Where Do Rookies Start?

Where do you start? Try the WAR ROOM.

Great place to do initial research.

Experiment and stay FOCUSED!

Welcome. First off, you're spending money to send cold users to an offer. There are a lot of people around here that are better affiliate marketers than me.

But basically, you're going to want to send users to a website, or opt-in, so that they sign up for your emails. Then through your site and/or emails, you can warm them up and promote different offers to them while mixing in valuable info that builds your credibility.

Through this, you'll build trust and credibility with your potential buyers. But you'll also be able to promote more products to buyers who opt in instead of just having one crack at it by sending them to the offer page. A customer may not be interested in product ABC, but they may buy product XYZ.

Start with a squeez page and build a list

I've been reading a lot about that squeeze page strategy. Only reason why I didn't do it is because of the cost. Spending money for domains, squeeze page, & autoresponder for an offer I don't even know will convert. Then if it does not convert, I have to do and spend all over again.

Arbitrage is cheaper to start, but now that I am climbing up in my spending without any conversions. The squeeze page idea is growing on me, lol. Just out of curiosity, are there any successful traffic arbitrage marketers in this forum? Thank you guys for your advice, I'm definitely going to start moving in that direction.

Create a squeeze page and market your affiliate link through email - if your affiliate network permits it. Just follow the proven path. This is the simplest way to make money with affiliate marketing. And make sure you choose a program that allows you to earn residual income each month so that you can profit every month without doing anything.

You start here This is the best place.

Don't be discouraged my friend. IM takes insane amounts of trail and error before you really crack the nut.

Focus on one aspect of IM, set aside some cash and take a few courses on how to do that really well. Then put those techniques into practice enough times that you become really good at that one thing. Then sit back and think about how you can make money with that one thing.

Also, look for a mentor or someone else who has done it. They should be able to get you pointed in the right direction.

"Where do rookies start?" - Often on the wrong foot.

So here's my advice...

Develop a business plan, and don't listen to the gurus.

Brandon, you lost me in the first paragraph, when your idea of "contributing" is a loophole allowing low level fraud (using multiple IDs to use coupons multiple times).

That said, sending cold traffic directly to a sales offer is a low percentage proposition to start with. As you have learned...

I've known a couple of people over the years that made this kind of arbitrage work, but they both relied on massive media buys (think banners and such). I'm talking millions of impressions per month.

The odds of making anything significant running $42 worth of PPC ads on secondary and tertiary ad networks are about the same as Pauly Shore winning an Oscar.

Maybe you need to steal a Udemy course on creating a real business...

Thank you all for the positive feedback.

Just an added note here, do not direct link from a Google AdWords account directly to an affiliate offer... Doing so, will get you banned for life from using AdWords.

Definitely, a compelling reason to have a landing page with a strong call-to-action (opt-in) - as it olds much more promise, complies with Adwords, plus... If you properly message your subscibers (via emails) you can build trust, and generate recurring sales.

By just directing traffic through to an offer... You are leaving an entire business model (email marketing) out of the equation.

Email marketing (in my opinion) is one of the most powerful marketing strategies you'll likely ever learn, second only to building traffic, and writing itself.

Aweber is less than $20 a month, and they usually have a $1 (30-day trial offer). I'd suggest reading up on it first, look at or subscribe to top marketrs lists...and get a feel for how they 'communicate' to their subscribers, and then prepare for some learning, as to setting up a sales funnel from ads to optin, to offers, and follow up emails takes some technical 'know how'.

Good Luck.

PS - for the record I do still receive a trickle of income from free blogs (Blogger, Webs, Hub Pages, etc...) whereby, I started off the same way. But the REAL money, is in list building/email marketing.

G.O.O.G.L.E. there is where you start, that is also the place that you started.

You looked for IM and you found WF.

But why would you stop using it.

Before you start with making money, stop dreaming and start learning, give yourself some months to try, test, build, loose, learn and finally WIN!

IM is like another job, you need to WORK!