trying to learn the IM ...

Know that if you are new and failing, you are exactly where you are supposed to be!

PPC is TOUGH... Even for seasoned pros. There are so many factors, from your keywords to your headlines, ad copy, ad score, your landing page, your checkout process, etc...

I'd like to offer you an analogy here... If you were to take up the sport of snowboarding, and you were serious about becoming successful at snowboarding, you would have to plan to spend days, weeks, months... Possibly even seasons falling down, bruising your bum, getting hurt...

Then, you'd have to pick yourself back up and get going again!

There is no other way around it. Even if you get lessons or trainings, you will still eat it HARD, repeatedly... Then, right as you think your getting good... BAM, you'll fall again and again.

Ok, so back to your scenario... And maybe a little mindset help for you at this point.

Most people thing that failure is on the opposite side of success, so 'if only they could not fail, and just do successful things, then they'd be successful.
Failure<<<<<<<YOU>>>>>>>Success
This ^ is incorrect and is fundamentally flawed...

You need to realize that Success is on the other side of failure. It sounds like you have not failed enough yet to understand what your doing wrong to have those enlightened 'Ah Ha' moments that lead you to ideas that do work.
YOU >>>>> Failure >>>>> Success
This is how success really works. You must fail your way to success and there is no other way to get there. Experience is your ultimate teacher and it sounds like more experience is all that you are missing.

Read the books, read the forums and try new things... Be sure you are tracking everything so you can be extremely observant about what works and what does not work... And then try some new things.

Also, remember that PPC is by definition expensive and challenging. Sometimes adding a WordPress blog to your site and going forward with Content Marketing can be a great way to get better organic search engine results and it takes a lot less money (but it does take more time).

Best of luck!

There is only one way to learn IM and that is the proper mind-set to begin with. Based on my experience you should really have a genuine desire to help people.

I mean really give them some information and background that will change their lives. And the only way I know how to do that is one-on-one coaching. I can't recommend a coach because I don't know your personality.

But I can you tell this. Its not what you see and whats being taught. If that were the case everyone on this forum would be making money.(lol)

SEO traffic (of which AdWords is also, of course, a derivative) is probably the very last thing I'd be looking at, myself, though it's inevitably a popular answer in forums, in which a significant proportion of the members are themselves selling SEO services of various kinds.

If there are affiliates who are generating a sale on every 20-25 clicks, at least in the short-term, I think I'd be trying to find more affiliates, rather than necessarily trying to sell it without affiliates. It sounds like you're doing something right, there, anyway (and maybe several things!)?

There are a lot of different business models online.

When you say "learn IM" you need to specify what you are talking about.

In general, there are three pieces to any online business:

1. Getting traffic.
2. Converting that traffic into sales.
3. Delivering the product.

For each of these points, you have several choices.

For instance, for #1 you could choose pay-per-click to get traffic. Or, you could use SEO. Or, you could use Web 2.0 marketing. Or, you could use social media promotion. Or... the list goes on.

For #2, you can use a squeeze page with email autoresponder marketing. Or email broadcast marketing. Or, a long form text sales page. Or a video sales page. Or some other form of sales.

For #3, you can deliver all sorts of products. Home DVD sets, downloadable videos, downloadable eBooks, membership websites, physical products, etc.

If you want to learn IM, you need to come up with the exact specifics of what method you want to learn to 1) get traffic, 2) convert to sales, and 3) deliver the products.

Once you have defined exactly what you want to learn to fulfill each of those three parts, then you can go and find a course somewhere on each method you need to learn.

I agree with Alexa - if you have affiliates generating strong conversions then absolutely cater to those affiliates, make them even better and expand to additional affiliates.

Affiliates give you leverage as a marketer, something that is extremely important to scaling your business.

Put your effort into:

1. Expanding your affiliate base
2. Expanding the products and services that you can offer through those affiliates
3. Look to cross-sell additional products to your existing customer base (the most important list you have :-)

Jeff

We? Davigol? Is that like Smeagol, from LoTR? "We wants to learn marketing, but poor Davigol doesn't understand its. We wants to understand its though."

Also, you're complaining that your affiliates sell 1:25 or 1:20 for your product!? Seriously? Those are awesome conversion rates so I don't know why you're stressing.

Hey, I think that Jim Cockrum's book "Silent Sales Machines" can help you to get the basics of IM plus it can help to determine the direction you want to go (I am not affiliated with this book, but I think it is pretty good and also cheap). I wasn't a newbie when I read it, but even then I found a lot of valuable information there.

As far as for PPC and PPV. Yea, I have tried 7 search to run CPA offers - I got some conversions, but wasn't very impressed with amount and quality of traffic.

PPV also depends on traffic source and it may require a lot of testing and big budget, so it isn't a best place to start in my opinion.

7search has never worked for me, but you should consider Bing Ads if Google Adwords is too costly/competitive. Learn more about free marketing and how it can lower your overall costs of getting a new customer. Also consider advertising on high traffic websites in your niche, and consider solo ads also. Be sure to balance out your paid advertising with free marketing so that you can get closer and closer to at least breaking even on every new customer you get - until of course... you're profiting on every sale... even if you are paying alot for advertising.

Ask your affiliates how they are doing it.

You'll have to use a little finesse in doing it though.

Praise them for their hard work. A novel idea. Never seen it done in the MMO niche. It's a real loyalty builder and it costs absolutely nothing.

Then ask.

Hey,

There is no such thing like fails. Look at your fails like one more lesson. Nobody avoided it. But you can cut corners by finding a good coach.