Earning a living from CPA marketing

[Rvfamily]

Well, the paid traffic campaign is still a work in progress. I do however have some additional information with my ongoing campaign.

Since I reworked the landing pages, I have been getting a much better click throughs. Since I created my landing page with Pagewiz, I have had 53 unique visitors. From those 53 unique visitors, I have had 14 enter their email address to see the sales page. From those 14 who made it to the sales page, I have had 4 convert the offer. So, at least as far I as understand it, the percentages break down something like this:

53 views of the landing page with 14 entering email address equals 26.42%
14 views of the sales page with 4 converting the offer (sale) equals 28.57% conversion

This free traffic has netted me $216 since the 21st of August when I had the first conversion. The total number of views on my YT channel to achieve this has been 6917. In addition, I have gained 27 subscribers to the channel, but I'm not really sure how I might take advantage of that (still working on that).

In my split testing for the landing page, the one differentiation was the placement of a security stripe (banner with the "As seen on GMA, NBC, etc.). On one landing page I had placed it at the top and the other at the bottom. It seems very clear from early data that the better converting was the one with the security stripe at the top of the page. I had each one being viewed 50% of the time. The one with the top security stripe had 11 emails entered, as opposed the one with the security stripe at the bottom which converted only 3 times.

I realize its a pretty small sample (26 views for each page), but the data seemed pretty lopsided. So this evening I switched to the better converting one as the only one which will come up.

Have to get up early and start a long day tomorrow, but I'll post more details and some screen shots tomorrow evening.

Here's to your success!

 

[Rvfamily]

Now that my channel is gaining several hundred views per day, it just seems to me that I might begin to see an uptick in the number of conversions. I think this for two reasons.

1. As the channel gets more views, I think it helps to knock down some of the barriers people have about purchasing through a link like this. If it has thousands and thousands of views, and it's still up (YT didn't take it down), then it adds some credibility. I.E., people become more likely to convert as time goes by because of the inherent trust from a large number of views on the channel.
2. Like we see in all of sales, it's just a numbers game. We are going for views of the videos, as those are impressions to the potential customers. As the channel has gotten better placement on the searches (I am behind the company's videos and one other video I uploaded), it's getting more views, more quickly. Like any sales funnel, when you put more leads (impressions here), into the hopper, we're going to get more sales out the bottom of the funnel.

Here is a screenshot of what my conversion/traffic figures look like from Pagewiz: *remember conversions on this chart are emails entered

On YouTube, I currently rank 5th for the main keyword (product name), 5th for the main keyword + the word "buy" in front. And I rank first in the main keyword + the word "review" at the end of it.

Since yesterday, the channel has had a little less than 500 additional views. From this, I generated 3 additional leads, and converted one more to the offer. This brings my total earnings since the beginning of the campaign to $260.00. That is $104.00 last month, and $156.00 this month. Which would put me on pace to meet my goal of making $500.00 in this month.

It does seem that over the last week to ten days, the number of conversions from the landing page have been increasing. And since it seems that the campaign is converting a sale about every fourth lead generated, if I can get to 3-4 landing page conversions per day, I should convert an offer about every one to two days (just my thinking here), which would gross me about $156.00 per week. This of course assumes a lot, like things will stay consistent. I have learned from reading many others who've been successful in this that consistency can be difficult at best. So, I'll continue to work on it to see if I can maximize it further.

I would like to finish off by saying that if I can do this, anyone can do this. I'm just doggedly determined to figure it all out. For those who say they have no money; everything I've generated so far has been from completely free resources. I've used Pagewiz (free trial) for the landing page and YouTube for traffic. I spent around 13 hours to get everything set up (would have gone much faster if I had done it before). So what's holding you back? Find a strategy in this forum that resonates with you, and go take action! Until next time...

Here's to your success!

 

[Rvfamily]

We always see progress and setback, as we move towards our goals. Yesterday I had a couple of setbacks. I found another product from the same company I am currently promoting on YT, in the same vertical. I was very excited, because the payout for this offer is quite high, like the sister product I'm currently promoting.

I spent several hours finding a good video (used Skrayp for the first time, and it's a good tool), downloading, making a few edits, reposting to my channel and building a new landing page with GetResponse. Within a few minutes of publishing the video, I was notified that the video was flagged and I could contest, but otherwise I couldn't use it. That was several hours wasted.

So I went back and downloaded another video right from the company and did the same. Another couple of hours to get it all done and posted to the channel. I thought for sure this one would be good. I woke up this morning to find it had fallen to the same fate. Darn, Darn, Darny Darn (a little Lego movie humor- hey I have two small kids ).

The only thing I can think of that could have caused this was that I got a little lazy this time around. When I did the edits to the video, I just shortened it and added a note on the screen to check the link below. In my previous videos, I spent a little more time doing outro's or intro's. Perhaps these changes were enough to keep the previous videos from getting flagged.

Really disappointing because I thought this would be another good offer with some conversions and the new video would benefit from being in an established channel with thousands of views (and several hundred new ones each day).

If anyone can provide any insight into whether or not trying a third time might get my channel flagged, I would appreciate it. I guess I don't want to take something that's producing right now and have to start over by going to the well one too many times with this other video/product.

 

[seeqer]

We always see progress and setback, as we move towards our goals.
If anyone can provide any insight into whether or not trying a third time might get my channel flagged, I would appreciate it. I guess I don't want to take something that's producing right now and have to start over by going to the well one too many times with this other video/product.

Did you check if you had the right to use that video? Some videos are under copyright protections while others you can use it according to the terms of youtube. Maybe that is why.

 

[crysper]

Congrats for your success so far, it will only get better.

Regarding to your videos, did you see other affiliates trying to promote that product in the same way? Maybe competition flagged your videos...this happens a lot in this industry.

 

[Rvfamily]

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment back. I'm certain the first video was a compilation put together by another marketer for the product. It was pretty nicely done, and it was flagged within minutes of being put up. Is there software that monitors that kind of stuff or something?

The second one was a video I put up exactly like the other 5 on my channel. It was just a straight testimonial from the company. I did edit it a little. I'm not sure what I can and cannot do as far as some of this stuff goes. There were several other people who had the exact same video up, so you're probably right @crysper.

Is it worth it/possible to contest since I don't own the videos, I'm just using the companies testimonials in the same manner as several others? As I stated before, right now, I'm making a little money from this one channel while I try to figure everything else out. I'd just hate to try again and have them shoot down my channel.

Thanks in advance for any comments or help.
Here's to your success!

 

[crysper]

If you can add your own spin to the videos and use a new youtube account it might work, since the competition may follow your current account for any updates.
To speed things up you can try to outsource the video production/editing somewhere. Have you tried Fiverr? Video Post Production, Internet Video Production, Video Editors |Fiverr


This way you won't spend hours working on the video, so it won't matter that much if it gets down, 5 bucks is nothing.

 

[Rvfamily]

@crysper, thank you for the advice. I am still new enough that I just get tunnel vision and can't get out of the box of one way to do things. Done!

Here's to your success!

 

[Rvfamily]

As I mentioned in a previous post, it seems that things can turn very quickly. Since I posted last, I have had only one email conversion and the traffic to my lander is down quite a bit. I was even beginning to wonder if someone had placed a PPV pop up (not even sure if that's possible ), on my YT channel page.

The drop off happened immediately following the attempt to set up and promote the additional offer from the same company. I did receive one last night, but I went several days with hundreds of views on my YT channel each day without even getting an email conversion. And it followed a few days where I was getting a couple of leads per day and a sale/conversion about every three days. I have come to believe that this is just part of the deal. A natural ebb and flow in this industry. I just have so little experience, that everything comes under the microscope.

I had set up VPS hosting through Atlantic (as mentioned in a previous post), and was trying to set up Thrive Content Builder (I purchased this to build my landing pages) in the back end of WP on the site. Since I didn't buy Cpanel, and I don't have coding/internet infrastructure skills necessary to make TCB work, I have switched everything over to another shared hosting plan I have with Bluehost. I then set it up as a second domain on the same host (very little traffic to original blog), so that I could install the Thrive Content Builder to build out some landing pages to use with CPA offers. Since I wanted something that didn't require an ongoing monthly expense, and I already had the other Bluehost acct, I set it up this way.

I will be looking to set up an additional VPS hosting plan when the one with Atlantic expires at the end of the month. I bought it for about $5 per month just to see if it would work. I thought the cost was so low that if it didn't work, it would just be a small expense.

As I understand the payment process with MaxBounty, I should receive my first check from them tomorrow . I must admit to being pretty excited to see the first fruits of the labor I've put in, even if it's small ($104).

I am partially through with a landing page I'm setting up to run for free/coupon offer from Peerfly. I will post the lander and feedback from the beginning of the campaign on this thread when I have it.

Finally, I have been looking at a company called AdRoll to do some retargeting for the Health/Beauty offer I've been promoting on YT. If anyone has any experience with them I'd appreciate any feedback.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[Rvfamily]

Since I am determined to learn how to operate in CPA marketing as a business, I am trying to take the ups and downs as just part of the learning curve to reach a point of success. I have some good news to report as well as some lessons learned. I hope in sharing these lessons that you might be better equipped if you too are trying to get started in this as a business and not just a get rich quick scheme. Sorry for the rant.

So first the success. I did receive my first payment from MB and they wound up paying me for the total amount I had outstanding. Yesterday, as they said they would, MB paid me $260 for what I had done so far (image in previous post). This was pretty exciting, as it was the very first dollars I had earned (I did win the contest here in this forum) through my marketing efforts in the field of CPA . As I have stated before, this is completely new to me.

Now on to the challenges. In the course I took detailing the method I am using, they stated that you should set up an independent channel on YT for every offer you run. So that if you get one banned, it doesn't take down your whole operation. This is how I set this first one up. I created an email account and a YT channel completely independent of anything else and didn't link them with any others.

So, when I tried promoting a second offer from the same company in that channel, a competitor flagged the new video and it created a "strike" against me in that account. I tried uploading a second video to promote the same new product and it was flagged as well (detailed in previous post). This second "strike" causes YT to suspend your account activity for 2 weeks. Although this had occurred, I had not logged into the email account I set up for the channel in about a week.

So I go merrily along making some changes in the back end of the channel over the last few days without incident. I changed the link in my description to lead to a new landing page I set up on my own site, since I didn't want to spend the money for the monthly expenses when my free trial of Pagewiz expired (I will say for someone completely new to this, the WYSIWYG landing page creator at Pagewiz is very good, and certainly worth a look).

I changed all the links and got everything done, and then noticed an email from YT about the second "strike" I received a week ago. It stated I needed to click the link and take the necessary action to continue with my account (see below)

Once I logged in and clicked the link, it took me to the back end of my channel, where I could not leave the screen informing me of the corrective actions. So I guess this means that for two weeks, I can't do anything to the channel AND that YT removed two more of the videos I had in the channel. There are still three left, and they now point to the right landing page (I guess I'm lucky I got the link changed before this morning when it would have been pointing to a lander I don't have anymore). This has caused my channel to fall in the rankings for my keywords though, which will almost certainly effect the number of views and the additional revenue it might generate.

I'm thankful that I did get to see some revenue from this first work using free traffic. I learned some lessons, and will move on with additional knowledge and skill to the next project.

What I've learned from this campaign:

1. If you are going to use the free traffic source YouTube, you must set up a separate channel on YT for every offer. I logged into my other accounts and there is no restrictions on them (you would probably do well to take a look at K's post about using proxies here and here).
2. You need to have redundancy built into your efforts. You need several videos and a few channels for working together, as well as be using other traffic (free or paid) for a particular offer, so that if you have a hiccup like I have described, you are not completely out of business.
3. This is a pretty competitive environment, and you better be on your toes and taking care of your business, or you'll get hammered. What I mean is that in such a competitive marketplace, you have to be monitoring and paying attention to your offers, your traffic sources and your results. If you are not, you will never be able to earn a consistent living from this.
4. You need either a landing page service (instapage, pagewiz, etc.) or you need to purchase a theme/plugin combination (WP) that allows you to build your own landing pages. If you're using someone else's setup, you can publish your landing pages right through them. However, if you are going to do it on your own (I purchased the Thrive Themes Membership, with Thrive Content Builder), then you are going to have to have hosting (preferably VPS SSD for speed). This is just a part of your startup expenses.
5. You are either going to spend money or time up front in this. If you can or are willing to spend a little money, you can have better tools and accelerate your learning curve. If you can't or don't want to spend the money, then you are going to have to make use of free tools and spend greater time reading and collecting the information necessary to begin to see results.
6. Any action, even imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. I made some mistakes in this first campaign, but I learned some valuable lessons and made a little money. I will be better moving forward.

I think I've just about ran this first free traffic campaign as far as it can go (I'd love to hear from more seasoned IM'ers, if there is something more I can do). I'll let you know how the next step goes. I hope anyone reading this has found value.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[crysper]

Nice write-up.

There is no way the most you can get form youtube, you just need to be more careful and put automation on place. If you can duplicate and somehow automate to spend less time on the process that made you the first money, you're good to go.

If you have the budget(about $1500),right now you might be prepared for the bigger league - mobile. There is the real stuff.

 

[Rvfamily]

@crysper,

Thanks for following and commenting. I appreciate any feedback. I am not quite ready from a budget standpoint to do mobile (though I would love to learn from someone who has been doing it ). I have been putting the money I've made into tools and higher quality information sources. I do have a budget for advertising that I've got set aside (haven't touched it yet), but it would need to grow quite a bit to get to that level. I'm patient, and understand it's a process. I have become absolutely consumed by CPA and want to get really good, so that I can execute it as a business and so that I can share with others to help them achieve their goals/dreams.

As to this YT campaign, I think sometimes part of my problem is I just don't know when to quit. I'll pursue something past the point of maximum return and just keep going.

But I think you're absolutely right about setting up processes and automation to focus on higher return aspects of the business. I just want to know and understand how to do these things so that I can more effectively communicate to someone what I need done. Perhaps it's a bit of a flaw in me from time to time, but I just "need to know" how to do everything. This probably sets me back sometimes.

I've been thinking about setting up a blog detailing the outcomes as I go. A little like this post series, just a follow along with more detail and information about the processes, outcomes, tools and links to other high quality information sources.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[K]

+1 For setting up your own blog sooner than later.

 

[Rvfamily]

I am continuing to receive several hundred views on my YouTube channel per day which is good, but for some reason I have been unable to generate even a single sign up for the email autoresponder since I attempted to run the second offer on the channel and incurred the wrath of a competitor.

I was generating a couple of sign-ups per day before this occurred, but have since generated only a single sign up in close to two weeks. I just can't make sense of it. When I go to YT outside of my login, I can see the page as I set it up, with the landing page listed, as I had it before. I click on that link and it takes me to the landing page. I enter my email address, and it processes through to my email autoresponder company. Then I am taken through my aff link to the sales page. This generates a click in MB in my account for that offer.

By all appearances everything works as it supposed to, but for some reason, once this event occurred (setting up second offer that incurred the wrath of competitor), I have generated only a single click through and no other activity on either side (email collection or click through/sale/conversion) on the MB side. I am just befuddled.

If anyone has any insights, I would be very grateful.

After changing the hosting around a few times for the site I set up to run my offers (and having some issues with speed), I decided to purchase a VPS hosting plan with Cpanel and Softaculous. I have spent several hours figuring out the back end of the admin for the server (a work in progress) but was finally able to get the DNS settings right to point the domain name to the VPS hosting. I'll provide a few more details in the next post.

In addition, I have set up a new account with 7Search and created an ad for the new offer I am looking to promote. I will detail it once I have it up in the next couple of days.

In a few of the blogs I read on CPA marketing, I have seen a couple of people state that in their experience, they have gotten much better conversions from 7Search traffic for pay per lead offers, or pay per sale offers which did not have a high dollar purchase involved. For example they stated that for email/zip submits and similar offers, their conversions from the 7Search traffic were good. However, for pay per sale offers where the cost of the product was high, they had better results from TrafficVance or 50onRed traffic. Does anyone else have insights on this? Again, any feedback would be appreciated and helpful.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[Leif W]

This is really interesting! I have no doubt you will succeed, your determination is obvious.

I have been a full time affiliate marketer for over two years, it can happen! I tried organic traffic generation at first, and although the conversion rates were good I couldn't get the scale needed to make this a full time job...it took getting into paid advertising to make it take off.

Also I find PPL (and other lower dollar conversions) much easier to test and scale as you can understand patterns much faster than with a less frequent conversion.

 

[Rvfamily]

This is really interesting! I have no doubt you will succeed, your determination is obvious.

I have been a full time affiliate marketer for over two years, it can happen! I tried organic traffic generation at first, and although the conversion rates were good I couldn't get the scale needed to make this a full time job...it took getting into paid advertising to make it take off.

Also I find PPL (and other lower dollar conversions) much easier to test and scale as you can understand patterns much faster than with a less frequent conversion.

Leif,
I appreciate your taking the time to read and comment on my follow along. It seems you've already tread the path I am pursuing. Congrats on your success so far.

If you don't mind if I ask a question...
From where you are today, what one piece of advice would you provide to yourself from two years ago, that would have the greatest impact to shorten the learning curve in this business?

As Always,
Here's to your success!

 

[Rvfamily]

7Search account set up, funded with $100 (to maximize the free money you can receive from your AffiliateFix membership). When you go through AF, you can get $50 free when you fund your account with $100 to start.

I've created a keyword list with 6 words that take a certain angle for the coupon/freebie vertical (I used LTP-Long Tail Pro).

I go to my website (VPS hosting) and there is some technical issue. I'm not sure what it is, but I know they said it could take up to 72 hours for the DNS to get straight. So, I'll wait until tomorrow night and try again.

Here's to your success!

 

[K]

Did they give you the bonus yes?

Make sure after you have 100 clicks you mail cleo@7search.com to get blacklisting abilities.

 

[Rvfamily]

Did they give you the bonus yes?

Make sure after you have 100 clicks you mail cleo@7search.com to get blacklisting abilities.

K,
Yes, they did apply the bonus. Thanks for following up. I will be sure to email cleo when I get to 100 clicks. I have read several threads where people said this was invaluable for obtaining proper ROI (eliminating non performing traffic sources). Thanks again K.

As always,
Here's to your success!

 

[Rvfamily]

Well, my lack of tech skills is certainly making progress challenging. Before the first of this year, I had no experience with anything other than basic software and internet use. I have been trying to teach myself the digital skills necessary to operate as an IM'er. I love learning, and usually pick things up pretty quick, but at times I just get hung up on the details.

As described above, I recently bought VPS hosting from Mochahosting.com. Since I recently set up blog, with Cpanel as admin software for the domain and WP as the software to build the website (I hope I'm describing this properly), I have had some basic familiarity with Cpanel. I understand this:

However, when I signed up with Mochahosting with Cpanel and Softaculous, the UI for it looks like this:

I have been through the series of videos that the company support has set up to get started and spent several hours working to get the DNS right so that I can install wordpress. After all of this, I am still at square one.

I'll be tapping the support from mochahosting to see if they can help me get it straight. I think I'm just going to have to go back and do my domain as an add on to another Bluehost account until I can get this resolved. As of right now, I don't even have a lander up for any traffic I might have generated via YT for the lone offer I was promoting.

Bleh. Sometimes when we're being stretched it's challenging. Just remember the great quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes. "A man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains it's original dimensions." I'm not sure if there are other newbies who might have dealt with this, but once I get some clarity and understanding, I'll post the information here so that those people might benefit.

Good offers to promote from reputable companies- check
Angles chosen for the paid traffic campaigns (once I get these up and running I'll detail what angles I decided on and whether or not they worked)- check
Software for building landing pages- check
Money deposited into first advertising company- check
Hosting for landing pages- a work in progress and my current stumbling block

As always,
Here's to your success!