Losing Money in Internet Marketing ? Maybe your Hosting!

Few mentions it, but monitor your CPU, MYsql and MEMORY load. Whenever, you start an offer or have heavy days.

If, your hosting can not handle the tracking and the serving of pages. You are losing money.

Your CPU load should  be below.5 and Memory usage below 10% a majority of the time.

Ask you hosting company what is optimum for CPU and MEMORY for what you are running and your most active times.

If, your tracking is showing one number the network another and your traffic a 3rd. That maybe the sign of an overworked server and you are missing visitors and you are paying for the traffic. A double waste!

Make sure they are seeing you ads!!!

If you can get a load balanced server and if you are doing enough bandwidth/traffic consider a CLOUD server. They are not only faster, but can be cheaper to run.

Their are add-ons in Firefox that allow you to use Amazon S3 easily. Search of Add-ons will show the most current.

I suggest having tracking on one server. Hosting your pages on another and Any program like LPGen on a 3rd.

Hosting can usually be done with a VPS.

NEVER GO SHARED! The cheap price is not worth the headaches.

Not if you are serious or if you do. Make sure you can painlessly move everything to a VPS and then a dedicated.

Tracking, serving of your ads and accuracy of your data are paramount to quick success and on going success.

“IF YOU CAN NOT TRACK ACCURATLEY. DONT DO IT”

IMV

How to test and scale properly

1. Have a campaign that is ALREADY showing conversions at 3+ per target/keyword.

2. Take only the most active converting keywords. Does not matter if ROI is + or -.

3. Test the same ad copy + split and core converting keywords/targets on other traffic source.

4. Give enough time (2weeks) or enough impressions or clicks (90% of payout.)

5. Continue this with each traffic source you want to test. At the end of the test period you will know what traffic source to run that campaign on and what ones not to.

6. Do not fight it.

Traffic has demographics and interest beyond what they tell you . Always let the $$$ and the offer conversions let you know if you have a winner or not for a traffic source.

7. If Direct linking. Split-test Landing pages with only a few variances. Unless, you are using tamaguchi testing.

8. No matter what they say. Adding MORE keywords to a failing campaign of testing converting keywords is NOT the answer. If your traffic source says that. Ask for another rep. or move on. All they care about is their dollars NOT yours.

(it can help to ask if their traffic is ROI or branding. Kontera was nice enough to tell me they are branding traffic NOT ROI. This saved me a lot of time and frustration.

Enjoy

IMV

The #1 Reason people fail in Internet Marketing

Touchy subject and it is something that I need to address, again.

I realized this morning while reading over more emails on some system or blueprint that someone has made to make money off those who dont know how to. A fundamental flaw that gets just about everyone.

In trading  it is called, “Keeping your powder dry”

This is part of the “not-mentioning-how-much-money-you-need-for-testing” that I find most leave out of all their materials or just gloss over.

The problem is that if you look closely and map out many of the programs and courses out there. They are assuming unlimited capital or do not talk about the “drawdown” and “recoup” phases of Marketing.

That is INSANE !!!

In business and any decent start-up you map out estimated costs and time frames for break-even and hopefully profit.

But, from what I am seeing are the same generalities of, “Just go test x amount and once you test enough you will make money” or even worse, ” Just follow my system and you will make money!”

Thats not real!

When you invest wisely or even gamble (and this is more of a gamble) You determine:

How much you have, how much you are willing to risk, how much you will scale if you win, when you will walk away if you are losing and when to walk away when you still have enough to come back and play again.

None of this risk management, money management, business planning & financial management and just plan common sense do I see being mentioned in 99% of the  free and paid course out there in detail that will actually save a persdon from their own financial self-destuction and if they do they gloss over it.

This is not rolling the dice with unlimited capital and I am afraid many people “elling the dream” are ignoring this piece or just dont think about it and it is very important.

You need to be realistic about what you are spending, how much you are willing to lose and what really are the ratio’s of return. I almost always go off of standard direct marketing statistics and love it when the results are better then expected and learn from it when worse.

.1%-3% are great base numbers for everything from CTR to CONV. If you cant get those at least. WTF ? and most would want a much higher CTR and CONV.

For impressions .1%-.3%. If one in thousand are not buying. I hope you have a really low cost media buying campaign. Otherwise you are bleeding cash.

I always look for higher numbers. But, if you cant get these at least. You got to stop and look.  Granted you need enough samples for measurement that means anything and again you need to figure the cost of that into you overall money management plan or you are flying blind and hoping on a dream and a pray.

And as J.F.K. said…

“HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY! WE NEED STRATEGIES THAT WORK NOT WISHFUL THINKING THAT MAKES US FEEL GOOD”

Good Day,

IMV

Mad minds think alike or enough with the sheeple!

LOL,

WOW! I just got done reading 3 blogs. Where each one of them was more scathing than the last about ‘gurus’ and ‘sheeple’ and the’ sheering’ going on.

Once more hats off to the out-spoken and out-landish PPC.bz.

Nice to know I am on the right track with reporting what works vs. what is hype B.S.

So, the tip for the day.

Things are seldom what they seem.

Take bidding in CPV.

You see a high bid of $0.20 and you assume that 3rd place is  $0.17.  So, you place it and low and behold you are at rank  10.

OK, so you figure you will move your bid to $0.18.

OK, now you are at rank #5.

Uh ?

You say f*-it and place a bid of $0.21 and now you are 1st place.

What happened with all the other places. Why didn’t it just move up $0.01 per rank ?

The ugly secret ?

On some CPV networks, if someone is bidding higher and they have their freq cap or week parting set to the future IE its mon and their ad wont run tell thur. Their bid is STILL COUNTED towards all bids!

So, even though they may not run on thur (they could pause it or kill it.) Their bid is STILL affecting you on Monday.

Betcha the networks didnt tell you that one !

I will talk later on how to combat this sneaky-sneaky when used against you.

Enjoy.

IMV

Tracking Your Tracking

OK, so enough of the “I told you so”

Until some new level of idiocy occurs we are going to get into the pieces that make the difference.

One of those is tracking your tracking.

OK, you say. I have head of tracking, but tracking your tracking? What do you mean?

What I mean is noting when you start a campaign and add new ads or keywords/targets is just as important as the ROI.

I recommend using an excel spread sheet to note: start date, day of the week, traffic source, country, cost, aff network, offer and payout. Then going laterally add new dates when ever you add keywords or make a change.

I would also recommend a Project Management Software. Use MS-Project only because I was an MS trainer and used to it and their GANNT charts etc.

However you want to. Keep track of when you start and change your campaigns and this timeline of your offers will reveal some interesting patterns over time. More about that later on optimization and making money.

Thats all today. Enjoy!

IMV

Making a killing in CPV/PPV Impression Marketing

Well, I am sure by now if you are checking out the forums and your email that you are getting bombarded by CPV/PPV courses and forums.

Yes, you can make money in it. I have moved almost all my traffic to CPV after the great GOOGLE ban. I still have my GOOGLE account. I just don’t like there QS and its lack of reason. Anyone else notice the big three suck for searches in the last 3 months? You know it’s bad when BING! is better at finding what you want then GOOGLE, but its still not all the goodness I saw a year ago. But, that’s another point. Back to CPV.

CPV or PPV as Gauher Chaundry has coined is popping your message either on top of or behind the website that is being viewed. It is legitimate marketing in that the user has opted-in to the advertising by way of accepting the terms of software. Could be a gaming toolbar or a FLV viewer.

All well and good. Its not the malware, spyware crap that once installed (usually without your notice) you have to nuke your computer to get rid of. All legit CPV ware I have tried. Easily un-installed and left no traces. Still, always test on a ‘sandbox’ computer and one preferably NOT on your home LAN (just in case it’s a trojan or worm you try.)

So, what’s the down side?

Again, it’s with the gurus and the chumps that make money off others. Everyone is sending up the rally cry to get on CPV. (and next will be mobile, then billboards and finally grannies forehead)

The results? Bid’s that 6mnths ago were reasonable for a target. Have sky rocketed. As more and more people come out with scrappers and courses. More people are jumping on and like most things. There is a finite supply.  So, you see what happens in all supply and demand situations. Demand goes up more than supply. Prices increase. Basic econ.

Now, I checked with the top CPV companies and got their numbers for subscribers and increase rate. All of them are madly adding new viewers.

BUT, here is the question? Are there more people watching then selling?

It’s hard to tell because you can have 10 people or you can have 1 person with the capital of 10 people. You will see the number of members (usually it’s your aff-id) but you have no idea how much the others ones are spending and what their reserves are. IE: I could be losing on CPV on one place making money in another, bid high to bankrupt the competition (still losing money) and then once the competition is out. Use my cash from the other income to now go into CPV and own a place. Until someone with more buck and income streams deems my position worth it and a super -affiliate bidding war breaks out. (not as much fun as it sounds)

What I do know is that URL’s and KEYWORDS are being bidded up and no one is doing the math.

If you have an email submit that pays you $1.75 and your bid per impression is .015 that means for every 116 impressions seen you have to get one submit. Now, one in 100 is avg for PPC marketing conversions. But, 1 in 116? That is NOT a normal conversion for impression marketing. The classic number is .01 or 1 in 1000. OK, so that part is not being mentioned.

Now the testing.

If I pick 10 targets (not a large number) and I run then campaign at 2x-3x spending. That means I will (in worse case) spend $52.50 to test. That doesn’t sound that bad. Except now you have to have 30 conversions to break even. Which means you shut off all non-performers and let the cash reserves fill-up. THEN, you get to profit. That is unless the offer has ceased (which happens more than you would like to know. I will have stats for that in a later post)

To make it worse. Many have the mentality of bid 1st position. That might be OK if you want to check out conversions on an offer. BUT be careful, if the test if impressions cost $0.30 on a $4.00 payout (I have seen that on dating) and you are direct linking. How are you going to optimize that and be profitable? You would have to have a ‘sale’ every 13th view!!! NOT LIKELY!!!!

Starting to see what is being left out of your marketing material and maybe that course or forum you joined?

It’s called risk management, money management and understanding ROI & ROT. Something people selling you stuff don’t want you to know or calculate. Because ANYONE can get rich on the internet!!! Uh Huh… rightttt.

The first thing to ask you is WHY? If this is so great WHY? are the selling me this? TO MAKE MONEY!!!

Mother Theresa is dead and outside of earthquake relief. Business is about making money NOT charity. If they really wanted to help you the would post their info for free (like I am for now) because they make enough money in other ways. The truth is YOU ARE THEIR INCOME!!! and they will tell you what every “psycho-feel good-fear of loss-scarcity-social outcast-I’m just like you” CRAP to suck you in.

Listen, I come from the trading world. If you have a trading method that makes bank. You don’t give it away or sell it. You get people in as investors, trade their money with your system and charge them AND YOU NEVER EVER EVER REVEAL HOW YOU DO IT or WHAT YOU DO ? Why? Because anyone who has created successful income streams know that processes that spit out money consistently with very little effort are very very very rare. Just look at the banking and investment industry. You don’t think they would not be in this knee deep if they thought they could make 300% ROI ? Well, they are its called branded banners. They just aren’t wasting their time with “get rich quick courses” too much hassle in the long run. But, Netflix subscriptions!!! No hassle with that.

People do make money on the internet AND it is tough work. For every youtube or waitress that now makes 7 figures off berries there are 1000′s that never get a peep and die a silent death. Though, someone made money off them in the process.

The last step is what all the gurus promote about.  The ‘you can get rich…fast…easy’

The 1st two steps ” Spend money, make spent money back.”

Seems to be left out of the marketing material AND its REAL!!!

Now, are all campaigns this ‘gloom n doom’?

NO! AND you need to be real about how much time, money and talent it takes to make money online.

Too many people are being told the ‘glory’ and what they need is the ‘guts’ knowing the ‘glory’ will come after sacrifice.

“If it was easy to do. Everyone would be doing it”

OK, so what’s the solution?

DONT BE DESPERATE and HAVE SOME COMMON SENSE!!!

If you are broke, out of work and you don’t have to dimes to scratch. LEAVE THIS SITE NOW!!!

And go get some  REAL assistance and alot of it since each one give’s only a little. Once you are back on your feet. Spend some time methodically researching and doing. Every time I hear someone say, ” I don’t have money, I lost my job, etc.etc. IM GOING TO MAKE MONEY ON THE INTERNET!!!” I want to smack them awake before they hurt them self.

The rest of you. You better have time and money you can afford to lose or you are deluding yourself and the ‘sheeple’ marketers have your number.

I will never say like some people “never buy a course”

I will, also, never say “just do and test and ignore the rest”

Those are the 2 mindsets I hear and empirically disagree with.

What I do encourage. Is to look at IM the same long term rational way you are supposed to look at business planning, life planning, family planning and anything else that takes years to do and has results along the way, as well as, challenges and be real.

I’m not going to bash this guru or that. I have already been in those sh*t fights and you can’t win against someone with more zombies and bucks then you. (amazing how when something doesn’t work and people have paid for it, people will still ‘pray’ to it acting likes the 2nd coming)

What I will do. Is keep poking at the ?’s to ask and the facts to demand and when your gut says “this is crap” follow it. I have been wrong at times listening to mine, but the numbers of times I have been right in following my gut has been 1:100+.

Until next time. Avoid spending $50 to make $1.75 or $500 to make $10. Use the same common sense you do with your checkbook and if you don’t have any.  Go back to TV and the PBS channel (when they are not fund raising). Since, anything else will just suck the last cash out of your wallet and leave you bitter and broke ( I don’t want that for anyone)

and YES ! I am making money in CPV. I also spent ALOT to get there and most of what I learned was not in a course (though I took many) it was in the field and some good people I have met.  A little knowledge and lots of experience will get you far in life

IMV

Internet Marketing Launch Satellite View

OK,

Since, I am not a blogger per-say. You will def. want to get an RSS feed to this blog. My postings will be fast, accurate and sporadic, but always constant (yes, I just did that linguist violation… get used to it. I am a thinker and doer and admit my grammar and punctuation stink)

What you will find is bullets and factoids here and there under each Page which are also the Categorizes. Facts and info that are not everywhere else and actually work most the time if not ALL the time.

These ‘nuggets’ of information will be what was, what is and what will be in Internet marketing and as you will see in time all marketing and commerce. What works.

Lets start small…

To get a great top down view of the industry and all the types of people in it. The best suggestion is a home town boys website.  A little gem called www.affbuzz.com

Here you will get a real taste of all the people and angles on the Internet marketing field. At least at our level.

Spend  a weekend getting sucked into all the different posts forums and opinions. You may get overwhelmed, but that’s OK we are just exposing your brain to the world that is and could be.  No harm in knowing who you are playing with.

Download the ‘free’ info they all have. That will give you a better idea of what is of value and what is accessible. Don’t spent any money or time setting things up or buying things. There IS a method to the madness. Make sure you use a ‘dumby’ email at hotmail, gmail, yahoo. You get the idea.  I would have 3 . Your personal you don’t let out at all. Your affilate for business and one for all the things you will get subscribed to and want to check out.

Avoid getting sucked into the forums, dramas and illegal downloads. Remember, if you are reading and posting you are not doing and it’s all about the doing (and some learning) but mainly alot of doing.

Anyone who is successful knows this and it is good to reminder to all of us. Edison was a GREAT internet marketer. 1% inspiration & 99% perspiration (we will talk about auto-mation too)

OK, so thats the first nugget. If you know it great. If you dont. There you are.

My posts will generally be short, since I have many projects to build, track, optimize and scale AND I will still take the time to get the VERITAS out.

Thank You,

IMV

Can you make money online ?

Can you make money online ? That is probably the #1 question that brought you here or you had originally when you started internet marketing or researching it.

The answer is yes and no. Yes, because people DO make money on the internet some $ some $$$,$$$,$$$, but most who try wont for a number of reasons.

1st it take’s money to make money and time is money. If you are not spending it here you could be spending it on a job or a skill development. So, when someone says it only takes time. Well, that IS money in one way or another.

For the most part the people that say its easy are making money ‘selling shovels to miners’ and alot of those shovels are junk or not even a shovel.

I’m too smart to start bad-mouthing anyone directly, especially since online marketing is very ‘interconnected’. What I will do is post questions and verifiable information and let people form their own educated opinions when it comes to people and products.

It’s funny that if people applied the same guidelines to buying a house or life insurance as they do buying thousand dollar information products there would be less ‘scams’ that are done to newbies.

Keep in mind. There are 2 markets in force here. Those that are making money off of the general public and other business’s and those making money off you.  Know who is who.

2ndly refering back to the “takes money to make money” aspect of IM. This is the topic I find most people ‘skate’ around. Why? well if I sell you a course that is $1997 and then you have to have $5,000 to $10,000 in traffic tests to find what works. I am not going to have many customers. But, If I say, “Buy this course. I made thousands, you will make thousands and all it takes it 2hrs a night” I will sell many, many courses. Yes, I will have some refunds. But, as anyone in marketing knows. Unless, something is truly hideous and I mean truly. The amount of profit made vs. the amount in refunds is negotiable. Most people who sell self-help books know that 90% of the people who buy their books. Will not read past the 1st chapter.

Now, does that mean all course and ‘gurus’ are ripping off the public ? No, I know some say that all are. It depends. Are you totally new? Yes, there is tons of free info on the internet AND sometimes a nugget in a course or forum can be worth  and money pay the time you save. You can spend it on testing or buying someone else’s test (what most course’s really are when you boil it down.) Either way, it comes down to which ultimately saves you time and makes you the most money.

3rd and STILL talking about money. Lets talk about testing capital. I find most are sorely lacking in this category and I have seen many lose out because of this. You need to have enough capital to test AND lose AND then come back again. This is alot like  trading stocks or commodities, BUT worse. When you find a pattern in those. You can duplicate. But, what do you do when you find a winning offer and before you have made back the intial testing and optimization investment. That offer or even worse. Niche or traffic source are gone !?

No one talks about that. At least not until recently. When I got started it was “focus on one thing and scale it up.” I, also, saw huge affiliate’s lose vast amounts of income when an offer or traffic source was taken away. Recently I have  started hearing others speaking about diversify. Something I did from the start. Its challenging to test multiple offers on multiple traffic sources and yet it is necessary with how internet marketing has changed in the last two years and will continue to.

Inside of that is still the cost. Lets get real. If you test 10 offers with 100 keywords on 3 traffic sources with your clicks costing you $0.35 and each keyword is tested for 100 clicks for conversion you will need $105,000.00 to test in a worse case scenario. WHAT !!!! no one EVER TALKS ABOUT THAT!!!!! My math MUST be wrong. Well, its is and it is not. You may get some sales so its not a total negative and few people test to this extreme. But, it is the ugly truth (oh there are other ugly ones… we will get to them too.) Now, you will find stories of people that didn’t lost that much money and made good money and still do. Still, if you look at the IRS records for taxable income the groups that claim business income that have the worst income to expense ratio in no particular order are: Gamblers, MLM’rs, Internet Marketers and Day Traders.  When I got into PPC IM I met 3 types of people. Those who had lucked out and made money right away (Very few & were looking for the next one before the current one dried up), Those that were getting a trickle to come in, and those who were ‘burning’ through time and money ‘hoping’ to find something that worked before they ran out of cash or credit. Sadly, to say few did.

Lets look at CPV traffic since its cheaper and its the rave right now:

10 offers

$.01 an impression

1000 impressions per target

100 targets

=$1,110.01

and if your payout is $1.75.

It will take 635 sales to just break even. That is NOT even profiting.

Again, as with any business. You have to spend and test, then optimize and then scale. The 1st two parts always cost. That is why standard business wisdom is to have 2 years of operating expense AND 2 years of livable income. I know few do. Yet, that is the wiser course to take in money and life management.

So, there you have it. Can you make money online. Yes, I have made a living for over a year. Some months positive some months negative and just about everything that could go wrong, go wrong (I’ll detail ALL of that here AND solutions/preventions.) At year-end I was net positive AND I had found along the way nearly 95% of what I thought or told was wrong or severely lacked information to make it useful. There is a lot of competition and a lot of people who would rather make money off you then the general public. With that in mind. Remember this saying, “If it was easy. Everyone would be doing it and successful” and now you know the some of the Veritas of Internet Marketing

IMV

The Beginning & Why?

It has been over a year since I started with PPC Internet marketing and 6 years since I started SEO CPS marketing and over 10 years since I did my first Internet marketing campaign with banner ads for an offline product.

I decided awhile ago that spring 2010 (3-21-10) was the ideal day to start a BLOG about the “truth” or Veritas of Internet Marketing and for the most part, ALL marketing, advertising, sales and business. Since, with-out the ‘truth’ there is not much that can occur. At least, not in the long run.

So, If you want the ‘truth’ of what works and the ability to apply it and make money on the internet. This is your blog.

I will post what works and what doesnt for PPC, PPV, CPV,  CPT, Media Buys, Banner Ads, Mobile2Mobile, Contextual, Social, Tiered and any other form of marketing or advertising that work or may for CPS, CPL, CPA and CPC monetization.

Pragmatics (doing what works) and Philosophy (the application of knowledge) are our hallmarks.

To those who are looking for what works and makes money online.

Welcome Home…

Bookmark this page and come back daily as I update and add more relevant and exacting content for making money.