I think everyone here has the opportunity to have a mentor, I have even been mentoring several highly dedicated individuals. Some of them are already turning profits, others have learned an invaluable amount of information. I dont name drop for privacy reasons, but if they want to speak up, that is there choice... No i don't blow smoke, which is the reason for calling you out on micro testing... My advice was if your afraid to lose money, then don't use adwords. If your not afraid to lose money, then my recommendation was to not call it quits after a couple hundred dollar spend. I also advised not to test out so many offers. Commit to a project, do your research and follow through. That is what my advice was... You simply took it personal If you are serious, then be open minded, we are here to help... If you know your a noob, then consider anything you are doing can still be done better. I think you mistaking talks of large amount of money and partners with arrogance. Hardly the case, I talk big numbers, because I deal with big numbers. I understand many deal with small numbers, but I also understand small numbers is usually associated with people who are afraid of risk and those not financially fit to use adwords. I think there is a misconception out there that people can make lots of money by investing very little, In the hundreds or low thousands. This is usually the misconception lead on by "gurus" or affiliate marketers in the market of selling how to make money online. So again, these people need to learn a tough lesson, that internet marketing and affiliate marketing is not a walk in the park. No problem... anytime I am more than happy to share anything I can, however, privacy, non disclosures and legalities limit what I can say about past and present jobs. If you would like me to evaluate a possible industry, please let me know, I will walk you all through it, but here is the basic structure. 1. find a product or service either affiliate, personally owned, partnered with, or client owned. 2. Research market potential including supply and demand, market cap, market value, cost analysis, break even analysis, starting budget requirements, demographics of visitors, critical success factors, competition and many others I can't think of off the top of my head. Sometimes I do all this myself, sometime I buy industry reports, sometimes I call companies in the industry I want to invest in and ask questions. I learn about the product, put myself in buyers shoes and evaluate the overall product 3. Strategy - Once I have defined all the facts above I put together a strategy to isolate, target and appeal to these people. Knowing my critical success factors, industry averages, and product research I then put together both a logical and physiological plan of execution. Logical means what makes sense as a businessman. Psychological means what makes sense to the buyer. Many times I will also consult with people with psychology backgrounds to help better understand subconscious buying habits, other times I will consult with other business professionals on how to properly manage, as a business, what I want to accomplish. 4. Execution - Now that I have the product, research and strategy in place we can now execute. Execution includes proper campaign setup, structure, optimization, landing page development, and testing. Most of which I speak about on this forum is execution since that is what most people want to talk about. As you can see, most people forget about step 1, 2 and 3 and go straight to 4. This is why so many fail... 5. End game - This is usually one of two things, exit strategy or long term potential. If after the testing and trial period is completed, budget is spent and proper alloted time is given to test a campaign and its considered a losing battle, then I end the campaign and trash it. If its profitable or almost profitable and just need tweaking then a new long term strategy is devised. Usually this includes a 1, 3, 6, and 12 month optimization plan and goal. Secondary to that is long term campaign management which usually includes campaign management, monetization and automation. This would be a very lengthy response, but as you can see from step 2 above research is more than just 1 hour of guesstimates and then going right into execution. Since I spend so much time researching, calibration becomes easy because I have so much information. Research and strategy for projects thought up by me usually take 2 - 6 weeks. By the end of research and strategy phase its usually very easy to see if the campaign will succeed or fail. Projects thought up by others usually include reviewing the overall plan, tweaking and putting in some insight and then evaluating if its still worth moving forward. Your right, which is why i never mentioned this type of information till you asked. I understand everyone cant spend 35k and say oops. But you need to be able to say, I have a plan and its going to cost 2k and I am willing to spend that money, and lose it all for education and a possible payout. If you cant say all of that, then you are not ready. If you build your own landing pages then you are light years ahead of many already. I will tell you out of experience, 3 tweaks is probably not enough, sometimes it takes 100, but then that would require time and money to continue tweaking so I can understand why you bail... You need quick success to stay afloat. So I will advise that, next campaign do steps 1 - 4, and while your in steps 4 ask lots of questions about what is going wrong on these forums, or even drop me a line and I will take a peek personally. I see your point here, if you cant work for someone else then perhaps you should pay for some mentoring or consulting on your campaigns. There are many professionals including myself that consult others for a living. This will put yourself on a faster road to success. Imaging instead of testing 5 offers at $200 spend, and losing $1000, you spend $1k for consultation, and mentoring. Also, ask your friends, family members, wife, kids, parents, doctor, lawyer, accountant, and the lady standing behind you in the supermarket about what they think about the product you are researching. You will get some interesting answers that will be usable in your next campaign Well, a nice lengthy post once again... I hope this clears some things up...
You could be amazed at what google knows... If your ever in san jose, cali call up your Google rep and see if they can give you a tour when your in town. Just a short trip around campus and you will see the power Google really has