Hence, “Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Games: Comparative Stats for Asian & Western Games” probably ranked as the best session for me on day 2 of Casual Connect Asia 2013 which was held in Singapore.

Some stats about Kongregate:

• 15 million monthly uniques
• Core gamers are 85% male,
• Average age of 21
• Most popular game genres are MMO (massively multiplayer online), RPG (roleplaying games), CCG/TCG (collectible card games/trading card games), TD (tower defense), shooters

Kongregate uses the following metrics in measuring Free-to-Play (F2P) games:

• Daily active users (DAU)
• Income per DAU
• 1- and 7- day retention to a lesser extent MAU (monthly active users) and 30- day retention
• All stats are calculated based on the lifetime of the player on the platform, based on a minimum of 6 weeks on the platform
• Revenue is broken down into 2 segments: ARPU (average revenue per user) and ARPPU (average revenue per paying user)
• A player is definied as a Kongregate registered user who has loaded game page at least once
• Number of plays is definited by the number of sessions played and is the preferred method to measure player retention

David showed a series of graphs and charts, of which I’ll post a summary here. If I get access to the presentation, I might link out to it.

These stats will give you a rough idea of what was shown.

MMOs outperform single player games (not too surprising)

Single player games tend to have lower ARPU $5-10 range

MMOs have a greater variance in their range: $20-350, thought the majority of them fall within $0 to $3 range. Having said that MMOs feature a few outliers that kick ass. Big spenders can spend in excess of $300+ and there is a linear correlation between how hardcore a player is and their spending patterns.

When it comes to ARPPU (paying users) game developers can take heart that big spenders (ie “whales”) are not caught, they are created. The longer you can keep them in-game, the more opportunities you can present them to spend.

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Asia F2P games vs Western F2P games vs Mixed F2P games

This is going to be a little tough without the chart, so bear with me.

Asian MMOs have a higher ARPPU of $181 vs $54 for western MMO.

Asian MMOs have lower conversion rates for new player signups vs Western equivalents.

Asian games have slightly lower retention, defined as the percentage of people who have played 50+ times.

In general with Asian games have higher ARPPU, tight player funnel and caters to big spenders.

Western games have good intiail retention, broad conversion at lower prices, and the Pay-to-win model (where you might have to unlock a paid stage or purchase a key to finish the game) is not accepted by Western game players.

Mixed games are defined as games which have a mix of elements from both Asian and Western games. They tend to have high conversion rates, have a wide funnel and can create big spenders.

When it comes to monetizing your game, the cardinal rule is that the more people play, the more likely they are to buy and they are also more likely to spend more.(repeat of the last section but this is an important one).

With Western multiplayer games, 55% of ARPPU revenue is generated by people who play 500+ times.

With Asian multiplayer ARPPU, 58% of revenue is generated by pepoel who play 500+.

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F2P best practises for optimizing retention

Keep players engaged

Daily play bonuses – motivate players to come back regularly. There are many ways to improve on the 5-7 day cycle of daily bonuses With one successful title, Wartune, every day you check in, you get a stamp, up to 26 days. With longer time = better stickiness. Wartune’s system doesn’t reset every 5-7 days, doesn’t punish for missing a day. With another game (from one of my favourite studios, Edgebee) Card Monsters’ daily login opens up bigger rewards on successful days.

Use of punishments – Punishments can deter unwanted behaviour, but they can also drive away players if not used correctly: Don’t punish people for taking a break (castle raided, troops killed).

Players need a break from time to time, it’s a psychological need.  Exams, vacations, illness are some of the more common reasons for taking a break from gameplay. Having strong punishments (ie: other players raiding their castle, stripping resources, killing all their troops, etc) may otherwise drive away users who might have been re-activated after their break.

Getting whipped for not playing regularly will create a “there’s no point coming to the game since I lost everything” mentality.

Meting out punishment:

• Punishment should sting but not handicap players permanently.
• Limit losses and allow easy recovery. Eg: when raided, enable shield or protection if you lose a lot of troops.
• Mix in positive reinforcement – allow one-step rebuild (vs rebuilding 100 buildings

Player engagement
Wartune keeps players busy with various types of activities (PvP, PvE, team PvP, team PvE, individual raid bosses, world raid bosses, etc).

More things to do = more players staying

It’s important to continually add new features, but pace the gameplay and introducing of new game elements so the learning curve is not intimidating.

Players don’t want long, boring tutorials.

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Track player’s progress:  Without progress you have nothing. Not having a way of keeping score means your players can’t measure how they are doing.

Asychronous does better than synchronous (online at same time): asynchronous (aka “fake multiplayer” where the other player’s character is controlled by the computer AI) vs both players having to be online at the same time so they can fight.

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*Important*: Shopping should be easy and frictionless

• Location, location, location – If your store can’t be found easily, how are players going to buy stuff?
• Help them buy: make easy to find the right item, include detailed descriptions
• Mix soft, hard currency items
• Don’t sell stuff too early, the first few sessions should focus on engagement, enjoyment, building the relationship with the player.
• Buy screen: show discounts for large packages, do math for the player (don’t make them have to whip out a calculator and see how much they will save buying items in bulk)
• Less friction in buying process = better conversion
• Hide $100+ package until after first purchases. Big ticket items can scare away new players
• Make shopping experience interesting -firstime buyers can be presenter with a cheaper, good value starter packs (helps them get over the first hump of buying their first item)
• Help them walkthrough their first purchase
• Get players in the habit of buying deals/events to get them into the habit of spending money
• Look for items which enhance gameplay, not just producing/build speedups
• Keep them coming back, keep your store fresh – add new items, seasonal, time limited items
• Look at items like a timer counting down before the deal expires
• Look at gamification elements in the buying process. In Asian games, players can “level up” and earn points and perks for buying
• Let players can spend as much as they want – Give them the ability to spend $1,000 if they want to
• Have lots of items, introduce variety. Have stuff which is appealing, useful to hardcore/committed players and also items for early, mid play.
• If you make a fun game, someone may want to spend infinite amounts of cash on your game.

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Best practices for community building

Make it easy for a community to develop – provision for players to easily create chatroom, forums. This lets players easily build relationships.

Kongregate monetizes better compared to other platform (more sticky userbase, real relationships result in higher ARPU (can be 5-10x higher compared to Facebook)

*IMPORTANT* Guilds are awesome

All top games have guilds.

Guild members spend 10-20x more than normal players.

Guild members have a social incentive to return – to see their friends

Social pressure element is in play- “I don’t want to disappoint my buddies, so I’ll be sure to show up for the raid, rack up points, etc”

Psychology of buying is boosted in guilds and hence spending goes up- “I’m doing it for team, not me”

Community mgt and customer service

Important, especially for Western audience. Expectation of good quality control, customer service.

It may be your game, but it’s their experience.

Be visible – on forums, chat, email.

Listen to conerns (you don’t always have to agree with criticism), acknowledge their emotions, be transparent, honest, accurate (especially with game downtime, give advanced notice of upgrades)

You can use downtime to surprise with good customer service and as an opportunity to give out some freebies and delight players (ie: Sorry for the downtime, here are some credits you can use in our premium store).

Consider the marginal cost of virtual good vs losing a player. Do what you need to retain players, but don’t do something unless you are willing to do for everyone. Players talk to each other, so if you show favour, it will come back to bite you.

So it was great to get an insight into how the company put together its strategy to come up with a winning game.

DeNA Singapore managing director Tetsuya Mori presented a session “How a Japanese mobile RPG made it big outside Japan” at Casual Connect Singapore today.

Mr Mori said that previously a game’s success had been often linked to a gaming platform, like Super Mario being linked to the Nintendo video game system and the Final Fantasy series and the Sony Playstation.

However, the trend has been towards a decoupling of games from platforms. Hence Rage of Bahamut was a hit, but not specifically tied to specific game hardware.

Similarly, DeNA has seen an encouraging take up rate with Blood Brothers, which is now celebrating it’s one year anniversary.

With its slick graphics and game engine, the average player might not be aware that its game code was developed in Hanoi, Vietnam, and some of its art was also done in Vietnam.

On a strategy level, while some might attribute the success of a game to its art/creative aspects, Mr Mori said that’s not really the case.

The ART element of a game refers to its:

• game concept
• game design (it helps to have a system which is ahead of its competitors)
• visual presentation
• audio presentation

But what’s more important is the SCIENCE, or system behind the game, referring to its:

• Monetization architecture (the thought behind incorporating monetization in the game planning process, rather than as an afterthought)
• Continuous event operations (events make a big difference in your revenues, as you’ll see shortly)
• Dynamic user management (keeping them engaged and entertained)
• Analytics driven game-balancing (keeping tabs of game balance issues and tweaking to optimise them)
• Key Performance Indicator-based game life management

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Events

Special game events make a big difference to the game’s performance.

A well-planned event can double ARPU (average revenue per user) compared to a non-game driven period.

An event can be defined by the following criteria:

• A game inside a game (ie: mini game)
• Different style of game play (adds variety within the game)
• Special set up (adds more variety to the standard game mechanics)
• Limited rare items
• Limited time offering (eg: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day)
• Multiple times a month
• Unique event each time
• Can toggle between competitive, or cooperative event
• Players experience a feeling of growth and power
• Active user group managment

In the PvE context, these could include special global boss raids, treasure hunt type events.

Customisation and toggling/catering to player’s of different skill levels is also key.

With some planning, the following factors can be customised:

• Raid boss difficulty
• Special dungeons of varying difficulty levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced)
• Player versus Player (PvP) events

Events matter!

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Key event design factors:

• Leaderboards (so players can measure their progress)
• Separation into groups: (sub divide into categories, which players can then top a sub-category (and feel special) – still top in another category compared to being a nameless number within a huge blanket category)
• Incentivize efforts (eg: more points for successive wins, double points when the crowd cheers (people watch, player plays, both groups entertained, win-win), give leverage, motivate)
• Set limits to avoid saturation/boredom-one day, one match (a week long match vs same opponent = long, boring. while an optimal amount might be one day one match, 3-4 events/mth)
• Reinforce and reward player’s effort

Game playability/usability:

• Make player goal clear and attractive
• Don’t let the player get lost
• Don’t let them get overwhelmed
• Don’t let them get bored
• Don’t let them get exhausted
• Don’t just reward the top guy, be sure to also give him some pain or stress, so he doesnt get lazy/overconfident (then get bored and drop out)

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Making money from what you’re doing:

The size of your game’s userbase is not most important.

The player’s paid vs free player ratio is as important, if not more important.

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Success game architecture:

Be sure to actively manage the game as a service (something you continually improve, enhance). The old way is thinking of a game as a product that you box up, ship out and never touch again).

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I liked how Mr Mori finished off his presentation:

“Come and join DeNA as players, developers and employees!”

 PS: If you decide to try out Blood Brothers on the ios (iphone, ipod, ipad) or Android platform (phone or tablets), you can use my invite code to unlock some nice goodies: 7RGWtR

Despite fallout after Facebook started steadily imposing their 30% “tax” on in-game purchases last year, the Internet’s largest social network has seen a steady exodus of game publishers from the platform. On a rough basis, it feels like anywhere from 30-50% of hardcore players have chosen to move their game playing to dedicated game platforms like Zynga, Kongregate or MochiGames, or are playing on standalone game sites like Ninjakiwi or Armorgames.

Recent coverage in the Wall Street Journal has talked about the trend of major game launches fuelled by major ad budgets.

For example, mobile app developer ZeptoLab UK whose “Cut the rope” which was launched in 2010 on the back of mostly word-of-mouth viral marketing is now spending as much as $1 million on launching the latest version of their game, “Cut the Rope: Time Travel” boosted by tie-ins with Burger King which bundled the green Nom Om monster plush toy with their kids meals.

It’s not all for nothing either, as NPD group said mobile game sales topped $2 billion in 2012.

Another mobile app developer, Tokyo-based GungHo Online Entertainment, launched Puzzles & Dragons in Japan boosed by TV ads, an unusual marketing tactic for a smaller (in relation to major developers like Electrionic Arts and Blizzard) game developer.

So it’s probably an opportune time that Casual Connect is conducting another game development conference in Singapore. The event takes place later this month (May 21-23) at the ShangriLa Hotel.

A number of app developers are based in Singapore and in Southeast Asia, so there’ll be some good sessions during the event.

There’ll be reps from Facebook’s game publishing arm, PopCap Games (which publishes Plants vs Zombies) as well as local developers talking about their experience.

If you’re interested in game/app development, you should take a look at the Casual Connect Asia event website.

It was a great experience working with Sam Brachat, then Michelle Reid from Neverblue, as well as a great time of account managers (who’ve a great understanding of how advertisers structure their offers and the best ways to provide great lead quality and get onto accelerated payments).

Tips for aspiring affiliates: Work hard and probably more importantly, learn from your mistakes.

Almost every campaign will start off as a loss-making one. Being able to pare away losing keywords and high volume keywords with don’t have a chance of recouping what you’re paying in ad costs will only bring down your campaign.

Having a Vegas mentality that after spending $100-200 on a single keyword or url target or demographic, seeing zero to a handful of conversions is treating your business like a lottery and won’t help anyone (except maybe the ad network).

Get a book on statistics, read up on statistical significance, split testing. Learning the business, rather than learning how to use spy tools will give you a better competitive edge in the long term.

Is everyone gradually moving from promoting casual dating offers via adult traffic to mobile offers? Should you blindly follow them?

Are you a sheep? Can you think for yourself?

There’re still relatively new affiliates (3 years or less experience) who’re doing 3- to 4-figure profit days consistently working relatively unsexy verticals, stuff that isn’t widely discussed on affiliate blogs or forums.

I had a conversation the other day with a newer affiliate who asked “Should I be considering these offers? It’s not mentioned on the forums or blogs.”

Here’s a tip.

If you’re making a killing with a particular method or offer, should you:

1) Tweet about it, brag about how much you’re making and how you’re going to spend your earnings?

2) Post pictures about what you’ve just bought, go to the network’s facebook page and say “Thanks ABC affiliate manager, I’m making a killing with XYZ offer.”

3) Shut up about it and bank in silence.

You go figure it out.

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Success has a lot to do with:

1) Figuring what works for you with the type of traffic you’re using and the offer you’re promoting

2) Coming up with a system to follow, so you’re going through a series of steps that make sense and maximise your chances of success and ability of scaling what you’re doing.

3) Repeating what you’re doing, being able to scale the traffic (at about the same quality level) that you’re sending to the offer.

The steps are easy, aren’t they? Being able to follow them is not.

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Back to 2013: The past couple of months have been a little busy for me, with my older daughter starting primary school (grade school to you yanks) and working a couple of consulting gigs that had been backlogged.

In the next couple of weeks I’m working on:
1) Launching a resource site that will be useful for affiliates and product owners

2) Developing/revamping and launching/relaunching existing and new products/services.

3) Publishing some stuff for Amazon’s Kindle platform

4) Publishing new blog posts (hopefully more frequently than once a year).

So what’s on your plate for 2013?

PS: This is a new blog template, not everything is fixed yet. It should be…any day now.

At first glance both words refer to a category or topic (like gardening, or finance, or games) that you hope to theme an online marketing campaign around…so it seems similar, but it’s not.

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A niche in time…

Let’s look at some examples: A niche (variously pronounced as “nitch” or “neesh” depending on which side of the pond you’re on, or maybe how many beers you’ve had) is something specialized. So the stuff on Clickbank tends to serve a niche. For example “low calorie recipes to promote hair re-growth for vegans” would be a niche. “Dog training for hearing impaired pet owners” might be another niche. These tend to be specialist products with interest from a smaller subset of the Internet audience. The key driver of why this product does well is because the user can’t easily get this info or service elsewhere. After all, how easy is it going to be to find a book on “501 woodworking project for someone with zero technical skill”? So the $27 or $47 e-book on clickbank tends to find a ready audience.

In most cases these niche products tend to top out at a couple thousand in revenue per month. So to bank with these products, you’d usually have to market several of these types of products. If the products are related or complimentary, there exists opportunity to cross-sell and cross-promote, so you can, to borrow a phrase, “stack that money”. You might do this be cross-selling a range of photography books (outdoor photography, fashion photography, shooting kids (taking their photos, not going at them with an AWP…)). If you upsold stuff, you might sell camera paraphernalia, like camera equipment, online photo services, photo events, confences, workshops.

The times I’ve promoted niched products, I’ve felt like a sniper, shooting at demand for long tail demands for which people are willing to pay to make the pain go away, or bring themselves pleasure, or a combination of both.

Generally, you’d need to promote maybe 3 to 5 of these types of products to generate a decent income.

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Going Vertical

When promoting offers such as CPA offers, you’d realize that these tend to address big markets – dating, finance, gaming, downloads, travel, fashion – some of Neverblue’s top verticals. With verticals you’re dealing with entire sections of a market – within the finance vertical, you’d have credit cards, insurance, credit scores, financial profiles, stocks, mutual funds, forex, etc.

So when you promote a vertical, you’re addressing a potential market of millions (instead of just thousands in the case of most niche markets). The promo style is different too, which is why most CPA affiliates favor paid traffic.

You’d probably hear the familiar refrain that CPA marketing is a volume game. The more traffic you buy, the more leads you generate, the more you get paid.

In contrast to more specialized stuff, the key is to become a dominant player with each offer you promote. While niche marketers might be content with generating $5,000 per month with a niche product, the CPA marketer might aim at $5,000 per day or more in revenue to make their business model viable.

The CPA marketer is often arbitraging traffic. If your commissions exceed your traffic costs, you’re in the money. In most situations, you’d want to go for the offers with the highest potential in terms of traffic (ie: demand), scalability (how big you can grow the offer) and importantly for affiliates who think of themselves as business owners – your bottomline (how much it will put in your pocket at the end of the day).

My advice for newer affiliates is to find an offer that has potential to scale to something big and aim and work towards at least $1,000 or more a day in revenue. It’s only when you make this a goal in your overall business strategy that you will experience bump in your business and your profits.

The reality is that everyone is subject to the same 24 hours a day, whether you’re Richard Branson or Joe Blow starting out.

Sure, you might say that an experienced affiliate might have multiple campaigns making a couple thousand a day and mainly running, except for an hour or two of tweaking and optimization each day, so he or she has time to do ‘lifestyle blog posts’ or tweet about the massive filet mignon that they’ve chowing down at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse or Craftsteak for lunch.

In my book, all this self-justifying, non-productive structured procrastination is what leads many affiliates to knock themselves out of the game. Imagined “high competition” and reasons that the industry/offer/traffic source is dying/saturated/overpriced/sees little or no demand, is all a bunch of BS.

Let’s look at this for a moment. I think you need to make up your mind. Is the offer “saturated” or is the industry “dying”?

If it’s dying, then it’s dying. But if so, how could traffic be “overpriced” and the offer be “saturated” at the same time?

Sounds like a paradox, and not one of those fun ones either.

I’ve been speaking a number of affiliate training workshops recently, some as part of my role in recruiting and developing Neverblue affliates, as well as for local Internet marketing groups.

The major challenge that most marketers face is a mental one. Not so much that you’re going crazy at the stuff you have to deal with in figuring out how to get started, but more a lack of self-belief.

Talk to a top affiliate and you’ll realize that confidence is one of the keys that separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls.

Even if you haven’t mastered something yet, it should not keep you from jumping headlong to figure it out.

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But back to wealth building in 15 minutes…

If you’ve sat waiting for the subway, or have time between meetings, or maybe 15 minutes before going out for dinner, what do you do with that deadtime?

Are you spending it checking your email? Or watching youtube? Checking for Facebook updates?

If instead of doing all that, you spend that time looking at ads running on high traffic websites, running keyword searches, doing competitive research, reading up on promoting techniques, that would help you more than just blowing that time doing something that you’d probably forget two days from now.

Yes, I like watching/listening to motivational stuff about “how you can do it” as much as the next guy, but I try to limit that to listen to that while I’m in the toilet or taking a shower. Because it doesn’t require your full focus.

So try this out for a couple of weeks, make a commitment to spending your time more productively. Stuff CAN be accomplished if you have a pocket of 10 minutes or more.

And now I have to complete this 15 minute blog post. Ping it, then head to my next meeting.

While I doubt Ivan will have much time to do personal mentoring, I’ve arranged the next best thing – he’s agreed to a workshop that builds on and goes into greater detail on his strategy in promoting international offers.

You might be wondering why this might be a useful area for affiliates to pick up on. For one, North American offers, which comprise the bulk of offers in each network’s database still represents the lion’s share of revenue at most networks. If you’re a newer affiliate, this means you’re competing against established affiliates, whether they specialize in paid search, SEO, media buys or PPV. Being outbid or just being unable to run your campaign with major ad networks can be a major stumbling block.

With Neverblue’s focus on establishing a European and Asian presence, I’ve compared the offer database against other networks and am confident from seeing the offers and seeing how well some of my experienced affiliates are doing with the offers that I feel new and experienced affiliates stand to gain from either starting out promoting these kinds of offers or adding these classes of offers to their portfolio of campaigns.

For the upcoming workshop, Ivan will be presenting his system as well as showing campaign data from Europe and Asia campaigns, it’s my intention that attendees will be able to create a blueprint to similarly promote offers, which generally seem to have a higher conversion rate, and usually lower traffic costs across the board.

If you’re not earning the level of affiliate marketing income that you are aiming for, you should attend this workshop.

As it’s additional training by Ivan, it falls outside of Neverblue’s training.

Although there’s a charge for the 1-day workshop, Ivan’s offering a special rate to Neverblue affiliates.

If you aren’t already a Neverblue affiliate and would like me to be your affiliate manager, you apply to be an affiliate via my signup link. (Update: I’m no longer an affiliate manager with Neverblue, but if you apply with my signup link, drop me an email via my “contact” link and I’ll see how I can help you get approved).

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Note: You should be familiar with how affiliate marketing works. If you have run CPA campaigns previously, it will also help you get more out of the workshop.

Note: The workshop has been postponed due to Ivan’s commitments. You can still sign up for Neverblue here.

I often read of these new marketers having their affiliate application denied, especially at major networks.

Here are some tips to increase your chances of getting accepted.

“Interviewing” for your CPA network affiliate application: Just like interviewing for a job, it’s important to be prepared when you’re “interviewing” to get into a network. It’s not very encouraging to have an affiliate apply then say they don’t know anything about the network, or worse, say “I’m brand new and I’m not in any network yet, so I applied to everyone.

Some tips that will help you get in, especially if you’re newer.
1) Do your homework: Check here and on affiliate blogs on the profile of the network. It’s a 2-way street. How is the network’s offer selection? Payment policy? How helpful are the affiliate managers (AMs)? Are they “agency of record” for the offers they promote, or do they mainly syndicate offers from other networks?

2) Have a game plan in hand. This can be difficult if you’re not already in at least one network, but if you are in one network, you can surf through the offers and get an idea of what your focus will be on. If not, you can use offers202 or another offers search engine as a means of last resort (although you might not be able to see some of the analytics like CTR, EPC, etc) Figure out what niches do you focus on? What is your traffic strategy, what are your primary promo methods? If you can’t understand this, you might score lower on the network’s internal rating system (generally the lower your score, the more difficulty you’ll face in getting accepted), also depending on the network, you might have a smaller pool of offers to choose from.

3) Invest in yourself: A lot of affiliate marketing is knowledge-based. So be sure to trawl through the available resources and know what you need to know to run your business. If you don’t have all the tools and knowledge to be effective, it’s not likely that anyone else is going to do it for you. So this step is just smart business sense.

4) Follow up: There’s a couple of ways to do this. You can call the network after you’ve submitted the application, be sure to be able to answer questions about your background, experience, promo method, niche selection, etc. Alternatively, if you get in touch with someone from the network (either from the AM side or from the biz dev side), and have a conversation with them (tell them especially if you’re brand new), then you have a much better chance of getting in. Applications at the larger networks go through an automated screening process when you first submit and may be denied during this stage. If you talk to someone, they can flag it and the application can be prioritized. It’s more difficult to approve a denied application than to manually review an application that is in the pending pile.

Ok, that was long, but hopefully it’ll give a better idea of what happens during the account application and review process.

If anyone has any questions, especially about applying to Neverblue CPA network, you can read my earlier post: “I’m looking for a few top Neverblue affiliates”

Alternatively, you’re also welcome to email me.

Since the first affiliate summit I attend in 2008, I’d been talking to the affiliate networks about establishing a presence in Asia, especially with the growing number of affiliates in this part of the world.

So it was a great opportunity earlier this year when I started talking to Neverblue senior network manager Samantha Brachat about establishing a presence here, especially since Europe and Asia are the major growth areas for the network.

A Neverblue Asia office was set up earlier this year in Hong Kong and in October I took on the portfolio of Affiliate Consultant, responsible for recruiting and developing affiliates, with a focus on Asia.

So I’m happy to announce that Singapore will be playing host to a Neverblue Interact event later this month, in conjunction with the launch of the company’s Singapore presence.

It’ll be a training and networking session on Dec 15 (Thurs) from 6pm to 10pm at Singapore Management University in downtown Singapore. (suggested attire: smart casual).

If you’re a Neverblue affiliate or if you are not, but interested to find out about affiliate marketing, do come down for the Neverblue Interact event for an evening of training, networking and fun!

I’ve invited three top affiliates who’ll be sharing their experience of growing their online business and strategies for building a profitable business. The three affiliates are:

Ken Lee who’s one of Neverblue’s top affiliates and one of the winners of Neverblue’s recent Out of Bounds competition. Ken lives in Malaysia and rarely speaks at events, preferring to work on his business and this is one of the rare occasions he’ll be speaking.

Ivan Ong who’s a successful Singapore affiliate. He’s blogged about his PPV strategies and tips for a successful campaign at his blog.

Eddy Kuah, an experienced Malaysian affiliate who’s based in Singapore.

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The evening will kick off with a light dinner before the speaker’s take to the rostrum.

If you’d like to come with a friend, do indicate it in your reply.

Be sure to register your attendance at the Facebook event page and drop me a mail via my blog contact form.

For me, this has translated into putting on about 33lbs (about 15kg) since getting married and not being able to do most of the things that I used to be able to do.

Yes, I could probably have signed up for a continuity plan for colon cleansers and acai shakes, but the plan for me seemed to be opting for a lifestyle change.

All the money in the world isn’t going to help you if you’re not able (or around) to enjoy it.

Especially with 2 young kids, aged 2 and 5, I am hoping to be here for a long time to see them grow up, attend their sports games and performances, see them graduate and get married one day.

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I enrolled in a hospital-managed weight loss program which started about a month ago.

It has a lot of fancy stuff like getting a MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and a MRS (magnetic resonance spectrometry), and a battery of other tests to establish my baseline health before the start of my program.

The results are that my BMI (body mass index is 29 — anything over 27.5 is considered overweight). At about 1.78m (about 5’10″) I weighed about 92kg (202lbs). With a 39″ waist you’d think that most of the fat would be around my abdomen/stomach. But instead the MRI scan showed large deposits in the love handle around to the left and right of my lower back. The fat deposits look like it was a couple of cm thick. Around my abdomen, the fat looks like it’s about 1cm thick.

But that’s not the worst of it. I’m at an increased risk of heart disease and being overweight means my insulin levels and ability to process sugar are lower than usual – which could lead to an onset of diabetes. None of this is particularly fun.

If you’re not like – not particularly happy with where you are now, or heading to where you want to be – then taking a comprehensive medical will give you pointers on what your next direction will be.

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On the plus side, my metabolic rate appears to be higher than normal, at about 1780 calories/day. The average 20-something has a metabolic rate of about 1400 calories/day, so some of the stuff I’d discovered when I was younger, that I was able to lose weight pretty easily and put on muscle mass pretty easily, seems like they would work in my favor in achieving my goal.

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The regimen that I’ll be starting involves changes to my diet and getting on a regular series of exercise.

For now the diet changes involve cutting down on fried food (mainly because most food prepared in restaurants are fried in palm oil, which is high in saturated fat and trans fat), fatty food (like pork belly), and reducing my food portion sizes. Over the years I’d kinda become the de facto “food finisher” for the family when we went out. So finishing up the food was having a long term negative impact on my health.

Having worked on medical stories for a Singapore newspaper and reading about people who have heart attacks and strokes and ending up paralyzed or even worse, suffering from “locked-in syndrome” (where you’re aware of what’s happening around you, but you’re not able to talk or move your body – I’m becoming more aware of my own mortality.

Whether you’re an affiliate, a product creator or service provider, all the money in the world isn’t going to help you if you’re in poor health and not able to enjoy it.

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So back to the diet – besides cutting down on unhealthy food, reducing my food portion sizes, the other major thing is taking meal replacements. The meals are rated at about 600 calories each and consist of (from what I can tell), a type of carbohydrate similar to milk powder, and a whey protein powder, which lessens your hunger pangs. By replacing two of my meals each day with these meal replacements, it reduces the overall calorie intake and theoretically should result in a net loss of weight (unless you decide to finish off a pint of ice-cream cos you’re hungry…..).

For the most part I’ve been good and followed the diet, and have lost about 2kg (4.5lbs) since starting this past Monday.

I’ll be tracking my weight loss in this Google doc spreadsheet.

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The exercise sessions will start up next week with a personal trainer – they’re three times a week, of about 2 hours each session. So I expect the pounds to fall off.

I don’t expect that it’ll be as intense as going on a p90x program, although I’ll probably be at 80% of my heart rate, so that should ‘burn the fat’.

The plan is to see this program through and come out it healthier and even more ready to take on the world. And you’ll get to read periodic updates here.

Post your comments or questions below.

I had a great discussion with Neverblue senior network manager, Samatha Brachat, when she was in town for AdTech Singapore a couple of months ago and after discussion, I’m working with Neverblue as an affiliate consultant to help grow the company’s affiliate business.

What will I be doing?

The role will have some similarities to an affiliate manager – to help recruit and develop affiliates. Although I’ll be focusing on the Asia markets, I’ll also be bringing in affiliates from North America and Europe.

You might be wondering why I’ve stepped into the affiliate management side of things after working as an affiliate and advertiser – it just seemed like the logical next step after about 14 years in the industry.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with various affiliate managers and network owners over the years and I’ve found the most effective AMs tend to be:

• Knowledgeable: It first starts with being familiar with the offers on your networks, being up on what the best performing offers and the most appropriate offers for an affiliate’s method of promotion. An understanding of your network’s platform, facilities like pixel placement and API are key to help your affiliates too. That’s the baseline expectation of a decent AM. The great AMs are the ones who are up on what’s happening in the affiliate space – what’s being discussed on the various IM and aff mktg forums, how various traffic sources/networks perform and how to integrate a campaign with a traffic source. Although tracking and analytics are outside of what some AMs might be familiar with, they’d be important for any affiliate to know what’s working and what’s not.
• Responsive: Getting back to an affiliate’s query in a timely manner helps them get their campaigns up in a prompt manner. After all, if they do well, you do well. So why not help them get started as soon as possible.
• Bringing value to the table: Going beyond what you see when you login to your affiliate account is probably one of the biggest advantages to the table. Beyond just a “how are you doing?” and “here are a few hot offers on our network”, a great affiliate manager will want to understand your business and your goals and work with you to achieve them, not merely push a certain offer. I see myself bringing ideas to the table that go beyond affiliate marketing, on operating and scaling a business if the affiliate wants.
• Following through: Simply, if you promise something, delivering on it.

If you’re not a Neverblue affiliate yet, you can apply here and drop me an email, so I can help you get started.

If you have been inactive and you’d like me to help you grow your business, do drop me an email.

Some will be fixated with Forbes’ estimate that Jobs’ net wealth was $8.3 billion in 2010, making him the 42nd wealthiest American. They’ll probably see the glowing success of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMacs and neglect to see the failures Jobs encountered along the way. That could be a major mistake because it’s only in failures that lessons can be learned, especially for Internet marketers.

Jobs was an astute businessman, in an early episode with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, the book iCon recounts:

Atari’s founder, Nolan Bushnell (who later founded the Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant chain). Bushnell asked Jobs to figure out a design for the game Break-Out, where players would use a Pong-like paddle to smash a wall of bricks. Unbeknownst to Bushnell or Alcorn, Jobs turned around and made a deal with Woz: Do the coding, and Jobs would split the $600 completion fee with him. Woz did the work, and Jobs got his money and gave Woz $300—his “half.” Problem was, Jobs got $1,000 as his fee. Woz didn’t find out about Jobs’s lie until a year later, according to iCon, the 2005 book by Young and William L. Simon. When he did find out, he was so hurt he cried.

The lesson is that if you own a business, you need to run it astutely. I most would consider Jobs to be charismatic and project an aura. Not as many would call him a nice guy.

His desire for getting things right played a large part in his success. In the same way that successful marketers will continually strive to get something right so that their business ran correctly. As some would say, “If you do what you’re supposed to do, you’ll get what you’re supposed to get”.

Here’s an insight into Jobs’ quest for perfection from iCon;

Jobs wanted the next computer to be something different—an appliance, something anyone could use. That was the Apple II, which came out a year after the Apple I. He hammered at his message as the company grew: Computers should be tools. Trip Hawkins, one of Apple’s first 50 employees, remembers Jobs obsessing over an article he’d read in a science magazine about the locomotive efficiency of animal species. “The most efficient species was the condor, which could fly for miles on only a few calories,” Hawkins says. “Humans were way down the list. But then if you put a man on a bicycle, he was instantly twice as efficient as the condor.” The computer, Jobs said, was a “bicycle for the mind.”

Jobs had another message: These tools had to be beautiful. The Apple II did look great, for then: It had a case and keyboard and fit easily on a desk. Jobs’s aesthetic suffused everything, even the circuit boards. He insisted the circuits be redone to make the lines straighter.

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And just in case you mistakenly associated Apple’s touchy-feel human-friendly products with the personality of it’s founder, here’s a reality check:

At Apple, Jobs inspired without inspiring much love. “He’d stop by and say, ‘This is a pile of shit’ or ‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,’” Andy Hertzfeld, who helped develop the Macintosh, told Moritz. “The scary thing was that he’d say it about the same thing.” The people at Apple had a name for that behavior, too: “the shithead-hero roller coaster.” Guy Kawasaki, another early employee who was assigned to recruit outside developers to write software for the new machine, said Jobs once came by his cubicle with an executive Kawasaki didn’t recognize. Jobs asked for Kawasaki’s opinion about some third-party company’s software. Kawasaki replied that he didn’t think it was very good. “And Steve turns to the guy and he says, ‘See, that’s what we think about your product,’” Kawasaki says, laughing. The stranger was the third-party company’s chief executive officer. “I’m sure the CEO did not expect to get ripped like that.”

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Lesson: If you want to get what you want, you need to do whatever it takes. This means working on your PPV, PPC, SEO campaign till you get what you are shooting for. It means working on it on weekends, holidays till you get it right. Closing shop at 5pm every day is just asking for trouble.

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Despite all that hard work though,

The board told Sculley he had to act. In April he relieved Jobs of day-to-day duties and made him vice-chairman. Then Jobs lost that title, too. At 30, he lost the thing that most mattered to him. “I didn’t see it then,” he would say in 2005, “but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.”

So even if you start a company, there’s no guarantee that you won’t be kicked out. Though Jobs’ managed to turn it into an opportunity:

After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. Apple’s subsequent 1996 buyout of NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he served as its CEO from 1997 until August 2011.

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Although Next was touted to be the next big thing in computers, Jobs’ struggled to find buyers for his $9,999 computers. He poured $7 million of his own money into the company and it nearly went bust. Funded by VC money, the company continued to chug along.

It was only after a turn of events that Next was acquired by Apple in 1996 for $429 million.

In case you’re wondering, parts of the NextStep operating system formed the foundation of Mac OS X, which were a crucial part of Jobs’ iMacs after he rejoined Apple.

Also, Next’s WebObjects, an object-oriented software platform, would power the Apple Store, iTunes and the MobileMe services.

Lesson: Smart entrepreneurs will learn to reuse, recycle, repurpose tools and intellectual property from previous projects. If you’re an enterprising marketer, this won’t be news to you.

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While Jobs was involved with Next, he also acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm for $10 million. The company, which would later be renamed Pixar, first tried to sell the Pixar Image Computer, but failed. After years of unprofitability, the company would contract with Disney to produce animated films, the first of which was Toy Story and the rest is history, with hits like A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and the Incredibles following.

If you think running a business with “years of unprofitability” to its name is a good thing, you’re probably an optimist, but might not do well running a company. Being able to adapt Pixar’s business model not only ensure its survival, but brought it to a whole new level of profitability.

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And Apple was not without it’s failures too. It’s attempt to launch a tablet computer-type device through it’s Newton subsidiary was a pretty big failure. Placed side by side, you can see some similarities between the Apple Newton MessagePad and today’s iPad.

Lesson: Expect failure no matter how smart or good you think you might be. Picking yourself up is a test of whether you’re capable of getting to where you want to be.

Let’s assume you’re suffering from tunnel vision and just see the $99/month price tag. Is it expensive? Heck, yeah.

Anything’s going to be expensive if you only look at the cost side of things.

Disclaimer: I don’t know Jordan that well, aside from a brief email exchange where he asked if I wanted to submit a picture of myself with my car for a blog post on StackThatMoney.

I then asked him, if he wanted me to pose with my regular weekday drive-the-kids-to-school car or my sports car.

No, I’m kidding, I politely declined and said that I felt it’s a little lame to feel like you have to prove you can buy (or probably lease) some $40,000 car and brag about it online so you can feel better about yourself.

But Lorenzo and Besmir I’ve known for some time and I was a little surprised that they posted the offers and campaigns they’d been running. They had told me about these campaigns confidentially over skype/AIM and it was surprising to see them appear as case studies on the forum.

Now before you break out your paypal account or credit card and start signing up with dollar signs in your eyes, just wait a sec.

Some caveats: Obviously if 100 affiliates (newbie or experienced), start cloning the offer, landing page, keywords, url targets and run it on every single PPV network they can get their hands on, the offer will probably tank. It will go from 50% ROI to maybe 5% if you’re lucky.

The best way to benefit from the forum is to study the techniques being demonstrated and see how they might apply to your existing campaign, or better yet, adapt and combine two or more techniques to get an even higher response/conversion rate.

The best tool any affiliate can get isn’t one you can buy online, or even in the store. It’s the one that lies between your ears. Joining a forum can help spark an idea or introduce an element that brings your campaign to a new level.

“Is the forum any good?”

That’s a bit of a silly question in my opinion. Since the forum is brand-new and its three owners are focused on building the brand and bringing in the members, they’re not holding anything back. The case studies contain a lot of detail, the owners are frequently online and replying to questions. Short of calling any of them on the phone, I think the forum is the next best thing.

But don’t take my word for it. Check it out for at least a month, spend at least a decent amount of time following along and setting up your own campaigns and see what you’ve learned and more importantly, how you can benefit from it.

And there’s an opening offer:

$99/month promotion, goes up to $149/month later.

Check out: StackThatMoney for more details.

1) Click to go to the Affiliate Summit website. (opens in a new window)

2) Click the “Register now” link.

3) At the registration page, use the discount code “ASE11WIAW” (it’s good for 10% off silver, gold, platinum or diamond)

PS: The prices for early bird registration end May 20th (Fri). If you’ve been procrastinating or waiting for some reason, perhaps the increase in price after May 20th may motivate you.

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Ok, let’s look at some of the details for Affiliate Summit East 2011 (also known as ASE2011).

The upcoming conference is back in New York.

• When: August 21-23, 2011 (Sunday to Tuesday)
• Where: Hilton New York

I suggest flying in or getting there on Saturday and taking it easy during the day and meeting up with friends or arranging meetings that evening.

Some affiliates have been known to party hard on Saturdays before the conference begins, then have to nurse a pounding hangover the next 3 days. Generally, not very fun.

New York is generally more expensive than Las Vegas (where Affiliate Summit West is typically held).

The turnout tends to be smaller than ASW – this means you have more time to meet up with your advertising or CPA network reps, and have more time to networks with other affiliates.

Vegas seems like a flurry of parties and non-stop meetings, so the pace at New York might better suit you if you’d like to turn things down a notch.

Having said that, ASE2011 will feature 4 keynote speakers – I’ve heard Seer Interactive’s Wil Reynolds speak a number of times and he always delivers great stuff. I had a look at the other 3 speaker’s bios too and they looked pretty interesting, even if you’re probably not going to follow their business model.

As always, be sure to check out the Meet Market on Sunday, even if you might miss some workshop sessions.

The conference sessions look interesting, although the speakers aren’t all listed yet (I believe they’ve probably not submitted their speaker agreements yet).

I’ll post more about the sessions as more info become available in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, you might like to get your ticket.

Which one to get?

If it’s your first time, you might like to get the Diamond or Platinum pass which gives you access to all the workshop sessions. They’re kinda like “all access” passes.

The gold and silver passes are good if you’re mainly there to check out the tradeshow and have meetings, cos you won’t have access to most of the workshops.

Here’s the registration info again:

1) Click to go to the Affiliate Summit website. (opens in a new window)

2) Click the “Register now” link.

3) At the registration page, use the discount code “ASE11WIAW” (it’s good for 10% off silver, gold, platinum or diamond)

PS: The prices for early bird registration end May 20th (Fri). If you’ve been procrastinating or waiting for some reason, perhaps the increase in price after May 20th may motivate you.

That mantra also happens to be the subtitle of Guy Kawasaki’s Rules for Revolutionaries (first published in 1990s), and still equally relevant today.

There’s a paradox/dichotomy with Internet marketers. Almost all of us have the potential for unlimited income, but the vast majority (ie: more than 90%), work less than an hour a day.

That’s excluding time spent on twitter, facebook, watching youtube videos, reading ebooks, chatting on AIM. That’s less than one hour of purposeful, meaningful, goal-direct work each day.

The other “law” is that your amount of meaningful work is directly proportional to the amount of income you generate.

So that time spent goofing off translates into throwing away potential income too.

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Deciding to be an “internet marketer” could mean spending time after you finish your day job, after you’ve eaten your dinner/supper and sitting at your table, trying to figure this “internet thing” out. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances tell me they want to “do what I do”, and then they go on to talk about how working from home would be great for them, how they’re really good at marketing/writing/creative stuff and they would make an excellent internet marketer.

So, like a fool, I give them an idea to work on, and they buy into the idea, they see they can do it, and I finish off the conversation with… “Remember, more than 90% of people give up after the first day, of the rest, 90% of the guys left give up after the first week. So only 1 out of 100 ever gets anything done.”

After promises that they’ll be that one outstanding individual, they go off to do their thing.

Two weeks later, I speak to them and they’ve got a lot of stuff to tell me. Mainly a lot of reasons why they didn’t do anything. Usually a combination of either:

• School
• Kids
• Relationships
• Their day job
• Stress, fatigue
• A lack of drive
• A loss of confidence
• Or they bought about $100 worth of books off Amazon, but haven’t had time to read a single book.

Which is a little disappointing because I gave one simple thing for them to do. If they had done it, they would have made $10, $20, or maybe even $100.

Even if they’d have made their first $1, it’d drive them to go on.

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I’m fairly sure, it’s not anything specific to Internet marketing, e-commerce, being an entrepreneur.

It’s got everything to do with your drive, your motivation, your ambition.

It’s free to say you want to have a lofty goal, but it takes real cojones to do something about it.

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Are you going to fail if you try it?

Possibly, and the probability is pretty big, especially if it’s something like CPA marketing, or using a new traffic method like PPV.

Are you going to lose money?

Heck yeah, possibly a lot of it too.

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In sci-fri writer Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series, the protagonist Paul “Muadib” Atreides is put to a test by the Bene Gesserit order.

His hand is put into a box and it feels like the flesh is being burned off it and his hand is being torn apart.

But he survives this test because his mother Lady Jessica has taught him a mantra, the “Litany against fear” which goes:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

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Besides being my favorite sci-fi series, Dune also contains one of my favorite quotes.

Substitute “Fear” with “Failure” or “Adversity” and you’ll realize that anything worth the effort is going to involve some degree of pain.

If you’re starting something new, it’s going to take time to master it.

In all likelihood, you’re going to spend about 8 to 12 hours a day just figuring out something new – whether it’s blogging, social media, PPV or CPA.

Once you’ve understood the basics, it will probably take 4-6 hours a day to fine tune what you’re doing.

And in the third stage, you can probably get things going smoothly and you’ll be able to maintain your level of earnings with just one hour of effort a day.

How long will it take to go from stage 1 to stage 3?

It varies from individual, but typically the ones who aren’t afraid of fear, or don’t let it become their mind killer move much faster through the stages.

If you haven’t been brainwashed by some of the talk of buying a business-in-a-box or a pack of 2,506 ebooks to kickstart your e-commerce business, you’ll usually start out on a better footing.

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To address some emails I’ve received:

“What’s the fastest time it will take for me to earn $xxx per month from websites/affiliate marketing/blogging?” – I suggest that rather than shoot for “fastest”, it’s better to bone up on your fundamentals. I’ve noticed that these “fastest” methods tend to rely on learning one method (usually blackhat) way of doing something and these generally last a couple of hours/days/weeks depending on your luck. Then you’re left running to learn another “trick”. You’re not building a business in my opinion, you’re just hustling for some spare change.

“Does it work?” – I could tell you I’ve been doing this for many years, but I guess you won’t know for yourself, until you’ve tried it out, will you?

“Can you coach/mentor me?” - I’ve not offered this for a long time (since 2008 I think). Unless you have an interesting project proposal/joint venture in mind, I’m wholly focused on long-term projects. If you’re newer or looking at bringing your earnings to a higher level, you should check out PPV Playbook. I’ve mentioned it a number of times, and you can check out a write-up here.

By the way, PPV Playbook discount codes are still available.)

“Will more Friday Podcast episodes be coming out?” – While I produced the series, it took a fair amount of time and resources. With two young kids and a number of ongoing projects, there’re no plans to continue it at this time. You can check out the archive here though).

“Will you be blogging more regularly?” – I was inspired after meeting FinchSells (aka Martin Osborn) last week in Singapore. He claimed that he was blogging about once a week now. I wasn’t going to call him out on it, but he seems to be blogging every 2 weeks, so I guess he’s a big fat liar. Now that my gnarly taxes are out of the way, I plan to publish a post every week. So check back often.