a week. I thought I’d try and be creative and make some unique business cards for handing out to people.

I researched all sorts of creative ideas. I looked at the plastic cards (more then I want to spend), the see through cards.. same. and so on.

I settled down on what I thought would be a neat idea.

See how it looks like I just grabbed a card and hand wrote all of my information? What a neat idea! Yeah, it looks kinda pathetic and sad.

Is it unique? Yes
Will it get attention? Probably not, they look like trash. When I first opened the box of cards I though, WTF?! Someone wrote All Over My Cards!!… oh wait. This is my writing. Man does this look bad… Even worse, I put a slight gradient on it that makes the card look old and dirty. LMAO (you have to see these things in person, the picture above doesn’t do them justice).

Oh look, I found coupon for 25% off my next order… With rush delivery I’ll get them the day before I leave.

I’ll bring the new cards and these and let you decide which is better.

As a bonus, I suppose I can enter all the business card contests twice.

Tags: Affiliate Summit 2008 by John Hasson
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