You will need Prosper202 set up on, at the very least, a VPS. I recommend a VPS with Wiredtree. They’re fast and support tickets take 5 – 10 minutes to reply to. Do not trust shared hosting providers with your payed traffic. You’ll lose more money than you will by spending an extra $50 per month on a decent host for your landing pages and tracking.

Now that I’m done with my little words of warning, I’m going to tell you a little more about what I’m doing here. What I plan to show you is how to collect important demographic data when you have no reliable resource to get it from. This is for those that don’t mind spending a little money to find out what really works on which ever demographics. You will not profit off of this campaign, but the data you collect could very well make you a lot of money in the future if you put it to good use. This is very simple to setup and all you need is Prosper202 and an ads account on Plenty of Fish.

If you’ve been around Plenty of Fish for a little bit, you probably know they have variables that automatically inserts things like the user’s (that is currently viewing the ad) age, sex and state into the ad. This is extremely useful and can be a huge boost for ad CTR and ad relevance. Everyone knows the higher your CTR, the more likely you are to profit. Pick an offer/niche and write some ads including these variables:

• Age – {age:default}
• Sex – {gender:default}
• State – {state:default} – I would assume this one only works for USA targeted ad campaigns, but I could be wrong. I haven’t tried it internationally.

Now with Prosper202, you can create a tracking link like = http://www.mytracking202domain.com/tracking202/redirect/dl.php?t202id=xxx&t202kw={state:default}{gender:default}{age:default} (Thanks to IMKazu.com for the basic idea I’m extending this post from)

When viewing your clicks data from Prosper202′s Analyze > Keyword tab, you’d see something like: MinnesotaMale24 pop up when you get a click from a user that is in Minnesota, is Male and is 24 years old.

But lets make this even easier to track and play with. When printing out your links in Prosper202, you will see these fields blank.

I always wondered “WTF” is this when it first popped up in the last Prosper202 update. Well, lets fill in those fields with the variables from above. You’ll be left with a link like this:

• mytracking202domain.comtracking202/redirect/dl.php?t202id=xxx&c1={age:default}&c2={state:default}&t202kw= (I only used age and state variables here as I know I will only be targeting men with a simple dating offer)

You can fill in c3 and c4 with other tracking things like image# or adtext#, but you will have to create ads manually using this method. Alternatively, you can just use the subid (at the end of the link) which will be categorized as a keyword in Prosper202.

So anyways, we’ve got that all done. Now what you need to do is run a very broadly targeted ad. Target by country, nail down age and sex if you want to, but in my example, I leave it open, session depth, and that is about it. Anymore and you won’t really be demographic targeting anymore, at least nothing else that can be easily tracked. Set your campaign budget to $100 dollars, make sure you’ve got clickable ads (do a small test before you open the flood gates if you’re tight on money), and then let the campaign go.

Once you’ve collected your data, lets head over to the Overview > Group Overview tab. Here, you can see we can order Group everything together by c1, c2, c3, c4, keyword, and more. Depending how you setup your tracking link before, you’ll be able to see exactly which ad depending on state, age, sex, ad text, ad image, etc performed the best in whichever combination!

Now, you’ll have to do a very large exhaustive test to get conclusive data this way, but if you’ve got $1000 sitting around and want real data, this is probably one of the cheapest ways to get it. Once you have a campaign setup and tightened, you can still used this to make sure you are getting optimized down to the last cent spent. It’s a very helpful and innovative feature of Prosper202 that I haven’t seen anyone else touch more on.

I’ve been in Thailand around 5 years now. I started out as an exchange student and now I’m a full blown entrepreneur. I’ve learned my fair share about this place and how it is positively and negatively affecting my business. Enjoy the post, and the eye candy.

1. Things aren’t always what they seem to be

There are a lot of people pretending to be what they really aren’t. Thailand is full of women that aren’t just that. In order to get through all the BS and fake crap spit out, you need to know what to look for. In Thailand, that means looking for big feet, an Adam’s apple, or just going for a “ball-check” if you’re up for it. As an internet/affiliate marketer you should know what to look for in an affiliate offer, traffic source or CPA network before you start dealing with any of them.

2. Knowing the local lingo gets you places

Living in Thailand without knowing some basic conversation isn’t impossible, but you are going to be stuck in the main tourist destinations, without much bargaining power, and you might have some difficulty ordering food or talking to the locals in some areas. As an internet marketer, you should know the lingo before you jump into things. Tracking, CPA, EPC, CPM, CPC, PPV, FB – these are all just some of the abbreviations and keywords you should be familiar with. It’ll help give you a jump start and give you more power over making decisions in your marketing business.

3. Sex sells

The sex tourism industry, as much as I hate to say it, is huge in Thailand. This is a simple idea. Sex sells everywhere around the word. When building landing pages and advertising banners don’t forget this. It can have a large impact on CTR to CVR (see step 2 if you don’t understand that).

4. Keep your infrastructure and traffic clean

This is a problem Thailand could use a lesson on. There is always a traffic jam somewhere in Bangkok, 24/7. Sidewalks are used as motorcycle lanes, emergency shoulders are for passing, internet connections are slow and unreliable, and the government is corrupt and sloppy. Keep your statistics well organized and on hand, have a server capable of holding extra traffic in case you need it (I recommend WiredTree), and do your research before you build out a 10,000 target PPV campaign (easy to do with the likes of AffPortal)

5. Avoid Being Lazy

I love Thai people. I love my Thai employees (they’re extremely talented), but its more of a culture thing that being on time, finishing projects on schedule and that doing things now when you have the free time is hardly ever an option. It can rub off on you. Avoid this situation at all costs. If you think you have nothing else to do today, and can slack off and play games, sit back down and think hard. In my business, there is always something I can do, whether it be research, campaign optimization, client work, coaching, phone calls with CPA managers, split testing ads, data mining, new offers to launch and oodles of more things. Get into the habit of doing more before you get lazy with the culture surrounding you.

Thailand really is a great place, but its got its own pros and cons when it comes to business. There are lots of distractions which you’ll need to learn to avoid (see the above image), the Internet can be slow and shoddy (3g is just picking up speed in Bangkok, DSL is the main connection type while broadband was just made available in limited areas), and if you want to do local business you’ll be hard pressed to find good employees, as well as trying to deal with local Thai clients. Even with all the cons, I love the place and think that everyone should come here and try it at least once in their lifetime.

Let’s talk PoF.

Now, Plenty of Fish ads is what I see as a stepping stone to Facebook Ads. It’s great for getting your feet wet and trying new things. We’ve got a lot of tight options to choose from that you just won’t get on any other marketing platform. Where the hell else can you target people by their hair color?

The past week I’ve been playing with the system a lot and I’ve come up with a few conclusions I would really like to share with you guys.

First off, frequency cap. Frequency cap is defined as the amount of times a person will see your ad during 1 session. Now, this is important because if this were sent to an infinite amount, you could just be raking up ad impressions from 1 person and that is all. Obviously, something like this happening is very unlikely, but you get the picture. I’ve been playing with this for the past week, and as long as I’m not setting this extremely high, it hasn’t really hurt my campaign EPM (earnings per 1000 impressions). Anywhere from 3 to 10 worked best. It might be something you want to play with, but I wouldn’t get too caught up in it. Typically, you can leave it at the default 5.

Next up, we have session depth. Here is a fun one to play with. What session depth means is how deep people will see your ads. You can choose to show your ads only people just logging in, in which case you would set SD as 1. However, you can scale this out. Try using the “greater than” option here. People still click ads that far into their session, and guess what? They’re much, much cheaper impressions to buy!

Login count is the last thing I will touch upon here. You should be using these in any campaigns you’re building, and testing each and every login count option. Less than 50, between 50 – 100, between 100 and 150, etc. With an increasing number, you can decrease your bids. Make sure you are tracking these ads, too! With a higher login count, on a typical dating campaign, you’ll have a lower ROI and lower CTR. This does not mean that 500+ logins will be unprofitable and this is because impressions there can be so cheap! If you can manage .1% CTR, you’ll only be paying 10 cents a click which leaves you about 40 clicks headroom on your standard dating offer.

A big problem I hear with a lot of my coaching clients is that they’re trying to play with the system, overcomplicating things for themselves which leaves them chasing their tail. In combination with the above advice, slow it down and simplify things. I still have very broadly targeted campaigns that I keep running up there.

Having trouble getting started on Facebook or PoF ads yourself? Looking to break into affiliate marketing with a head start? Contact me to learn more about my 1-on-1 coaching program. Click here!

Remember back when PPV was all the rage. 1 cent pop-ups turning normal affiliates into millionaires in weeks, or so that’s what people were saying. When new traffic sources are uncovered like this, you’ll find a lot of people talking about how “cheap” it is. And cheap it normally is, but we must remember that “cheap” is a bit of a derogatory term. Cheap – shitty, bad, poorly crafted – these are all synonyms you can use with cheap.

These 1 cent pops, yes are pretty inexpensive, but you have to remember that they are just pop-ups. How many people actually let these pop-ups load 100%? How many actually click through your landing pages and convert. With the same ad on search or Facebook, you might have a 10-20% total CVR, while with PPV you’ll be squeezing out 1% CVRs. Yes, this makes other platforms, theoretically, more “expensive”, but in most cases a large portion of quality is attributed with a single click/pop-up costs.

In the end it comes down to your total acquisition cost. The lower, the better. If you’re Facebook, $1 CPC ads convert at 10% while your 1 cent pops on TrafficVance convert at 1/1000 (0.1% CVR), then you’re left with equal acquisition costs. After that it’s a question of how well you are optimizing your ads and landing pages.

In my personal experience and opinion, I think cost is directly attributed to minimum income requirements by the advertising network + quality of the traffic. Without a doubt, Facebook and tier-1 search engine traffic is of much higher quality and consistency versus 1 cent PPV networks. Typically, campaigns make more money for me on the more expensive networks and they last much longer.

This is a follow-up post in responce to an Ask Questions; Get Answers post. If you’ve got any internet marketing questions you’d like to ask, leave them in the comments section of that post!

Many of you already know I have opened up an affiliate store specializing in releasing landing pages and creatives for newer affiliate marketers on a budget. I guess you could say this is my first real product and attempt at an e-commerce store that has had some pretty decent success. I took a chance on this because I was looking for a way to make money on things I’d never used and to provide me with another stream of revenue. My designer makes some great landing pages, but half the time the work is just filler on what I need from him. The extra landing pages get passed on to you for $5 each.

I just wanted to share what I’ve learned about being able to launch this store, and what it took to actually make it success.

Always start out with a list. When I first started building my email list, I had no idea what I would use it for. I ended up giving away all the images I used for Facebook ads, because I didn’t need them, but others did. Build a list by giving away things people will find useful. I’ve been told my images have helped some affiliate marketers make 4-figures a day. Needless to say, it was useful, and built my list up very quickly. I’ve also given away some free landing pages here and there, to my subscribers, as well.

I used the list I built to send updates about the store. Those who were on it before New Years saw I sent out a discount code for a decreased total on all landing pages and creatives. This helped drive a lot of sales, and every time I send out an email, I get a few more sales. The list is powerful, and I’m beginning to understand why everyone is saying that.

Good support has helped me. Luckily, I’m in front of the computer most of the day. I have lots of time to give support to any emails that come in. This has helped bring back return service. I also get suggestions for this or that kind of landing page. With that input, I can make more sales in the future when I put out what people want.

Use social media. This is a big no-brainer. My following on Twitter and Facebook is pretty big. Every once and a while, I update it with news on my affiliate store. It’s fast, free and easy advertising.

Post on forums targeting your niche. I’ve focused on posting in Wickedfire, but there are a plethora of other affiliate marketing forums I plan to hit up. Again, this is another free and fast advertising option. I know I’ve picked up sales from Wickedfire, one of the toughest forums on affiliate marketing, so I can only see bringing in more money from some of the more lax affiliate forums.

I’m also considering installing an affiliate system and buying banner space on other affiliate blogs and forums. We all know how affiliate marketing works for advertisers (if it didn’t work out for them, why would they have these programs), and buying banner space is no different than a media buy. That’s something I am used to, and if you ever launch your own product, I’d include it on your agenda.

Yeah most of this stuff is Hurr-Durr, but it’s an interesting space to be in. I want to say it’s like being an affiliate, but instead of taking just a piece of the pie, you are taking all of it. Just make sure your product isn’t a recycled pile of garbage scraped off of JohnChow.com and you should be alright. Provide value, and you will be greatly rewarded.

I’m looking at my AMEX account online and seeing I racked up a $11,000 charge from Myspace. Well, that would be great if I actually set up a campaign profitting so much I could afford to drop that kind of money… too bad that’s not the case.

Unfortunately, what happened is there is an asshole, another advertiser on Myspace, that wants all the impressions and banner spots to himself. Instead of just outbidding us all, he’d rather sink way low, and click fraud us, to the tone of 45,000 over 5 hours, at around $0.25 cents a click. You can see the details and join the conversation over at Wickedfire.

I’m not alone in this click fraudery. A friend of mine got hit hard, and a few others on WF. Apparently, one of the guys click frauding (if there is more than one. I don’t know) is a big? asshole publisher on a network or two.

I’m still in the process of getting this all settled, so its a bit frustrating that I’ll have to see this on my credit till Myspace can get its act together (2-3 weeks probably).

On top of that, I’m testing out PPV traffic with TrafficMedia. The experience has been fine with a few good profitting campaigns. However, they are having some errors with there financing stuff. Basically, my account balance keeps going negative and more negative despite me freezing all traffic. I think im at around $-700 when over the past few days I’ve only spend $500 and should still have $100 left in my account (manual prepayment). Those that have been on automatic withdrawals have had they’re money taken due to this error. MediaTraffic is currently on the issue and will return everything to normal as soon as they know what’s wrong.

Oh, and for all of you emailing me with “Hey, hit me up sometime let’s get something started together!”… Read this.

A Bad Day

Ever just have one of those days where nothing goes right for you. It sucks, especially when it comes to your internet marketing campaigns. Today was one such day. I expected it, as Mondays and Sundays have typically been the least profitable for me. I suppose with Father’s Day on Sunday, that made things ten times worse, because every campaign I had turned on today had conversion rates less than half of normal. Some of these I’ve had running for a few months.

All I can really do is ask my affiliate managers if there were some problems with the offers, if conversion rates were down across the network, or if this is ussually expected on most holidays. In some cases, it could be any one of these, or it coulda just been my unlucky day. If it continues for a few more days like this, I’ll know it has been a problem on the network rather than anything else.

Anyone else see bad things happen to their campaigns the past couple days?

Anyways, the Tatto Media contest is finally starting to pick up some steam. Nearly $100 has been generated by 24 affiliates now on board. That still isn’t enough money, though. I’ve decided that to make this worth while, we need to hit atleast $500 in commissions before we give out the prize. I already gave out a suggestion on what offers to run and how to run them, you just need to go out and try it!

Sounds like one of those scammy e-book titles you always hear about over at Digital Point, right? Thankfully, I’ m not gonna sell you anything. The past month has been pretty shitty for me. It was probably the worst month for marketing in my life. I decided enough was enough and I just had to kick up my profits. Here is how I got myself on the right track.

Set up the office

I set up my own home office. This makes me feel like while I’m at my desk, I’ve got to be on the job at all times. On top of this, I’ve got my designer that comes in and helps me get my tasks done. He’s what keeps me from searching for porn on Google. That’d be awkward if he caught me doing that, aye?

Talked to some friends

I use a private chat I’m part of with a small circle of friends that are also other affiliate marketers. I tried a little better to participage and ask some questions. They are all great people and helped point me in the right direction to get some motivation and make some profits. Without the other people I know in marketing, I’d probably still be a giant boat of fail. Just reaching out and contacting someone, anyone, you know in marketing can go a long way in helping you succeed.

Asked my affiliate managers

Your relationship with your affiliate manager is huge! Don’t underestimate them, and don’t let them underestimate you. You pay for their shiny new cars and $50 lunches, so why shouldn’t you be swamping them with questions? Anyways, I talked with one of my favorite AMs and one of the coolest cats I know, Ryan Eagle, from Eagle Web Assets. It’s a private network, but if you are buddies with me, him or Harrison, you can prolly find a way to sneak in.

Anyways, he knows what offers I like to run and how I promote everything, and this kid just asks me “What offer do you want and what payout do you want for it?” He goes out and gets whatever the hell you want to promote without shaking. You want to know how much money he took on that offer? The offer pays out 5 more cents on his end. I have to sent 1000 leads just for him to make $50. What a playa! He helped me snatch an offer that many other networks don’t have, and gave me a higher payout than anyone else will have for sure! On top of that, he gave me advice for generating traffic from areas I hadn’t heard of!

With all these working in connection, I’ve been able to raise my revenue over 5x of what I was pushing last week. It looks like it will be pretty consistent, too. So, get out there, sign up for some affiliate networks (My favorites: EWA, Tatto Media, Motive Interactive, Advaliant), split test some offers, ask me for advice, and make some money!

The most important part of any ad, any story, any speech, any landing page, is the headline. Without a headline that grabs your readers attention, all you’re gonna get is a bounce back to the page they came from.

So what makes up a good headline? Take a look at a national newspaper, a magazine, billboard advertisements, even infomercials on late night TV. They’re all written by professional marketers and advertisers for a reason. Because they work! Take use of their examples.

I don’t normally write my LP copy, because, well, I hate my own work (even though everyone else I’ve worked with said I write like a god. You are your biggest critic). What I do notice from my best LPs and other LPs I’ve seen is some of the following:

• Catch people way off gaurd. Throw them for a trip. Give them something totally unexpected. One example was of a speech I was forced to listen to in high school. There were 1,200 kids in the high school auditorium. Everyone was talking, and when the speaker went up to the mic, no one shut up. “SEX!” … the room went quiet. “Alright! Now that I’ve got your attention…” It was completely irrelevent, but it totally worked. All eyes were on him for his whole speech.
• Big and bold is the way to go. This is pretty self-explanatory and kinda “duh!” You’ll notice that all headlines are bigger than the rest of the text. Yeah. Don’t be a dumbass! Make your headline bigger than the normal font. Since you want it to be the statement that draws them in, its gotta be the biggest font above the fold. Users eyes will naturally be drawn to it.
• The use of emotion helps drag people in. Making a headline exciting or sad can help create a connection with your potential lead. People are dumb and gullible. Use that to your advantage and make them feel bad about themselves. Rather than “Is this person fat? They could use Acai berry to slim up.” try, “Are you tired of being called a fatty? Thin up with Acai!” Target their own emotions, not someone elses.
• Use a question as your headline. This is straight out of 10th grade. Rather than start off a paper with “This paper is written by me, Justin Dupre, and I am going to be writing about how to write better headlines.” Knock that shit off and try something like, “Do you want to write headlines that made people like Justin Dupre bajillionairs?” It’s exciting, engages the potential lead, and begs them for an answer. HELL YES I WANT TO MAKE A BAJILLION MONIES!

I’ll try and find some more real life examples and we can examine them in-depth for a future post. In the mean-time sign up for Tatto Media and win some free stuff!

I got an email from another new affiliate marketer. We just had a friendly conversation through email about how I found him on Twitter, and from there I took a look at his blog. In his first month of affiliate marketing and the help of PPC-Coach (an excellent program that will make it difficult not to profit with PPC marketing tactics) he made over 80 dollars on a $35 budget. Not bad ROI.

He then told me that he is thinking about getting into web design and development because he finds that with internet marketing, its hard to find new niches.

What?

I couldn’t help but tell him that he had already done the hard part already. His niche is there, he’s got profit, but he isn’t going to continue marketing? There isn’t much I could really say, but to say this:

“Scale, scale, scale.”

He’s got his profitable niche, the hardest thing to hit when marketing. The only thing this marketer doesn’t have is enough volume to make big wads of twenties.

To scale a campaign, you can do several things. The most obvious choice would be to test more and more keywords with higher volumes. Low volume come from long-tail keyword selection, which in turn decreases traffic costs. However, while high volume keywords will give you more traffic, they can be more expensive. I say, even if these clicks cost you more, if they provide you with a EPC that is equal to 1 cent or greater than your CPC for that keyword, why not run it? Profit is profit. You may take a cut to your overall ROI, but look at it like this – Would you rather spend 100 dollars and make $300 revenue? Or spend $1000 and make $1500 revenue.

Another choice to take is to transfer campaigns to other search platforms, social media, and content networks. If you want to transfer keyword campaigns, there are many free tools that allow you to turn a Google campaign compatible for upload to MSN or Yahoo‘s search platforms. There are also several other large, 3rd-tier search engines you can bid for clicks on. Other traffic sources can include media buying, PPV or email marketing.

So don’t give it up just because you don’t have that volume yet! Get out a high limit credit card and find that traffic to make your bank love you!