There is a lot of very misleading, incomplete, out of date or simply inaccurate information to be found on the web, which can lead to expensive and extensive time wasting.

Gauher Chaudhry’s Pay Per Click Formula, which comprises six books, six CD tutorials and two DVDs, plus one of the most supportive and useful forums to be found on the net, is one of the most comprehensive courses available for those wanting to master the necessary skills.

As a scene setter for my forthcoming review of his course, here is my interview with Gauher Chaudhry.

Please tell us exactly what you focus upon teaching in your course.

The focus of Pay Per Click Formula is to teach people how they can basically buy traffic from pay per click search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN and drive that targeted traffic to CPA (cost-per-action) offers and get paid a commission every time someone fills out a lead. The course is not really for beginners and assumes that the buyer understands the basic workings of the major PPC search engines.

How does it differ to other techniques such as Chris Carpenter’s “Google Cash” approach?

The “Google Cash” approach basically teaches how to drive traffic from Google to ALL
affiliate offers. Pay Per Click Formula teaches how to drive traffic from Google and hundreds of other pay per click sources strictly to CPA offers. Most people need to realize that there is a world of traffic outside of Google that is in some cases much cheaper and better quality.

You were an accountant in the real world before you started working solely online. Has that background helped you as you have developed your techniques?

Being an accountant has helped me tremendously because it forced me to become a
spreadsheet expert. By having advanced spreadsheet skills, I have been able to create
advanced tracking spreadsheets to help me grow my traffic brokering business and better understand the CPA lead conversions from various traffic sources.

Where did you go to school and college?

I went to McMaster Univesity in Hamilton, Ontario and finished with a Bachelor of
Commerce and then acquired two professional accounting designations in the years to
follow. I have a love for numbers and that is why I find the traffic brokering game so easy.

You have been online for over ten years now, since before PPC marketing even existed. What did you do online in those early days?

In the early years, there was no such thing as PPC. I made a lot of money in the late
nineties by publishing a variety of e-zines and selling classified ads in those e-zines. This was during the first dot com boom when advertising was sold at high prices but still got a decent response rate.

When did you first start PPClicking?

I first started using pay per click search engines when Goto.com (the first PPC which
eventually become Overture and now finally Yahoo Search Marketing) came onto the scene. It was great to get those one cent bids and drive a lot of traffic to my web sites.

How has the market and the process changed since then?

The Internet marketing world is almost like night and day now since the early years. There were not that many online marketers when the Internet first came out and now that a large number of people know that there can be money made on the Internet, it has become very competitive. There is also a lot of crap promising riches being sold today, which can cause mass confusion for people just getting onto the Internet today.

As I push my way up the steep, but not insurmountable, learning curve involved in understanding your techniques, one of the things that I find most intimidating before launching my own campaigns is the lack of certainty involved. With possibly only one or two in a hundred campaigns proving successful, it can be scary to know where to start, particularly when operating on fairly limited budgets. Any advice to make the transition from total newbie to moderately successful a little easier or less expensive than simple trial and error?

Following my techniques, you should have a fairly good success rate of 30-40% on creating ad campaigns. A lot of what I teach is common sense that can help users save time and money by doing simple steps before deciding on an ad campaign to promote. This will dramatically reduce the time testing during the trial and error stage.

The three main traffic sources you use are Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter. What differences do you find between them? Do you get different results from each of these traffic sources for the same campaign?

Google, MSN, and Yahoo generally have the same ad platforms. It seems lately that MSN and Yahoo are trying to make their ad platforms a lot more similar to Google. I noticed that the quality of traffic amongst the top three PPC seearch engines varies from campaign to campaign. There are too many variables to zero in on why there is a difference, but is has something to do with items such as fraud and geo-targeting ability.

The first of your two major techniques, “The Loner”, seems under threat from the increased reluctance of Google to tolerate the direct linking of ads to sites that lack much content. Do you think the days of linking to sites that only want an email address or zip code are ending? If so, will people have to rely increasingly on “The Workhorse” method and build their own content websites in order to avoid the legendary Google slap?

The loner method is not only direct linking. You can still do the loner method and create your own landing page. I only call it the “Loner” method because you are simply promoting one CPA offer, versus the “Workhorse” method where you are promoting multiple CPA offers. I don’t believe that the days of promoting emails or zip submits are over because as long as your can create a web site that has valuable content related to your offer, you can still get decent bids in Google without worrying about being slapped. There are many tools available that help in speeding up this process and getting lower bid prices.

Did you ever imagine that your early pioneering efforts would lead to such success?

If you look at some of my techniques such as the “Alexa Method” of keyword research, it simply makes sense. It is just a matter of putting all the pieces together to make the system run efficiently and as profitably as possible. What has surprised me is my customers who are only three months into the course and grossing over $75,000 per month. That type of immediate success I never suspected.

I understand you are now setting up dedicated business premises and hiring staff. Given that most people working in affiliate marketing are pretty much one man bands, what exactly are your plans for this new stage of your online adventure?

One of the biggest constraints to growing an online business (especially if you are a one man show) is time. There are only so many hours in a day. I am hiring staff to do things such as keyword research and the setting up of campaigns as this will help me test and track much faster and find winning campaigns.

It it more difficult for non-US-based people such as you and I to work in this field?

It can be a little bit more difficult to be outside the USA since almost 90% of CPA offers are for US traffic only. You need to have a US proxy address in order to be able to view landing pages of advertisers or view your competition in US-only Google searches. These are more nuisances rather than problems because you can find ways around this. The beauty of this business is that you can pretty much run it anywhere in the world.

Gauher, thanks very much for your time and the care you have put into the preparation of this course. I know it is going to help a lot of people and will be reporting on my own progress in my forthcoming review of your PPC Formula.

Compared to the original version, BTTB2 is a completely re-written work and Benwell claims that it’s not necessary to have previous blogging or Internet marketing experience. His techniques come in two parts, a basic blueprint designed for new bloggers followed by a new section for serious bloggers featuring more advanced techniques. I’m about to try out both sets of techniques and report what happens for our mutual greater understanding and, who knows, possibly profits, too.

After introducing himself and detailing his background and previous experience, Benwell sets the framework for his approach, stating, “The only way to have long term blogs that produce results for months to come is to follow the 5 blogging commandments”.

So we’re all working from the same perspective, here are the five commandments in full:

1) Imitate Nature: Don’t go stuffing keywords into posts or overdoing on page SEO. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are looking for quality sites by real people, not someone spitting out hundreds of blogs per month filled with keywords and ads.

2) Add Some Visitor Value: About every post you write should offer some value to your readers. Now this doesn’t mean it has to change their life or anything but it needs to offer them value. Even posts about a related article with a link or a product review are good. Blogs filled with RSS vomit don’t offer value and won’t last.

3) Make It Sticky: Your blog should have people coming back to it and reading it again and again. Make sure you include RSS reader buttons so visitors can subscribe to the feed. Also opt-in newsletters that offer more than just updates are a good idea but the number one way to get people to come back is to offer excellent likable content.

4) Don’t Let Your Blog Die: After testing I’ve seen huge differences in blogs that are kept updated and offers that don’t get new posts. You don’t have to post every day or even every week but make sure you don’t just set them up and forget about them because they will die off and lose traffic.

5) Market = Profit: If you are after making the most money you can from a blog them the most important decision you make will be the market you blog for so make sure you research it well first.

From there we move on to his step-by-step blueprint, which I intend to follow precisely, so let’s get started.

Step one is market research and the first thing to decide is whether to target an affiliate product market or rely on Google AdSense or other advertising to generate money. Benwell has always had more success with affiliate marketing so in the great tradition of following in the guru’s footsteps, I’m going to do the same.

Affiliate marketing is the art of creating a market for someone else’s pre-existing product, which can be a physical product like a book or a computer or something your customer can download immediately after buying, like software or e-Books. As the go-between sending customers to your chosen affiliate partner, you make a commission for each and every sale you generate. Any affiliate program worth signing up for won’t charge you a single cent for joining; if there is a charge, simply don’t bother with it, there’s a lot of choice.

There are literally hundreds of affiliate programs out there, some are run by companies in-house but the vast majority of businesses, from huge multi-national corporations like airlines or credit card companies to one man bands selling their own eBooks, use specialist affiliate program companies.

Probably the most well-known of these is Amazon but to get started we’re going to once again take Benwell’s advice and start with ClickBank, a company which focuses on info products and software. Signing up is easy, a simple one-page, fill-in-the-blanks thing and you’re set. Once signed up, click over to the marketplace and do some basic research on products you might want to sell. There is a very broad range of choices, from Business through to Society & Culture; one good tip I can give you is to focus on something you are already interested in.

The key to finding a viable market lies in identifying keyword phrases that get enough search engine results as to indicate there is enough demand to hope to generate enough traffic – and therefore sales – to make your efforts worthwhile and Benwell explains clearly how to conduct this fundamental research.

As the Virtual Income series of articles is all about learning how to make money online, for the purposes of this review I’ve decided to choose some high-paying ClickBank affiliate products in the very competitive field around the basic keyword phrase “how to make money online”. There are literally hundreds of this type of product and it can be very difficult to get a high enough profile and therefore enough traffic to your blog to actually make any significant money. If you decide to purchase Blogging To The Bank, currently a $47 downloadable eBook that also comes with a host of free bonus resources, and follow Benwell’s techniques, I strongly recommend that you choose a less fiercely competitive area and preferably a subject about which you already have some knowledge.

To create your blog, Benwell strongly recommends using your own webhosting account and WordPress. He recommends Yahoo Small Business for their reliability and ease of use, though there are of course many other possibilities. However, for the purposes of this review I’m going to use this a Google Blogger blog to set up a demonstration site and just hope that they don’t shut it down as a splog!

Having set up a blog, the next concern is content. Remember the fourth blogging commandment? Don’t let your blog die by failing to keep adding fresh content. This can of course be a real problem for some people who are either unable to write regularly or, like me, are too busy simply keeping their head above water to take on yet another writing responsibility. Fortunately there are several solutions to be found on the web. In addition to writing his own content, Benwell uses a subscription service called PLR Pro, which costs $97 a month for 440 articles in 11 different niche subjects, but there are cheaper options.

Benwell lists a variety of sources for either paid freelance or entirely free of charge content and a quick search will turn up those exact same sites, too. Top of the list when I searched were iSnare and Uber Articles and I shall be using content from these and other sources of free content for my demo sites. Benwell’s technique is to use a mixture of all the above methods as he is now running a network of literally dozens of blogs.

Another crucial issue is optimizing your blog, which means making it look good, easy to read and navigate through, and keeping it search engine-friendly. There is a ton of good advice in Blogging To The Bank, from using distinctive, preferably unique, design to adding RSS Reader icons and, a key point, collecting reader email addresses. He also gives detailed explanations of how to tweak the WordPress code properly for maximum Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefit and user friendliness, which I am going to duplicate on Blogger. For reference purposes, the site I have set up on Blogger is How To Make Money Online.

Having got your site established, the next thing is to get your site noticed and Benwell details a broad variety of ways to do this, including pinging; article syndication, to facilitate which he includes a free software program with the e-Book which, though fairly basic and in need of an update, is a real time saver; link exchanges; press releases; forums; and getting free or paid links back to your site. Another related major chapter covers newer techniques, generally known as Web 2.0 promotion and traffic generation techniques. Benwell highlights his four top sites in useful “how to” detail, which are Squidoo, Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati.

Obviously, really committing to Rob Benwell’s Blogging To The Bank techniques is going to take an ongoing commitment of time and modest resources, more than I can give for review purposes here. He claims to be making a six figure income through persistent application and in his ninth and final step explains how and where he finds freelance writers and coders to outsource a lot of the grunt work, leaving him more time to manage his blog empire.

He closes by detailing some extra techniques for maximising the income from your site, doing advanced SEO and also offers an affiliate opportunity to promote his e-Book. His last words are probably the most pertinent:

The worst thing you can do is put this e-book down and not do anything with the amazing information you’ve just learnt. So at least do a little research, make a plan of action for yourself over the next week or so and stick to it. Here’s to your blogging success.

If you are attracted to the idea of blogging your way to financial freedom, this e-book will serve as your guide.

Amongst other achievements, Ewen is as famous for his own money-making exploits as he is respected for his desire to help others learn how to earn their own online income through his public speaking appearances and his many informative e-books. Newbie Cash Machine is exactly what the title says; an easy to follow, step by step guide, for people with no previous experience, to making money on the internet by focusing on your own strengths and interests.

Of course, untold wealth won’t come flowing your way by just wanting it. Desire is vitally important but has to be backed up by the willingness to do a little hard work in order to prime the pump and this e-book, a $27 downloadable PDF, will show you exactly how to do it.

Over the course of over 140 pages, Ewen explains both the big picture context within which this takes place and all the basic principles to using the approach of drawing upon your own interests to become a trusted source of information and expertise and earn money based upon that relationship. As Ewen writes in his introduction,

Earning money online is easy when you understand how to choose the right market, target products for that market and convert prospects into customers… It’s really a 1-2-3 process consisting of a product offer, targeted traffic and good sales copy.

Lest this all starts to sound too easy, there is also the caveat that you must make a real commitment to learning the lessons, focusing on understanding on how it all connects together and of course, actually taking action by implementing a daily action plan. Although there are three types of products that can be offered online – digital products and services like e-books, videos, podcasts and membership sites; physical goods, anything from cars to clothes; and finally intangible monetization models based on internet traffic and advertising, Chia’s approach focuses on the first model, answering people’s constant search for helpful and useful information. As he explains, “people use the internet as a research tool prior to making a purchase… This hunger for information is going to be your key to making real money online… by becoming an information provider”.

It might seem difficult at first to imagine yourself as someone who can provide useful information but almost everybody knows how to do something, home decoration, how to fix a car, lose weight, how to juggle or whatever. People looking to find out how to do things like this will actually pay good money to someone they trust to help them achieve their ambitions or interests. “Your goal is to provide people with information that is truly valuable”.

If you think this is all a bit ambitious to start with, it is also possible to make money and easier to get started by acting as a middleman or affiliate, placing yourself between potential buyers and the actual sellers of information products and Ewen explains how to go about that in just enough detail. He explains the definition of affiliate marketing, how and why it all works, which companies to sign-up with, the required skills and tools – and, crucially, how to acquire and implement those skills and tools.

Pre-selling is one of the key techniques to getting a prospect warmed up and ready to buy before you actually present them with an opportunity to do so. If you are selling your own information directly, you need to build a relationship of trust in yourself as someone who knows what they are talking about. If you are acting as an affiliate, you would focus on getting the prospects to trust your judgement in recommending someone else’s products, such as by writing a series of reviews. The very article you are reading right now is in fact an act of pre-selling as by accepting my recommendation of Ewen’s e-book, you are more likely to buy it.

Having explained the context within which we newbies will operate, the author then goes on to spell out, in a detailed but easy to follow ten step process, exactly how to go about it. These steps include how to find a hot market to target: how to find three profitable affiliate programmes in your market; how to set up a website and email auto-response system; how to get a constant stream of traffic; and, most importantly, how to build a quality relationship with your site’s visitors.

Ewen concludes by spelling out the importance of consistency and sticking with it. There is no point at all in investing time and money in this process if you’re not prepared to stick with it but if you do, a constant stream of money can come your way for only a few hours work each week. Of course, once having got the hang of it, it’s increasingly easy to repeat the process in a different market sector or produce your own information product for even higher profitability.

There are a few minor points that Ewen doesn’t get completely right, such as not taking into account how seriously the search engines can mark down duplicate content articles and, in his otherwise fine explanation of using Google Adsense, he uses an example that wouldn’t actually get any traffic for your site but these don’t seriously devalue the usefulness of his techniques.

If there is a particular subject you’re really interested in and either a pre-existing product exists you can sell as an affiliate or, even better, an original report or other product you can create yourself, Ewen Chia’s Newbie Cash Machine system is as clear and useful a guide to how you can earn money online through your own natural interests as you can find.

His first product was the highly respected and reasonably priced Google Cash e-book, which came out about four years ago, and his latest product is the rather more expensive and just a little bit controversial Google Cash Detective, which draws upon the work of his e-book and makes the whole process easier to implement. The Detective is software that simply makes the Google Cash techniques easier to implement but is far more expensive and currently sold out.

Tell us about your background. Where are you from and what did you do before getting into the virtual income lifestyle?

I grew up all over the world. My father was a diplomat in the Foreign Service. We moved from country to country every three years or so.

I’ve always enjoyed the outdoors and have been an adventure nut since I was a child. I worked all sorts of temporary jobs and night jobs to try to keep my days free so I could do my adventure activities like skiing and surfing and mountain biking, etc.

As an adult I lived in Salt Lake City Utah at the base of the Cottonwood Canyons, working night jobs so I could ski during the days. I worked as a waiter, as a bus boy, as a bartender, all sorts of service jobs. The good thing about the service jobs is that it frees up your days for skiing and mountain biking, etc.

When and why did you start to look to the web as a way of earning a living?

The downside to working night jobs is that the pay is quite dismal, and you’re still stuck to one area since you have to show up to work after your ski day. So you don’t have a lot of money and time to travel to other ski areas. This for me was still much better than the alternative of working a 9-to-5 JOB, but as I mentioned, you’re still stuck. You’re barely eking by with money and you can’t do much adventure traveling since you have to go to work and you have limited funds.

That’s how it was for me five years ago. I was happy. I was doing what I loved. I worked so I could do what I loved: skiing, biking, kayaking, climbing, etc. But I felt stuck — no money, no time off from work. And I really wanted to travel the world going on adventures and doing the things I love. I wanted to go helicopter skiing in Alaska, surfing in Fiji and other places.

Those things are expensive though. So I got a real job and worked like crazy. I commuted over 45 minutes each way to work, and sat in a cubicle in front of a computer five days a week. I was only able to go skiing on the weekends. I became a “Weekend Warrior”. The idea was to work hard for few years and save up money and then go on a bunch of big trips. After almost a year of working like a dog and neglecting my passions – I managed to save a whopping $0. Yup, in fact I was $11,000 in credit card debt. Now I couldn’t quit my job even if I wanted to, because I had to work to pay my bills and my debt. I was stuck in the rat race. And I was miserable.

I decided then and there that I was going to dedicate myself to finding the answer. How can I live my dream lifestyle of traveling the world and going on adventures? I searched and searched. Is it being a writer, or a photographer, or some sort of an adventure guide? Nothing I came up with satisfied the criteria of no time constraints, no money constraints, ultimate flexibility, and no geography constraints. I had pretty much given up and settled on the fact that I was going to be a 9-to-5 slave or work in a restaurant at nights so I could play during the days.

I had a breakdown and then in the midst of my breakdown – I had an epiphany. In my epiphany I saw how the Internet disseminates information. And I realized that whoever helps the information reach the person looking for it quickly and accurately and gives them exactly what they are looking for – can make money from that. So I started setting up an online business.

For the first month I worked 15+ hour days on it. By the second month I earned $30,000 of profits, still working 15 hour days. Then in the third month I systematized my business and automated the systems and outsourced most of the work. From month four until today, four years later, I’ve been earning lots of profits a month all the while only working around five hours a week. Since I systematized and outsourced the work, now I work on the business and not in it. I work on the 10% that produces the 90% of the profits. Also since it is an online business, it lives entirely on the Internet. There is no physical store. I can work from anywhere, all I need is an Internet connection. That’s the main reason I looked into working online – for ultimate freedom.

You’re obviously quite well known in the world of Internet marketing for your Google Cash e-book. Can you tell us a bit about that book and what it teaches people?

The Google Cash Method is simple: You place an affiliate link for a product or pay-per-lead offer in the destination URL of an Adwords ad. Then, you bid on keywords related to that product or service. When someone clicks through your ad and purchases or signs up, you earn commissions. If you earn more commissions than you spend on your Adwords ads, then you’re profitable. If you spend more on Adwords ads than you earn in commissions, then you are losing money.

In part 2 of this Chris Carpenter interview we will learn about the Google Cash Detective, the benefits yoga can bring, and the four steps to freedom.