Ahh, feels good to fuckup for the first time

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BullsEye

I am the gatekeeper
Sep 28, 2007
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This might need to go in the newb section, dunno, most of this is just shit I've had floating around and need to get written down and organized, so I apologize to the mods beforehand if thats the case. But I did want to post something of use, since thats supposed to be the theme of this place.

I started my first affiliate attempt about 2 weeks ago after being here on wf for the past 4-5 months or so, and I've learned a couple basic things that some noobs and old timers alike can probably relate to.

I started in the financial sector, a couple reasons for that. Most highly competitive niches scare people because of the amount of difficulty when they're first starting out. Now I might still be dead wrong for making that niche selection on my first attempt, but, I AM NOT GIVING UP, which is important to remember.

Its easy to get to the top 3 -5 results and then drop off the radar, I'm sure every affiliate network has seen more than their fair share of people who have done that.

Some people don't have the stomach to withstand it, but my thinking is if you can learn to make a profitable campaign in a tough niche, you can learn to make one anywhere.

I started with free vouchers, nothing else. My first day I spent 1.50 on a click, got a 24.00 conversion. QS wasn't an issue, was reading on here for awhile on how to make google not hate you. Sitemap, privacy, small amount of content. Didn't have any outbound links, but still had great quality score. Not too shabby, right?

Now I should mention at this point that I spent $100 to have some landing pages designed, and i'll touch on that later but its important to keep some shit in mind when you're having your page made.

So, in all my noob glory, I was ready to quit my job, put a down payment on my first house, pay off my ridiculous amounts of debts, buy into that expensive poker tourney, and spend some quality time north of the states :rasta:

Like 1800%ish ROI was pretty good in my thinking, right? I come back later that day, 16 more clicks and no conversions.

OKAY, I failed. Awesome. 2 choices now. Give up, bitch whine and moan my way back to the bottom of the barrel e-books I downloaded, or TAKE ACTION.

So heres what I learned.

Site/LP - When you make your site, keep your visitor in mind. Would you trust your site? Would you be persuaded to take that action, be it fill out a form, enter your email, or click the buy button? Does it look PROFESSIONAL? Or just a thinly veiled attempt to get someone to buy something. I made the mistake of thinking a semi-ok site would convert like craziness, I was wrong, and should have put alot more time and effort into it.

Content - Make sure its quality and you have plenty of it. This can be outsourced, but make sure that it makes sense to your readers and isn't just jammed with keywords with no flow of thought whatsoever.

Keywords - Don't be afraid to think way outside the box. Everyone is bidding on most of the short tail words you can come up with, again this applies to competitive niches for the most part.

So think of people who are searching in an in-direct way for something you provide. If you provide loans, look for people who are trying to "get money for bills next month" instead of loans quick, or loans online. Oh yeah, start with Exact and Phrase match when you're starting out, otherwise you'll burn through your budget uber quick.

Track EVERYTHING down to the keyword, your own data is the most valuable of all. Then you can scale properly once you find whats profitable.

Yes kids, I'm sorry, but believe it or not, there is a time to STOP READING FORUMS and go out and DO WORK, SON! 90% of people will try to read their way to success. If thats you, go make an e-book plz.

I think thats the reason traffic here at WF died down, and Jon was actually right to be happy about it. Less people reading, more people doing.

Its cool to be READING about the ideas to make 100k a year, much better to BE the guy doing it. Its so easy to get caught in analysis paralysis when you're starting out, so go out and fail, it'll be fun, remember, and you'll learn a bunch of shit:D

Start on all 3 engines to get familiar with their systems. Yahoo is fucking quirky lately, msn has like no traffic, but great conversions, apparently. The point is get familiar with them.

Bum market if you have to, go out post flyers, do WHATEVER it takes. You can get approved for ANY affiliate company if you just let them know you will do whatever it takes.

Thats it for now, let the flaming commence. :anon.sml:
 
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DO WORK SON!!! good words of encouragement. I need to find some vouchers and get going!
 
In this particular situation yeah, 2 reasons. 1, the keyword is an urgency one, so the conversion rate should be high imo, and secondly...i just took a look at the LP from a big perspective and realized i wouldn't do shit on it except click back :) also the fuckin words were costing like 2-3 bucks a click, so not much room for error
 
In this particular situation yeah, 2 reasons. 1, the keyword is an urgency one, so the conversion rate should be high imo, and secondly...i just took a look at the LP from a big perspective and realized i wouldn't do shit on it except click back :) also the fuckin words were costing like 2-3 bucks a click, so not much room for error

Think you missed the point on the fact that 16 clicks has no statistical significance. You could get 10 leads on your next 50 clicks...
 
If spending money on 16 clicks costs too much then you definately don't need to be in a big niche. One of the big factors in making a "big niche" work is having deep pockets, and spending a buncha money just for testing. Advanced PPC marketers will lose money on purpose (thousands of dollars) just to get the data.

"1, the keyword is an urgency one, so the conversion rate should be high imo, and secondly...i just took a look at the LP from a big perspective and realized i wouldn't do shit on it except click back
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also the fuckin words were costing like 2-3 bucks a click, so not much room for error"

That does not make any sense. You're still new and don't need to mess around with niches like this.

You can still make good money in small niches. As long as you're not losing you're doing ok, just scale it.
 
Great post, well thought out. I commend you for getting right into a big niche right away; there's a lot more money to be made. I started out in big niches and have done really well.

Don't fret about losing money though. ubaid...is right. Some people lose thousands of dollars. I just launched a new campaign today myself; I spent over $400.00 on PPC for a single conversion; made $40.00. So while I may be -360.00 for my first day in this particular campaign, I'll continue to tweak and test it over the next week or so.

My point is, don't be afraid to lose money. It's easy to get excited when you make your first couple of bucks. With any luck you'll come back to this post in 6 months and laugh at yourself because you brought yourself to a new level.
 
I should also mention that when you got that 1st sale after spending $1.50. That's actually very common, right when you start an offer you get a sale right away. Some people have stated that advertisers (or networks?) do that purposely to get you motivated and put more money into promoting their offer (which is what happened to you). It happens to me all the time. I never really understood it but, that reason makes sense. I know networks can afford to lose money like that since I've had a free conversion given to me just over testing a tracking pixel that I was having problems with. They tested it themselves and the pixel recorded the conversion and I still got paid for it. So it wouldn't surprise me they can give away a free conversion like that.
 
you know uba, that occurred to me right away too, shit. only cause of the nature of the sale, they contacted site support first and i had to physically send an email to link them back to my site? wtf???
 
lol this may seem like a noob post, but it has quite a few good tips to help newcomers.
 
Great post man, I have been reading this Wf for a year now and this is the first time I have decided to actually make a post. It's awesome to hear about noobs grindin it out and figuring out a plan of attack that works for them!! Kepp it up buddy and you will succeed!
 
Hmm I'm wondering what happened after Bullseye takes his own advice and put it to work. Maybe a followup post would be good?
 
I know everybody in here is talking about how great his noob post was although really all this has been discussed numerous times on here, all you have to do is search and you'll get all the basic foundation to PPC. The only thing that seperates you from the herd is your creativity and thinking outside the box.
 
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