[vc_column][vc_column_text]
MARKETING
JetSetFly, aka Josh Madrid scams people out of $500k+
Oh, boy… Get ready for some serious drama!
+ Who is JetSetFly?
First off, you’ll have to excuse the fact that we don’t follow every single “marketing guru” out there so we know little about JetSetFly.
Given that he has over 270k followers and a lot of engagement on IG, plus people paid so much for his courses, it’s safe to assume he’s pretty popular.
That being said, we don’t know how he got this popular, so we’ll have to fast-forward straight to the last 24 hours when all of this blew up in many marketing-related groups and on Instagram.
+ Breaking the news
It was Bogdan Kosilov who broke the news on his Instagram as one of the people who was supposedly scammed for $10k by Josh.
Once he made it public, other people started coming forward and the whole thing spread like a virus.
You can see the Story Highlights of how it happened here.
+ What was the actual scam?
People signed up for different courses or masterminds, saw they were incomplete or completely ineffective.
When these people asked for a refund, they were denied, even though there was always a policy in place that said people could ask for it if they didn’t get the results they were promised.
Sounds rather familiar, right? It’s the typical problem with courses that offer such a promise.
There’s more. The contracts that some students had to sign were pretty bad. We haven’t seen it though, it’s just a claim made by Bogdan and some of the people who messaged him.
+ What happens next?
Bogdan is trying to get people together and take Josh to court, estimating that the scam goes over $500k when taking everyone into account. Get in touch with him if you’ve bought something from JetSetFly.
JetSetFly posted saying he is heading back and will make things right. We don’t know what “right” means, gotta wait and see.
+ What everyone should learn from this
Don’t expect any course to be some magical solution!
A lesson to go by is this: If someone moves a stone by telling other how to move the stone, they are making more by teaching than by applying their so-called lessons.
It’s something Naval Ravikant echoes in his podcast and also someone closer to our industry, the anti-guru himself, @jasonaguru. Hi, Jason!
“Let me tell you something very simple to understand. Nobody in life, NOBODY is going to teach you how to be their competitor. Nobody is going to go through years of hardship trial and error and be on the top of their game and then just show you how they did it.
The only way they will do that is if it makes them more money to teach you than it does to actually work on the business they are showing you how to set up.” – quoted from Jason’s IG Story on 17th July, 2019.
Bogdan actually recommended “a real thing” to his followers. We have no idea how useful it is but it’s probably not the timing to sell another course.
+ So is everyone teaching just a scammer?
No, but you have to manage expectations and be extremely picky where you take your advice from.
We try to be a filter for you with the case studies we feature here but we are not perfect so you should always do your own research. And let us know when we’re wrong.
Learn from doers, learn by doing, learn from the abundance of freely available information and only afterwards consider courses…
Important changes for ad formats and headlines on Facebook!
Phew, finally out of that drama…
There are a couple of important updates coming to Facebook Ads starting August 19. They are specifically for the Mobile News Feed placement so this applies to basically everyone.
Credit goes to Gil David for sharing it on LinkedIn.
What does this mean for you?
Less text visible by default for captions means you have to rethink your copy. You can either make it shorter in general or make sure people are enticed to tap “See More” after 3 lines instead of 7.
You might also have to rework some of your video creatives that are too tall, otherwise they will automatically be adjusted by FB and might not have the desired impact anymore.
SPONSORED
This is where 2.7k+ affiliates will gather in September. Your company should be there too!
Oh, you didn’t know? The India Affiliate Summit takes place on 26th and 27th September this year.
Where? At the Leela Ambience in Gurugram, India.
Over 2.7k attendees are expected and The Affiliate Street is where they will hang out, network and look to discover new companies to work with. This interactive exhibition floor is dedicated to affiliates, publishers, brands, ad networks, bloggers, agencies and much more!
There are only 39 booths left right now from a total of 95 available so the sooner you book your booth, the better. The prices are also going to increase starting 1st August! You still have time to get the early-bird price now.
Every booth on the Affiliate Street Package includes:
- One 6’x2.5’ draped table and 2 chairs.
- 2 Gold passes for the Summit
- Your company logo, URL, profile and contact details on the website
- Invitation for you and your colleagues to the exclusive Partners and Exhibitors dinner on 25th September
The price for this right now starts at $1.25k – check out all the available options here.
Not looking to exhibit and want to just attend to network, here some good speeches and meet some of the biggest affiliates in India?
TOOLS
Open-source mock-up contracts for basics
A generic but useful tool to find contractual agreements, NDAs, offer letter templates and pretty much everything else that was recommended by Charles Ngo.
It’s an “open source” website which means you can download and use any of the templates you want and even modify them as per your needs.
Like Charles said, don’t use it for anything important like a founder’s agreement or a prenup.
Tracking spend efficiency for ecomm in Google Ads
It’s all about the ROAS for those e-comm ads, right? Or any ads for that matter.
How are you currently tracking that?
Well, you do get some topline figures from Google itself. You could manually use spreadsheets to customize it further. But that’s still a lot of work and pain.
Wesley Parker had his developers build a script to automate this whole process. It creates a visual representation showing performance up to the keyword level.
How does it work?
The script pulls all the keywords and their respective ROAS from your ad account. It then presents this data into two charts.
First one helps you visualize the percentage of keywords that fall within a specific ROAS bracket. For example, what percentage of your keywords have 100%, 200%, 300% ROAS.
The second chart compares weekly performance to monitor the ROAS changes across your account.
Manual controls to setup the script
- Define your ROAS thresholds. It’s recommended to do this in increments of 100. You can do this on line 17 of the script between the square brackets.
- Create a new Google document and paste the URL of the doc into line 21 of the script, between the quotation marks.
- Set a look back window (time frame for the script to take data) on line 24.
- Bam!
Here’s the entire script.
Keep your data visualized, keep your processes organized! 😉
Noone is counting your Likes anymore
The pressure is being taken off of you! Instagram wants you to feel comfortable.
“We want Instagram to be a place where people feel comfortable expressing themselves. This includes helping people to focus on the photos and videos they share, not how many likes they get.”
Got it? No?
Well, Instagram has been taking a toll on the mental health of its users, especially the young ones. People are struggling to keep up with the reels of their friends and the celebrities they follow and it’s proving to be exhausting after all.
For the past several months, Instagram has been running a test in a few countries that didn’t show likes. People could see who liked their posts but the total number of likes were hidden.
Now this test is being rolled out globally in smaller batches.
Under the new system, you can see how many likes your photos get, but your followers won’t be able to see that. Similarly, you can’t see how many likes other peoples’ posts get.
During the F8, it was announced that new features to combat bullying are being experimented.
Instagram also released an AI-powered feature in July that lets users know if they’re posting a comment that can be considered offensive. For example, when a user types out “You are so ugly and stupid,” they got a notification saying stating “Are you sure you want to post this?”
Anyway, to cut a long story short, the bottom line is that it wants you to “focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get.”
Only time will tell how many other countries this test rolls out to.
FROM THE CREW
Hey, you! Tell us a lil’ about yourself, will ya’?
We’ve asked you a few questions about yourself before, but since then this newsletter has grown. We want to know what type of content you’d like to see, what type of marketer you are, and how experienced in the industry you are.
Why? Because we want you to love this daily briefing!
We noticed there are a lot more types of marketers than just affiliates reading this. We’re flattered!
That also means we have to get some more info from you to ensure we aren’t neglecting any area of digital marketing that you ladies and gents are interested in.
It’s anonymous, takes 3 minutes to fill in and it helps us make sure we stay on top with content quality and the type of sponsors we bring to the newsletter.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
What’s going on with FB’s crypto-hype?
When Facebook announced their digital currency project Libra, it was all over the news.
The company seemed to be in high-spirits and over enthusiastic about the project. In fact, FB itself handed over the data and privacy protections to Swiss regulator FDPIC.
Fast forward to now and the Swiss agency confirms that so far, they have not been contacted by Facebook with concrete info regarding this matter.
“We expect Facebook or its promoters to provide us with concrete information when the time comes. Only then will we be able to examine the extent to which our […] competence is given. In any case, we are following the development of the project in the public debate.“
There are still loads and heaps of approvals and regulations pending to be defined and examined.
Basically, everybody is still awaiting the developments on the project.
All this comes at a time when policy-makers from around the world have expressed serious concerns about Libra related to money laundering, financial stability and regulations.
Well, better late than never!
Here’s what you can get if you share us with your marketing friends!
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]