Yes, that was what I meant, sorry.

And is it better to first start buying ads on bigger well-known sites or is it okay to buy on a site you never heard of, as long as the demo is right and they have a lot of impressions available?

Any suggestions for newbies about this?

I was thinking about YouTube or Facebook earlier and then do the target option to filter and narrow down. But then these are all listed as "unknowns" in terms of page placement.

Do you suggest going with big name sites with unknown page placements or maybe go on a site that isn't well-known but fits the demo, has a lot of impressions available to purchase, and has Above the Fold clearly stated available?

Are there any ad networks that focus on mobile phones?

4char

ha, today my my friends ryan&ruck from imgrind released this beauty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ptAEoNy5s

I bought a membership at imgrind last week, it will definitively help me to avoid some beginner mistakes and gave me some ideas to explore for the french market.

I am finally more interested to start with mobile marketing instead of RTB media buying but the more I read about it, the more I got the feeling that's not a good place for beginners.

it is definitely not.

by that I mean you have to have a bigger strategy than putting banners on sites and making sales. That is not working on mobile and I've saw people spend ridiculuos amounts of money and still can't make it work.

It will never work that way actually. At least in 99% fields.

how do you like imgrind? Does it live up to the expectation? Or dissapoints?

I learn a lot, especially for strategies to capture and monetize leads through multiple steps funnel. I will apply them to french offers.

just wanted to chime in about this in case anyone cares.. i watched a webinar from the guy Chad who runs that forum and he does give out some good advice, some of which line up with what ballistic was saying in this thread. most importantly, he is refreshing to listen to because he doesn't hype everything up. i've watched a few different webinars from these internet marketing clowns all hyping their $1000 software product or some other shiit for 2hours straight.. makes me want to rip my ears off.

my gf signed up for sixmonthsfromtoday and was also provided with Chad's 'traffic blackbook' videos and beginner 'profit 101' videos which so far seem like a good starting point. i'm making no claims about the usefulness of the forums or whatever training they are offering.. all i'm saying is that i watched some videos from the head guy and i enjoyed them, which seems rare in this shady business

I was talking about the forums. Of course he knows his ****, it would be really stupid to create a forum and to not know wtf you are talking about.

Last time I check his forum it was almost dead with threads about 7search and other PPC crap like that. basically, people who have just started and ask stupid questions. Nothing to learn from anyone but the founder.

imgrind on the other hand is full of people who are very skilled, and the owners are a lot more experienced. i.e. Ralph Ruckman(one of the owners) was CEO of convet2media, which is one of the leading networks out there, making more than 300m in revenue a year. A lot of people even thought that c2m=ralph and stopped working with them, after he left to start imgrind.

This guy knows some things, but there are just (a lot)better places to give your money.

applied to an ad network (first one i've applied to) and got rejected. for some reason i thought it would be an automatic thing - i apply, they accept me. i guess i need to find noobie-friendly ad networks.

yeah ballistic, the forums didnt seem all that useful, mostly beginners trying to get help from the founder. but thanks, i will check out imgrind too

If you used a throwaway e-mail that is more than likely why. Use a real e-mail address and apply with all your real information. If you know someone on the network, have them vouch for you. Phone them if needed and be honest about your traffic.

Check out Stack That Money too. Never used it but heard great things about on another forum. I think it's $50 a month. Could be a crap forum for all I know but I'd probably pay $50 just for the pleasure of not having to wade through all the 1-post Indian bot accounts that infest public IM forums

edit: I see the forum was already mentioned earlier. My pony is slow today.

Thanks. Did some more research on this - apparently a lot of people also face the problem of being rejected - and I see some things I did wrong. Your last sentence about phoning them seems to be the way to go from what I've read.

I haven't started a campaign yet but plan to very soon, but wanted to check with you first Ballistic about the below.

I'm thinking I would only run 1 offer/1 ad banner for now. The minimum buy from the ad network is $500. As this is my first time, is it reasonable to spend only half of this on a test, and then with the remaining, use the data from the test and then tweak things?

How many impressions do I need to get a good sample size for data?

And is it okay to only buy from 1 traffic source/1 website for now for the initial test with my 1 lone banner?

Or should I be running the same creative/banner on different sites at the same time to test different traffic sources?