05.18.08
Oh what fun it is to…
…make money all through the night!!!
Well, for me, in theory anyways. I’ve been putting a bunch of my time into building websites, reading, looking and learning. Now I want to be part of the Affiliate Millionaire Club!
OK Tony, first, some ways for you to make more suitcases of money:
1. Have you thought about a Membership site on AffiliateMillions? Where you would share some real deep “how to” stuff? Bet you could get a few thousand members pretty quick… Maybe juice up the membership with a Tony’s Top Earners or AffiliateMillion’s challenge to create 10 New Affiliate Millionaires. By the way…pick me!
2. What about selling links on your site? Mega moolah is my guess.
OK, Now about me:
- Did I mention I’d love to have a mentor take me to the top in 60 - 90 days? I’m pretty confident I’m going to fly, but would love a great mentor to help be “the wind beneath my wings…”
- In your ads, do you prefer: broad KWs with numerous negative KWs; specific exact phrase KWs, or what?
- Do you favor longtails KWs over broad? When, if ever, is Broad a good way to go?
- What do you consider good CTR for a campaign? Do you drop lagging keywords as quick as you can in order to improve Ad Quality/Quality Score?
- What, if any, software do you use to manage your campaigns? I am assuming you are running 20 to 100 campaigns (or more) at any time. Please discuss.
- You seem to have a real “voodoo” about making great ad copy. Can you give some serious hints?
- Can you share any real dangers you’ve encountered and lessons of things a person never wants to do in advertising and affiliate marketing?
- Are you a big fan of newsletter lists?
- Are you seeing that less and less companies are allowing Search Engine Marketing? I read in another post that you have no experience with ClickBank. I’m a member of CB, LinkShare and CJ. Do you have any thoughts or other recommendations?
- Do you have any thoughts or guidelines about Content Marketing? Is there a way to make it work or work better?
Hope I didn’t ask too many questions all at once! Inquiring minds want to know… Thanks for your insights and congrats on your success!
Carl
Administrator said,
May 20, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Carl,
Alright. You’ve definitenly set a record for most questions in a single post. I guess I’d better get started with the answers.
As for your first two questions;
1. A paid membership option where I give ‘deeper’ information would be a great idea… if I had any deeper information. Honestly, except for the actual keywords and ad text that have made me millions (and you don’t have enough money to buy those from me) I’ve shared literally everything I know about this business. A lot of people ask for the ‘deeper’ info, but this is really a simple business, in my opinion, and the key is to focus on that ad text when writing direct search ads. If I took your money for a mentoring class, you’d ask for it back at the end, believe me.
2. Most of the sites I recommend do pay commissions. Just to be clear, though, lots of sites I don’t recommend also pay commissions, so I don’t want anyone to think I am just chasing commissions. Likewise, some sites do not pay commissions, (CJ, for instance, stopped paying commissions months ago) and I promote them anyway because I’d be doing a diservice to my readers to ignore them. I only make a few hundred dollars a month on these commissions (no where near what my affiliate marketing business will make this year) and the site is primarily managed as what I see as a duty to my Affiliate Millions readers. If you write a book on a dynamically changing subject matter like this, you need a vehicle to communicate changes.
Now the next ten;
1. I’m happy to answer any questions you have on this blog, but I don’t offer any mentoring beyond that. Thanks for the interest, though.
2. Typically, my focus has been on small numbers of high volume keywords and an aggressive push to get to the top level of whatever performance tier I’m working with. Occassionally, I have set up so called ‘long tail’ campaigns, usually at a loss, with the goal of turning them to keep me in a higher performance tier when - in a slow month or quarter - it appears I might be in danger of missing a performance goal. Others do make money on long tail strategies though, so don’t think I’ve told you the ONLY way to skin this cat.
3. I favor broad over longtail, but you can make money with both.
4. Some people have noticed (some have even complained) that I don’t talk much about CTR, except when comparing my own ads in the same ad group to each other. The reason is, if you don’t know the competition’s CTR, you don’t know what a good CTR is. Ive had money makers from under 1% all the way up into the 70%+ range. I could tell you 10% is great - and it usually is - but if the competition is getting 20% in the same territory, you are still going to get crushed. Ignore CTR completely - except when comparing your own ads in the performance tuning process - and you’ll do much better.
5. I typically just use excel spreadsheets. And I typically only actively monitor campaigns in the beginning. Once a campaign has reached a certain level (where I can’t seem to improve its performance any further) I get a sense of the normal range of performance (Volume, CPC, etc.) and I can tell at a glance if its running fine. I wouldn’t try to closely track more than 2 campaigns at a time, but I’m sure some other folks are quite capable of doing more than I can at once.
6. It’s more art than science, but I can tell you its important to realize that even if you have a talent for it, there will be some products you’ll be good at selling, and some you won’t. You’ll go broke quick if you try to win every fight, so if your ad text improvements aren’t translating to the bottom line, move on to another product. As long as your improvements keep getting you closer to making money (or making more) keep at them.
7. Chapter 10 of Affiliate Millions: Make a Fortune using Search Marketing on Google and Beyond
. And thanks for the product placement opportunity. 
8. All I know about newsletters is I’m not very good at them.
9. Fewer companies allow direct search now, but the trend away from it seems to be slowing a little, and their are even some companies that are finding ways (bidding rules, seperate domains) to allow search marketing again. And of course, many companies still allow direct search, like Amazon.com, which is a great program to cut your teeth on, as I’ve said many times before.
10. Depends on what you mean, if you mean running your direct search ads on content networks, then yes, though its a little harder. If you mean setting up awebsite and adding content, then yes again, though its not my speciality. I even have some free website templates on the Affiliate millions site, one of which is a news content site. My problem, though, is I don’t have killer web design skills.
Whew… okay… I’m ready for the follow-ups.