federal trade commission complianceeasier to scale up. for this example, we will be using a hair...
TRANSCRIPT
Federal Trade Commission Compliance I make every effort at candor regarding any products or services we use, recommend, or otherwise make mention of. I strive to clearly differentiate between our own products or services versus those of third parties, to facilitate inquiries, support, and customer care. Likewise, just as I (and any other legitimate business) may profit from the sale of my own products or services, I may also profit from the sale of others’ products or services (like any retailer). Additionally, wherever products or services may give rise to income generation, I endeavor to provide realistic and factual data, but highlight the fact that the variables impacting results are so numerous and uncontrollable that no guarantees are in any way made. It is my goal to embrace the guidelines and requirements of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the benefit of all, and with that in mind provide the following disclosures regarding compensation and disclaimer regarding earnings & income. Note that material connections may not be made known at every single advertisement or affiliate link. Thus, to be safe, you should simply assume there is a material connection and that I may receive compensation in money or otherwise for anything you purchase as a result of visiting this website, and also that we may be paid merely by you clicking any link. Compensation You should assume that I may be compensated for purchases of products or services mentioned on this guide that are not created, owned, licensed, or otherwise materially controlled by me. Stated differently, while most people obviously understand that individuals make a living by way of the profit that remains after the costs associated with providing their product or service are covered, at least theoretically there may be someone out there who does not understand that a third party can "affiliate" someone else's products or services and be compensated by the product or service creator/owner for helping spread the word about their offering. Just compare it to retailers. They seldom produce anything, but rather make their money connecting product and service creators with end users.
Earnings & Income In light of all of the factors above, impinging on the very nature of income-producing products and services, there is no way to guarantee results of any kind whatsoever. Accordingly, we affirmatively declare that we make no guarantees as to your earnings & income of any kind, at any time. As with any business endeavor or investment, past performance is no guarantee or predictor of future performance. Any testimonials or other representations of results are for illustrative purposes only and, though every effort is made to ensure they’re factually honest, they are not intended to imply or insinuate what is likely to happen with you. Your reliance on them as such is not advised. It should be noted that “earnings & income” is so phrased with specific intent. While income may typify the earnings most either seek or are accustomed to, earnings can come in non-monetary forms. These include some forms that are abstract or intangible, and thus not even readily converted to currency or a common medium of exchange. Thus, note that all manner of compensation, including earnings of a non-income yet nevertheless beneficial form, are covered by these provisions.
Introduction
Paid traffic is one of the fastest and simplest methods to
drive targeted visitors to your CPA offers. It is also one of the
fastest and simplest methods to leave you flat broke and
discouraged from internet marketing. That is the major reason
why many beginners and even some veteran marketers choose to
stay away from paid traffic. However, you will soon learn that
when used properly, nothing can beat the speed and scalability of
using paid traffic.
Although I do love all paid traffic sources including PPC and
PPV. The one paid traffic source that will always be my favorite is
media buying. Why? Because media buying is faster, simpler, and
more easily scalable than any other form of traffic generation.
Period. Also, unlike PPC and PPV, media buying ad networks are
much more flexible when it comes to approving campaigns so you
run a much lower risk of running into trouble. Most importantly, no
other traffic source can match the absolutely incredible targeting
and volume of media buying.
With media buying, you do not need to write any articles,
design your own websites, or do any off-site SEO. You go straight
to the websites that are already bringing in tons of targeted traffic
for your offers. You are essentially paying for someone else’s time
and hard work to bring in relevant traffic so you can reap the
benefits immediately. The type of media buying we will be doing is
display advertising. You place your banner on their website and
watch the traffic come in straight to your CPA offer or landing
page.
Step 1: Choosing The Offer
As always, we are going to need to choose a CPA offer
before we do anything. I know you read this all the time, but the
number one recommendation I can give you is to ask your affiliate
manager. Not only do they know what is converting best right
now, but they also know what is converting best for each traffic
source. That’s why it’s important to not just ask which offers are
the hottest, but also which offers are converting best specifically
for display traffic.
I also recommend you choose a wide ranging niche. The
bigger the niche, the better. This will widen your options when
looking for sites to buy display advertising from, meaning it will be
easier to scale up. For this example, we will be using a hair
removal product offer from Maxbounty called NoNo Hair
Remover. It is an offer I am promoting with this method with great
success. I will reveal exactly what I did and the results I got.
However, I will not be revealing the exact sites I advertised on for
obvious reasons.
Tip: Competitive Intelligence
Another way to choose an offer to promote is by using
competitive intelligence. These are tools that show you what the
competition is doing including the exact banners, websites they
are advertising on, and how long they have been advertising.
What I like to do is use competitive intelligence to see which
campaigns have been running for at least 90 days. The reason
why is because it is extremely unlikely that someone is going to
be running an unprofitable campaign for 90 days straight. The
longer the campaign is running, the more likely it is that the offer
they are promoting is profitable.
With competitive intelligence, it is possible to completely rip
off someone else’s campaign. However, I highly advise against
this. Not only is this very unethical, but it can lead you into trouble
with the affiliate you are ripping off and possibly even the traffic
network you may be running on. Instead, use this to get ideas of
what is proven to work and implement those elements into your
own campaigns.
There are many competitive intelligence tools on the market, but
here are the main three:
• Adbeat
• MixRank
• WhatRunsWhere
If you decide that you want to use competitive intelligence, I
suggest you do your research on all three of these before you
make a decision. By the way, none of those links are affiliate
links so I have no incentive to recommend one over the other.
Step 2: Researching Demographics
This is the foundation of your campaign and a crucial step in
determining your success. If you match up the demographics of
your offer with the demographics of the site you advertise on, then
you are already giving yourself a great chance of success.
We will be using Quantcast for demographic research. When
doing bigger media buys you will want to also use Alexa and
Compete. You can also go to offervault.com, find the offer your
promoting, and then find the demographics of your offer in one
click. However, in this particular case, Offer Vault does not have
the demographic information for this offer. We will be specifically
researching the demographics of the offer’s main website. In this
case it is trynono.com
Go to quantcast.com and simply type in the URL of the
website you are researching:
Click “Search” and it will take you to the site’s profile of the
website. Scroll down and you will see this:
What we are primarily interested in are age range, gender, and
income. In this case we see that our target demographic should
be females aged 35-44 with an income of $0-50K. This means
that we will get optimal results if we advertise on a site with these
demographics.
Tip: SEO For Chrome
When researching demographics and analyzing sites, I
highly recommend you use the plugin SEO For Chrome for
Google Chrome to make the process much simpler and much
faster. It is a free plugin that allows you to quickly analyze data
from any site from Quantcast, Alexa, and Compete with one click.
All you need to do is visit the site you are interested in and then
click the SEO For Chrome button on the browser and a sidebar
will popup showing you a quick analysis of the site based on
Quantcast, Alexa, and Compete. You can also visit the profile of
the site with one click.
Step 3: Finding Sites To Advertise On
This step is where we will try to find sites that match the
demographics of the offer. The method I have had most success
with regarding small media buys is by contacting owners of niche
forums. Often times these guys are passionate about their niche
and drive massive traffic, but they have no idea about
monetization. They either don’t have any advertising on their site
or they are making little to no money by placing Adsense on their
forum. They will jump at the opportunity to advertise for you as
you will be able to offer much more money than they are already
receiving.
I will be discussing how to contact these owners in the next
step, but for now I will show you how to find these forums. The
first method is by using Google and simply typing “(niche) +forum”
(side note: if you have a profitable PPC campaign you can search
one of your profitable keywords and contact sites directly. It works
wonders if you get deeper into media buying). Another way to find
forums to target is by going to one of the big forum search
engines and searching for forums in your niche. Two of my
favorite such search engines are http://omgili.com/
http://boardreader.com/.
You will then check the demographics of these sites to see if
they match up with the demographics of the offer. Keep in mind
that these demographics don’t have to be completely identical,
but the more similar, the better. Here are the demographics of the
site I ended up advertising on for my campaign. They don’t
exactly match up, but I was still able to get an amazing ROI.
Also, you want to target forums that are getting at least 30,000
views per month. The reason why is because even with a very
low CTR of 0.5% you would still get 150 clicks on a site that gets
30,000 views per month, which is a very significant amount of
clicks to receive from targeted high quality traffic that is very likely
to convert well. To check traffic statistics, you can use Quantcast,
Compete, and/or Alexa. I like to check all 3 in order to verify
information. Here are the traffic stats of the site I advertised on
from Compete:
Tip: Bookmarking Sites
Using bookmarking sites to find sites to advertise on is one
of my favorite strategies. Usually, these bookmarking sites will
have much more targeted sites than Google. Also, these sites
usually have much less competition for advertisement. Lastly, the
sites you will find are usually higher quality sites for the reader
that they continue to return to. My favorite bookmarking site to
search is Xmarks.com
Step 4: Contacting & Negotiating With Forum Owners
As I mentioned in the previous step, I recommend contacting
15-20 sites. The reason why is because these are smaller sites
that are not usually contacted by advertisers so a large majority of
them will not even respond. In my experience, about 10-15% will
respond after you initially contact them. Of the 15-20 sites you
contact, you can realistically expect 2 or 3 of them to respond.
This is where you begin negotiating.
Usually, there should be a “contact us” link at the bottom of
the site where you can contact the site owner. You don’t have to
say anything fancy during your initial contact. Here is the exact
script I use:
“Hi (owner of forum),
I am interested in advertising on your site, and I wanted to discuss
rates for purchasing advertising space. Please respond back with
any information to (your email).
Regards,
(your name)”
Be sure to keep it professional and don’t use language such
as “would you like to make some extra cash?” You don’t want to
come off as a spammer, and you are more likely to get a
response if you seem like a person who is serious about
business. When negotiating a price, you will want to pay as little
as possible while giving yourself the best possible chance of
being profitable. Here is a simple formula to figure out the
maximum amount you should pay per 1,000 impressions (aka
CPM):
(offer payout) X (minimal CTR) X (minimal conversion rate) X
(1000)
In this case the offer payout is $15.00, the minimal CTR we
should expect is 0.5%, and the minimal conversion rate we should
expect is 1%. Using these numbers, the formula would be
calculated as such:
$15.00 X 0.005 X 0.01 X 1000 = 0.75
That means the most we should pay is 0.75 per one thousand
impressions of our ad which would be 0.75/1000 X 66,000 = 49.5
so the least we can pessimistically expect to make is $49.5 per
month on this site being pessimistic about conversion rate and
CTR. Keep this number in mind when discussing rates for
advertising space.
Remember, these forum owners often times have no idea
what their site is worth so you can get away with offering as little
as $25. Even if they are making $25 per month on Adsense, they
will love the fact that they are getting paid immediately instead of
monthly. However, keep in mind that many of these forum owners
will not waste their time with low amounts so I recommend that
you don’t just flat out offer $25 per month. Instead, ask the forum
what they believe their site is worth monthly. If they overshoot the
price you are willing to pay, show them the traffic statistics you
researched and explain what their site is worth. If negotiations
come to a standstill, then offer $49.5 (or whatever price you came
up with using the formula) per month as a take it or leave it offer.
You can offer higher than this amount, but remember that this is
the least you can realistically expect to make per month. If you
want to give yourself the best chance of profitability, then that is
the highest price you should pay. I ended up paying $25 for the
first month of my campaign in this particular case.
Step 5: Setting Up Tracking & Optimization
Unlike PPC and PPV, you will not be tracking dozens and
possibly hundreds or even thousands of keywords/URLs. Instead,
you will be tracking clicks and conversions of 3-5 banner ads. You
can use a tracking platform such as Prosper202 or CPV Lab, but I
have a much easier way for tracking.
You will be using simple sub-IDs for each banner you create
(you can also use the banners that come with the offer from the
CPA network). For each banner, you will use one different sub-ID.
It is very easy to create these links. With Maxbounty you will
simply go to the offer and enter “b1” “b2” and “b3” for each banner
by using the advanced tracking options:
Each time you enter a different sub-ID you will get your tracking
code for the banner by scrolling down and clicking on “get
tracking code”
You will associate one sub-ID with each banner. Make sure you
tell the forum/site owner to evenly rotate your ads so that they will
get equal amounts of impressions. After gathering enough data,
you will then eliminate non-profitable banners and keep the
profitable ones. To check your clicks and conversions to each
banner, you simply click on “REPORTS” and find the offer you are
promoting. You will then click on “Sub-ID” and a report will pop up
showing you the clicks and conversions from each banner. Below
is what happened during the first month of my campaign so you
can get an idea of what you should do for optimization.
First 5 Days
Banner 1: 18 clicks, 0 conversions
Banner 2: 33 clicks, 2 conversions
Banner 3: 27 clicks, 0 conversions
So after 5 days, I already had two conversion for $30.00. I had
already obtained a positive ROI and the month had only began. At
this rate I would make $120 for the month and have an ROI of
over 400%. However, there was very little data to work with and I
still had to optimize the campaign. I decided to drop banner 1 as it
had a very low CTR along with 0 conversions. Obviously, I
decided to keep banner 2 running, and I also decided to keep
banner 3 as it had a pretty strong CTR.
After 10 Days
Banner 2: 83 clicks, 5 conversions
Banner 3: 67 clicks, 1 conversions
By dropping the 3rd banner, the clicks to banner 2 and banner 3
increased and so did the conversions. I had already made $90
and was on pace to make $270 for the month.
After 15 Days
Banner 2: 125 clicks, 7 conversions
Banner 3: 105 clicks, 2 conversions
As expected, the CTR had dropped for both banners. You can
expect banner blindness to come into effect especially with a lot
of repeat visitors on forums.
After 20 Days
Banner 2: 160 clicks, 8 conversions
Banner 3: 129 clicks, 3 conversions
Again, the CTR dropped for both banners and was terrible for
banner 3. I decided to get rid of banner 3 and see how much I
could milk out of banner 2 for the remainder of the month. It was
already too late to start testing new banners so I had to work with
what I had.
After 30 days
Banner 2: 270 clicks, 14 conversions
In total, after the month was up I had made 14 conversions for
$210. Not bad for a $25 investment.
Step 6: Scaling Up
It would be unwise to continue to use the same banner for
the next month as the CTR is constantly dropping, especially with
forums where there is a significant amount of repeat visitors. It
would eventually become non-profitable so I would need to create
new banners for the next month to increase CTR and
conversions. In order to scale up, you can of course contact more
sites using the demographic research I showed you.
Also, remember the data we gathered from Quantcast? At
the bottom of the page it shows you “Audience Also Likes” along
with a list of sites. An example is below:
This is the Quantcast profile for nba.com. The higher the
affinity score, the more likely a visitor to nba.com is to visit it. For
example, a visitor to nba.com is 33.9 times more likely to visit
pgatour.com than the average internet user. Use these sites to
determine which sites to contact to purchase advertising space.
The higher the affinity, the more likely you are to replicate your
success from your initial campaign.
General Tips About Small Direct To Site Media Buys
If you are lucky, the site you place your media buy on will
have an ad server installed. If that is the case, simply ask the
website owner, or whoever is in charge of advertising, to place
your banners on the ad server so that they will automatically
rotate. However, more often than not the smaller sites will not
have this installed. This is no big deal. All you have to do is tell
the website owner that you would like to use different banners on
different days so he/she can manually rotate the banners as
frequently as you want. Also, make sure they include the different
tracking links with each particular banner so you can see which
ones are performing best.
Always make sure that your banners are being displayed
above the fold. This means that your ads should be seen as soon
as the viewer reaches the website without having to scroll down.
There is a dramatic decrease in CTR when your ads are below
the fold so make sure during your negotiations that you get ad
placement above the fold.
Network Media Buys
My favorite form of media buying is going direct to site. It is
the cheapest way to go and gives you the potential of the highest
ROI you can get. However, I do a lot of media buying through ad
networks as well. On these networks, they have an RTB (real time
bidding) system in place which allows you to generate traffic
almost immediately as long as you are the highest bidder on a
particular website. It is a very fast process and I know a lot of
people who solely use these networks to be successful with
media buys.
There are downsides to this. The most notable difference is
that most ad networks will take anywhere from 30-50% of your
money to act as the middleman between you and the website
owners! Of course, you can lose your money very quickly with
little results if you do not know what you are doing, but that also
goes with any paid traffic source.
What I like to do with network media buys is quickly test
several websites at a time. Doing this I can see which sites I can
potentially be profitable on. I may even be profitable immediately.
However, ultimately I do not want to keep running traffic on that
website through the ad network. Remember how most take 30-
50%? That is a lot of money negatively affecting your ROI.
So here is what I do. Instead of continuing to run ads to the
site through the ad network, I contact the site to see if I can
negotiate a direct to site media buy with them. This eliminates the
30-50% cut from the ad network, and significantly increases
profitability. Remember, the website owner is also taking a pay
cut from the middleman so he/she will likely be willing to negotiate
a direct to site buy.
Premium Traffic At A Budget Price
As I have stated before, media buying is an absolute HUGE
source of traffic. It is so big in fact that ad networks often do not
sell their entire traffic inventory that they have available. This is
called remnant inventory, and I am going to show you how to get
this traffic at a budget price.
Mbuy.com (formerly known as Adbuyer) is a remnant
inventory ad network. They will be able to give you premium traffic
at a much lower rate than the bigger ad networks such as
SiteScout, GCN, and AdSonar. They also have a much lower
minimum deposit (when I first used it as Adbuyer I believe it was
only $50) so it is much more accessible. What you want to do
here is test out the remnant inventory from other ad networks. If
you find something profitable, then you can scale up by
generating more traffic from the same websites by going directly
to the bigger network that is supplying the remnant inventory to
mbuy. Or you can go directly to the site and negotiate a media
buy with them as well.
Conclusion
I have shown you step-by-step how to generate targeted
traffic through small direct to site media buys. If you follow these
steps, I am very confident you can have success with this
excellent traffic source. Don’t listen to the “experts” who say that
media buying doesn’t work or that it is too expensive or
complicated. Media buying has always worked, is working now,
and will always work when done properly. There is a reason why
8 of the top 10 CPA marketers from one of the top networks I
work with use media buys as their primary traffic source. It is no
“loophole” or “hidden secret.” It is a real, proven strategy that the
top marketers are using every single day, and this is one of the
ways to do it properly.
In my opinion, media buying is the number one traffic source
you can ever get into for CPA marketing. Unlike PPC and PPV,
there are little to no restrictions for getting ads approved. There
are literally millions of sites to choose from so this can practically
never become saturated and competition is very rarely an issue.
The simple and easy demographic research allows you to laser
target visitors that will convert. Also, the way I teach you is
cheaper than any PPC or PPV method that I have seen. The
example study case I showed got about $0.06 per click which I
could have easily made even cheaper if I created more effective
banners. Media buying may not be the most praised form of traffic
generation, but for me it is undoubtedly the most effective.