Wiredniko's Journal - Adventures of the Newbie

Worked for about two hours on my first article. It was rather long, but I wanted to establish my website as legit. I figured first post impressions count. Added a link to an offer.

Need to customize my theme, there are some issues with it so I got to hack it. Found an interesting link about my theme and customization that covers some of the things I want to change but not all.

My article though is kickass, I read it and get pumped. Probably the best article I have written to date.

..can you tell I am excited.

I don't know if going for a walk before I start is helping my productivity levels but I can focus for two straight hours working non stop. Normally the same amount of work would take me at least double that time.

Updated my GTD style notes.

I need to setup my campaign with prosper202 first thing tomorrow.
 


Keep that excitement up, will get you tons accomplished!

getting fresh air and exercise definitely helps! Trying to get myself out today.

I have found that the more I think copy is going to kick ass and convert the more it doesn't...lol.

I've hired about 5 people to write copy on this one page, one was some i'm awesome you will see giant percentages in conversion blah blah that cost 300 bucks....out of all of those I am using crap copy that I wrote in about 5 minutes one day because for some reason that works the best on this page and all the good sales copy tanked my clickthroughs and conversions.

I was just recommended clicktale heatmapping and it has really been interesting to see what gets noticed and what people skim through as well as where their notice is to place links, etc.

prosper setup is a breeze, shouldn't take more than a couple minutes.
 
I am pissed off with my work environment and the stupid state I live in...more fuel to succeed in AM and move away.

Anyway, Google Analytics its still not working. First time I have had that happen. Changed some options in my google analytics wordpress plugin, I hope that fixes it.

Created a logo. A crappy one...once I start making a little bit of money, first thing I hire is a guy that can do art stuff, I suck at them.

Hacked my wordpress theme. It finally looks perfect

Added another post, with a youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-8SjjGOFg one of my favorite motivational videos. Of course I had to figure out how to add videos in wordpress.

Ok enough with the article posting, time to actually work on things that will generate me money right now.

Time for my first landing page. Went to Stock Photography: Search Royalty Free Images & Photos | iStockphoto.com and grabbed some photos. In my opinion images are the easiest way to make something look professional. I am willing to pay $1.50 per image for that.

...speaking of landing pages this is pure gold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZlGy2auvFo&feature=player_embedded#at=981
 
I caught myself procrastinating today. I think I am afraid that this will fail.

Sven Goran Eriksson said "the greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure"

I guess its true. If you are too scared to try you will never succeed.

I have all the notes I could possible have for creating a cool LP. So might as well create one...or two. I should go with two LPs, two Ad Copies and see what does the best.

I think for LP 1 I am going to go simple not flashy...like google simple if that makes any sense. LP 2 I will go for something that matches the offer page.

CSS is done, going for internal CSS without linking so I can keep my LPs separate in terms of CSS elements.

Got a button created for my call to action. I have multiple ideas about what my call to action button should say, I am going to go with greed first.

....so I went to get the specific offer I wanted and I needed approval. Emailed Mike, my AM for A4D...three hours later on a Sunday I was approved. Mike rocks.

More CSS work, I had misspelled a freaking CSS class and it was my main web look class. Kept trying to figure out why all my fonts where smaller....so much fail, wasted 30 mins on that.

Hmm, page still needs work. My image is too big. I should also add a border around to give it that professional look...right now my page looks too plain.

Added "as seen on" logos to give myself some brand recognition. Of course I made it 1024 pixels wide...and I am setting up my page for 800 pixels. Oops. I should resize that.

Also need to add testimonials on the bottom part of my page. I am thinking two should be enough. I have three pics to play with from istock so I am ok for that, need to reside them first..but that's easy.
 
wiredniko said:
I caught myself procrastinating today. I think I am afraid that this will fail.

Sven Goran Eriksson said "the greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure"

I guess its true. If you are too scared to try you will never succeed.
Click to expand...

KeepOnTruckin%5B1%5D.jpg
 
Keep on trucking eh?

Time to create another SEO based post...add an affiliate link as well...I still feel like I am slacking when it comes to my Landing Page :angryfire:

Well I kind of am I guess.

I am 50% there for my first LP.

Post made....time to work on the LP.

By the way I mentioned this before but...notepad++ is the bomb.

Updated my logos, 1024 width on a CSS based 800 width page defeats the purpose. I also added a fade effect to make it more part of the background.

It makes my call to action POP!
 
Landing page completed...took a while, overall I would say I spent about 12-15 hours developing it. I think I overcame certain issues that next time I will be able to do it faster from scratch.

At least now I have fully configured CSS files, have a source for all my images...and even a privacy policy that works on a universal scale.

I have given some thought about split testing. Since I am not creative but more analytical I came up with the following list of things I can test:

  • Headline
  • Page layout
  • Navigation
  • Color scheme
  • Button text
  • Sales copy
  • Graphic images
  • Call to action
  • Offer

One of the keys of experimentation is to only change one variable at a time to measure appropriate deviation so I am planning on doing exactly that. For my 2nd LP I have changed my headline.

I am also creating two ad copies.

Damn I am so close...I am getting a little bit nervous.

Working on Ad Copies I had some good ideas so it should be kind of simple to generate...Yup made two copies that I like...hopefully they work well.

I decided to test PPC providers as well, half of my money will go to AdBrite the other to Bing.

or AdBrite can be a bitch and get dropped...Its probably better to just use on PPC Campaign anyway. I am going with $100/days. I can run it for 5 days and see how it goes. Everyday I will check stats and keep split testing.

I am getting ahead of myself....bidding on a per word basis...uhm...yeah. I never researched that. Thankfully MS Adcenter has a calculator for hitting position 1....I have no clue how they can claim an actual CTR though, it probably is the average CTR of the #1 position.

So basically this is where I fucked up my acai campaign. So lets use that knowledge a little bit. First of all, one of my keyword sets is $50 CPC...for position 6...yeah that's what happens when you make stupid keyword selections.

Time for some research. Its funny how none of the "big" affiliate bloggers really talks about how to determine proper bids. Like some kind of an initial benchmark. After I have the numbers it becomes much much easier.

Google searched ideas for CPC bids...it totally failed. So I did a WF search at least now I know I should start high and decrease while focusing on high CTR. It appears that if you have high CPC your bids can be smaller and you still retain a high position.

Well that's great but I still cannot go after $50 keywords....so...

Alright...for 100% ROI, $36 payout, lets positively estimate 3% conversions....that makes my max CPC $1.08. So I am going to cut all the keywords that are more than that.

Better idea (I hope, the ones that are $1.50 or lower I will tag with a lower max CPC, that will give me more keywords, and for some of them I just will not be as high position)

Of course the API is designed in an annoying way...CPC and keywords in separate pages...so I have to go between pages to drop keywords. I am sure there is a better way to do this.

Found the better way...add the entire campaign then go back and pause the high ones :p

Crap I am still confused. I set everything at $1.08...its an experiment I will see how it goes by tomorrow.
 
Woke up today hoping my campaign had generated some clicks. No such luck, it says active in adcenter but no clicks, and I have $0 spent so I am guessing its not really active yet.

Posted some PPC related questions in this forum with the things I got stuck with yesterday, hopefully I will get some answers. I still do not know if its dumb of me to have huge under bids for keywords or not, I rather fix that before my campaign becomes truly active.
 
Created two more articles for my website.

Checked stats MSN is finally working, got some clicks. It seems like its not in real time because it bursts.

Prosper is not reporting the hits for some reason even though it reports my initial links. Don't know what's up with that.

I will check my stats later today to see how it worked out. I cross linked things with A4D no sales yet...but I still have not reached my payout yet, so there is still chance for profit.

Also applied to EWA, I just really like Ryan's style so being part of his group would be interesting.
 
Bro, I'm reading your journal, keep on doing what you do baby. I know them streets is tough, and getting prosper to work is tougher. But, get your prosper game proper, cause if you sling shit on the wall, then you ain't operating at a scientific level. You need your keywords and shit.

That is all.

Good luck man.
 
I know what you mean. I need to figure that out.

I also did not spend my $100 yesterday. Since I am underbidding anyway I will raise some of my bids for a better position.
 
My tracking is all messed up.

Clicks
MSN: 131
Prosper: 14 wuh?
A4D: 22

My guess is MSN and A4D is alright but Prosper is really sucking. Investigating about WTF is going on.

My ad copies CTR
Ad1 - 2.195
Ad2 - 2.535

I just found out something kind of neat. My offer page is actually being split tested, they have two designs. I guess it makes sense for affiliate rules to expand to advertisement rules.

I don't get it. My landing page javascript created by prosper202 seems legit. I even compared the lpip number...which I am guessing its a unique id for prosper. I checked both landing pages. I even clicked the javascript link to make sure it takes me to an actual javascript.

Programming wise this does not make sense, how can it work only sometimes? The number being lower than what MSN reports is whatever..but lower than A4D which is AFTER my landing page.

I checked my text ads they are all pointing to my LPs, no direct links.

It does not work. Hell I even landed on my pages on purpose but the prosper numbers did not change. Hmm A4D did not update either.

Frustration. :angryfire:

Reading more...maybe I will rewatch the setup videos...even though they are for an older version.

This has to be something dumb, I can feel it. Let me re approach this.

Ok, some clicks register, other do not. I get no keyword tracking either. None of the graphs are displaying anything...

So that means its either the LP code or what is feeding it. Since the text ads are alright...could it be my A4D actual links that are weird with the whole subid, c1 stuff....?

Oh my god....I think I figured it out...30 minutes later. Wes you rock as a programmer but you need someone to do the explanation part of things. Fucking brackets...That's what happens when the video online for configuring this is out of date...

My clicks are being tracked. Can't tell for the rest, I hit my budget today of $100 so there are no live results I can get. I need to talk to my AM to add my tracking pixel and since I am at it to confirm that I am doing things right for my prosper tracking.

...in the meantime my article auto posted. Might as well have the SEO side of things working well.

Hmmm, with no data I am kind of stuck. No sales though kind of sucks. $135 spend up to today. $0 sales. By looking at the A4D stats and MSN stats, I have a 16.7% CTR on my LP...which I think is high for my first try.

So why no conversions?

Its 10:10...with my real job and this I have worked 14 hours today. I am going to take a shower, meditate and sleep.

Tomorrow I hope prosper works better so I can get some real results instead of estimates.
 
wiredniko said:
It does not work. Hell I even landed on my pages on purpose but the prosper numbers did not change. Hmm A4D did not update either.

Frustration. :angryfire:
Click to expand...


Are oyu running on your own host? When you choose spy mode(I think its called that at least) so shall there be an option in a list that says show only real clicks and show all clicks....

try to change that around
 
Checked my stats today.

Prosper is still fubared.

Totals
Total spent: $159.02
Clicks: 174
CTR: 2.36%
LP CTR: don't know...but can extrapolate
Landed on sales page: 62 (but some of those are my clicks)
Sales: $0

Lets assume that out of the 62 sales page clicks 10 of them are mine.

That means from my ad copy to my sales pages I have a 29.88% CTR...but 0% sales.

Prosper not working is frustrating....according to prosper I have only had 27 clicks to my LP....even though my sales has has 62 :action-smiley-052:

Well my Ad Copy needs to be worked on tonight, and so does my LPs since they are not generating sales. I was thinking yesterday in the shower that I need to target more desperate users and maybe even mentioned the shipping and handling fee up front. I rather have lower CTR in my LP with sales than 30% CTR with no sales.
 
I paused my campaign. Prosper not working and making $0 sales with about 200 clicks...

Had a new friend check out my LP, he politely said that they pretty much suck. :)

Obviously it was an LP problem. In the meantime there are some really nice LPs I have discovered that totally put mine to shame.

So back to the drawing board. Re-designing my landing pages from the beginning. My Ad Copies need some work 2.76% is kind of low, but to be honest my average position was 4th or 5th. Next time I need to hit higher positions as well.

Looking for a new wordpress theme for the site style I want to have.

...I swear every time I look for a new wordpress theme it takes me hours.

How hard is it to find a 2 column white theme with a simple styled menu up top that looks business like....apparently its impossible.

Oh great gods of WF, please bless me with a free wordpress theme that looks kind of like CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News see how its just a freaking professional looking menu up top...that's all I want
 
read some landing page tips on copyblogger.com. My ctr improved 20 percent with just about 2 hours of improvements
 
wiredniko...

forget about the biz theme.

Try making your landing page look similar to your offer page.

::emp::
 
emp said:
wiredniko...

forget about the biz theme.

Try making your landing page look similar to your offer page.

::emp::
Click to expand...

Like make it feel like my page and the offer page are almost the same thing?

I don't know if I explained that right...I mean make it seem like my page and the offer page where designed by the same person?
 
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