AMA - Affiliate Marketing + Guide "How I Made $5K w/ 1 Campaign"

[Nosferatu]

Hey Guys -- Figured it's time to share any bit of knowledge i can, since this forum has already paid me back generously in information.

I got into Affiliate Marketing in late 2011 - Buying traffic and creating ads promoting all sorts of offers. I've successfully compiled campaigns that enabled me to generate $600-800 (sometimes even more) a day on autopilot.

Attached to this post is a step by step guide i used to generate $5K in just 4 short weeks. Originally, this content was meant for my blog so disregard any mention of the site moniker or domains. Otherwise, the information is legit.

AMA about Affiliate Marketing, Getting Into CPA Networks, starting campaigns, Media Buys, Information Marketing, etc

ATTENTION:
Please do NOT PM me with your questions. Post them here in this thread for all to benefit from. Thank you.

PS. I hate Affiliate Marketing -- I know this sounds crazy, but it's true. Too much micro management, and hoops for my liking. Anyway, ask whatever! maybe i can help!

Mini $5k in 1 Month Guide:
View attachment CASESTUDYHOWIBANKED5103.20OFFPLENTYOFFISH.pdf



EDITx2 :


I got a few asking about the traffic sources. Decided to let some more goodies out of the bag.

Download my Rolodex of Traffic sources and tools all in one fugly PDF. Enjoy.

View attachment TRAFFIC SHEET.pdf

 

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[Nosferatu]

How do you decide where to buy ads? Do you use an advertising network or go and negotiate directly with site owners? How do you check the accuracy of sites stats? usually, site owners claim they get x amount of isitors and many times is not true.

Thanks

As to how i decide to purchase my ads.. Demographics.

Demographics Literally determine who i'm targeting.

So what i do is match the demographic to the offer. Then you find all of the websites match your demographic and also offers display ads.
You can find this kind demographic info for almost every website at Alexa.com & Quantcast.com.
Quantcast even gives you a list of all the sites that accept ads for money too.

Then once you have a list, you find the ones that have the best intent, in regards to the offer.

For example, dating ads can work on any website. But the chances of you clicking on a dating ad, when you're not looking for that kind of thing is going to be pretty small. But if you place a dating ad, within a dating network -- People are already there, interested in dating - so the chances of what you have to offer, is a lot higher, therefor your successes will be more frequent.


There are networks for pretty much every website out there. I got a list of dozens of websites you can buy adspace from. Everything ranging from MSN.com to Excite, Yahoo.. l mean, pretty much everything. Sitescout.com is pretty badass too. Good RTB Network. (real-time buy) -- PoF (plentyoffish.com) - Has a sick ad platform.

PM me if you want me to send you a big list.

There are also going to be websites that don't participate in Ads -- those are a little bit trickier because it involves communicating with the site owner.
This is accomplished by simply using Whois , get the administrative contact, and shoot them an email to see if they can make a deal.

Hope that answers your question.


*** Late EDIT ***

i use Compete.com for traffic details too. If you want to know how much traffic a site gets, just go to compete.com , sign up for a free account and use thier tool to get an idea of how big that site owners market really is.

As someone who is making a sprint as far away from Affiliate Marketing, I second your notion about hating it.

I've spent the entire day today chasing someone who owes me data for e-mail marketing, someone who owes me a website, and someone who owes me $5,000.

Enough is enough. Can't wait for my startup in 4 more weeks.

Ouch.


I personally love Marketing in itself. I just realized it's a lot more lucrative to do it for me, instead of running other peoples products, and only getting a small commission.

Can you go through your lead gen process. So you get an offer, and you have your end set up. How do you pick the best ad outlet or method? What's your method for creating ads and testing them?

I think that portion of AM is always the most helpful to everyone, I know when I got out, it was the most valuable thing I had learned and still want to learn about.

In regards to setting it up, read above at Alex's post.

For the graphics, i do them myself using Photoshop CS5. PS does pretty much everything you could need. From shading to animations. It's awesome.

You can also outsource them. But the truth is, it's a lot easier to just learn how to do them properly. Because you can burn a lot of money paying people to make images that might not even convert.

For testing, you really have to know about your market. What drives them -- then project a mental image on to an ad as best you can. For me the process is a lot of psychological back and forth.

I usually test 5 to 10 different "Angles" at a time, Then i see which people clicked on the most. I then use that as my control , and then do a lot of A/B testing, changing fonts, phrases, colors and see which out of those makes it to the next round or improves CTR (click through rate)

I usually test for 5-7k Impressions before i kill an ad (if it sucks and doesn't get clicks)
Hope this helps.

 

[Nosferatu]

Can you detail how brst to "swipe" a successful campaign. For example on PoF how do I find out if the campaign is doing well and worth swiping?

Thanks for the PDF case study, it demystifies the basics.

Good Question!

This is pretty easy. There are a few ways, The easy but paid way is by being a member of STM (stackthatmoney) they have a members tool section which has a POF spy tool. I think it tells you how long any ad has been running, and you can filter by demo. Obviously if it runs for more than a few days - it means it's profitable if they keep paying for ads.

Then you simply click the ad and follow through to the lander. Once you have their lander, you have a winning combo ad + lander - then you just copy the lander modify it to suit your needs and swap your aff link to it.

Sounds Pretty sleazy right? -- well it happens to everyone, even me. A good idea isn't kept a secret for long in CPA Marketing especially If you're competing for eyeballs.


The FREE way to do it, is by simply making a POF profile on POF that matches the offer you're promoting. Then log in and keep notes on the ads you see.

Refresh the page 10 times and keep record of which ads are being shown the most.

For example, on my ads -- i would never show the user my ad more than 3 times in a single 24 hour period. - that's why i say refresh up to 10 times because then you can see who's putting down cash for a lot of views for your sample demographic -- once you figure out who the shark is, repeat the step above -- click through their lander, copy it and modify it in your own way. Put it up and test.


Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Nos

 

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[Nosferatu]

You mentioned you have a background in IT, so I'm assuming that right off the bat you made your landing pages with HTML and CSS? What benefits are there to coding everything over the other possible methods like photoshop/ wordpress? Since thats what I see people telling beginners to just learn basic HTML/ CSS.

I've been using photoshop to practice making banners+ landers and have hit a roadblock when it comes to dreamweaver. I can't seem to find any solid tutorials or forum threads on what I need, the only related thread I found- people just told the OP to learn how to code lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J5Fe-0FCws

This is the most comprehensive tutorial I found, he starts off at 6:20 in PHP mode (why not HTML or CSS?) and throws in a wrapper tag with the lander. I follow so far, but when he gets to the summary sub-menu: background/ positioning I don't have any of those options? I've looked through a ton of dreamweaver tutorials/ threads and I feel like an idiot cause I'm sure its something simple. Also when he's mapping the hotspots, I see on other tutorials that people are naming each individual one whereas he does all of them in one shot. Unless I'm missing something and the individual ones are for different destinations per link. As always, thank you in advance

View attachment 5914

hehe, i do have a background in IT. I think you're giving me a lot more credit than deserved. However....

Let me introduce you to:

http://www.httrack.com


Site sucker.


Go to POF, click on bunch of ads, and suck down your favorite lander.

Then open it up in dreamweaver, swap your code/affiliate links. Re upload your modified Lander with affiliate link.


Link your ad to your server, with your now newly sucked/copied lander that you edited.

Bam! Instant landing pages, just borrow from others, modify with dreamweaver and you have a ad/lander combo in minutes !





PS: You can make landing pages from scratch too -- i use dreamweaver -- simple simple html forms and buttons - trust me the simpler the better.

PPS: I did recommend to check youtube out, mainly for the Photoshop tutorials. i learned a lot on youtube about making elements on ads pop out -- in regards to coding i did the method above with good success.

I can't code worth shit.

I have a swapfile collection of landers i work from.

 

[Nosferatu]

Thanks for the clarification on your previous post



Heh, now you're just making me question myself :smx8:. My reason for trying to get into AM was to get marketing experience for when I'm ready to pursue a real venture of my own. Many people have said that they've come away from AM with lots of important experience that has helped/ will help them in going after their own business.

I don't want to be a money chaser, frankly I have no interest in AM apart from learning how to direct traffic effectively. My endgame is wanting to either come out with a product that would benefit people (I'm a mechanical engineer) or a service (preferable as its much easier to manage and and get started with). However as you know- marketing plays a HUGE role in whether you'll prosper or tank.

Maybe you can advise on what the most effective way for a complete noob with zero business/ finance/ marketing experience is to get his feet wet and develop some skill so that when he's ready to break out his business, it doesn't go unnoticed or have to outsource- therefore relinquishing control (not to mention involving people who don't have your idea at heart)? Reading books, blogs, and forums is only getting me so far.

Tom

I see what you mean now. That's kind of funny because that's where i'm at now. I've mastered traffic generation and now im building products and services. So i totally see what you're trying to accomplish.

Here's what i did.


Learned 1 traffic source at a time. I picked 1 niche, and 1 source - and made it work. I spent money on tons of campaigns. testing, trying a few things. i went into it with the attitude of paying for school or training - I also followed several popular affiliate marketers online for close to about a year, and slowly over time i picked up a lot.

Pro Tip -- sign up for a lot of affiliate email list and go to every webinar or show they put out -- keep in mind their whole goal is to get you to buy something. Don't ever buy anything unless you know for sure it will help you, but it's basically free training because they always spill the beans on what they do, and they just try to sell you the end product at the end instead of learning it by yourself.

Read, Read, Read, Read some more. I've downloaded so many marketing books off the internet it's crazy - i got a harddrive of books i've read. I would consume books in hours - seriously - read about all the greats, gary halbert , dan kennedy stuff , John Carlton, etc

Pick a forum like stm and join, contribute and most importantly, take action in trying some ads. Don't give up. There is a learning curve.


Go to Yearly events - this requires money, room and board , but let me tell you the biggest a-ha moments where at these events.


Once you've atleast tried everything once, you'll start to notice the inner workings of a lot of ads online, one of my favorite hobbies is to break down ads and figure out how they're profitable -- its fun (for me lol)

I also download a lot of stuff off the web. If you're not learning, your not growing.



Hope this helps

 

[Nosferatu]

Very interesting post, Nosferatu. Thanks for sharing the info.

I know very little about CPA marketing, but it seems like it can be quite lucrative if you put in the work. I'm thinking of taking some time to teach myself the ins-n-outs so I can pay off some debt + put money away for my Fast Lane ventures.

Quick question, Nosferatu. I notice you liked to StackThatMoney, they have a forum that is $99/mo with a 7 day trial. Would you recommend signing up as a newbie? Or should I try to learn through some other source first before joining up?

I'm thinking a month or two of committed work will be enough to see if I can make it worth my time + money.

Thoughts?

Your points ring true. It is lucrative if you're willing to put in the work.

Well, let me be honest with you here. Like most, i was a total cheap skate especially when i started, i didn't see the value in paying money upfront when my entire goal was to make money. After consistently putting work and effort, and learned everything i could, i did hit a wall. I caved in and figured it was at least worth a month to give these forums a try. -- And so i paid for membership. To be honest, that was the best decision i made, because you can't put a price on the type of networking and concentrated information you'll find on these kinds of forums. Also, the price point is a barrier for people who aren't serious. Because i want to make something very clear to ANYBODY READING THIS. --- Do not underestimate these words.


THIS IS A BUSINESS, TREAT IT LIKE ONE


if you treat this like a hobby, it will pay you like a hobby. If you treat it as a business, it will pay you like a business.


So with that said, is it worth the money ? hell F*cking yes. the amount of information and value you'll learn (if you're serious) is priceless!


I came to one of the better known members here zen*******, asking for guidance on business related things, and the best thing he told me is to get membership here, and provide value. Because of my past and living by my words, i didn't even hesitate to buy membership here. It is because of these kinds of wisdoms that allowed me to make more money online. The membership i paid to TMF , paid itself back on day 1, because i learned some cool tips from one of the moderators here, Vigilante ( i don't think i ever mentioned it on the forums here, but vig if you're reading this -- big thank you) shared a tip of a road block i was having. And the solution was so stupid simple, i nearly kicked myself.


So are these forums with specialized knowledge worth it ? yes. Now how serious are you in pursuing this, thats the real question.

 

[Nosferatu]

Nosferatu... You da man!! Seriously, any spot in LI you name it- I owe you a couple cold ones.



I agree completely, and trust me I've been inhaling my fair share of knowledge- its never enough!! (In fact I've never devoured books as fast in my life apart from the Harry Potter series growing up haha). I'll start reading up on the guys you mentioned for sure and do my share of digging as well as joining the forums. I need to become an INSIDERS here as well and stop being a cheapskate.

Once again, thank you so much! Its pissing me off how many times I've given you speed and your number hasn't gone up haha

Tom

haha, it's cool - im not in it for points/speed whatever. i don't care about that stuff. Just trying to give value back where i can.

 

[kyled427]

As someone who is making a sprint as far away from Affiliate Marketing, I second your notion about hating it.

I've spent the entire day today chasing someone who owes me data for e-mail marketing, someone who owes me a website, and someone who owes me $5,000.

Enough is enough. Can't wait for my startup in 4 more weeks.

 

[Nosferatu]

Update: Please stop sending me PM's


I understand you want information -- but a lot of the questions i'm getting are repetitive and very simple to answer. Please be a trooper and post questions to the thread, so that others may benefit.

We all benefit from the exchange of value and information.

 

[Nosferatu]

I would like to ask you a couple of questions related to affiliate marketing:
1. Can you recommend any resources with help about creating banners? The best I have managed with PoF is 0.10%. I am thinking of finding someone from fiverr to do so.
2. Facebook does not allow direct affiliate links, so I have to create an intermediate sales page, have you tested such a strategy?
3. What is your normal conversion rate for CPA offers? Assuming that the registration page etc is normal

Thanks

1. Here's my take on this. Affiliate Marketing is business run on margins. The more margin you can keep, the faster you can test, and the faster you can scale. So the truth is, i invested time in learning the very basics of photoshop. You can learn for free on youtube.com and search photoshop tutorial for basic things like: "making a 3d effect on photoshop" " -- even learning how to make simple shapes helps.

The other side of this is to pay someone, but the thing is you cant just tell the guy "Hey make me a high converting banner" -- it doesn't work this way. you have to test the response of the banners yourself and tweak it by adding colors, text and a strong call to action.

So heres my best advice , learn the very basics of photoshop. spend like 60 minutes a day, or 30 minutes a day - until you grasp the core concepts of it. even if its to make fugly banners. because your going to spend a fortune paying people to make them for you. and the whole point of the game is to make money, not lose it.

The positive side to this is that fugly banners work alot better then the ones with nice graphics. Ive literally made $5K with a pic of 4 words and 4 pics of guys with no borders. (read my guide and see my winning ad) So thats that.


PS. i made that $5K profit on a .10 CTR - but the offer was killer! and converted great! imagine if i had gotten a .15 CTR ?


2. Yes, Facebook is baller if you have a good image. It's a bit tricker to make it work because of the magnitude of FB, but its not impossible. Ive successfully built a few campaigns on FB traffic. The best advice i can give you here is try linking internally to a page with a clear call to action. For some reason pages leading to fb usually have better CTR ( in my experience)


3.Conversion Rate is subjective. Each offer can have a different conversion rate - what it's important is whether or not your making profit.

 

[Nosferatu]

Yesterday I applied to a bunch of networks I found on bhw that were confirmed as not needing a phone call to be let in. I want to get a little acquainted for a week or 2 before I call the big guns like neverblue/ maxbounty/ etc so I don't sound clueless or try to lie my way in and potentially look like a jackass. Here is who accepted me so far with no call so far

Peerfly
CPAGrip
AdWorkMedia
CPAWay
Still waiting on a few more and will keep applying

I have a question though that I haven't been able to find by searching. How is it that networks influence conversion rates? Ex- I found a thread on bhw talking about adworkmedia where guys that had .15-.18 epc falling down to .04 with no changes in their campaigns. How does that work?

if all things are the same, the conversion rate shouldn't change. what's likely happening is that their scrubbing the leads.

Basically what happens is this...

Lets say an advertiser pays 5$ per lead. If you send them leads and the leads don't convert -- the cpa networks will place a scrub rate. A scrub rate means that if you send them 100 leads (at 5$ a pop for example) - they deduct a % off every 100 until the advertiser is profitable. If the advertiser isn't profitable, we don't make money because he won't have money to pay the cpa networks, which pay you..

But this is a double edge sword, because an advertiser can say they're not profitable to prevent paying out, or ive seen cases where the advertiser IS profitable but they cpa network is taking an extra cut at your expense.


From a fastlane principle, and this is part of the reason i went private with my stuff. Lack of of control big time.



aside from scrubbing, if all things not being the same. Factors such as speed of redirects, loading times, etc can be different depending on the network.


this is why it's important to track and setup your own hop in between you the network and the offer. Because if your tracking says 200 hits and the cpa networks says 100 hits to a link -- something is off.


Tracking is important

 

[Nosferatu]

I was completely clueless on the subject prior to reading this thread and guide a few days ago, but since then have read a lot on the subject. Did you make most of the money from direct marketing? I keep reading everywhere, everyone saying "build your list, build your list".

Also is it hard getting accepted into those networks, like Convert2Media? I was signing up as a publisher and read that they required at least one site live,, what do they look for in your site?

Build your list is excellent advice. What they don't tell you is the context of why you should be building a list.

Building a list is nothing more than free marketing combined with the recipes of forming a lasting relationship with your customer. But in order to have a customer, you need to have a product to sell. This is why building a list is important. It lets you re-market to those customers that you already spent dollars in acquiring.


You could also rent email lists for a fee to run ads. Usually these lists are niche based. You can find a lot of email lists out there by doing a google search.
--

The best way to get into a CPA Network is literally to submit an application and then call them for instant approval. They're going to grill you, they want to know you're not wasting their time, most networks don't want to deal with newbies. I think on most networks, you have 10-15% of people who do the most volume, then another 10 who do okay, then another 5-10 percent who do small volume. The other 70-75% are time wasters. This is why they put people through the ringer via interview. It's also why they put so many requirements in their application.


If i were you, i would hit up as many networks as you can, and call them up. Be straight with them, tell them you want to learn how to run traffic to offers and that you are dedicated to running traffic. Learn the lingo, these guys want traffic. Don't be afraid either because you got to understand that, these guys make their money off you. They need you. Once you have an account you can run stuff whenever you want.


Id also recommend talking with your account manager a lot, they can tell you what's hot and performing well. Then it's your job to find those conversions.

 

[Nosferatu]

Ad Search

Affiliate Spy Tool For POF



More kick a$$ tools:


Affiliate Expert - Home Page

 

[Nosferatu]

I just wanted to thank you for giving back and helping people out, I really appreciate it and I've learned a LOT being a complete noob

I want to try my hand in AM to get the marketing experience so I can eventually graduate to do my own thing like you are. I've started to learn PS and hopefully will be getting in the game soon enough, but I've been seeing that POF is getting a little tough to deal with lately. Looks like they've gotten much more stringent about the ads you can run on top of it getting more crowded. Would you still attempt to run a campaign there at this time?

PS- Good to see another NYer, I graduated from farmingdale :smx1:

Hey Nitroheadz, i'm glad i could help. Trust me, when i was newbie i wasted many hours figuring this stuff out. I just outlined what i did and my general process. -- as far as my campaign. unfortunately, the offer owner went private with it , he found someone to do all offers direct. This is part of the lack of control MJ talks about in the book (i just didn't realize at it that time) so this campaign is dead, as it stands. However the demographics are pretty important as you can port this information to other related niches.

I would still attempt to do this on POF, because POF is still comparatively cheap, and as long you as you know how to make a great banner and write BOSS ad-copy, you're gold!



A tip about POF ads being denied: keep and keep trying, but try to stretch the rules as much as you can. the POF people sometimes have serious Quality issues about approving ads, ive retried ad sometimes and gotten it through, and sometimes denied, they have a team of people going through them, and everyone has a different opinion about whats right or wrong. Id say if you've tried it 3 times and got denied, switch it up and try to edit it.

As much as this sucks, this is something you have to deal with.


Also , id recommend putting ads on SUNDAY NIGHT, to be approved monday morning. --- The Weekend people at POF are horrible, horrible trolls. I have almost a 10% success rate, they seem to deny everything i've ever thrown at them. I dont know why, that just happens to be my experience, but everytime i submit during the normal 9-5 M-F, my ads get approved quickly and with better success rates.

Don't bother submitting ads from FRIDAY TO SUNDAY.

Are you profitable on a consistent basis, and if so, are you making over $1k a week (the point where I would justify a job is no longer needed).

see answer above ^

Yeah I was wondering the same, isn't POF very saturated now? OP are you consistently earning 5k from this?

Sent from my SGH-T999V using Tapatalk 2

it's saturated if your pushing the same thing as everyone else, but by targeting different niches, you're unaffected. (blue ocean strategy)

Im wondering what a typical ROI would be for media buying. I realize this could range a ton just wondering if you have a number you shot for or an average where you are pretty happy? The niche I would be most interested in would be health

Media buying is generally for when you want to take a working and converting offer from the affiliate stage, to the mass market stage. (depending on the niche)

IE: if your ads convert well with a demo of female 19-29, college, with high disposable income, media buying victoria secret would be a gold, but it all depends on the product and your offer.

In terms of ROI, you could totally make a million dollars a day on a successful media buy, as long as your metrics are rock solid and battle tested.

 

[Nosferatu]

Do you think I should wait until I get into a couple of CPA networks than join TMF , or just join now..

I don't know how to really answer that. What are your actual goals ?

Let me give you an example. When i started, i thought marketing = cpa marketing. That was the only thing i knew. It turns out that marketing encompasses sooo many different avenues and media types. Every Media type has it's own methodology. Marketing on POF isn't going to be the same thing as marketing on Google Search and so forth. Campaigns that work on search may not work on display or other traffic sources and so forth. And there are many different ways to market to your target audience: radio, newspaper, display, search, retargetting, pop ups, toolbar traffic, omg the list goes on and on -- they're endless pools of ad space out there.

CPA Marketing = Quick fast cash, not stable, could last a week, could last years, highly dependent on skill and ability to read between the lines, a lot of potential to get scammed, not a lot of regulation in the industry, at mercy of the network and hope they don't scrub you to death/steal from you, lots of competition.

Just as if you were to join STM vs TMF , the goals of each forum are different. This forum is a business forum for like minded individuals to share ideas about their fast lane venture. The INSIDERS forum is a much more concentrated part of the forum where actual people post up actual processes that they're taking action on. Can you take away something from it ? absolutely. Will it help you in your goals? maybe, maybe not.

It depends on how well versed you are in what you're trying to accomplish.

If your up for CPA business model, joining STM would be a better option because that's all they do over there. And they're pretty darn good at it. I actually made my first 100$ a day there, by reading and learning from others.


So again, i can't really answer this question for you, you'll have to do some thinking about what your goals are then plan and move accordingly.


My reason for joining INSIDERS is because i want more real world business experience and knowledge, not marketing info per se.

 

[Liz]

Thank you Nosferatu and Nitoheadz28, I am a little behind Nitroheadz28. Managed to join Pof and Peerfly last night and are accepted by both. Managed to enter pof on advertisements.pof.com.

 

[Nosferatu]

Thank you very much for your detailed answer. Now that I have your answer a deeper question comes to mind. You explained the optimization thoroughly. Is the step of optimization for more profit or to make the campaign to profit?. In other words, based on what number of clicks we test the offer itself not the banner?How long should we stick to the offer? Is 100 clicks enough? Is the so-called 2X amount the payout for testing the offer only? If so how should we judge that because with say 8 dollars you only have 20 clicks that's too early to jump on the conclusion. Not only that, but a newbie could bid poorly and receive only 10 clicks for 2x the payout offer. Because of that, I am arriving to this conclusion that this so-called 2x the payout is the greatest bullshit found in affiliate marketing. I'd would be grateful if you could give me a more clear explanation on that. Thanks.

Well... here's the thing..

So when you throw up a direct link campaign

Your really testing 2 things.

1. the banners
2. the offers


Just because you have amazing CTR's and great banners, doesn't mean the offer will convert.


So in general -- when your testing..

your testing to first get:

A great set of banners that click well..

Then once you get a few set of good clicking banners, you rotate in relevant offers.

Once you find a combination of banners / ads that are converting...

Then you go through this process mentioned above.. of systemically getting the RIGHT people to see your ad... and you do that by cross elimination.



To answer your querstion:

The point of optimization, is to increase the success rate of a campaign that is performing. In other words... get a sale/conversion.. then improve the process of getting sale, faster.



Also, i see what you mean about the rules and offer payout whatever --

Here's the thing... the offer is everything.

If the offer sucks, you aren't going to get a conversion, no matter how good your ad is -- that's why split testing the offers is essential when creating these ads.. your trying to find a winning combo..


When i did the PDF, i used those same banners against a few relevant offers - only 1 consistently got conversions and so thats the one i went with (after testing)

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Hey Guys -- Figured it's time to share any bit of knowledge i can, since this forum has already paid me back generously in information.

Thank you so much for providing value to the forum -- Ill share the links tomorrow -- hope you're ready!

 

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[Nosferatu]

What networks do you use?

Thanks for the thread btw

Convert2Media
F5Media
Wolfstrum
Pushint.com (push interactive)
Neverblue
Rockstar Private network

 

[Nosferatu]

Eh, doubtful. POF is renowned for their in depth targeting. As far as I know, and from the traffic sources I have seen (dozens), the only thing close is FB. The only problem with POF is it is limited in scale. It's a great platform, but ever since FB started getting ban happy, droves of affiliate marketers began flocking to POF as a safe haven. There really are plenty of fish in a little pond now.

This reminds me of a campaign I ran for some adult stuff, pulled $6k profit back in June, but I have since moved on from AM with a TON of very valuable knowledge gained. A guy I speak with regularly was making $56k per month back in June, and is now expecting to make $15k this month. AM is just too much of a roller coaster, offers go down, traffic sources change their rules and ban you, FTC bullshit, shady affiliate networks. There are just too many moving pieces in the machine, things eventually break. And when they break, that beefy ROI starts plummeting in a downward spiral.

Now I know what MJ was talking about when he was talking down on AM, though it is still a source to make money pretty fast. Given you know the process and how to go about it.

Either way, thanks for the share Nosferatu. Quality stuff man!

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Same position i was in. Money one month, zilch, the next. Then my CPA network went bankrupt, stopped paying. It's a shitty cycle.

On the upside, all these skills i learned are now being used to promote my own stuff.

 

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[Nosferatu]

Thank you so much, already gave you speed a couple times for this thread but heres more . I'm a little confused now though. Where does the ad copy come into the equation? Or by that do you just mean the lander page?

Also in your case when the offer was taken from you, the reason why you didn't continue with the campaign was because your networks didn't have anything similar that you could throw in to substitute with?

How is it that some people are making mid-high 5 even 6 figures monthly and many just bringing maybe a 1000 a month? Is it just that they scale their successful campaigns out on a bunch of sites?

I really appreciate you taking the time to help us out and wish I could buy you a beer :smx9:

Cool thanks alot for the beer offer. hehe.

In Regards to ad copy. Ad copy really is important -- i never realized how important words are until i read a few copywriting books. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword. --- When i say ad copy, i mean the actual call to action on the advertisement its self, even the banner ad copy is important.


For example, On some of my ads i wrote:

"Meet Rich Men In Your Area" as opposed to "Meet Rich Local Guys" they both mean the exact same thing, but the 2nd one is more brisk , saves room and conveys the same message in smaller amount of words. It also converted better believe or not, these are the small kinds of details that can either make you thousands, or millions. Remember, you need to impact millions, to make millions.


And yes, thats how some of these guys scale, you take a winning combo ad, and your target demo, and you target as much as your target demo as possible, on as many websites as possible. Thats where media buying comes in and sites like sitescout, etc.

 

[Nosferatu]

Well I've been MIA for a good few days cause of some health and life issues, going to slowly get back on track and hit it hard. While Nosferatu's guide has been SUPER helpful- its still lacking a bit for the ultra noob such as myself (I don't blame him... He can't write out everything lol). Anyways, here are some useful bits that I'm picking up and my plan to hit the CPA thing hard:

-Registered at BHW forum (necessary to see certain info). Not doing STM yet as I want to get my feet wet first.
-Go into the forum> Making Money> CPA sub forum, read the stickies. They have tips on getting accepted into networks since its not very noob friendly. The first sticky is a step by step, read through it+ the other ones.

So based on that my plan of attack is:

-Get a hostgator baby plan+ register some free domains+ learn to use wordpress and throw up some content on the site in case the CPA network wants that (many do).
-Get into a CPA network, read the stickies and do the phone interviews.
-Proceed with Nosferatu's guide in this thread.

Sound right or am I making it more complicated than it is?

this sounds about right. the best advice i can give is to call the cpa network right after signing up and just be upfront. tell them your a newbie but your motivated and just want a chance to prove yourself. it helps to know the lingo and how your going to promote offers and stuff. they're going to ask.

many cpa networks dont care if you have a website, i said get a website for the purposes of redirecting. thats it. i never had a cpa network ask me for a personal website. its' not even that important. your brokering traffic, your not a blogger lol.

 

[Nosferatu]

By redirecting, you mean the site being the landing page?

Most of my confusion lies in the actual process after you've found your offer and come up with a banner, aka the "techy" stuff. I'll just apply to a few networks asap and figure it out if I don't need a site to get in anyways, that simplifies things a little

Yes exactly. so basically the way it works is:

DIRECT LINK :

AD (on pof) --> user clicks --> goes to your webserver (with a auto redirect.php to your affiliate link page) --> if user converts or signs up --> you make money.

or with a landing page.

PRE-SELL W/ LANDER:

AD (on pof) --> user clicks --> goes to your webserver with a landing page telling them why this site is so good --> click here button --> redirects to the offer page with your affiliate link --> if user converts or signs up --> you make money.


hope this clears the confusion

 

[Nosferatu]

^ That says it all, thank you so much. I owe you big time and trust me I will pay it forward.

No Problem.

Just to be clear, the ONLY reason for having a redirect (web host) is to have the ability to test different offers. so like my previous example:




AD (on pof) --> user clicks --> goes to your webserver (with a auto redirect.php to your affiliate link page) --> if user converts or signs up --> you make money.


if Offer 1 Doesn't convert, you can go in your web server and Swap the affiliate link for another offer. (Offer 2, Offer 3 and so on)


You can even have a rotator and try 3 different offers at the same time. This whole purpose of this exercise is to eliminate the need to keep submitting an AD to POF everytime you want to try something new.


This way, you submit once, get approved and as long as the banner gets clicks, you can test as many offers as you want on the backend.


basically:

AD -> SERVER > OFFER 1, OFFER 2, OFFER 3 etc -- until you find a winner, once you find a winner you eliminate the other 2 and just keep the one that makes the most money.

You can use Split Test Rockstar

to try multiple offers with 1 banner.

saves a lot of time, and money. and we all know time =money.

cheers




edit:


The process is as followed:


1. submit an ad
2. find an ad that gets a lot of clicks.
3. test a lot of different/related offers until you find a combination (between the ad and the offer) that works.
4. profit.

 

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[Nosferatu]

Should I get plugged into an affiliate network, how does that work? What ducks do I need to have in row before I approach a network to be taken seriously?


- You could... but some networks require a deposit of like 20-30K upfront (prepayment) to make sure they can pay their affiliates. Unless you're a repeat customer they might work with you.

But basically you must have a proven funnel / sales page / metrics before you even consider asking a network or JVs

What are some sites/networks you can get into that your product won't be drowned out by a million other products and services?

-ClickBank. CJ.com those are probably the best for what your trying to do. You can also google sites with similar products and contact the owners for a JV / Affiliate partnership.


How do you make your product more attractive to affiliates?

-Incentivize like a mofo. Offer a good deal/cash upfront, 50% is pretty standard. make it worth promoting. Do all the work for them. Ads, banners, ways of promoting, write an autoresponder sequence. Basically make it really easy for anybody to pick it up and start selling.


How about growing your own network of affiliates, what are the pros and cons of doing this approach?

-Setup an affiliate page promoting and selling your products -- also run contests for your affiliates to encourage sales. For example, depending on product pricing, you could offer ipads, tvs, -- ive seen crazy things like flights to different parts of the world.

Obviously this depends on your products price point and how much you can afford to spend on traffic vs affiliates.

What do I need to set up infrastructure wise, rules affiliates need to follow, etc?

-Just a website, and a good affiliate tracking system. (ex: hasoffers )

Our products range from $200-300 and excluding advertising costs, we conservatively net about $130-150 per sale so we could probably do $50-80 in commissions, is that a good/bad?


-thats pretty good.

 

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[nitroheadz28]

Ugh I feel like such an a$$ whoring out questions, but heres a couple more

I found this site:

Affbeast – Internet Marketing Courses, Case Studies & Guides

Which was such a freaking lifesaver for a 100% noob like me. Basically internet marketing 101 from start to finish, it was nice finding everything in one library rather than picking up tidbits here and there. Hopefully this helps anyone who's still fuzzy on some things.

I'm feeling pretty confident in getting some campaigns up and running and starting out, but the tech stuff is still throwing me for a loop (domains and hosting). That site recommends NOT using shared hosting and cheapo hosting like Hostgator because of slower loading times as well as not being as friendly with tracking software (What tracking do you prefer? Maybe there is a tracking software that doesn't take so many resources?). They recommend VPS which is more $$$ with Prosper202 as the tracker. I don't mind spending the money, the question is whats the smartest choice? What do you recommend? Searching through forums I found people saying that shared hosting could be fine if you're just starting out- hence my confusion.

Have a domain for each niche and create sub domains for each campaign or?

When I use the spy tool you provided (and I signed up on POF for a test account) and I check for the running ads.. With the spy tool, lets say 22 male in the last 7 days there are less than 50 ads running (doesn't seem like a lot)? Now when I check my dummy POF account, I don't see the same ads? And after I refresh the page 4-5 times it just switches over leaderboard animated single banners per page and I'll refresh 10X more and no more of the regular small banners will show? What gives? Also, when I click some banners and get what looks like a landing page- but theres no lander code in the URL? Out of 10 pages I only saw 1 with a lander in the URL? How does that work?

Thanks so much!! It seems like the questions never end lol, I'm really doing my best to find these on forums and whatnot but a lot of places assume you have the tech knowledge and just give you tips on creating successful campaigns, kind of like your case study :smxB:

:thankyousign:

 

[Nosferatu]

Ugh I feel like such an a$$ whoring out questions, but heres a couple more

I found this site:

Affbeast – Internet Marketing Courses, Case Studies & Guides

Which was such a freaking lifesaver for a 100% noob like me. Basically internet marketing 101 from start to finish, it was nice finding everything in one library rather than picking up tidbits here and there. Hopefully this helps anyone who's still fuzzy on some things.

I'm feeling pretty confident in getting some campaigns up and running and starting out, but the tech stuff is still throwing me for a loop (domains and hosting). That site recommends NOT using shared hosting and cheapo hosting like Hostgator because of slower loading times as well as not being as friendly with tracking software (What tracking do you prefer? Maybe there is a tracking software that doesn't take so many resources?). They recommend VPS which is more $$$ with Prosper202 as the tracker. I don't mind spending the money, the question is whats the smartest choice? What do you recommend? Searching through forums I found people saying that shared hosting could be fine if you're just starting out- hence my confusion.

Have a domain for each niche and create sub domains for each campaign or?

When I use the spy tool you provided (and I signed up on POF for a test account) and I check for the running ads.. With the spy tool, lets say 22 male in the last 7 days there are less than 50 ads running (doesn't seem like a lot)? Now when I check my dummy POF account, I don't see the same ads? And after I refresh the page 4-5 times it just switches over leaderboard animated single banners per page and I'll refresh 10X more and no more of the regular small banners will show? What gives? Also, when I click some banners and get what looks like a landing page- but theres no lander code in the URL? Out of 10 pages I only saw 1 with a lander in the URL? How does that work?

Thanks so much!! It seems like the questions never end lol, I'm really doing my best to find these on forums and whatnot but a lot of places assume you have the tech knowledge and just give you tips on creating successful campaigns, kind of like your case study :smxB:

:thankyousign:

Honestly, i would not bother with a vps unless you do mass volume. Otherwise shared hosting works great. I mean yea, shared hosting performance isn't GREAT, but as long as you use a decent provider you should be fine.

Tracking202 is a good platform to start.


In regards to pof, you need to login more times. POF has ad limiting built in for new users. This make sense from an advertising standpoint, for example if you tapped your potential market and only want to market to new people with less then 100 logins (newest of new users) -- you can also target people who have been there a while.

Don't go by a new profile, because you won't see all the ads until you've logged in a few times.

 

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[nitroheadz28]

Thank you so much, I can't tell you how much I've learned over the last couple weeks and a lot of it has been attributed to this thread. It was the kick in the pants that I needed to get started.

 

[nitroheadz28]

Dude.. I love you- no homo

If I can actually manage to start turning a half decent profit some day, I promise I will repay you as best I can. Or if you ever need anything regarding developing a physical product such as design/ manufacturing I will hook you up as best I can , I wish I could offer more. I can't thank you enough for how far you've gone to help me and a bunch of others on here. I can only hope I can provide as much value to others some day.



P.S.- Thank you for the tips. The last few days I have been locked inside my house doing nothing but reading/ watching tutorials and practicing- I'll keep it up until I'm 100% that I can create variations of banners/ landers quickly and on the fly so no time is wasted when I get campaigns up and running. I'm confident in the process (I know I probably wont break even for a little while) and the landing page deal we discussed above has always been the hitch since I started getting serious. I'll keep plugging away at it, I really hope I can get some campaigns up next week

 

[Nosferatu]

Well, you can guess or you can buy data.

Guess which way gets you ROI faster.


Buying data is the way to go. I can't tell you how many times ive tried to guess, only to waste hours upon hours on wrong assumptions.

When money is involved. Don't assume.

The data doesn't lie.

 

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