Talk about the Ultimate in sales advertising…Amazon Product Ads!

Q: First off, what exactly is ‘Amazon Product Ads’?
A: It is an Advertising system that puts your product advertisements in front of other related Amazon.com products, to catch that buyer’s attention (bringing them to your site and/or product) while they’re in the buying mood! Awesome Idea!

Q: How is this different than Google’s ad networks (Adsense or Clickbank)?
A: Google’s advertisements pop up on selected websites with ‘potentially’ related content…even though google’s ads are getting better, they’re not always the right ad for the right viewer. The main difference is, Google ads show up when someone could possibly be in a ‘buying mood’, Amazon’s Product Ads on the other hand are putting your little product or service in front of the buyers eyeballs as they’re ready to buy! This should be seen as a HUGE difference in the two Advertisement systems for any business (or person) looking to sell their own products. Which would you rather have if you’re trying to sell a product? Would you rather pay for an ad to be clicked on while ‘random’ people are looking at it, or…Pay for an ad to be clicked on while ‘buyers’ our looking at it!

Here’s Amazon’s explanation of how their system works:

Amazon Product Ads includes easy-to-use tools to upload and manage your product catalog. This makes it simple to put your ads in front of some of the most active customers on the web.
Amazon provides the tools you need to create and maintain your Product Ads. When you create your account we will pre-set your cost-per-click bids to the minimum amount in each category. You just need to upload your detailed product catalog, set your daily budget and you’re ready to go. Your Product Ads will then be displayed across a variety of placements on Amazon.com including search and browse results and product pages. These ads link directly to the product on your web site where you make the sale.

Upload Your Product Catalog and Set Your Budget
A Product Ad is created for each product that you upload to the Amazon.com catalog. Once you have registered, you can upload your items directly through Amazon’s online account management interface – Seller Central. Your ads will then appear on Amazon.com.

Customers See Your Product Ads on Amazon.com
Your Ads will be viewed by active Amazon.com customers 24/7 via Amazon product pages, as well as being displayed in relevant Amazon.com product search and browse results and contextually targeted placements.
Customers Click to Product Pages on Your Website

When Amazon.com customers click on your ad they are taken directly to your Web site where you control the brand and buying experience for your products. This allows you to deliver a unique buying experience, giving you the opportunity to acquire new customers and grow revenue for your business.

You Are Charged a Cost-Per-Click
Using Seller Central, you can easily view your invoices and track your advertising budget. There are no fees for impressions – you are only charged when Amazon.com customers choose to click on your ad and are directed to your web site. You control not only the maximum price you are willing to pay for each click, but also your daily and monthly budget. Most importantly, you can measure your return on investment and optimize your budget accordingly. Invoices are published as you accumulate clicks and payment is collected via credit card.

Customers Purchase Products From Your Website
You control the buying experience because Amazon.com customers are clicking through to your Web site. Customers benefit from the seamless discovery of your products on Amazon.com and your e-commerce expertise. Your Amazon Product Ads will deliver you engaged customers giving you the opportunity to acquire repeat orders and increased sales for your business.

As you can see, this is a HUGE benefit to every small business out there that wants to sell their products! Only time will tell if this is the next best ‘product sales’ advertising platform…

Please Go To The Amazon Product Ad Homepage, sign up for a FREE account & let us know what you think…we’re doing it already!

Thank you very much and have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

This is just a short update about everything…since I haven’t updated my blog in a while.

Right now Shawna and I are:

1. Planning a move to a different part of the world (specifically, we’re gong to go to the South East Asian Islands for an unknown amount of time), because we can…and need to. We need a change of pace in life, we need to get out of our comfort zone, we need to experience life…just having each other to rely on, and we need to emerse ourselves in different cultures before we decide where & what we will call home.
2. Getting Certified in ‘Teaching English As a Foreign Language’ TEFL. Let me clarify, my wife is getting certified and I’m proudly supporting her. I will get certified in the next year or so, but right now it is not a passion of mine.
3. Getting over our auto accident: Shawna just had surgery on her knee, fixing some issues that were caused by a kid crossing the center line (plus two lanes of traffic) and hitting us head on. After she gets done with rehab, we’re going to start our physical conditioning for our trip (working out so we can hike and carry our 70lb backpacks)!
4. Organizing our life for our move; this involves everything from selling our cars, selling our home, having someone take care of our pets when we’re gone, setting all of our bills up for automatic payments, getting enough auto-generated money to pay our USA bills when we’re away with automatic payments, buying all of our travel supplies, etc.

Right now David (my business partner) and I are:

1. Building a new business that teaches people how to create auto-generated income using online affiliate marketing…with WordPress
2. Cleaning up our current business ‘Control Yours’ and considering listing it for sale…why not?
3. Paying the bills…which can sometimes be the hardest part!

Right now I’m:

1. Building a travel website for our travel updates (called ‘fullcoursetravel.com’)
2. Organizing the ‘Full Course’ Brand and getting it all to mesh together nicely with ‘fullcoursebusiness’, ‘fullcoursemeal’, ‘fullcoursetravel’.

We have a lot going on and I’m excited for what it’s all going to bring to us!
Have an Awesome Day and please let us know if you have any questions.
~Chais Meyer

The Affiliate Marketing world can seem Uber complex, especially to someone that has never dabbled in it before.
I was one of those people a few months ago, I’d never messed with any sort of an Affiliate Marketing system before but it all intrigued me so much that I’ve kinda dove in head first.

Question: What is Affiliate Marketing?

Simple Answer: Being the middleman, helping people find a product or service that they have an interest in buying…and because you assist in making the purchase (linking the customer to the seller or the sellers goods from a website), you get a percentage of the sale.
More Simply Put: “You get a piece of what people are already buying, because you have an easy website for them to find the products they’re looking for!” That’s it.

It’s a very simple concept and it’s much more beautiful and effective than traditional advertising…why is this? With traditional advertising you pay a company to put your ad, brand, special, discount and/or product in front of people’s eye balls…but these advertisers can NEVER guarantee how many people will see it, or how many of them will actually act on it to buy your product or service. Affiliate Marketing is an advertising system structured more like a high commission sales job; The advertisers get no money upfront (no salary), they only make money when they make a sale for the company…100% commission. This is a beautiful system if you do a good job at promoting other peoples products or services…this is a shitty job if you suck at promoting other peoples stuff…the good thing about it, there’s a system to it!

[Side Note: Think about being a business in the USA and how awesome it would be if you only payed advertisers when they ACTUALLY sell something for you...NO MORE expensive newspaper ads, where their 'advertising strategy' is shooting a shotgun in the air and hoping to hit a bird...that's what I'm talking about! That's Affiliate Marketing!]

The main reasons that I’m falling in love with the Affiliate concept, is because:

1. It’s so easy (using the internet and the right online tools) to build a website that gets visits on a monthly basis and eventually leads to sales.
2. Hundreds of thousands of companies out there are looking to sell something and you just have to find a company that you think is honest, has a good product, and a good reward for you helping them with the sale.
3. You can start small! (Amazon Associates is a great place to start…for free)

You may be thinking “Ok Mister, if it’s soo easy show me the proof!” … Fine, I will.
Take a look the following website that I  just put together less than a month and a half ago: http://www.refurbishedkindle.net. This website’s sole purpose is to link people to the products they want to buy…in this case, ‘refurbished Kindles and their accessories’…I don’t own the Kindles, I don’t have inventory of the accessories, I just link to the actual products on Amazon.com; and if someone buys that product or anything else on Amazon.com within 24 hours of clicking on my link, I will get a percentage of the sale as a reward for sending the potential customer to Amazon.com. This is great for me and great for Amazon!

Over this last month I’ve made $125.74…doing nothing. (check out the photo below)

Let’s clarify what it took to get to the “doing nothing” stage…

• I had to set up my Amazon Associates account (one time, then I can use it forever)
• I had to buy the domain name ‘refurbishedkindle.net‘ ($9.99/year) and then set it up with a free wordpress.org site, on a website storage space (aka. hosting account, for $72/year) = a Total of $81.99/year or less than $7/month.
• I had to choose a ‘theme’ (look and feel for the website…these can be free or purchased) and ‘activate it’ (this is the beauty of wordpress…changing the look & feel of a website takes all of 3 minutes).
• I had to tell the website what products I want to show up on this site…(only products from amazon.com initially)…and set it to auto-publish (automatically add new products from amazon, every product also automatically includes my amazon associates ID, which is what tells Amazon that I sent the person to their site and that’s what gives me a percentage of every sale).
• I do a couple of SEO related things (Search Engine Optimization) to help search engines find my website (this is pretty automated any more…with some free online tools)
• That’s It!
• I check back once every two-three weeks to make sure things are running smoothly.

I’m not saying that someone can (or should) quite their job & jump into this whole ‘Affiliate thing’, making THOUSANDS of dollars in their first couple of weeks or anything like that…I’m just saying that it’s like anything else in life, if you dedicate 5-10 hours a week to it as a side thing, you can make hundreds of dollars in extra income in about a month or two…in a really simple way. If you invest 40+ hours a week to it, you will make more money…go figure! [Main rule to remember: Don't sell something that people aren't buying! It's a giant waste of time!]

I’ve decided to spend more time with this affiliate stuff over the next few months, and who knows…maybe I’ll create a side business that gives people the exact instructions and support they need to learn about how all of this stuff works. I’d love for this affiliate stuff to become my full time job, that just sounds great!

I think the hardest part about anything new in life, is the initial learning curve!…do you think it would be a good idea if we put our entire system of  ’how to make affiliate marketing simple’ into video tutorials?

This is really exciting to me, and I hope to post about more affiliate info as I become more knowledgable…remember, I’ve just been doing this a month or two, I’m a baby in the affiliate world.
Thank you for reading this post and I hope that you have an Awesome Day!  (please let me know if you have any questions)
~Chais Meyer

I’m not really sure if fundamentals can ‘technically’ change or not since they are “fundamentals” & all (the foundation and most basic part of our beings)…but I’d like to think that I can change whatever about myself when ever I want, or need to.

I was very quickly getting sick of my life (I recognized a pattern about two weeks ago), doing the same things that I’ve always done and expecting to get different (BETTER) results.
The end outcome wasn’t changing, so I decided to make it change…I only have one life and I better be the best ‘Chais Meyer’ that I can be! I always have the opportunity to compare myself to the countless other 27 year olds that have already made millions of dollars, sold multiple business and met the president of some far off country…but where would that get me? Life is based off of ‘Cause and Effect’ & what I did ten years ago, one year ago, or one week ago helped create a road map to where I AM today (as good or as bad as that is). The question that comes to mind after realizing this is, “What am I going to do today (the Cause) to change my future (the Effect) for the better?”
I can no longer be the victim because I AM THE VICTOR…and I need to start cusing acting like it!

“Take Responsibility for yourself and change your cusing fundamentals!”, I yelled at myself in the hotel room.
No one is going to take you by the hand and make you be better, stronger or smarter…YOU are the only person responsible for you!
DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME READER!?! YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU!

For me, that means sleeping less (from 9 hours to 5 or 6 a night has been good so far), learning more (applying myself and dedicating one hour or more each day to learning something that will better my tomorrow), applying myself (TAKING ACTION, ideas are great but their just ideas if they never get implemented) and limiting the amount of time I spend on things that distract me from progression (AKA. Disc Golfing and the above !

Keep Pushing & Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

[image used from: http://studio.angoulvant.net/tag/3d-fundamentals/]

Just now commenting on the book ‘Crush It‘ may seem a little late, as it was officially released back in 2009, but Gary Vaynerchuck just appeared on my radar…and I’m glad he did!

I first saw Gary when I went to an Up-lifting / Technological / Entrepreneurial conference in Omaha, Nebraska a few months ago (called BIG Omaha). Gary was one of the speakers and spoke about business, the web and all around randomness while he was answering questions that were asked by the audience; He’s a Total Stud, a creative thinker, a free speaker (he speaks his mind & cusses a lot), he’s inspirational, and an extremely potent individual (in the nicest way possible .

As soon as I heard about his book ‘Crush It’, I had to buy the audio version and see if Gary was ‘just another business guy’ or something more…I’ve since discovered that he’s definitely more!

I’ve listened to a lot of business related audiobooks and Gary’s is the most real audiobook I’ve EVER heard!
What makes an audiobook more REAL than the next?

• First, Gary goes off the script a lot in this book! This is right in line with his unedited episodes on his Video Podcast (for Wine Library TV). ‘Going off the script’ is exactly how it sounds…he stops reading the words that he wrote in his book and starts explaining in more detail, gives real world examples and he even comes up with new thoughts as he’s recording the audiobook and shares them with his listeners. This, in my opinion, is how ALL audiobooks should be…If the author wants to mention something else to his listeners, just do it…share any/all of your thoughts if they may help us get a more complete experience from your book, even if it wasn’t in your initial published draft! Thanks Gary for helping me find what I was missing in 95% of all audiobooks!
• Second, Gary speaks to his readers/listeners in a no bull shit way, “You’re not going to get rich over night, it may take months or years until your hard work pays off”. Thank you for not feeding us with another round of crap, the kind that eventually leads people to a feeling of disappointment because of their limited results after 2 months of ‘hard work’!
• Third, Gary puts a massive priority on what it takes to make yourself & your business(es) a success & that is Sweat (you know, the liquid that comes out of our pores when we do something that is intense)! When we realize the importance of our own hard work and how it’s the only thing that gives us a leg up over the next guy, we will change our priorities and stop expecting someone to just hand us success because we put 20 hours a week in on a particular project or business.

If you want to either create or re-create your own personal or business brand, this book  is a must have (the audiobook version is my recommendation)!

Thanks again Gary for sharing your thoughts, examples, and experiences with us to hopefully better ourselves.
Please listen to this book and tell me what you think of it and have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

:: I’m going to be updating my progress as I start to re-create my own personal brand over these next few months…Stay Tuned & CLICK HERE if you’d like to subscribe through email…I’ll send you a new email every time I write or record a new blog post!

This image is great because the guy in this picture looks as proud to have $17 as we are.

This was truth about 5 days ago…I looked in my online personal checking account and saw a dollar sign “$” with the following numbers “17.00″. Unfortunately, this was not a mistake by Wells Fargo, they did NOT accidentally move the decimal point over two places from the end of the number, we actually had $17 in our checking account.

This is not a pity cry or a call out for help, I am proud to have $17 in my checking account!
Why? Because this is ‘the real dirty’ of not living a typical 9-5 lifestyle, of working for ourselves and putting all of our extra cash and resources into our businesses that will someday repay us for scraping by in order to feed our businesses.

Could we do it another way? Could we work a full time job and also make our businesses grow?
Yes & Yes.

There’s no right or wrong when it comes to living life the way you want to. For us, it’s all about constant progression…if we are moving towards a growth direction and we’re seeing constant change for the better (personally and professionally) we are willing to have a harder short term (and a better long term). On the other hand if we’re sitting back, blowing our money and wasting our time, we deserve to be in a tight spot without the reward of our business growing for the future. The fact of the matter is that we’re running, pushing, and sometimes fighting to get what we want…we plan to have a huge financial turn around during these next 6 months…and that news will be even more exciting to share!

Business is not always easy & it’s sometimes dirty, but as long as you have a higher purpose, bless others (individuals and businesses), and work with more passion than the next guy/gal…things will eventually go your way.

Have an Awesome day & don’t forget to thank your God for what you have!
~Chais & Shawna Meyer

A buddy of mine (Mike Nyffeler) sent me a link to this video today, and it really helps me see ‘what we really want out of life’…Purpose.

Take 10 minutes and watch this video, it will reinforce some thoughts you may have about your own life and what drives you.

I was shooting the shit (AKA. Talking) with a buddy of mine, in my office today. We started talking about business and happiness. The conversation was started by him recognizing my chalk board walls and the writing that is on them. (my wife and I painted 50% of the walls in our office with chalkboard paint to help us visually layout our ideas and thoughts everyday)
This particular section of the wall was designated for our “Star Customers”, the customers that do everything right and then some. This list is ongoing and ever changing to help us identify what makes up our Star customers and how we can get more of them.

For us, a Star customer recognizes growth potential in themselves and their business, they want to learn and better themselves rather than having someone spoon feed them everything. Knowing this, we can manipulate our current business systems to reward these Star customers. This is not standard business logic, “rewarding customers, it will never work, we’ll lose money on that”, says corporate America.

We’re starting to see this ‘new agey’ business logic with a lot of young business owners because they’ve seen how happy customers (and employees) make for an extremely profitable and Happy business.

Maybe I’m noticing this new model in more businesses recently because I’m reading Tony Hsieh’s (CEO of Zappos) new book, “Delivering Happiness” (http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com), which is absolutely incredibly! This book is an overview of Tony’s life (Personally & Professionally), with his wins and losses along the way. He’s inspired me to be better at focusing on happiness instead of money, and then the money will take care of itself.

I’m striving to make every business I’m involved with a true success (according to my customers and employees), not Gross Profits. My wife & I are super passionate about this and challenge you to look at life this way. Take a look at Tony’s new book and tell us what you get of it, here’s the Amazon link if you’d like to buy it and check it out (http://www.amazon.com/deliveringhappiness).

Make others Happy in Life and you will be too!
Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

This Blast from the past is one that helped me develop my marketing mind. It brought to my attention that I need to think about who’s listening to my story, instead of how great I think my story is. Take a look and tell me your thoughts. (This post was originally written on October, 1st 2007)

Marketing (in the form of advertising) affects who it affects…

Words following this statement might be something like this:
Duh…
No, Really…
Wow, That’s deep (with a hint of sarcasm)…

But it is so true and simple that we (especially myself) forget about it.

I was with my mom watching television last week and we saw an Alltel (cell provider) commercial that has the 4 guys (they represent the other cell phone companies) and “Chad” (from Alltel). The four guys always do something silly or stupid to make Alltel look like a better company. My mom loves these commercials (absolutely loves them…) and I…not so much.

So, I think to myself that this commercial is a waste of time and money and that if I were to do it, I would do them a different way (I don’t know everything about commercials, but I know my own tastes and what effects me). The interesting part is that my mom loves it the way it is, maybe my way wouldn’t effect the people that it currently does in a positive way.

Using myself and my views as a basis to judge whether all marketing is good or bad, is an incomplete way of looking at it. I need to view it (marketing) from other’s points of view (my mom and people like her), as well as from my own. This combined point of view is the middle ground that every non niche company tries to find. It requires more work and is more time consuming, but it is the area that I need to be shooting for.

What I learned:
1. Look into marketing deeper (my own, other company’s and individual’s)
2. Don’t judge what works or doesn’t off of 30 seconds of thought (I need to push myself to grow).
3. Don’t forget about the customers / partners / investors that don’t think like me!

I hope you enjoyed this Blast from the past & have an Amazing Day!
~Chais Meyer

[There is an update at the Bottom of this Post]

I was recently loaned an Audiobook called “Adventures in Creative Thinking” By Mike Vance. This particular Audiobook is a set of 6 cassette tapes, not CDs or an .mp3 file, making it very challenging to listen to if you don’t own a cassette tape player…I don’t know if you know this, but iPhones, iPods and most computers don’t have a cassette tape slot! You probably knew that

The last time I listened to a cassette tape was probably about 5-7 years ago. So, in order for me to listen to this highly recommended Audiobook, I would either have to convert these tapes to .mp3s or listen to all 6 of them on a tape player. I decided to convert this Audiobook Set into a single .mp3 file. Easier said than done…

After about 4 hours of searching for my old tape player, and having no luck finding it, I decided to search for this book on the internet…ARE YOU KIDDING ME? NO DIGITAL COPY OF THIS AUDIOBOOK AVAILABLE ON THE WEB…NOT EVEN TO PURCHASE!?!

I started doing a little investigating and found the company that made this Audiobook, here’s a link to their website: http://www.creativethinkingassoc.com/
“OK, now I’m getting somewhere”, or so I thought. They have a online store with all of their Audiobooks (15+ published books) but NO .MP3s!

Whether this was right or wrong, I noticed an opportunity to help a company upgrade their products and possible make a little money for myself in the process. So here’s what I did:

1. I went to Audible.com to see what the procedure is to submit published Audiobooks for digital distribution and possible resale on their website. I don’t see any actual instructions, just an email address that I can send my questions to…so I write them an email.
2. The email to Audible.com is copied below (I sent a copy to Audible.com and a copy to ‘Creative Thinking Association of America’ The creaters of this book) :
   “Hello Audible.com,
   My name is Chais Meyer and I’m writing for ‘Creative Thinking Association of America’.

   I am currently in no way connected to ‘Creative Thinking Association of America’, but I would like to assist them with the conversion of their Audiobooks to the proper digital formats to possibly be distributed and sold by Audible.com.

   ‘Creative Thinking Association of America’ currently has 15+ Complete and Published Audiobooks that involve creative thinking and entrepreneurial mindsets. These books have made a dramatic impact on myself and my business partners, and we would love the rest of the world to be able to have access to these Audiobooks in a digital Audible file format. I believe that this conversion will allow ‘Creative Thinking Association of America’ to earn additional revenue from their Audiobooks by being converted and sold with your proprietary digital format (I view your company as The Premium Audiobook Resource) .

   I do not have permission to act legally on Creative Thinking Association of America’s behalf, I am only doing investigative work to make this process as smooth as possible for them, if they do indeed decide to convert their Audiobooks into a digital Audible format. Can you please direct me to any/all page(s) or document(s) that explains the specifications and/or requirements needed for converting Audiobooks to the proper digital format? I would like to have a clear answer for this company of how these processes would work. If there is anything else they should know (contract documents, etc.) I would love to provide them with any appropriate literature that will help them understand this process and get everything moving in the right direction, if they choose to do so. I believe that their knowledge and experience needs to be spread to the world.

   Thank you very much for you help and I look forward to hearing from you.
   Chais Meyer
   (mobile) 402-419-1202
   (email) meyer@threedotinc.com
   (twitter id) twitter.com/chaismeyer “
   

3. I wait for either a good or a bad answer…nothing yet!

I do realize that this could be seen as presumptuous and/or very forward on my part (because I was not given permission to contact Audible.com). But I see such a huge need for any existing published Audiobooks to be converted and sold in a digital format. I mean, we’re in a day and age where portable audio is a standard thing and if your books aren’t in the format to reach the masses, they most likely WON’T reach the masses. Sounds logical anyway.

I don’t know whether this action will be good or bad in the long run, all I know is if you’re trying to run a business in ‘Today’s Business World’, you need to follow suite and sell what people are buying.
Who knows…Maybe this will be the start of a business that converts everybody’s old Audiobooks to the new standard Digital format, and maybe for all my hard work and forwardness, I’ll get a percentage of every online sale (Crossing my fingers). Whatever ends up happening, I know that if I didn’t have the balls to help this company make a change, I would never see any positive benefits!

Be Courageous, Daring, and Spontaneous, and if need be…be ballsy enough to tell others they need to change for today! (Just understand that change can be difficult and scary for certain people)

We’ll see where this goes from here.
Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

[Update 3-18-2010 :: I received an email from Diane Deacon, President of Creative Thinking Association of America and it's listed below ]

Hi Chais,

Thank you for your letter and call.  We are glad to know that our Creative Thinking products have helped you be even more creative!

We are working on getting some of our audio programs into proper digital formats.  We will let you know when they will be available.

Keep the Creative Juices Flowing!!!

Sincerely,

Diane Deacon
President