Ask Me Anything About Affiliate Marketing

Look at whats made you successful so far. Is there anyway to take what you already have and scale it out to that $500. Is there anyway to take your current ads and make them work for another niche if your current campaign is really capped out.

Scaling to separate traffic networks is a relatively easy way to scale, as well.

Of course, being able to dedicate more time, submit more ads, and better manage yourself and hire staff to mitigate some of the more tedious tasks so you can focus on creative work and research will help you immensely.

I do Facebook, PoF, PPV, Mobile and Display. Not too much search though. I've never been very good at it. We all have our markets!

I'd recommend, bare minimum, $2000 that you are ready to straight up lose just for testing and getting your feet wet. Look at this as a real businss. How many other businesses do you know that make it with only $500 to their name. Someone serious in investing their time into this, should ideally have around $5k+. PoF had an ad blog post saying $6k will get you on the right track and proficient. I'd mark that as accurate if you are a poor risk mitigater/researcher. Better research and knowledge into your targeting can bring that number down.

I do both lists and direct. Lists are expensive to build and learn, but payoff down the road.

Clickbank is CPA buy the way (Cost per Action - You're paid out on any action the user takes whether thats a lead, sign up, sale, call, etc). I say find something you know a lot about, analyze the main problem with that, and find an offer that solves that problem. I recently wrote a blog post about this and how it paid off big for me.

I do create my own products and offer services. I've got a big dating site launching soon, and have outsourced several niche products that I sell through my own ads. I like to keep as much in-house as I can to avoid the growing pains that having other affiliates push your stuff can have. I've probably stepping on my own feet there, but I'm not ready for such growth, and as we've seen from several networks shutting down, explosive growth can have deadly results.

It can take weeks, it can take months, it could so happen that you never make a profit. I've coached guys that just aren't made of the right stuff and never make it. This is not an industry for those looking for a magic money button. It doesn't exist.

There is no way to make money quickly in this industry without thorough thought, time and research put into building your campaigns. You can try relying on luck and throwing poo at the wall until it sticks, but, again, what other business would you be so daft to try this in?

You can copy successful campaigns, too, but at the end of the day you'll be stuck in a constant loop of trying to play catch up with the original innovators in ad design, copy and targeting. You don't teach yourself how to properly market anything when you copy ads, so just don't do it.

AM has risks. It's much like a casino, but the risks can be lessened through a lot of research. I have no magic bullets that can tell you there is a quick way to break even or make a profit other than working your butt off for it, reading into your targeting and learning how to write solid copy. It will also take a lot of trial and error and some money. If you can't come to grips and accept the risks any true businessman takes (Loss of everything, money, time, even relationships), stick to pushing papers or flipping burgers. That's a lot easier, too.

Thanks for thread.
What do you think: is it worth trying PPV (LI|TV|50) for Russian offers? I work with russian cpa networks and wanna try ppv for russian offers. We dont have such ppv traffic sources in out country. But im not sure, if there is enough and if there is any russian traffic? What ppv would you suggest me to start? Which one has the most international (russian) traffic?
Thanks so much.

First of all, thanks so much for offering valuable FREE advice.

My questions are:

1. If it is not too personal, let me ask you when you say "Health, Money and Relationships niches", within the health problem do you develop and/or sell other peoples e-book/audio/video products like for example, remedies/cures for psoriasis, acne, constipation etc., If not, what you actually market in these niches?

2. Do you write the remedies/cures, both regular and alternative yourself or hire writers? If so, how do you write if you have not experienced yourself, basically how you project yourself as an expert, not being a physician, either traditional or alternative?

The reason I am asking this is, I have cured myself of many day-to-day infections, problems with only natural remedies that I learnt from volunteering with Naturopaths, Ayurvedic Physicians, Homeopaths while I was a teenager. I want to know how I can use these experiences to create and market e-books?

Thanks and Regards,
Peter.

How did you make your first 100 dollars a month residual? What would you suggest to start? Clickbank?

Thanks Justin,
Yes there are more things to test for sure but as you say after driving 1000 visitors to a site I would have expected to at least see conversion or two. Once I know that I can look at how to improve those results...
I was driving clicks direct to the landing page - is it advisableto drive them to my own landing page / squeeze page first (I am trying to keep it simple for myself)... your thoughts...

Ok then. Thought you were some one i knew.
Your name is the same and your avatar is freakishly similar to my friends

I'm not sure what you are looking for? If you need free tracking, use Prosper202/Tracking202.

One thing I recommend is do not start getting into paid advertising until you have enough money to invest into it. I recommend having at least 2000 USD for testing.

Head over to affpaying.com or one of the other CPA network review sites and sign up for 10+ top networks. Browse all their offers until you find one that strikes your interest.

I buy general niche related domains, and for campaigns that do well from there, I buy a couple more specific domains and test their effect on EPC.

As above, test domains, but you'll also be testing landing pages. The key to success is constant testing.

To keep a campaign alive, you'll need multiple ads and you'll want to rotate through them on a regular basis. Without doing so, a campaign may only last less than a week.

That means to run all insurance offer we need to choose a domain like insurance.com , for gaming offer domain like gaming.com etc. Is this right? What is broad niche domains means??

Hey Justin,

Hi guys,

I am going to pick one of the following niches and was wondering which one have you seen most success in. I know YOUR results are most likely going to be different from mine and success isn't guaranteed in this manner BUT I would like to choose a niche to up my chances and improve my confidence hence my query. Here's my short-list, please advise. It is for PPV through Lead Impact:

1) Insurance (auto, health, etc)
2) Payday loans
3) Biz opps (I'll select the shorter form offers)
4) Skincare
5) Diet

Thanks in advance!

Amen Brother.

Do you mean your blog on marketing or? I have a blog on a broad niche (which doesn't get much traffic), but I haven't any blog on traffic.

Wouldn't that be fussy and troublesome to do? Get them think that I'm a fussy and nasty person?

Hey Justin, in this mini guide you mention building lists for your mmo/bizopp campaigns. Which mail service are you using - aweber? mailchimp? Are you doing single or double optin?

With landing pages, start with one layout that is proven to work well. If you look around for a bit, you'll find this info laying around free. Then rotate through 3 different ad copies at a time. I sometimes test up to 50 - 100 landing pages on my best campaigns, but again, rotated 3 at a time, taking the best one and add 2 others to it, kicking the 2 worst performers out. Eventually it gets to a point where small changes don't do much and its better to focus on scaling rather than optimizing.

Look to spend anywhere from $20 - 500 testing almost any offer. Remember, testing is just testing. You aren't looking for profitability, you're looking for consistency and whether or not your gut tells you you can get that profitable.

I've spent upwards of 10k just "testing" until it just wasn't any more optimizable or I was finally able to get it profitable. There is a lot of mind game and risk taking to it.

I am not sure on all search PPC platforms. I know bing lets you see it. Not sure about Google as I don't use it. I won't scepticize on search as I don't know much about it. I do hear reports about bidding into 2nd -4th position can be more profitable in some cases though.

Again, you're probably talking about search and I just don't know the answer. The more keywords you have, the more you'll spend testing, the more likely you'll "eventually" hit a winner.

Ninja's got it. Use landing pages to pre-sell, throw in an angle, grab an email, etc, etc. You can bend the reader's mind with a landing page, rather than just an ad.

I'm hardly making anywhere near the top marketers. The guys making the most are the ones that are absolutely silent about it. These are guys that can move 6-7 figures per day. I'm successful, comfortable and happy with the amount of money I make, but there are some guys that would just blow your mind if you ever took a look at their affiliate accounts.

And if I want to know more about ppc what or where should I start from? Do you have any suggestion like e-book or video or something to learn about ppc?
Thanks

At least 3 different ad copies, 10 - 20 banners or 50 - 100 small images depending on what sort of ads you are making, and 3 different landing pages to start testing a campaign.

Facebook isn't stupid. Try writing a legitimate blog post about any affiliate offer you want to promote on your page. So long as you haven't spammed that domain to death on Facebook, you might be able to get by linking to the blog post.

You can insert your own email submission forms. I test emailing on most campaigns eventually. I might start off without it just to test, then shoot a smaller percentage of the traffic to a squeeze page and test the response of any emails.

Hi Justin,

I checked out your article on ads.pof.com:

New to POF? This is a MUST READ. Guest post by Justin Dupre! | Ads.pof.com Blog

It's a great read and has plenty of good advice.

So I am trying to build out targeted campaigns on POF,

e.g. US, Female, 30-39 yrs, Curvy, Smoke, University Degree

Since targeted campaigns give a better CTR and thus lower CPC,

But I find traffic volume low and it takes a much longer time to test creatives if there are low impressions.

You mentioned somewhere that you test a lot of creatives per campaign,
(100 - 500?)

How do you test many creatives fast on low volume targeted campaigns?

I tried, but as my lp is not adwords friendly. Many publishers didn't accepted me, and in RTB platforms, i am not getting enough inventory from the sites i wanted. How will you resolve this type of issues?