invinceable

Ok, I have been doing lots, and lots of programming (mainly with PHP) for the past year in order to earn around $15,000 where I can set aside to learn some PPC. The reason I only have $15,000 is because I am also in college so I don't have the time of someone working a normal day. I have known for about 1 year since I have been saving I wanted to get into this, because as some of you guys know here, you can make 1000 times what a programmer can make with time.

Again though, I have been busy and haven't really had time to actually learn much about PPC, but I always remembered reading here the reason why its so difficult for newbies to stomach PPC is because of losses at first. Well I am trying to minimize that, but need some direction on where to learn.

I read here that ppc-coach.com is a GREAT resource, especially for people like myself starting out. I will definitely do that since its only $50/month. After that, I figure I need some form of keyword research tool, but I figure right now I don't need something like keyword rockstar that is $400, maybe something a little more simple with less bells and whistles at first like Market Samurai. So if you guys could suggest a keyword tool for a beginner that would be awesome.

I also have the money for domains, but don't have a solid host yet. Have you guys used HostGator? I heard for the price they are great.

Is there any tools/services I'm missing that would be good for a newbie? Any courses worth actually getting? I know I could read this forum and get all the same information, but I would rather pay a little extra $ to have it compiled instead of just reading random tidbits of information.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, and I hope to become a contributing member to this forum as I learn more and more.

justuser

I know it's my first post on this forum but I'm sure somebody will back me up on this. You don't have to buy PPCCoach, keyword rockstar nor market samurai (whatever that is) to be successful. Do yourself a favor and do not buy any ebooks or courses. Resources are out there for free. Some techniques that Will Heimerl aka PPCCoach uses are well known techniques that get covered in millions of blogs. Google Keyword tool and your brain are great free keyword tools. I suggest you learn some basics and start testing. 15k is way more than enough to get you going.

leadsupplier

stay away from ppc coach .. i can help you out .. pm me, you must be pretty good w/ php, show me some of ur sites if possible ... i want to learn..

justo_tx

Tell that to Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page.

If you're here to shill for ppc-coach then you fail, it's fucking garbage and everybody here knows it, but if you want to piss your money away, to each his own I guess.

__________________
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Medici

read the blogs on affbuzz.com and don't buy any programs.

__________________

invinceable

PPC Coach Worth It?

Looks like some mods here disagree with you bud.

invinceable

Thanks everyone else for the tips, and leadsupplier PM'ing you now.

kimboslice

Newbie Guide | NickyCakes.com


Uber Affiliate Marketing Guide

adigitalorange

Good post, helped me out as well. Thanks man.

adigitalorange

Would you recommend for a newbie to shell out the $40/mo for the tracking202 pro? I'm only asking because it looks like it definitely has more features, but being new to the scene I cannot really gauge how worth it the extra features are. In short, you experienced guys, is it worth it for us to shell out the $40/mo to not deal with a bunch of the legwork that it kind of mentions that is required in the self-hosted version?

Dispel

Self-hosted version will do you fine. Preferably dont install it on shared hosting account though, if you can afford it.

__________________
___The MicroAffiliate___

adigitalorange

Damn, I already have HostGator and was just going to throw it up on there. Any other recommendations that are better? Will a VPS work? Is the goal to get something that is quick, or just not something where people can steal your keywords?

kimboslice

Hostgator is a terrible option for installing prosper.

Check the prosper forums.

Prosper202 Forum

DavidLerner

@ invinceable

I'm only going to write this post once, and it's late at night so since I'm nocturnal this is going to be a pretty OUTRAGEOUS response.

PPC...
Alright, don't buy any products. The way you learn is buy trying shit. Start with the search engines like Yahoo, Bing, or Google(make sure you specifically turn content network off if you're running a Search campaign) and plug in some offers and build some simple landing pages and track with prosper, etc.

Read NickyCakes guide, it's golden, and to be honest is all you really need for now. All these products are useless... Who cares if there is some METHOD out there or some TIP. That's not the point. The point is to familiarize yourself with what sells, what works, and to just understand the system. You just get familiar with PPC as a whole, and the only way you do that is by trying shit.

Tools... You don't need them. That's right, fuck tools. I purposely don't use them, at some point in the future I might look into some that help me automate shit but TOOLS are not going to be the difference between a profitable and unprofitable campaign, your brain is. The only tools you need are free, and that's Google's line of tools (Mainly, in fact almost solely the Google Keyword Tool) as well as Prosper 202. Now you should get a dedicated server for Prosper, because the thing is that you are going to be going through a shitload of clicks. But for now, for a campaign only making $20-$50 or a so a day, some random 5 dollar a month hosting like Bluehost or Hostgator is okay. Then you definitely want to switch.

Some idiot asked whether or not they needed the Prosper202 PRO yet they hadn't started a campaign. Listen guys, along with any paid tools ALL THEY DO IS AUTOMATE SHIT FURTHER. Once you already are making decent money and know you're shit, then yeah..maybe you will be a looking for a few more features or some shit. But for now it's fucking irrelevant. No you don't need fucking pro.

Okay, let's talk about tracking. The reason you track is to find profitable and unprofitable keywords. Prosper/Tracking202 will actually show you what keywords are making you money (based on data from both your affiliate network and what you're on average paying per click), and will tell you whether or not it's profitable. The reason people say campaigns are unprofitable at first almost always, is because either the campaign is just a total fail (unlikely, but happens), or you just have a shitload of unprofitable keywords. Literally, you just look at your unprofitable keywords or terms, and either delete them or put them as negatives(meaning you specifically won't show up for keywords with that word in the phrase, if you put "guide" as a negative, you wouldn't show up for car guide, automotive guide, etc.) Then guess what? You're only left with profitable keywords, and furthermore, a PROFITABLE CAMPAIGN! Holy shit... Not rocket science folks...

Split testing, ad groups, etc... Aight, if you're campaign is almost profitable/has a chance, or is already profitable and you just want to ramp up your profit, you split test. YOU SPLIT TEST THE FUCK OUT OF IT. Basically, the theory between split testing is that ONE THING will beat another thing. ONE ad copy will get more clicks than another Ad copy. One ad copy will presell better(more targeted traffic because people know what's involved in order for you to get your lead so you don't have to pay for non-converting traffic) than another adcopy. One landing page will convince more consumers to complete some action than another. Etc. So yes, you test two of them. Then you take the better one, and you test that against another. An so forth and so forth... Prosper202 actually has this built in, and will track which landing page converts better, etc...

All this was pretty much covered in Cakes guide.

OP! I'm dierecting this at you. Don't spend your $15k.. Start testing a bunch of campaigns on a low level... Literally do one campaign...

Here's exactly what I would do. Follow cakes guide, pick some random offer (not a email submit or any offer paying below $2 for that matter because clicks cost a minimum of 5 cents and unless you have an amazing conversion ratio you just won't turn profitable or barely profitable.. I'm talking about search engines here too, this isn't always true) and just set your budget to like $10 a day and just test.
Only focus on that campaign, gather data, think about how you could make it profitable. Chances are you won't even make that first campaign profitable, I didn't make my first one profitable, and tons of people I know didn't make their first campaign profitable. But you never know. Really, you are doing this for experience. The more campaigns you launch, the more you ATTEMPT TO DO WITH IT (split testing, new landing page styles (LP styles), etc), the better you'll get at PPC AFFILIATE MARKETING in general.

Listen, no ebook can teach you Experience. Really, that line alone should really resonate with you. When it comes down to it, no product is going to make you money. YOU are going to make YOU money.

El fin (food for you spanish speaking muthafuckas).

__________________
Blitz Local is headed for disaster.

DavidLerner

made edits to the above post, delete ^^^^^^ the one aboove this

@ invinceable

I'm only going to write this post once, and it's late at night so since I'm nocturnal this is going to be a pretty OUTRAGEOUS response.

PPC...
Alright, don't buy any products. The way you learn is buy trying shit. Start with the search engines like Yahoo, Bing, or Google(make sure you specifically turn content network off if you're running a Search campaign) and plug in some offers and build some simple landing pages and track with prosper, etc.

Read NickyCakes guide, it's golden, and to be honest is all you really need for now. All these products are useless... Who cares if there is some METHOD out there or some TIP. That's not the point. The point is to familiarize yourself with what sells, what works, and to just understand the system. You just get familiar with PPC as a whole, and the only way you do that is by trying shit.

Tools... You don't need them. That's right, fuck tools. I purposely don't use them, at some point in the future I might look into some that help me automate shit but TOOLS are not going to be the difference between a profitable and unprofitable campaign, your brain is. The only tools you need are free, and that's Google's line of tools (Mainly, in fact almost solely the Google Keyword Tool) as well as Prosper 202. Now you should get a dedicated server for Prosper, because the thing is that you are going to be going through a shitload of clicks. But for now, for a campaign only making $20-$50 or a so a day, some random 5 dollar a month hosting like Bluehost or Hostgator is okay. Then you definitely want to switch.

Some idiot asked whether or not they needed the Prosper202 PRO yet they hadn't started a campaign. Listen guys, along with any paid tools ALL THEY DO IS AUTOMATE SHIT FURTHER. Once you already are making decent money and know you're shit, then yeah..maybe you will be a looking for a few more features or some shit. But for now it's fucking irrelevant. No you don't need fucking pro.

Okay, let's talk about tracking. The reason you track is to find profitable and unprofitable keywords. Prosper/Tracking202 will actually show you what keywords are making you money (based on data from both your affiliate network and what you're on average paying per click), and will tell you whether or not it's profitable. The reason people say campaigns are unprofitable at first almost always, is because either the campaign is just a total fail (unlikely, but happens), or you just have a shitload of unprofitable keywords. Literally, you just look at your unprofitable keywords or terms, and either delete them or put them as negatives(meaning you specifically won't show up for keywords with that word in the phrase, if you put "guide" as a negative, you wouldn't show up for car guide, automotive guide, etc.) Then guess what? You're only left with profitable keywords, and furthermore, a PROFITABLE CAMPAIGN! Holy shit... Not rocket science folks...

Split testing, ad groups, etc... Aight, if you're campaign is almost profitable/has a chance, or is already profitable and you just want to ramp up your profit, you split test. YOU SPLIT TEST THE FUCK OUT OF IT. Basically, the theory between split testing is that ONE THING will beat another thing. ONE ad copy will get more clicks than another Ad copy. One ad copy will presell better(more targeted traffic because people know what's involved in order for you to get your lead so you don't have to pay for non-converting traffic) than another adcopy. One landing page will convince more consumers to complete some action than another. Etc. So yes, you test two of them. Then you take the better one, and you test that against another. An so forth and so forth... Prosper202 actually has this built in, and will track which landing page converts better, etc...

All this was pretty much covered in Cakes guide.

OP! I'm dierecting this at you. Don't spend your $15k.. Start testing a bunch of campaigns on a low level... Literally do one campaign...

Here's exactly what I would do. Follow cakes guide, pick some random offer (not a email submit or any offer paying below $2 for that matter because clicks cost a minimum of 5 cents and unless you have an amazing conversion ratio you just won't turn profitable or barely profitable.. I'm talking about search engines here too, this isn't always true) and just set your budget to like $10 a day and just test.
Only focus on that campaign, gather data, think about how you could make it profitable. Chances are you won't even make that first campaign profitable, I didn't make my first one profitable, and tons of people I know didn't make their first campaign profitable. But you never know. Really, you are doing this for experience. The more campaigns you launch, the more you ATTEMPT TO DO WITH IT (split testing, new landing page styles (LP styles), etc), the better you'll get at PPC AFFILIATE MARKETING in general. Really what you spend to test a campaign depends on the offer payout, because the more the offer pays out the more you can afford to spend. Example: If you have two campaigns, one $7 lead campaign and a $35 rebill campaign and for both your average conversion (direct linking let's say, i know you can't on google, hypothetical folks) say is 4%. Okay... I'm going to make this real simple. Since you can convert 1 in 25 visitors into a lead, that means you have you can spend 35/25=about $1.40 per visitor in order to break even. So now you know what you can spend AT MAX in order to break even. Great, spend less than this or improve your conversion and you make money. In terms of data, YOU DON'T NEED $15 fucking grand... Don't be a fucking moron OP. If you spent $150-$300 on this campaign you would have a decent amount of info, enough that you could either get it profitable or fairly close, and from there you are making money anyways so your not digging into that 15 grand. For the $7 campaign it's similar, 7/25=.28 cents... So let's think about this, clicks on google cost a minimum of $.05... Depending on competition, and if you are bidding on zero-comp. longtails, you could either get $.05 or very close.. Etc... DON'T WASTE YOUR FUCKING 15 grand...


Listen, no ebook can teach you Experience. Really, that line alone should really resonate with you. When it comes down to it, no product is going to make you money. YOU are going to make YOU money.

El fin (food for you spanish speaking muthafuckas).

__________________
Blitz Local is headed for disaster.

adigitalorange

I was that idiot that asked about the paid version

Anyways, great fucking post, will certainly help me out a bunch and cleared things up.

bprimeelite

Best thing you can do right now is take about $5k out of that $15k becuase you aren't going to need all of it for awhile. You will need it once you start to scale since cashflow could be a problem if you don't have the extra before you get the wires. I would just read around some to figure out how to do ppc the best and a lot of it is just learning. I used to read like crazy but now 95% of the stuff I read is pure bullshit from people who don't really make much from ppc. Also in my opinion with Google changing so much stuff I would spread out and diversify for my websites. I do this and do it this way.

50% SEO
30% PPC
10% Placement Targeting
10% Social Media (paid tweets, facebook, etc)

I am more of an SEO guy so switch things up to get a good formula that works for you but this is the best way to do it so you don't have all your eggs in one basket.

BlueYonder

Your advice was golden. Great post. +rep.

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adigitalorange

Would you say some others on this site go with about 90% PPC, with almost no SEO? I see a lot of blog posts talking about the waste of time it is. I'm not denying it works, but people make tons of cash without it, right? Or is SEO a must with PPC campaigns?

DavidLerner

As NickyCakes said it best, you never see anyone in SEO making 6 figures a day. It just doesn't happen (highly unlikely)... If you really want to make money in this business, and fast, you do PPC/MediaBuys/Paid traffic in general.

Now don't discredit SEO, I always stay diversified among Membership Sites, Ranked SEO sites, etc... But mainly my income comes from PPC.

You have to realize that SEO is extremely tedious and slow, and the time spent doing it could yield 1000's greater results in PPC. Show me a SEO campaign where you can get to $400 daily in a matter of a week, it just doesn't happen. I guarantee you this guy isn't making bank.

When I talk about diversification, I mainly don't even mean between SEO and PPC, mostly I mean different traffic sources and offers WITHIN PPC. Search Engines, Content, PPV, Media Buy, tons of niches... That's what I mean by diversification. But yes I do have some what I guess you could call SEO sites.

Let me expand on what he meant by using the 5k, because it may have confused you... Now, remember when I said that you are going to get a campaign profitable... Alright great, you only spent a hundred or so to get it there (or you dropped it if there was just no potential) and now it's pure profit. You should be constantly tweaking, but now you are going to remove your daily spend limit (or inch it up slowly) and spend more and more. Eventually you are going to be spending a fair amount every day, whether it be $200, $2k (in your case, at this stage you probably won't be spending more)... So yeah, since it's pure profit campaign you ARE going to want to scale it and make money, but where does this money come from... GOOGLE IS CHARGING YOU... That's where your 15k/5k/whatever comes in... But that's not testing money, that's pure profit replication scaling monies...

__________________
Blitz Local is headed for disaster.

Dispel

Yeah good luck with that $35 rebill campaign on google. Or yahoo or Bing for that matter. Or anything else with a thin landing page for that matter. Or anything affiliate related at all. I missed the advanced cloaking advice in that post. And any mention of google slaps, let alone of what to do when google banhammers your fanny perpendicular.

If I recall correctly NickyCakes advised that Facebook is the best place to start for a newbie, as its a much simpler, more purely PPC environment, with no quality scores. Although its much tougher now there too.

And whats wrong with starting with some content network campaigns, where you will actually get some really cheap clicks, to get your around writing ads, using Prosper, using Adwords, creating landing pages etc? If you're just learning, then just learn. No need to jump into Search straight away and waste your cash on $2 clicks on keywords you got from the Adwords Keyword Tool and everyone else got their keywords from also.

__________________
___The MicroAffiliate___

adigitalorange

So you are saying start with facebook and not google, as even though it is difficult, it is still easier than google or msn?

DavidLerner

No, dispel is just taking what I said literally. When I was talking about rebills, I was talking generally for PPC how you would figure out what you could spend. It was completely unrelated to Search, but I see how it could be said that way.

So yeah, you can't do rebills on search. Bad example. But everything else I said was right.

To tell you the truth adigitalorgange, you can't really say one platform is that much easier than another.

Sure, in a sense I guess you could say MSN and Yahoo is a little easier than Google because of a little less competiton. Or Facebook, because of great targeting options and a relatively new platform. But when it comes down to it, you can make money on all platforms. Asking the question "What's Easier" means that you probably won't make it in this industry. Nothing's easy, you have to put down your hard earned cash with no guarantee of a return.

But one thing I can say is this... Before you ask the question, Can I make money with this platform "Google, Yahoo, Facebook" realize that if people are advertising there you probably can. I've made tons of money on Google, and I started on Google, but that doesn't mean its the best or easiest. You just try shit. Stop asking questions and just TRY but be smart about it, don't waste a shitload of money, and do it cautiously.

For instance, many people fail to realize how huge Google's content network is. It's WAY larger than Search. Think of all the sites with adsense on them out there, TONS. Sure, it's a little harder and you can drain money quick... But if you learn the system, test in small amounts first, and use ur fricking brain you can make massive amounts of money.

But again, by asking what's easier adigitalorange and just asking all these nonsense questions that you could easily figure out your own, it makes me wonder whether someone like you who's not willing to take risk and try shit out is going to make it in this highly competitive business. EVERYTHING IS COMPETITIVE, nothing is easy. BUT IF THERE'S MONEY TO BE MADE, and you're willing to put your money on the line and use your fucking brain, YOU CAN MAKE MONEY.

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Blitz Local is headed for disaster.

Sharksfan

I love this thread. +rep DavidLerner

adigitalorange

Advice taken, thank you again DavidLerner. I'm certainly not afraid to test the waters, but like you said I want to be smart about it. A shitload of money is spent everyday on every network, and was just wondering if I should start small before moving to somewhere like google. It's the same thing as going into fucking new york and opening up a restaurant and then some random city in north dakota, much less competition. But I understand your point about taking risks in order to gain knowledge and I agree whole heartedly, I just didn't know if there was a network I should go for first, but I understand now, thank you.

-Vince

Jonyk

I do mainly SEO and just want to make sure you understand why people choose to do seo rather then ppc. If you have other things in life like full time job or university etc. you don't have much time working, it is nice to have a big portion of your business on auto pilot. Organic traffic is great for that. Yea you spend time and money building links and working your site code and maybe you need slightly more knowledge to do seo than ppc (ppc is mainly testing) but in the long run you have a site that gets organic traffic, converts and you are done with it. Keep it running and use that income on something else maybe on PPC or hookers who knows... And if you ever need quick buck go to any website marketplace and sell it well beyond your monthly income. Organic traffic is very valuable !!! For example Bankaholic.com was sold for over $1m simply because it had amazing organic traffic. Despite everything I said I do suggest starting with PPC and not Adwords good luck bro

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TylerDurden

+rep DavidLerner