Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Q&A Answer Part 1

I have 5 comments from the blog where i requested you guys to ask me anything about biz or personal life in general and i’m going to answer them one by one now… Keep those questions coming so there can be part 2 part 3… :)

  1. # 1 Tzerwah Says:
    Hi Ivan,I am thinking of promoting items from Amazon but i can’t seem to b able to find ways to promote the item through PPC.Is there any way that i am able to sell Amazon items through PPC.Please advise.
  1. Thanks

In my opinion, i think that Amazon pays out very little in terms of commission and the payment scheme of net60 turns a lot of affiliates away from the associate programs. Unless you are promoting high ticket price items where you can get a chunk of commission and your CPC are kept low, i would not suggest you to try PPC with Amazon simply for the reason that we PPC marketers requires fast and efficient cashflow and with Amazon net 60 payment scheme, it will be hard to do it big. Perhaps you could try other affiliate programs like Ebay Partner Network or some other big retail stores over at Commission Junction.

  1. # 2 Simon Says:
    Hi Ivan,Please could you go through and explain your keyword research techniques for “testing” a campaign to see if it’s worth developing?So, process, tools, number and types of keywords etcI believe this initial testing keyword research stage to be tricky for most beginners..Many thanks,
    Simon

Hi Simon, thanks for the questions… I use only Google Adwords as my PPC platform now and for testing out a campaigns, i normally go for higher volume search keywords that are targeted to my offer and try to run them. What’s better for doing keyword research on Google Adwords then using Google own keyword tool, i would generally try about 100-200 keywords to test out a campaig to quickly see if it converts for me.

I would try all three match type of the keyword and i’ll be sure to set up my Google Conversion Tracking first before i run any data on it so that i can get a good overview of the keywords that are converting and those that aint.

Generally as a rule of thumb, if i lose $100 or 4x the payout commission ( whichever is higher), i will drop the campaign and move on to the next one… Doing up PPC campaigns is a number game. The more you do, the higher chances of you striking gold mine… As for now, the total number of  Google Adwords campaigns that shows in my Google Adwords account is 69… haha is that alot?

  1. # 3 JT Says:
    Hi Ivan,

Hi JT… :)

 # 4 johnson Says:

  1. eh Ivan, u made more than enough le… time to study! :)My question… how much time do u put into PPC?

Hey Johnson… oh well… exams coming in one more month…Really time to study… Not vert good if i fail my subjects and have to retake, that’s even more waste of my precious time. For this period of exam time, i barely put in any time into PPC anymor. Maybe just 1 hour a day to check that things are going on fine and its basically running on autopilot. I hasn’t launched a campaign for quite some time now due to school projects, assignments and exams… Hope this will end soon and it will in a month end… I’m looking forward to  April 27th…. :)

As for normal days where i do not have exams, i will spend at least 2-3 hours a day on a slack day and anywhere up to 10-12 hours on days where i am launching campaigns or ramping campaigns etc. So it really depends on what you want to achieve on that particular day, sometimes i can be up till very late monitoring a new campaign that i have just launched to make sure i don’t lose my pants off when i am testing a competitive market.

  1. # 5 Nigel Says:
    Ivan: I totally understand how you feel. Just completed mid-term tests and exam is coming in 3 weeks time too. Wish I have more time for IM.Johnson: I’ll help Ivan answer that question. He’s a zombie and he dosent sleep. He is like 24/7 in front of his computer. hah =)Here’s my questions to you, Ivan: (Hope it’s not scaring you off)1) What was the first ‘program’ you have had success with? (Digital Products- ClickBank, CPA offers, Amazon, or eBay?)2) We know that you’re promoting ClickBank products and earning 4k/month. (I’m sure its more than that now! :) )Q2 Part 1: Are you promoting your own Digital products or promoting for others?

    Q 2 Part 2: Most of your income comes from “Direct Linking to ClickBank Merchant” or through Squeeze pages>>email>>Merchant? Which method attributes most to your income from ClickBank? Having some little success from Clickbank, need some pointers…

    3) CPA Offers

    Q3 Part 1: What Category of the Offers you having the most success with? (Email/Zip, Pay Per Sale, or Pay Per Lead?)

    3) Do you need a Maid?

    I might stalk you soon, lol. J/k :)

ahhh long questions… :) Nice one Nigel… ha i’m not a zombie, its just that i feel that i can work most effectively at night and its time night when my concentration level are the highest and so that’s why i sleep late and wake up late also, i am not a zombie, i still have ample rest, much more then what most people have i believe… haha…

1) My first ever profitable campaign from is a CPA campaign and i was running Baby Diapers email submits on Yahoo and the network i was using is PrimaryAds.com… I did up a 2 offer landing page and basically drive traffic from Yahoo to the landing page and i was making a profit. That was in February 2008 and it was my 3rd month doing PPC-CPA… That month i made about US$2000 and from then now there was no turning back for me in this industry… :)

2 part 1) I am promoting other people’s product and i do not have a product that’s being listed on Clickbank…

2 part 2) All i can answer is, it really depends on the niche that you are promoting.. Take a look at what your competitors are doing and follow them… For example, registry cleaners advertisers all use a review style page that recommend 3 registry products. Do you think you can be profitable if you do a pre-sell story landing page? No way… People all use the same template because its proven to work… Just stick to it…

For me personally, review style pages attribute most to my Clickbank income and i don’t do direct linking… Direct linking can be profitable in some niches such as the people search niches but you have to be careful that you are competiting with affiliates who have been around for eons and their quality score is probably 100x better than yours and you are paying a much higher price then them in terms of CPC. So.. how you want to tackle this niche, i leave it to your own creativity… :)

Q3 Part 1) Most of my income comes from CPA offers now. The offers that i have most success with are zip/email submits. Even though they are $1-$2 per lead and you probably din think that you could be profitable for such low payout, then you are wrong, My gross revenue from email/zips alone can go up to US$3300 and my profit margin can be as high as 100%.. However, email/zips offers tend to have a lot of scrubbing from CPA networks and the advertisers, but as long as we stay profitable, that’s all that matters to me… I will definitely want to go into a pay per sale high payout offer because that’s where i feel the real money is.. and also with more budget to burn, i would probably work something out. :)

Q3 Part 2) Nope… i am perfectly fine with what i have now and i don’t need a maid… hahax…

Phew! That’s all for the 5 questions that i have receive for today… Feel free to leave more comments and you’ll receive your answers soon… I hope i have answered all the questions well though… hee… 3.14am… ha Nigel, i’m probably a Zombie aint i… ha

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6 Responses

March 24, 2009
jerrick

hi ivan,

Just curious on the few questions below

a) Can you list the entire tools you use for keywords research, tracking, campaign setup etc in your PPC?

b) As most of your campaigns are CPA ads, did you upload contents reguarly to your landing pages? Or most campaigns lifespan last from few weeks to 2 or 3 months for such campaigns compared to pay per sale?

c) Did you outsource any stuff like landing page designs etc?

d) You mentioned scrubbing happens quite often in CPA networks?How did you overcome it to ensure you are not running a loss? You may have ramp up quite a bit for the campaign to end up a huge loss if the network don’t pay right?

e) Can you point to us some landing pages sample (not yours) that is good for CPA networks like zip or emails submit? Do you use content network?

Thanks


March 24, 2009

Wow. This is some good stuff man!
THank guys for asking all these questions! haha.


March 24, 2009
Matrix

Can you describe your approach or bidding strategy on google adwords, like how much to bid up or down on a keyword & when do you do it? Also, how many clicks on a keyword with no conversions before giving it up? Thanks.


March 24, 2009
Matrix

Oh yeah, another thing. I’ve noticed in your Zero Affiliate ebook that you do a form of direct linking with a twist with good QS (not exposing to much) to the Clickbank page, but now you say you do review style pages. So what is it do you actually do?

Or is it that you do that direct linking thing first as a test before switching over to review style pages? Thanks.


March 24, 2009
John

Hi Ivan,

Can i ask if you are using polls or latest news to capture zip submits?

Wow, 69 campaigns? Amazing….how did you do that… :)


March 24, 2009
peter

thanks for sharing your experience with us!

ok, here are my questions.. :)

1. do you still running the diapers offers? if no, why? does the offers dry up? normally what is the lifespan of the zip/email submit offer that you’ve promoted?

2. 100% profit for low payout zip/email submit means your cpc might be quite low, can you let us know how is the lowest you paying for a click? and how do you maintain such as low cpc? Do you use any software to track your keywords?

3. do you ask for increase payout for the zip/email submit? does your AM approve it easily or is there any tips to let them agree on it?

thanks!