Hello Guru’s I am as new a newbie as they come. At this point, I feel dumber than a box of rocks, a bag of hammers, or a can of dirt. Let me explain. I am trying affiliate marketing with adwords and clickbank, writing ads. I spent probably 3 days reading these forums before posting. I also spent some time on other web sites trying to understand the best method or plan. The file manager in my brain is about to quit his job due to overwork without pay. Some people say to spend at least 10 hours per day. Some people say to spend just a few hours per day. Some people say that adwords works well, some say it doesn’t. Some say you pay for impressions, others say you don’t. Some talk about terms and nomenclature I don’t even know. Some say to use a website; others say you don’t need one. Some talk about a landing page which I’m not sure what it even is? Some say to promote adds that are varied in nature, others say to concentrate on a niche that interests me. What I’m interested in, is making at least a few honest bucks without compromising my standards. By that I mean that even though they would make a lucrative living, I wouldn’t promote something like porn or gambling. Some say to just do a couple of adds, others say to do lots of adds. I realize that different things work differently for different people. As you may have already surmised, I’m almost confused at this point. I also know that just starting out is always a little more difficult on something new. Can anyone tell me: How long can I expect to wait before I start to realize even a little money? What sort of advice you would give to a newbie? Do web sites make you more money? Should a web site of links all concentrate on one type of product? Should it not? What kind of investment should I be willing to make and for what? If I am using adwords and clickbank, how many adds should I run at one time without ending up under a bridge? Should I use a web page for adwords or not? Is there any other resource I should or could be using? I apologize in advance if this sounds like incessant whining. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I’ll leave it at that for now, and ask other questions as the file manager needs. Thanks to all who take the time.
Wow Swampdog - lots going on here! I'm definitely not a guru, but let me see if I can help piece some of this together for you. Get ready for a long reply It really depends on the person - if you have more time to invest, that's great! If you don't, then spend what you can. There's no 'minimum threshold' you need to work to be productive - even just moving towards your goals at 30 minutes a day is something I wouldn't be overwhelmed if you can't spend more than a few hours a week - and of course, you're already on the right track by researching & asking questions before you jump in! I personally believe the adwords system itself works great - and perception of it not working well is often a misperception of poor marketing skills. It's easy to run up a 50$ adwords bill with no sales and blame google; harder to dip into your own marketing psyche and figure out what went wrong. In paying for impressions, you only [can] do this if you're targetting a specific site with your ad. A landing page is simply a "pre-sell" page. You link to it from adwords or another place and basically build excitement, as well as give a mini-preview of the product, where the surfer can then click through and go buy the actual product. Think of it as analagous to a movie trailer. Lots of essential bits and pieces, but to get the whole thing, you have to go the movie. While you don't need one, necessarily, I think people on the whole do better when they do have one, due to the fact that it lets you track traffic, build a more targetted ad campaign, have a better Adwords quality score, and use an opt-in mailing list. Good call - there's lots of ways to do that. Concentrating on a niche that interests you isn't a must - it just means that you'll have an easier time trying to figure out the lingo your audience speaks, which is what it's really all about. You can easily promote products from any niche, do some research on the audience by snooping around in forums and the like, and then go effectively market to them. I'd start by trying to find something that is at least semi-closely related to your interests, and then going from there. If you're just starting out, my advice would be to start small. It's easy to go throw a bunch of ads there in a "hail mary" and hope something works- but that's not how pros really get good results. It's about careful, methodical planning. If you're putting an adgroup up, you need to think about why exactly you are doing it, which keywords you are going to use, how the adcopy is going to be written, and how well it pertains to your website or landing page where you link. Failure to do this will shoot your Quality Score in the foot, big time, and you'll end up paying more for less results. To be honest, it could be an hour after you put up your campaign, or a month. It all depends on a few things. -How targetted your ad & keywords are to your audience -How well the product you choose sells itself -How hungry your audience is for your product & their purchasing power. If you start off with the right mix, you could be making money really shortly. If not, you'll need to revise until you hit that point. This is pretty general, and there's no real definite answer either way. If you're curious if you should go out and buy or build a large website, though, I'd say play it cool for now - don't worry about that, and read up some more on these forums, or the resources in my sig until you have a better idea how you want to get started. Yes, if you're running a landing page, where the whole focus of the page really is to push one particular kind of product. Anything else leaves "another exit" open to the visitor who could waste your adspend by not clicking something other than the back button to get out of your site. GREAT question. I think that's also what many people would love to know! I'd say until you're really, really sure of what you're doing, play the investment pretty low - spending little cash/day. I'd probably even recommend starting off doing some stuff for free, like http://www.bummarketingmethod.com . Calculate your investment carefully & don't be too hasty to spend money, and things will go well. Haha yikes, under a bridge. Well, if you're starting out, I can't tell you how many ads to run, but I'll say if you're focusing on more than one product, it's going to be really difficult not only to keep costs low, but to really get into the nitty-gritty of how the whole thing works. You want to start out nice and slow, learning everything you can about how your ad, keywords, and landing page + product all perform. Especially important if you hit upon success right away, so that you know how & why you succeeded and can go replicate this success elsewheres. If you're talking about a landing page, then I'd say yep. I personally recommend them highly. You can do direct linking if you like, but it's an easy way to lose money if you're not very carefully tracking your methods & stats from the get-go. Honestly, there's a bajillion resources out there! Everyone wants to sell you their latest book on this and that, and all kinds of other stuff these days. There's tools, keywords trackers, stats programs, autoresponders, all kinds of stuff up the yin-yang. Some of it works - some of it can leave you with misperceptions. If you're just starting off, knowledge & forums are some of your best tools in figuring things out. Once you know more about how you want to approach things, you can get into using more tools if you need, like performance & stats trackers and the like, and take it from there. Well, I hope these help the "File manager" out a bit Sounds like you're off to a great start - feel free to give it a few days rest to let it all kinda sink in! There's a ton to learn about, explore, and discover - I do it every day! And if you have any more questions, just ask away. -T
Telmari, Thanks for the response. Great advice and handy tips. I'm sure I'll have more questions later. The only question I have now, is about the landing page. If it is just a one page website linked to a product, then having more than just a few of them could run into more than just a few bucks per month to host them. Is that an accurate assumption? Thanks again for your response, I do appreciate it. Swampdog
Hey again. Generally, you're right - except that in this case, you don't need multiple domains & hosting in order to host a review page - you just need separate subdomains or subdirectories, such as www.myreviewplace.com/product1, www.myreviewplace.com/product 2, etc etc.,.. or review1.myreviewplace.com, review2.myreviewplace.com, etc etc. This definitely saves some serious hosting costs -T
Swampdog, you may have already seen this but maybe not...read everything you can in the AdWords Learning Center...then read it again
Guy from Chicago, Thanks a lot. I didn't even know that was there, and it looks like a lot of information. I'll start on it tomorrow when the file manager in my brain is fresh again. Swampdog
Thats the thing......there seems to be alot of people out there doing things like re-hashing Adwords learning centre and selling it for like $40 or $50 bucks....damn them. Just trying to make a dodgy buck. I guess thats why forums like this are good.....you come across helpful people. btw thanks a heap telmari....your answers helped me too !