I have $3K. What should I do with it?

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bizzykehl

bizzykehl

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Sep 9, 2008
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Hi everyone,
I recently received a little bit of money (3 grand) and I'm looking at getting more into affiliate marketing. I've run several successful SEO campaigns in the past, and I own my own web design business. But this money is purely "play" money, and I'd like to start turning a profit using AM.

I've played with facebook ads a little bit, but have been unable to turn a profit. I've also been trying craigslist out but their new spam restrictions are getting to be a little ridiculous. And I also make about $5-10 a day from adsense on my various sites.

Basically I'm looking to use this 3K and turn it into profit-generating potential. Any guidance, suggestions or advice would be much appreciated! I'd rather be informed than just go out and blow it on $3k worth of facebook ads or something.

Thanks!

Bizzy
 


Start slow.
Money has a way of disappearing much faster than you could ever imagine if you're reckless.
Realistically if I were you I'd either buy up established sites surrounding a certain(broad) niche, or start learning adwords. Or both. Just start slow till you get the hang of it.
 
I've been going slow for the last 9 months or so. Now's the time to turn it up a notch. I'm not super familiar with adwords, but I've run a few successful seo campaigns, own several autoblogs with a high rank, etc etc... I'm looking for real solid advice here to (as emeril would say) kick it up a notch!
 
bizzykehl said:
I've been going slow for the last 9 months or so. Now's the time to turn it up a notch. I'm not super familiar with adwords, but I've run a few successful seo campaigns, own several autoblogs with a high rank, etc etc... I'm looking for real solid advice here to (as emeril would say) kick it up a notch!
Click to expand...
On the SEO Side
Buy established sites similar to the general niche of the places you've had SEO success. Use them to leverage eachother as much as you can, and do old school link building to each new one. As they profit, buy another. Keep going until you control the niche. Make sure to pick up some different hosting for at least some of these. As you get more and more sites you have the ability to get links(from yourself) no one else can. Powerful links hopefully. So you can just keep ranking up and up. Contextual links are your friend.

On the PPC Side
Don't concentrate on a million campaigns. Find one you know is converting, and see how far you can scale it with a positive EPC. Notice what works and what doesn't.
After you've done all you can do there, test campaigns until you find one with potential. Then do the same thing.
 
thanks for the advice, duly noted. I'll try and stick to one or two campaigns initially and widdle them down w/ some split testing.
 
xmcp - awesome tips - I would say I'm in a similar situation as OP, and noticed myself running into similar problems. I would throw up a direct link campaign with some general keywords, wouldn't profit, and would get discouraged w/ the niche/offer and quit. Did that over and over again and got lucky a few times, but didn't really learn much or get anything out of it aside from learning what NOT to do :)
 
Test a few different niches, nothing too competitive or expensive (eg. payday loans.) Put together a few PPC campaigns on Adcenter or YSM with 4 or 5 ads in each ad group. Considering that you've got a web design co, throw together a few landing pages for each niche, test different styles (review, simple, full article.)

Launching a profitable ppc campaign isn't as hard as it may seem. It also, despite what most people will tell you, doesn't require thousands for testing. Set your budget for each campaign to $30 or so per day. In most non-competitive niches that should get you ~ 60 clicks. Use seobooks keyword tool to try and get a few longer tail keywords if you're CPC is a little high.

Of course, before any of this you'll need to sign up for an affiliate network, I work with and highly recommend both Hydra and Neverblue (if you'd like you can use my ref links in my sig.)
 
Either read everything here or join PPC-Coach and learn how to spend it wisely. You could very easily drop it all in 1 day and have nothing to show for it.
 
I would stay in SEO to build longterm.

Try outsourcing to see if that makes things happen faster.

Duplicate any successes you had with complementary sites that could share traffic.

Example: Car rims with new Car Stereo site. Send traffic back and forth and pass the link juice.
 
ya dude if I were you I'd stick with what I know and sounds like you got a good grip on SEO so just keep building & promoting new sites (outsource most of the work) & buy establish sites like has been mentioned...ppc is a different monster
 
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