Justin Dupre» Justin Dupre | Internet Marketing & Affiliate Marketing

Landing Pages and Direct Linking With PPV

Justin Dupre — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:31:53 +0000

I get this question way too often, despite the amount of times I’ve gone over on this blog. If direct linking to an offer doesn’t work, try a couple landing pages (Rotate… always rotate). If a couple landing pages don’t work, try direct linking (or you should always rotate the DL into your landing page rotation anyways). Let me help assist you further by sharing when I’ve found landing pages work better.

Like most others just jumping in to PPV, you’ll probably end up using AffPortal, scraping relevant keywords and targets, and using them to start off your campaign. That’s all fine and dandy, and will probably work well with direct linking. However, expensive click costs come with targets that convert well with direct linking, so much so you may lose money in a bidding war over it. This is why I branch out from relevance, build out a landing page somewhat related to a different category of websites that I’ll be targeting, and go from there.

Anything that requires a credit card will almost always need a presell of some sort. I’ve gotten rebills profitable with a tiny little paragraph on a nicely designed landing page. It did worse with flogs and farticles.

If the offer page requires 10+ forms to fill, you better be using a landing page. I always like it when the advertiser goes out of their way to make their own presell page, but a lot of advertisers are ignorant and fail to do so, just giving you a link to a page with 1 sentence on the top that says “Save on Car Insurance!”. Build out a presell page that steals their design (don’t go copying logos and copyrighted material, just use the same colors and design layout. There is nothing wrong in using inspiration to guide design). But on a paragraph, some bullet points and rotate, rotate, rotate.

That’s what I’ve seen as far as PPV. Honestly, it shouldn’t even be a question to ask. ROTATE! Try split testing landing pages and direct linking at once. If you can’t afford to buy $100 – 200 worth of LPs (3-4 different designs), and can’t make your own landing page, you shouldn’t even be trying PPV at all. Get a job, do some freelance writing, and save up some money before you jump in because I guarantee you will almost always lose money on your first campaign. I lost $4000 on my first PPV affiliate marketing campaign, and lots more on the many other campaigns I’ve built out.

As far a “Freebie Friday” tomorrow, I’ll be sending out two landing pages that you can use for PPV. I know I missed it last week, so that’s why you get 2 this Friday.

Is Affiliate Marketing Stressful?

Justin Dupre — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:31:16 +0000

Is affiliate marketing any more stressful than building a regular, physical business? Let me help you get this straight for you – affiliate marketing IS a physical business… you’ve got your storefront (your landing pages), stock and inventory (offers), a supplier (affiliate network), and employees (designers, copy writers, programmers, etc). Put simply, it is as stressful as any other business you can be in.

I was there while my father was building his restaurant up. It was hard… stressful – very much so. He’d come home and talk to me about budgeting and how he couldn’t take a paycheck just to pay employees on time (testing your affiliate offers, you usually break even or go bust). We’d go over how expensive some items were getting to produce (click costs, any one?) and we might have to bump the cost of our sandwiches (it was a Roly Poly franchise place). We never got the place profitable over about 2 – 3 years, so we had to let it go (offer died out, traffic too saturated, competion moved in, etc).

There are no easy, stress-less ways to make money. I know millionaires that get stressed when they lose a couple thousand testing a campaign. What differentiates a good marketer from a great affiliate marketer is ones ability to see through their stress, find a solution, and turn things around. Whether it be stock investment, real estate, brick-and-mortar shops, or affiliate marketer, we all deal with a ton of stress on a nearly daily basis.

Facebook Games I Love to Play While I’m Working

Justin Dupre — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:44:22 +0000

I’m a hard worker. These past few weeks I’ve completely cut out partying, sat down, and have really been building out some campaigns and working on some relations with new advertisers and clients. There is a monotony to it, which can make the whole thing seem like a giant task.

That’s why I try to break my day up with a little gaming. What I’m about to post here are some really addictive Facebook games. If you are already addicted to Farmville, and had to use LeechBlock to keep yourself off, it may be a good idea to add these to your list, as well. Luckily most of them are casual games, meaning you go back, click 1 button every 10-15 minutes and you’re done. They help me break up bigger tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks.

Anyways -

Fish Wrangler – Fishing. I hit this game pretty hard when I started playing at first. Pick a fishing pole, buy a boat, level your skills, catch bigger fish, and make money. You only have to make sure you have bait and click fish every 15 minutes or so, other than that, it fishes for you every hour I think, so you don’t have to manage it too often. You can catch record size fish and compete against others in tournaments every month, which is where a lot of the appeal to continue playing this game comes from.

MouseHunt – This is the largest casual Facebook game out there. Buy traps, build traps, make potions and invent cheeses, and catch some mythical mice. Join a clan and play with friends in many different tournaments every month and see if you can “catch ‘em all,” so to speak. It’s fun and its got a lot of strategy, and again you don’t have to manage your profile too much.

Ghost Trappers – About the same as the above, except you are catching ghosts. Good spin on it though is that you have to use various alcoholic drinks to catch them. I didn’t know ghosts were such heavy drinkers.

Airline Manager – This game requires a bit more time managing stats as the name implies. You are in charge of a virtual airline. You can buy aircraft, fly routes around the world, buy bases, have accidents on your flights, buy and sell stocks, among a plethora of other things you’ll find in other management sims.

Why write a post like this? Filler? Meh… maybe, but more likely because I enjoy writing and didn’t know what else to put down here today. Just felt like writing, I guess. Another thing though, is that these games are making the developers A LOT of money. They can take 10 – 50k to build initially, but from there, they can sometimes profit within their first month of launch. If you can come up with a good, unique idea for a casual game and can develop it, you could easily be making 1M+ a year.

Go bug Andrew Wee about it. He knows a lot about that topic, apparently.

As for yesterday’s post, TV was upset that I uploaded that list as it was to be used for my own personal gain, so unfortunatly, I won’t be able to send it out to anyone on request or on Freebie Friday. However, I’ve got plenty of other things to choose from so stay tuned for that!

An Example of a Profitable Campaign I Had From Day 1…

Justin Dupre — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:16:02 +0000

Isn’t something you’ll be getting from this blog post. Your day one profiting affiliate campaigns, well, they don’t come along so often. When they do, I bet it’s because of sheer luck or someone just handed it down to you. I’ve had these… a few of them actually. And I took them all from someone else or I just got lucky “throwing shit at the wall.”

But you want to know what sucks the most? Besides losing thousands just throwing shit at the wall (I call it throwing shit at the wall, missing, hitting the fan and just making a big mess. I know a few of my consulting clients heard me say that one already), I ran them thinking they would convert forever and ever. Obviously that never happened, and I never seemed to learn my lesson from running affiliate offers like that.

I ran the offer and never knew why it was profiting. I just knew it was profiting and left it like that. Never did any split testing, never rotated through networks, offers or LPs, and just thought I was sitting under a money tree. Well, the money tree shriveled up and died, and because I never knew why I was profiting before I could never replicate the results I was creating before.

Find the common denominators in your campaign. Was it the way you wrote your ad copy? Was it the way you were targeting? Was it the offer or landing page you were using? ALWAYS be split testing so you can actually find out yourself. Rotate absolutely everything you can, dump some money into data-gathering campaigns, and see what converts on your targets and why.

Since I’ve started looking at things this way, I’ve quadrupled my profit, and I’m able to make more campaigns faster, get them profitable faster, and understand 100% why I made them profitable. I know the number one factor on all my campaigns, to why I am actually at a positive ROI.

Freebie Friday: February 26th, 2010

Justin Dupre — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:11:11 +0000

AH! It’s Friday and I almost completely forgot about Freebie Friday. I’ll be sending this one out immediately, so if you aren’t on the mailing list (check out the right sidebar) you won’t be getting this one unfortunately!

This weeks free landing page is a really simple template page. You can use it for woman’s exercise/weight loss, or you can edit the picture and use any other niche you can think of. It’s flexible, easy to change around, and looks good for PPV campaigns.

Why Thailand?

Justin Dupre — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:35:56 +0000

Someone asked me why live in Thailand? This is why…

And that’s why… btw that last girl is about 32 years old. So I think I have a lot to look forward to if I decide to get old here.

But in all seriousness, Thailand is a wonderful place. The food is the best in the world (I could hardly find any food I enjoyed in America after being in Thailand so long). There is a lot to do and see. The people are amazingly friendly. The beaches are gorgeous and the clubs are bouncing. It’s a great place for a young, single entrepreneur like me to live. On top of all this, its sooooo cheap. My daily expenses can be as low as 10 dollars (not including rent). You can live comfortably here on less than $1000 per month.

Sorry for the random post, but just wanted to get something up quick. I’ve got a few new consulting clients to attend to as well as a lot of personal campaign management to do. If you’d like to get some consulting done with me, check out this page. I’ve got a special price I just emailed out today, so that should be really exciting for some of you without a big budget but in need of some guidance with your affiliate marketing campaigns.

I’ll also be putting up some new landing pages in the marketplace, and don’t forget Freebie Friday in a couple days here!

Want to Profit? Try Innovating for a Change

Justin Dupre — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:19:23 +0000

Don't be one of these... also, don't let your cat sit on a scanner.

It’s never been more difficult to be an affiliate marketer. Thousands are pouring into the space, hoping for a piece of a pie where the slices are already cut too thin. Affiliates are getting booted off of Google Adwords and Facebook. Advertisers are running out of money or can’t continue their continuity practices with merchant accounts being shut down. And networks are trying to make cut-backs getting rid of low performing managers, referral programs and bonuses given out to their best affiliates.

But I think what is really making the affiliate poorer than he really should be is the sheer amount of copy-cats trying to enter performance marketing. People are ripping Facebook ads left and right. I constantly get emailed and asked if I have a PPV spy (and the answer is “No”). And some are straight up giving you their campaigns. While there is nothing wrong with any of these tools or showing someone how they built a profitable campaign, there is a problem with everyone going straight out, ripping their exact techniques – same ads, same pictures, same targeting – and attempting to make a carbon copy affiliate campaign.

While I was doing my last few consulting sessions, a lot of the people say they read about a campaign someone else did or copied some ads like they saw on the ad board. As they’re probably someone inexperienced with affiliate marketing, I can’t say I blame them. It’s tough to make an original campaign when you aren’t in the right mindset. It’s easier to copy. Actually, sometimes I’m not sure if they’re taking the easy way out, or the lazy way out.

I try to talk to others about affiliate marketing, attempting to make you change the way you approach selecting and creating an ad campaign. Sure, you can run an ad you saw up on the ad board, but wouldn’t you like to make it better? Don’t you think there are already 10 others running that same ad targeting the same demographics?
That’s a lot of people all bidding for the same users view for the exact same thing. Your target demo will get bored, and you’ll get frustrated and come asking me why it isn’t profiting for you but you see everyone else doing it.

Take a step back, rethink how you can use the same techniques or same offer, but in a unique way. “Are there anyways I can still hit the same group of people but with unique targeting? Are there any specific keywords I can use to increase my CTR? I can target niche URLs, but targeting URLs where my customers might also visit could help. Why don’t I try targeting by workplace or college the user went to. Yeah… that might work!”

Copying ads you see creates competition (more so a challenge for yourself). It makes you a very simple marketer, which means you won’t be able to innovate when shit hits the fan and all your offers dump you. It increases click costs decreasing your change to profit. It increases CTR making it even more difficult to profit again. I’ll tell you once and I’ll tell you over and over again. Innovate, innovate, and god dammit! INNOVATE! Take advice with and campaign examples as a learning experience, and see how you can better top them rather than see how fast you can right out copy them.

My Ballin’ New Gaming PC

Justin Dupre — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:42:44 +0000

It had always been something I’ve wanted to do – build my own PC – but I never really had a reason to do so. Most of my money was spent putting it back into business, so spending 2 – 3k USD just never seemed like a smart idea. I bought an ATI 5870 a week back because I could tell my 9800GT GPU was about ready to die. That nice little upgrade did wonders for gaming.

Then I met Flight Simulator X. I’m not gonna lie… flying across Thailand all the way to Minneapolis, MN was actually a decent amount of fun… call me boring if you will, but I like it. The problem was, my PC was good for nothing as far as getting decent framerates was concerned… it was more like “How many minutes it took to load per frame”… erk.

So i dipped into my bank account and splurged a little. Scratch that… A lot. $2500-ish in for my new set up and it was worth every penny. I was updating my Twitter with pics, but in case you missed them, I’m gonna review here.

Here’s a pic of all the swag I picked up:

I apologize for the crappy image quality. Blame RIM and their horrible Blackberry 9000 camera.

What’s included is:

Case: Antec 1200
CPU: Intel i7 920 @ 2.66 GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A UD7
Ram: G-Skill Ripsaw 6 x 2 GB @ 2000 MHz
CPU Heatsink: ThermalLite Venomous X
HDs: OCZ 60 GB SSD and WD Velociraptor 10k RPM 300 GB HD
A Couple CoolerMaster 2000 RPM Fans

So, here are some more pics of me putting the PC together.

The Case

Ripping apart the old PC for the ATI Radeon 5870 and the 600W Power supply (might have to upgrade this).

The mobo… and instructions. I needed those badddd.

The CPU air cooler. It is magnificently huge.

Venomous X installed on the mobo and i7-920. Fans installed, as well.

Bus heatsink installed inside the case.

Memory is installed. The RAM chip closest to to the CPU had to be stripped of one side of its heat sink. It wouldn’t fit with it in place.

Almost done!

Up and running 100%! Just gorgeous.

The thing is a beast, but its still runs nearly silent. I think the loudest fan runs at 31 DcB. (Not including the GPU… that thing can scream if it has to). I was able to overclock it stable at 4.16 Ghz which is decently high for air cooling I hear. With Prime95 running for about 20 minutes, the CPU was at 72c, which is acceptable. I’ll be adding more fans and probably another SSD. By the way, if you don’t have your Windows install on an SSD, get one. Windows boots from load screen to up in running with startup apps in about 30 seconds.

I haven’t been able to play any CPU/GPU intensive games yet, as I completely forgot to back up my copies of my Steam games I had, so once I have that all down, I should be ready to test it. If you want updates on that, post in the comments and I’ll make another post about it.

Other than my new PC upgrade, I’ve been up to a few things. Number 1) I finally hit 1000 RSS readers. It almost took 2 years, but I’m glad I was able to finally do it. Freebie Friday has been going really well. My designer is back in action after being down in his books for midterms, so the affiliate store will definitely see some new and exciting updates. I’ve also done some affiliate marketing consulting with about 10 people so far, and I’ve got to say, it has all gone very well. I’m enjoying it a lot, and being able to talk to other people in English is pretty refreshing, on top of the fact that I get to talk about affiliate marketing, I don’t get a whole lot of that here. Haha.

No related posts.

Lead Gen Offers I Would Run if They Existed

Justin Dupre — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:31:30 +0000

For those of you who are advertisers, listen up. These are offers I want to run! If they exist, well, tell me what CPA network I can find them on. If they don’t exist, get your stuff together, find some lead buyers, and throw up a high converting landing page because I’m about to send you 500 leads a day!

Plastic Surgery (I’ve seen them in the UK, but not the US)
Colored Contacts/Eye Glasses
Weight Loss Lead-gens (Why aren’t there any of these yet?)
Buy Used Cars
Computer Hardware/Repair/Troubleshooting
T-Shirts
Wedding Rings
Vacations/Travel
MMO leadgens (That don’t suck)
Sell Your Own Porn Movie (Seriously!)
Lawyer (I’ve seen a few of these, but they all convert horribly and look like a 5-year old designed them)
Get Rid Of Your Speeding Ticket/DUI/DWI/Possession of Pot Brownies offer
And just in general, more offers with an alternative PPV-sized LP

Want to add your suggestion to the list? I know a lot of advertisers and affiliate network reps read this blog. Perhaps one of them will drop by, catch your suggestion, and build the offer!

And don’t forget! Tomorrow is Freebie Friday. If you aren’t on the mailing list within 24 hours or so, you won’t get an awesome landing page I’ve got lined up for you to download. You can sign up in the form on the right sidebar.

Taking Your Business to the Next Step: Thinking Long Term

Justin Dupre — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:57:31 +0000

Affiliate marketing can turn you into a $6 an hour full-time employee to a multimillionaire in a very short amount of time. I’ve never heard of an industry where a complete individual can go from broke to seven-figures or more in less than a year. It’s incredibly lucrative in the now. That’s the problem – Most affiliate marketers aren’t thinking about 1 to 2 to even 10 years from now.

I think it’s really time for any affiliate marketer, especially the ones that banked hard during the acai and biz-op continuity craze, to start thinking about how they can make their short term affiliate income into something more sustainable. The day and age of gorilla affiliate marketing tactics, I think, is coming to an end within the next year or two, and affiliates are going to have to become more creative to actually start generating leads and sales.

Let’s not forget all the competition that is creeping in on us. Many companies that have used affiliate marketers before, are slowly starting to see they can hire people in the industry to do these jobs internally. Well at least someone there found a long term solution (job, security, benefits, etc). Although most don’t want to have an employer, this is a route I think we’ll find a few people take.

In actuality, you can modify your marketing methods within a few days to go from short term to long term business practices. I’m attempting to convert over in a few ways myself.

First, I’m trying to build assets. Using Aweber on my landing pages and blogs, I can easily build a large list of emails. With an email address, I can constantly send out information, links to items I’m selling, affiliate offers, etc, literally to no end. As long as I provide a useful service and some benefit to those that sign up to the mailing, and I don’t spam them with emails multiple times per day, I can build a pretty sustainable business.

An example I’ll give you is the newsletter on my blog. In exchange for your email, I give you 750+ Facebook sized images you can use for your ads. I also send out coupon codes for my marketplace, and its an extra way to reach out and connect with those that read my blog. I can also send out reviews for products I’ve used, be paid to send out relevant emails featuring other businesses products and services, and generate sales and affiliate commissions through that. And to say the least, it has gone over really well. While it took me a few months to get the list to the size it is now, it consistently generates about a 10 – 15% CTR on any links inside the emails (I mean, I have a list of 800 people… 200 – 300 will open it and about 100-130 will click-through: 25% Open-rate -> 50% CTR after opening).

You can combine email list building with all of your current landing pages and marketing tactics. PPV, Facebook, Google, SEO, Media Buys, whatever! You can start building your asset list, email out your offers in the 1st – 2nd email, and keep hitting them again and again.

Other ways I see affiliates going: starting up their own affiliate network. Many are building their own products. Some are moving from this industry to another with their short-term affiliate profits (Forex, investing, real-estate, physical businesses, etc). In all honesty, I’ll ask this. Do you really want to still be an affiliate marketer in 5 years? In 10? When you get married and have children? I don’t mind it being another form of revenue for me, but I don’t want to be stuck stretching my creativity and budget for it the rest of my life. I’ll always keep it there to net me a few extra figures per month, but eventually it will have to move over for something more sustainable.

One thing I’m looking to move in to is consulting. Most of you may have gotten the email I sent out a couple days, but for those of you who haven’t feel free to check out my consulting page. I’ve always really like teaching people and helping them get over what they were struggling with. Making money, maximizing revenue and ROI are a couple of those problems that affiliate marketers struggle with. I’ve been there and done that, and know how hard it can be to deal with as a new affiliate. Some people may see it as selling out, some people may see it as an escape, however I see it as something I really enjoy. I’ve been a student-teacher, a writing-aid, and did one PPV mastermind session with PPVPlaybook and I loved doing it. Using my knowledge and helping someone succeed – whether that means helping them write an extraordinary final’s essay or generating a higher CTR on Facebook – is very fulfilling. And isn’t that what life, as well as long-term business, should be about? Love what you do.

While I don’t think you should, in anyway, slow down your hustle to generate any money now, you should start thinking about how you can start taking your now money and turning it into tomorrow money. We all know how volatile the affiliate industry is – offers blow up, advertisers and networks go bankrupt, traffic sources dry out (or kick you off), and FTC pulls a lawsuit up against you for illegal business practices. Will you be prepared to face the music if the affiliate industry just implodes on itself?

What’s your long-term business plan?