PPC to CPA - Taking the Ride Again

[bigg_capp]

I'm actually calling out a few knowledgeable CPA experts like redtide1969...

I basically followed his thread earlier this year and came super close to making money but kept falling short because I was not financially prepared to grind out the testing.

I was setting up campaigns, getting a few conversions, then tweaking, getting more conversions, teaking etc., but through each iteration I would be losing about $100 - $150. It went something like this......
1st Iteration - Make $350 spend $550
2nd Iteration - Make $350 spend $500
3rd Iteration - make $350 spend $380 - Close, but no cigar. Can't improve on 3rd iteration after a week and then move on to a different campaign and start the cycle again.

As you can see, this is a quick recipe for losing your ass.

Now I'm making some decent money on some SEO sites...for now (Until Google releases Kung Fu Panda 2 ) so I know it's short lived but I have money to commit, and I'm trying again. Before I dive in, I want to make sure my fundamentals are correct. If someone with experience can let me know if I'm starting off on the right track......

WHAT I HAVE

1. I am approved in 12 CPA Networks and have personal relationships with 3 of my AM's. I went to ADtech two weeks ago and talked with them personally

2. I have websites in several niches for landing pages: Pregnancy, Dating, Humor, Entertainment/gossip,

3. I have been creating fan pages via low click Facebook PPC in Hunting and golf Niches.

OFFER SELECTION

It's my experience that email and zip submits you don't really make real money and per Redtide's advice in the "How to Turn PPC to CPA's campaigns consistently Profitable" thread he confirmed this was the right direction.

STRATEGY

1. Use a Landing Page where Possible.
I wasn't doing this the first time, but reading from the people who really make money, landing pages are important to build trust, even if you can direct link it's still better to use landing pages. I struggle with this, but I also lose money so I'm not going to rationalize this, I'm just going to plan on using landing pages, Period.

I found a lot of good samples doing a "t202kw=" + "your niche here" in Google.


2. Multiple accounts
I now have 3 Bing/yahoo Adcenter accounts. Using the optimization techinques suggested only running the super optimized campaigns on the 3rd account.

3. Funding
I am ready to dedicate all my earnings from my other methods into this until it works so that's about $700 per week.


4. Attitude
I'm going to f*ckin' make this work or die here trying. Those are my two options.

QUESTIONS:
1. Is there anything else I should consider before taking the plunge?

2. Is Adcenter OK?
I'm assuming Adcenter should be ok. I have had even worse luck on Adwords, I tried running 7search but got so little clicks it wasn't even worth setting up keyword tracking. Nothing ever converted.

3. Should I be planning to use paid Keyword Research Tools, or am I ok with Adwords Keyword Tool?


Ok - any advice you can provide would be great. Maybe I will update this thread with my progress. I've just read about 3 CPA guides, I'm going to sleep for a few hours and then Go At It.

Thanks in advance for any advice or experiences.

-Capp

 

[beazt]

Subscribed

 

[skohh]

Subscribed

that^^^ in b4 redtide1969

 

[howard_hughes]

Interesting

You'd need an ROI of atleast 25-30% for this to be anywhere near longterm

 

[4bothis]

who ever said making real money off email submits isnt profitable hasnt done it properly yet. made 100k+ this year with just email submits.

 

[skohh]

Hi bigg_capp - I'd just like to point something obvious out.

Now I'm making some decent money on some SEO sites...

Well keep doing this, honestly. I think nothing beats personal experience.

I think redtide1969 and other super affiliates will agree in that everyone's experience in CPA is different.

You sound like you have a solid understanding of CPA. I'm still trying to perfect my experience and am not quite there yet either, but making money with SEO such as yourself so i'll keep going this route... Nothing beats trading time for traffic.

I think if you can continue to do this, only time will tell... Good luck

 

[_Sunny_]

Subscribed as well

 

[axus_auto]

I won't be subscribing but will be coming back often.

 

[livecricket]

interesting .... Good luck

 

[Chees]

subscribed. Props for the attitude OP - its the only way to go.

 

[narfunk]

If you're going to be spending money sending people to a lander please put up an autoresponder to capture the emails...no sense in spending money on traffic if you're not capturing leads.

Just set it up to redirect to the offer...don't let them get away easy

Other than that, good luck and I hope you start seeing a profit. The fact that you have a plan and seem determined is a good start.

 

[GunzZ]

First of all i wish you good luck with this. I think you are trying hard enough and i believe you will succeed. I have one question. You think the email and zip submits are not so good. So what kind of offers make the "real" money?

 

[beazt]

I subscribed because I want to run a similar campaign pretty soon with Google Adwords.

I have a few suggestions to make here, especially this part:

3. Funding
I am ready to dedicate all my earnings from my other methods into this until it works so that's about $700 per week.

Start out with a smaller budget, and increase once you start getting a positive ROI.

I can see that you have stated above how you are using the super optimized campaign, but still there would alwasys be campaign optimization opportunities available once your campaign starts running and generates enough data.

4. Attitude
I'm going to f*ckin' make this work or die here trying. Those are my two options.

You are taking the money out of a working method and investing it into another which hasn't worked for you in the past? No intentions of sounding rude but this does not makes sense.

Start small and then scale up

 

[bigg_capp]

who ever said making real money off email submits isnt profitable hasnt done it properly yet. made 100k+ this year with just email submits.

I think it's profitable but maybe a little harder. I have been running a few Facebook PPC campaigns and then redirecting it to offers. For instance, I'm running a Twilight Movie campaign on facebook targeting young females 16-24 redirecting it to the CPA offer. It gives me a couple of bucks a day profit. I had to split test that thing 18 times to get the clicks low enough to be profitable and I make about $4.00 / day. It was a lot of work for $4.00 per day.

I have a hard time either finding cheap enough clicks or getting the people to convert.

You sound like you have a solid understanding of CPA. I'm still trying to perfect my experience and am not quite there yet either, but making money with SEO such as yourself so i'll keep going this route... Nothing beats trading time for traffic.

I totally agree that time for traffic for profit is sweet. But Panda kicked my butt although I recovered because my sites are all high PR, original content with high PR backlinks. During that recovery period, I didnt' just drop 1 or 2 spots, I dropped off the face of the planet, and my income almost stopped. That's when I thought I need at least another stream to buffer in case that happens again. I'm sure I can re-rank through any Google update because the sites are high quality, but the question is, how long would it take.

please put up an autoresponder to capture the emails..

Great idea.

You are taking the money out of a working method and investing it into another which hasn't worked for you in the past? No intentions of sounding rude but this does not makes sense.

Start small and then scale up

My intention isn't to just to burn through $700 / week. But it's to kind of give an idea that I have money to spend. This week I actually came up short....only made about $380 but there's still Saturday. Right now, I'm only in IM to make more money. I don't spend my IM money on anything except more IM methods & tools. Until my worse days are above $100 I am not spending a dime. Right now I still have days where I make only $10 from adsense. If you guys know those days, you just want to smash shit. I think I gained 10 lbs of muscle going to the gym during $10 days so I don't kill somebody.

You think the email and zip submits are not so good. So what kind of offers make the "real" money?

I think here is where I made my mistake in the past. I am going to be a lot smarter in my selection of offer. I have Pepperjam, CJ and a host of new CPA networks to choose from. Hopefully I can find just the right product or offer, mixed with the right angle.

I will share it here - I think there is no real threat if you tell people it's an insurance offer, or it's weight loss. I think sharing that level of knowledge should be encouraged.

-Capp

 

[ff1227]

At the very least, even when the campaigns you lost money, if you have a landing page that captures their email, you can find other highly related offers to monetize. That way, even though you're $200 in the hole to start, you can make that back and then sum over a series of emails.

 

[redtide1969]

I'm actually calling out a few knowledgeable CPA experts like redtide1969...

I basically followed his thread earlier this year and came super close to making money but kept falling short because I was not financially prepared to grind out the testing.


I was setting up campaigns, getting a few conversions, then tweaking, getting more conversions, teaking etc., but through each iteration I would be losing about $100 - $150. It went something like this......
1st Iteration - Make $350 spend $550
2nd Iteration - Make $350 spend $500
3rd Iteration - make $350 spend $380 - Close, but no cigar. Can't improve on 3rd iteration after a week and then move on to a different campaign and start the cycle again.

As you can see, this is a quick recipe for losing your ass.

Now I'm making some decent money on some SEO sites...for now (Until Google releases Kung Fu Panda 2 ) so I know it's short lived but I have money to commit, and I'm trying again. Before I dive in, I want to make sure my fundamentals are correct. If someone with experience can let me know if I'm starting off on the right track......

WHAT I HAVE

1. I am approved in 12 CPA Networks and have personal relationships with 3 of my AM's. I went to ADtech two weeks ago and talked with them personally

2. I have websites in several niches for landing pages: Pregnancy, Dating, Humor, Entertainment/gossip,

3. I have been creating fan pages via low click Facebook PPC in Hunting and golf Niches.

OFFER SELECTION

It's my experience that email and zip submits you don't really make real money and per Redtide's advice in the "How to Turn PPC to CPA's campaigns consistently Profitable" thread he confirmed this was the right direction.

STRATEGY

1. Use a Landing Page where Possible.
I wasn't doing this the first time, but reading from the people who really make money, landing pages are important to build trust, even if you can direct link it's still better to use landing pages. I struggle with this, but I also lose money so I'm not going to rationalize this, I'm just going to plan on using landing pages, Period.

I found a lot of good samples doing a "t202kw=" + "your niche here" in Google.


2. Multiple accounts
I now have 3 Bing/yahoo Adcenter accounts. Using the optimization techinques suggested only running the super optimized campaigns on the 3rd account.

3. Funding
I am ready to dedicate all my earnings from my other methods into this until it works so that's about $700 per week.


4. Attitude
I'm going to f*ckin' make this work or die here trying. Those are my two options.

QUESTIONS:
1. Is there anything else I should consider before taking the plunge?

2. Is Adcenter OK?
I'm assuming Adcenter should be ok. I have had even worse luck on Adwords, I tried running 7search but got so little clicks it wasn't even worth setting up keyword tracking. Nothing ever converted.

3. Should I be planning to use paid Keyword Research Tools, or am I ok with Adwords Keyword Tool?


Ok - any advice you can provide would be great. Maybe I will update this thread with my progress. I've just read about 3 CPA guides, I'm going to sleep for a few hours and then Go At It.

Thanks in advance for any advice or experiences.

-Capp

Hey Big Capp, I'll do what I can to help man.

I'll hit on the parts of your post I highlighted...

1) You sound like you have all of the fundamentals in place but this part I highlighted is the biggest clue as to where your approach is off, only slightly off...

PPC all comes down to testing budget per campaign and the niche/competition/offer reasearch that the campaign is starting off with, as well as how large the pool of KW's are that you're initially starting with based on your budget.

2) This goes hand in hand with your testing budget and your initial niche research before starting and testing the campaign. If you've done your initial research, I suggest not stopping the campaign and starting that cycle over and over like you said you've been doing. Stick with the campaign.

From personal experience, and to use an analogy, it sounds like you're 10 feet from the summit of Mt Everest (breaking even) and are then climbing back down the mountain in search of a better mountain to go try to climb?

Once reaching the summit of breaking even, it's on the downward climb that you're tweaking your ROI like a madman through split testing everything that makes up the campaign. When you reach ground level again, it's at that point for example that you're sitting there with a handful of golden KW's, converting at 1 in 3 clicks, at a $1.00 CPC/$5.00 bid, with a payout of $25+ per lead.

Sticking with the campaign when you're confident in your initial research is key.

3) Exactly, PPC is not for the faint of heart. For any newer members reading this thread and thinking of using their last dollars to get something going with PPC, don't do it.

It takes money to make money in this game. It's all about working towards an end goal with KW testing, and proper KW testing costs money.

4) You are correct sir, email submit related niches are typically too expensive per click for PPC, especially PPC with the 3 majors.

5) I personally only direct link to test a niche if I'm not confident in my initial research. DL'ing has it's place, but not for the long term optimization of a PPC campaign.

6) That's exactly the kind of mindset it takes to make big long term money in this game. When I started my first campaign I blew through $1,000's while I screwed around trying to figure it all out. Keep this mindset you have and I can guarentee you'll be making money.

7) I personally don't like to talk about which platforms I use, but let's just say you can't go wrong with the 3 majors (soon to be 4 majors with the growth of FB.)

8) If you haven't been, there's a good chance that's the reason you haven't pulled profit just yet.

Like I mentioned in that other thread, it's important during your initial research/KW scraping that you have a heads up as to which KW's your PPC competition for the niche are pulling profit with.

Good luck man, while there's a few things that I personally do/use that I'm not comfortable with sharing in a high traffic forum, I hope some this of this shed a little light.

In a nutshell, your testing budget and do or die mindset are what will make you succeed. :beerchug:

Interesting

You'd need an ROI of atleast 25-30% for this to be anywhere near longterm

Well said, at least 50% ROI is my end goal for each campaign. In the end, it all comes down to whether the person had done their niche/offer/competition research and started with a large enough pool of KW's as to how quickly they will get there. It's standard practice to carry a much lower than 50% ROI during optimization, but like I mentioned to Big Capp, it's being able to withstand the spend involved during the all important optimization phases that newbs to PPC struggle with.

I know I sure did.

who ever said making real money off email submits isnt profitable hasnt done it properly yet. made 100k+ this year with just email submits.

Email submits make a boatload of money, but we're talking about PPC here. The majority of PPC platforms have too much competition and too high of click costs to turn a decent ROI with low paying submit offers.

Hi bigg_capp - I'd just like to point something obvious out.

Well keep doing this, honestly. I think nothing beats personal experience.

I think redtide1969 and other super affiliates will agree in that everyone's experience in CPA is different.

You sound like you have a solid understanding of CPA. I'm still trying to perfect my experience and am not quite there yet either, but making money with SEO such as yourself so i'll keep going this route...

Nothing beats trading time for traffic.

I think if you can continue to do this, only time will tell... Good luck

Without a doubt, there's so many varianbles involved in a campaign's performance - such as pre-sell approach with your LP's, how good a person's LP content is in building trust in their consumers, how closely they montor and how anal they are about tracking results, it goes on and on.

The main thing like I said before regarding PPC...it all comes down to testing budget.

If you're going to be spending money sending people to a lander please put up an autoresponder to capture the emails...no sense in spending money on traffic if you're not capturing leads.

Just set it up to redirect to the offer...don't let them get away easy

Other than that, good luck and I hope you start seeing a profit. The fact that you have a plan and seem determined is a good start.

Agreed, for every campaign I run I'll set aside a certain testing period to setup my LP's as a capture point rather than a direct sale. It's something each person has to think hard about and way the benefits of both approaches. Again, it all comes to bottom line ROI.

If a person invests enough time testing both approaches (and are able to afford the neccessery testing budget) it becomes clear for each individual campaign whether the direct sale or list building approach brings the most ROI. With that said, list building is not always the best approach for my personal campaigns. Again, the bottom line per campaign becomes clear after testing.

Sometimes I find that certain niches just don't respond well to the capture and my spend brings higher long term ROI from the direct lead.

I subscribed because I want to run a similar campaign pretty soon with Google Adwords.

I have a few suggestions to make here, especially this part:

Start out with a smaller budget, and increase once you start getting a positive ROI.

I can see that you have stated above how you are using the super optimized campaign, but still there would alwasys be campaign optimization opportunities available once your campaign starts running and generates enough data.

You are taking the money out of a working method and investing it into another which hasn't worked for you in the past? No intentions of sounding rude but this does not makes sense.

Start small and then scale up

Well said with the part of your post I highlighted. Even when a campaign is initially started with a massive pool of KW's to test as it should be, and reaches an ROI at the 50%+ level, there's always small optimizations that needs to be done. It becomes a fairly easy "monitoring and slight tweaking" process more than anything.

I don't agree with the second part of your post because that's how you get ahead in this game and are able to snowball a campaign's earnings for the long term, by finding any level of success with one method of driving traffic and investing the time or money into others for testing purposes.

I always use the exact opposite approach, I always start with PPC and then go after SEO on my proven, high converting PPC KW's. It all comes down to budget of the individual and whether money or time is most important to them.

 

[bigg_capp]

Thanks Redtide for the response,

I realize how much time it takes to write that out and how much valuable information you just gave up.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that I was close to the Summit and gave up. I think it was my ego. I couldn't handle
not making any money for so long. It sounds stupid but it's not a good feeling, and I couldn't handle it. I didn't see that i was actually getting better and gaining a killer list
of keywords.

Now there are no excuses. Just reading everything that you have written in this forum is enough for anyone to pull their
skirts up, grab their balls and start making it happen.

Thanks again, I will show you your advice is not in vain with some good results.

-Capp

 

[skohh]

Thanks Redtide for the response,

I realize how much time it takes to write that out and how much valuable information you just gave up.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that I was close to the Summit and gave up. I think it was my ego. I couldn't handle
not making any money for so long. It sounds stupid but it's not a good feeling, and I couldn't handle it. I didn't see that i was actually getting better and gaining a killer list
of keywords.

Now there are no excuses. Just reading everything that you have written in this forum is enough for anyone to pull their
skirts up, grab their balls and start making it happen.

Thanks again, I will show you your advice is not in vain with some good results.

-Capp

One thing I learned from Dan Kennedy is that your ego will kill you in sales.

... Side note, redtide1969 thank you for your contributions.

 

[redtide1969]

Thanks Redtide for the response,

I realize how much time it takes to write that out and how much valuable information you just gave up.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that I was close to the Summit and gave up. I think it was my ego. I couldn't handle
not making any money for so long. It sounds stupid but it's not a good feeling, and I couldn't handle it. I didn't see that i was actually getting better and gaining a killer list
of keywords.

Now there are no excuses. Just reading everything that you have written in this forum is enough for anyone to pull their
skirts up, grab their balls and start making it happen.

Thanks again, I will show you your advice is not in vain with some good results.

-Capp

That's the main stumbling block that makes the people who are new to PPC walk away saying "ah crap, it doesn't work". I was the same way and had a really hard time stomaching the losses while I learned/tested, and initially lost money.

Until you break through with the first campaign, try to remind yourself of the Mt. Everest analogy that I spoke of. When you're on the other side of the mountain after summiting, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

And no worries on the shares, I don't mind spending the time when someone like you is testing/trying and putting in the effort to succeed (without their mouth open asking me to pull out the spoon.) It's my way of paying things forward.

One thing I learned from Dan Kennedy is that your ego will kill you in sales.

... Side note, redtide1969 thank you for your contributions.

You're welcome skohh

 

[blackcontent]

who ever said making real money off email submits isnt profitable hasnt done it properly yet. made 100k+ this year with just email submits.

You do this with PPV -- primarily -- rather than PPC, right? Seems like the CPC's would have to be too high for the piddly payouts, unless you had 500-1,000 e-mail/zip submit offers bringing in consistent trickle profits like clockwork.

2) This goes hand in hand with your testing budget and your initial niche research before starting and testing the campaign. If you've done your initial research, I suggest not stopping the campaign and starting that cycle over and over like you said you've been doing. Stick with the campaign.

On the flipside, there must be a point where you give up on an offer and acknowledge it's unlikely to EVER be profitable, right?

5) I personally only direct link to test a niche if I'm not confident in my initial research. DL'ing has it's place, but not for the long term optimization of a PPC campaign.

Without a doubt, there's so many varianbles involved in a campaign's performance - such as pre-sell approach with your LP's, how good a person's LP content is in building trust in their consumers, how closely they montor and ho

I guess for the more involved offers that ask for a lot of pages of info and perhaps whipping out the credit card, the landing page presale could help get the prospect psyched up, but the e-mail/zip submits and the short-form freebie type offers would still seem to get the highest conversions from not giving them a chance to lose interest by having to read even MORE info and go to ANOTHER page, no? Thoughts?