So, as my subscribers know, I am currently testing the PPV waters. I got to say its pretty frustrating so far, but that was to be expected since I know that most people quit it before they make any money. I would like to say that I am having much better results than I did with CPC advertising. I think this is because I was trying to use Adwords when it was somewhat saturated. Plus the fact that they filter so many things makes it almost impossible to create a successful campaign with Adwords and affiliate offers. PPV is a breath of fresh air when it comes to setting up an actual campaign. Bidding directly on keywords and URLs without a quality score to worry about is wonderful.

     Most of you know that I am not a fan of Adwords since I previously wrote a weekly rant about it. PPV allows me to go out and use any URLS or Keywords than I feel relate to my niche. Now saying that I realize that its a double edge sword and that it may seem like a blessing, but could ultimately be the cause for a campaign not being successful. It’s nice to be able to go after anything you want, but you need to beware of words and URLs that do not convert. You get a little “Target Happy” when you get automatic approval and you end up with 1000 targets for a campaign that you can get away with using only one. This is where you are tested. You might have found a crazy keyword that brings you 300 hits in a day, but converts maybe 1 or 2 leads. Now that’s ok if you are running a big payout lead, but if you are running a submit then you might have to look elsewhere for traffic. A solution might be to bid lower on that target which may keep you from getting rid of a converting target, but limit the cost.

You can go 1 of 2 ways with your campaign:

• First you can have many targets all at minimum bids and weed out the big traffic earners that don’t convert well. There you will get limited traffic from each keyword, but it will be a lot of traffic combined at a low cost.
• Secondly you can try to bid on 1-10 targets that are high converting, but a little more expensive to bid on.

      It’s a preference thing and really depends on what you are advertising. A key thing is to remember you dont always need to be top bid. Everyone gets their traffic and more popular links still give decent traffic with lower bids.

     Blah, blah, blah right? Yea a lil slow and boring, but really it has been the biggest thing that I have learned in 2 weeks of doing this. I guess the whole point is to test. If you test then you will be able to find out what strategy you need to use for your specific campaign. Bid high on some or bid low on a lot. You WILL lose money. I have lost money. It wont always be the case, but no one gets into this and makes money right off the bat. Remember that and stay with it. I don’t feel like I am doing well right now which frustrates the HELL out of me. I contemplated giving up on it and going with other means of earning money. Prostitution was a thought, but i like late night TV way too much. No stopping me now though. I will continue with PPV and Affiliate marketing. Email me though if you are lonely, i’ll consider side jobs. Later Bums!!

     So a man by the name of Josh Todd did all of his readers a big favor and wrote this PPV guide. Since this whole journey is about be learning and starting from the basics, I thought this would be a nice read for me. Turns out that this was the most useful thing I have read online about affiliate marketing that was free. Please understand, I say this knowing that what he is talking about is for the beginner looking to start with no basic grasp on PPV advertising. I have very little experience with PPV and I feel like I got a lot out of the targeting and bidding sections of this pdf. He explains in the introduction that you cant make millions from this alone. He simply wrote this to give you a platform to think for yourself and become an innovator. I really did get that feeling when i was reading this book. As i went through the steps, my mind was thinking of the twists and that was exactly what he meant for this to do.

     Like I said, this is a free pdf. All you have to do is give your name and email address and the site will send you an activation link, then an e-mail with the pdf link. I would just directly link you to the pdf, but He did a lot of work and should get some credit for it. I hope you guys benefit from it like I think I will. I am going to set up some campaigns later today, so watch out for a V-Log later for an update.

Insideaffiliate.net – PPV 101 – Everything You Need By: Josh Todd

     Well it has been a while since I have written about something you can actually use and make money with. I been mainly just complaining and blabbing about lessons learned. Don’t get me wrong, i believe everything I have told you so far has needed to be said. Not only for you own good, but also for me personally because its important for me to have the reminder.

     Something I found to work and actually make a little cash with are gateways. For those of you who don’t know what gateways are I’ll tell you. A gateway is basically a form of CPA advertising that floats over website content. In order to view the content on the page, you must fill out a CPA lead. Once this has been completed then the user is allowed to view the content behind the gateway.

     I signed up to CPALead.com a few months ago, but really didn’t mess with it too much. When I did mess with it, I honestly didn’t use it correctly. The funny thing about all that is that I knew how to use it correctly, I just didn’t realize I had the right tools to make it profitable to me. The important thing to remember when you use a gateway type of ad is to put it over content that the users want to see. Quality content is key. I first tried to put it over “sexy” videos, but this turned out to be pointless because you can go anywhere for those kinds of videos. People don’t want to sit there and waste their time by filling out a survey to watch a 2 minute video. When that failed for me I kind of put the gateway thing off to the side and went with other ideas. I totally forgot that I owned a website with original content that got about 500 views a day. I was the only person with this content and If they didn’t fill out my lead then they would not be able to use the content I provide for them. This is a key factor in my recent success. Now I am not telling you that I’m now making good money, but I am telling you that if you have a website with quality content then you might want to check this form of advertising out. I was actually pretty happy with the conversions I have been seeing over the last couple days and am currently looking for more ways to take advantage of this.

     I read some stuff online and they did give a method that kind of ran with this same idea. Personally I am not going to run it myself, but I am going to try to expand on it somehow. Basically you make a WordPress website with the theme of TV shows. You want to find embed codes of television shows that are popular at the current time. Try to send some traffic to it via link exchange, SEO, or paid traffic. Hopefully you can get enough quality traffic that wouldn’t mind filling out CPA leads in order to view different TV shows on your website. Put the gateway over your websites content and hope for the best. Its a fairly simple method and may or may not work. I suggest you get good quality shows and update daily. The more legit it seems then the better conversion you will receive. This form of advertising depends completely on quality content. If you can find a way to get quality contnet then you will make a killing with gateways.

Join Under Me At CPALead.com

     I been really bored the last few weeks. I mean the kind of bored where you find yourself talking to people you don’t even like to talk to just because they are the only people online at the time. I hope you know what I am talking about and it is not a feeling the The Bum is privy to.

     I been up and thinking about why I am still trying so hard to make it big on my own. I have about $100 bucks to my name at the moment and big things look like they are on the horizon. Yea I said big things, but how big? I don’t know to be honest. I personally don’t even know if It will turn into anything big at all. That’s the thing though. I have heard myself say that sort of thing before and then nothing came of it. Things that I thought i planned out perfectly and had all intentions of going through with, but just never had pan out the way I thought they would. So, why is it that I am continuing to do this to myself when I know that in 2 months I will have to find a real job and become a working adult? Well I am a little crazy for one thing. Besides a little bit of lunacy, I think I am conditioned better than others for this type of disappointment. I played baseball for 17 years of my life and if there is anything baseball players are exceptional at is failing. Who do you know is happy with succeeding 30% of the time. We feel one day and we get back up the next and try again. I think that’s why I know I am right for this field of work. Affiliate marketing is exactly like baseball. First of all, it takes a lot of practice and attention to detail to be successful. Secondly, You will never bat 1.000. You will fail a lot trying new stances and new techniques, but when it all comes together you will be able to see the ball coming at you like a huge watermelon. I have failed so fair in my journey to becoming a self made marketing superstar. My coach has sat me on the pine, but I know that my time is better spent thinking about the next adjustment I need to make rather than picking splinters out of my ass and feeling sorry for myself. All it takes is one idea and one solid method to get back into the lineup. Find that grove… get into that zone… and see a watermelon sized wad of cash flying towards your wallet.

    I guess the lesson here is to figure out if you can handle the stress and the failure. It can last for a week or years, but you will get to a point where everything comes together and you just click. It’s all green from there baby!!

     OK so For Easter I thought I’d give you all a little money making advice. This is not really an online marketing solution, so you will have to walk out into the sunlight this one time. First thing you have to do is drive around and scout places that seem to be hosting Easter Egg Hunts for children. I would suggest parks and churches for the best and biggest Egg Hunts. Once you have scouted them out a little bit, pick one out and try to blend into the crowd a little bit. Yep this means you will be around PEOPLE and you have to do your best not to come off as a pedophile or else this method is pointless. Start helping some of the children find the tougher eggs. Now here is the trick… Once you find an egg, DON’T GIVE IT AWAY JUST YET. Look around and point the child in the opposite direction in order to be alone for a minute. Pocket the egg and it’s contents. Repeat these steps about 10-15 times and you should come out with some gas money. Either that or you come out with some good chocolate to shove down your throat while you sit in front of the computer tricking horny guys into filling out E-Mail submits all night. WHAT!? I’m the only one???

HAHA Hope you enjoyed… Happy Easter Everyone!

     This weeks rant is less random and more geared to affiliate marketing than what i think I’ll be writing about most weeks. AdWords really annoyed me beyond belief. Everyone knows Google has refined their search, AdSense, and AdWord platforms to ensure quality. This is nice for the general public, but for us advertisers it has just made it that much harder to take advantage of the system. AdWords frustrates me the most because I have found it almost impossible to get nice cheap hits and also run the majority of leads that networks provide. Strict guidelines and quality scores make running ads effectively very hard and time consuming. I am no expert when it comes to this type of advertising and won’t claim to know every in and out of Adwords CPC network, but I can say that I have never ran a campaign without some type of issue with what I was advertising. Most of the type it was an issue with quality score. Quality score is an annoying scale that gives you an idea of how your key terms relate to the content on your site. Sounds nice, but sucks when you are trying to direct link your leads. I guess all this stuff just annoys me because I always get free AdWords vouchers and never make any money with them. It sucks, but it’s free and can’t complain about free stuff right?
     Now I know that you read through that last paragraph thinking that I am stuck here and don’t know what to do to fix these problems. Well no I know what to do, it is just that I would rather do it the easy way than the difficult way. Its annoying to me to have to make a landing page for everything. Landing pages are nice if you know what your are doing with them and you can greatly increase your quality score with them If you can create them the right way. Just, who wants to sit there and great all these landing pages all the time in hopes that your campaign will work? Then there is the issue of the rules versus offered ads. Many of the leads that networks offered are not allowed to be advertised on AdWords. An example of this would be those Smoke-51 ads. It is hard to even use the word smoke in your text ads let alone get the website approved. You really have to be super creative and know what you are doing in order to get an ad like this to pass and be showed throughout Google. In this case you would need to step away from the bigger networks like AdWords and even AdCenter. Truthfully most advertisers stay away from them anyways and go for the smaller networks because they are less strict on their campaigns. Of course you run the risk of being limited on the size of your campaigns because you are running them on a smaller network. However, it is another way to get around the annoyance of AdWords rules.

     Let me know if any of you have some useful books or web pages on the subject and i’ll be sure to update everyone with a post.

     I have a dilemma. I might be afraid of making money. I said MIGHT BE. It is either that or my pride is getting in the way of earning an income with CPA marketing. In my case, I have been trying to start legit and by the book in order to make a nice steady income, but the truth of the matter is that its tough as hell to do that when you have no cash to back up your mistakes. Coming to the realization that my lack of funds is ultimately causing me to be scared to test the market, I ask myself I should start smaller and cheesier. In order to make a few bucks now, should I go and try E-Whoring or run Craigslist Job scams? This questions has been nagging at me for some time now and I feel like my pride is basically the only reason why I haven’t been subjecting myself to a less than respectable means of making money.

     First I would like to describe my thoughts on why it is so difficult to remain honest with no money to back it up. Real marketing consists of tests, research, leads, and statistics. You have to be able to use all the information given to you and put it to use for you in such a way that would give you the best opportunity to make a little profit. testing takes money and time. If you believe what they say then time also equals money so you are just getting hit twice there too. You may have a flawless method that has a lot of potential to make you money, but if you don’t put it to use in the right niche then you are screwed! Takes time to fine out what niche will serve your method the best and time is expensive. Now I feel that knowledge is a use factor in this time equals money formula. The more knowledge you have about marketing then the less mistakes you will ultimately make in the long run. Less mistakes equals less time spent looking for the right formula to make money. I kinda like to think of this like how I was in high school knowing I had pretty good grades so a good SAT score wasn’t as important to me as it was to a person with sub-par grades. Knowledge and money kind of counter balance each other. More knowledge you have less cash you need and vice versa. I fall in the category of needing a little cash to get something going.

     Now that I have identified myself in the “need cash” category, I have to make a choice. Do I stay legit and struggle or do I make a sacrifice and go after horny people for a living? It’s a good questions right? well maybe its not. Maybe there is something I am missing in all of this. Well there is. What is blackhat? My definition of blackhat may be different from yours and I may be lumping a lot of things into one category. Think about it when you read these blogs from “superstar” marketers. You think they are blackhat guys? Do you think they are totally legit? HELL NO! These guys are for the most part fallowing the rules, but they are stretching the rules as far as they can without getting caught. Some people like to call this grayhat marketing. Over the past year I have come to the realization that nothing is really as nice and clean as it seams. There are always little loopholes that people use in order to take advantage. This is where I need to be. There is a line between fraud and legit. Luckily that line is really thick and isn’t straight because different companies and different people have conflicting views on where the line is drawn. Most affiliate networks will look the other way as long as you are bring them some cash. If the advertiser comes to the network then there may be some disiplinary action, but until then you can get away with the little stuff that may give you a nice edge.

     You might have just read this and thought,” Is he done yet?” or “If you knew this was the case, how come you wrote about it?”. The simple answer to that question is this. We read the success stories about people making five grand a day and they think one of 2 things. Either the guy is cheating his ass off or he is a genius with a great network of methods. Truth is that most of these guys are no smarter than you or me. They just grew a pair and took the extra step. They learned the rules and figured out how they could be skewed in such a manor that would help their cause. Anything wrong with that? not at all. You aren’t sitting there talking to half naked 50 year old men trying to get them to fill out leads all day and you are not stealing from innocent people. Simply using the system to your advantage and raking in a little extra cash.

     So, I guess the question has changed. To be or not to be…legit? No… more like, when you gonna get off your ass and just do it?

     Well first off I want to explain this concept. It is pretty simple to get, but why not make it even easier. I am going to write a a post every week about things that bother me about the web.  Hopefully it will lead to ideas on how to improve your own web creations .  Simple enough, right?  Okay, here we go.

     I guess the best way to start this up is with the BIGGEST thing that bothers me.  Like most of you, I have aspirations of making it big on the net so that I can have a great income while doing the least amount of work possible to have that money.  I am an idea type of person and I constantly stay up at night thinking of different website concepts or ways to improve what I already have.  All this work and all these failed ideas has frustrated me to no end.  I accept the fact that it’s tough to make it big with an idea, BUT when I see the likes of FormSpring.Me and Twitter.com I just wanna quit.  I mean how did I not think of FormSpring?  Possibly because its a website based on the most simple idea done in the most inappropriate way imaginable.   Nevermind the fact that all you do is ask questions and thats the whole concept, but the fact that you can be anonymous is totally crazy. You get these teen girls hammered by teen/perverted boys with inappropriate and rude questions.  As if their self confidence isn’t low enough, why would u need to make a site where a person can ask why they are so ugly and never be able to know who sent it.  Either way you slice it.  Its a dumb idea that made someone rich and I am sitting here thinking of complex ideas that will never bee seen by anymore than a few thousand people.

Lesson Learned: Dumb Down! People are simple and sometimes the most simple ideas are the most successful. You are smart and sometimes you are just a little smarter than people visiting your site. Make it easy and get your point across simply. Also don’t think something is a dumb idea before you research it. I wouldn’t have thought in a million years that a site like FormSpring wasn’t already a popular idea. So, get an idea and go through with it. If it exists then improve on it and give it your own twist. Create your own stupid idea and make yourself a bunch of money.