My Lending Club Investment Strategy

If you’re in the world of online marketing (or any other career for that matter), it’s important to have both a short and long-term plan when it comes to your finances. This year, I set the goal to save money and invest wisely (you can check out my 2012 goals here). Each and every day, I try to remind myself to save as much money as possible.

In that spirit, I have been embracing some new investment vehicles, one of which is LendingClub. What is Lending Club? It’s a peer-to-peer lending platform that allows normal people like you and me to lend money to others. Those who need to borrow money (often for such purposes as consolidating debt) get a much lower interest rate than credit card companies. Those who lend the money, get a much higher interest rate than is available anywhere else. In short: Both lenders and borrowers win!

I started investing on Lending Club in October of 2011, wrote my first post on PPC Ian about Lending Club in late February (check it out here), and am now ready for another exciting update! As you can see in the screenshot below, my current net annualized return is 12.99%. I’m excited about that because it’s only down a little from 13.04% in late February. Since I’m newer to Lending Club, I expect my net annualized return to dip over time since some of my loans will default. In addition to my consistent high returns, I’m now invested in 173 loans (2 of which are in funding).

I wanted to briefly highlight my Lending Club strategy today because I feel that it will be core to my continued success with this peer-to-peer investment platform. The best way to illustrate my strategy is through numbers. My total Lending Club account value is $4,137.27. Of that amount, $4,048.66 is invested in 173 loans. If you divide $4,048.66 by 173 loans, I’ve got an average of $23.40 in each loan. However, if you’re new to Lending Club, you may know that the minimum you can invest is $25. That is absolutely true. However, the real magic here is that your loans get paid off each and every month. If you start small, consistently add more money, regularly reinvest your profits, and grow your portfolio over time, you will get into a sweet situation where you have less than $25 in each loan, on average.

It’s really as simple as that. You don’t want to drop down a large amount of money all at once. You want to invest slowly over time, also known as dollar cost averaging. As your loans get paid off, you want to invest the proceeds is more loans. Eventually, you will have diversified into many different notes, with different start dates, and will have less than $25 in each loan. It’s all about persistence, diversification, and longevity. It’s not rocket science, but it definitely works (based on my experience so far).

So, there you have it, my Lending Club investment strategy. Thanks so much and best of luck in your own investing! I’m looking forward to my next update.

Important Note: I’m not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. Please consult your own financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
Image in this post © PPCIan.com

Where I’m Investing In 2012, Lending Club

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Feb 26 5

If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know saving money and investing wisely is my number one goal for 2012. When it comes to investing, I’m a huge fan of dividends and also interest income. Today, I’d like to highlight one of my favorite places to invest: LendingClub.

My Personal Lending Club Account

Lending Club Account

Check out the screenshot to the right, that’s my personal Lending Club account. I started investing in August, 2011. Since then, I have been contributing money on a regular basis. All my investments have added up and I currently have $3,369.15 in my account. My net annualized return is 13.06%. That’s right. The same money in my savings account (or even high yield savings account) would be yielding less than 1%. Lending Club is bringing in a huge 13.06% return, sweet!

What Is Lending Club?

So what is Lending Club? It’s a really cool platform that facilitates peer to peer lending. Lending Club finds people who need to borrow money. A good amount of the borrowers need to borrow to consolidate credit card debt at a lower interest rate. They screen the individuals, assess their risk bucket, and then allow them to borrow money from Lending Club investors (like me). Bypassing the middleman (banks), Lending Club makes the borrowing/lending process much more efficient. Lending Club means better interest rates for borrowers and better interest rates for investors. Finally, investors like myself get to taste the good life like the big banks who have been making so much money all these years.

Diversify Across Many Lending Club Notes

Here’s my personal strategy: Lending Club lets you invest as little as $25 in each note. Therefore, I invest in as many notes as possible to spread my risk around. If any one note doesn’t work out, I don’t sweat it at all. I’m currently invested in 143 notes, with two more in funding. So far, four of my notes are fully paid and one is late by 16-30 days. I’m well diversified!

My Special Tip: Diversify By Time

In addition to diversifying across many notes, I also like to spread my risk by time. This is a unique strategy that I haven’t seen anywhere else when it comes to Lending Club. I’m talking about investing incremental amounts of money over time. I try to invest a few hundred dollars here and there. Since August, my investments have added up to a large amount, but it wasn’t always that way. By investing incremental amounts over time, I have hedged my risk even more in case loan default rates are linked to any one range of dates. If you sign up for Lending Club, I recommend this very strategy. Start small (maybe as little as $25) and add more and more money over time!

Start Now: It Only Takes $25 To Open An Account

At the end of the day, Lending Club is fundamental in my goal of saving and investing wisely. Also, it’s helping me give back to others (another one of my top goals this year). I’m lending money to people like you and me who need help. If you’re interested in earning a high interest rate, I highly recommend checking out LendingClub. It only takes $25 to start and invest in your first loan!

Important Note: I’m not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. Please consult your own financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Image in this post © PPCIan.com

PPC Ian’s Internet Marketing Money Map

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 4 11

I’m super excited about today’s post, it’s an epic post in my opinion! I’m going to share with you my personal PPC Ian Money Map. That’s right – This is my personal one page map/plan for getting rich! It’s a map that I study and refer to daily to keep stay on track. Money is always on my mind, period. I wrote this out by hand because writing is power and will ensure my dreams come true.

If you’re in the Internet marketing industry like myself, you know how easy it is to get caught up in the day-to-day. Today’s all about taking a step back and planning for the long term. (By long term I mean 10-15 years out, I’m planning on retiring young and wealthy after all!) I couldn’t be more confident in my plan. It exploits the velocity of money, multiple revenue streams, diversification, passive income, earned income, equity in private and public securities, and so much more more. In fact, it would take thousands of words to fully explain this in a post so I thought that sharing the actual map would be so much easier (and more informative).

This plan is the culmination of years of studying money and is largely inspired by one of my favorite authors, Robert Kiyosaki. Please click here to download PPC Ian’s Money Map or simply click the preview image to the right!

For the remainder of this post, I will highlight some of my major points, but again highly encourage just downloading the free map because my words will not do it justice. I sincerely hope this helps in your own quest towards financial freedom.

Realization 1: Internet Marketing Is Not Pure Passive Income

Despite much hype but top pundits online, I have arrived at the conclusion that web publishing and Internet marketing are not pure sources of passive income. In my opinion, they are a hybrid between an investment (passive income) and a small business. I like to think this is the case, with the investment side really coming out strong in the long run (and with the small business aspect diminishing more and more in the long run). I’m starting to see this happen in my personal domain portfolio.

As a result of this realization, one of my big goals in 2011 is extracting half of my Internet affiliate marketing profits and flowing them into truly passive dividend paying stocks. This has been something I’ve struggled with so far as I have been reinvesting all profits from my Internet marketing business (and then some) back into my affiliate marketing business. Why? I’m obsessed with affiliate marketing and it has been growing rapidly. However, I need to remind myself that this stuff is not bulletproof and that it’s not truly passive.

Affiliate marketing has been a huge help in terms of diversifying my income streams and drives more revenue than my true investment activities at this point in my financial lifecycle. Moreover, I wouldn’t be where I am today in the corporate world without affiliate marketing, the education and learnings have been unreal. All things being equal, however, I’d prefer to have that same money coming from dividend paying stocks versus websites since that provides more freedom, stability, and ultimately time in the long run.

Realization 2: Earned Income Accelerates Passive Income

You hear everyone talking these days about passive income. You hear a lot of hype and there are so many people chasing the dream. Unfortunately, there also exists a lot of misinformation. The first source of misinformation is that Internet marketing is passive income. As explained in the last point, this is not fully the case in my opinion (at least in the short run). The other misnomer is that passive income is really easy and that anyone can do it quickly. I’m here to say that given the unprecedented number of people chasing the passive dream, earned income is easier these days for those with the right talent and skill. With so many people focused on passive, there exists an unprecedented number of earned income opportunities in the field of Internet marketing for those who are highly intelligent and willing to work hard. Is earned income easy? Absolutely not! It’s super hard! However if you want to have true passive income that matches your salary, it’s not nearly as easy as all the hype indicates.

If you’re an A player, my advice is to go for earned income as part of your overall money strategy. You will be able to learn so much from other people, learn invaluable leadership and people management skills, and accelerate your small business/affiliate marketing revenue and investment income. Moreover, you will have access to stock options and 401Ks, two fundamentally critical components of my investment strategy that would not be possible without a job. After all, I made it big in online marketing because of stock options in private companies that had major liquidity events.

Realization 3: Compound Interest Is Extremely Powerful

In crafting your own money plan, I highly encourage you to identify opportunities for compound interest. I have compound interest working in my favor in all areas of my money map. First, I consistently devote the majority of my time and hard work to my job. This has compounded tremendously over the years: I went from Associate of Search marketing to Director of Search Marketing in only five years.

In terms of my affiliate marketing endeavors, I have allowed the earnings to compound. I have spent all of my earnings this year building more sites (via outsourced projects that I have project managed). I now have about 80 active online businesses. Now, as mentioned before, I do plan to scale back and start funneling some of my profits into "real" passive investments in 2011.

Last, my investments are compounding by reinvesting dividends, investing in companies that grow dividends consistently, and also via equity appreciation (although I don’t care about equity as much since I’m in this game for cash flow). It’s really the compounding happening in my investment activities that will truly make me financially free in the 10-15 year timeframe and that’s why investing is going to be one of my top focuses in 2011.

Thanks again for reading and make sure to download PPC Ian’s Money Map!

Money Map image and PDF in this post © PPCIan.com

I Own Shares In Inflection.com

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Sep 3 13

If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know I’m a tremendous fan of stock options. One of the huge advantages to the corporate online marketing career path (as opposed to affiliate marketing) is the ability to accumulate stock in leading privately held companies that later have the opportunity for major liquidity events. Just recently, I wrote abut how I made it big in online marketing. How did I make it big? I cashed in on my NexTag and QuinStreet options! Today I’m excited to share another success story: I own very early stage shares in Inflection.com and according toTechCrunch Inflection.com just secured $30 million in funding. That’s right: Every private company I have worked for has turned into an investor’s dream. I love the online marketing career path!

I’m Not Writing This Post To Brag

Inflection

So I’m super excited but want to make it very clear from the start that I’m not here to brag. Rather, I’m here to empower and share the power of the online marketing career path with the world. I know I’ve mentioned this many times but I must underscore it again: Online marketing professionals are in demand, especially pay per click professionals. Due to this fact, you get your pick of which companies you want to work for. This abundance of choice (which 99 percent of the working world doesn’t have) affords you the opportunity to make wise investment decisions. View your employer as an investment opportunity and you too can have three amazing private company investments in a row, just like me! PPC is unlike any other career for this simple reason.

Hey Jon, Have Anything To Say This Time?

So after my recent post about making it big in online marketing I received several spam messages from someone named “Jon”. Jon did not provide a valid email address, but was quick to tell me that I did not make much on my QuinStreet stock (which is quite untrue). Hey Jon, this post is for you. Also, I think I know who you are. How are things going at your fourth tier ad network? I actually enjoy getting these types of messages. As my friend John Chow says in his book Make Money Online, haters are the number one leading indicator of your own personal success. Hence, the Inflection news coming in such a timely manner!

Inflection.com Rocks and They’re Going To Dominate

Ok, time for me to get serious again. I wanted to close out by talking a bit about Inflection.com and my personal experience there. Right before my current gig, I thoroughly enjoyed running Inflection.com’s paid search business as their Director of SEM. I’d like to close out with a few great things about Inflection:

The co-founders are awesome. Brian, my former boss, started the business in his Harvard dorm room. He joined forces with Matthew, his brother and serial entrepreneur, and started Inflection. They bootstrapped it and quickly turned the company into a 50 person cash machine. These guys know their stuff and I’m obviously not the only one who thinks so. It’s extremely rare to land 30 million funding in this economy.
The team is very seasoned (which is one of the big reasons they are doing so well)! I have two pieces of information to quickly prove this to you. First, their executive VP of business development used to be President of Match.com in its early days. Second, their VP of finance was VP of finance at Netflix and took that company public. When I was there, half the team were Stanford graduates like myself, how awesome.
Inflection’s products are cool. Just check out Archives.com!

Here’s to Inflection’s continued success! Want to work at this amazing company in the heart of Palo Alto near my alma mater Stanford University? Send me your resume to jobs@ppcian.com and let me help connect you!

Picture in this post © Inflection.com

How I Made It Big In Online Marketing

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 16 12

You hear a lot of stories about people making it big in the world of online marketing. Today, I’m looking forward to sharing my own story about how I made it really big. The great part: I did it all in a nontraditional way, one which has higher leverage than any other in my opinion.

The Typical Online Marketing Fortune

My wife and I at Tryst, Las Vegas. PPC paid for our trip to Wynn last week!

I’m always hearing about online marketing fortunes. It seems like every blog I read is boasting of tremendous profits. Typically, these fortunes are coming via affiliate marketing, blogging, or even starting a small company that takes off. I have a tremendous amount of respect for anyone that makes big money on the Internet. Why? It’s not easy, period. It takes a lot of hard work, hustle, and intelligence. However, I’m here to say that I think the three methods just mentioned are lower leverage these days than the corporate route (the route that produced my success). I’d like to start out by talking about some of the difficulties with affiliate marketing, blogging, and starting your own business. Later, I’ll transition and discuss my personal success and leverage via corporate marketing (in addition to my secret money-making strategy).

Let’s talk about affiliate marketing and blogging. Most obviously, everyone is trying to do it! We live in a global economy, which is currently in a recession. Basically, you have everyone in the world trying to make some extra cash online. What does all of this competition mean? Less upside and thinner margins. Now, let’s think about corporate marketing. The corporate world requires a certain mindset, you’ve got to have that professional swagger and the degrees to back it up. Moreover, while most corporations are global, those with huge budgets want someone on call in their hometown.

Start Your Own Business, Delay Your Payout By 10 Years

Now, let’s quickly talk about starting your own business. I have huge respect for anyone that starts their own business, it’s a lot of work and a very respectable route. However, as I see it, there are only two real small business routes within online marketing. The first is the small affiliate marketing shop. I love this route because it involves zero investors and is pure profit for the owner. I even went this route myself and started IJL Productions. However, affiliate marketing margins are getting thinner and competition is getting more fierce (not only from other affiliate marketers but also from large corporations which have a lot of money to throw at their campaigns because of their high margins).

The second route: Get some funding and start a small business that may get bought out or go public one day. One problem with this route: Investors will dilute your ownership tremendously. My bigger problem with this route: The payoff is WAY in the future. You often have to wait five to ten years to be able to sell. Moreover, when it comes time to sell there are so many restrictions that you may not be able to dump all of your shares at once. You hear about all these Internet millionaires who started their own business, but I wonder how much of their fortune is liquid versus stock that can’t easily be sold. If the money isn’t in the bank (or in very liquid assets), it’s not real in my opinion.

How I Made It Really Big

Now, I’d like to talk about my personal career path and how I made it really big. You may be thinking, Ian’s going to talk all about working your way up the ladder and earning a big salary. Well, that certainly is a great thing and I do highly recommend it, but it’s not the point of today’s post. Today, I’d like to talk about stock options in high growth private (and public) companies.

Invest Like a Venture Capitalist and Get Rich

Who are some of the richest people you know? The richest people I know tend to be venture capitalists. Why? Easy! They got in on the ground floor of amazing companies. They own a diversified portfolio of private companies that later got bought out or go public. They own the leverage because they simply need to pick the right companies and then sit back and profit as the companies take off (leverage in its purest form). So, why not just become a venture capitalist? Again, an easy answer! The only people making money at the VCs are the partners (requires many, many years of tenure) or the folks wealthy enough to invest in the VC funds.

However, there is another way! Why not join the best companies in an online marketing capacity and accumulate stock options? That’s exactly what I did. I own stock in NexTag, QuinStreet, and Inflection.com (the first two had major liquidity events which I’ll discuss below)! When I started, there were haters for sure (and there still are). People were telling me I should discount stock options because they’re rarely worth anything. People told me stories of friends that worked at companies, but their options expired worthless. Well, what these haters didn’t know is that I was co-president of the investment club at Stanford and that I’ve been picking stocks my entire life. I intentionally picked the top companies in Silicon Valley. I intentionally negotiated a large portion of my pay via company stock. And, I intentionally worked hard and received additional stock option grants. Now, I’m one of the rare individuals in the world that owns stock in both NexTag and QuinStreet, two of the largest success stories of recent years.

Stock In NexTag and QuinStreet, PPC Ian’s Secret Leverage

I was one of the earlier employees at NexTag back in 2004. Because of the power of the pay per click career path, I eventually ended up running the entire PPC team and having a lot of clout at the organization. In 2007, 2/3 of NexTag got bought out for $830 million! I profited handsomely, not only from my own work, but through the leverage of everyone working hard at this great company. I also got in early at QuinStreet, well before their finance business took off. Earlier this year, QuinStreet went public and the company is currently valued at nearly $500 million (even in this bad economy). I’m confident that I picked my other companies correctly as well and that there is more great stuff to look forward to!

So there you have it, my leverage strategy: Accumulate stock in privately traded companies and profit like the big VCs. You may be thinking: Couldn’t I do the same thing even outside of PPC? My honest response: Not really! PPC is very well regarded because we’re dealing with huge multi-million dollar budgets. It’s an exclusive club and a skill (on a multi-million dollar level) that is very rare. As such, PPC professionals are truly in the driver’s seat when it comes to choosing the ideal companies and getting as much stock as possible. There’s only so much time in the day. Do you want to accumulate stock and enjoy the leverage of everyone’s hard work (not only your own), or stay internally focused on your own affiliate campaigns or business? My take: The corporate world offers an unparalleled amount of leverage! Want to learn even more PPC career strategies? Make sure to check out my free PPC eBook.

Image of Tryst Las Vegas © PPCIan.com

Buying Domains on Sedo

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Feb 15 6

If you’ve checked out the footer on PPC Ian, you may have noticed that I own a small LLC, IJL Productions LLC. I actually plan to write a future article all about LLCs and why I think they’re a great business entity to separate your business from yourself, creating financial protection (in my humble non-legal opinion). However, today I wanted to discuss the launch of IJL.net, the official website of IJL Productions LLC and in particular my experience buying this domain name on Sedo.

I have been interested in launching a small web presence for IJL Productions for quite some time. In fact, I registered the domain IJLProductions.com over two years ago for that purpose. However, as a domainer, Internet entrepreneur, and a guy with an ego, I wanted a shorter premium domain that I could brag about. Thus, I decided to buy a premium three-letter domain on Sedo, IJL.net, and I’m looking forward to discussing my experience.

Why I Picked IJL.net

Net

Three letter domains are extremely valuable, especially the dot com and dot net TLDs. (I recommend checking out 3Character.com, a very useful resource for those of you newer to three character domain names.) Moreover, my business name starts with three letters, making a three-character domain name very relevant and professional. Combine these two factors with my own vanity (I wanted a premium domain name for the bragging rights) and I quickly decided that I wanted to own a premium IJL domain.

Upon more investigation, I uncovered that "IJL" was taken on all the major TLDs such as dot com, dot net, and dot org. IJL.net and IJL.org were both going to parked pages and were available for sale on Sedo, making them great targets for my acquisition. For those of you new to Sedo, it’s the leading domain marketplace for buying and selling aftermarket domain names!

I Started Making Offers on Sedo

From the beginning, my preference was for the dot net TLD (as opposed to dot org). Don’t get me wrong, I love dot org domains because they inspire confidence due to their nonprofit roots. I probably bought 30 dot org domains in the last month for investment purposes. However, my personal business is for profit and I wanted to make that clear. Moreover, IJL.net just has a better ring to it than IJL.org. However, dot net TLDs are far more valuable than dot org so I wanted to leave my options open. Originally, I made some lowball offers on Sedo. I think I offered $275 for IJL.org and $700 for IJL.net. Not surprisingly, the sellers didn’t even entertain these offers! I waited quite some time and didn’t hear back.

At this point, I raised my bids on both domain names. The seller of IJL.org came back with a rather aggressive counter offer. Since it was not my first choice, I decided to stop negotiations and focus on IJL.net. Even after coming in rather aggressively, I did not hear back from the IJL.net seller on Sedo. I decided to take matters into my own hands and filled out the contact form on the website asking the seller to take a look at my offer. Don’t want to go into too much detail here, but must say the negotiations took several weeks and were rather involved. I was actually quite shocked it took that long, but in the end I feel that both the seller and I got fair deals. The seller got a very fair price for this premium domain name and I got the three-character domain name of my dreams!

Buying Your First Domain on Sedo

If you’re new to Sedo like I was, I’m hoping the following guide will help you a bit in your first transaction, from the buyer’s perspective. Following is my personal experience buying IJL.net through Sedo’s system, step-by-step:

The first part is the fun part! Simply search Sedo using their advanced query function to isolate the domain you’re interested in purchasing. You get to see statistics such as the seller’s offer price (not all sellers list a price), the number of people that have viewed the domain’s page on Sedo (giving you a sense of interest in the domain), and the seller’s activity index (if they’re active on Sedo, that’s a good thing).

Important: Offers On Sedo Are Binding

Once you’ve isolated a domain name, you simply need to create a Sedo account and place an offer! Please keep in mind that offers on Sedo are legally binding. If the seller accepts, you are locked into the deal. I can’t underscore enough that you want to be absolutely certain before making an offer. Tip: When you’re making your offer, please keep in mind that Sedo will charge you an extra 3% fee as a buyer to use their service.

Keep Your Cool During Domain Name Negotiations

After your offer is made, it’s time for the seller to ponder your offer. I believe sellers have up to 7 days to think over the offer and either respond with a counteroffer or decline the deal. I really want to underscore here that domainers, especially those who have been in the game a long time and who have strong portfolios, are expert negotiators. They will do whatever it takes to extract the full value for their domain name (and I can’t blame them!). As you negotiate, take your time, especially if the domain has little competition. Be fair and honest with the seller. At the end of the day, you need to feel like you got a great deal so please don’t go crazy, get caught up in the deal, and overpay. At the same time, you’re much more likely to get your domain name if you offer the seller a fair price. It’s all about balance and the art of negotiation!

After all the back and forth, hopefully the seller and you agree on a fair price. At that point, the Purchase and Sales Agreement is ratified and available for your download on Sedo. I recommend downloading it, taking screenshots, and printing it out. This is the document that outlines the transfer of title on your new domain name.

Also it’s now time for you to pay up. I truly enjoy leveraging Sedo because they act as the escrow company in your transaction. This ensures that your hard earned money is safe and that you only pay if you get the domain name. Domain names are expensive. There have been bad deals and thefts. Because you’re spending a lot of money on your domain name, I highly encourage you to leverage Sedo (or another alternative such as Escrow.com) to protect your investment. I have used Escrow.com in the past, but as a domain buyer I’m a bit partial to Sedo. Payment on my front was really simple. I had an existing balance in my PayPal account so I decided to pay via PayPal, a great option and much appreciated. With Escrow.com, I had to wire money in the past so I found the PayPal option much simpler.

Stay Patient During The Domain Transfer Process

At this point, it was time to transfer the domain. This process took a few weeks, longer than I had imagined. At the same time, I felt good about the transparency of the process. Moreover I appreciated the fact that Sedo assigned a dedicated transfer agent to my deal (who answered my questions very quickly). At the end of the day, the transfer probably took a bit longer because we were moving across registrars (from Enom to Moniker). Had I been transferring to another Enom account, perhaps it would have been quicker. In any event, here are some of the logistical details:

Seller transferred the domain to Sedo’s escrow account on Enom.
Sedo sent me the authorization code.
I initiated a transfer from within my Moniker account and entered the authorization code. I also decided to renew the domain name for several more years at this time. My Advice: Always register your premium domains for at least 5 years, the last thing you want is for them to expire by accident.
Moniker sent Sedo an email that contained a link they needed to click.
I sent a heads up to my transfer specialist and he clicked the link, no problem.
I waited a bit and Moniker sent me an update that the authorization code was incorrect.
No big deal, I emailed my transfer specialist at Sedo and got a new one.
I entered the new code and it was accepted.
I waited about five days and got daily updates from Moniker that the domain was still pending transfer.
The deal closed!
PPC Ian decided to celebrate!

Premium Domains are Ideal For Pay Per Click

As you know, the name of my blog is PPC Ian. I’m the greatest PPC enthusiast out there! To close out, I wanted to tie this all back to pay per click. In my opinion, every great pay per click website deserves a great, premium domain name. Just think about it: You’re spending millions of dollars per year across your portfolio of sites. I personally see a great case for taking just a fraction of your PPC budget and investing it in premium domain names. Premium names will improve your click through rate and user retention. I hope my experience buying IJL.net via Sedo has helped you out as a first time Sedo buyer!

Online Marketing Diversification

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 15 5

As an investor at heart, diversification is one of my favorite risk mitigation tactics. From day one, I quickly learned that diversification is your safety net when crafting a well-rounded portfolio of stocks. Today I wanted to highlight just a few exciting ways that diversification is directly relevant to your career in online marketing.

Diversify Your Campaigns Across Search Engines

Stocks and Bonds

I’ll start with the obvious one. In today’s search engine marketing landscape, it’s not uncommon to be dramatically over-weighted on Google. Just think about it: Google is the 800 pound Gorilla in the space. It’s only natural that search teams focus their efforts on Google first (it all goes back to leverage). However, once your Google campaigns are established, I’d like to argue that an incremental conversion from another search engine is worth disproportionately more to your company than an incremental conversion from Google.

It’s all about mitigating risk. What if Google changes their algorithm? What if Google gets too competitive? Anything can happen and I urge you to treat your paid search campaigns like stocks in a well-balanced portfolio. Diversify amongst all search engines including Yahoo, Bing, and second tiers – your employer will thank you for the added stability.

Diversify Your Team’s Skill Set

I’ve managed a multitude of search engine marketing teams over the years. There are two competing management philosophies that I’ve tested and experienced: Specialize and generalize. Under the specialize school of thought, each team member owns a particular task or search engine and acquires an immense amount of skill in that area. Under the generalize school of thought, each team member understands all of the search engines, campaigns, and skills, contributing across a broad array of projects.

You probably already know which one I’m going to recommend! Managers, please go the generalize route. Diversify each team member’s skill set. Every member of your team should understand all of the search engines, processes, and initiates. Going the diversified route keeps morale high (because it’s easier for everyone to learn new things) while mitigating risk in case someone leaves (you’ll have backups who understand all the details). We’re already in a specialized line of work and diversification keeps things interesting and leveraged.

Diversify Your Personal Skill Set

How do you rise quickly in pay per click search engine marketing? You become an absolute master of PPC while learning the other online marketing channels as well: SEO, display advertising, email, and PR. I’d actually go beyond this and also encourage you to learn sales as well, an incredibly valuable skill in getting to the Director level or above. There are rarely enough hours in the day to do this at work and I recommend starting your own small business on the side to acquire these diversified skills (check out my post on SEM moonlighting). Some other tips to diversify your skills and get on the fast track to promotion:

Have regular lunches with people on other teams.
Work on cross-functional projects that benefit both teams.
Once you’ve been at a company long enough and have driven results, ask your boss for the favor of an "educational" week spent working on a completely different team for a completely different boss.

Diversify Your Private Company Investment Portfolio

Disclaimer: I’m not a licensed investment adviser and this is just for your entertainment. In my opinion, one of the largest benefits of working in our field is the ability to accumulate stock in rapidly growing private companies. I personally own shares in three private companies thanks to my 5 plus years in PPC. This strategy has already paid off quite handsomely. While it should never be your core reason for career transitions, this is a very important factor often overlooked. In my opinion, a well-diversified portfolio of fast growing private companies is every investor’s dream. SEM provides the perfect avenue to realize this diversification dream without having a million dollar bankroll to approach VC funds as an investor.

To close out, I encourage you to think each and every day what you can do to diversify. Diversification is a tremendous tool to mitigate risk while driving growth in your search marketing career.

Investment Expertise Will Boost Your SEM Career

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 26 1

As you may know from my about me, I was co-president of The Charles R. Blyth Fund, Stanford University’s prestigious real money investment club. My passion for investments actually dates all the way back to my high school days. I’m still addicted to the game and can’t get enough whether we’re talking public companies, private companies, or even commodities. You may be thinking, "What the heck does this have to do with pay per click search engine marketing?" Surprisingly, it has a whole lot to do with your SEM career.

Connect With Internet Executives on an Investment Level

Bull Market

I have a natural ability to hold lengthy conversations with executives. I’m very proud of my ability and it’s something that I’ve been leveraging since day one when I interviewed for my first PPC job in 2004. For a while, I didn’t really know why I had such successful relationships with senior executives. Now, I do. What am I typically talking to executives about? All aspects of investing!

At the end of the day, all executives are investors. All executives enjoy talking about investments. From my experience, all executives are passionate about investing in their personal portfolios, but let’s put that aside for a minute. Focusing just on the operations of your organization, executives are in strategic roles where they’re often making investment decisions for the company. They need to know the market thoroughly and are always thinking on a merger and acquisition level. From that perspective, it’s impossible to be an Internet executive without being an investor. Now, If you’re a passionate investor, you immediately have a common point of interest that you can leverage to make a great name for yourself and increase your odds of promotion.

Your Investment Knowledge Will Add Value To Your Company

Now, you may be thinking, "Ian, this sounds a bit superficial. So I’m supposed to shoot the bull with the executives about tomorrow’s hot stock and I’ll get promoted?" The short answer: Yes and no. There are two important takeaways here. As you get promoted, you’ll become a visible leader within your organization. You need to prove you can hold a conversation with the decision makers (and investing allows you to connect and prove your abilities).

Second, I truly believe your knowledge about investing will add serious strategy level value to your organization, which is exactly what leaders need to do. There exist a multitude of ways your investment knowledge could pay off greatly. I’d like to highlight just one small example next.

I’m passionate about sifting through thousands of small company stocks. One day, I took this passion to the next level by searching for small Internet businesses that could make great acquisition opportunities for my employer. I started frequenting sites like Buy Sell Website to find website investment opportunities. One day, I came across a perfect acquisition opportunity for my current employer. I drafted up a proposal and after our due diligence we ended up acquiring my recommended investment. Needless to say, this definitely helped my career.

Learning About Investment Essentials – A PPC Manager’s Guide

So this all sounds great, but you’re not sure where to start. First, there’s absolutely no reason to worry at all. You’re a pay per click search engine marketer. The tasks that you’re performing every single day are precisely the same skills that will help you become a great investor. You’re great with numbers, modeling, Excel, operating to a solid margin, and identifying growth opportunities. PPC is the quintessential operational role and it sets you up to become an investment superstar.

In terms of building your investment toolkit, following are my top pieces of advice specifically for those in pay per click search engine marketing:

As soon as you hit your stock option vesting cliff (typically one year after your start working for your employer), exercise at a least a percentage of your stock options. This will give you access to your company’s annual report, not to mention putting a little bit of your personal wealth on the line. Spend time reading your company’s annual report at length. You’ll learn a whole new dimension about your organization and will be armed with the very information that decision makers are pondering daily.
Know all the players in your industry, both public and private. You’re probably already familiar with your competition from the PPC landscape. Take it to the next level by researching them from a strategic investment perspective. A great place to start is Yahoo! Finance. The ties you’ll start forming between your operational knowledge and the strategy side of things are astounding. The ties will help you formulate and communicate your PPC strategy on a whole new level.
Read as many investing books as you can. I know, you have limited time. You need to make time. Robert Kiyosaki is a great introductory author and my favorite financial mentor. Over the years, I’ve read a huge number of investment books. Because you love PPC odds are you’ll get addicted to investment books like me!
Last, make sure to invest a few of your own dollars. There’s no better way to learn that putting your own money at risk. Never risk more than you can afford to lose and start small. Your company-sponsored 401k might be the best place to start. Then, consider a brokerage account and start investing in individual stocks. This experience will greatly reinforce everything else.

To close out, I want to underscore the importance investing as a tool to accelerate your SEM career. PPC and investing go and in hand. Armed with the two, you’ll start seeing major strategy opportunities and will climb the corporate ladder to become a PPC executive in your own right.