Stephen N. Hills (everyone calls him "Sunny") - the most unlikely AdWords genius

Twice a year (fall and spring “semester”) we do the Bobsled Run which is a first-click to final-sale intensive coaching program.

In that program we hold a contest with prizes and today I want to tell you about the most unlikely of winners, Stephen N. “Sunny” Hills, who lives in Maui Hawaii.

His story is entertaining.

The Bobsled Run is like drinking water from a fire hose, so therefore we charge an application fee and require students to describe their business. It has to be up and running and working. We don’t allow rank beginners, it’s too much to absorb for them.

Sunny applies and he’s making – I forget – $50 a month from his website or something like that.

Furthermore what he’s selling is positive thinking / personal development CD’s for not much money.

One of the factoids I know as a Certified Marketing Maniac is that the only person who has successfully sold personal development on TV is Anthony Robbins. For whatever reason he has succeeded, but ALL others have failed.

ALL.

“Positive thinking” and “self improvement” are so intangible, so feel good and so undefined that it’s like selling religion with no afterlife. So I’ve got this guy who’s barely making any money and he’s selling something that you can buy used on Amazon for 50 cents…. I reject his application and go on.

He asks Jeremy if he can please have a phone appointment with me. We talk on the phone and he begs – “Please Perry, I’ll do ALL the homework, I’ll work harder than anybody, you’ve never seen anyone apply myself like I will…”

“But this is personal development. How are you going to make money with that?”

“I will, I promise, if you accept me, just watch and see.”

Wow. Determination. I admire that. OK Sunny, you’re on.

That isn’t even everything.

On top of that, Sunny ended up building his revenue model around “AdSense Arbitrage” which meant he was buying clicks on Google AdWords and selling clicks back to Google AdSense and trying to make a profit. Which is very hard to do. Google doesn’t even like it when people do this.

But anyway, he goes to work. And man did he ever work. He did EVERYTHING. He listened to every MP3 three times. He did every homework assignment to the Nth degree.

And he wrote 105 autoresponder messages.

He would buy clicks on Google, get people to opt in to his positive affirmations course, and every single day for 105 days he’d be sending them back to his website where they could click on more Google ads.

He relentlessly, methodically tested not only his incoming Google ads but his AdSense channels and the ad locations on every page on his website and the content and everything.

And almost magically, he made water flow uphill. It didn’t matter how much or how little money was in that market, all he needed was traffic and there was a lot of it.

For every dollar he gave Google he was getting several dollars back, and actually…. there’s quite a bit of clicks to be had on that topic.

He grew his business well over 10,000 percent and didn’t go into the red doing it.

His contest entry put it this way:

“If you compare the two months before I started the program to the two months in his program, my profits increased 168 fold.

“Even by the most absolutely conservative estimate, skewing the numbers the worst possible way, my numbers still come out more than 1200% better than my very best prior month. My net profit for every click increased 50X.”

When it was all said and done, Sunny won the grand prize. He even beat out Ari Galper who won 2nd place – and Ari grew his business from $5K a month to $25K a month in four months.

Sunny took the cake with the most amazing MP3 contest entry submission I could possibly think of. You can listen to it here – it’s 24 minutes – really crazy, and funny too:

[mc src=”http://perrymarshall.com/adwords/sunny_perrycoaching64.mp3″/]

Sunny Hills Coaching Story – right click to download MP3 or just press “play” and listen while you check your emails etc.

Then Sunny took the Bobsled run again, as an Alumni Club member. And he would always be on EVERY Mastermind call, even if it started at 3am Hawaii time.

Then he took it AGAIN.

The following year I did a seminar (DVD’s here, in my opinion it’s a gem) – and I had Sunny teach AdWords arbitrage. Like I said, making water flow uphill.

He’s the only person I’ve ever allowed to manage my own Google campaigns. We also refer consulting clients to him.

Last year I brought him on board to help coach Bobsled Run students and they love him.

Sunny is the coach for AdWords Boot Camp. He’s the guy who logs onto GoToMeeting with you and peeks at your AdWords campaigns and helps you fine tune them. He’s as devout as any student I can name and he knows this stuff inside and out. A Certified Marketing Maniac. Takes one to know one.

So I invite you to participate in the AdWords Boot Camp. It’s a little bit like the Bobsled Run but it’s 4 weeks instead of 12; it’s AdWords only; and we accept beginners. Comes with a rockin’ guarantee. Starts June 9:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/adwords/bootcamp/

Perry Marshall

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.