Taken some time off of this project….
I’ve taken some time off of the project.
January and February were a rough start and somehow miraculously in March I’ve been able to recoup nearly most of my initial investment. That being said, it’s been tough! Not as easy as some make it out to be.
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to reach my goals on this one……
I plan to take the next few weeks to really look at what happened in January/February and how somehow I made some profits in March (without doing much of anything differently) and figure out how to make the March numbers more consistent.
For now, I’m happy to be back at square one in terms of investment.
I’m breathing so I guess I’m still alive….
I’m still alive folks and still attempting to “make it” in this field.
I’ve got a bunch of things on the go so I’m trying to find time to make them all happen. Blogging isn’t my strong spot but hopefully I’ve got some “good news” coming to you soon.
Cheers
Noah
Getting spanked on Facebook Ads
January was a tough month.
Am I cut out for affiliate marketing CPA offers? Not sure yet. Quite a few months to go before I’ll make an official decision.
I spent some decent money in January but in the end was down about 25% overall. I spent the last two weeks of the month testing on Facebook and got spanked there as well. Actually, I shouldn’t say that I got spanked because I didn’t really. Nearly everything I tested on FB broke even but I eventually got fed up with the Ad approval process and delayed reporting of stats.
The system is wonky to say the least.
In case you haven’t noticed, Facebook opened the floodgates last week to affiliate marketers hence the sudden influx of “I made $3200 Today from Google” & “Obama’s Grant Ads.” One thing is for sure, even with decently written ad copy, and ads that consistenly get a higher CTR in other locations, the CTR on FB can be pretty brutal. The way it seems to work is that “when” an ad is finally approved, you’re given a whole rush of impressions very quickly. In some demographics you might see literally tens of thousands of impressions within the first few minutes. IF and only IF the ad gets a decent CTR your ad will continue to be shown. If not, the ad impressions will dry up but FB won’t tell you this. They just stop serving the ad.
If you’ve got a decent budget set and your CTR is high, you can expect to rip through a ton of clicks insanely fast. The traffic is fast and intense and trying to stop an offer, if you need to, is even harder. Putting the brakes on the flood of traffic is pretty difficult so be prepared to possibly spend some decent cash quickly. For those that find offers which will convert, there is some huge potential on Facebook, but for me, I’m holding off for now.
It’s now February and we’re already into Day 9 of the month. I’m not sure where this month will take me. Much of January was focused solely on Adwords traffic and that might have been a mistake. I also need to be testing and tracking traffic from MSN, Yahoo and various other sources.
Another concern is Landing Page design. I’m getting the hang of creating these things as I’ve been spying on many other affiliates but the fact of the matter is, it’s time consuming to create landing pages for offers that aren’t going to convert. Perhaps I’m just being lazy?
Anyways, I’m going to hold off on doing anything rash until I find another campaign I can focus on and carefully test and tweak until I find those profits.
On the other side of things, I launched a niche information product with a member of one of my membership sites on February 2nd. With very little promotion, the product has banked sales every day since the launch. That’s pretty exciting considering there was no pre-launch, no list, no major promotion etc. etc. The product was shared with a few affiliates who’ve been known to promote similar products and so far they’re making conversions.
More to come.
N
PPC Income Tracker from Cashtactics - Don’t be poor.
Cashtactics.net posted a Free PPC Excel Income Tracker today for CPA marketers. Did I mention it’s free!
It’s awesome and you should grab it now. This will allow you to track spending, revenue, profits and losses for Google/MSN/Yahoo and more.
I just downloaded it and inputted the results from a few of the campaigns I’ve been running.
Even though I started late in January I have seen some actions.I actually only started spending money a little over a week ago.
That being said, I’m in the red right now. I’ve lost some money but I’m learning more and more each day. 2009 is really shaping up to be an interesting year!
I love this because it gives you a true visualization of where you’re at!
I’ll give you further information on how January went in the coming days but for now, grab this excel spreadsheet. This is exactly the type of stuff I need!
Download at Cashtactics.net HERE
See the video below to learn about the spreadsheet.
PPC Income Tracker from Cash Tactics on Vimeo.
Crank up the Volume…
Hey everyone,
Thought it was time I posted a little update. I’ve learned a few things over the past week that I thought I should share.
First, I’ve lost money. Yup. I’ve lost about $100 bucks now but in the interim I’ve learned a few things and I don’t plan to give up that easily 
I figure it’s money well spent.
I was reading a few forum posts from some of the big dogs of the game that said most people fail at CPA Marketing because when they go in the red, they get nervous and bail out. Make no mistake, I hate losing even a hundred bucks or so but I’m learning and more importantly, learning from my mistakes.
Here’s what I know.
1) The offer I started with is popular and converting for affiliates. We know this to be true, but I’m not converting yet. That being said I’m only $100 or so bucks into it.
2) My landing page I created was just OK…Nothing great but OK. The design was very basic but the copy is pulling enough people from my Landing Page to the offer page. With that being said, I’ve been too busy to create and test new versions of my landing page but I’m going to build a few revisions tonight. In fact, I might just scrap the whole LP and build it from scratch.
3) My ads are getting a decent Click-through rate (CTR), my quality score is high, my bids are on par or competitive.
So what’s the problem?
Well, the problem is this… (I think…. remember I’m learning.)
First, I’m jumping right in and playing with some of the big boys by competing on marketing a product with a decent affiliate payout. BUT, my keyword list is way too small and certainly not broad enough. While I’m gaining some perspective through my testing, I’m not pushing nearly the volume I need to be pushing to see if this offer is worth my time. 
Tonight I spent about two hours doing some research and I’ve learned a ton about my competition. I studied their ads and their landing pages and these discoveries have also contributed to the growth of my keyword list.
So tonight I’ll be adding a large number of keywords to my campaign and letting it keep going. As I mentioned above, my ads are pulling and I believe they are pulling the right people but right now it’s about volume.
I’m learning but I know right now I need volume before I can make a clear decision about this campaign.
Thanks for following. Any of you other beginners out there also going at it, let me know how you’re making out.
Cheers
Noah
P.S.
If you’re like me and also following along over at the Warrior Forum what has been going on with the folks who bought Arbitrage Conspiracy you’ll find a lot of unhappy people right now.
I look at it this way, at least I’m still $1900 bucks up on most of those folks…
But time will tell. And in all seriousness, the $2000 they paid for that “highly endorsed” program was a lot of money, lets hope for those folks things get better very soon.
If you did purchase AC and aren’t one of the unhappy folks at the Warrior Forum, post a comment here and let us know how things are going.
Just a brief update - more to come…
Morning (to our 16 trusty readers )
I wanted to drop a quick message here as it’s been a few days since I posted. Things are moving along but I have yet to test an offer. Instead, I’ve chosen an offer and have been developing both a landing page and my keyword list and also a series of Ads which I’ll be testing.
I’ve been building my Ads based on the brilliant link I shared in my previous post from WickedFire.com.
Many will tell you that instead of purchasing a domain, building a landing page, and going to all this work before hand might be a total waste of time, energey and money! The domain has already set me back $9.69.
But I’ve chosen an offer to promote which has had a long standing run on the Affiliate Network. It’s also a campaign that’s both profitable and competitive. My AM (affiliate manager) also suggested the offer should be around for a long time to come. So instead of ripping out some keywords and direct linking to an offer, I’ve decided to take the long road here and see if I can build something that can actually make some long withstanding profits.
But also, like I said above, I’m taking the long road and I’m treading the waters carefully. In the mean time I’m still reading and learning constantly but this is also a critical mistake made by many getting into this business, too much time reading and learning but not testing.
Don’t worry, I’ll be testing a lot over the next year but I prefer to do things smart as opposed to haphazardly.
If I can learn to do things right and avoid potential beginner mistakes and pitfalls, then I can share those mistakes with you and you won’t have to make them.
Noah
Day 4,5 - Affiliate Marketing - A Whole New World
I’ll be honest, I thought I knew about Affiliate Marketing and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be able to make some money in CPA Marketing but I’ve learned over the past 24 hours, this is a big world and there is a TON to be learned.
As I mentioned before, I did some CPA last year and I was relatively successful, I even put out a guide about how I was making money with offers from Azoogle. But over the past 24 hours I’ve learned and realized this is a really a whole new world to me and it’s big, it’s daunting, it’s intense, it’s insanely cutthroat.
I started researching who some of the top affiliates are out there and who I’d be following in my RSS Reader. I started to look for the top Affiliate Marketing sites & forums and began reading the threads.
I’m overwhelmed!
One of the forums I’ve been lurking is Wickedfire.com. I’ve visited Wickedfire in the past but not to the extent I’ve been reading the posts over the past few days. 
This forum is hard core. It’s rude and crude and the members are intense. The regulars will take constantly take aim at the newbies who ask basic “newbie” questions. BUT, spend a few days on the forum and you’ll start to find it’s filled with some serious gold. For example, just check out this post here. (I’m pretty sure you’ll need to register but that one post is worth it)
The post is about writing copy for your ads and understanding both the mindset and personality of the surfer. The author goes on to give specific examples about how you should be split-testing ads to appeal to different groups of people with different surfing styles.
Pretty amazing stuff.
This is the type of material that at another site, that also shares the acronym WF, would end up costing you money. Again, pretty powerful stuff in in that single post but the site is chock full of similar material.
So aside from being overwhelmed, I’ve discovered some amazing resources, learned some great stuff and we’re moving forward.
Two days ago I mentioned I had installed Propser 202 for tracking purposes. Yesterday I found a member at the Warrior Forum selling some Prosper 202 Training Videos for $9.95. I purchased the videos and went through them. The content was pretty good and I learned quite a bit about the program.
Prosper 202 also has some training videos which you should check out.
They have a special page setup here for understanding how subids and tracking subids works.
They also have another collection of training videos here.
I’ve found a few offers I’m planning on promoting and I’ve done some research. I’ve decided to get into a couple of niches that are competitive and making money (according to my affiliate managers) and no, not acai berry. While I’ve decided on a few offers, my general focus over the weekend will be on one campaign and doing some testing on that specific offer.
Which reminds me, Acai Berry is something you’ll see everywhere. Even iFarter Joel Comm took a pretty poor attempt at getting his blog readers to score him an Acai Berry Commission. But what I’m interested in talking about is the “fake blogs” promoting Acai Berry. To find out what I’m referring to, just type in basically any female’s name followed by weightloss.com. For example sarasweightloss.com. The blog looks pretty genuine and convincing which is most likely the reason you can find them for about every female name out there. They clearly must be working and making money.
I’m not sure about the tactic and I wont be resorting to such tactics. I’m sure that without proper disclaimers we could see the FTC or other organizations going after people operating these types of blogs at some point but then again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the offers are played, the commissions are made and the fake blogs will be long gone before any issues will arrive? Who knows. Either way, seems like fraud to me.
Thoughts?
Day 3 - Join me on the Voyage
Today is Day 3
I have yet to get my hands dirty and start testing.
Yesterday I installed Prosper 202 which I’ve read a lot of good things about, and it’s free. From what I’ve read it’s supposed to be pretty darn powerful and I’m looking forward to giving it a try. You can download it free from Prosper202.com
Much of my day yesterday was spent just reading blogs and getting caught up on things. It seems most affiliates are off to the big Summit in Vegas this week. With any luck, I’ll be attending the conference next year.
Join me on the Voyage
First and foremost, I’ve been getting some emails and messages from people who have either bought Arbitrage Conspiracy or are also getting involved in Affiliate Marketing for 2009. If you are getting into promoting CPA offers then I invite you to join me on the voyage. Subscribe to my RSS feed and try and visit the site at least once or twice a week and if you feel so inclined, feel free to share either resources you’re learning from or the successes and failures you’re having. My goal is to be transparent as possible and share as many details as I can with you on this blog.
Keep in touch and let me know what’s going on!
Noah
P.S. looks like we have now have 5 readers in our Feedburner button. Welcome!
Day 2 - How will I know I’ve become a Super Affiliate?
What exactly makes someone a Super Affiliate?
Upon reading various blogs from you guessed it, “super affiliates” I found the question asked a few times. One of the better blogs out there, “Shoemoney” just recently posted the question to his Twitter followers. You can see the post HERE.
Some of the responses are fantastic. Some believe you have to make 10,000 a day to be considered a super affiliate while others set more modest definitions of generating between $5000-$10,000 a month on a consistent basis.
There are some interesting responses to say the least but I’ve got my own definition and goals.
First off, the purpose of this experiment for 2009 won’t be so I can tout my own horn if I make it and end up reaching my goals. I wont all the sudden be launching a $2000 info product if I DO actually make it!
The goal is to see if someone such as myself, who has had some decent success within the Internet Marketing Industry, can transition and focus on CPA Marketing and actually make a damn good living from it.
So without further ado, here are my goals for 2009.
Note: These are my goals related to Super Affiliate Voyage only
- Be earning at least 10k per month by the end of 2009 in profits strictly from Affiliate Marketing
- Buy a BMW M3 with profits from Affiliate Marketing (Currently I drive a 2008 Jeep Patriot - everyone needs a “dream” car too!)
- Build my Affiliate Marketing business in such a way the profits continue long past 2009.
There you have it. Three simple yet highly achievable goals for 2009 and the Super Affiliate Voyage. If I can achieve these goals then in my own mind I’ll have achieved the voyage.
Some may say I’m setting my sights to low. That may be true and by mid 2009 we’ll look at this post again and see how I’m making out. For now, I’m pretty happy with these goals.
Noah
P.S. more to come today….
CPA Network Approval - How I got approved in under a few hours
I actually started my little project during the last few weeks of December.
I started during the week when everyone was going nuts deciding weather or not to buy the Affiliate Arbitrage program from the guys claiming to make 100k a day.
Because of all the excitement surrounding this launch, people were jumping the gun and feverishly signing up to all the affiliate networks only to be denied access.
I’ve read that people get denied and the information about your first application does stay in the system so they know you’ve already been denied once.
This post is about getting it right the first time. Here’s how I did it.
I started at 7:00 am on Wednesday, December 17th and filled out applications while enjoying my morning tea. By 1:00 p.m. I had been accepted to each one of the networks I applied to.
Not a single denied application.
I’ve even got fresh new “referral links” if you want to sign up under me
These are the networks I chose to apply to.
1) HydraNetwork
2) Never Blue
3) Affiliate.com
4) Click Booth
5) CX-Media
Here’s how people usually get denied.
First, you apply.
After the application is finalized, the system usually tells you that you can expect a call.
They DO actually call you to verify you are who you say you are and everything on your application is legit.
What most people do wrong is they get nervous and don’t answer the phone. Or they call and the applicant has now clue what he/she is talking about or what was actually put on the application.
Here is how I did it.
- Filled out the applications online
- Wrote down what I was going to say when they called.
- Did NOT wait for them to call me. I got to my office around 10:00 am and started calling. I would just say “Hi, I just filled out an application for my company this morning and I’m hoping I can expedite the application review process”
By taking the initiative to call them, this shows you mean business and you’re not some poor little sap who’s planning on becoming the next great Nigerian Spammer.
I would then refer to my own personal business site, a few other websites I own and I’d tell them a little bit about my experiences with CPA and a little introduction about me.
I said that my company does primarily Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing for offline/online businesses (True)
I would then explain that I had started doing a little CPA about 1-2 years ago and had great success (I did) but didn’t have the capital to move forward and expand as I wanted to. (I did have the capital but I didn’t have the time or focus like I do now)
I then proceeded to say my company now had the capital to move forward and in 2009 my company would be taking our CPA efforts to the next level.
Questions I was asked
How much would I spend to test an offer?
No less than $50
What categories would I be most interested in promoting?
I said email submits and zip submits but anything that’s converting right now would be great. I mentioned that ideally I want to work with an Affiliate Manager who’s hands on and can point me in the right direction to which we’ll proceed and conduct our own testing.
Did I review the Terms of Service of the Network?
I was honest here and said “Yes but only briefly. I’d be reviewing further before starting any tests”
Will I be doing anything else besides PPC Marketing ?
I said that 100% of the traffic would be paid traffic.
Needless to say, that was it. I was on the phone for maybe 5 minutes per company. It was really easy and while it may have taken a little bit to actually start dialing, this was the difference between being denied and being approved.
Just be confident and know that they aren’t out to fool or trick you. They are simply doing their jobs and ensuring the right people are accepted into the Networks. They may ask what types of offers you like to promote, what other networks you belong to, how much do you currently spend, do you have accounts with Google AdWords or MSN etc. etc.
Don’t worry too much about showing them sites or traffic. Most of you have sites. Show them your personal sites if you need to, but explain that nearly everything you do is PPC (even if you only do it for offline businesses)
Good luck and let me know how it goes.
Noah
