Earning a living from CPA marketing

[Rvfamily]

@Rvfamily - best of luck! You're getting close, I can feel it.

If you go with Bing, they are offering free coupons, $100 for Canadians, I think the same for U.S.

@azgold,

Was this for people who already had an established account? I set up an account a little while back, I just hadn't done anything with it. Many of the Adwords coupons require that your account be less than 14 days old. Thanks again for your help.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[internalsoul]

Hey @internalsoul,

Thanks a lot. That's really what I was looking for. Just some honest insight into what traffic sources people have used and been happy with. I understand you, when you mention matching traffic sources to verticals/types of offers. However, I'm a little fuzzy on "funnel."

I am familiar with a marketing funnel, where you get someone to purchase a lower priced item and lead them through the funnel to higher value, higher priced products or services. How does a funnel relate to a CPA offer? Sorry for my ignorance.

Thanks again for taking the time.

As always,
Here's to your success!

Well, i consider it as the working combination of all the elements in a campaign(like keyword+ad+lander+offer lander). Sometimes, you can refer it when you capture the leads and direct them to different offers like A/B testing and promote other related offers.

Your Landing page -> Lead(Subscriber)| -> Direct them to offers(Split test)

 

[Rvfamily]

Ok, so I have once again paused the current campaign. I was notified early Monday that the offer was canceled, which is good considering I paused it on Sunday morning. Like the other campaigns I have run, I will provide all details below. Ready? Here we go.....

As you have read in the post above, in looking at the traffic source 7Search in Alexa and SimilarWeb we see that the demo is heavily male. As such, I wanted to try to make sure that the offer I was promoting was a good fit for the male demo. I found one on MaxBounty. The offer was:

Salewa-Get Vertical Contest-US
Payout: $2.40 per lead

I was direct linking this campaign, running/testing two ads with the same copy, but different headlines. The first ad/headline, which received 214 clicks was:

GET VERTICAL AND EXTREME SKI FROM YOUR BASECAMP WITH SALEWA
Get Vertical! Win an adrenaline basecamp adventure and extreme ski Grindewald, San Martino Di Castrozza or Alta Badia. Enter and you'll have the chance to instantly win gear from Salewa and Polartec every week.
http://basecampadventure.info

For this offer, I was running the following keywords: the CPC for this set was: $0.07.

supplement
ski
natural testosterone supplement
muscle building supplement
adrenaline rush
ski holiday
skydiving
ski runs
supplement for muscle growth
outdoor sports
rock climbing
adrenaline junkie
mountain climbing
adrenaline challenge
heart palpitations adrenaline rush
rock climbing in winnipeg
climbing gear
ski vacation package
cross fit
extreme outdoor sports
mountain climbing gear
ski package europe
mountain climbing harness
climbing gear package
extreme sports adrenaline
climbing gear online
ice climbing gear
mountain climbing clothing
outdoor climbing gear
adrenaline workout
best mountain climbing gear
cross fit training
performance enhancing supplement
ski europe
adrenaline junky

My thinking for this particular set of keywords was that someone who would be inclined to purchase Salewa gear, would be male, middle age, and would probably be either an adrenaline junky, or someone who was very active physically.

The second ad which ran a shorter window, and had 67 clicks with no conversions was:
ESCAPE THE CUBICLE THIS WINTER: EXTREME SKI GRINDEWALD
Get Vertical! Win an adrenaline basecamp adventure and extreme ski Grindewald, San Martino Di Castrozza or Alta Badia. Enter and you'll have the chance to instantly win gear from Salewa and Polartec every week.
http://basecampadventure.info

Keyword set was almost exactly the same. Only a slight difference, with the CPC averaging out to about $0.06.

For the first ad, I set an initial budget of $7 for testing, which I later moved to $12.

I remembered someone saying that they thought 7S (possibly others) metered traffic so that you got clicks throughout the day, and not all at once (provided the kw generated enough traffic). I was hoping to gather data a little more quickly this time, so after the first day, I set my budget to $12 per day. I did see a nice tick up in the amount of clicks over the next day or two.

After I had about 130 clicks on the first ad, I created the second and moved the budget for both to $7 per day each. My total spend for the campaign was $19.09 with no revenue and a total of 281 clicks.

Some thoughts and What I have learned in the last few days:

So far I have run/tested 4 campaigns, generating a total of 1664 clicks with 2 conversions (1 each in two different campaigns). I don't really have any idea of what conversion rates should be, other than the data that is provided by the network. But I do know that my conversion rate is way below what the network is averaging for each of the four offers. I have been thinking a lot about where I need to improve. Here is what I've thought about so far:

1. Every super affiliate, and most of the people who have current blogs in the field of CPA, state that you need to pick a single vertical and a single traffic source and work it until you master it. Many state that you will not have the odds in your favor if you are jumping back and forth between offer verticals and traffic sources. I think I am finally beginning to understand why that is (more on this below).
2. I had seen someone comment in a video I watched some time ago that you should look at the demographics for the traffic source you are using and try to match the offer types and verticals to the demo of the traffic source. There is another piece of the puzzle I think you should also look at. Different traffic sources generate their traffic in different ways, and from different audiences. For example, you might have traffic generated from social sites, types of blogs or from sidebars on business websites. If this is true (I believe this is how it works), then you need to look closely at the ad network websites to get a better idea of how and where the ads you run will be placed. I would even say, you should speak to someone from the customer service department for each one and ask them about this, so that you have a very good understanding of how they generate traffic to your ads and where that traffic comes from. This is a part of number one above.
3. There are two areas that I need to focus on improving when it comes to keywords: keyword selection and keyword bidding strategies. What I have come to believe is that keyword selection is as important as offer selection. You can select the easiest, most common keywords that you could probably use without much of an angle, but you'll have to have deep pockets. If you choose this path, you'll have to outbid all the others who are using the most common keywords. Or you can work an angle and the not so easy to identify keywords and get lower CPC's. For example, weight loss pill in 7Search returns a max bid of $0.54 per click, where weight loss plan returns a max bid of $0.16 CPC. Although weight loss pill is easy to understand because it is more of a buyer keyword, you could work an angle in your ad like, "Get the Weight Loss Plan that Can Have You Thin in Time for Your Reunion." (These are just off the top of my head of course).

So why is it that you need to focus on a single vertical/traffic source and master it? Every vertical and traffic source has its own nuance that you will never become familiar with if you are jumping around.

Some of those things that are going to be unique to each are:
-what types of offers convert best for the traffic source
-what types of angles convert best for the offer vertical
-is traffic from a certain source better for lead generation or pay per sale
-what keywords work best for an offer vertical
-etc., etc.
These are the kinds of things you will get to know from operating in a vertical and traffic source for a while.

I would offer up (someone with greater experience/knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong), that working an offer vertical and traffic source till you have mastered it, is analogous to picking a specific method of online income generation.

For example, if you are trying to write and publish on Kindle, Create niche websites using SEO for traffic and Creating information products and launching them, all at the same time, the odds are you are going to fail. There is simply too much information to process and too much going on for you to become really good at any of them. Remember the proverb that says: "The wolf who chases two rabbits, catches none." (i.e., goes hungry). But they all have certain skills that are universal, so that once you have mastered one, you can move into the other space in a shorter time than it took for you to get really good at the first.

The two examples are analogous in that you must focus on one to become really good at it (and better than the thousands who are doing the same thing), but there is a lot of crossover in the skills necessary, so that once you have mastered one, you can quickly add to it.

A good blogger over time can begin to sell books or courses to his audience. He can begin in email marketing by creating a list from his subscribers. She could create a YouTube channel and begin to generate some income from her channel, which would also help in driving traffic to her blog and help in selling her courses.

I will be starting another campaign in the next day or two, and will share what I get from it in the hopes that it will provide benefit.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[azgold]

@azgold,

Was this for people who already had an established account? I set up an account a little while back, I just hadn't done anything with it. Many of the Adwords coupons require that your account be less than 14 days old. Thanks again for your help.

As always,
Here's to your success!

Sorry, only saw this now. Yes, I believe it has to be a new account, sorry. I didn't realize that you had already set one up.

 

[azgold]

@Rvfamily - no one can accuse you of not focusing. Your dogged persistence to understanding is a shining example to the rest of us, I applaud you.

Don't know if this helps you, or if you have already seen it. If you're a reader of @LukePeerFly 's blog, you probably have seen it, as that's where I found it a couple of years ago (thanks, Luke!). 7Search.com - Top Paying 500 Keywords

 

[Snoop]

awesome study hows progress?

 

[clements]

@Rvfamily - Running an successful PPC campaign(s) is very tricky but can be very successful and rewarding. Listing very specific targeted keywords is very important or you could be seeing your money just being breezed through without revenue. I remember when I was selling candles online (10 years ago) and had a website. I had tried to get more traffic and I went through $1,000 in less than a week. I was using Google exclusively and realized that my keywords were too broad so there was a lot of competition in bidding for one of those spots cost a lot of money. I had chosen Candles, Jar Candles online. I needed to make it more targeted. I should of probably tried more specific keywords but still using ones that people will probably still search for but I did not ever try it again.

Some examples, Candles made with fruit/vegetable oils, Mia Bella Candles, & Mia Bella Online.

Anyways, I would suggest to search for your competitors and their keyword to see what they chose, see if it is too competitive, and doing research & to see which keywords are most successful for you.

Have you ever considered maybe continuing PPC in a few search engines & maybe work on list building as well. Maybe, you can add your page for them to subscribe/unsubscripted and add that link to your campaigns to grow your list and then add email campaigns to send to subscribers. Maybe have survey questions like gender, age, race, & what type of things are they interested in would also help know what your traffic is looking for or have the auto responder send an email with a survey/survey link for people to take and you can look at the data to help. If not interested in email, disregard this message.

By the way, if your looking for anymore campaigns to promote than look in my signature here for my Affiliate Network to check out and possibly become an affiliate/publisher or Click Here to apply!

 

[azgold]

I've been thinking about this thread the past couple of days, wondering how things were going.

@Rvfamily may be:

- taking a well-deserved breather
- too busy working to post
- raising more money for his campaigns
- enjoying his family for the Thanksgiving holiday
- struck it rich and is living it up in Hawaii or Vegas

 

[Rvfamily]

@Snoop, @clements and @azgold,

Thank you for continuing to read and offer help in my follow along. I work in retail grocery, so it was pretty hectic right before the holiday. I just wanted to drop a note before I head off to work. I have been working on a guide for bidding strategies (will post as a guide in the forums, with a link in this thread), and have a vertical selected for the next campaign. I'll be kicking off that campaign tonight/tomorrow morning using 7Search traffic.

I must say, it's almost addicting to post here. I miss it when I don't post for a little while, but I'm ready to get back into it. Hey @azgold, LOL. Too funny. Hope you're having great success.

I hope you are all having a great time with family.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[azgold]

Looking forward to reading your guide, @Rvfamily

Don't work too hard and Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[Rvfamily]

Ok guys and gals, I just posted my bidding strategies guide here. I would love any feedback.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[azgold]

@Rvfamily - excellent, thanks for doing that for the rest of us!

Going to read it now.

 

[raynoldclare]

Thanks so much for sharing this RVFamily!!!
This would really help me a lot as a newbie. Keep up the excellent work.

 

[internalsoul]

Rvfamily that's a excellent work. great guide

 

[Rvfamily]

First, I would like to say "Thank You" for the positive feedback for my guide. I hope I can contribute more as I get better in the field of CPA. I just wanted to put something together, as I feel like, you have learned something when you can teach it to others.

So what's next? Well, I applied to and was accepted by G4 Offers. I did this in part because I wanted to try out the DNI feature that is part of Prosper202. DNI stands for Direct Network Integration and requires that you apply for and get accepted for an API key that you then plug into P202 to access the offers G4 has right from the Prosper interface. I have an offer in mind. I plan on DL (direct linking) this campaign, but this will probably be the last offer I will DL for a while.

I have a couple of offers I plan on beginning campaigns for in the next week or so and already have landing pages created for them. As an example, please take a look here, and tell me if you think this is an effective LP for offers in the "Surveys/Coupons/Freebies" verticals.

I will be using landing pages most of the time going forward, as I want to aggressively work on building lists, as another opportunity to monetize the traffic. The idea of a funnel, and remarketing to lists has become more clear to me. If you can build a list, that you can then remarket to with similar offers, you can in effect increase the cost you can bid on certain KW in a campaign.

If I can increase the avg revenue generated through additional marketing, I can pay more for each customer than others who are simply relying on the offer revenue itself. This can be extremely important in the most competitive markets, that generate the most traffic and highest revenues.

When I used to own several Quiznos franchises, we would do local advertising and attempt to track sales volumes during the advertising window. The increase in sales (as a dollar figure) would then be divided by our avg ticket to get a "new customer" count. We then divided the cost of advertising that week, by the new customer count to get a customer acquisition cost.
For example:
TV ad spend for the week: $1000
Sales increase during the week of advertising compared to previous 3 week avg.: $1000
Avg. ticket price per customer: $9.50
The math looks something like this:
Sales increase / Avg. Ticket- $1000 / $9.50 = 105.26 (rounded to 105) new customers
Ad spend / # of new customers- $1000 / 105 = $9.52
Cost to acquire a new customer through this advertising medium- $9.52

If this illustration were an exact representation, this would be a fantastic ad spend. Now you do have to factor your food and labor costs, but overall just from a revenue standpoint, we see that we are breaking even from the first customer visit.
A final piece of this illustration would be to know the avg # of visits we get from a customer. In our case from Quiznos it was about twice a month.

How do we apply this to my previous conversation in IM and CPA specifically? Our ad spend on 7Search for example might be $100 to generate 20 conversions (pulled out of a hat for demo purposes), with a payout of $4.50 per conversion. Our conversions are customers, our payout is our revenue generated, and ad spend is the same. Our math looks like this:
We already know the # of new customers = 20
Ad spend / # of new customers $100 / 20 = $5
So our customer acquisition cost is $5

I can optimize the campaign to generate more conversions per $100 ad spend to make it profitable, and this must be done for any campaign. However, there is something else we can do. We can build a list and remarket similar offers to that list. Some of them will convert and we will have additional revenue per conversion.

Why this matters in the most competitive verticals and offers, is because there are two ways (working from opposite ends) that we can develop an advantage over our competitors in an offer:
We can buy ad placement in bulk and pay up front (or similar) so that we are in effect paying less for the traffic or we can build additional revenue on the back end that enables us to be more aggressive with our bidding because we know that the avg payout will be more than the CPA network payout.

Well, that's all for now. I'm off to work at the day job. I'll post the details of the next campaigns shortly.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[azgold]

@Rvfamily you already sound like a pro.

Don't forget to put your FTC proofing at the bottom of your lander - privacy policy, disclosure, yada yada. You want your butt covered.

 

[khaled909]

i just want to comment about the landing page .
it took 2-3 seconds at least to load the page . i think its important for the page to be as fast as possible . as a web visitor i would close that page within 2 seconds if it doesn't open

 

[Rvfamily]

i just want to comment about the landing page .
it took 2-3 seconds at least to load the page . i think its important for the page to be as fast as possible . as a web visitor i would close that page within 2 seconds if it doesn't open

@azgold, thank you for your feedback. I'll make sure to get it on there.
@khaled909, thank you for pointing that out. I'll have to look. I'm using Thrive and a VPS, so it should be fast. I'm not a technical expert, so there could be something I don't have right.

 

[Rvfamily]

OK, looking for some feedback here. In my latest promotion, I have been promoting an offer with a $1.50 payout. The keywords that produced clicks in the 7Search platform, were avg (as a set) about .20 per click. I ran about a twenty dollar spend to try the offer with two different headlines. Neither one of them produced a conversion (about 56 clicks each). I have seen many marketers mention that when testing you should look to cap your test at about 5 times the offer payout.

In this case that would mean $7.50 spend. However, for the keywords I'm having to use, I cannot get to a point of statistical significance with a spend of just $7.50. Can anyone provide some guidance on this?

My questions are:
Is the five times payout for testing a ceiling just to see if the offer has potential?
If I split test multiple headlines with each one getting enough clicks to reach a point of SS (statistical significance), I am looking at spending probably $40 to $50 dollars for testing. Does this seem like a viable model?

One other related question:
Can you split test multiple headlines (text ads) without creating a new campaign for each one. I have seen people talk about rotating offers, but I am not sure how you set this up in the 7S platform.

Any direction on these would be very much appreciated.

I'll have a post later today with the angle I used (and keywords) for the latest offer I was working on. I think it's really the first time I was working an angle and not just using direct copy to try to drive traffic.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[newlxx]

OK, looking for some feedback here. In my latest promotion, I have been promoting an offer with a $1.50 payout. The keywords that produced clicks in the 7Search platform, were avg (as a set) about .20 per click. I ran about a twenty dollar spend to try the offer with two different headlines. Neither one of them produced a conversion (about 56 clicks each). I have seen many marketers mention that when testing you should look to cap your test at about 5 times the offer payout.

Initially, to get rid of bot traffic I would start optimising by blacklisting publisher ids that have spent more than 2-3x offer payout.
After that, I would start taking a look at keywords and ads.

Can you split test multiple headlines (text ads) without creating a new campaign for each one. I have seen people talk about rotating offers, but I am not sure how you set this up in the 7S platform.

Offer rotation is done on your end using your tracker.