The Unofficial DP Winter '06 Affiliate Noob's Challenge thread

The first book you mention is exactly the type that most people would pass on.
The Valentines site is much better, has more credibility and would have a much higher conversion rate.

>>>but the books work for someone<<< Thats a subjective argument, you would need to take a poll to sort the answer out. Some have absolutely no redeeming features and would only cost you money.
Another bitch I have with a lot of those overhyped e-books is that their is usually another then another e-book you have to buy to be successful. It's a never ending roller coaster.

 

The guy who wrote the book made the valentines site. It's an example of the type of site he would help you make and market in the e-book. Some people consider the valentines site spammy because it has nothing but affiliate links on it but it converts well. A site like quityourdayjob.com is better for the search engines because it atleast has some text on it and it also converts very well.

Most people will crack open a book like this read the first Chapter and never pick it up again. The same goes for most books. The bottomline is that you will always get people who won't benefit from any book or service no matter how good it is.

Just like some people won't really benefit from The Most Brilliant Plan in the World. It's a great site that's providing a needed service but the site is using a hard sales letter. That doesn't mean that they are hyping up the product or that the service they are selling is really a scam. Not everyone will benefit from the service but a certain group of customers will.

As a customer you have to do a little bit of research and figure out for yourself if you really need a product before you buy it.

Now of course I would love to put together a site like http://www.valentines2006.com/ and start running google ads at it but I just don't have the money to run $2 a click ad campaigns and get a big enough sample to see if the site would convert.

 

Hi,

I read this entire thread yesterday, got started with some affiliate programs and adwords, and today had a profit of $18.37 for $0.27 in clicks. Only three clicks, so a conversion of 1 in 3. Pretty cool for my first day! I think I'm hooked.



Neil

 

You Bastard!

Welcome aboard! How many programs are you with, and are they CJ, CB, or something else?

 

Just some clickbank products. I think I probably just got lucky, I'm interested to see how it goes the next week or two. I signed up with CJ and some others as well, but only really using clickbank until i get to know the landscape a little better, and it's the simplest to get started with. I was surprised to find it's actually kind of fun to write ads and come up with ways to pitch things, never really tried it before.

neil

 

You actually raise a very good point there and I'm glad you mentioned it because I agree.
The product is excellent BUT their website in my view overhypes it and the product gets lost in the hype. They don't adequately explain the many and varied uses of the product...or express that you are only paying for one product but actually receive a lot of inte-related products that come with it.
All the information is in the website somewhere but it's difficult to navigate around to find it. Who is going to spend an hour on a site looking around trying to get a proper grasp on what is actually on offer. Only me

For that very reason I am in the process of building a website specifically for that product to simplify everything and make it a lot easier to comprehend.
I have been using it for two months now and still find bits and pieces in nooks and crannies on their website that astound me.
The number of applications that you can apply it to are endless.

 

That is good idea!
Build Nice, Easy, WebSite and I think that will convert very well

 

AdBrite Update: Adbrite is working pretty good. It's giving me a little bit of cheap traffic. I'll wait a few days to see if I can convert the traffic.(I corrected the spelling mistakes)
If it doesn't convert I'll move back to Miva.

MSN Adcenter: Didn't have enough traffic. Like shoemoney said.

I think I'm going to go ahead and bite the bullet and buy that book.
I'm a sucker but I can't let it go. I keep thinking about it.

Edit: I bought the book - I'm a little disappointed. I guess I was expecting some magical trick or some gold mine niches or something. It had mostly stuff that I already knew and stuff that I should have already known. omg I'm a reader so I don't regret the purchase.

 

I just wanted to drop an update on my situation.

I started with a campaign back in late Nov. It was for a product that was quite hot at that time (still trying it out so I prefer not to mention it). From the last week in Nov till mid Jan things were going really wonderful. My conversion ratio was pretty great and I made in the $x,xxx range.

Starting in mid Jan till present things have gone down hill and it is now losing money. I have modified the ads and CPC to try and bring it back to profitability. The CTR is better but the conversions have continued to slow to an absolute stop recently. I am not losing much since my CPC reduction have also lowered my clicks so it not an overall loss at all.

Based on Cyclops' advise about separating keywords into separate AdGroups I now have a way of keeping my good keywords apart from my bad ones. The different groups also go to different optimized landing pages. All in all a great tip (thanks!).

When this thread started up I experimented with a few new campaigns without landing pages. The results have been mixed but again I learned some new things from it. Overall these produced a loss but not a big one. The money spent was worth the education.

Compared to other methods PPC advertising seem difficult but very promising. I am glad to hear that other are doing so well with it. Personally I am so happy to have made a really successful campaign even though it now has runs its course. Time to find a new campaign!

I think for myself driving the clicks to a landing page works better. That way I can provide some unique info and give the surfer multiple ways to make me some money. Most importantly I can track what happens very closely. Landing pages/site offer so much flexibility.

Now I just have to find some time to do some research!

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread!

 

That is Great News Alex
Keep That Good Work
All The Best Dudes,
Sunchy

 

Got started yesterday.

I've made 2 different campaigns on adwords.
-One pointing to a cj product via a landing page.
I have already 12 clicks (according to cj but no actions)

-The other one is pointing to my referral link.
I had 8 clicks but the reporting page of the program is quite slow.

Thanx for the very interesting thread.

 

i have some questions for you.
I can't get good CTR from my ads. Today I got more than 500 impressions with no clicks. Is the ad price that lowers the CTR or should I make more attractive ads ?

 

Hi Dazed,

For me, the ad position must be within the top 8 results for my ads to get any clicks. Once I start seeing positions like 11.6, 14.9, etc., I'm down to no clicks. This means that I have to keep bumping up the ad price to stay within that zone of clicks as competition continues to pay more (perfect system for Google to make cash).

If your ads are within the top 8, then I would start trying new ad copy. Google allows you to make multiple ads and will rotate those ads through the impressions.

I tried things like

XYZ Widget
70 dollar discount!

OR

XYZ Widget
45% discount!

This month the 45% discount ad has the highest CTR.

 

Ok on my small campaign I've tried to be at 4-6 positions, but with 500-1000 impressions/per day I don't think that I will get results fast. I will add more keywords and I'll back here to report.

 

how much are your CPC and how much is the return on what you sell?

 

You can also try negative ads:

Don't buy defective widgets
Guaranteed and trustworthy
blue widgets service

Keyword:
Small Blue Widgets

Only Small Blue Widgets
Get the color and size that you
paid for from a trustworthy source

Ad Campaign update for the Rich Jerk Style Site:
I've gotten 90 hits (on adbrite) to my rich jerk style site with no sales. My goal was to get at least 1/30 conversion rate.

I fixed the spelling and grammatical errors on the site but I can see now that my copy write has way too much hype in it (and the copy is probably too short). The sales letter technique in his e-book causes you to make sites like that. However, on his sites he doesn't really have that much hype in his own copy. I think he sold this site to someone so do not bother the owner.

This is the type of site I am going to make using that e-book from quityourdayjob.com. It's a good solid e-book but it's for beginners most people here probably won't learn anything new.

 

Lately AdWords traffic has been really down for me. Check out www.ppcdiscussions.com for more details. Hopefully things pick back up with some modifications.

 

max 25 cents CPC , and the commision is 25$. So I want more than 1% conversion rate for my campaign to be "successful".

 

Have as few KW per adgroup as you can. Your CTR will rise if the ad is as relevant to the search as possible. People are more likely to click if the ad matches their search.

 

You must optimize your ads my friends Belive me