Justin Dupre » Internet Marketing

What I Learned About Launching My Own Product

Justin Dupre — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:16:06 +0000

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.

Problems, Problems, Problems All Over the Place

Justin Dupre — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:03:13 +0000

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.

So You Had a Bad Day?

Justin Dupre — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:45:27 +0000

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!

How I Increased My Revenue by Over 5x Overnight!

Justin Dupre — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:41:55 +0000

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!

Nail That Headline and Get That Lead

Justin Dupre — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:46:44 +0000

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!

You’ve Got a Little Profit! Now What?

Justin Dupre — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:01:57 +0000

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!

Get More Traffic Buying It From StumbleUpon

Justin Dupre — Sat, 02 May 2009 19:50:35 +0000

Remember when you used to pay Digital Point users to go give you some good reviews and thumbs up on StumbleUpon. Well, you don’t have to do that anymore. StumbleUpon recently released their own advertising platform. I had a chance to try it out and here’s what I think about it.

You aren’t really paying for clicks. You are paying for page views (at 5 cents a page view), and you can select the daily limit on how many page views to give a site. You choose a category that closest matches your landing page, and then you can select from some very limited demographic choices such as sex, age, and location (down to city-level). Once your URL is submitted, it then needs to be approved by StumbleUpon’s team. It took about 12 hours for that process to happen, and found that they seemed to approve once in the morning and once in the evening. Weekends I found that they approve slower than weekdays which shouldn’t come as any surprise. Once approved, page views will begin immediately as long as your account is funded (done with prepayments through PayPal).

I ended up running advertising a niche dating website with one of my affiliate links. Due to the niche and the ability to target a category directly matching that niche I thought for sure I would be able to at least break even. To profit I would only have to make 2 conversions per 100 viewers. Things never really went my way though. I spent around $100 split testing different ages and running the ads at different times, but I never saw a positive ROI. I’m only down about 30-50%, so I’m not a complete failure.

Here are some tips I have to give you guys on advertising with StumbleUpon:

- I’m assuming this was released more to help your personal website build up traffic, get thumbs up, and allow it to get more traffic through organic stumbles. Affiliate marketing is just something that a lot will play with. If you’ve got a story or blog post that you think would do well, but just don’t have the organic traffic to help get those first few stumbles this is an excellent platform to use.
- There is no discrimination other than the few demographics and categories you can choose from when creating your ads as to who will hit the page. This makes it very difficult to get super targeted. While you are only paying 5 cents per page view, you could be paying for many people that just aren’t interested in what you are advertising. $50 CPM isn’t exactely that cheap when you look at it this way. You’d be better off paying $8 CPM in an media buy that lets you create a banner ad making sure only people interested click what you are advertising.
- To try and make affiliate marketing profitable, look at other popular stumbled pages and see if they are advertising anything. Also consider that most people that use StumbleUpon are very tech-savy. Things they are mostly interested in is technology, gaming, etc. Look for offers you think may be popular with these users.
- Check the ad stats to see if you are getting thumbs up or thumbs down on your offer. It seems that most stumble users don’t actually use these buttons anymore though. With nearly 2000 views, no one gave my page any thumbs.
- If you are using sub-ids in the URL, don’t use any form of the word “Stumble” or “StumbleUpon.” They’ll disapprove the ad for use of their name. Pretty lame, right?

And to StumbleUpon, here are some tips for you:

- $0.05 a click!? Are you insane? I know you guys are laughing your way to the bank with these kinds of rates. The serving cost for these ads probably don’t even amount to a tenth of a cent or your end. There are much cheaper traffic dealers available. Hell! Paying for stumbles is probably cheaper than this.
- Offer more demographics. This will need to be implemented into the regular StumbleUpon interface first, but your advertisers will be much happier.
- Drop down the ad approval wait times. This is a problem with a ton of advertising platforms.
- PayPal as a payment platform sucks. Give me the ability to directly charge post-payments to my credit card.
- Allow me to view how many Thumbs I got per hour, not just per day.

If you are interested in the advertising platform, check it out here. Already tried it? Let me know what you think!

Why You Should Start Marketing With Facebook Pages NOW!

Justin Dupre — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:36:49 +0000

Facebook contains an ungodly amount of users interested in an ungodly amount of interests. I could probably log into my Facebook Ads account and pinpoint in on users that are interested in “Ungodly Things” if I needed to do so. What is great about Facebook is that it gives its users the ability to easily share these interests with others on their friends list with a click of a button. Have you noticed a giant increase in “+Become a Fan of ‘Insert Product/Brand/Entertainer Name Here’” notifications in your inbox? I certainly have, and it’s no wonder why! Marketers are starting to see the power of Facebook and Facebook Pages.

Facebook Pages are simply put, a mini-site hosted on Facebook. In ways, it’s similar to a blog still hosted on WordPress.com or Blogger.com. You don’t have to pay to use it, not for a domain name or hosting. Anyone in the world can make a page for anything they want. It can be used to post pictures, videos, and you can even set up a wall and a discussion board for Fans to comment on.

Free!

It is a great promotion tool as it is free. Who doesn’t like free stuff? It is openly accessible to anyone that wants to make a page for any reason. Simple as that!

Brand Recognition

It is highly recognizable. Everyone knows Facebook. Everyone trusts Facebook. Want people to trust a unique product that you’ve created? Make a Facebook page for it as sort of a sub-landing page to help make a sale in the end. You can load it with info, specs, pricing, anything, and do it all under the Facebook logo. Trust is a factor put into most purchase decisions made by consumers. Without any form of trust, you are very unlikely to build enough confidence in any consumer that makes them want to reach for their credit card.

Easy to Build Attention

The simplicity to reach out to millions of users makes any other form of marketing look like rocket science. As soon as your page is built, you can send out invites to people on your friends list. Enlisting your friends to help you, maybe by sending them a message asking them to help spread the word, you can then reach an even wider audience. They then send out invites and the triangle just gets wider and wider. If you’ve got something amazing to promote, Facebook users will do the work for you!

If that doesn’t do enough for you, you can run CPC or CPM ads to your Facebook Page for an added boost in Fans. And while I’ve never promoted anything in this way, I have a feeling because the traffic never leaves Facebook that advertising to a Page will get you cheaper clicks than advertising to an outside website. That is just a theory, though, but I think Facebook trusts itself more than what other advertisers can and have advertised on their platform.

If you’ve got a successful story with Facebook Pages, please leave it in the comments or contact me with your story as I’m very interested in knowing how it worked out for you in the end. In my goals post, I listed that I wanted to become well-known in Thailand. I made a Facebook Page a while ago that is there to help “sell myself” to possible agents, photographers, or anyone else that might be interested in “using”me. I don’t have many, if any fans now, but go ahead and become one to help me spread the word!

Odd Niches Make for Big Money

Justin Dupre — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:30:05 +0000

Sometimes, we all have to dip our toes into some yucky substance we’d much rather avoid as Internet marketers. However, those niches that other marketers look at and say yuck at are the niches where there is still money to be made.

Remember the colon cleansing “flogs” (fake blogs). That was an untapped niche, although I’ve seen products for cleaning your colon on Clickbank well before the whole “flog” fiasco came along. Too damn bad I was way too grossed out by the pictures I saw on Google to ever put together a mini-site on it and start promoting well before everyone else did. I would probably be laughing at everyone else with their fake blogs while I stood on top of the pack with a much stronger, heavier page in Google.

There are people out there with some odd and disgusting problems. It is our job to find their solution and market it to them. This is key to true and big untapped profits. Having a clue that there is an odd product out there waiting to be marketed helps. You can do the research yourself, or if you have kickass affiliate managers, they’ll send you an email when a unique offer comes on the network.

That is just how I got one offer that has just been killing as far as ROI for me. I’m bidding huge click costs on it just to generate impressions, however, it still pays off with 150% ROI back in my pocket. And that ain’t chump change at all! With further optimization I could bump that up another 25 – 50%.

If you are looking for an odd niche, look at yourself first. What kind of odd problems do you have that you don’t have a solution to yet? Always biting your nails? Have webbed toes? In Thailand and can’t get a decent girlfriend? (Ha!) There has got to be an affiliate product or offer to solve all these problems, and if not, you can always create your own! Think outside the box to put money in your box.

The Key to Increased Profits on the Interwebz

Justin Dupre — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:43:57 +0000

So you are sitting here, reading my blog, wondering why your ass isn�t making more than a few cents with those crappy for Adsense sites you set up everyday. Well, number one, you are using AdCENTS. Unless you are attacking a niche with huge click costs (key money, diet, and B2B phrases), have excellent SEO skills that can pop you in the top of hugely competitive niches in days, as well as a butt load of time, you probably ain�t gonna be making your first AdDollars for a few more months. You certainly won�t be balling.

So what should you be doing? Anything but AdCents. Get into some IM, AM, Freelance design, programming, or writing. I used to make 100+ bucks a day writing, until I realized I could make more for myself writing ad copy and putting some ads up on Google to it. I stuck with affiliate marketing, and for the most part it has been a profitable source for me.

What else should you be doing? How about stop reading this blog. In fact, unsubscribe! Unsubscribe to every other blog. Block any site with the word WordPress in it�s footer to make sure you can�t read another blog. It�s wasting your time, highly unproductive, and let�s face it� when�s the last time I wrote a post that made you 1 million dollars last year? Never.

It�s time for a personal revolution. Put down the time, throw down some money, and see what happens. The best marketers have found their way to the top, mostly, with the help of their sense of creativity and courage, willingness, and curiosity. No one�s going to hold your hand to your first $100 dollar day, your first $1,000 day, or your first $10,000 day. I�ve done this by myself (minus the $10,000 day.. I know� not quite balling, yet) and I�ve had a few kicks in the butts along the way, but no one has ever told me how exactly to do it with step-by-step instructions.

You�ve got to do it yourself, experiment, lose money, investigate and data-mine until you figure out the fastest and best ways to profit. You could copy a dying horse like everyone else with your stimulus plans on Facebook or Becky�s Diet Duo on Google (yeah I�m outing some LPs� ban me, biotch!), but that�s just temporary money. Really experiment, dig into odd niches (toejam?), create your own products, build a list, bid low on keywords no one else has hit, remove the BS keywords that just lose you money, and start rolling in the profit machine you�ve just built.

You�ll never make money reading this BS. Get out of here� seriously.

Bye and good luck!