Get some CPC campaigns working + build a list

[Johnnie]

The title says it all, that is what I am hoping to do.

I have been around the warrior forum throwing away lot's of money for years but it's time to move on from there.

I spend some time playing with Bing Adcenter but never ran any campaigns, I found it complicated. I guess I would just need more time playing with it to get used to it. I have Prosper installed on my hosting site, but never added any campaigns to it yet. The last few weeks I have been playing with 7Search which seems quite easy. It looks like it would be a good place to start, and then move to Bing.

My problem is a lack of guidance. Even though I have bought lots of WSO's on CPA and list building I don't have a good plan to follow. I find all of that stuff I bought is lacking in areas where I need help. They all give you info on the same old easy stuff but not much on the more difficult to understand concepts. One of the areas is picking offers to get started with. I have gotten lots of advice. One person suggests I only do $1 game offers to build up data cheaply? Another says I should only do free trial offers between 12 and 20 dollars. And yet another says email submits are the way to go.

I have some bucks but have to be careful, I am only working part time right now. I have, with the $50 from the AffiliateFix deal, $200 sitting at 7Search. I need some kind of a guide to get me going. I am wondering if there is something like that in the DoJo that can help me? Something to help me get started with some CPC or even ClickBank campaigns and start building a list as well.

Thanks
Johnnie

 

[gravemind]

Firstly, you will need to focus on just one area--either CPC promoting CPA offers, or list building and the myriad ways you can gain subscribers.

As far as choosing an offer, the less experienced you are, the less the offer payout should be. So, the guy who gave you the advice on $1 offers is probably most correct. Low-paying offers are advantageous because such offers require low testing budgets to determine their viability (i.e. you can collect lots of data on what works and what doesn't without spending a lot of money). And, when you determine what works, the optimization budget for such campaigns is also relatively low (i.e. you can do lots of split-testing on a relatively low budget).

Before you spend anymore money, I'd recommend you narrow your focus and spend some time doing (cost-free) research on your chosen vertical and promotional method. You can find plenty of info around this forum and other IM forums/blogs that will aid you. Once you've established a concrete plan of action, you'll be in a much better position to spend money in any capacity.

 

[Johnnie]

Well I have heard over and over again that it would be stupid not to capture email addresses when doing PPC. You are the very first person I have ever heard suggest that it could make sense to neglect grabing email address on a landing/squeeze page. I don't understand that at all. Am I misunderstanding you?

As far as your comment, "spend some time doing (cost-free) research on your chosen vertical and promotional method", I would love to do that. Can you point me to somewhere I can get started doing that? By research are you talking demographics? Or what kind of research do you mean?

Thanks
Johnnie

 

[gravemind]

Yes, "the money is in the list" is a well-known IM maxim, but that doesn't mean you must blindly follow it. Plenty of people successfully do PPC while ignoring list building altogether.

List building is best suited for long-term verticals (i.e. verticals you can and will stick with for a long while). For example, if you were focusing on the Make Money Online (MMO) niche, then you could promote MMO products via PPC while collecting emails so that you could continue to sell MMO products to that audience with your email funnel for months and years down the line. This would be an example of focusing on list building because: most of your PPC campaigns would be geared towards building a strong list in a certain vertical and profiting on the back end while you may or may not profit on the front end; and as you continue to focus on building your list, you would want to branch into other areas outside of just PPC that also allow you to gain subscribers.

Now, if you're focusing on PPC (specifically CPA offers for the sake of this discussion), then as beginner, you'll likely find yourself in too many different verticals and too busy testing and optimizing to build and maintain meaningful lists. Not to mention some CPA verticals may be too narrow for a worthwhile list; However, you'll be able to put all your effort into testing those offers and optimizing your campaigns to maximize your ROI on the front end (as there is no back end in this case). Then, once you've optimized one campaign, you can expand to other CPA offers/verticals and again focus all your effort on maximizing your ROI. In this case, you're free to move between vastly different, sometimes very narrow verticals while still focusing on PPC, and you could easily spend an entire IM career never venturing beyond PPC.

The reason I'm saying to narrow your focus is because the wealth of information in these two areas (PPC focus vs. List-building focus) is much too vast for a beginner to try and take on all at once. List building in particular could be tricky for the beginner because you need to be able to build an effective email funnel, and calculating the ROI on an email list that's costing you money to build isn't as simple as it is for nearly every other area of IM. If you like, once you become reasonably skilled in one focus, you can begin branching out more into the other.

I can't really point you in a direction and say "go here and you'll become a list-building god!" The kind of research I'm talking about involves a lot of thinking for yourself. For example, if you're interested in PPC, then you could go to the PPC-related sections of this forum and start reading some case studies and journeys. See what went right, what went wrong, what others have to say, and what you can take away from the thread. You can also check out blogs of prominent PPC players and see what advice they have to give in their posts (charlesngo is pretty good; you can also check affbuzz for many more good IM blogs). Use that info to build a plan of action for yourself: know how and where you're going to launch your first campaign, know what vertical you're going to focus on, know your initial testing budget for the campaign, know how you're going to track and analyze your stats, have an idea of some ways you can split-test and optimize your campaign, etc. Write it all down, and then test, test, test, and revise your action plan as necessary. And, when in doubt, just ask for some help on the forum(s).

 

[Johnnie]

Thanks a lot gravemind, lots to absorb there, lots to think about.

I am interested in MMO. That was my plan to eventually promote MMO products from JVZoo and WarriorPlus to my list. I spoke with someone who has successfully built a 43,000 subscriber email list in a bit less then 2 years. Last time I spoke with him he said he is averaging 54 cents per subscriber per month in income. $20 grandish a month is not bad. I know it is said he should be doing $1 per subscriber but he is very happy and is now hiring a Philippine VA to handle his list. He is now started creating his own products so he can promote them to his list and as WSOs.

He built the list doing CPA and ClickBank by PPC to many different verticals to make money. And by using very low bids and really broad keywords to get penny clicks in Bing. He says conversions are a bonus and not the focus of these low bid campaigns. He wants subscribers, and gets tons of them for pennies. He says there are lots of people in all niches interested in making money so he only has one MMO list. He is emailing his list 4 times a day. The old churn and burn, but with subscribers so cheap, why not. I would like to have some of those low bid campaigns picking up subscribers as well as making some money with some CPA or Clickbank or whatever.

There is a lot of money available in promoting the infomercials you see on TV. Promote the ones with their own affiliate programs and you can do trademark bidding. Another guy I spoke with who does this has a few formulas that make success almost a sure thing. He can tell with around 85% certainty if a product is going to make or lose money before you ever run the campaign. He has another formula for deciding how much to bid. He made a lot of people rich with his WSO. Lots of them would drop by and post in the forum saying how life changing it was for them. He is supposed to be working on another WSO with a bunch of new ideas he says and an upgrade to the old one which has become dated now.

Thanks for the info graveman.

Johnnie

 

[susmanto]

thank you for posting. today, i am running ppc on fb ads and bing including to collect email list