Why would you drop a 300% ROI display CPM campaign instead of just letting it sit there and bring in some money until it becomes ineffective? You've already made your time investment in setting it up, why not autopilot this one while developing other new campaigns?

Because it costs money. Why not invest my money on something more profitable?

Also, the ads will burn out, and I gotta make new banners for it, which will eat more time, better invested somewhere else.

Testing and optimizing campaigns is not something that you do once. It is an ongoing and evergoing process.

Unfortunetely, there is no autopilot. You gotta oversee everything.

Don't get me wrong. For most people 300% ROI is great and not so easy to achieve. But that is what sets apart the good media buyers from the great ones. That constant hustle and optmizing for something better and not settling until you squeze everything you can out of your investement.

300% maximum ROI on a campaign means it's limited in various ways. Even if I pour money into it, it will lower the ROI to around 80-100%, because that's what's happening when you scale largely. And like I said, man-hours for me are limitted. Better do something else.

EDIT: I see now, that you said why not let it run, until unprofitable - actually, that is what I meant, sorry if I was unclear. I will not just go and stop it, because it makes me only 3 dollars for every 1 I spend. That's foolish. Especially, as I am on postpay(I pay for the inventory after the ads run, not before that) I will just stop the support for it and let it die.

That was just an example, as how much profitable is CPM bidding than a CPC one.(in certain cases, of course)

thanks for sharing op, I also lost my old name , and had to create a new one just to post in this thread

I have my own website and I would like to open a call center with telemarketers and cold-callers. what would be the best way to buy quality leads or find affiliates that will work with me and sell me their leads?I read your post where you say that the future of the affiliate game is selling the leads to real businesses. How would I go about acquiring these phone leads and finding the affiliate partners?
We are set to run the inhouse call center in about 2 months, right now, the game plan includes buying radio advertising, banners on a few big sites that cater to our target audience and using our existing database.
I also currently have an affiliate program as well which I have not used at all and do not know where to start.

thanks

Actually, I'm very glad for this question. Lol, i sound like dem politions, don't I.

If you want to do called calling, you will want to looking into co-reg(instartion) paths. It's a very lengthy topic. Basically, someone register for some kind of an offer and his info is passed along to several other advertisers. If the other advertisers require additional information he is redirected to new pages, with new fields.

silverpath is one such network. Contact them and ask for help, they are good guys.

One way to acquire numbers is to do a so called "pin submit". Basically, when the user clicks and ad, or whatever way he lands on the landing page he is promted with a few questions or is offered a prize and in order to proceed he has to input his ph#. He receives an sms and has to input the pin in the field, to confirm his ph#. I don't want what software they are using for this though, i have never done it.

Be very careful with ofering freebies though. The FTC has very strick rules about it. Basically, you can do just that on the front end and when they submit their phone number, they are redirected to your parner's pages and they have to complete additional offers in order to get the freebie. At the end they have to make some kind of purcase in order to qualify for the freebie.

The good thing about this is, every time he fills additional offers after yours, you get paid, so basically, you can get the numbers for free or even profit out of the whole deal.

Another way is an IQ quiz. You get them through an IQ quiz and in order for them to get the result, they gotta input their ph#. Works like a charm.

You can also go on some fourms/companies/trade shows and seek for people that own data, but most of them are going to want to do a rev share with you, instead of a direct buy. There are a lot of places, just search around on some forums. Maybe you should visit mailingforum.com. Search google for "data monetization" and contact those comapnies.

Another method of aquiring leads is a lot more interesting and a lot more "white hat". That is one of the things I am looking to branch into.

Paypercall. I know some people killing it on mobile right now. Basically works like this(from the affiliate POV)

instead of an affliate link you get a unique number or several(for internal tracking purposes).

You buy ads, stick it on your site, or even flyers and offline, whatever.

When someone calls your number, like for insurance lead it goes:

if you are over 18, press 1
if you own a car, press 1
....
....

Then he is conected to the call operator. After "X" ammount of time spend on the line, you(the affiliate) get paid. The quality is INSANE.

I don't know exactly how it works on the advertiser's end, but I think it's pretty self-explainatory. You can do everything with this model - leads, sales, everything.

As you might imagine, it works exceptionally well on mobile, because you can make so they just tap on the ph# and they call directly.

You can even setup google adwords for it. When they do a search and your ad shows up and they click it, instead of going to web page, they are redirected to a call centre. Again, awesome on mobile.

It is a very new thing. And you rarely can find standalone affiliates.

They are affiliate programs only for paypercall. Some are

cj.com/paypercall
shareasale.com
mundomedia.com has some too.
ads4dough.com has some too.


All of them are using a software from ringrevenue.com. You can buy it yourself and set it up and get your own paypercall aff program and not give networks your monies.

Actually, as I said, I am very interested in this myself and would love to have a chat about it, but as we are both new members and don't have PMs yet, and I don't want to post my contact info on public forums, as I imagine you don't, it's a tough job to get in touch. Any ideas?

Hope that helps, if you want something else - shoot.

Thanks for the response
That is some interesting stuff and we will try to explore your recommendations in the post and post again in this thread.
As for getting in touch, it seems like 2p2 changed their policy on private messages
Anyways, I have a gimmick email in my profile which ya can email me at and perhaps we can get in touch.

I also lost my password to my old name, had to make a new name. Seems like a common issue.

I run an olive oil company, and I made my website simply to have a web presence and as a convenience for people to buy it (my company has a small following of people who almost all know me personally). I've never really expected the web sales to be very profitable, mostly because people are so price sensitive with food, and because shipping costs add a lot of extra expense without adding any value to the product. Thus, unless I raise the price, the margins for my online sales are pretty thin.

I was wondering what your thoughts were on internet marketing for this kind of business? Should I bother trying to scoop up cheap ad spots on food sites? Where should I look to test out a few display ads? Are there places where I can get "remnant ads" that are on sites that target foodies / cooking sites etc?

I put some display ads on Facebook but they didn't do very well. Do you have any comments about landing pages with respect to a physical product like this, when I actually own the company? I've been sending people to my domain home page, from there they need to click a few buttons before they can close a purchase. How important is it for the landing page to be "add to cart" type of page? I know you mostly generate leads but I figured you would have insight about this.

For the most part, if I play with online ads at all, I imagine that I have to do the marketing for this product myself. I won't be able to entice any affiliates to work with me given how thin my margins are. I could raise the price and still get sales from some people who are REALLY into it, but philosophically I would rather offer a better price for the product and deliver a lot of value to my customers. Any advice would be appreciated, at the moment I'm planning to simply not advertise online because I don't see it as +EV yet.

Quick derail:

Someone contacted me via PM, saying that I actually don't say anything of value or anything that can be found. And as I can't PM, I have to put this here.

Don't get me wrong, I am not revealing some kind of secrets here. Almost everything(apart from my personal contacts and recommendations) can be found freely on the internet. You just have to dig very deep(and know what you are searching for, in the first place) in order to find the relevant information. And then, again, you have to put a lot of thinking to draw your conclusions from what you have spent months searching and reading.

Don't think of me like some kind of a guru(I really hate those guys). Think of my like a quick reference. I can just give you quick, relevant information and point you to the right direction. You have to walk your own way, I can't do that for you.

That being said, I can't really tell you a lot of spicy stuff, because I will out myself/my friends/coleagues. I can't really give you the secrets of my trade, can I? I know that not a lot of people read this and it's not some IM forum and everyone will dash into raping my methods and ways, but I just can't risk it. I hope you understand that. It's like asking some chef about his cooking book - not gonna happen.

No, I'm actually happy people ask different questions, because there aren't so many things I can say about just buying banners without outing myself.

I actually would change the title of the thread to "I'm a big online marketer" if I could. Because that is what I actually do. In ad agencies, a media buyer, is the guy who just buys the spots. There are marketing guys and media planners and all kind of other people who make the plan. I do all of that myself. And I have done a lot of stuff apart from buying banners. Websites for adsense monies, content locking, search ppc, hell even spamming forums and youtube(ashamed).

This post (AGAIN) turned out rather messy. I started talking about a lot of stuff, you didn't ask about. You might be doing some of the stuff, I talk about, but I hope you can make something out of all that writing.

Basically, to eveything you said, the answer is yes. Quick answers for some questions:

Should you buy banners on small, related sites - I would rather say no. You better contact them directly and pay for a sponsored listing or article where they promote your product. I think that will be reap a lot more sales for you. The thing with banners, is that you count on big numbers. It's a numbers game. You gotta have millions of impressions and only handful of clicks. With small niches like that, you can't really do it effectively, because there are only a few people interested in what you are selling. You can summon intent in some, but I don't think it's gonna be worth it.

Sponsored article on relevant sites though, will just put your name out there. Will make aware interested people of your existing. They might bookmark you and stuff like that.

HINT: mommy bloggers.

About the landing page - linking to your homepage is a huge mistake. I often see that. There is a reason why the landing page has been invented. Some basic stuff - explain briefly, what the customer will gain(healthy, delicious, etc., etc.) with a pretty font, maybe a video on the top, right corner. BIG "call to action" button.

DO NOT ever put a credit card fields on the lander page. That is just a no-go. maybe email and name at the first page, and then the process goes to a second, where they put their cc info and check out.

That way, if they have a second thought on the checkout process - you have their email and can email them and summon the intend again.

Pick green colours for your page. I hear foodsies love it.

TEST TEST TEST. And track, and then optimize acordingly. Change the colors, the fonts, the call to action buttons, and size of the fields, the headlines. Change everything. And see what works best. I CANNOT REALLY STRESS THIS ENOUGH.

Another way to bring good traffic for your website is search ppc and maybe contextual) = google adowrds/MSN adcentre. Just don't bid on outrageuosly expensive keywords. There are some tools that can generate relevant keywords for you. Google them.

Facebook ads is a good way to promote, but I guess you are doing it wrong. I don't blame you, I blame all the blogs and marketing agencies that make all the hype. And then everyone thinks that facebook will do miracles for their business. It's not that easy man. It's marketing.

A few tips - make yourself a fan page. Something that a lot of people do not know is that if you link to a fan page, instead of external link, your CPC will got 1/3 of what it usually is.

Put advanced targetting. Target health/bodybuilding/foodsie pages. Just search for them first, find out as many as you can. Make appealing headlines and use appealing pictures.

Some tips on how to not burn out your ads very quickly: If your target demo is 20-25 female. Target people from 20-22 on day1 and on day two - the rest. Always have a few ads running and see what is working. Drop the losers. On day 3, go back to 20-22. I hope you get the idea. That will help you not spend too much and will give you longer life for you ads. Also change your pictures/headlines every 10 days or so.

Contact fan page admins in your target demo and offer them to promote your fanpage/site. Some will do it, without anything in return. Some, you will have to pay. It's not very expensive usually. Just make sure that you make a deal, where they post at least 2-3 times your page, not just 1. When you have some following on your page you can do swaps.

Post on your fb page, don't let it rot. Make a blog and make articles for it on relevant topics.(you can hire writers - textbrokers, thecontentauthority). Then post it on your fb page. Offer them discount coupons for your products(fb has a tool for this). Engage with them. Post pics of healthy people/health goods.

When someone buys from you, stick his email in a database/CRM/autoresponder(icontact, aweber, mailchimp) and send them an email every week with some article(just make sure it's v good, they will just unsubscribe from you if you waste their time) and every now and then offer them a coupon or pitch them.

Also put the email subscriber field on your blog and offer them something(cookbook, or health tips) so they subscribe.

Reach out to other ecommerce stores in your field(not direct competitors though), and do 1-click upsells with their products. You are seriously missing out if you are not doingthis. If they buy olive oil, they will be interested in beans/salami/pears/goat cheese. Offer the store owners to do upsell with your product and give them a cut.

Also, you can make a twitter account and get a following. Just engage in conversation. Like search for some hastags and contribute to the conversation. Make it more personal. That way people will want to hear back from you. You can also buy sponsored tweets(just google it). I know that you will be able to get some accounts that target your demo. Just when they tweet about you, make sure the link doesn't go to a sale page.

Don't be one of those ecomerce sites. Make them want your product. Explain why it is good to buy your product. What sets you apart from the competitors. MAKE THEM WANT IT.

That of course requires a lot of work on your copy.

Also, always make sure, that even if they don't buy now, you get something from them. Email, like, follow, whatever, youtube subscriber, whatever.


Also, make a tumblr account and post all your blogs there too. I know for a fact that there are a lot of foodsies there. Again, just engage.

Pinterest is the trend right now. GET ON THERE. It's exactly your demo, IMO.

Maybe even go on related forums. Just contribute there and converse. Maybe you can buy someone's signature for $10/month.

As you may see, I recommend a lot of social activity, but that is just the way with your biz. Personal recommendation. Oppsosed to big corporations, for small biz like that, this is the way to go.

There are a lot of software products that can help you manage your social marketing efforts. Hootsuit is one. You can search for others. There are some outrageously expensive(I use radian6), do not fall for that. You don't really need it. Just use something lightweight. Google it.


One more thing - make sure it is very easy to subscribe/like/follow you. Urge your visitors to do so. Bribe them. Maybe a mobile app with cooking recepies, whatever. Make them want to share what you have. Figure it out.

One thing I think you don't take into consideration is that you do not think about the lifetime value of the customer. He may purchase something for $100 and make you $20 now, but if you remarket to him(the way I described), he will make you a lot more than $20. That way you can offer your "affiliates" even full comission on what you sell through them. You will make your money on the 2nd, whatever. Customer retention is the key here. Work on that.

EDIT: Also, branch out. DO product development. You can push someone elses products to your audience too, but you can develop other products too. You have your demo, think about what other they might be interested in. Mobie apps, books, other tanglie goods, other foods, whatever. HUSTLE.

How do you know that a person filled out details/made a buy on your client's website? Is that based on trust/their reports?

Isn't your profit derived from the effectiveness of the clients landing page? You get them traffic but if they have a crappy page there is no profit....

Phenominal thread. I know absolutely nothing about this, but I've learned a ton.

Whats the easiest way to make and design a landing page if you are not tech savy?

Exactly.


I understood that what you do is pick a landing site and then do your best to create traffic there. Not sure if that's correct though. How do you choose your landing sites?

So is it correct to say that you can find affiliates to promote with your own unique link to get proper credit (lose weight, dating, grants, etc.) through a CPA network like ClickBooth and then you have to buy ad space through a RTB network like SiteScout?

Or can you just do it all in place to do everything (ie - only go through ClickBooth or only go through SiteScout)?

Also, few more random questions:

- Seems to me that scalability is way more important than ROI. If you have a 3000% ROI but can only target an extremely narrow demographic who cares, right? Small ball for someone like you. If you could do a really broad campaign with a 30% ROI its much more appealing, right?

- I get where the leverage comes from in your biz, i think. It comes from the fact that buying these banners is inexpensive because most people have crappy click through rates. If you hit it right, you can buy lots of clicks very cheap. VS. buying per click, much less leverage there because it costs a lot more. You'd have to have absolutely stellar click through rates to get the same leverage and return.

- Where do you do most of your managed buys? Where should someone look to start?

thanks for doing this. i may pepper you with specific questions later

are,they books or websites to learn the basics of this? i realize u have expertise which i would never expect to learn from a book