I really would discourage you to do managed buys at first. That is the most difficult part of our biz. You get your account manager to do the buys for you, but you gotta have the experience and knowledge to tell him what to do. They don't really like inexperienced people. The same account manager you are dealing with, makes the buys for big ad agencies. For instance, I got hooked up by my acc manager at last ad:tech NY with the guy managing the online stuff for B.B.D.O(I hope you know them, if not - one of the biggest ad agencies in the world). They spend 100-150 mil EVERY MONTH. And when black friday and chistmass hit that goes to 250 mil.

It's just no place for a newbie.

If you really want numbers, the minimum deposits at ad networks go from 2,500 - 10,000. And that is like the minimum deposit at PS - 10 bucks. Do you expect to make something usefull out of it?

For managed buys, you want your banenrs and landers already worked out and tested. Then, typically, you would run like 40k test on the network, trim the fat, optimize and scale.

If you want to start buying media, I would suggest you go to RTB platfroms like sitescout. Their min deposit is just $500 bucks.

I know that I push it a lot, but they are great guys over there and unlike the other networks will not turn down newbies and love affiliates(unlike a lot of the networks out there). They will definetely help you out. Just ask for Steve.

For time frames - that is what I love about this biz. 1 year in internet biz is like 10+ years for brick&mortar. I know people that start with 250 bucks and after 9 months they got 2mil+ credit at the ad networks and do buys at msn.com

Not testing enough, for sure. ALWAYS TEST. You can't expect to just do your homework and everything will work out. Doing your due dillegence is important, but there is nothing like the real world data that you get while actually doing the work yourself.

Don't worry. It's really information overload. If you try to search google and other forums, it will be even worse, lol. That picture, that I posted actually is pretty accurate. I work/have worked with 80%+ of those companies. It's a big place.

Being small time people for sure. It may sound funny, but thinking small is a huge mistake.

I constantly see people jacking my banners up through intelligence spy tools.

See, those tools are great, but if you steal something from someone that will not get you very far. If you notice it is worth stealing, then it has been running for a lot of time and its life is already ending. Sure you can squeeze some bucks out of it but... They are great tools to find out where you stand, what's working out. Make your deductions out of it, not just plain steal **** up.

Also I laugh my ass off when some dip**** steals my lander and forgots to change the affiliate links and I got the sales. You would be surprise at how often that happens LOL.

Unrealistic expectations is another thing. You can't do that for a month and expect to rack dem millionz.

the good thing about this biz right now is that there is a ****ton of intentory and tools to buy it. There are more spots than demand. I see every day wasted inventory.

Just gotta find your spots in all of it.

Ha ha, nice one.

Just to ask since you were recommending the affiliate network is there something similar on the CPA network side or just about anyone would be ok?

my friends at ads4dough.com are just great. Don't be fooled by the name and the site design. It's that way to keep peasants away.

w4.com . There used to be a huge network called "hydra", but some of the execs were really ****ty people and the talent split and made their own network. That is w4. It's small and under the radar, but that is a good thing.

abovealloffers.com <- those guys will do everything for you if you run a lot of traffic through them. They are just great.

whizmedia
mundomedia.

convert2media <- great network.

Unfortunetely the above networks are kinda for people who have been at least pushing some traffic right now. You can apply there too though.

some newb friendly:

clickbooth
maxbounty
EWA <- the owner acts likes a baller and stuff like that, but if you are dealing with the bisuness wise, you will find out he is trustworthy. It's just an act to attract kids. Also, don't fall for his marketing ploy "EWA is accepting only x ammount of affiliates right now" and his banners "You cannot be accepted at EWA". This network helps affiliates A LOT. I strongly recommend you to try to get in this one. Get on the email with him and try to pitch him lol.

neverblue, this network is one of the biggest, but their parent company has filed for a bancruptcy protection and neverblue is being auctioned right now. Neverblue itself is solvent and people are saying everything is OK, but I can't really recommend them right now. The funny thhing is that, the networks that have sinked in the past were always the biggest ones.

peerfly <- they accept absolutely everyone. You even don't have to get on the phone with them. Just receive e text and confirm on their website. I would recommend you, to count on this one as a last chance.

All of the networks will require a quick phone call with you. That is just a screening process for indians and such and to drive fraudsters away. Just be honset, say you don't have any experience but you are looking to start out. Don't lie at all, those guys smell bull**** from a mile away.

some other networks:

if you are looking for digital goods:
*********.com <- no site, no phone call, but only selling ebooks and courses and software

tangible goods and hardware and stuff like that, they have some lead gens too, but nothing interesting:

cj.com
shareasale.com <- recommended, if you want to be affiliate for a real product.

Also, apply for several(all of them) networks at once. If you got rejected for some reason and you didn't receive a phone call, call them yourself. In 99% of the cases you will be accepted.

What CPA networks do you recommend, especially for a noob? (*edit* I see you just answered this.)

What do you think about someone just jumping in via trial and error using only advertiser's landing pages and display ads? I assume that if I do my due diligence as far as finding the right product/service, demographic, etc. that it is possible to turn a reasonable ROI this way.(?) Or what I might like to do, rather than creating 20-30 display ads per promotion myself initially, is make a few custom display ads per promotion and run mine along with theirs to test the waters as far as CTR for my own stuff. Maybe I would do the same with landing pages. Maybe this will only work with really new advertisers that have somewhat fresh copy themselves?

Is there a guide you would recommend for writing landing page copy?

Can you give a rough outline of what someone should do starting out with say, 1k? How many different promotions would you want to spread that over? What would you look to spend as far as CPM? How many impressions would you look to get per ad before you decide whether or not to continue running it?

I'm sorry for so many questions, but this is really interesting stuff. Thanks for doing this.

That is the best (and IMO the only) way to get into this biz. Reading will not get you anywhere. It's like with poker. You can read all you want, but when you hit the tables frist you are a fish.

That is reasonable assumption.

Doing that for the landing pages is a good idea. If they are running through CPA networks, that means that they are making sales and their landers are somewhat good.

Direct linking(you use the advertiser's lander) is profitable. You will want to create your landers when you have some experience and want to match the lander to your banner, which is matched to the site you are running on. And also when you start capturing data for yourself, before passing it.

But with the banners, you just gotta make them yourself, because the advertiser's are just already raped to death. First he used them for months himself before running through CPA networks and then when the offer was fresh, the affiliates raped them even further.

What I suggest to you, if you want to start out is to look at this software:

http://www.banneradrockstar.com/
http://www.mediabuyrockstar.com/

I AM NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE COMPANY, MAKING THE SOFTWARE IN ANY WAY.

I jjust used it in my early days.

IF you want some insight on it, before purchasing, here is a webinar. It has some somewhat itneresting info on media buying:

http://www.offervault.com/webinar/watch/week/118/

whole book - ca$hvertising NO AFFILIATE LINK.

Do your research, do your banners, talk to your affiliate manager, talk to your ad rep and start running. Just do it smart. Don't burn through all of your cash for two days. Make it so you have a lot of data out of it. Like 10 days for $100 each. After you got some data, adjust and make bank.

Don't forget to test everything. A/B testing is a must.

One. Spreading yourself too thin is a big mistake. I see all the time. Just master one vertical and one traffic source fist. Then think about something else.

Just pick a vertical(dating, I recommend) and ask your AM what is doing well on your traffic source. Remeber that when you make money, he makes money too.

But don't bee too pushy, he has 1000 of affiliates just like you. IF you are not making him money yet, he will help you out, but up to a point.

[quote]
What would you look to spend as far as CPM? How many impressions would you look to get per ad before you decide whether or not to continue running it?
[quote]

Generally $2 is average CPM. Remeber that we are talking remnant inventory. The premium costs $15-20+. I would go as high as $5, but that just gotta make sense for me. Remeber, that you have metrics and you are in direct responce. If you are seeing the results at your end, you can go as high as your results are allowing. IF you are making decent money at $5 CPM, why no go for it?

When you are starting out, bid on(I hope you have sitescout/other RTB as a starting point) $0,50 - $2. Stay in the lower ranges.

Also, make sure the inventory you are buying, is above the fold. THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT. IF you are buying spots, that noone is actually seeing, you are just lighting money on fire.

Not at all, it is good to have some technical questions answered too.

IF you got more - shoot.

Thanks for the answers, very interesting.

To ask on a personal basis, where do you see yourself in the near future? It looks to me you run a giant marketing company.

Thanks for the detailed response. I'm sure I'll have more questions. I had already ordered Ca$hvertising yesterday, btw.

i guess i'll ask some questions relating to me personally

i've created a poker multi-tabling application at www.stackandtile.com as a hobby and thats how i started learning about marketing/copywriting/etc (whereas i'm more familiar with the writing code aspect of things). i dont have very many users at all, but i realize that my software is very niche compared to the widespread poker tracker apps. how would you go about increasing my userbase? i've chosen the monthly subscription payment model which has turned off some users but i need to make this worth my while at least a little

second, earlier in the thread, if i read it correctly, you said that someone could get up to $1k/day within 6 months of hard work. for someone like me, who is familiar with putting up sites and can work his way through code html/css/php etc, where would you recommend i start?

ive considered the online poker/casinos niche since thats the area that i'm familiar with. usually they will give you like $50 per CPA that you can get signed up as long as the end user makes a real money deposit of like $500 or something. as a poker player who values his time fairly highly, it seems like a shiitload of work to try to get $50 for one signup. i suppose what you do is mass market this kind of stuff so that somehow you are not really wasting your time..

Not really giant, I have 5 people on staff lol. We are in 130 sq.m. office, so it's not as big as you might imagine.

WE are a compact company.

The thing is, the bigger you get, the more people you gotta hire and your margins become thinner. i.e. if I open an office in Frankfurt to manage german biz, I gotta hire someone lime me to manage the show. People like me, are very expensive. And the bigger you get, the less risks you can take.

You know, you gotta people on payroll. People with families and stuff like that. Sometiems you gotta let someone go, because things don't look that shinty right now, because if you don't fire him, everyone will suffer. They expect things from you, if you know what I mean. It's kinda like being a head of a family. Especially with smaller companies like mine.

I will think of myself as big if I break the billion mark. IMO, then a company is big enough.


Where do I see myself in the near future?

A lot of my peers started their own business and products/services and I kinda got left behind making money for other people.

I want to shift my business a bit. I want to transform ourselves in a lead generation/data monetization company. Like companies come to us, and say "Hey, we need clients. Gimme some". I got the audience, they trust me, I work only with trustful companies and we all bank hard.

Like back in the day, I used to buy websites at flippa, who had just adsense on them and put products/aff links. Do that, but just build websites for the purpose of lead generation. Something like webmd/investopedia but not selling banners.

Building email lists and websites for generating leads. And media buying will be just a channel for generating, not the whole biz.

I hope what im saying is making sense for you.

Also, I want to make a software like google analytics, but on steroids. Build with performance in mind. To have heatmaps and eye tracking built in and all the goodies. To track everything someone needs, make visualizations and such. Have multivarative testing and things like that. And on top of that, help optimize the site towards people's goals. It will be not be for the casual user, but for ad agencies/people managing a lot of sites/big affiliates/ecomerce stores.

It will help me imensly, and if I manage to refine it for the not-so-power users, maybe I can sell it as on SaaS model charge monthly and have people optin for a newsletter, where all the money is invested in research and case studies on colors, demographics, psychology on the masses and goodies like that.

There is a power web analytics softwre right now by adobe. It's called Omniture. I haven't used and I think it's our main competitor. The thing is I gotta spend like $100k just to see it. Eventually, I gotta do that, so I know what the competition is doing, but spending it now doesn't make any sense. And I think it's rediculously overpriced. No matter what they offer, I think that 10k/month for just analytics and the basic plan, that is, is way too much.

I gotta some plans for igaming(poker mainly), but just gotta get my lazy ass to it and start doing it. Pretty intesting stuff, but not outing lol.

But in some years, I really see myself hiring a CEO to manage everything. You know marketing is good, and you can make butloads of money really fast, but you are making the rich people richer. After making enough money, I see myself stepping down, doing some more traveling, maybe writing a book, maybe teaching college/uni students. Maybe stuying philosophy/psychology, maybe literature. Basically enjoying life.

And while I'm at it, do some venture funding and helping start ups. Like backing this guys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d6KuiuteIA at the early days? Are you kidding me? How cool is that? So far, I've helped some folks at TEDTalks and I've made a decently sized donation to reddit, because I think it represents the internet really well. And I love the internet. It is just such a great social factor and... I just love it. It's an awesome thing lol. A lot of people forget about to think about how good the internet is.

I don't really believe in charity. No matter how rich you are, you can't feed all the hungry people in the world. Building an infrastructure and teaching them a trade or how to make money? That IMO is a way better thing. I'm looking for oportunities to do that. And also, giving good students that have big ambition scollarships - that IMO is such an awesome thing. I am very proud that I have given 2 schollarships so far to students that graduated my highscool and my chemistry teacher told me about. They would have gone and be waiters or drivers or something like that, but now, they Organic chemistry grads. How cool is that?

Yeah.. basically I guess that is how I see myself. Making butloads of money, so I will never ever have to worry about them and helping technology and perspective people go forward and develop society that way. IMO, salvation for our world lies in science and technology. Politics and relligion is just bull**** and wasting people's time and resources. Also enabling greedy ****s and corporation to block development and technologies like cancer/AIDS cures and technologies that make green energy(tidal, wind, solar power), because the status quo makes them butloads of mmoney.

Well, that is a tough one. As a friend of mine says you are in the "can opener for left haded people". It is a really small niche. The good thing is you don't have lots of competition.

You website has some mistakes IMO, but that is not very important, because your target demo is professionals. They know what's up. You don't have to pitch them very hard.

That's why I will talk about marketing the whole thing.

A disclaimer I gotta put right here. I'm completely talking out of my ass. I've never been remotely close to that niche and don't know people in it, personally, so take everything with a pinch of salt.

One thing that you can do is contact power poker affiliates. Implement a coupon system and give them discounts for their users and offer them a CPA for everyone that uses their coupon. Figure out your user retention first. If a user subscribes to your service for an average of ten months:

LVC(lifetime value of the customer): $179,5
coupon discoun for two months: 35.9
your revenue: 143.6
you can give them 20% of your total revenue: around 30 bucks.
your total profit: 113.6

Just make sure that the people can't use two consecutive months as their free and they can't use the first as free. Also, make sure that you pay the affiliates on a purchase, not a free trial.

Make the payments at monthly net10: You wire them the payments for all sales made for the month, 10 days after the month has ended.



that's without any costs you might have. This was just an example of how you should be looking at how to calculate what to offer them.

They've got nothing to lose. Only to gain. First they might get a few bucks. Second their players get value out of them.

You can do that "ONLY THIS MONTH", and then the next month "because of the huge demand we have continued our deal" but have a smaller coupon.

Another thing you might do contact similar products(not direct comeptitors though) and make a bundle. Like 5 products cost 400 bucks, but they get it for 250 and the software devs split the profit.

You can also contact power affiliates and give them unlimitted discounted licesnces for their users and have them "You generate X in rake this month and you get 1 month of this awesome software". Like CR and DC and other training companies do it.

Going to forums and poker blogs and getting a sponsored article is a powerthing to do. Maybe give a review copy to bloggers.

Also, maybe implement a "reffer a fiend progam". When you refer someone, you get 1 month for free. Make it really easy for them. As you are a coder, it will be easy for you to implement that, I suppose.

I'm sorry that I can't really help you with this, I'm really not experienced in this field.

yeah, 1k a day is not that hard to achieve at all. Where to start - just start doing it. I wrote some posts on good starting points for beginners. Look at them. If you get some technical skills, that's good, but means nothing in the marketing world. For instance, I can't code ****, and can't design ****. It will be a plus for you, because when you outsource things, you will be able to find quality people and will know what costs how much. That's a tough thing to judge if you don't know **** about code/design.

Also, if you mean that you want to do aff marketing thorugh websites, rather than through ad buying - your coding skills are good for making the websites, but don't mean ****. You gotta rank for the keywords. coding skills won't help you much and almost everything in aff marketing can be done with wordpress lol. You actually have the least useful skills in aff marketing. The best is if you can write well, after that comes hustling and ambition, after that SEO skills, then comes design, and the coding. It will sure help you for not spending on the backbone, but you gotta a lot of other stuff to do.

$50 CPA for poker/casino/betting is waaaaay low. It starts at $80 for 10 bucks deposit(that's at PKR.com for this very moment). It can go as high as 300 pounds. For betting/casino it goes even higher.

The larges niches from waaaay back in the day have always been PPP. Porn, poker, pharma.

People make ****loads of money. But the real money is not in CPA, it's in rev share. But that requires a long term plan.

Yeah, mass marketing and mainly SEO is the way to go. PPV is huge in that field. PPV is pay-per-view. It's when people download some freebie/toolbar, it is bundled with adware. And when they type certain things in google/open a certain site it opens a pop-up/under. It's paid on CPM basis too. It's very good for this vertical.

IF you are into SEO, you gotta target smaller niches, like "best pokersites for 7 card stud" or something like that.

One thing people don't understand is that, when you build a list it's LOLeasy to print money.

You spend 90bucks for aquiring a player, you get 100 for it, you profit very little, but then you got his email

After a month you just organise a tournament/freeroll/some other promotion just for your players and email them. You will get around 1:3 conversions. For 1000 people, that's 300 people at least. 300x 100 bucks =30 grand. Then crossmarketing comes along, you pitch them with that "betting system" or this super sweet game that is comming. Then you push handicaping services. Then software.

You can do that for a while, but of course it will dry up, you gotta always reinvest in new properties(sites), buying other people's sites, ranking for better keywords, corss marketing, etc.


Hope that helps. If you have something else to ask - shoot.

Not really a specific question, just curious for some feedback on what you think about my approach... I'm a noob with this stuff.

I'm looking to break into venture capital and recently started a display ad on LinkedIn that redirects to my LinkedIn profile. Started off targeting anyone in the "Private Equity and Venture Capital" industry in five geographic locations (30,000 people). This weekend I realized that some of these leads are too unqualified so I then limited it down by job title (now 15,000 people). The great thing about LinkedIn ads is that with a premium account I can see who clicked the banner ad about 2/3 of the time, so even if they choose not to message me I can check them out (see if they have a job posting, what their firm specializes in, etc) and maybe follow up with them myself.

Two ad varieties, one is a bit link baity, the other I imagine the leads are more valuable.

1) Unemployed Millionaire (61 clicks, 60k impressions, 0.1% CTR, Avg CPC $2.45)
2) All-Star VC Analyst (32 clicks, 53k impressions, 0.06% CTR, Avg CPC $2.34)

These stats seem pretty solid but I've already spent about $150 after rebate and haven't seen a ton of ROI in terms of inbound (4 inbound leads so far, only 1 of which might lead to anything).

Seems that LinkedIn is pretty low engagement though, and your profile has to be pretty incredible to blow people away on there, especially in this industry. I would think they probably spend only 15-30 seconds on average on my profile once they click the ad.

I was thinking about doing an A/B test where I redirected off LinkedIn to my resume post on my blog. My blog is relatively new though (only 2 posts so far) so felt strange to me. Creating an AboutMe page seemed like a decent option as well. Is it worth looking into creating a separate landing page for this ad? You mentioned "guiding him through the conversion"... I think I might be failing in this regard right now.

yeah the $50 was just a ballpark, anyway

do you use any particular software to do your A/B testing and to check the statistics of what works better?

What is your conversion goal? I need to know it, in order to help. If your goal is an email submit, you should take one course of action, different then the one, if your goal is people to invest money.

In any way you are paying waaay too much. you should know that your CPC is a derivative of your CTR. The higher your CTR is, be lower you will pay per click.

You should be aim at least at 0,3%+ CTR, otherwise you can't really make things profitable. It's a really hard thing to do at the least.

I do multivarative testing these days, not simple a/b. It's more expensive initialy, but reaps more returns. I have custom built software for that.

I had custom built script for the a/b testing too.

Just google it, i'm sure you will find something out.