Author Archive

I wanted to get a quick post (2 am here) about a new blog I’m launching.  I really hate the domain this is on because I’m not really into poker affiliating much anymore and focusing on sports and stuff outside of gambling as much as I can.  I decided it was best to just launch an entire new blog with a more general domain name.

I looked for some keyword type domain names and couldn’t find anything I liked. I tried my full name but it wasn’t available plus no one can even spell my last name.  So I decided to go with a more brandable domain name that people would remember.

To stand out from other affiliate blogs I chose something simple and what I think is something that isn’t too hard to remember.  It also could create excitement and curiosity to people who don’t make money online and stumble across the site.  My new Internet Marketing Blog is going to be at DropoutGotRich.com.

I clearly explain in the “about me” at the top of the site that I am no where near rich right now, but it is just a goal for me to be wealthy.

I also am not proud or trying to promote that I “dropped out” of college, but I thought that would be catchy and again easily remembered.

“Dropout Got Rich dot com” just seemed pretty easy for me to remember.. and if someone was surfing the internet and came across the site and read the name they might get curious and read on (especially college kids).

So what am I doing with the blog?

I am going to just talk about anything I feel like, and basically blog about my life as an internet marketer.  I’ll review products I’ve tried, give tips, complaints, or anything else internet marketing related. Of course I want to make money through the site – I am not gunna lie about that.  I made a little introduction post to the blog last night.

Will I stop blogging here?

I’ll probably slow down here, but I will make posts from time to time – which may or may not include my monthly goals (I am not sure yet, going to think about where I’ll post those).  I will also make most of my poker, casino, sports affiliate specific posts here when I feel like writing about that.

If you have an affiliate blog and you update it somewhat regularly hit me up because I probably read it and will want to do a blogroll exchange.  I will also be hitting up some of you guys through IM or PM or whatever.  Would appreciate any links you can throw at it… and I hope you find it interesting to read.

January Recap of Goals and February Goals to come probably tomorrow afternoon!

First I will get to the results of the “subject line test” for one of the emails I sent out to my sports betting list.  Since making that post things have tightened up a little bit with more opens, but there is still an 8% difference from first to last.  If you had a 1000 email list that would result in 80 less people opening, and possibly hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars lost.

Votes on which subject line came LAST:

How You Can Crush The Sportsbooks – Knup, Bryan, Nick
Game Changing Sports Betting System Released To Public – Matt, Dealer Dan, Adam
Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits – Gerry, Tom
1 Insane Sports Betting System -

(note MJ said “im with matt and gerry” but they were on different subjects haha.. so vote void I guess)

And the worst open rate was:

Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits

Good job on Gerry and Tom picking that out…

From Best to worst…

How You Can Crush The Sportsbooks – 30%
1 Insane Sports Betting System – 28.8%
Game Changing Sports Betting System Released To Public – 25.8%
Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits – 21.9%

To sum it up… 3 of 10 people who voted actually picked the subject line that did the best.  No one thought 1 Insane Sports Betting System would be the worst, and it actually was second best, so good job there.  The most votes came on the subject line that was second last.  And two people picked which was going to be the worst open rate.

Oh and Knup listed from worst to best and actually got the exact opposite order lol.

What I can take from this small split test experiment:

I will have to keep testing but I think using words like “crush, insane, game changing” will help open rates.

Does “How you can…” increase open rates?

Would using a more exciting word help, like…  “Learn How I Skyrocketed My Betting Profits” rather than “Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits”?

Using numbers might help… 2 Crazy fat loss tips, 4 secret sports betting tips, 7 poker tournament strategies

Anyways, a cool little experiment and neat to see what people were guessing.

On to something else for a minute…

I had an interesting comment by Casino Answers man, Dealer Dan, on my night time productivity post about cold showers.  He suggested I tried cold showers to wake me up and clear my head in the morning so I could get more work done (I’ve been having troubles within the first few hours of waking).

It was weird because I actually started this yesterday and loved it.  And later in the night I was reading a blog post by Tim Ferris (author of Four Hour Work Week) about how cold showers can actually help with fat loss.  Exposing your body to cold will cause your body to try and heat itself up basically and will burn more calories.   I made a little post about using cold showers for fat loss on my very new workout tips blog.

So if cold showers are going to help me wake up in the morning, clear my head, and help me stay lean… why not.  These are added to my daily routine from now on out.  Oh and not to mention it is supposed to be good for stress, depression, and more.

Try it out!

Just a quick random post as I am interested to see other affiliates thoughts and guesses on a split test I did.  Please leave a comment with your guess at the bottom (hey free link why not)!

Basically I did a split test for an email I sent out to my sports betting list about a sports betting system.  I sent out the same email with 4 different email subjects using the Aweber split test for the broadcasts.

Which email subject do you think came last as far as open rates (listed in random order):

How You Can Crush The Sportsbooks
Game Changing Sports Betting System Released To Public
Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits
1 Insane Sports Betting System

Leave your answer in the comments and I will let you know the winner after I get a few comments…

I’m not too sure what it is… but the time I get the most done is between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM.

Actually about 5 nights ago my girlfriend fell asleep watching TV just after midnight so I hopped on the computer and actually worked right until 4:45 am and it was one of the most productive nights I’ve had in a long time. I was dead tired in the morning, but the amount of work I got done was well worth it.

I don’t know what it is, but for some reason I seem to zone in at night time.

My day starts with getting up at 10am and for about an hour I check stats, emails and browse the forums and basically feel brain dead.  For the next few hours I will do some small work like posting articles I had written, but I don’t get too much done before hitting the gym early afternoon most days.  It isn’t until I’ve been awake for about 5-6 hours that I actually become productive.  After I hit the gym and make a light dinner I seem to get the most work done.

It kind of sucks because the night time is when there is the most going on outside of work (hangout with friends or gf, sports on TV, etc, etc), but no matter what I do I can never be too productive in the morning.  I don’t drink coffee but I’ve tried caffeine pills and they don’t help the cause at all.

Anyways just a random post because I’ve been very productive so far in January and will probably hit almost all of my January Affiliate Goals!

On a side note I wanted to give big props to Bryan from PAL who run a great site BankrollManagement.org (which of course focuses on bankroll management tips for gamblers).  Bryan helped me switch two sites over from my shitty shared server at godady to my unlimited hosting account.  My sites were taking like 20 seconds to load at some parts of the day which was super annoying and costing me a lot of money.  I did an analytics comparison to two weeks before and after the switch and my bounce rates went down 2.23% and my pages per visit went up 2.34%.  Make sure your site loads fast!

Hope your killing it in January… because it only goes downhill from here! Haha just playing, but it seems like more work gets done in January because of goals and seeing income numbers for the year before! Have a good week.

Almost every day I learn something new about email marketing, whether it be from my own tests or reading other online marketer’s blogs. Since starting with email marketing about a year ago I have come so far in what I’ve learnt, and I look back at laugh at my first couple go’s at it.

Email marketing is a very important tool for affiliates and online marketers, and I highly recommend reading the article below which lists what I think are the 7 most important factors for email marketing.

#1 – Your Incentive

Why should I enter my email to sign up for your newsletter (or whatever you are offering)? Getting someone to give you their email can actually be tough, but if you are giving them something in return (that they want) it becomes a lot easier.

You need to clearly state what your visitors will receive for entering their email, and you better make it something that your visitors actually want if you are looking for a good unique visitor to sign up rate.

If you are a poker affiliate don’t make your call to action something vague and boring like “Enter your email for poker tips”… try something that creates interest and suspense like “The 1 secret online poker players don’t want you to know”.

#2 – Quality of Form

This took me a while to actually implement, but the nicer looking the email capture form is the higher sign up rate you will get.

When I first started with Aweber I didn’t really realize you could customize your forms, and would end up just using the ugly and boring templates they provide you with.

After paying a designer $5 to whip up a quick graphic to put in the form my sign up rate instantly grew.

My sign up rate grew even further when I came across a great tool called “Popup Domination” that gives you very nice looking and conversion focused templates to use in Aweber (or whatever email marketing provider you are signed up with).

A small investment in making your form actually look nice will go a long way in helping your sign up rate… make sure your email capture form isn’t an eye sore.

#3 – Privacy Notice

I personally haven’t done a lot of testing with this, but I have heard of other internet marketers that have tested it and came to the conclusion that including some sort of privacy notice letting your users know that you won’t spam them or sell their email address will actually help your sign up rate.

It definitely can’t hurt including some sort of privacy notice, so I would suggest implementing it on your form.

#4 – Personalization

Aweber gives you the option to include some personalization in your emails, which is a must for building relationships with your readers.

When you capture their email make sure that you have a field for their first name, and then you will easily be able to use a piece of Aweber code “{!name}” that will insert the persons first name anywhere you like (the title, the start of the email, etc).

It is very easy to implement and can do wonders building a relationship with individuals on your list. Think about it… would you feel better if an email was address to you with “Hi There,” or “Hi Kevin,”?

Start personalizing your emails a bit and act like you are talking one on one with the people on your list and whether or not they know you are sending the email to a mass amount of people at the same time, they will listen to what you have to say.

#5 – Autoresponder

Maybe the most important on the list is your autoresponder. An autoresponder is a series of emails that will be sent to someone who signs up for your list.

With Aweber you can choose when to send them, so for example the first one goes out right away, the next is the following day, the third is two days after that, the fourth is 4 days later, etc, etc.

You only set this up one time and then the autoresponder works its magic and markets to anyone who signs up all automatically with no work needed from you.

Don’t just hit them up with offer after offer. Build up a bit of a relationship in the first few emails providing them with quality content that you know they will enjoy, and they will start to like you more. Once you have built a small “relationship” with them you can hit them with an offer you will have a much better conversion rate.

#6 – Call To Actions

I actually had a fellow affiliate comment on my call to actions recently, letting me know that I can probably improve in this area (and I agree).

Within your emails you actually want to give your readers a call to action.

This isn’t just for making sales, but can also include your content articles. Mix things up a little bit and instead of just emailing content, how about putting the content on your blog and sending them a link to the post through email.

By using the above tip your readers will actually get used to sometimes clicking on a link you’ve provided for valuable content, so when you do hit them up with an offer (affiliate link to a sales page for example) they won’t think twice about clicking the link.

I have found using call to actions like “Click Here to read more about this…” work good, but get creative.

#7 – Testing

Ice, Ice, Icesicles…. Pop, Pop, Popsicles…. Test, Test, Testing 1-2-3!

Haha sorry I had to start this off with that…

Anyways TESTING IS HUGE for marketing, and it is no difference for email marketing!

Test everything you can when it comes to email marketing. Aweber gives you the option to easily implement split tests, allowing you to test 5, 10, 15 or however many forms you want. Test the headline, test the button color, test the button CTA, test everything to do with your form.

You will also be able to easily test different emails very easily with Aweber. Test the email subject line, try personalizing the email subject line, test the actual email body for clicks, and test everything to do with your email.

And don’t stop testing. Small tweaks can make a world of a difference, and that will result in more money in your pockets!

Click Here to get started with email marketing at Aweber…

Click Here to check out Popup Domination (a tool I HIGHLY recommend)…