I was asked the following after stating my $10k average earnings on CJ.

Originally Posted by diandr4

how much you spend for bought the traffic??? ru using a landingpage or some other method?

thanks for ur advice and motivated replay.

For my Cj campaigns alone (I work with many other networks) I generally end up spending around $2k-2.5k on my PPC and media buys per month. It changes from month to month though. But lately been able to push down costs further by optimizing my landing pages with more text tweaking. Also it seems the longer the campaign history the cheaper the per click rate becomes. People usually set and forget landing pages that's like giving up on 50% of the battle. Yes keywords and adcopy are extremely important but once you find keywords that convert well you need to tweak your LP to bring down your bidding costs.

To start off I went through CJ and applied to a whole bunch of merchants I even contacted some telling them that I was going to put some serious effort in promoting them so if they had a better CPA or sales rate they should send me that offer. It worked a couple of times ofcourse those companies moved up to the top of the priority list. Then I slapped together some very generic landingpages (generic graphics and images) studied the merchants website to answer the simple question. "Why would anyone buy from you?" Once you figure that out you have all the best calls to action you can use on your landing pages. The key is K.I.S.S theory you have to Keep It Simple Stupid. Remember you usually have a few seconds to convince a buyer that your offering them exactly what they've been looking for. Don't worry about stuffing your page with details. The max amount of points you should stress are 10 if that. I try to stick to top 5 reasons that answer the why question.

Now depending on the niche you can pull up some wikipedia material to copy and shrink font size and have be directly below you ad text or graphics. I've experimented with making my page just an image so their bot can't read it and optimized the wiki article again to get a better quality score and bring down costs. This method works great and seems to be able to get a better Ctr from landing pages to the merchants page.

People often feel that these landing pages must be these masterpieces of art. That isn't the case trust me I'm no artist and I've been successful building my own. Your placement of words the flow through writing and calls to action are the most important factors. When you start finding sales then you can invest in a snappy graphics designer and such. Don't waste your money.

Anyways, now you've been accepted into a CJ merchants account also possible at a higher rate. You studied their pages developed 5 to 10 calls to action. Then you researched the market for keywords. A great way to do this is go to the merchants site look at their page source and hopefully there you will find meta tags with keywords or in their title tags. Now go to google and search up those keywords. Look at the top three ads and how their structured. The top ads are often the most successful. Try to experiment with variations of those ads or remix elements that they had. Also look at the top results in the search take a look at their source you should find more keywords to target for your PPC campaign and more to do testing with.

Now to the fun part you have your keywords ( you can use keyword tools on the web to find more), you have an idea of what successful ads look like and generic landing page has been put together. So all their is left to do is setup your campaigns on adwords (you can later on expand to other adnetworks, adwords tends to have the best quality traffic so always use them to test out campaigns first). Make sure to start off your per click bid high so you end up on the first page results. Make sure to also set a daily budget or you might end up with a nasty suprise the next time you login. Depending on competition, quality score, and ctr of your campaign you should never end up actually ever hitting your max bid. Make sure you also have a good tracking tool to log which keywords brought in traffic that ended up clicking through to merchants.

Split test your campaigns targeting only up to 10 keywords and make your ad copy highly customized to those campaigns. You can take this further when you land some keywords that convert and also customize your landing pages for those keywords to increase sales.

Now let it run for alteast a week to get a proper idea of how the keywords perform. Running a campaign for only a day is not useful enough info to make decisions with. At the end of the week take a look at the best preformers and try to figure out why. Then try applying it to the other variations and adgroups. The campaigns that are doing real bad dump them. The ones atleast covering your costs work on them some more they have great potential and the ones going great export those campaigns to other adnetworks to multiple your successes.

Finally move on to the next merchant and repeat the whole processes again. I use this process across several different cpa networks and its worked everytime.
I try to seekout merchants that are stable and not running limited time offers or campaigns. That means less work for you in the future (ie updating campaigns and such).

Good luck and much success to everyone. All it takes is a lil work. I'm sure once you see things working you'll be even more motivated to do better and better!

Most of you might already know this info but people don't realize there is no magic bullet. You have to test test test, try try try. The day you start implementing instead of just reading is the day you start your journey in earning money online!

it is a solid way of doing it the whitehat way, and probably known by many, but it's good to see you have success with it.

hey mrsmirf, I have a whitehat site promoting CJ stuff. I got over a 1,000 visitors clicking through and not one sale! My CTR is in the double digits.

CJ claims all kinds of excuses but I haven't made 1 cent yet with them. What's your opinion on that. BTW, my niche is in the hotel business.

I have left Adwords and i am never going back, lost $5K the first time and $3K the second time around, it isn't all that easy, people have to be prepared to trow a lot of money against it before ever seeing some returns.

My feeling with PPC is that it is totally overrated and overpriced, there are other (cheaper) ways to get traffic.

But still your post was a great read for people ho want to get into PPC

Just my 2 cents.

10k a what? day? week? month?

Do you find it's hard to track your CJ earnings when doing it via PPC? CJ's tracking is sometimes delayed quite a bit, and it always throws me off!

Originally Posted by roychuk

hey mrsmirf, I have a whitehat site promoting CJ stuff. I got over a 1,000 visitors clicking through and not one sale! My CTR is in the double digits.

CJ claims all kinds of excuses but I haven't made 1 cent yet with them. What's your opinion on that. BTW, my niche is in the hotel business.

You can drive 1,000,000 visitors to your advertisers but if they don't have a reason or an interest in what your advertisers are selling you won't get a single sale. You have to make sure that your visitors are completely aligned and interested in what products your advertising to make any type of sales. As they say it isn't about quantity its about quality.

For example if you have an entertainment website about say Miley Cyrus which general audiance is teens and below, don't be expecting to be advertising any offers that requires a credit card because your demographics won't have it. If they do have access to one it'll be their parents will have those restrictions that come along with it. So basically you have to know the demographics of your visitors very well. If you don't why not ask them? Or setup surveys or votes and findout.

In terms of CJ tracking the only two major issues I've had with them is their delay in reporting sales and also the fact that their clickthrough data doesn't matchup with the data I have. Usually it appears that CJ has a much more inflated count of clickthroughs then the number I have from my own tracking software and the ones that show up on adwords, yahoo, adcenter ..etc..etc. This problem is better then them under counting, which they don't do.

Heck it might be that your links arent setup properly or the simple fact that the merchants website just doesn't convert visitors. Have you ever had any sales from your visitors from other merchants in the hotel business?

Originally Posted by DaveNL

I have left Adwords and i am never going back, lost $5K the first time and $3K the second time around, it isn't all that easy, people have to be prepared to trow a lot of money against it before ever seeing some returns.

My feeling with PPC is that it is totally overrated and overpriced, there are other (cheaper) ways to get traffic.

But still your post was a great read for people ho want to get into PPC

Just my 2 cents.

See, the thing is PPC can be a bottomless pit that you can run through thousands of dollars very quickly with no results. Thats why you pace yourself by setting in controls like campaign budgets. You also must test test test out variations of your campaigns and keywords..this is where the work is and this is what lot of people fail to do. As you end with a larger and larger stock of successful campaigns you start to get a feel of what works well within a given niche and you build upon that. You should not brush off PPC marketing, you get instant access to million of visitors in any given niche. You can't do that with any other type of marketing including SEO. All of the other methods take much more time. Listen picture PPC marketing like flying a plane. If you just get up one day and jump in the cockpit and try to fly it most likely you will crash and burn. But if you take small steps practice(test) then move on to the real thing (bigger budgets) you should be able to land safely. Although ofcourse like with flying no matter how good you are there is always a chance of something going wrong. Realizing this and keeping it in mind will keep you going until your pockets are fat with cash.

Originally Posted by patgelose

10k a what? day? week? month?

That would be above $10k a month with CJ. I do aswell if not better with handful of other networks. I just haven't been focusing on CJ too much.

Originally Posted by LostShootingStar

Do you find it's hard to track your CJ earnings when doing it via PPC? CJ's tracking is sometimes delayed quite a bit, and it always throws me off!

Yes, when starting out this is one of the most annoying aspects with CJ. But even if you are receiving almost instant data about conversion like you do on several other networks you should always give your campaign a couple of days to get the most realistic picture and data to make decisions. I've stated this in my original post and I do it again, do not be impatient, because there are various factors that will effect sales. Time of the day, time of the week, holidays, major events, etc..etc countless things. The best scope in the shortest time I think is atleast over a week.

That was a very helpful post. Thanks for the share.

Thanks for posting that helped me a lot. My goal is make my first 1k this month or so.

Excellent information for newbies. Now for all those asking how do I make money, here it is. Apply it and scale it.

Now depending on the niche you can pull up some wikipedia material to copy and shrink font size and have be directly below you ad text or graphics. I've experimented with making my page just an image so their bot can't read it and optimized the wiki article again to get a better quality score and bring down costs. This method works great and seems to be able to get a better Ctr from landing pages to the merchants page.

I found that to be the most informative point. I know the rest but that is a good suggestion. Been using images for awhile but never thought to add wiki text. Good stuff, thanks for typing all that up.

Originally Posted by banarm

I agree and can let you in on a little secret that i've used. Simply G**gle your niche a few times and find out which vendors appear at the top (or use your favorite tool to find the top paying keywords and find out who is using them). Visit said vendors and apply to their affiliate program. By doing so, you won't pay for the intermediary and you won't get a few pennies when you could get a genuine % of what is sold.

Yes, this would be great to find better paying rates. Again I wouldn't really bother with besides asking the merchant if they'd be willing to give you a higher pay bracket. I would go do this after I have found find some winning offers that actually convert. You don't want to waste your effort on offers that just aren't convertible or that you have no success in finding the right audiance for.

Originally Posted by bananahands

I found that to be the most informative point. I know the rest but that is a good suggestion. Been using images for awhile but never thought to add wiki text. Good stuff, thanks for typing all that up.

Yes, it doesn't just have to be wiki, you can use articles from article databases or anywhere really. Just play around with them until they have the right keyword density and repeating phrases for adwords to index to give you a higher quality score. Ofcourse if you want your landing pages to also get indexed well you'd be better off writing some unique text or just rewriting these articles into your own words.

Thanks mrsmirf, this is exactly what I've been plotting. You lost me here though:

Now depending on the niche you can pull up some wikipedia material to copy and shrink font size and have be directly below you ad text or graphics. I've experimented with making my page just an image so their bot can't read it and optimized the wiki article again to get a better quality score and bring down costs. This method works great and seems to be able to get a better Ctr from landing pages to the merchants page.

1) Why are you putting wiki info on your page? 2) What about duplicate content penalties? 3) You made the page an image and then just left the wiki article? 4) I'm completely confused

Is there any tool to find what keyword was using by adword adds

hi mrsmirf Can i know are you blanking the referrer that you r getting the traffic from PPC or just open

thank you thank you thank you

Originally Posted by flow

Thanks mrsmirf, this is exactly what I've been plotting. You lost me here though:



1) Why are you putting wiki info on your page? 2) What about duplicate content penalties? 3) You made the page an image and then just left the wiki article? 4) I'm completely confused

I don't think that the duplicate content is a problem here (on adwords), but of course unique content is better. This is because, as per my experience I just using PLR articles (not unique) with just copy and paste to my landing page (normally on article page). So far the quality score is not bad. I think it just will help the google adsbot to check what is the content in your landing page to match with your keywords to determine the QS for your each keywords.

Oh at least that's for me..

It seems like a huge project. Anyway, it works.

Really Wonder Full Post. You explained in just few paragraphs of what popular gurus charge for $1000s and in several 100 pages.

I got a question, always I confuse in putting highest bid for the right keyword. If the adwords shows maximum first page bid for the keyword is $2.00 which is quite expensive when I want to use that kind of keywords in campaigns like email submits. How do I decide this kind of situations?.

Originally Posted by flow

Thanks mrsmirf, this is exactly what I've been plotting. You lost me here though:



1) Why are you putting wiki info on your page? 2) What about duplicate content penalties? 3) You made the page an image and then just left the wiki article? 4) I'm completely confused

1. Wiki is just an easy and quick source of material to have on your landing pages to improve the quality score you would receive from Adwords bot. The higher the quality score of your landing pages the more often your ad will be displayed at a lower per click rate. You don't have to use Wiki articles the articles can come from anywhere as long as they use the keywords that your bidding on in your Adwords campaign.

2. Duplicate content penalty can happen from using content found on the web such as a Wiki articles. This penalty basically pushes back your landing pages on the search engine results for your keywords or might not even have them not included in the search engine results. This isn't very important since you will be driving the majority of your traffic from PPC campaigns but there might be those out there who want to have a higher ranking landing page that gets free traffic so I thought it would be good to mention it. To avoid the penalty you simple make sure you have a unique article on your landing page. If you can't come up with a unique one you can either rewrite one you like in your own words or hire someone. Good quality 500 word articles are going for $5-$10 a piece. You can take a look at the buy and sell sections of any major webmaster forum and you should find people selling this service.

3. Yes, I make make my landing pages sliced images all clickable. From the text to the images, everything. Then I have a wiki article ( I use other sources aswell) directly below my image landing page to help with the Quality Score. Once I find a landing page is converting and sales are generating I usually go and get an article writer to write one for me instead of using wiki.

4. lol Okay well I can see how this can become confusing if your trying to visualize everything without having done any of the steps ever before. You have to look at it one step at a time. So here is what you should do. Scroll above to my original post, pull out a notepad or just use the notepad found in windows and write out the steps you see in your own words. Like I always say keep it simple. Then try them out one by one. You'll get the best picture of how things are done by actual practice, then the process becomes very simple in your mind. If your still confused just post in this thread speicific questions that are keeping you confused and I'll do my best to answer them

Originally Posted by periodmao

It seems like a huge project. Anyway, it works.

Well, maybe but think of this. Why do you think 99% of people trying to make money online arent? Because of that exact statement you just made. People don't want to put in some work, and really it isn't even that much hard work specially compared to actual jobs you might actually have to end up working to pay the bills instead.

The beautiful thing about this method is that once you find winning campaigns there isn't really any more work you technically really have to do. Just keep the campaign running and everything becomes autopilot. Ofcourse if you have drive like me you will always continue experimenting and testing and tweaking your campaigns to improve the income until you become that $100 million dollar man.

All I know is I rather be doing this then breaking my back in some construction site or working a a portfolio manager stressed the hell out that I have to manage to keep millions of peoples money growing and not lose it all. In my field there is no stress and there is no labour. That is as long as you put in the work in the begining atleast.

Originally Posted by raotnv

Really Wonder Full Post. You explained in just few paragraphs of what popular gurus charge for $1000s and in several 100 pages.

I got a question, always I confuse in putting highest bid for the right keyword. If the adwords shows maximum first page bid for the keyword is $2.00 which is quite expensive when I want to use that kind of keywords in campaigns like email submits. How do I decide this kind of situations?.

If your not confortable with that max bid showing up on your bill I'd avoid it completely. I'd look for longtail keywords that are much cheaper to target and can get you close to the same amount of traffic over several keywords. Remember though that max bid is just to get you in the game, doesn't mean your going to actually end up paying $2 dollars per click. If your very confident in your ability to create ads that have high CTR and you create a landing page with a high quality score over time you will definitely be paying much less for that. Other factors you should consider to make a decision like this is how much the merchant is actually paying out, will you break even. There are several "CPA formulas" circulating on the web. The most popular one is this "the maximum bid price equals the value of an action (lead or sale) multiplied by the conversion rate of a click to the desired action." I'm not going to go into the details because there are tons of different ways of looking at it and it all depends on your risk tolerance. But here is a good article that explains it fairly well I think: http://www.electronicretailermag.com...s08su_bid.html

are you doing this with CPA only, or with physical products?

Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. Another question is when I discuss with my Affiliate Manager to know about good converting campaigns she mentioned few of atleast which should convert 3 to 5%. But when I started the campaigns and getting enough clicks but no conversions at all. When I review the keywords most of them all are atleast 80% related to the targeted niche. But I couldn't able to figure it out how to solve this puzzle. I don't think my AM is lying to me.

Very nice posts in this thread. I thought VJ is being used only on CPA, but now being an affiliate, wow! You're great, guys... thanks a lot!

Originally Posted by LostShootingStar

are you doing this with CPA only, or with physical products?

I'm doing this with both physical goods and virtual products.

Originally Posted by raotnv

Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. Another question is when I discuss with my Affiliate Manager to know about good converting campaigns she mentioned few of atleast which should convert 3 to 5%. But when I started the campaigns and getting enough clicks but no conversions at all. When I review the keywords most of them all are atleast 80% related to the targeted niche. But I couldn't able to figure it out how to solve this puzzle. I don't think my AM is lying to me.

Your welcome. Now to answer your question I would need to take a look at your landing page because you haven't given much detail on how it looks. Please post a link to it or some info on it so I could help you out. The more money you make the more money the AM makes so its in their interest to have you promoting the best converting products. So yes like your inituition says theyre probably aren't lying to you. Although there might in some small percentages of circumstances that it might be in the AM's interest to do so if they've cut a larger sale of the revenue for themselves from the merchant.

Anyways I'll need more info to help you out.

Thanks for the share

Hi mrsmirf

Currently I am taking course with Arbitrage conspiracy and the guy who teaches his name is ayemen explained that for initial cranking just collect the keywords and create different adcopies for split testing and include direct CPA offer URL in adwords destination area. After you find some successfull conversion he is advising us to think about creating landing pages for much more conversions. So the initial stage which is during campaign cranking it self I couldn't able to find any conversions at all. Off course every body throwing same question to him. But he is stressing that keep on continue try try untill you find real golden nugget. I don't know how long we have to continue like that with enough budget. What your thoughts on that?.

Originally Posted by raotnv

Hi mrsmirf

Currently I am taking course with Arbitrage conspiracy and the guy who teaches his name is ayemen explained that for initial cranking just collect the keywords and create different adcopies for split testing and include direct CPA offer URL in adwords destination area. After you find some successfull conversion he is advising us to think about creating landing pages for much more conversions. So the initial stage which is during campaign cranking it self I couldn't able to find any conversions at all. Off course every body throwing same question to him. But he is stressing that keep on continue try try untill you find real golden nugget. I don't know how long we have to continue like that with enough budget. What your thoughts on that?.

Well, without having a landing page it makes it that much more harder for you to convert. Like I've said the landing page doesn't have to be all that fany in round one. You can put together something with any html software out within 10minutes. The biggest task would be creating the calls to action after reviewing your merchants offer. In all you can do it within 30minutes an hour max if your having trouble being creative.

Finding your first converting campaigns in a particular niche can always be hard and often it takes a lot of shooting in the dark until you find something that works. Like your teacher says your going to have to keep trying and trying. Once you find something that works you should analyze it and see how and why it works. From there it will be easier and easier to find converting campaigns as your experience grows.

Only thing I suggest different from your teacher is to keep building landing pages, they can be very simple and straightforward. Once you see good conversions you can higher a a nice designer to make it fancy for even higher conversion rates.

Anyone using KeywordSpy for their keyword research? It looks very VERY interesting.

Once some money coming through (fingers crossed) from my CS'ing efforts i will have a very good marketing budget to set up a number of these to test.

Need to find more legit ways to make bank.

This is what i call a helpful post. Thank you. Do you recommand any book to start with PPC?

other than the cj ..

how about linkshare ? i heard it is NOT easy to promote the products/services.. very fierce competition..

Originally Posted by tgx874sah

This is what i call a helpful post. Thank you. Do you recommand any book to start with PPC?

Well, honestly you can learn all you really need from places like this forum, webmasterworld, digitalpoint, sitepoint, warriorforum. You don't need an ebook to show you how, all the information and tools you need are avialable in the public domain. Most people never even end up reading the ebooks they purchase, and even less people end up even testing out the methods.

What level of knowledge are you at?

You can grab a few of ebooks for free in the download section on BHW, you will see what I mean when I say all this info is out there already.

The key is just coming up with your own twist to the tools, using a new combination or in different sequences. You don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Originally Posted by whale

other than the cj ..

how about linkshare ? i heard it is NOT easy to promote the products/services.. very fierce competition..

I promote a couple merchants on Linkshare, I'm actually doing even better on linkshare then CJ. A little competition shouldn't scare you unless all you do is think like everyone else. Try things differently, word things differently, use attention grabbing landing page sales copy.....on the internet there is no such thing is fierced competition. You have as much opportunity to make the sale as the next guy whether your competition is a billion dollar corporation or a guy in a cabin out in Montana.

Wow.... thx mrsmirf!!! your suggestions are brilliant & right on point. A fellow Canadian i believe! Thx so much. thx given!

mrsmirf, do you have an example of a landing page to illustrate this method? It doesn't have to be any of yours, just one that you think would work.

Hi Mrsmirf

This is a very useful post you've made, thanks a lot

If it's possible, could you give us the link/url to your landing page? because on my previous campaign with my affiliate (I use adwords to promote), I've got decent clicks but no conversion (classic problem), so I think one of the problem is my landing page

Thanks in advance

All the best

Thank you so much, this is great practical stuff. Now all I need to do is quit reading BHW and do something

can someone here add my on skype to tech me some of this plese?

trini sonny

badmantrini94

You do realize this was posted in 2009 right?

That is too funny! 2009!!!

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