Maths and Lies

Choke

Choke

Flaccid Member
Dec 6, 2010
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wowoverseer.com
Newbie Questions seems like the best place for my first post. So Hello, I'm new. Not just new to the site, but new to affiliate marketing completely. Before a few days ago I was completely unaware of it.

How I got here? Curiosity got the better of me. I finally caved in and clicked on one of those ads that you have all no doubt seen if you've been on the internet for more than 5 minutes. "SINGLE MOTHER MAKES SIX FIGURE SALARY WORKING FROM HOME PART TIME - THE SECRETS THAT THE EXPERTS DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW." I had no intention to buy anything but I wanted to see how they were backing up their lies. It was pretty convincing. The incentive of money was interesting, so I Googled it first to do my research, to hear what other people were saying about these products and because I felt that I wasn't so naive as to believe that they actually worked. I was sure that the only people making money from these products were the people that were selling them and I didn't want to be a sucker.

What did I find? Blatantly fake reviews, and as I learned more about affiliate marketing it seems like these reviews were all written by affiliate marketers, all writing glowing reviews, pumping their site to the top of Google and taking a cut of the change. Well that's just swell. I could probably get me a bit of that action and make a bit of side income.

But still. There are SECRETS out there. Secrets that the experts don't want me to know. So this brings me to my first question:


  • Has anybody actually bought one of these books and do they backup their promises? Are you now making your six figure salary working from home part time?
I get the impression that these products are peddling the same regurgitated information I could probably find with a Google search. That I probably already have found with a Google search and that you guys have kindly provided to me for free across this entire forum. I've read most of the sticky posts on here and there are a lot of "Make Money Online" ones. Are there really any secrets out there that are so good you have to be part of a paid club to join them. And if they really are so good, why are they so desperate to give them away?

Anyway, researching all that took me so far, and I ended up on some Blackhat forum that I won't name or post links to, because frankly I felt disgusted with myself for just reading that shit. Not that I have some overwhelming moral or ethical code, or that I disagree with blackhat, but there is a certain depth I don't think I will go to, and that is pretending to be a girl in chatrooms so I can seduce some sick old man into filling in an email submission to make $1. It sounds tedious and a little bit depraved. I also don't feel like taking the risk of getting banned by adsense, so I promptly left there and kept looking for something else, which is how I eventually did end up here.

To hurry this along, I got myself signed up on a CPA network and am trying to put together some plan of action for myself. I don't want anybody to hold my hand, and I think I have most of it figured out, but still, I am pretty dense and my math is really poor. Like, I'm lucky I finished high school poor, and I just want to check that I am not throwing away my initial investment, because I've only got the one investment and I'm not the kind of guy that's going to bet my rent on a "sure thing" because I don't believe they exist.

So on the network there are plenty of offers to choose from. Some of them pay out just $1 for a form and email submission and some are paying up to $60 for purchase of a product. There's a lot of stuff on there. The ones that look easiest to turn over are probably the $1 email submissions, and probably a good place to start for a beginner. These are the things that are like "WIN A FREE MACBOOK AIR - ENTER YOUR EMAIL HERE."

The payout is fine, the EPC is fine, but the thing I'm really interested in and the thing that I think is confusing me is the conversion rate. How accurate is it? I want to check that my math is right on this because the plan I put together just doesn't seem viable and I really don't want to lose my initial investment.

Let's say I have an initial investment of $200. (I don't, but I'm going to put a little aside a few months until I do and then I'll start then.)

I've decided I want to try selling Hypothetical Product™. It pays out $1 on a simple email submission and it converts at 0.8%. If I put my full $200 investment into advertising, I assume this means that 0.8% of the people that actually click on the advert, will enter their email.

If the ad I'm bidding on is $0.02 per click (is this too optimistic, I don't know?) I can expect 10,000 visitors to my landing page, right? And then 0.8% of those 10,000 visitors will actually input their email to fill in the form. So that's 80 conversions, right? The payout for this is $1 per conversion, so I've made $80, but I've SPENT $200. I've lost money.

So my next question:


  • Is this because I chose a product that pays too low? Or because the conversion rate is too low? Or a combination of both?
If I chose a product that converts at 0.8% but pays $10 for a form and credit card entry, I would have spent $200 and made $800. That seems profitable and workable. If I have worked it out correctly (and I'm not sure I have, like I said, my math is poor, and I want to be sure.) But then if this is the case, why would anybody ever promote the $1 payout, low conversion rate products? Should these be reserved for the free advertising you can squeeze into your landing page?

"Hey, welcome to the site. Here's the product you were looking for, but also, why not win a FREE MACBOOK AIR?"

So I know this was all excessively long winded. I know you guys don't like people who haven't done research, and I wanted to show that I had, but these last two things are really getting to me. To sum up:

Has anybody tried any of the "Secret Technique" products, and what are your experiences with them? I'm not asking for a testimonial or your affiliate link, but anybody that might have had a genuine experience with them. And in the second half of the post, is my math correct? Am I working this all out wrong?

Thanks.
 


Because you took the time to write a reasonable first post, I'll throw you a bone.

Don't waste your money on ebooks or 'guru'/'make money online secrets'/etc. products, no matter what the price. The info will generally be junk and just base this on the simple premise that if they are truly making money with it, why tell anyone?

As far as your math goes - I didn't read it over in too much detail but it looks like you're on the right track. Keep in ind the advertised EPC is across the entire network, so you may get people blasting offers to their 10M+ user list that's in no way targeted traffic and it will drag the EPC down.

Shoot me a PM if you need any more info.
 
Yes it looks like your math is correct. And all of those factors you mentioned play a role in how to get profitable. If you can't decrease cost of traffic you must increase conversion of traffic, etc, etc, etc.


Go download SEO_mike's excel sheet in one of the stickies up top and play with various numbers.

http://www.wickedfire.com/newbie-questions/40974-like-math-you-better-learn.html


RE: Profitable Zip/Submits the reason people run them and make money is A) Cheap traffic / Free Traffic B) They usually convert higher than 0.8% because all they require is an email address.

Everyone here is going to tell you the same thing though. There is no industry norm.

Your Affiliate manager can give you what is hot right now on their network but dont' assume network EPC will be your EPC. You don't know if they is organic (SEO) traffic that is converting or paid traffic.

There is only what YOU can produce as YOUR results, and the only way to find this out is by TESTING, and TESTING costs MONEY..... which is why no one will share TESTING information because..... TESTING = MONEY
 
You're on the right track. However, there are several things that you aren't accounting for. For instance, you're assuming that you can get two cents per click. Often, that's not possible. In moderately competitive niches, it's not uncommon to be paying over two dollars per click. Also, you not only have to deal with your landing page's conversion optimization, but also that of the advertiser's page.

Your ad, be it on Facebook, Google, wherever, might be getting an 80% click through rate to your landing page, and your landing page might be getting 60 to 70% click through rate to the advertiser's page, and the advertiser's page might be converging at 40 to 80% based on what the person has to do on their site.

Now if you take that same 10,000 people in your initial example exposed to your initial pay per click ad, and apply those same figures, you'll end up with 8,000 hitting your landing page, 4,800 – 5,600 leaving your page and going to the advertiser's page, and 1,920 – 4,480 converting on the advertiser's page.

Of course, that's not even accounting for advertiser shaving you, chargebacks, and a number of other issues that you may not even see or expect.

So, using my figures above, if you're paying a more realistic CPC of $1.50, you'll be paying $15,000 for those 10,000 people, and you can expect to get a return of $19,200-$44,800. That's a very large margin, but one that could easily put you in the negative or the positive depending on what kind of variables you're dealing with that day.
 
My recommendation is that don't put money into something unless you're absolutely prepared to feel as though you have lost it. It's just the way the game plays out but you may find that you can be profitable quickly, most people aren't so lucky.

Just some things I would like to note:

Rexibit is right, PPC is going to be far more expensive out of the gate than $0.02 per click.

Also, he is spot on when it comes to how conversions work out. The figure you are probably looking at is how many actually convert once they get to the site you are referring people to. However, you are going to shave some off at your own site (no ones website I have ever seen converts at 100%). I would say a more realistic conversion affiliate link CTR on your own site is going to be less than 80% out of the gate. It might be significantly less than this depending on how you setup your landing page. Some people prefer to presell the products they are selling which may mean better conversions once the users click on your affiliate link, but probably a lower CTR on your own website. This may still be the way to go though if you feel like the site your are sending people to is not converting well enough. Other people use gimmicks and other techniques to get people straight to the offer, but people often see right through it and never end up making that purchase or filling out the lead form when you do this.

PPC click prices: You might be able to get your clicks down somewhere around $0.25 pretty quickly, possibly cheaper than that on sites like Facebook. Google Adwords is fairly expensive though these days, especially in a crowded market.

Good luck!
 
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