Dump, dump, dump… Another one BITES the DUST!

Well,  I am very sorry to say 2011 is NOT the year for affiliate networks.

I have seen 2 Officially close. [yMultimedia & AdEngage]

I know of another. That everyone, but one person, has left. [ECM]

Which now sent out  a letter about getting funded for $6M.

So, not sure what’s going on there!

( I also saw many parties at ASW that were usually big. Scaled down or non-existent. So… MORE to come!)

Seems like instead of networks making sure the affiliate is legit. Affiliates need to check the financial structure, business plan and credit worthiness of the network or get a rude awakening. [talk about turning the tables!]

I really hate to see this happen, since I know being in the middle and a brokerage firm is NEVER easy.

Many affiliates want to blame the networks when many times they need to see past that and to the offer.

Good Luck to those surviving.

Anyone want to place bets on the next one or ten to fall? (Vegas or Monte Carlo ONLY!)

IMV

as always and with more evidence every day

Trust No One!

btw. if you have not swung by ppc.bz or saltydroid.info Check them out. They make me look tame and sedate

Oh one more thing. I would encrypt those referrers, targets and creatives. Especially,  if they have an ‘internal team’ Let them spend their OWN money testing . NOT YOURS!

NOTE: Pinnacle Media was wrongfully in this article before. I went off a trusted source and found out later that was in error. Sorry Guys, but I’m here to protect the affiliates NOT the networks. It was NOT intentional and accidents happen. Next time there is an error COMMENT or contact me. I do my best to get accurate information, but even the NYT has to re-tract statements. I hope you understand.

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

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