Day 91 - I will be back

Due to my busy schedule with my property business. All monies in my traffic network has either become negative or zero! Campaigns have come to a standstill with effect from last week. As the terminator always says:

"I WILL BE BACK!"

4 affiliate marketing strategies that work

There are a number of components that make up an effective affiliate marketing program. Affiliate marketing is becoming an immensely popular strategy for brands as it allows them to affordably direct consumers to their website by recruiting publishers – particularly those operating in niche markets – to promote goods and services to consumers. According to Internet Retailer, citing data from a study conducted Rakuten, approximately 74 percent Internet shoppers will view as many as three third-party websites before making the decision to buy an item being advertised to them.

To develop a successful affiliate marketing program, brands must take a strategic approach to partnering with publishers that will generate the most traffic to their Web pages, while also effectively measuring the results of this joint endeavor. Here are several helpful tips that can be used to build the foundation of a program that delivers positive outcomes on a consistent basis:

1) Carefully research affiliate partners: There are literally thousands of affiliate websites active on the Web today. However, it's important to remember that no two are the same. It will be wise to conduct extensive front end research before deciding which sites to partner with. Things to look for include the number of views for a particular item that an affiliate promotes, or publishers that offer a more cost-effective option based on the individual goals that a brand may want to achieve in the creation of its affiliate marketing program. Simply deciding to work with an affiliate partner without conducting a fair amount of investigation could lead to ineffective outcomes.

2) Offer discounts, coupons and other perks: In many instances, consumers may need a reason to buy an item presented to them online. Internet shoppers routinely scour the Web to find deals that will ultimately lower how much they spend on the products they're considering buying on the Web. Internet Retailer, citing a study conducted by Forrester Research, wrote that 48 percent of consumers who discovered a promotional discount on an affiliate marketing website, found more value in these offers as opposed to ones delivered to them directly from the retailer. This information is useful for brands in the process of deciding the kinds of publishers to partner with.

3) Mask affiliate links: The prevalence of Internet phishing and online fraud is one of the biggest concerns on the Web today. It's not uncommon for links to lead people to websites and other places on the Internet where viruses and other malicious programs are downloaded straight to their computers. Oftentimes, links from affiliate networks can appear to be untrustworthy as well. For this reason, Business Online Guidance wrote that one of the best ways to increase conversions is to create links to affiliate marketing sites that look trustworthy and will safely redirect consumers to the intended affiliate Web page.

4) Work with an effective affiliate payment service: Two of the most common questions asked by affiliate partners is likely to be how much their commissions will be and how often they will be paid. While it can be exciting to be involved in the promotion of goods and services online and then be compensated for it, it is not uncommon for this process to be a confusing one. Understanding how a brand partner will monitor and track views, as well as how much money a publisher will earn for every completed transaction between a company and its customers should be carefully explained at the beginning of the working relationship. In addition, it will be important to work with a payment provider – such as Payal. – that will ensure that publishers are promptly paid, in the correct amount and in a manner that will allow affiliate partners to collect their funds in an easy and efficient manner.

How to Learn CPA Marketing

Cost Per Action/Acquisition (CPA) marketing is known as affiliate marketing. As an affiliate, also referred to as a publisher, you earn a commission by the merchant, also referred to as the advertiser for any lead or sale. This type of marketing is best done by people who are Internet savvy and who have been successful affiliate marketers in the past. Learning the ropes of CPA marketing requires you to apply or sign up with companies or networks who encourage CPA marketing. Find out how to learn CPA marketing.

Enroll in an Internet marketing course at your local community college or Lifelong Learning center. This is essential if you have never done Internet marketing before. You will become acquainted with the major types of Internet marketing, including affiliate marketing.

Consider getting an Associate's Degree or Online Certificate in Internet, Digital, or Online Marketing. If you want to build up a good knowledge base and you learn best in an instructional setting, then signing up for a 1 or 2 year program may be your best option. In this program, you will learn how to start a career as an online marketer, including getting started with CPA marketing.

Like most types of online marketing, CPA marketing is changing constantly. Those who are most successful are able to learn through trial and error and constant research into new techniques. It is not necessary to take a degree program in order to be successful.

Set up a website. You may want to start with a blog in a subject of your choice. Many affiliate marketers start by creating content and posting affiliate links on their page. You will need to cultivate the ability to start new websites, buy domain names, host pages and make landing pages. These skills will become important as you begin CPA marketing.

Download an ebook on CPA marketing. Relatively inexpensive (or free) in comparison to regular books, ebooks about technical aspects of marketing are common. Consider titles like "Newbies Guide to Mastering the Secrets of CPA Marketing," "Newbie 411: The Official CPA Marketing Beginners Guide" and "CPA Marketing Simplified."

Practice driving targeted traffic to your website. You will not be able to gather leads if you don't know how to bring specific people to your website. Learn the basics of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. You can do this through YouTube videos, online tutorials or by trial and error. Set up an account in Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter, and pay for some ads that drive traffic to your website, in order to practice while you learn.

Learn how to use the channels that are often used for CPA marketing. The best way to become a CPA marketer is to learn how to drive traffic to websites. The following are ways that people learn to drive traffic.
Practice creating and promoting fan pages and groups on Facebook. If you know how to get "likes," then you are on your way to driving traffic to a lead landing page. This usually takes a passion for staying in touch with followers and trying new creative social media strategies.

Practice creating videos and YouTube channels. If you are an expert in a field or you can call on other people to create creative or instructive videos, this content grabs attention. Once you have traffic, you can post links to landing pages where you can gather lead information. Learn how to make and buy Internet ads. If you have graphic design skills and you don't want to create content on a blog or YouTube, then this may be the best option for you. You can find prime ad spaces, through services like BuySellAds, and purchase the ad space for a period of time. If the ad is targeted successfully, people will click on the link and type in their information, giving you leads. You will need to subtract the cost of the ad in order to figure out your return on investment.

Become adept at using PPC advertising to get traffic to your landing page. Similar to buying ad space, you will need to bid on keywords in order to place the link to your landing page where you will get noticed. If you have a lot of experience with search engine advertising, this may be the best option for you. Go to Slideshare.net to learn the basics of CPA marketing. This high quality slide show site hosts a number of tutorials, including "Learn CPA Marketing Today".

To know more about CPA Marketing course, do visit: CPA Affiliate

Day 84 - Campaigns further testing

Scored my first 2 conversions last night from my last traffic network top up. From what I have learn in CPA marketing, when your campaigns are converting, try to optimize and scale it to become more profitable. Apparently, these 2 conversions have NOT been actually tested but it is a different product from the same CPA offer.

Conversions that came from converting campaigns have 'refused' to convert, even after doing a single campaign with converting keywords/targets during testing phase. Instead of scaling to 3 targets or more, I only use 1 single converting target. No luck whatsoever!

The CPA network that I am using is W4.com.

Five Simple Internet Marketing Tips

 A lot of people ask the question, “What is Internet Marketing”?

Many people believe that Internet Marketing is about selling things on the Internet. But that’s not the case. It’s not about selling your product; it’s about helping your customers to find solutions. Remember, it’s all about your customer. It’s not about you, your brand or your company. It’s also not about product or even your service. It’s about helping your customers to find solutions.

Here are 5 simple tips to help you to achieve that:

1. Help them to solve a problem

Show your customers how your product or service can fulfill their needs, wants, and desires. Or show them how you can remove their frustrations, struggles and pain.

2. Help them to see the benefits

When you talk about features, you’re focusing on your product. But when you’re talking about benefits, you’re focusing on your customer. Your customer always asks the question, what’s in it for me? They want to know the benefits – how your products and service is going to benefit them

3. Help them to see the value in the service or product that you are providing

Make sure your product or service is:

– valuable
– dependable
– reliable
– durable
– interesting

More importantly, it has to be beneficial to your customers and give them exactly what they need and want.

4. Make it safe to try your product

Help them by making it safe to try out your product. Give them the information they. And also give them a guarantee so they feel comfortable trying out your product

5. Make it easy

Help them by making it easy. Make everything easy to understand. And make it easy to purchase once they’ve made the decision to buy.

Action Exercises

What are some of the common problems/frustrations/pains that buying your product or service will solve for your customer?

What are the benefits your customer will enjoy after solving one of more of these problems?

How will you make your customer see the value of your product?

What can you do to make it SAFE for your customers to try your product?

What can you do to make it EASY for your customers to try your product?

Come join me at W4 now!

Day 80 - Topping up credits

Did a top up on my 50onred account last night and from my point of view, the targets on that traffic network are getting more expensive. Conversions seems to have dropped due to higher competition from new CPA marketeers or otherwise.

The top up is mainly not to create any new campaigns but to run campaigns that have conversions in it. After 24hrs, I should have at least a conversion. Have been slow in my progress as I did not test new campaigns so far after my last update.

This top up marks $3k overall in my CPA journey and of course, it will not be the last top up!

5 Things You Need to Know About Joint Ventures

A joint venture is established when two or more businesses realize that multiple heads are better than one and agree to pool talents and resources, such as copywriting skills or advertising expertise, to achieve a particular goal. Some have also defines joint ventures as strategic alliances that allow established businesses to share markets, assets, intellectual property, knowledge, and profits.

There are four ways to set up joint ventures with your affiliate program: the traditional way, upsell, affiliate referral, and affiliate joint ventures. The traditional contract allows vendors to give a portion of their earnings to a partner. An upsell contract lets product vendors upsell another vendor’s product and split the proceeds however they wish. An affiliate referral contract permits a vendor to share a portion of its earnings with an affiliate manager or joint venture broker who referred the affiliate that led to a particular sale. An affiliate joint venture contract allows two or more affiliates to share the commission on a sale.

Joint ventures come with several risks and possible pitfalls. It is therefore important that you understand a few things before getting into any agreement.

How much does each party contribute?

You shouldn’t just assume that 50/50 deals are the best. Contributions can be made in any proportions, depending on the agreement. And even where it’s a 50/50 split, what exactly will each party bring to the table and does this equate to their share of the contribution? What are they contributing in terms of skills and expertise? How much cash are they offering? These are the kinds of questions to ask.

Who takes care of operations?

This is another very important question when starting joint ventures. Remember that someone will be needed to take care of day-to-day stuff such as customer service and keeping track of finances. Without a clear plan, these tasks can pile up and may eventually collapse the venture or cause one party to resent the other, leading to a strained relationship. Luckily, ClickBank helps ease operational tasks by providing full details of all transactions that occur regarding products for which there are preestablished contracts, easing visibility for all parties.

For how long does the agreement stand?

Is there an end date? In joint ventures, you need to specify the period of engagement. This is because most joint ventures aren’t eternal. The individual parties are likely to be running separate fully-fledged businesses on the side and the venture may have just been created to boost online store returns for a specific period of time. Deadlines and end dates allow for each party to plan accordingly.

How can intellectual property be used outside the venture?

Normally, you’d expect a few inventions to be made in the course of joint ventures. To avoid future problems, parties are encouraged to provide periodic reports on their discoveries, and to obtain assignments from investors as soon as the inventions are made to provide evidence of ownership. Most importantly, each party should be mindful of intellectual property rights, and licensing and ownership issues must be addressed accordingly.

What happens if there is a disagreement that you can’t settle amongst yourselves?

Of course, you won’t be starting a venture intending to quarrel with others. But what happens in the unfortunate event of a disagreement arising that you can’t solve amongst yourselves? Ensure that the obligations of each party are clearly defined along with procedures in the event of bankruptcy and grounds of default.

There are several benefits of joint ventures including access to new internet business ideas, markets and distribution channels, additional specialized expertise and resources, increased financial resources, and so much more. But most of these only come to fruition where there are clear guidelines and proper understanding of what joint ventures entail.

What Is CPV Lab?

CPV Lab is designed to help you track and optimize your PPV campaigns. It’s billed as an advanced analytics platform and that’s exactly what it is. Many of you will be familiar with Prosper202. The Prosper tracking platform is a fine solution but it also comes with limitations. Where you struggled to get it to do exactly what you wanted in the past, CPV Lab just clicks in to gear without breaking a sweat.

In fact, CPV Lab comes gift wrapped with a bow tie that says “Hello sweet affiliate, won’t you make some money with me?” The software is clearly developed with our very specific needs as affiliates in mind. It boasts some of the most powerful reporting functionality I have ever seen. But it’s also laced with useful tools that can be tweaked to act like an artificial intelligence for affiliates. I’ll get on to those tools later.

Split testing is critical to the success of any campaign. CPV Lab is so flexible that if you so wished, you could compare the performance of a direct linked campaign with 3 separate landing pages. If you wanted to go further, you could choose to test three separate offers with each variation of the landing page. Or as many as you like. The software automatically adds the next variable in to the loop and distributes your traffic evenly.

This is a nice touch, but without flexible reporting, it just makes your life a lot harder. Well that’s why CPV Lab is such a beast of a creation because it tracks every single variation, every single time in every single way. Once your tracking pixel is added, even the primal newbie art of chucking shit at the wall stands a chance of succeeding. Each landing page and offer can be viewed with accurate breakdown of how your PPV targets are performing on that particular variation.

We’ve all been left with the bitter taste of “Oh I could probably make money here, if I just knew which part of the process was failing me” But if you can’t pinpoint where you’re leaking the cash, it’s a case of another PPV campaign bites the dust. CPV Lab sniffs and scratches under the surface. If there’s a part of your campaign that’s profitable, it will find it.

The bottom line is that CPV Lab is simply amazing. It is a must if you are doing CPA Marketing. CPV Lab will help you in optimizing your campaigns and improves your productivity. All-in-all, save your time, money, effort with CPV Lab testing, tracking, and optimizing software. So improve your ROI on campaigns across various traffic sources with full control and unlimited flexibility.

Day 70 - Conversions Profit and Loss Summary

Good Morning! Been quite a few days since I last updated my progress on CPA marketing. 5 days to be exact! Well, finally all my traffic network funds have exhausted. Total spent $2900 + $250 free credits.

You may ask, how do I get free credits? Its simple, allow me to share with you.

Now assume that I am 'A', as 'A' was refereed by CPA. So both CPA and A gets $50 each.

Now A refereed B, so both A & B gets $50 each = $100. As a matter of fact A & B are both my accounts.

Lastly B refereed C, which is my 3rd account. As such, B & C both received $50 each. In total, that's how I achieved $250 free credits.

I just broke the 'egg' today and achieve my 1st conversion for the month of June 2015 of $28 (meaning clocking a conversion or sales)
Neverblue YTD (Year to date) = $77.50 in total
W4 YTD = $1145.05 in total
Gross = 28+77.5+1145.05=$1250.55 achieved in CPA on day 70.

(Gross Profit – Marketing Investment)
Marketing Investment

My Gross Profit is $1250.55 - $2900 / $2900 = ROI (56.87% ), that's my P/L summary. I have used $2900-1250.55 = $1649.45 to find out which campaigns are working and have since found a few profitable ones. Will test other traffic sources soon. Subscribe your email on the left to be updated on this blog.