$3k to begin with!

maddogtom

New member
Feb 17, 2010
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Hi everyone, go easy on me its my first time here! I suppose im just looking for advice! I work as a web designer and online marketeer for my job and I want to start working for myself full time. I have almost built a website to help me get into the CPA networks and am looking to start CPA marketing and have a budget of about 3K to spend.

Just wanted to find out if you guys think this is the best way to go in the beginning or should i invest the money in other things, e.g building some affiliate sites to generate opt ins and sales through the likes of clickbank?

Thanks in advance for your advice everyone!
 


My advice:

Start with SEO. The traffic is free (minus time/effort)... so everything you make is a profit. Build 20-page sites in every sector you can (insurance, credit cards, diet/beauty, biz op, etc...) so they will start aging immediately. Make sure you pick good domain names as well. Ones with branding power + keywords in them.

From there, you can put all your earnings into paid traffic and possible start ballin hard enough to wear chains. You will also buy Nike Air-Force ones in every color imaginable.

good luck bro!
 
SEO is def. the way to go. It might be tough at first it'll be worth it. If you can master, or even become moderately good at, building search engine traffic you can clone the success for future projects.
 
You don't need to build a site to get into CPA networks. Apply, say you're fairly new and testing various things. Follow up with a call. I recommend C2M, A4D and EWA to be honest. Like $1k for weekly payouts.

Test new things. I've never done SEO so I can't comment on that. But $3k isn't that bad. PPV is big right now, maybe you get into that. You're a designer so you can create your own 750x550's and test them on a good qual/low'ish vol network like Media Traffic. Facebook is always a good place to start. Nickycakes has a good guide to getting started, and EWA have guides too if you sign up to their network.
 
You don't need to build a site to get into CPA networks. Apply, say you're fairly new and testing various things. Follow up with a call. I recommend C2M, A4D and EWA to be honest. Like $1k for weekly payouts.

Test new things. I've never done SEO so I can't comment on that. But $3k isn't that bad. PPV is big right now, maybe you get into that. You're a designer so you can create your own 750x550's and test them on a good qual/low'ish vol network like Media Traffic. Facebook is always a good place to start. Nickycakes has a good guide to getting started, and EWA have guides too if you sign up to their network.

Here's the guide he's talking about: Newbie Guide | NickyCakes.com

On a side note copywriting is crucial to success anywhere online. The words you type are the sole factor is whether you make nothing, or something online. Pick up a few books on copywriting it'll be well worth the time and money.

I was mainly into SEO until just a few weeks ago when I had a little bit of cash to play with and didn't mind wasting it all. I got into premium PPC and just watched certain people and saw, as the weeks went on, who failed and who stuck.

I then guessed as best I could to why certain people failed. E.g - low converting offers, bad pages, no exit pops, etc, etc.

I made a list and came up with a pretty good idea for what worked with what traffic sources. I had a page built and tried to incorporate everything all the other pages had while still trying to write even better copy and having even better graphics made.

It turned out great. Once I saw what keywords were converting and what ones weren't I managed to get the campaign lean and mean. Not making me a killing, but it's still pretty cool and motivating.

You live and you learn. Whatever you pick I recommend sticking with instead of flip flopping around a lot (something I did for a long time).

For areas like PPV, Facebook, etc copy, and landing pages matter but from what I gather it's more about mass testing not about the fine details (since you aren't paying a ton for the traffic). Where as premium PPC such as adwords, adsonar, adcenter, and ysm, all need to have solid landing pages with killer copy, graphics, and of course offers.

Good luck.
 
thanks for the help guys! the nicky cakes guide was an interesting read! thanks for the advice too ppcIcon, but dont worry im not that daft, im not looking to blow the money!
 
its very true what everyone else says, you wont learn more if you loose 1000 instead of 300 on you first try.

track your traffic, offer->keyword/demographics->ads->landingpage->conversions, and act on the result. tracking202 is popular and free.

facebook and google are kinda basic, try each at least once.

the two sticky threads in this forum is 50% of the good stuff posted. Read them many times.

make sure you realize if you are "interrupting" your visitor or if you are answering a question he is interested in, makes everything different.

facebook and google have a lot of things in common, they are very hard (at our level :) ) to get personal contact with, they have (relativly) userfriendly systems, they are overpopulated and they have a lot of rules you have to follow.

Myspace, bing and yahoo have less rules, and most others have possibly the law and no porn as guidelines. Good to know if that is what you feel is stopping you.

study others campaigns like a blackhat seo studies the Viagra-serp. Figure out not only what but why it works for them.

stay off of rebills and deceptive sites until you see where that shitstorm ends up. everyone here will call me a pussy for saying it, but if youre not already into it theres no point in getting into a dying and/or illegal businessmodel. yes some form of it will survive, no doubt. not necessarily yours tho, just saying.

social media sites will own the users time in the forseeable future. be there as long and cheap as possible.

real sites about products or fraction of niches will continue to draw buyermode traffic you will be able to compete about. real sites are not 20 articles on a wordpressblog.

good luck and such...
 
Just because you have 3k doesn't mean you need to go spend 3k. The problem many run into is the fact that they try to spend their whole marketing budget without a real grasp of the industry and their demographics/market. The best thing to do is like others say, just start with a brandable website in a certain high volume niche and slowly build content and links while aging the domain. After you start figuring out what is converting then scale it with PPC, Social media, media buys, etc. $3k isn't a lot of money at all once you start competing in these niches with a lot of traffic. That is about a one day ad-spend for a low-volume advertiser.
 
3k is a lot of money, go slower than you would like to.

Just one of 25 amazing, enlightening posts. Way to go ppcIcon, you are a straight up genius with your wisdom. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with WF.

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