Archive for the PPC Marketing Category
Posted on January 9, 2010 by Eric
I’ve got a question: When did internet marketing become throwing shit at a wall until we get a piece to stick?
I haven’t been in IM since the beginning, but from what I can tell all of the wanna be internet millionaires who whine about crap information are just that… whiners.
They don’t want to be marketers. They don’t want to run a business. They just want someone to give them some key to some vault which has all of their dreams stored up in some bag with a dollar sign on it.
WAKE UP!
There is no secret. There is no dream campaign that all of the big guys are keeping from you. There’s just marketing, and then there’s shit being thrown at the wall…
So which type of internet business are you running?
Are you actually trying to connect a consumer with a product that they want or can use? Or are you uploading 10,000 keywords into Yahoo Search Marketing and hoping that one of them will convert on that Walmart gift card offer?
If you want to make a living at the internet marketing game, you’ve gotta stop thinking like a drone, and start thinking like a marketer. You’ve got to come up with a concept that makes sense, and that connects real people (yes they are people on the other end of your website, not just conversion numbers) with real services/products.
I’m not saying you can’t get a $250 Walmart gift card to convert well. I’m just saying that putting it on a blank page that says click here to get it isn’t going to do fuck all.
Where does this come from? Well I found a site (I won’t list it here because I just feel sorry for the guy) that was just a page with a black background and a bunch of affiliate banners on it. They weren’t similar banners. In fact there was one for dating sitting next to one for auto insurance.
He had claimed that he was sending PPC traffic to this site and trying “everything” he could to get it to convert, yet he was just losing money. These types of people just shouldn’t even try to be internet marketing people.
And in fact, if you are reading this and you own a site like that… just get out… get out NOW!
Marketing is about telling a story. A story that jives with the views of a group of people (for those of you who don’t know who these people are… they are your “customers”). Your story has to be convincing… and your story has to be consistent (as in, don’t say you have the best customer service when you don’t ever answer the phone). And yes, even if you are promoting email and zip submit offers, this story needs to be there.
So ask yourself; what story is your site telling?
More on this later, but for now do yourself a favor and pick up Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars and start being a marketer, not a chump.
Posted on December 30, 2009 by Eric
I want to write about my first experiences with Adknowledge. Adknowledge is a “performance based advertising network” that I came across through a friend, and in late November I decided to give them a try.
Because of this recommendation I thought that the system would be smooth sailing, and I’d be able to get some quality traffic to my offers for a good price. I learned two things quickly… never assume a damn thing about any 2nd tier PPC company.
When I first signed up I was confronted with a terrible user layout that is completely built in flash called bidsystem. Not only is it incredibly clunky to use, but it doesn’t always save your changes. For example, if you pause a campaign that campaign will disappear from your dashboard. Where does it go? I’ll be damned if I know. As far as I can tell the only way to get to your paused campaigns is to log out and log back in and pray that you can see them on the first page of your dashboard.
Anyways, I had worked with a number of bad UI’s before and figured I could get by this if the traffic was good.
So I setup a few campaigns and I waited… and waited… and waited. And then I saw this thing on my dashboard that said my account status was pending… huh… I wasn’t told that my account needed approval, but I figured I’d wait over the weekend and at the very least it would be approved after 4 business days…
I was wrong. So I sent them an email. And two business days I got a message back saying that I was approved and my ads were accepted… thanks Adknowledge!
In these first campaigns the traffic wasn’t bad, and it’s about half the price of a Google click. However, you can only bid on categories and not keywords, so I was basically fucked for getting my campaigns to profit margins.
For a credit report campaign I was only approved on 2 categories. 2! Now, I can understand that they want to keep their traffic score up, but how am I supposed to optimize a campaign when I have two choices?
My initial campaigns weren’t going too well so I decided to pause them (that’s when I realized that, once paused, the campaigns went to adknowledge heaven). I decided to setup a few new campaigns. That was December 10th. It is now December 30th, and I just received notice that my ads were approved. It took 20 full days to have my ads approved from adknowledge.
Did I try contacting them during this time? Hell yes I did! And I got no response. In my adknowledge dashboard I had a big fat blank under “account manager” too so I didn’t even have a direct contact.
So now that I have ads running on adknowledge that are about the holidays… approved after the holidays… I should start getting traffic, no? That’s what any sane person would imagine, but it’s not the case… All of my categories for my campaign were rejected! Apparently my payday loan application CPA offer doesn’t fit into these categories:
Cash advance
Cash Loan
Online Loan
Payday Loan
I like how the first one got rejected even though cash advance is in the domain name and header of the offer. Of course you’re probably thinking, “Eric, why don’t you check their notes to see why it was rejected?”. I would if I could, but there is no notification when these categories get rejected, and I have no way of knowing why someone would have rejected them.
This post is getting long now so I’m going to end it, but if you come across adknowledge in your quest for good PPC traffic, my recommendation is to be very careful. If you’re going to try them out, start with a tiny budget first. As for me, I want to get away from their terrible service and terrible software as quickly as I can.
If you want to check out Adknowledge you can do so here.
Has anyone else had any experience with these guys? If so, let me know. I’d love to know what other people experienced with them.
Posted on December 7, 2009 by Eric
About three months ago I joined up with Peerfly, but I didn’t start promoting offers through them until just before Black Friday… And if you didn’t take advantage of Black Friday, then you really missed out.
Peerfly is a CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) affiliate ad network that is really starting to take off in popularity. There are a ton of CPA networks out there, and I’m a member of a good number of them. But Peerfly struck me right away as being different.
Why? Well, first it was their software. They are setup on a site that is really easy to use, and looks way more professional than a lot of CPA networks out there… plus they have a mobile subdomain that allows you to check your stats from your phone… and not just your iPhone (I’m looking at you Neverblue… I have an HTC Hero).
What I like about Peerfly
They toss your account balance in any emails that they send out to you.
They have a mobile page to check stats.
New software is slick and easy to use.
AM was easy to get ahold of, and quick to answer instant messages.
Almost 300 offers and a ton more being added all the time.
It’s super easy to add your own tracking pixel to any offer you are promoting.
Easy sign up process.
Multiple tracking domains to choose from.
What I don’t like about Peerfly
My AM was almost non existent when I first signed up… keeping this in mind, when I took the initiative to contact him he was very helpful so all in all my experience has been awesome.
I would like to have a global tracking pixel placement.
You can’t run quick reports by subid.
All in all my experience with Peerfly has been above average and I recommend getting an account if you’re looking to expand your reach with CPA offers, or even if you’re just starting out.
Also, though I’m not a big affiliate by any means, I was able to get about %40 ROI over the Black Friday weekend with a number of zip/email submits on Peerfly.
Click here to check out Peerfly and to apply.
Do you have any experience with Peerfly? Let me know in the comments.
Posted on December 2, 2009 by Eric
PPC affiliate marketing is hard. No matter what some bs spouting guru tells you, affiliate marketing takes a lot of work, dedication, and you have to be ready to lose money.
I have a bad habit when it comes to affiliate marketing. I baby my campaigns. I love to watch the spy view in Tracking202, and I end up wanting to change something about my campaign without just letting it run.
Today for example, I’ve been getting killed in all of my campaigns with Peerfly. Watching all of your money float away is enough to make you want to hit the pause button… but you can’t.
Learning to let go of your control over your campaign and just letting it run is a good lesson in affiliate marketing. I think it separates a lot of the piss poor marketers that will never get off the ground.
So how do you fix it? You gotta get your mind off it dude! Go for a walk, find another campaign to start, etc. etc.. just do anything that will get you away from your tracker view long enough to let the damn thing run. Then when you’ve got all of your data, sift through it and weed out the crap.
Remember, your 200 clicks to an offer at 2% conversion rate doesn’t mean it wont pick up at 5pm, 6pm or even 11pm and swing you way back into the green for the day… Just don’t sweat it until you have the data.
Now I gotta turn off my laptop so I don’t go crazy watching that damn spy view.
