Boy, have I been getting a lot of Russian comment spam lately.

Well, not really. But that’s the only way I could thing of to segway into this blogpost that really has nothing to do with making money online at all. Just indulge me, it’s not often I stray off-topic. Think of it as a Russian marketing lesson, since I’m sure many of you are banking hardcore targeting those ruskies with teeth whitening/magic jack, etc. (/sarcasm)

Earlier today I was surfing around on a Russian proxy (shady off-white business, of course). At some point I forgot I was still using the proxy, until I went to Google to search an image and saw all the Cyrillic-y characters. I then decided to go to Google images and have a look around. I used Google Translate to translate terms from English to Russian and was quite amused by some of the results, especially when compared to the results on Google.com (US). I am here to share some of the best ones with you. I must warn you, however, that a couple of these border on gross/offensive. But nevermind that, let’s get started! I’ll try to go from sorta funny/interesting to hilarious/wtf. Please note that at the time of this writing, these were the #1 image result for the query on the respective Google Images search engine (with safe search turned OFF).

Query: Automobile

Google US


Google RU




Query: Candy

Google US


Google RU




Query: Alcohol

Google US


Google RU




Query: Murder

Google US


Google RU




Query: Old People

Google US


Google RU




Query: Woman

Google US


Google RU




Query: Employment

Google US


Google RU




Query: Prison

Google US


Google RU




Query: Russian Men

Google US


Google RU




Query: American Women

Google US


Google RU




Query: Homosexuals

Google US


Google RU




Query: Dinner

Google US


Google RU




Query: American Family

Google US


Google RU




Query: Police

Google US (note: they are Georgian riot police)


Google RU





I wish I had time for more. Perhaps I’ll do another one of these one day as a comparison between different countries. Or maybe YOU should.

Probably not for long, so you’d better get on it.

I kept hearing people say the Wynn was “sold out” for the Affiliate Summit West conference. My lazy ass has been taking its sweet time to register, and hearing those reports killed my motivation to do so. Then, about a week ago, I did a quick search on the Wynn’s website only to find that there are plenty of rooms available. I suppose the people that were saying it was “sold out” were referring to the group rate secured by Affiliate Summit ($189/night).

So I figured, whatevs, I’ll just pay a little more. But then I decided to just poke around the internet a bit for a promo code. Hot damn.

Long story short: Use promo code NOVWLT. Got a Deluxe King room (better than the group rate ASW regular rooms) for $139/night (plus $20/night resort fee). Register with the promo ASAP here.

Last I checked there were still deluxe king rooms available at that rate for Jan 9th-11th. Good luck. See you there!

We may be well into November, but believe it or not, there is still time to take advantage of the huge surge of holiday spending online by establishing brand new sites and getting organic traffic.

Find the Golden Terms
Your first friend in this process is going to be Google Insights. Using this handy dandy tool, you’re going to want to search something general, such as “shoes” or “toys’ or whatever. Scroll down to the bottom of the results and you’ll see “Rising Searches”. Take a peek at them and see if anything looks interesting. You might want to avoid brand names…you might not. Depends how off-white your SEO hat is.

“Breakout” terms can be golden. They can also be crap. “Breakout” means that the term has recently experienced a surge in search volume of 5,000% or more. Of course, if it gets 2 searches a day, and then one day it got 100 for whatever reason, it will be labeled a “breakout” term.* Do a little research before you go domain crazy. Obviously some breakout keywords are next to worthless (especially with small search volume) while some may be worthwhile. Some breakout terms and the terms that show 200-500% increase (or more) are going to be the money makers.

Try to Snag Them
You might be surprised how easy it is to find available .coms for some of these terms since they may have only recently landed on the radar. Take your list of prospects to Namecheap (the promo code this month is FAMILYWARMTH) and see what you can find.

Build Links, Utilize the Boost before the Deadly Dance
If you’ve ever built/ranked a site in your life, you know that new sites are usually easy to quickly rank for their targeted term (assuming it’s not crazy competitive), at least in the short-term. It is very common for new sites to hang out on the 1st page for a few days or a few weeks before Google asks it to dance. The “dance”, of course, is the endearing term that has come to represent the seemingly random and chaotic position changes that can occur shortly after a new site gets indexed and ranked. Depending on your link building techniques and consistency, the site may settle back down on the 1st page (possibly in an even better position), or it may be cast out to page 24 where it will shrivel and die. In some rare cases, new sites like this actually hit the front page and stick for the long-term. But, that’s besides the point…

The idea is to build sites around these trending keywords, throw them together quickly, slap on some monetization such as Adsense/Amazon/EPN, whatever, and milk that honeymoon traffic you get. You want to try to time it so that your site attains that initial favorable position in the middle of the online shopping frenzy that happens at the end of this month well into the middle of December. So, the time to start building is NOW.

If you need link building ideas, they are all over this site. I know my navigation sort of sucks. Think of it as a barrier for entry.

And, of course, if the site you build is halfway decent, perhaps you can continue expanding it and by the time the next holiday season rolls around you can put it to even better use.

*I take no responsibility if I fucked up my math somehow

In exactly two months it will be time to make the short trip out of Los Angeles, through the desert, and into the magical oasis of Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West, the only affiliate marketing conference you need concern yourself with (because it’s the only one I really go to).

I was going to put these codes at the end of this post, but then I figured I shouldn’t punish the people that actually read my posts and reward the ones that just scrolled down to get the codes, since they would get them way faster…and there are only three! So act fast. Each one of these codes is good for one GOLD registration. Please note that these passes are not transferable, and if you register and then no-show, you won’t be eligible for complimentary passes in the future. Also, if the event somehow sells out before these three promo codes are used, they will become invalid. Without further adieu…

Gold pass promo codes:

1. ASW11OWH1
2. ASW11OWH2
3. ASW11OWH3

Register here. If the code doesn’t work, that means some jerk beat you to the punch.

I hope I just saved you $549 with them codes. Wish I could have given out more passes. In case you were wondering, the gold pass includes: Admission to meet market, exhibit hall, keynotes, Sunday educational sessions (minus the Monetize Summit track); access to all recorded session videos; PowerPoint presentations; and Affiliate Summit Social Network. Does not include Monday and Tuesday sessions.

If you have followed my blog for a while, you’ll know I had a good old time in 2009 as well as 2010 at previous ASW shows.

This year is expected to be better than ever, for several reasons. One reason in particular that I’m quite excited about is the change of venue. Prior to this year, ASW has called The Rio its home. Nothing against The Rio or anything…but this year the conference is being held at The Wynn, which of course is one of the nicest resorts this side of the Prime Meridian.

Why the Hell Should I Go?
I hear this question a lot. I also answered it recently in a thread on Wickedfire. To sum it up, there are a ton of benefits associated with attending, but in my opinion, these are the most important:

• • Seeing the world and scope of internet marketing in real life
• • Making invaluable contacts
• • Free booze
• • I’ll be there, silly

Sure, you may pick up a couple things in the sessions that hadn’t occurred to you before, or get inspired with a new idea for your business, but don’t expect attending the conference to somehow push you into a new tax bracket overnight. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this show to anyone that takes their business seriously.

If you’d like to hang out with little old me at the conference, you can most likely find me at the Parasol Down bar…or screaming at some poor lady in the casino cage about needing another marker. See you there!