It’s been a long while since I updated this blog, and seeing as I don’t really want to delete it I’m going to update it.

We’ve been using Facebook’s self serve platform for a few months now and has been making us a good amount of money consistently. One of the key things to our sucsess on Facebook has been testing, which is basically what affiliate marketing is.

We use a few tools, but the core of it is Prosper202 to get/read our data as well as some other tools and software we use, but we’re not going to go into that. So if you don’t have prosper202 already, go get it and install an SSL cert, it’ll save a lot of headache. Easiest way to get an SSL cert is just buy a domain with namecheap.com and get one free. Use the SSL pixels, it’ll save some headaches, but remember to update the subids daily as some will get missed!

So to start off, you’ll want to pick what your going to promote and start gathering some pictures for the ad, we usually do about 5 per test initially. As well as 5 pictures, we do 2-3 ad texts. So there will be a possible 15 variations per age group you target – not easy work as you gather, and it never is. If it’s too much for you, hire some one in-house to do it for you and pay them weekly or commision it. I’ve personally gone the commision route and it has worked well (more motivation).

Now the way to track this with prosper202 is to use their keywords. In the keyword you want to include a few things like the Age, Gender, Country, Picture version, Text Version. So format it something like this:

1. M-18-20-P1-T1-CA
2. F-18-20-P1-T1-CA
3. M-18-20-P2-T1-CA
4. F-18-20-P2-T1-CA

And so on, till you have a combination of everything. Keep in mind certain pictures and ad copies will make different demographics respond differently. For example picture 1 may respond very well to 18-20yr olds, but very differently to 30-35 year olds.

Once you have the ads submitted and approved, run a good sized test and make it significant so 1 click or 1 lead won’t throw off your numbers. So get some good statistical significance – it’s important.

Once you have the data, you want to go into Prosper and go to the Analyze tab and in the keyword box (in the More options section) put in M-18-20 so it only shows the KWs matching that. Then sort it by EPC (not ROI). If you keep prosper up to date, and update the CPCs the CPC data will set for example 50c to all KWs when in reality all the keywords may not be 50c cost. You will want to grab the combination with the highest EPC for each age / gender and run that. Once the winning one has exhausted, move on to the 2nd and so on.

The difference doing these tests can make is huge. To further these tests, you can start split testing landing pages also, as this will have a huge impact on the EPC too.

I can’t be bothered to write any more on this, so there it is! It’s been a great year for me and my company. I’ve met a lot of new people in the industry and learnt a lot this year. This industry is definately a great industry and the potential from it is HUGE.

Well while browsing the internet, I came accross this post by Zac Johnson, so all credit should go to him on the find. However, I think the importance of this find needs to be shared!

Well as you can see, certain colours can invoke certain emotions to people. How can this help your probably thinking? Well imagine if your selling green herbal tea, and you want to invoke trust from your visitor. Then you would use the light green colour, which should make them trust the page more.

I’m not sure if this is real, or if it even works – but I’m gonna test it! I’ve found a campaign with a sweet $20 payout per lead, and I’m going to test 3 things:

1) Direct Linking
2) Normal Landing page
3) Color Landing page

And then I will report back with all the nitty gritty stuff. I’m predicting that the Color landing page will deliver best, but in this industry – you never know! I’m going to be using Yahoo and MSN AdCentre as I was recently banned from Google AdWords (pending investigation) which I will post about soon. I’ve actually grew quiet fond of these two other networks and can see my self sending a lot of volume there way! (more…)

Well, I have some bad news. After days of getting 0 leads, I have decided to pause the test. I shall resume by wednesday most likely. I have also bought a membership at PPC Coach and I can say it’s worth the money. The forums over there are gold!

I’ve learnt a few tricks from PPC Coach, such as the content network and direct linking. Basically, you use the Shotgun method and target every keyword possible. Then remove them as you find ones that don’t convert, until your left with a select group of keywords which convert well for you. Allowing you to scale the campaign and start making the money. For this, you must turn off the (more…)

Well, day four. What can I say? Things weren’t looking good yesterday, and I know now why. I’ve also made a plan of action to tackle the low profits. So, what was the cause of such a drop? Traffic – simply. There was just no more traffic coming into my site, but I was still paying Google. So what’s the problem ey? People stopped searching in Google.

The biggest mistake I made was making a site which revolved around news. Mine was a sports player, who was recently rejected an appeal. After the first day, he wasn’t convered in the news any more, so people stopped searching him. So long story short, I lost my audience. However, that is a valuable lesson to me. The test is still in profits overall, and the last few days have still been making profits.

For those of you who were interested in the original test, arbitrage – I will be starting it again. I will however incorporate it into this test. I have been reading around, and found some tips which I could implement to make it more profitable. It will be added within the next few days, and I will report back here!

Here is how I did with day for of the testing:

(more…)

Well, because I’m not using AdSense anymore, I’m renaming the testing to Affiliate Marketing. As you already know, we’re on day three! Well, this testing has been a rollercoaster so far. Day one was a big loss, and day two had some very nice profits, even after covering the domain etc.

The stats showed me that people were clicking but not converting. This was strange! I thought it was because it was a sunday, people won’t be working or searching – just relaxing and sleeping. Well I hope that is the case. I also realised that people clicking after 23:00 were clicking less, but it picked up again after 09:00 so I restricted the times AdWords could display may ads. I hope this pays off as well.

Here are my stats from yesterday:

(more…)

Well, it’s day two and after a loss yesterday – things can only look better, ey? Well, they do! I decided to scrap AdSense and went with one of my favorite affiliate companies Market Leverage. I chose these over the other companies because they have a lot of UK offers, and as the campaign was targeted for the UK that was perfect.

So lets get down to the number crunching. Yesterday, I spent $6.25 on AdWords which is only $1.25 more than yesterday. That is nowhere near my daily budget of the campaign which is $15. I want to also point out that Google did actually slap me this morning as I also changed the content to gear it towards email submits. However, after 3 hours I recovered from the slap and got my old rate of $0.05 per click back!

Here is my spending vs earnings:

(more…)

Well now that I have an AdWords and AdSense account again, I thought I’d do some testing. Let me fill you in on what I did, which led me to making this test.

A night of no sleep, and no sleep in the morning. I was taking around half a gram of caffeine every 5-6 hours and I was alert, focused. I started reading through blogs, forums etc and started getting some ideas. After around 5 hours of solid reading and it’s 8AM GMT I decided to have a shower, get more caffeine and some food.

Did a bit of keyword research quickly, and threw together a quick site in dreamweaver. I’m not going to show you the site, or tell you the keywords for obvious reasons. I found the niche I was going to use, and quickly gathered the content.

To get my content, I didn’t write it myself, nor did I outsource it. No way, that would only waste time as well as waste money. I’m not trying to rank for the terms in orangic searches, so I don’t mind if google don’t rank me for duplicate content. Catchin’ on now? Good! So I found the story using Google news (always provides hot topics), quickly did some searches to make sure there was no paid listings. Then went to a news article, and copied and pasted the whole thing! Even got some images.

So here are my results for day one – showing AdWords vs AdSense:

(more…)

Well as some of you may already know, I have been banned from AdSense. I have appealed, but have not heard anything as of yet. I don’t think my account will be reinstated however.

I have recently joined a few affiliate companies. Max Bounty, Never Blue Ads and Market Leverage. I’ve always had a CJ and Click Bank account. I will be using these companies to monetize the sites, along side something like Kontera or EchoTopic for the contextual side.

My plan is to find niches using the Free keyword tracker, then look at the competition quickly using SEO Quake. I will then buy the domain and hosting and install wordpress using Fantastico. Get a skin, install my core plug-ins and then write the content myself after researching the niche.

The main part I think will be building the links. I will look for blogs and forums within that niche or related to the niche in a broader term and post around and have the link in my signature and posts. If I need a large amount of links to rank #1 I will probably buy them, or buy links off other people and have my link put in their signature.