About The AdWords Mad Scientist

  Real name: Darrell Merrick

Adwords name: The AdWords Mad Scientist

Location:
Currently living in the Phoenix area, with girlfriend Debbie and basset hound "Monty".

Vices:

martinis, Vegas, blackjack. So I guess the perfect combo for me would be to be playing a hundred dollar blackjack table at the Wynn with a great martini in hand. Oh, and winning like crazy ... to make this fantasy scene complete!

Prior career:

Post-college I have always worked with software and web development (of course the web part didn't start til late '90s). Though I want to stress that I'm not an anti-social computer geek! I have a business side as well as a technical side. But the business side of me was frustrated for the longest time. I'd come up with ideas for starting my own business. But then in my mind I'd turn them into huge monster projects ... that would become so big in my mind that I wouldn't do them (other than initial research).

My first job out of college was working for Lockheed, at the "Artificial Intelligence Center". Everyone there (excluding the administrator) was a scientist and worked on computer projects for research and application of artificial intelligence (AI) ideas. Got to work on some fun stuff. Especially to come up with software to combine data and logic and come up with intelligent solutions to problems.

After 5 years there, I became a "gun for hire" with different companies, as a contractor/consultant.

Though I kept seeing a pattern: what I was brought in to do was often far removed from adding actual profitability. They'd convince themselves that whatever big system was the key. But it would usually be something that someone just came up with as a silver bullet. You'd spend a lot of time according to someone's vision (without any say in what it should be) and then months down the road the system would be released. Only THEN would it become clear to the decision-makers, and everyone else, that it wouldn't get the results expected. Sometimes there would be value ... other times the system would be forced on users and then quietly phased out.



Going out on my own:

Anyway, after a few years working for various companies, I finally decided that I needed to have my own business. It was time to stop being just a "cubicle jockey" and have my own thing.

In 2002, with some money saved up, I gave notice to my employers. I had a loose plan to "ramp up" an internet-based business within 6 months. Allowing a couple months to explore options and get some revenue ... any revenue. Then the third month to get profit. Then higher profit. The sixth month to cover living expenses. Then beyond that to keep growing.

I actually achieved that 6 month plan, in spite of having some ups and downs during those 6 months.

How did I start selling online

Well, my girlfriend's uncle, John, was successful as an "affiliate marketer" selling travel. I think I'd heard about affiliate marketing before, but didn't know what it was about.

He told me how he was running his business and also gave some of the nuts and bolts of what he did. How he strategically bought advertising mainly from goto.com (which became overture, then became Yahoo Search Marketing), funneled people into booking travel (mainly hotel bookings), got commissions, and made nice profits in return. The income was fairly passive. He had to put in time to create new ads, and to monitor/change keyword bids across ads. But if he wanted to he could take off days at a time, while still getting good money. He'd go on vacation and just check online for a few minutes each day to make any adjustments. Beyond that he could play as much as he wanted.

And the whole idea of getting people by paying per click, was amazing to me.

It really appealed to my sensibilities: being able to say exactly what kind of visitor you want (via keywords), how high you're willing to pay per click, and market via these tiny classified ads.

No having to play the game of buying ads from newspapers and magazines.
This was a way to allow anyone to do advertising ... on your OWN terms.

Pay-per-click advertising was like a complete online business revolution to me. And advertising was the missing piece in my different business ideas. What good is it to create or find great things to sell ... if you can't reach people?

The other piece of the story is that at that time Google had recently started their AdWords service. of course I'd already been using Google for a while, for searching. But all of a sudden I started seeing these little "listings" on the side. They had a good look to them, and I'd click on them.

After seeing them a few times, I noticed a link that Google had about the ads. "Advertise here" or something like that. I read what they were saying and immediately knew that I needed to be using it.
I'd already heard about John having success with GoTo (actually renamed Overture by then) and here was a similar thing being offered by THE search engine.

About a couple months after that revelation, I left my job and went out to work on my own.
My plan was to start doing affiliate marketing, as a stepping stone. Making money, and then working toward implementing my own products/services.
But using Adwords as the initial means to get visitors and sales.

Initial attempt:

I'd like to tell you I had good success right away.
That would be untrue.

I made a mistake of modelling what I was doing after what John was doing.
A question was what I'd actually try selling.

Since I knew travel was hot, I tried to think of something that:
would sell
would make nice commissions
wouldn't compete with John (i.e. not hotels)

Though John never really used Adwords (other than a little playing with it). So in hindsight I could have tried hotels without competing with him (his ads would have shown in different places than mine)



My first online business - selling Cruises:

After exploring options, I found a site that sold cruises. I'd recently been on my first cruise and loved it. Here was a bigger ticket item - figure at least 2 people, starting at $350 each, and up to thousands each for the big cruises.

The cruise site I picked paid 10% commissions (the biggest I'd found).
The site looked good and was easy to browse to see different cruise deals.

So I created my first Adwords Ad, to send people to the cruise site.

I could go into a lot of detail, going into:
Adding keywords
Trying to keep keywords (and my account) active - since my ad clickthrough rates were too low
Trying different ads
Creating my own mini-site to pre-sell people on cruises - in turn directing them to the cruise site

I became very good at creating pages that inspired people to go to the cruise site for more information. I became good at created well-targeted ads, and matching ads with keywords. I focused on having the visitor get a good "chain of relevance" from search to keyword to ad to landing page.
For a number of keywords I'd be the only ad that was speaking to what they were searching for (example: having an ad featuring a current Alaskan cruise deal, for people searching for "alaska cruise")

Even though I was having trouble making sales, I kept trying different things. I'd eliminate what wasn't working and try different approaches.
Tracking where people would go from my mini-site to the cruise site - and seeing that I was improving that "conversion".

I learned a lot, and quickly became proficient in the mechanics of all of this.

How did I do?

Well I spent around $2,000 in AdWords advertising.

Revenue was $0

I didn't make one sale.

Lessons learned:

At least a couple times I wondered if I was getting screwed by the reporting. That maybe I'd gotten sales and they hadn't shown up (which can happen for technical reasons ... and for "company doesn't want to pay you" reasons)

I had a friend that was going to take a cruise, and tried to get her to book through my site. Not really for the money, but to verify that I could get commissions from this. If she booked and I didn't get a sale reported, I'd have my answer. And if I did get a sale reported I would have confidence that the reporting was accurate.

But she backed out, due to scheduling issues.

In hindsight I should have just paid someone to book a cruise - like giving my commission and then some. And then seen if the sale would get reported to me. That would have been valuable information.

Though I did come to a realization:
it didn't matter if I was getting screwed by the affiliate program or not. I was getting screwed by the lack of return.

In fact in hindsight I assume that the affiliate program was on the up and up (though can't prove it now).
The real problem was that it's not that much of a spontaneous purchase.

It takes 2 or more people (1-person bookings are rare) to decide exactly where they want to go, and to clear their schedules.
It's something that people research to death before pulling the trigger on.

And the booking engine that the site used was very clunky. Toward the end of my "experiment" I would try to book and would get all sorts of timeouts and slow responses. Sometimes there would be mismatches between what the booking said and what the actual site would advertise.

So the problems were really:
1) Cruises are hard to convert in general
2) The booking engine was bad (making me wonder if I missed sales on people that wanted to book, but couldn't ... or were so frustrated by the process that they gave up)


The big lesson learned:

Make sure you're promoting something that converts to sales!
Don't just rely on your own assumption (or someone telling you) that it will convert.

There's persistence, which is good. But past a certain point it becomes naive optimism, to the point of throwing money away!


Initial revenue:

I experimented with selling other products and services.

But on a whim I tried advertising magazines through "magazinecity.com".
I think the first magazine I advertised was Maxim.
Whichever one it was, I found that it converted well. I actually was able to make profit from Adwords!

I advertised other magazines. Some worked out, some didn't.

Amazon.com:

Then stumbled only Amazon.com's affiliate program (though they call it their "Associate program").
I wasn't thrilled with the idea of advertising books, since the commissions would be so small.

But did try advertising their magazines.

Wasn't really better for me than magazinecity. But I also tried advertising other Amazon products. Some higher dollar books, DVDs, software, housewares, etc.

I found that people really love Amazon. And with the right products, with ads to match, I could create nice profitable "adgroups" (Google calls a collection of keywords and associated ads an "adgroup")

I kept expanding what I was doing. Trying a lot of different products, and different ways of "pitching" them.

Also created my own pages to help sell the products. For one thing, this allowed me to offer different products together (with the vital details, removing the "fluff") more effectively than Amazon does.

But having my own site allowed me to track visitor behavior. Something that I couldn't see by relying on the information that Amazon gives (though I should note that Amazon gives a lot more information and support than most affiliate programs)

Long story short (too late, I guess): I kept expanding what I was doing, experimenting, getting better conversions, maximizing my commissions from Amazon, and keeping my Adwords costs low (or at least within bounds).

Here are the "stats" over the last 4 years, with Amazon:
Total items sold: 99,852
Total sales for Amazon: $5,910,090
Commissions paid to me: $547,966

adwords costs: $167,832

total profit from Amazon so far: $380,133

Other affiliate programs:

I've also advertised for other affiliate programs.
For the most part these are "niche" sites focused on a particular product line.
And in some cases promoting for sites that have just one product.

I've had a number of successes and a number of cases where things didn't pan out.

But for things that didn't pan out: I learned to quickly gauge if something was going to work or not, based on results. And then cut my loses for what didn't work.

It's like drilling for oil. You just have to expect to drill in a few places that won't give you oil. And in other cases you can hit it and then look out!
Though to be more accurate with the oil analogy: imagine that when you hit oil it may just be a little "oil" (profit) that you get, or a lot, or anything in between.


My first product:

After other internet marketers heard my story with Amazon, they told me I had to write about my experience.

As far as I know I'm the only individual to get to this level with Amazon. And I've looked for other people doing this. Every other affiliate I've talked to, selling for Amazon, has done it on a fairly small scale.

So I created an ebook called "Amazon Money" to tell people how to get started selling for Amazon, and to give some of my unique insights on selling for Amazon.

note:
You can signup to get the book for free at: easyfunmoney.com
You not only get the ebook, you also get my free email course, where I give additional tips.

I have to admit that I put that out there and haven't yet done as much as I should have with it. At least not until recently. Since I'm newly focused on helping people make money online, I'll be further beefing up the course. And will tie it together with Adwords guidance.


My first product for sale:

Being an affiliate is great. You don't carry inventory. You don't have to do customer service. You don't even have to have your own website (though it helps).

But it can be a bit limiting.

I've found niches that are screaming for products (at least products better than what's out there) to meet demand.

I've found great products that serve a hungry market ... that have a horrible sales process (especially cases with bad salesletters)
You can't convert your traffic to sales in those cases (or at least it's an uphill battle - like my experience with cruises)

Last year I found a good ebook that was for men's dating advice, that I signed up as an affiliate for. I liked the product and thought it spoke well to the audience.
I didn't like the salesletter, but I thought "who am I to say if it works or not?".
Well the results did prove that the salesletter couldn't convert - at least not the traffic I was sending.

It popped into my head:
"What if I could create my own version, where I'm drawing on my own experience and other sources. An ebook that's just as good, if not better, than what I was trying to sell as an affiliate. I'd get the full amount (minus transaction costs) for sales - not just the 50% that the other book would pay (which was just theoretical since I wasn't selling any!). And I could in turn have my OWN affiliates. I'd give up 50% (later bumped to 60%) to affiliates, and any of those sales would be pure profit.

And better yet: I could do my OWN salesletter that I had full power over. If I wanted something different I could try it myself.

Plus an added benefit: full tracking of what going on with visitors. For example: if someone goes from the salesletter to the order form I can see it - whether he buys or not. Selling for someone else I only get to see a little of the information - and only if a sale is made.

So I took the plunge to creating my own products.

I created my own guide, with it's own site.
After a little advertising and "tweaking" of the salesletter I made my first sale.
I quickly became both an author and publisher!

I now make sales, and profit, from that virtually on autopilot.
And there's a LOT more potential - especially after I add more products.


Other products:

I won't bore you with all the other products I've done.
I'll just say that over the last 6 months I've been working with my partner-in-crime, Kevin, to create different "infoproducts" (information packages, including ebooks, video, audio, mindmaps, software)

We're finding how to identify hungry niches, and how to effectively serve those niches with information.

It's very fun, once you get started!

And basically limitless. Even within a given niche there are so many different things you can potentially provide.


Lifestyle:

The money I've made has enabled me to be financially free, buy a nice big house, take trips when I want, and basically live a dream life.

I've also been able to start up a high-end furniture boutique, as a side investment, with the money. It's my girlfriend Debbie's store. I act as investor, business advisor, and occassional errand boy. She lives and breathes furniture and fashion - so it's great to use my Adwords profits to help realize HER dream.

Some quick info about the store:
It's called "D. Frank Designs" and is located in the heart of Scottsdale Arizona (www.dfrankdesigns.com).
She has designed her own line of "couture" furniture called "The Collection". In June she is having the world's first fashion show for furniture, to showcase her pieces!
Plus, she is working with a local jeweler to create the ultimate fashion pillows: that have patterns made from diamonds!
I even registered the domain name pillowfashion.com, to promote her pillows (no site there yet ... stay tuned)


Teaching other about AdWords:

After having success with different niches, as an affiliate, and for my own products, I started coaching others in using Adwords.
And by coaching, I mean giving guidance to friends as they needed it.
I want to help others achieve the great lifestyle I have.

A number of people talk about making money on the internet. They talk about it being easy. But then they throw a bunch of different options at you. Not giving enough depth for you to really succeed.

Well, I'm focused on leveraging the power of AdWords, with some key knowledge and processes, to ensure success.
It's not "Make Money Fast" (those pitches are always scams) but about making money in a straightforward way ... and then growing to the point of true financial freedom.

I don't claim to know everything (there's always a lot more to learn). But I have found things that work.
And I know how to use AdWords as a lethal weapon, to achieve results.


AdWords Mad Scientist:

While talking with other internet marketers at Rich Schefren's seminar in Florida (I'm in his "Business Growth System" coaching) I found that internet marketers are really hungry for the Adwords "stuff" that I know.

Of course I've gone through the basic and intermediate material out there. Including sources you've probably never heard of.

Though even more important is that I've taken in all of that and gone beyond it.
I have extensive experience and have learned a lot as I go.

I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Adwords.
I've gotten millions of clicks.

And I've made great profits from it.

I call myself the Adwords Mad Scientist, because I'm like a scientist in a hidden lab - finding what works. Not just relying on what others say (which can often be far from reality).

I've found my own formulas and tricks that work.

And I realized that even if I tried to apply my Adwords secrets to every niche I can, that I'd still only covering a small fraction of what's possible.

So I decided to give up my hard-earned knowledge and findings.
I want to let others benefit from what I know.

I'm just now starting to get my information out there ... and I'm finding it very gratifying to do.
Sure I make sales from my products, which is cool.
But I enjoy working with others to help them grow THEIR business.

There's a crazy percentage of people that are struggling with making profit from Adwords. Or are making some profits, but not nearly living up to their potential.
And this is in spite of getting the other guides that are out there.

And here's a frightening thing:
I went to Perry Marshall's Adwords seminar last year and it was hard to find people having much success with Adwords. I was expecting everyone there to be doing well with Adwords and to be looking to take it up a notch or two. Yes, there were some people like that.
But the vast majority were stuggling!

I'm not blaming Perry. He himself expresses disappointment with how people don't succeed with Adwords.

But there is a big gap out there, between where people are with Adwords and where they want to go.

I'm going to fill that gap. I'm providing my secrets, broken down into different topics, to get people out of "the Adwords mud" and into better results.

The resulting advanced AdWords course is called "Adwords Profit Secrets"
For full details on that Click here
I also have a free email course, called AdWords Profit Vault

Contact me:

Hopefully this has been at least a little interesting, and if you're doing AdWords you can identify with some of the hurdles I've come across and overcome.
If you have any comments or questions then
 
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