Trev 3.0

The last few weeks I have been going bezerk with attempting new ways (or ways unfamiliar to me) with purchasing traffic.  One thing that I have been playing with much more is Media Buying.  I wasn’t aware of how many people you can get your ads out to with meda buying.  I also like many things about it like you can cut deals to get better advertising prices.  You are also getting loads of traffic compared to one of the many other routes out there…

You may be wondering why I’m worried about such mass amounts of traffic more lately?

Well, there is a simple answer to that, I have now actually entered a few "niches" and have had some actual physical products manufactured for these niches.  I was getting tons of traffic just using the simple means of promotion I had used earlier, but since everything was rolling a good profit at that level, I wanted to ramp things up with a few insertion orders.

I would have to say that so far, I am liking this media buying process.  The only downfall is you need to have some money to put down at first.  Some of these buys can be pretty expensive compared to throwing up some campaigns with just PPC or whichever way you are promoting offers.

If anyone has any decent info or tips related to media buying, please leave a comment, I’m interested to hear others opinions in this area!

Until next time, best of luck guys!

So I’m sure many of you wonder why in the hell it took me so long to update you all since my last post.  The truth is this is not such a simple answer. 

What happened was that I started playing around with the contextual traffic I had posted about earlier and it made me really start to see that I need to not be so narrow minded on traffic generation.  I started testing tons of different sources (not contextual traffic, but any source of traffic I could buy) to get traffic and ran into a lot of little networks and companies to purchase traffic from way cheaper than using adwords like most everyone else has been doing.  So in the process of testing out all these new sources I also was testing out my tracking script to make sure and nail out any of the bugs in case we really do end up releasing this sucker to the public. 

So during allll of this I also ran across a lot of really good campaigns and more than quadrupled my overall revenue and profit levels for March.  This month was a pretty decent month for me and I realized how big this world really is.  There are literally thousands of different ways to generate traffic…and I’m starting to see that more and more.  When I originally started out with internet marketing my plan was to master ppc.  Since then, my goals have changed however.  I am now not as concerned about ppc, although that is still a big concern…I want to move my focus to finding much cheaper/better converting/more volume methods to finding quality traffic generation.

I’m noticing a much easier to recognize pattern of users for each traffic source also.  Its now much easier for me to see an offer and know which source it will probably perform well on and which it will perform poorly on.  It can really be hit or miss on making something work.  It’s starting to come around to simply testing and tracking everything.  When you can start mass testing and tracking, you can find the traffic sources that perform strong with a certain offer in a matter of minutes to a couple hours usually, depending on the volume you receive.

I’m unlike many internet marketers, which I also think is one of the reasons I am succeeding in this game.  Most marketers get very emotional over their campaigns.  They think they can make anything work or find that one keyword that will start pouring in the profits.  The fact of the matter is although you MAY be able to expand enough to find that special keyword, the odds are not in your favor that it will happen.  Not only that, but why waste your time and money trying to make it work.  You should be testing as many offers and sources as you can.  Its all like a puzzle, you have to piece together the traffic source with the right offer and the right types of people, THAN when you find that match you will see some major dough roll in.  DO NOT get emotional with your campaigns, if it isn’t making money, DROP IT….don’t continue to try and make it work.

I also want to let you all know, my computer is dead and dell’s replacement won’t be here for like 10-15 more days.  This has been a bit of a good thing as I was becoming glued to my computer throwing up campaigns and analyzing the data all day and night.  I will try to keep you all updated but realize the next couple weeks I will continue to post but it may not be everyday like it regularly is.

I want to really try and ramp up my reader base for April so I will try to get some pretty good quality posts going on this month.  Also, I get a lot of questions from people so I am thinking maybe once a week or so I will just post up a couple questions from readers and answer them.  If you have anything you would like an answer to just use the contact me form and send me your question.  If I don’t post it on the blog, I will get back to you with the answer, I am pretty good about answering everyone.

Well the last week I threw up some new campaigns and wanted to play around with Camtasia Studio so I decided to make a little "proof" video of the work I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks.  I did this intentionally to show a couple of my family members the possibilities of internet marketing in a "cool" fashion, but my buddy talked me into throwing it up on the blog for everyone to see instead….oh well.  Here you go!

 By the way, I know this isn’t the best video solution…I’m working on something.  For now though, if you can’t see the video, you can click the little full size icon right next to the audio in the lower right hand part of the player.  This will maximize it to full screen so that you can make everything out.

When I started all of this affiliate marketing/internet marketing, I started with a very organized infrastructure….however I didn’t know how to correctly handle everything on the business side.  I just got done getting everything ready for my CPA to do my taxes and let me tell you it was NOT fun.  However, out of everything bad, comes a good.  As I was looking through all of my cpa networks, I found 2 networks that hadn’t paid me a significant amount.

If I wouldn’t have caught this, I pretty much can guarantee I wouldn’t have gotten this money that belonged to me.  One of the networks I had been calling and calling and calling and leaving messages, but getting no reply.  I actually found a personal line to someone at the company and contacted him that way.  The other network I dealt with was very responsible about the matter and it was just a little mix up.  The nice thing is I will be quite a bit richer when this cash comes next month.  Its kind of like a bonus.

Either way, I wanted to mark the importance of keeping organized with everything and to KEEP TABS on what the networks owe you!

This is so freakin funny.  This basically reminded me of all the "guru"s and many of the big name guys in our industry

With internet access cheaply available to anyone this has opened up the vulnerability of many dingbats entering the area of internet marketing.  The only thing is they seem to think "make money anyway online with no morals" when they should be thinking something entirely different.  It seems like every hack out there has something they are willing to sell you.  Not only are people out there trying to sell you absolute trash, but loads more are out spreading around information that isn’t even accurate.  I don’t know how many blog posts or tutorials I come across online that are just flat out not right.  The information is wrong.  That is in my opinion one of the worst possible things…being fed FALSE information!  Oh well, lucky for you, you found the white hat guy already!

Anyways, this video sums my entire post up and with a lot more comedy added to it.

Let me know who you think the biggest hacks are out there right now! I’m curious…

A couple weeks ago on my plane ride back from Affiliate Summit West I sat next to the guy from Publishers Clearinghouse who brings the people their million dollar checks.  It was a pretty cool experience chatting with him, especially since I had always thought that publishers clearinghouse was kind of……bogus.  Ends up they aren’t as bogus as I thought.  I remember at one point when our plane landed he made a quick remark something like "that guy better not be stealing my publishers clearinghouse van window stickers!".  Hahaha

So anyways, this experience reminded me of another company called Blingo because Publishers Clearinghouse bought these guys  out like a year or two ago.  Now at the time, Blingo claimed to give out random prizes as searchers used the search engine.  The deal was that they would give out prizes based on random searches all throughout the day and night.  I was curious as to if this "really worked" so I signed up for an account and used it the maximum of 10 search entries per day.  I never seemed to have any luck winning anything searching….however…I referred a handful of friends over and they actually won a total of three $50 visa gift cards and a free Fandango movie ticket.  The great thing about Blingo is that if anyone you refer to the network wins…so do you!  You actually win the exact same prize that they won.  So I got $150 bucks in visa cash cards and a free Fandango movie ticket for absolutely nothing!

I haven’t been using Blingo as much as when I was first checking it out, but I am going to start using it at least 10 searches a day again.  That’s not bad at all since I normally use google as my search engine and Blingo uses google to pull its results from.  I have no problem using this a few times a day for my searches to get a chance at winning some cash…or maybe something like a new plasma tv.  They do give out bigger prizes like these.

Either way…if you haven’t heard of these guys, go sign up now and start winning some awesome stuff! 

With the hundreds of different ways out there that I can monetize my blog, I have decided to try something just a little bit different.  I don’t think it makes any sense to go through any sites like reviewme.com or payperpost.com who simply take a cut of the work I am doing.

I wasn’t quite sure what exactly to do until I stumbled upon a pretty badass WordPress (it works on many other platforms also) plugin called OIOpublisher.  This plugin makes it extremely simple to seamlessly integrate my own monetization methods such as site advertising, paid reviews, and more.  With this plugin I can actually setup an affiliate program for my advertising!  I could think of some pretty cool contests to hold now that I have this plugin!

Anyways, I have added some 125 x 125 banner slots, a recommended links widget on the side, and last but not least, I will now be offering to write paid reviews.  If you want to get in on any of this, just find where you want to advertise and click the Advertise Here links that are available.  If you don’t understand that or don’t see the links, than you can always click the Advertise link in the menu bar and this will take you to more information.

The really nice thing about this plugin is that now everything is AUTOMATED!  That is one of the things I attempt at doing during all of my business ventures, automating everything I can as much as possible.  I hate having to waste time on things I don’t want to be doing or that are just filling my time when I could be doing something I enjoy.

I had been looking for a solution like this for a really long time and didn’t think anything existed.  I am guessing many of you have these same problems that I am so  if you are running a blog and need a great way to start monetizing that space…then make sure you check out OIOpublisher right away and start making some more cash flow!

Well that was a loaded question haha.  The last few days I have been talking with someone who had a campaign and thought he was out of traffic.  Now I will admit he definitely had everything optimized extremely well and had really taken advantage of adwords.  However…adwords isn’t everything!

Just talking PPC alone here, I had him expand to Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN Adcenter, Miva, and Looksmart.  Now I won’t tell you which one didn’t make money but every source we tested except for yes…ONE…added profit on to the campaign.  He is now making almost triple what he was making with that exact same campaign as he was less than a week ago.

Now this post is short, but its short for a reason.  Sometimes the BEST tips, are the absolute simplest things we take for granted.  You know how to market, now go find the audience (traffic source) that is perfect for you.  Don’t get so one minded thinking you have to do everything in adwords.  This is something I see happening all the time.

Until next time, spread your campaigns out among some new traffic sources and start earning some more BLING BLING!

Here is a great youtube video of Poetic Prophet rapping about search engine marketing (sem).  Everytime I see this video it puts a smile on my face so I thought I would pass it on to the rest of you incase you haven’t seen it.

I would LOVE to see someone else break out some internet marketing rhymes!

Well I finally started getting some traffic through the contextual adware networks.  Media Traffic was definitely the quickest at getting back to me and even offering help.  I met Basil from Media Traffic at Affiliate Summit and he has been nothing more than helpful along the whole path of getting things converted over for testing.

One thing I have run into so far is that this network doesn’t pass on a referral URL.  Instead they use a different method to send on the variable so you know where the traffic is coming from.  Because of this me and my programmer have been working on modifying the script so that it is compatible "out of the box" with this sort of traffic.  I will probably be putting in a lot of time this week yet testing everything out.

So far adding campaigns is way way easier then setting up a PPC campaign.  Not only that but you don’t ever have to write ads, which is usually the longest and most tedious part of the process for me.  I have noticed with adware traffic using the same keywords as my PPC campaigns wouldn’t really be possible in many cases.  The way you target your traffic with contextual is yet very similar to PPC, but still different.  These are the changes I am trying to adapt to throughout this whole process.

I haven’t showed INCREDIBLE results yet with this type of traffic, but am certainly seeing the opportunity if I can work everything out and play around with this for a week or two.

If any of you are testing out contextual traffic, leave a comment and let me know what your experience has been!