I almost left WF because I didn't know what to write about for my 2012th post celebration. I still don't really know what I'm going to write about, but I know I don't want to waste your time telling you how to move to a third world country or how to make $0.75/day autoblogging. Your dicks are also probably raw from all the straight and gay porn posted here, so I don't want to go the easy boob route either.
So I'm just going to kind of improvise and talk about random things when it comes to making affiliate moniez, and maybe by the end it'll be a full post.
Regarding New Ideas
How I make money isn't some secret formula or Adwords hack, it's common creativity. I usually stick to hot/popular offers, because those have the biggest selection across networks and the payouts are usually more negotiable/flexible since the advertisers are raking in cash.
The first offer I made a profit on were ringtones like 5 years ago. I tried copying what everybody was doing, which was {Keyword: Kanye West} Ringtones for Free! Competition was high, and affordable traffic only trickled in by the pennies. So I started thinking of ways to spin ringtone offers, and I ended up finding an untapped niche in "Christian Ringtones". Yahoo's quality score system sucked balls so I was bidding on keywords like "bible", "church", "holiness", and other random religious terms. I was the only one bidding on these terms at first, so volume was decent and the clicks were cheap. At the peak I was making $200-300 profit/day which I thought was baller. Soon after I was copied like a mofo, competition went up, and the campaign couldn't withstand Google's quality score.
Then comes what I built decent notoriety for...(Chat). Online dating was (is) a hot thing, and like with ringtones I could only scrape pennies in with common dating terms and landing pages. I saw one other site using the word 'chat' on it's page a few times, so I did a little research and 'chat' was a relatively low-competition word in search and content. A few pages to split test and a few campaigns later and affiliate networks were flying me out, dropping to their knees, and pulling my pants down to get me to run True with them (I think the peak was around 3,000 leads/day). I got payouts no other affiliate was given at that time, had networks take down copycats like hawks, and went unchallenged at the #1 ad spot for chat keywords. Why? Because I was the first to do it. I can't even tell you how many other affiliates tried copying my page & outbidding me...their CPC was 4x as high as mine because they had no history and they'd last a week or two.
During all of this I did the same thing with credit reports. Nobody bid on 'Annual Credit Report' terms at the time, and no CR advertiser said ads couldn't be run on those terms. I got 40% CTR in Adwords for about 6 months until advertisers noticed the keywords (annual CRs are associated with the government) and eventually disallowed the ads.
More recently, I've done the same with daily deals. I'm not going to go into specifics because offers infrequently come and go still, but I tapped out a lot of the potential to it last year. When everybody was going crazy about Groupon, clone sites were popping up like mad and they were offering $3-4.50 payouts for an email submit in select cities. Even for being 5-10 cities, the hype and volume was so big that I was doing thousands of leads/day.
So the main important points I think exist when making money in aff marketing are:
1) Be creative.
2) Be the first.
3) Be conscious of what offers are hot and offer potential.
Combine the above and conquer.
Regarding Adwords
Google is one of the best at sniffing out and hating on affiliates, so they're a bitch. But they're not impossible.
If you're going to run rebills and really shady things, cloakers exist to prevent Google from seeing your pages, but you should be prepared for the banhammer to eventually come down on your account.
A little trick I've been using is to create pages that on the first page or two look completely clean. Like a lot of people have pages that start by just asking for a Name/Email, and on the next page runs them through a mobile path or edu path or something that Google won't like. When you make your page, have it go to affurl.com/page1/. Have the clean looking front page, collect their name/email, and then go to the next page where you might collect some more form data. When they submit, just take them to another inner page with a few articles and adsense ads on it. So if a Google rep is going through your entire path, it's all clean.
Now they approve the page yay, but if you just switch the link to your dirty affiliate page, they'll notice this in a week or 2 and eventually can your ads. Just keep your clean intro page(s) (at the same /page1/), and instead of sending the final submit to your adsense/article page, send them to the affiliate path. If a Google rep checks back on your page when it gets volume, they'll see it hasn't changed it all. If you don't start the path until 3-4 pages into it, they can even go through the first couple pages of your path and it'll all check out.
It's not a sure-fire method, but you can get creative with it.
Regarding Facebook
Account history seems to be kind of sketchy with Facebook. I have accounts that have run rebills/mobile/anything Facebook hates, and the accounts still stand with good history. But I have friends that will have accounts with longstanding history, run $5 in intl mobile ads and their account will be banned the next day. So I'd be a little careful with it.
Aside from that, it's no secret that you should be utilizing their awesome demographic targeting. Without straight cloaking/scamming, pretty much the only way to profit is to have ads with high CTR, and you get high CTR by targeting your audience right.
Regarding PPV Traffic
I'm still a semi-newb to PPV since I was still riding Adwords/FB/Quigo when PPV started to become popular. But the way I'm finding to profit is though creativity of course, but also bidding on a ton of URLs, spending a lot, and weeding out profitable data in a couple days.
The nice thing about PPV networks is that they're a little under the radar, and will approve any page you submit.
Regarding hot niches
-rebills
-mobile
-coreg
-dating
-insurance
-daily deals
-edu
No real surprises. I'd maybe keep your eye out for sites that take the Sell and Recycle Used Electronics - Gazelle model and try to scam/rebill it. Idk if those sites are new, but there are only a few and I just recently heard about them.
Regarding running your own offers
From personal experience (and common sense), digitally fulfilled products are about 100x easier to manage than physical products. After spending hundreds of thousands on dev/design, I'm stuck in an extremely long legal battle with a manufacturer. So if you do go the physical product route, do more due diligence than I did, which was trust that the other part of my operation knew what it was doing. A rookie mistake, but one that cost a ton of money and the potential for a new product that was taking very well with customers.
But if you ever come up with a creative idea for a host & post/coreg that's successful for you, get HasOffers and broker it out to networks.
Regarding life tips
AND NEVER FORGET
That corny ass headband got me 100x more attention than your (fake) Breitling watches. Attention leads to conversations, and conversations lead to connections.
Did I do this right?
And I hope you all enjoy 4 more years of this BAMF. He's got swagger, can't knock him on that.
So I'm just going to kind of improvise and talk about random things when it comes to making affiliate moniez, and maybe by the end it'll be a full post.
Regarding New Ideas
How I make money isn't some secret formula or Adwords hack, it's common creativity. I usually stick to hot/popular offers, because those have the biggest selection across networks and the payouts are usually more negotiable/flexible since the advertisers are raking in cash.
The first offer I made a profit on were ringtones like 5 years ago. I tried copying what everybody was doing, which was {Keyword: Kanye West} Ringtones for Free! Competition was high, and affordable traffic only trickled in by the pennies. So I started thinking of ways to spin ringtone offers, and I ended up finding an untapped niche in "Christian Ringtones". Yahoo's quality score system sucked balls so I was bidding on keywords like "bible", "church", "holiness", and other random religious terms. I was the only one bidding on these terms at first, so volume was decent and the clicks were cheap. At the peak I was making $200-300 profit/day which I thought was baller. Soon after I was copied like a mofo, competition went up, and the campaign couldn't withstand Google's quality score.
Then comes what I built decent notoriety for...(Chat). Online dating was (is) a hot thing, and like with ringtones I could only scrape pennies in with common dating terms and landing pages. I saw one other site using the word 'chat' on it's page a few times, so I did a little research and 'chat' was a relatively low-competition word in search and content. A few pages to split test and a few campaigns later and affiliate networks were flying me out, dropping to their knees, and pulling my pants down to get me to run True with them (I think the peak was around 3,000 leads/day). I got payouts no other affiliate was given at that time, had networks take down copycats like hawks, and went unchallenged at the #1 ad spot for chat keywords. Why? Because I was the first to do it. I can't even tell you how many other affiliates tried copying my page & outbidding me...their CPC was 4x as high as mine because they had no history and they'd last a week or two.
During all of this I did the same thing with credit reports. Nobody bid on 'Annual Credit Report' terms at the time, and no CR advertiser said ads couldn't be run on those terms. I got 40% CTR in Adwords for about 6 months until advertisers noticed the keywords (annual CRs are associated with the government) and eventually disallowed the ads.
More recently, I've done the same with daily deals. I'm not going to go into specifics because offers infrequently come and go still, but I tapped out a lot of the potential to it last year. When everybody was going crazy about Groupon, clone sites were popping up like mad and they were offering $3-4.50 payouts for an email submit in select cities. Even for being 5-10 cities, the hype and volume was so big that I was doing thousands of leads/day.
So the main important points I think exist when making money in aff marketing are:
1) Be creative.
2) Be the first.
3) Be conscious of what offers are hot and offer potential.
Combine the above and conquer.
Regarding Adwords
Google is one of the best at sniffing out and hating on affiliates, so they're a bitch. But they're not impossible.
If you're going to run rebills and really shady things, cloakers exist to prevent Google from seeing your pages, but you should be prepared for the banhammer to eventually come down on your account.
A little trick I've been using is to create pages that on the first page or two look completely clean. Like a lot of people have pages that start by just asking for a Name/Email, and on the next page runs them through a mobile path or edu path or something that Google won't like. When you make your page, have it go to affurl.com/page1/. Have the clean looking front page, collect their name/email, and then go to the next page where you might collect some more form data. When they submit, just take them to another inner page with a few articles and adsense ads on it. So if a Google rep is going through your entire path, it's all clean.
Now they approve the page yay, but if you just switch the link to your dirty affiliate page, they'll notice this in a week or 2 and eventually can your ads. Just keep your clean intro page(s) (at the same /page1/), and instead of sending the final submit to your adsense/article page, send them to the affiliate path. If a Google rep checks back on your page when it gets volume, they'll see it hasn't changed it all. If you don't start the path until 3-4 pages into it, they can even go through the first couple pages of your path and it'll all check out.
It's not a sure-fire method, but you can get creative with it.
Regarding Facebook
Account history seems to be kind of sketchy with Facebook. I have accounts that have run rebills/mobile/anything Facebook hates, and the accounts still stand with good history. But I have friends that will have accounts with longstanding history, run $5 in intl mobile ads and their account will be banned the next day. So I'd be a little careful with it.
Aside from that, it's no secret that you should be utilizing their awesome demographic targeting. Without straight cloaking/scamming, pretty much the only way to profit is to have ads with high CTR, and you get high CTR by targeting your audience right.
Regarding PPV Traffic
I'm still a semi-newb to PPV since I was still riding Adwords/FB/Quigo when PPV started to become popular. But the way I'm finding to profit is though creativity of course, but also bidding on a ton of URLs, spending a lot, and weeding out profitable data in a couple days.
The nice thing about PPV networks is that they're a little under the radar, and will approve any page you submit.
Regarding hot niches
-rebills
-mobile
-coreg
-dating
-insurance
-daily deals
-edu
No real surprises. I'd maybe keep your eye out for sites that take the Sell and Recycle Used Electronics - Gazelle model and try to scam/rebill it. Idk if those sites are new, but there are only a few and I just recently heard about them.
Regarding running your own offers
From personal experience (and common sense), digitally fulfilled products are about 100x easier to manage than physical products. After spending hundreds of thousands on dev/design, I'm stuck in an extremely long legal battle with a manufacturer. So if you do go the physical product route, do more due diligence than I did, which was trust that the other part of my operation knew what it was doing. A rookie mistake, but one that cost a ton of money and the potential for a new product that was taking very well with customers.
But if you ever come up with a creative idea for a host & post/coreg that's successful for you, get HasOffers and broker it out to networks.
Regarding life tips
- Have a generic site frame with HTML and CSS presets that you can drag/drop to start creating new pages. I have an index.php, style.css, and /images/ folder for whenever I want to create a new page. The index.php has links to stylesheets/jquery/javascript I use as well as commented sections of typical pages with divs (header, body, footer). The style.css will have a bunch of clear/float/font/background settings that save a few seconds when coding a page up.
- Use php to automate and split-test your pages. Create a fully-built out LP that has a generic style (header/body text/CTA) and then just assign everything PHP variables. You'll be transferring converting styles across niches in no-time. I mostly use this with PPV.
- Eat gruel. Brown rice/ground beef w taco seasoning/cheese/hot sauce/nacho cheese if you're fat. Combine all cooked ingredients. It takes me like 30 minutes to make a month's worth of this shit and it tastes great.
- I've fucked around with every todo/time saving/focus/organization app that's existed. They're cool, but none of them make or break your productivity. You don't need an app to tell your ass to sit in a chair with only Coda and Photoshop open for 4 hours. Keep everything you do well organized in folders, and make sure you actually work and not smoke pot and play mini games. If you're going to spend money on productivity, spend it on a fast computer and monitor real estate.
- Use baby wipes
- Burn candles, they smell fucking good
- Use f.lux
- Get your friends together and play in recreational sporting leagues, it's a fun way keep your heart in good shape. If you don't have friends, join a random recreational league and tell everybody you're new to the area and want to play sports.
AND NEVER FORGET
That corny ass headband got me 100x more attention than your (fake) Breitling watches. Attention leads to conversations, and conversations lead to connections.
Did I do this right?
And I hope you all enjoy 4 more years of this BAMF. He's got swagger, can't knock him on that.
