The GAP is a program designed for professionals managing multiple Adwords accounts, granting them official Google recognition and other benefits that are helpful in this field.

To become a qualified member you have to pass two exams:

The first one is Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam, a two hour long exam that contains 120 questions. This is a new version of the exam, designed to be more rigorous and strategy-oriented and covers all current products and best practices to help run and manage AdWords campaigns.

And the second one is a choice between the Search Advertising Advanced Exam, which is available and other two, which are in production.

Hurray!!

[patting myself on the back]- Today I passed the Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam, with a score of 98% (85% is required to pass)

This puts me half way to being qualified and joining the club!
I will update as soon as I take the second exam in the beginning of March.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
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Minding the GAP

Internet marketing is hard work. Look for freebies and shortcuts and you are destined to fail. Treat it as a business and succeed!

Learn how to treat this as a business from reliable sources, not hype infested egomaniacs that brag about their income or promise you immediate profits if you purchase this or that.

Put everything into practice immediately. Reading will not get you anywhere. Try, test, loose a bit of money. Get the feeling of things.

Another year had past and now this is my third year online. Man, did a lot of things change since that winter 2007…

If you were expecting an income report of some sort you won’t find one here, if you were following me for a while you would know that.

What I am going to tell you is that I have evolved into a different kind of marketer, one that looks at the big picture and makes strategies instead of having small projects to make a quick buck.

To brake things up, these are the stuff that I didn’t have 3 years ago:

• I no longer celebrate and not excited by sales and commissions. Funny, I used to be on the top of the world when the first dozen of sales came through.
• I became proficient in html and css, picked up a bit of php, and now I am able to use the full potential of Wordpress, my CMS of choice.
• I’m building content rich sites, instead of single landing pages.
• I realize that going after a one-time customer is not economical, I’m using Aweber autoresponder to market to my lists over and over again.
• I own my own products, which I either give away for “free” (for an email), or sell, and leverage the power of affiliates.
• I outsource the work that I don’t want or unable to do myself.
• I am comfortable with paying providers, investing in my upcoming projects.
• I am comfortable with paying for tools that will help my efforts.
• PayPal is my friend.
• Google is my mistress.
• I’m keeping up to date by reading a few pro blogs and news feeds.
• By a few I mean 4… It used to be 20
• I market internationally. US is not the only market in the game.
• I contact and get to know other affiliates. There’s a common interest we all share, and there’s no reason to restrict ourselves to avatars and pen-names.

So, there you go. It’s not ordered in any way and I probably missed a point or two since it’s already late and I’m tired. But you got the general direction, I hope.

You’re welcome to ask questions, comment, or do whatever below…

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Another Year Online

When you work long hours in this business it gets lonely sometimes.

By the end of the day I’m dying to talk to someone. Just to share what I went through during the day, the bad stuff, the good stuff, you know? But with someone who has a clue about internet marketing.

But, hey, on the other hand, you know better than to start singing out the offers you’re running. Sometimes a few words are enough to get a brand new competitor on your plate.

So, it’s a constant battle between the urge to socialize and discuss, and the more down to earth “keep your trap shut” urge.

Anyway, yea, back to work… This blog comes in handy after all haha. I’ve rarely used it for this purpose, but it’s nice to have your own place to vent some steam.

Did you ever feel the need to share something with someone but couldn’t?
I would love to hear that — comment please! $10 prize for the most original comment. *Subject to editorial review. Promo can be canceled at any time without prior notice. Did you really make the effort to read this fine print? lol

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Quick Venting

Luckily, although I knew nothing about making money online, I knew enough about the Internet to dig deeper than that. I started reading blogs, sifting out splogs of course, read a few forum discussions and basically got the feeling of this niche.

Like any of you probably did, I followed the gurus and opted-in to all kinds of mailing lists to receive free ebooks and how-to’s. I was swamped with information and the many money-making techniques. I was dreaming of multiple income streams and was ecstatic…

…during exactly one month.

After that moth, I started to suspect that with all those offers, methods, techniques, and way to make money online, it is probably a big bubble to get beginners to pay for info products.

Obviously enough, I ended up doing exactly nothing of what I’ve read as ways to make money online. I made a pledge not to buy another ebook ever again and, as a general rule, not to pay for anything again.

It’s human nature to choose the easiest path and stay in the comfort zone and, so I did. I was blogging and hoping to monetize the blog at some point. The “wonderful” and very promising ways to make money online I discovered in my initial research were long forgotten.

This is the point where most people would just forget about making money online and Internet Marketing altogether.

Make Money With Affiliate Programs: A Year Later

The comfort zone for me was not to spend too much money, and not to go where I was new. I had WordPress skills naturally I chose to go the blog way. A full year has past before I realized I needed to change my strategy, making minimal sales that wouldn’t even pay for my grocery bill. A full year!

Fortunately, I had the brains to realize that a huge change is needed, and enough persistence to make myself go into new online ventures.

I have chosen to pay for PPC coaching, and bought a really outstanding Internet Marketing ebook: One Week Marketing.

It’s been a few months since, and those two have provided me with the needed insights to dominate niches using both SEO and Pay Per Click, and for the first time in a long time I started to see sales coming in.

Summary and Insights

So what did I learn from all that?
Let me give the beginners a piece of advice:

1. Try to join a community of like minded people. That way you will have a way to easily find out what works and what doesn’t. What program is a scam and which is a true money maker. Find a paid forum or a paid coaching program, this automatically weeds out spammers and freeloaders.
2. Keep in mind that work is required to achieve results online. Nothing is easy, and your initial efforts will be tough.
3. If you feel that you “need” or “must” pay for another ebook or tool, refer to Advice No.1 above. Consult others. It is very probable that someone has already bought that and has a solid opinion, which is not biased like the opinions you’d find on a blog or a sales page.
4. This one could possibly be the best advice. Go at it.
   If you just read about a wonderful way to make money, and don’t give it a go, you might as well forget about Internet Marketing and watch Youtube videos all day. You can’t possibly expect to catch fish without throwing in the line, can you?

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Make Money With Affiliate Programs – Why 90% Fail Miserably When Doing Affiliate Marketing?

Today I want to share one of the best examples of thinking outside the box I’ve ever seen.

Who doesn’t love a pizza once in a while?

You eat it slice by slice…

You happily reach the end, when.. Oh Boy!! WTF?!

But, when the initial shock dissipates,

…it appears to be a advertisement for a local exterminator.

[I'm giving you a minute to soak that in... Please feel free to run through the sequence again]

Now, I know it doesn’t come through as very appropriate, especially keeping in mind that the pizza-eating experience has been ruined. But, please admit it.
It’s genius.

• Think about what would pop into his mind when he will have an insect problem?
• Think about the number of stories that would be told by that “unfortunate” customer to his friends and relatives.

Use this as an inspiration for your own marketing efforts.
Consider everything, dismiss nothing.

- Alex

Technorati Tags: adwords, advertisement, internet marketing, marketing, outside the box, pizza

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Best Example of Thinking Outside the Box