Stay away from Facebook until you know what you are doing…
I ran a few campaigns on Facebook that made me a little money, but lately I have lost money.
I need to stay away from the lure of “easy” Facebook profits and focus on larger landing page based campaigns.
Once I learn more, maybe I will comeback to Facebook and try again.
EDIT: As far as staying away from Facebook, I am powerless. I have to make it work.
Well, here it is. Take a look at the huge amount of money I have made with PPC so far:
My Prosper Campaigns Overview
See, this is why I have not been posting lately. I’ve been busy losing money. In all seriousness I AM learning and I knew that going into it that there would be several weeks, or months, or (hopefully not) years of learning. I am sticking with it, I have not lost my will or nerve. Keep on keeping on.
Well today was the first “real” day of my latest campaign. I had been using MSN adCenter, but there was not enough traffic from which to draw conclusions. I cranked up my adWords account and I am getting clicks. Here is what I have learned:
People don’t really like to read.
Weed out the surfers
It’s been a good day and what they say is correct, you won’t learn until you take action.
Well, I am still at it. I was up until about 4 AM this morning trying to get a landing page done. It is difficult at first but the more I do the easier things seem to flow. the big bottleneck for me currently is graphics/design. I am using The GIMP for now. I suppose that when I start making a profit I will outsource my landing pages. I do not enjoy creating them. I also would like to get a LP friendly WP install created, one that installs with the necessary plug-ins and structure in place… maybe someday.
My first “real” campaign goes live Monday. I am not too hopeful because I think I may have been too cleaver and selected too narrow a niche. If that is the case it’s fine because I learned a lot from it. One tip that I can share (I’m probably the only marketer who didn’t know this) is that AdBrite is terrible!!! I tried to run a bit of traffic through them to see if I get come to any conclusions, but the traffic I got was total garbage. I even spent time selecting what I thought were relevant channels. Even after all of this my ads were running on warez and torrent sites. Total waste of money. If anyone knows how to convert AdBrite traffic and actually make some money, let me know.
FYI: In addition to the campaign starting Monday I plan to have another started on Friday. I figure if I keep cranking campaigns out I will get the hang of it and it will get easier. I am prepared to lose money for the education it will give me.
Yesterday, I got final approval from CNET’s download.com to list my pool software, Vibrant Pool. I am glad because with the swimming season fast approaching the software was release just in time. I submitted threads to a few pool forums, and to digg.com. Vibrant Pool has been downloaded about 15 times so far judging by server logs.
If you have a need for software of this type go ahead and download it, it’s 100% free.
Yeah, I’m still working on my first “big” campaign. Big is a relative term. The campaign I’m working on is the first that I have done totally from the ground up. Bought the domain, installed WP, and tweaked the theme to resemble a static site. Now I am obsessing over the site content. The site is a review style site so I want to make it look credible because I DID actually purchase the product I am reviewing and I AM quite impressed with the product. I just hope my excitement does not come across as over-selling. We’ll see.
Here’s the plan:
Update on Vibrant Pool: I have contacted some people within the pool industry asking for permission to post a link to the website, so far only 1 out of 6 has replied. We’ll see. My plans with Vibrant Pool are to build more links (social, etc) and install WP or maybe Joomla and in tandem with free software offer some pool related products as an affiliate.
Will keep posting…
I have not quit. I will not quit. I will be quitting my day job by the end of this year. To that end I have been buried in my latest IM project. It is a review site. I believe I have found an underserved niche that I believe will pay dividends if I can manage to finish the site, get some linkage and setup a few decent PPC campaigns.
Even if I am totally wrong about this niche and product promotion I will be happy because I am forcing myself to take action and remain focused. No matter the outcome from this latest project I WILL learn a lot. I have been reading a lot lately on http://www.nickycakes.com. Nicky is a very successful internet marketer. The thing I like most about him and his blog is that he is not busy hawking the latest newbie bait eBook or program or any other crap. He also does not seem shy about calling out others who he thinks ARE trying to scam newbies like myself. I like that, it’s nice to find someone who is straight up.
He also doles out copious FREE advice, which invariably boils down to:
STOP READING AND START DOING!!!
That’s exactly what I need to hear and it’s what got me to focus on this review site and stop trying to read everything before I jumped into IM. You learn by doing, so I am doing.
Will continue to post…
Well, today was the day. I made $2.20 today off of email submits! The good news is that it only took about $56.00 in ad buys to make the money. I am surely on my way now! I have been learning a lot lately though. Namely that Google is a huge pain. I actually canceled my adWords account and requested a refund. I can’t have money tied up there while my ads won’t run. I practically begged for support, but got none.
Anyway, despite losing money I am glad I am still trying. $2.20 isn’t much but it does prove that money CAN be made. I just have to keeo working and try harder. I just have to keep learning and apply what I have learned to future campaigns. I believe my next shot is going to be small review sites promoting physical product. I think that this is a good course of action because I have some experience writing decent articles and I can code so setting the sites up will be a breeze. Just need to find a couple of products to promote and get to work. I think I have two products in mind that I will be getting started with very soon.
Will keep posting…
Affiliate marketing, internet marketing, whatever you want to call it is obviously a good way to make money. IF you apply yourself. IF and only IF. You won’t succeed if you don’t work hard. You won’t succeed by NOT launching campaigns. I KNOW all this stuff, and yet I am not fully committed. WHY? Am I scared of failing, of losing money, of being made fun of? It is probably all of these and more. All I know is that I am sick to death of working for someone else. I am sick and tired of dragging into work in the morning dreading the entire day. I want to work for MYSELF! All I have to do to succeed is decide and commit myself.
I am not interested in becoming rich. I am interested in freeing myself from the daily grind. I hate it. I am going to commit myself. I am going to start cranking out campaigns, and when those fail I will crank out more and more and more. I will tweak and analyze my campaigns until I realize some profit. I want to make $1.00 a day, THAT is my new goal. $1.00/day and it does not even have to be NET, I would be satisfied LOSING money each day if if meant that I was at generating SOME sales. I figure that I will be learning much and those lessons WILL lead to increased profitability.
BTW, I am now a member of FluxAds, Ads4Dough, COPEAC and NeverBlue Ads.
I have been trying to find a place to host the download for the Vibrant Pool software that I created. I could host it myself, but I want to give users the assurance of software being test as malware free. I applied to Tucows, but was advised that it could take a year or more to have my software tested and accepted. They did offer to put me at the front of the queue for several thousand dollars. No thanks.
I also opened an account at CNET’s upload.com, but I have been unable to list my software because of several bugs on their site. I suppose I will have to keep looking for a place to host the software. I had thought about sourceForge, but I am not sure I want to open source the software at this point.