Internet Business Daily

I have been hesitant about trying out Facebook Ads. I’ve heard both good and bad things. Some say it converts really well if you have the right image and ad copy, and others say it does not convert at all. Since reading that, I was not willing to try it out. But then I found a way to get $100 in free Facebook Ads.

It’s very simple. All you need to do is have a Facebook account and add the Visa Business Application. You will then receive an email shortly after with a coupon code. It will have instructions on how to redeem it. Try out Facebook advertising and write a comment on this post to tell people how it went for you. I am currently testing it out on a campaign I am running and will post its performance soon.

Introduction
A few weeks ago I had started my first PPC to CPA marketing campaign. Although I lost money (about 15% of my $500 investment) I gained valuable data and experience. Since then I have been doing research on my second attempt at affiliate marketing. Zac Johnson was promoting this Ultra Green Tea diet campaign through Advaliant and it looked very interesting.

I knew there was already a good amount of competition because Advaliant is running a contest that gives big cash bonus’ to the affiliates with the most conversions. I decided to go with the Ultra Lean Green Tea diet campaign anyways. This campaign was different than my first campaign because instead of a simple zip code submit as a conversion, a conversion would only count after a 2 page form including a credit card submit. Obviously this will have a much lower conversion rate than the zip submit but it pays $26 CPS (cost per sale).

Research
The first thing I did in the process was research who else was running the same campaign as me. I learned this strategy later in the process during my first go at CPA marketing. This is exactly what I meant by gaining valuable experience even though I took a loss. There were 4 or 5 other competitors in Google’s sponsored results running the same Green Tea campaign. They all had very similar landing pages that matched the advertiser’s page. I did some quick keyword research with Google’s keyword external and found that I would be paying between $1.25-$2 for the top 3 spots in sponsored results. I grabbed a bunch of keywords for my campaign and began the setup process.

Calculations
Next I had to set goals for my campaign. This is an important step in the creation process because without a goal, you will just be spending money and will not know how to tweak the campaign properly. Using the same formula as the first time (CPA/ROI * CR = CPC), I plugged some numbers in and got a general idea of my goals for this campaign. ($26/2 * CR = $1) Calculating this formula gives me a conversion rate goal of about 7.7%. I wanted to give myself enough room to hit my targets, which is why I went with a CPC of $1. This also means I will get less clicks because I will be in lower ad positions.

Creating the Landing Page
The next thing I did was get a landing page. It used similar graphics to the advertiser’s sales page. One thing I did not want to do with this campaign was iframe the form onto my landing page like I did with the last campaign. The landing page is important for “pre-selling” your visitors, which increases the conversion rate. I also included all of the normal components of a quality landing page: contact info, terms of service, privacy policy, about etc.

Setting Up Adwords
The next thing to do was setup Google Adwords. I used my previous method of creating an ad group for each keyword variation, which allows me to directly test the quality score of each keyword. I setup a broad match version and exact match version ad group for each keyword. After setting the campaign live I closely watched the real time traffic of the site and for each keyword that came through, I would create another exact match and broad match ad group for it. I would continue this process until I extracted all of the different keyword variations from my broad match terms. My goal was to have traffic only coming from my exact match keywords.

The Results
I will cut the suspense here and now, I made money on this campaign:). After talking to a few of my affiliate marketing buddies, they all agree that making money on only my second try at PPC to CPA marketing is rare. That being said, let’s get into the results:

The above image shows the data for the entire life of the campaign, including the time it took optimize the keywords. Overall, I had 60 conversions (according to Adwords, which I will discuss soon) at a cost per conversion of $17.84. Since my CPS (cost per sale) was $26, you can easily calculate my profits with the following formula: ($26-$17.84) * 60 = $489.60 profit. Keep in mind this is only according to Adwords.

Many of you will ask: why didn’t you just leave the campaign running if you were making money? When I started the campaign about a week and a half ago, I was making around $100/day profit. My campaign was converting at ~10% and all was going well. I hadn’t even optimized my keywords or CPC’s and I was already making great money. Obviously this was very exciting for me and I thought I finally could move up in the affiliate marketing world. Then, basically overnight, my conversion rate dropped from 10% to 1%. I am still not sure what happened. I kept optimizing my keywords and ad groups, and they were optimized well. My QS was good, my CTR was good, everything seemed to be the same or better but no one was purchasing the product any more. Maybe everyone had purchased the product and there was no longer a market for it, but that seems unlikely. I kept spending money for another 5 days or so, losing money every day. Finally, I turned off the campaign and was happy with the profit I made.

The Curve Ball
One thing that really screwed with my profit margin was the fact that Advaliant was reporting 10 less conversions than adwords was. This wouldn’t be a big deal if the CPA was $1.20 like my first campaign, but since it was $26 per conversion, I really felt the discrepancy in my profit margins. I am still working with my account manager at Advaliant to try to figure out a way to level off the discrepancy, and hopefully they will do good by me. Since 10 conversions equals $260, that means my profits dropped from about $500 to about $240. Advaliant said that the discrepancy was caused by Adwords double counting conversions because of visitors reloading the page, but I do not agree with that. I proved that individual keywords that were converting were not being counted, so that meant double counting was impossible.

Conclusion
Overall, this was a positive experience. I made money and gained even more experience with PPC to CPA marketing. I spent about $1000 and came out with anywhere between $1300 to $1500 depending on whether I get the missing conversions. I am still confused as to what happened when my conversion rate dropped to basically 0%, so maybe someone reading this will have an answer. My experience with Advaliant was decent and I am still waiting to see if they make up the missing conversions to me. I will update everyone with whether they do or don’t. Keeping affiliates happy is very important, so hopefully they do the right thing. I would like to note that they were willing to wire me my money early so I can pay off the credit card bill I had accumulated, which was a big plus for them in my mind. I am already doing research into my third campaign, so check back soon for updates!

Introduction
I have recently been trying to figure out PPC to CPA affiliate marketing. My first attempt was through an offer on NeverBlue Ads promoting a $250 grocery coupon. This CPA offer required a zip code submission to be counted as a conversion. The offer had a low $1.20 CPA, which means for every sign-up (acquisition) I would make $1.20.

This was the first offer I had with NeverBlue, and PPC -> CPA marketing in general. This means I had no history with Neverblue and they would be less willing to accommodate any special requests I had. Also, since this was my first time trying this I did not want to take a huge risk with my money. After reading countless forum posts I realized that you have to take a risk to make a profit. That being said, choosing a low paying CPA deal often means that the CPC’s will also be proportionately lower, reducing my risk.

Some Quick Math
With a CPA of $1.20 I did not have much room squeeze out a profit. Assuming I want an ROI (return on investment) of 100% and my conversion rate (clicks compared to people who actually signed up) was 15%, I would need my CPC’s to be $0.09. This is based on the formula: (CPA/ROI)*CR=CPC. This formula says my CPC should be equal to my cost per acquisition ($1.20) divided by how much I want to make (100% profit) multiplied by my conversion rate. I had asked my account manager to raise the CPA amount, which he did to $1.35. You can use the same formula to calculate what my target CPC’s were at this rate.

Creating the Landing Page
Many affiliate marketers will tell you that creating the landing page usually takes the most time with regards to setting up a new CPA offer. I also found this to be the case. Since I am not a designer in any way I had a difficult time coming up with ways to make creatives for my landing page. So I did what any beginner would do and I put together pieces of other people’s landing pages along with some customization to create mine. I went through many iterations before finalizing the design, but here it is:

The main thing to notice is the zip submit area. Originally, that was not there and was actually occupied by a “continue to the next page” button. The actual zip submit form is located on the advertiser’s landing page, which lowers the CR (conversion rate) because it requires users to click an extra page before signing up. I was not happy with this so I iframed the zip submit area of the advertiser’s page onto my page. Can you tell? This increased my CR. I’m not going to go much deeper into creating landing pages, but feel free to ask any questions and I will answer them.

Setting Up the Adwords Campaign
I will give a quick overview on how I was taught to setup Adwords campaigns. Basically, every keyword should be in its own ad group in the singular and plural form along with exact and broad match types. With this method you should have 4 ad groups per term. This is to control quality score and to better analyze at a more granular level. Each campaign should only have one root word. My original root word was “coupon” so I created a campaign called coupon. I used both the singular and plural form of the word and also had the broad and exact match types. Here’s what it looks like: Coupon, Coupons, [Coupon], [Coupons]. I did this with every variation of coupon-based keywords I had.

The Data
One thing that I was told very early is that you have to run a campaign for a little while before you start to see CPC’s lower automatically. After about 3-4 weeks, here is what my campaign was shaping up like:

This data is for the life of the campaign. In the beginning, my stats were poor and I was losing money. Towards the end I was able to start making money but at that time it seemed almost impossible to actually turn a profit. At that point I decided to cut my losses and stop the campaign. Based on this data it is obvious that for every conversion I had, I lost $0.57. This multiplied by 223 conversions means I lost $127.11. I do not think this is very bad for a first time and I had gained a lot of experience.

Conclusion
Although I had lost money I had learned many valuable pieces of information. I learned how to optimize an Adwords campaign, how to extract keywords from broad match type, how to lower CPC’s through optimizing my campaign and much more. You can read forums and blog posts all day but unless you get your hands dirty, you’ll never know a thing. As always, feel free to email me about any questions you have about my experience.

I have been working on a guide that outlines everything needed to make money online. You can find it through that link or click the IBD Guide tab next to “contact.”

Over time I will make this page into a comprehensive guide that covers everything from monetization, traffic generation, social media, marketing, research, and analytics. Everything and anything I have learned over the years will be placed here, in an easy to read page.

Check back soon for updates!

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While browsing the forums at DigitalPoint, I came across a very exciting post. eBay Partner Network (ePN) has officially extended their program to the PepperJam Network (PJN). This is great news for us eBay affiliates, because ever since the switch from CJ to eBay’s own in-house network, revenue and quality has nose-dived for the majority of affiliates.

Additionally, ePN’s customer support has to be the worst support I have ever come across in my affiliate marketing career. I will spare you my rant about ePN and just say that if PJN’s revenue is better, and their customer support is on par, I will be very pleased. They have already announced that they are dedicating an entire team to eBay affiliates.

I have signed up and am awaiting approval. As soon as I start getting new revenue figures, I will review PJN. I already have a good feeling about them, but then again anything would be better than ePN.

Lately, I have been writing about things that were a little off topic for this blog. My original plan was to have a blog that displayed all the ways I have learned to make money on the Internet, and to help other people discover ways to make money.

That being said, I wanted to give an update as to what was making me money lately. I do not want to give exact figures (you can email me if you really want to know), but I will give an idea as to what is really working and what is not.

Right now, the eBay affiliate program through CJ.com is still making me the most money. This accounts for about 90% of my Internet income (not including my day job at an Internet company). eBay has recently decided to drop CJ.com and go with their own in-house affiliate program, and I have not had much luck with it yet. If this does not change soon, I will need to look for other methods to monetize my traffic. Next in line is Adsense, Kontera, and other direct deals I have made. These are usually insignificant amounts, or one-offs. Also, I have been doing consulting, but again these are usually one-offs and not a steady source of income.

My goal for 2008 is to double my earnings per month from the Internet. Right now, this source accounts for about 15-20% of my yearly income (including my day job). One thing that I have learned is that you cannot give up. I have hit a plateau with my earnings and traffic for about 3 months now, and I have wanted to give up many times. I just need to keep plugging away and hope for the best. My ultimate goal is to be able to work full time on my web sites and money making ideas, like many of my friends already do. Hopefully, this happens sooner than later. Wish me luck!

Cloud Computing Basics
Google’s newest service it is offering is access to its “cloud.” Cloud is short for cloud computing, or distributed computing. Basically, how the cloud works, is by making lots of everyday home computers act like one giant supercomputer through the use of software, also called virtualization. This software, named MapReduce, is one of the main reasons why Google is so far ahead of its competitors. Instead of having to buy and maintain an expensive server that can support millions of users, cloud computing allows for lots of low cost machines to accomplish the same task. Whenever a machine breaks, it can be replaced without disturbing the cloud.

Cloud as a Service
Now that Google is offering its cloud as a service, everyone will be able to tap into the same machines that power such products as Gmail, Google Search, and Google Docs. There are both positives and negatives associated with this. Firstly, we will be giving Google even more information about ourselves and our websites. Like they need any more competitive data. Second, there will be limits on the amount of processing power each developer can use. To being, Google will offer 500mb and up to 5 million pageviews as part of its web app engine. Another negative is that there will most likely be little customization possibility.

On the positive side, developers will have the peace of mind to know their apps and websites are running on the most stable servers in the world. There will be virtually zero down time, and speed will be off the charts.

What Does This Mean?
Google is far from the first company to have this type of offering. Amazon already has a very similar and successful cloud service called EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). From a business aspect however, this is still a very smart move by CEO Eric Schmidt. Google already has the “biggest” cloud on earth, and a transition from the desktop windows system to a fully online computer network is imminent. The money will be in which computer network all the information sits on. If I am Google, and I am hosting all of your information and applications, I can charge you to use it. Although Google says its purpose is to index, sort, and make easy to find all the information in the world, they want to be the gatekeepers and charge for access. Whether the charge is direct, or through the viewing of ads, Google still profits.

Just like Facebook, Myspace, and many other websites, YouTube has officially released a platform API. The new YouTube API allows for deep customization into websites. This strategic move takes one of Google’s most expensive acquisitions a step closer towards being the source for all Internet video. Here are some features of the API:

• Create a web front end to let people view videos about specific topics.
• Create a desktop application or plugin that plays videos in a customized environment.
• Add related, dynamic video content to your website or application.
• Customise the Flash player to fit the look and feel of your site, device or application.
• Add feeds of videos from each of YouTube’s 18 international domains.

I’m split between two features for my favorite. The fact that you can sign in and upload videos to YouTube from any site is amazing. This was a brilliant move on their part. The other cool feature is full customization of YouTube’s player. We no longer have to look at the ugly chrome control panel.

There are still many things I have wanted to see from YouTube, specifically its player. The player itself is missing many key features that various other sites have implemented with no where near the resources of a Google company. Some of these features include: in-video tagging, higher quality video, and hover-over controls. These problems are minor and I am excited to see the creative apps that people make with the YouTube API.

**UPDATE: (8/20/2007) - Here’s another linkback, thanks! Google Blog

(6/21/2007) - I received another review shortly after this so I figured I would just include the linkback in this post: Tax Rebate. Thanks for the review!

First Blog Review
I received my first blog review for a linkback. I started this program about 3 weeks ago and finally someone has noticed. I have received many linkbacks from sites listing all the sites that run programs like this, but unfortunately those are not my rules and will not receive a reciprocal link.

Free Link Back
Someone finally took advantage of this great program and easy way to get a free link. Since they are the first, I will dedicate this entire post to linking back to them so maybe other people will see how easy this really is. The review of my blog can be found at chemstudioweb.com, specifically at this location. I would like to thank chemstudioWEB for writing the review of my blog, it seems like he both enjoys and learns from my posts. He also listed some of my mini niche stores, which was not necessary but welcomed anyway…thanks again.

How to do a Blog Review for a Free Link Back
The rules are very simple and can be found at: Review My Blog for a Free Linkback. The basics are you have to write a review of my blog, and link to it at least once using anchor text from the following choices: Make Money Online, Learn Internet Business, Blogging for Money, and now SEO Tips. Use any one of those to link back to my site and you will receive a link back to your site. If the reviews keep coming in slow, ill give anyone who does it a dedicated post. Thanks again Chemstudioweb.

I’m just going to write this short post to tell everyone I just installed a new plugin called Popularity Contest, which can be downloaded at that link. It constantly monitors the popularity of each blog post (based on views I’m guessing) and ranks each one. This data can be found in the Wordpress dashboard, and can be displayed in a sidebar widget as shown to the right. In addition, it shows the popularity of each post at the bottom of each article in percentage form. Thanks to Alexking.org for this one.

Instructions
1. Download the plugin.
2. Upload the plugin to your plugins directory on your server.
3. Activate the plugin in your Wordpress plugins page.

Everything should be tracking now. If you want to display your top posts in a sidebar widget like I have, just create a PHP widget and include this code:

<li><h2>Most Popular Posts</h2>
   <ul>
   <?php akpc_most_popular(); ?>
   </ul>
</li>

This should display your top posts in a nicely made sidebar widget. Thanks again to the creator for this great plugin. The great thing about this feature is that you can show off your most popular posts, and therefore get more clicks per user when they see more articles they may want to read.