Q&A Part IV

4th day of the Q&A session… haha… I’m thinking all this content is probably worth US$47… ha 5 more comments for today…

1. # 1 John Says:
   March 26th, 2009 at 1:45 am e Hi Ivan, I have quite a number of questions…quite basic qns as I am a total newbie. Haha really hope you can answer as many as you can. (Wish you can start a forum soon!) a. How do you cloak your affiliate links?b. How would you know the conversion tracking code is placed at the merchant end? Anyway to verify before you start sending clicks to them?c. When testing the offers, do you buy a new domain for each offer you test? E.g googleiphoneringtone.com, babyfreeoffers.com etc?d. What is the average ad position we need aim for? Would the last ad on the first page still make us money?e. On average, how many pages of content articles do you put up before testing the offer? Do you upload these “testing” content at one go?

   f. What is the minimum payout for you before even considering testing the offer? Is it anything above $1?

   Thanks a lot!

   I really got tons of questions more, but hope you can share some for now.

a) Cloak my links? I generally just use a iframe for my offer to cloak my links if that’s what you mean.

b) Nope… All you can do is to request that your AM let you know that the codes are placed and you can start running traffic to your offer.

c) I do a quick initial test on a generic domain name and when its proven profitable or has the potential to be profitable, i’ll then purchase a domain name and build up a site.

d) As long as your ads are shown on the first page, you are pretty fine. However, your CTR will suffer because there are lesser attention to your ads even though the number of impressions are the same. This equates to lesser CTR and in turn will affect your quality score and your CPC. So i generally would aim for top 3 position if my campaign is already profitable to get high CTR and get that 10/10 quality score.

If i am testing a competitive niche where bids are expensive, i would go for 4-6 position to test the offer first before i try anything crazy and go straight for position 1 when i don’t even know if the offer will convert for me… Its about saving your pocket…

e) I would post at least 10 articles in before doing anything and get my sitemap up… I spread it out over a few days for that 10 articles so Google will not find anything unusual about the articles.

f) Its not about the payout of the offer. Its about the epc and conversion rate. A high payout offer might not be as profitable as a offer that has much lesser payout. But the minumum i have tried before is $1.10 for a zip submit offer.

1. # 2 Timonty Says:
   March 26th, 2009 at 1:49 am e Harlow Ivan, Do you have any forumale when you target testing an offer? Like you mentioned, you prefer more long term niches. Just a general qns what kind of niches is suitable for CPA offers/Zip submit. Do you have more success with computer, dating or health niches for some services that people need to try online?Also are you using only one network or many to hit your $20+k per month profit?Lastly, does all your ad groups (I believe 1 keyword right?) all goes to the same landing page in a campaign?Thanks for your blog. It really inspire me to want to succeed as well!

Hey Tim… Yes… there’s like a standard procedure for me to follow when i start to do a offer but its the same few steps. Competitor analysis, keyword research, landing page set-up , campaign set up… and launch! ha

Long term niches are niches that will still be around 5 years down the road and possibly forever. This will ensure that your campaign never die out. Even if the advertiser decides to cut the offer for you, all you have to do is really to just switch your offer to another advertiser and you are good to go again. The thing with short term niches are you have to keep doing and doing your campaigns in order to maintain your income level. That’s just in my opinion, a highly paid salaried worker and he is still having a job and not a business.

I’m using a few network now but the main bulk comes from one network only.

Nope, i do not use 1 keyword per adgroup because it will be crazily tough when it comes to split testing your ads. I normally group my keywords into adgroup and each adgroup have a slightly different variation of the landing page. So to put it simple, each of my adgroup got its own landing pages.

1. # 3 John Says:
   March 26th, 2009 at 1:55 am e Hi Ivan, I have a few more questions if you don’t mind. Thought I will just ask them now instead of later. a. You mentioned you have many failed campaigns. What do you think is the reason for these failed campaigns? Competition? The niche don’t convert or the traffic demand is too little?b. What are the factors in your opinion that result in your CPA successes?c. Do you see CPA a long term continuing online? Because I read some Acai Berry ads and seems like the FTC is coming down hard on some of the networks soon.

   d. What kind of html editors do you use? Or you use wordpress?

   e. Do you have any other advice for newbies like myself?

   Thanks a lot. Your Q&A session is the ones that really help me the most to understand more about this biz.

a) Sometimes when a particular campaigns is not profitable, it could be due to the selection of wrong keywords, you have chosen non buying keywords in your keyword list and your visitors are generally just surfers or looking out for more information and have no intention of buying anything yet.When testing a campaign, try to think into the searcher’s mind of what is he thinking of when he enter that search phrase. Competition is also one of the main factor why you’ll fail miserably. You have just entered into a niche and your account history does not have quality score of your campaign and so you are generally paying 20% more then  a advertiser who has been around for a few months now, have CTR of over 10% and quality score of 10/10. How much money do have to throw down Google’s throat in order for you to build up that account history to take on your competitor? Chances are you’ll bleed before you get there and that’s why you’ll fail..

b) Mindset and Desire to want to achieve your dreams and goals. Its all up in your brain and your mindset.

c) CPA has been around for decades already… (As least Gauher has been online for 12 years already) and there’s no slowing down. Acai Berry and Grants are short terms niches that has gotten hit by some rules and regulations.. But they are crazy niches because people were making a fortune one those offers. Now its all gone.

d) I use both dreamweaver and wordpress and i personally prefer wordpress more.

e) Learn more read more and most importantly, take action! Without action, nothing will happen… No amount of reading and learning will make you money until u take action and do it…

1. # 4 peter Says:
   March 26th, 2009 at 3:34 am e hey mind guiding us how to use google conversion to track conversion if I’m iframing the offer? do you ask the merchant to include your codes on their web site for your zip/email submit offer? thanks again!

All you have to do is to ask your AM to place the code in the thank you page of the advertiser website. How you are promoting doesn’t matter because when the visitor reaches the thank you page of the advertiser where the code is placed, it will tracked for you…

1. # 5 wang kai qi Says:
   March 26th, 2009 at 12:32 pm e hello ivan, for those zip/email summit offers which u said u were doin reallie well with, may i know what their conversion rate is?

   thnx!
   kq

The best conversion rate that i have for the email/zip submit is around 25%.. of coz there are variations from day to day but it averages out to be 25% for the month.

Done with the Q&A for today! See ya…

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