Just an old guy who was just born in the IM womb.....

Hello Paul,

Your story kinda sounds like what I had to go through when I first got started on the internet. I wasted so much money on those so called "Guru Systems". And most of the time you can actually learn more from the sales page they use to sell the product, than what's being taught in the actual product.

Now there are tools and systems that you need to leverage and save you time/effort by systemizing technical and tedious stuff, but most of the time has nothing to do with generating the actual sales.

Now when it comes to any kind of marketing, testing is always going to be a big necessity. I have personally made quite a bit of money from just Craigslist alone, but regardless where you get leads from, it's all about how you position yourself and your offer when it comes to the actual conversion/sale.

I guess you didn't go into much detail about how you were capturing those emails. Now not saying you are, but if you are scraping emails from Craigslist then you can expect very little no conversions at all. And I would personally never recommend you ever do that anyway.

I look at it from an Attraction Marketing prospective. Always give your leads what they want, and they will buy. If you are promoting a landing page that's not congruent to what your offer is, and it's just optimized to get the masses to opt in, then again you can expect little to no conversions.

Even if it's a CPL CPA offer, we live in a day in age where people want to know from the start what it is they are getting into or they will click off the page in a heart beat.

And same goes for the emails you send you.

But know that you can make a lot of money selling just about anything you want, in any niche. The key thing is to stand out and be unique. For instance, if it's a Clickbank product you are trying to sell... If you are promoting it the same exact way as 97% of the other marketers, then you will likely get only a few sales and struggle to sell the product effectively.

We can talk about marketing and getting traffic and testing all day. But if you can't convert a percentage of the leads you get into sales, it won't make a difference anyway. Does that make sense?

And to answer your question regarding the mobile offers, it means exactly what it is. It means the offer wants (or accepts) mobile traffic from mobile phones and handheld devices. Especially for app/game download offers.

Some paid advertising sources such as Bing adcenter, Google Adwords and even Facebook gives you the ability to target mobile devices/users only. And if needed, you can exclude mobile device traffic as well.

But just keep at it Paul, keep learning, and most importantly keep taking action and applying what you learn. 60 is definitely not too old to get started in this industry. In fact, I have a guy on my team in one of my businesses that's 72 (been less than a year since he joined the industry) and had a $5,000 month last month.

And you certainly can too.

Not to crush your hopes, but LeadImpact has a minimum deposit that is in the $200 range if not more..

Focus on 1 ad network not multiple off the bat.

Hi Paul,

Regardless of what you decide to do within IM, I just wanted to say a sincere 'good luck'.

I really hope it works out for you (and there are a lot of people on here who can help).

Good luck!

Dave

If you choose a product, then make a research in which site your audience are present and then buy advertising in it. Now, you will get leads and sales...If you don't know where your customers are then you are wasting your money in the air...

Every offer works whether cpa, cb or mobile, you need to do the right marketing...

You will surely encounter a couple of mistakes but you are learning. It usually takes time before you earn a decent income in IM. Good luck and wishing you all the best. This forum can definitely help though. It's the right move to participate here.

Hi Paul,
There are many of us here that have had the universe dump on us. I was in Real Estate and the Financial Markets when they crashed and they took everything from me. My beautiful home, my cars, my boats, MY LIFE. I went from living in a fantastic 4600 sq ft home to living in my current 740 sq ft apartment. It has taken every breath I could muster to get a little profitable in this game. DON"T GIVE UP!!!

You are in the right place, the Warriors Forum. Here you can get your feet wet with some very generous and successful people. Knowledge is the key to all of this. You have asked several good questions, keep asking and you will get your answers.

I feel your struggle and your pain. I am 60 also, but the age thing is not important. Not at all. Feel confident that all the pieces will fall in place. Just keep after it. Remember, it is work, like anything else. I'm a fisherman, that was a lot of work at first, when I decided to get serious about it. Now, I am an expert at many facets of fishing, but it required a bunch of study, a lot of hit and miss methods, tactics, and strategies before I could go to a body of water and know exactly how to approach it and win. Weather conditions, time of year, bait fish behaviors, correct equipment, and the list goes on. My point is simple, if you love it... you will make it work. When it works, you get excited and learn to make it work better.

I have had many wonderful people here in this forum help me, and in return I pay it forward whenever I can. There are always new members coming to this forum to live the IM Dream! Only those that dedicate themselves and commit to the struggle of finding their success can say they are a winner and it happens everyday here in the Warrior Forum.

I wish you great success and I hope you get to know all of the wonderful folks here that will help you along the way, including me. Whenever I see you posting here, I'll be happy to offer what I have learned if it will be of help to you, as well will all of the other stand up marketers here. We all want to see you succeed.

Good Luck and great Successes Paul,

T J Tutor


PS:
As for your offers, I would not recommend CraigsList as they have a tendency to ban accounts. You are on the right track, you are learning to drive traffic, I think there are other free traffic sources you might want to explore. Also, have you considered using 2nd tier search traffic for pennies a click? Might make things a little more interesting. I have mixed results from 7Search for Dating, POF has been more lucrative. Also, you stated that you used a simple sentence:

In a few sentences I basically said, "Hi, if you're looking for women in your area, who have posted pictures of themselves for you to view, go to this site."

Remember that "COPY" is very important. In one of my more recent 7Search campaigns, I changed the wording of my headline of the ad and rotated 10 different versions of the same landing page which resulted in my discovering a killer ad and two new killer landing pages that only differed by the headline Copy. If you look around in the forum here, you will see hundreds of examples of case studies that demonstrate how small changes in copy, color, and page placement will often deliver huge results.

T J