Back from Ad:tech

I am still getting on top of everything after a fantastic week in NYC for Ad:Tech 2010 New York City

So, much happened.

Contacts.

Parties.

Deals.

New Traffic Sources.

New Networks.

Old friends re-acquainted with.

New friends and contacts made.

To keep it easier to digest. I will post separate posts for each subject matter. Easier to find in the future and read now.

All those who have not made it to New York for fun or business.

I highly recommend it.

Yes, its loud. Yes, its busy and Yes, hotel’s and food can be expensive (more the hotels than the food)

BUT!

NYC has really cleaned up in the 15yrs I have been there and you owe it yourself to get a “bite of the Apple.”

A shout out to all my NYC peeps. I wont embarrass you by naming you here (that’s for FB.)

Without you. It would have been another “stranger in a strange land.”

Thanks for Everything and MORE!

Still… Trust No ONE!

IMV

Do network owners want you to get banned ?

Interesting title, huh ?

Well, it is because for quite awhile I have gotten “tip” emails from various networks sometimes owners that make me wonder if?!

a. They actually run any campaigns?

b. Is the only way they know how to run them black-hat?

c. Are they delusional and just that out of touch with reality?

The latest email from someone that usually has good information is soooo general that if a affiliate blindly follows it I am sure they will be banned with-in 24hrs from Google.

No mention of what kind of offers or sites Google accepts vs. not.

and I can guarantee that if you direct-link to a game offer that has  a down-loadable or a toolbar.

Your campaign and offer will be short lived, as well as, anything else connected to google (want to do content or mobile in the future… forget it [unless you jump through serious hoops] once banned)

then they go on to tell you to do CPV and how great that is.

Again, with-out even mentioning that many of them WILL NOT allow download-ables,  .exe, tool-bars, pop-ups and sound.

Which most if not all game offers have in them.

Oh, and any mention of cost of traffic vs. payout. Nope!

Hey, I have run and am running game offers on CPV, FB and have on google in the past.

Yes, they are HOT!

BUT and that’s a BIG BUT!

If you do not follow the TOS of the ad plat-form AND network.

You can expect to…

1. Get banned or Have your account frozen and money kept.

or

2. Not get paid on offers from traffic you HAVE paid for.

So, honestly.

I don’t know why a network let, alone a decent one, is giving half-truths in a field that if you p*ss of the wrong traffic source.

YOU ARE DONE FOR!

I guess getting new identities and VM accounts are the “in-thing” now in IM?!

and networks wonder why affiliates scam them with ‘cookie dropping’ ?

Seems to me you encourage it by sending ‘lambs to the slaughter’

Try telling them the down side and technical aspects of promoting an offer and not just the “why are you not making $10K a day.. ya loser” mentality that I see many networks have.

Oh, and general information that can cost people their accounts.

Maybe better that you don’t share the ‘knowledge’ or at least do them the service of telling them the down-side.

Just IMHO.

Trust No One

IMV

Smart Phones + Credit Cards for the USA

Just out !

80% of 18-34yr olds would make purchases on their smart phones with a credit card !!!

(source:bloomberg)

This is huge !!!

Now that credit cards are going to marry easily with phones in the US like they are in ASIA.

The new rush will be on.

Do NOT believe the gurus !

Read the industry journals since this is a highly regulated industry (They learned from fax and email advertising mess and you DO NOT want to piss them off!!!)

Here is the guidebook from the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association)

Know the rules before you charge in and get worse than Google-slapped

IMV

How Face Book Ads work.

“Face Book is the NEW Google.”

“People made a killing on Google. FB should be just easy.”

Have you heard that ?

Well its not exactly the whole story.

Yes, people are making thousands (who have that to start with.)

There is an initial drain you will have to go through before you make money.

Here is how it works:

If, you get an ad approved (BIG IF) AND you pay a high enough CPC (some of them are scary $1.50 for ages 21-25 male single keyword ‘scrabble’ ???!!!)

You will get impressions/traffic.

Now,  here is where it gets tricky…

If, you do not have a high enough CTR on your ad. You ad will get less traffic and soon none at all. (looks like collapsing sine waves on the graph. Each peak lower than the last)

You, also, have to have a high enough CTR over time to have your bids lowered.

So, you have to spend money to find ads with high CTR and then hope the offer stays around long enough to get your CPC cost to a + ROI.

That is almost as perverse as Googles Ad Quality Score, but at least you know what you have to do here.

Oh, and one more thing that no one tells you.

People can rate your ads.

Those little “thumbs” and “x” you see next to an ad.

People can select those and if you get enough ‘x’s

1. Your ad cost goes up

2. You get less impressions

3. Your ad gets banned

4. You lose your account

5. Banned for life

(these are the levels of ‘threat’ FB can enforce)

So, keep that in mind.

Yes, FB ads DO work AND you have to put more into them then they say in time and money (you need hundreds of ads to find the ones that work as far as images and ad copy too.)

Better than Money ? The TRUTH of What WORKS!!!

So, the other forum I posted my strategy on is now on fire.

You would think no one had ever posted anything of detail that works.

The truth is few have.

The forum owner comes closest and maybe 3 members, but even I have noticed exact details and long descriptions are now lacking and posts about favorite movies and stupid sh*t is now popping up.

Who pays money each month to hear about stupid sh*t?

I DONT!!!

I pay to make back at least $5 dollars for every $1 I spend (and you should too!)

So, here is the complete step-by-step Money making plan:

15 Minutes to Fame: How to Make Money from 1000′s of targets in CPV/PPV and not Lose TONS of Money!!!

DISCLAIMER: IF YOU BLOW YOUR CASH OR SERVER DONT BLAME ME !!!

THIS IS FOR HIGH VOLUME & HIGH BUCK. IF YOU CANT AFFORD TO LOSE $100′s

DONT DO THIS !!! IF YOU DONT HAVE TRACKING DOWN. DONT DO THIS!!!

END DISCLAIMER:

1) find a trend. go to google insight and type in any CPA/CPS offer vertical or offer and you will see certain days, months, years are better.

2) use a scrapper and pull all the keywords and urls related 10 deep (yes that will be a few thousand) Remove any that obviously are not specific and have high volume traffic IE: diet and facebook.com

3) set-up tracking whatever traffic source you are using

4) pause your creatives NOT campaign while you  get your links and keywords approved

5) set your caps for minium. I set mine for $10. Set your bids for 1-3 positions. (you need steady traffic to test effectively)

6) once you have everything approved. UNpause your creative.

7) watch the traffic very 15min. Get rid of any targets that are more expensive than your payout.

after 15min. to 1hr you will see what targets have volume and maybe even conversions.

9) pause ALL other targets you have and let this block of performing targets run for 2hrs.

10) pause and optimize. then run optimized targets in next 2hr-3hr block of daily traffic.

IE: 8-10am, 11am-1pm, 3pm-6pm, 7pm-10pm

11) once you have a block of targets optimized you can run them at different time blocks and see if you can get a better ROI on time targeting segmentation.

12) repeat process for each traffic source to scale.

This Method maximizes targeting  for consistant volume targets and saving capital for actual performers!!!

You find what has volume, what is making you money and stop wasting money on what doesnt convert or get traffic.

You can set up 1000′s of these. Since, there are 1000′s of offers and 1,000,000′s of targets.

There are some nuances I will have in the members section to make you more money.

This should be a BIG START!!!

Now, go get testing methodically

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