In the previous couple of lessons we’ve been talking about PPC advertising, including some advanced PPC techniques.
Today we’re going to branch out and cover several other sources of paid web traffic…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
Their traffic generally comes from:
Pop-ups
Pop-unders
Interstitials
Expired domains
Some of them are scams, some are legitimate. Results are generally sub-par, due to poor quality traffic. This traffic will skew your statistics because it doesn’t convert well.
Newspapers
www.newspaperadvertising.com
www.mediabids.com
www.advertisingresults.com
www.usnewspapers.com
Magazines
Find a magazine that YOUR potential customers are reading.
Radio
www.strategicmediainc.com
www.bid4spots.com
www.wholesaletvandradioads.com
TV
www.sharktv.com
www.cheaptvspots.com
www.google.com/adwords/tvads/ (Recommended to start with)
Direct Mail
You can buy targeted lists and send them unsolicited mail, and you won’t be accused of spamming.
Direct mail is a great way to deliver a sales letter, and often works best for medium to big ticket items.
Use postcards to drive traffic to a lead capture page.
Tips:
Test your offer with online traffic before investing in offline media.
For all offline media, be sure to use a short, memorable URL.
Sneaky tip: If you advertise in well-known media (such as New York Times, NBC network, Entrepreneur Magazine, etc), you can say on your website “As seen in…”
In the Internet marketing world, “media buying” most often implies display advertising (banners, aka image ads). However, online media buying can include pop-ups, email, text links, video ads, widgets, and other new media.
Banner Advertising
Banners have traditionally been the biggest source of paid traffic on the Internet.
Usually sold using CPM pricing model (Cost per 1000 impressions).
Option 1) Deal directly with website owners. Find a high-traffic site in your niche, and negotiate to put a banner on it.
Option 2) Use an ad network. (This is how to get millions of ad impressions)
Test your ad using an ad network that has PPC or small CPM commitment:
www.google.com/adwords/displaynetwork/ (Recommended place to start)
www.adbrite.com
Take winning campaigns to high volume display ad networks…
zedo.com
pulse360.com
burstmedia.com
cpxinteractive.com
traffiq.com
advertising.com (AOL)
tribalfusion.com
valueclick.com
Warning: Even the paid traffic experts lose a lot of money on most campaigns before making money. You have to have some liquidity to be able to play at this level, AND I do not recommend attempting it until you have studied it in more depth.
Recommended Training: Media Buys Coach
CPV (Cost Per View)
Also known as PPC (Pay per view), CPV is another pricing model used in media buying. Most commonly used for pop-ups. Also for some video ads, toolbar ads, and ads that appear
in software and computer games.
CPV networks…
trafficvance.com
directcpv.com
mediatraffic.com
clicksor.com
stumbleupon.com/ads/
Recommended Training: PPV Playbook
Facebook Ads
Display advertising, with a unique slant. Access to hundreds of millions of people, and you can really target your key demographics.
Log into your own Facebook account, and then click on the Advertising link:
PPC and CPM pricing available.
Recommended Training: Facebook Ads Guide
Text Links
One of the most controversial forms of advertising on the Internet. While it can be a good source of traffic, search engines like Google don’t want you to be able to boost your search engine ranking by buying a bunch of links. If they find out that you are paying for links, or participating in any type of linking scheme, they may severely penalize your website in their rankings.
Option 1) Deal directly with website owners. Find website in your niche, and negotiate with them for a link. This will probably not get you in trouble, as long as it appears to be a voluntary link.
Option 2) Use a text link broker. There are tons of them, just search. But keep in mind that paid links through brokers are generally not permanent links. Therefore I do not recommend it for long-term SEO purposes.
Option 3) Donate to charity. Non-profit websites are reputable and often carry significant authority with Google. Many of them will give you a link back to your site if you make a donation (you may need to ask).
Video Advertising
Pre-rolls, mid-rolls, post-rolls, overlays, etc.
Prerolls are the most common right now. Viewers hate them, but they’ve proven to be effective (perhaps 10-20X higher CTR than banners). Mostly sold using a CPM price model, but you will find some PPC, PPV, and CPA.
Video networks/agencies:
tremormedia.com
brightroll.com
spotxchange.com
adap.tv
yume.com
adotube.com
Or you can deal directly with video publishers who post videos on their own websites and/or 3rd party hosts such as Youtube. You can negotiate placement of ads such as…
-Preroll ads
-In-video endorsements
-Banners or text links next to the embedded video
-Link in the Youtube description box
Paid Blog Posts/Reviews
Warning: Search engines may view this similarly to paid text links.
Sources include…
payperpost.com
sponsoredreviews.com
smorty.com
reviewme.com
blogsvertise.com
Paid Social Media
aka “Social media sponsorship”.
Similar to paid blogging, but shorter 🙂
You can pay people to post about your product in their social pages. Some agencies are now offering services such as: sponsoredtweets.com
Paid Email
Do NOT even consider spamming or buying a bunch of email addresses.
-Place ads in existing email newsletters
-Solo ads (much more effective than smaller ads)
I generally get solo ads by dealing directly with other marketers in my niche. There are also many companies that offer solo ads, but proceed with caution because the quality of the lists can vary greatly. Some have terrible response rates, but are also very cheap, so the important thing is ROI (and not being accused of spamming!).
Important tip: For ALL endorsements and sponsorships (via video, blog, social media, email, etc) make sure you follow the FTC guidelines. Paid endorsements/sponsorships must be disclosed.
Expired Domains
Expired domains with existing traffic can be a good source of traffic. However, it can be difficult to monetize that traffic, unless the domain fits your niche perfectly. An alternative to redirecting the traffic would be to build mini-sites on expired domains and monetize the niches that they originally served.
Expired domain sources:
dropday.com
freshdrop.net
justdropped.com
pool.com
olddomains.net
snapnames.com
Godaddy auctions
Ebay.com
-paid directories
-paid classified ads
-Ebay listings (for physical products)
-affiliate driven traffic (We’ll be covering this in depth)
-running your own CPA offers
-countless other advertising opportunities
Action steps:
1) Decide if you want to invest in web traffic/advertising at this time.
2) If yes… set a budget and start with one source.
3) Make sure you’re tracking everything.
We’ll begin learning about SEO in the next lesson.
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂
Have a great day!
I Have Never Bought Media Buying Before, I’m A Little Scared To. But I Will Give It A Try.
“As Seen In” Is Used All The Time Now In Days. I Always Think It’s Funny When They Say, As Seen In:
Ezinearticles And Online Medias! I Think It’s Funny!
Great Video!
Alexander John
I never wanted to buy media because of the high deposit most networks require.
Though, I check out the networks listed here to see if any fit my budget.
Just like John I have been afraid of buying traffic from these sources because I think they will be expensive and poor response.
My main source of traffic has been ezinearticles.
Thank you for sharing.
Eric you are the best doing what you know best. Your information are always straight to the point. I have tried some before and it work perfectly well for me on my site http://www.greatmanna.com. Thank you for the super information you are providing us.
Hi Eric
Thanks for this video.
I also need to dip more into paid advertising. Having missed your earlier videos on traffic, I now need to back track and go watch them.
Wayne Cooper
Hi, Eric:
I have registered a domain which is named after a famous person who is living, for example, barackobamatips.com (this is not the name). Could I auction the domain?
Eric once again you have provided so much excellent info that I will need to go through it all again.
I have done media buying in the past and it has cost me ‘an arm and a leg’ because I didn’t know exactly what I was doing ~ but I have learnt some lessons very well. What you have emphasised about starting small is so essential. Otherwise it’s much like a non-swimmer jumping into a raging sea to learn how to swim! Believe me, that’s rough.
You could certainly auction the domain, however most attempts to capitalize on famous people’s names by registering and selling domains are not very profitable. However, some marketers are making a lot of money by developing websites on such domains and using them to get high volume of free search engine traffic. At any given moment, there are millions of people searching for celebrity info and pics. Marketers are capturing this traffic using fan sites, forums, galleries, etc. and monetizing it via contextual ads or by marketing things that appeal to the audience. It’s not a niche I would pursue personally, but there’s definitely money in the celebrity niche due to it’s sheer size and volume of traffic.
Exactly!
I had previously tried paid Facebook ads starting with a low bid for how much I would pay for a click to my site. I was pleased I could set a budget per day and a time limit for the advertising. It was also, as you have mentioned, Eric, beneficial to target my audience to older teens who were interested in using a forum to discuss various personal issues and give advice to others. thanks for the addditional ideas.
HI Eric,
I have a question.
I bought paid traffic and my traffic has increased. but i find it is not targeted to my niche. my question is
1. How do I find niche target traffic.
2. How do I find if a website is getting enough traffic where I can buy link there.
Really good stuff Eric. I’ve delved into PPC numerous times and have usually broke even. It is rare that I go in the green column. Google adwords is one tuff nut to crack. I truly believe if u can make a successful adwords campaign you will probably do well with the rest.
Paul
awesome post Eric !
Thanks once again Eric,
Your information is invaluable, it gives me a place to start from. Before seeing this video I would not even have considered paid advertising.
Thank you very much for this training. Training like cost but you’ve given it free to subscribers, that’s a mark of a great man. God richly bless you.
Hi Eric,
This is a great summary of resources! Thanks a lot.
However, you end with a point that is truly important: Tracking. Could you recommend a training / info resource that makes Google Analytics or other tracking systems easy please?
Thanks and best wishes,
Mike
Eric, always great information. I’m wondering if you have any experience with Google TV. I’m about to launch a physical product so I’m looking for a reasonable ad platform.
Your emails are always opened, thanks for your generosity. Have a great and wonderful day!!
http://www.golfersgel.com
Kyle
1) You can get it from search engines (people who are searching in your niche), or from other sites in your niche. Search engine traffic can be free (organic listing through SEO) or paid (PPC). To get it from other sites… you can use any of the advertising methods that I’m covering in these lessons.
2) It’s hard to know accurately how much traffic a site is getting, but you can check alexa.com and quantcast.com
I talk about it in lesson #71, and for further training I would recommend Google’s own tutorials and videos… they have plenty of free info showing how to use Analytics.
I’ve not done it personally, but I’ve heard some positive reports from other marketers. It’s the easiest to get started with for TV advertising, and smallest commitment. Good info here:
http://google-tvads.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/googletvads
Thanks Eric for the exhaustive info, especially the warning about using paid text link that could get one punished by Google. I was thinking of using that means before.
Great lesson Eric! It’s really possible to get a million visitors if you combine more than a dozen ways of getting paid traffic.But it would cost so much for inexperienced marketers I suppose. That’s why free web traffic is still the best option for most. Thanks a lot!
Thanks, Eric. You have been quite responsive to questions — a hallmark of your presentations. Please visit my website, http://www.RunnersOnYourMarks.com, and tell me how I can increase traffic to it. Thanks.
Hi Eric,
Great you returned to your lessons
I’m sure paid traffic is more scalable than free traffic.
You spent a long time preparing this lesson but I need much more time to learn and apply your recommended websites at least.
Before to subcribe to your lessons I already used paid traffic (Google Adwords) when I subscribed your WritingCash program.I used some affiliate referral links chosen from Clicbank Marketplace and I just earned some hundreds of dollars but I quickly lost them because Google Adwords offered me more and mode bids for my targeted keywords.($5-$10/click)Of course,in the long run, I gave it up because I couldn’t afford to pay so big bids and I closed my Google Adwords account.
Now you recommend me to use Google Adwords for starting at least.
Can I learn from you how to use Google Adwords but using little bids for keywords ($0.05-$0.1)?
Now I have my personal website (http://www.petretudor.com) and some products for sale (MRRs and PLRs,purchased from you with the 4 OTO templates)
Some days ago I set up and uploaded on my domain a MRR to sale it:
http://www.petretudor.com/OTO2/GraphicDesignForBeginners.htm.You only visit it,if you have time and pleasure, to test if it is ok .
I promoted it, for a week ago,with my 10 free Traffic Exchanges and I just got over 50 confirmed subscribers but,unfortunately without a sale so far.
I have to tell you I created a single message ad (Welcome message with download link inside) and no a follow up within my Aweber account.
I ask you following questions:
– Can be this a reason that I didn’t got a single sale?
I’m going to add more message ads (minimum 7) but each of them will contains another new MRR product.
– May I create my follow up in this way?
If up to 100 confirmed subscribers I’ll not get a single sale I’m going to save and make a sacrifice $10 to try it on AdWords again.
Maybe my first offered MRR product didn’t liked them.
I’m waiting your advices.
Respectfuly,
Petre Tudor
HI Erick I have aprox 5 personalized how to info products in hand craft subjects that I have done myself over the years, all written up and pics to explain things .I don’t know if I should group them all on one web site or do individual blogs with links to each other ,I also have some plr products. Do I do a website on word press fantastico or is this only for blogs? my hosting co don’t spell out the difference. I am confused can you help me many thanks db ps I know I can trust your opinion .your e-mails give great info thanks.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for all your details videos & have been following them from the start. I’m really impressed with all the information available in there. And learning from all your really helful tips.
But, currently I’m being faced with the problem of images & pictures not displaying on my new website. It’s a simple landing page with with my sale letter but images & pictures are not displaying at all. They do display in my html editor but not on my website when I upload my index file. Eventhough, I have my images folder uploaded on my website. Do you have any idea why is this happening. Any suggestions from anyone will be much appreciated.
Many thanks,
Nigel
Hello Eric, This is an excellent piece of information you shared. I never thought about expired domain so long. Big thanks for that.. and keep continuing your good work. Regards
Madhan.
I’ve never taken the leap into paid advertising… I do have a high value product, but since its so cheap… the margins to play with are small!
Hello Eric. Can you recommend me pop up/hits site you used. I am searching for 2 days now, and most of them are scams
Looks like you got it fixed?
There are various factors that could be the reason why you didn’t make any sales. For example, it could have been the sales copy.
But one point I will make is that the quality of your subscribers will vary depending on where you got them. I am honestly impressed that you got 50 confirmed opt-ins from free traffic exchanges. But your results may indicate that those subscribers aren’t buyers. It is likely that they are a bunch of cheapskates who don’t want to spend money 😉
For your followup messages, be sure to give them some real content, not just sales pitches. See lesson #68. Remember, it’s about building a relationship. If they like you and trust you, then they’ll buy.
Since your 5 products are related, you could put them on one site (with seperate sales pages). However, for best results I would recommend seperate sites. This will allow you to choose domains that are optimized for each particular product.
You can build your website with WordPress (and you can install WordPress easily with Fantastico). It does not have to be a blog. Feel free to review the WordPress lessons starting in lesson #33
I would recommend making some aesthetic improvements to help it appeal to your target audience and get more repeat visitors. Talk to some people in your target market who are not marketers, and get their honest opinions about what they don’t like about your site, and why they would or wouldn’t want to visit it on a regular basis. Right now the site looks like a page of ads. Regardless of whether you’re going to use free or paid traffic, you need to have real content that people want to see. I think WordPress would be a better platform for your site than that script.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for all of the great information! I have been following since about August and I have happily finished watching all of the videos as fast as I could because they have been so info packed, honest, at as my experiences have shown me so far, very correct.
Your site has really been educational for me.
I just want to make sure that I haven’t missed something though… the series stopped at #75. Are the next lessons posted somewhere else, or have they just not been released yet?
Much thanks and looking forward to more!
Troy
What happen to the LESSON the last one I get was LESSON #75 then they stop
Facebook advertising might just soon replace PPC.
PPC is not what it used to be. The undue competition has just hiked the CPC unreasonably high in some niches. facebook advertising a refreshing new outlook to this
I’ll be releasing more soon, thanks!
Hello Eric,
I have a question really long question (sorry) about PPC marketing for CB affiliate products and I hope that you may be able to shed some light on the subject for me please. I hope that I am not overstepping some sort of lines by asking this here. If I am, please forgive me and disregard this post.
Hopefully I am not the only one who has done the following with poor results and this can help some others as well.
Here it goes:
I have been trying seriously to get up to speed on all that is needed to crack the code on IM now for about 9 to 12 months without success so far. I have found a good niche to that suits me to start out, but I have been stalled on one challenge that I need help with.
I realize that I will need to put in quite a bit of work (no problem) to launch a quality site with useful content in order to yield any substantial long term results, however a part of my monetization plan includes marketing affiliate products starting with CB to learn the ropes and also because the content will take a while to develop.
The problem is that I have never seen one sale on any CB products yet and it makes me worry about putting in massive effort on the main site only to see more Zeros on my CB account whenever I try to market a product.
I have tried driving traffic to my own landing pages for specific products and have acquired no conversions and only 3 aweber sign-ups with just one(1)of the 3 who actually followed through with the opt-in verification.
Next, I started driving traffic direct to the vendors’ landing pages using hoplinks with cpm & cpc text and banner ads on the adbrite and facebook networks.
My intention was to drive as much targeted traffic straight to the vendors sale pages and check that they really do convert at the claimed percentages before investing energy into content development and setting up Bum marketing for the pages and products.
The latest test has resulted in hundreds of thousands of impressions and over 400+ clicks to the landing page, but very few order form impressions and no conversions at all on a product that claims to be tested and optimized to a 3-5% conversion rate.
The product looks very good to me and the affiliate materials are top notch and well prepared.
This has been the same story for at least 3 additional products as well.
Also, I have been tracking all TID’s for every ad that I create on the ad networks and on the clickbank pages and the CTR’s match the Hops, but still nothing.
Also, the adbrite network traffic was from 72 different countries (oddly, no clicks were from the U.S.) and I wonder if that may be a part of the problem with actual sale conversions as well.
If I am seeing this same result on multiple products which rank high on CB, then I must assume that either there is something wrong with the network, the products that I have chosen, or with my methods/approach… I believe the latter is probably the cause, however, I was thinking that if the vendor’s pages convert at least a little bit with direct traffic, then I could trust that a well developed pre-sell should do the trick. But,I am really not comfortable about the fact that nothing has ever converted even when I send it straight to the vendors’ sales pages. Not even one sale using multiple vendors.
Finally, the questions (3):
1. Could there be something wrong with using hop ads direct to vendor that would preclude even (1) conversion on highly popular products with decent gravity scores?
2. Does international traffic also come with issues surrounding payment methods or is the CB payment process readily accessible to most countries around the world?
3. Would it make sense to stop trying to test the products using direct paid traffic in this manner and instead proceed to build the content rich site and market CB and other similar affiliate products starting with Bum Marketing techniques instead?
Like I said, I know that this was long and I apologize, but I am at my wits end and I need to try and get a little help from someone with more knowledge than me.
Thank you in advance for reading this and for any help that you can offer.
Troy
P.S. Can the software in your last epic firesale be marketed successfully as is?
Unbelievable!
After all this time and after making this extra long post here, I was taking a break from video 76, decided to check my current test campaign and Voila! My first conversion ever just showed up in my clickbank account! From the UK no less! Unbelievable!
I guess now I have my proof that this stuff can work for me and it is time to get to work for real!
I would still, of course, love your feedback on this thread however, because the cost of that one sale is definitely not what I want to be doing! But I am so glad to see that this stuff really works!
Thanks,
Troy
Glad to hear it 🙂
To answer your questions…
1) Probably not. There could be occasional affiliate hijacking, but nothing that would preclude all conversions. You’re probably aware that Google and some other networks don’t want you direct linking.
2) CB does accept many countries. However, international traffic can come with many different issues ranging from payment issues, language issues, cultural differences, 3rd world countries with no buyers, etc. This is most likely a reason for poor conversions.
3) Yes and no. You’ve already gotten further than most newbies, and you have figured out a way to test offers. It could still be worthwhile to refine your efforts, and figure out how to test with higher quality traffic to find offers that convert. PPC is obviously a lot faster than BUM (article, etc.) marketing. So you don’t want to waste your time doing BUM marketing on non-converting aff products either. But regarding building a content-rich site… YES I think that is a good idea. These are some of the reasons why this lesson series is primarily designed to show people how to build their own information business rather than just being an affiliate for others. I believe that the majority of aspiring internet marketers have a better chance of long term success by focusing their efforts on building their own business in a specific niche, rather than just trying to “make money” as an affiliate or whatever.
PS) Yes it can be marketed successfully as-is, but you’ll have a lot better chance of success if you repackage and/or do things to set yourself apart from other resellers.
Hello to every one wishing you happy xmas and new year in advance.Eric i am looking for sms software for sending and recieving message from GSM.Thank for your usual assistance
Thanks for the reply! I greatly appreciate it.
Also, The CB products that I am testing are specifically related to the niche that I plan to make the site for and I hope to include that sort of stuff as a part of my overall monetization plan as well.
Thanks again and Happy Holidays!
hi Eric
can tell me please…
what is the best way to make 500$ to 1000$ profit
no way that it is imposable…
will ask again …
if your kids need some food now and you only have 500$ but you need min 1000$ what do you do man?
tnx
Eric this is great information. You take all the hype out of online marketing.
Thanks
Steve
Hi Eric, Your material is very good. Like I said before my intention is to view than learnt he material thoroughly. I do have some questions but that will covered when I reach lesson 100. Please and Thank You! JAD
First it depends on what assets you have at your disposal. For example, I would just send an email to one of my lists, and it would be done. But assuming you don’t already have a business, I would do this…
1) Get a domain name, and web hosting here. Use coupon code ERICSTIPSCOUPON, and get the first month for 1 cent. That way your total cost is only about $10 including the domain, and you’re not cutting much into your $500 budget. (See lesson #23 and 24)
2) Sign up for AWeber (First month only $1). Create a lead magnet, and build a squeeze page (lesson #63)
3) Create an OTO after the opt-in (lesson #55). If I was pressed for time, I would spend $100-$200 to have a small product created to use for the OTO.
4) Set it up on an affiliate program like ClickBank ($50 to setup) or Paydotcom. Set the maximum possible commission payout (ie. 75%). OR use a script such as the “$7 script”, with 100% commissions.
5) Get some marketers in your niche to promote your offer, using your high commission payout to entice them. Also offer to do a promotion to your list for them (even though you’re just starting your list, that’s OK)
If you’ve got a good offer, one promotion may be enough to hit your goal of $500-$1000. You’ll also have a list from the squeeze page. You might get anywhere from 50-500 new subscribers from each promotion that you do with another marketer. If you build a relationship with those subscribers, you can make $1 per month per subscriber. So you can quickly be up to $1000+/month.
These are methods that I teach throughout these lessons, and they work.
Another totally different strategy to make $1000 would be to make one sale of a $1000 product or service. For example, you could go to local businesses and offer marketing services (website, with SEO, integrated list building, etc). Making a $1000 sale is not that difficult if you know what you’re doing.
Eric
I think you are the real deal online and you have total integrity. I have my own products for sale, and do affiliate marketing too. yes some of these product do not work and can not believe some people put their names on them.
What is your advice/opinion re. advertising/marketing using safelists?
They CAN be a legitimate traffic source, but I’ve heard more horror stories than success stories, so I’d proceed with caution. Worst case scenario, some safe lists are not really safe, and can result in spam complaints. But more likely, they just result in low quality traffic. But if you can find some good sources, it can be traffic that you can tap into repeatedly to build your own list.