What am I Doing WRONG ?!?

[Mark Gray]

Well its me again !!!

I have just gone through the first 13 hours of the ALB
release and made ABSALOUTELY nothing!!

No £££££
NO Opt-ins

Zero, Zilch not a JOT !!

Now what i need to know is, what the hell am i doing wrong?

I had an Adwords campaign, with the following details.

Clicks 29
Impr 92010
Av CPC 15p
Cost £4.34
Av Pos 3
Conv Rate 55.17%
Cost/Conv 27p
Conversions 16

There where 11 of those clicks on the Google + Search with 7 conversions
and 18 on the content network with 9 conversions

According to Google My succesful keywords where


[automated list builder review]

[automated list builder]



[build a list]

to name a few, which seem pretty targeted to me but still i have nothing.

What are the conversions then? where have i gone wrong?

Can someone please take the time to either give me some explnation or even better, take a look at
my whole campaign and tell me whre i obviously fell flat on my face !!

Again all i have succeeded in doing is spending loads of time creating a large wheel of
advertising for a good product, spending money on PPC (which i dont have) to gain
absaloutely nothing which i find extremely weird, not even 1 opt in or sale.

anyway thanks for listening to my inane drivvel as usual
and i would really appreciate someones assistance in looking this over
and ironing out some errors etc.

thanks

Mark

[igntl]

content network might be the problem, were you actually doing "content placement" or they were just never turned off?

in my experience its better to have content network turned off.. (those people are just curious)

[tonyg]

Hey don't worry mark. I too didn't make a thing...I did make ONE sale on OAC today and got him as a subscriber. 2 other leads as well. But for ALB I don't know man, John's product really overpowered OAC and ALB today and will continue to unless you are in the top spots on Google or have a huge list. I'll have something for you to check out very very soon that you will like. I'll pm you. But just keep at it and I would implement Craig's methods in SAC and ONLY use PPC when you know the product will be huge or its pricey, just to supplement. But definitely you want the linking power and that will help. If someone else wants to chime in feel free but your not the only one, some other people I talked to today didn't get any sales as well. Its not the end of the world and I am sure you still gained valuable information.

[Michael Kelly]

I'm a newbie, so I might be off. But here are my thoughts (after a ton load of work).

For organic results, I believe this product is going to be evergreen, not splash. It's a great product and I predict word-of-mouth will keep it selling for a long time. Autoresponder stuff is not sexy so there is an innate problem with broad appeal. But we all need it, so it will always be there.

I also think ALB will kick in a bit after the Reese splash (which is sexy).

The only people who seem to have profited from the ALB splash were ones with large lists.

(Heh... the very ones who don't really need this product...)

I don't know how many people are actually searching for it right now, so I am not too confident about PPC. But I have no doubt "Automated List Builder" will end up becoming a recognized phrase. But it's not going to happen from one day to the next.

Hang in there Mark. I sincerely believe this one will be a nice steady little stream over time. It should be around going strong long after some of the sexy things get older and not so sexy anymore.

Michael

[Mason Tanner]

I have been experimenting with PPC and some SAC style marketing for quite some time....while I do have several profitable campaigns they are hard as heck to come by....I test every new promising product coming out of CB and others and very rarely do they work out. Here is what I think that works in 2008 just as you guys said before: you need a list. You can make money without one but it is very, very difficult. If there is a ton of buzz and ppl are desperate for the product you can SAC your way to the first page of Google and maybe run a couple of ads and cash in...but dont expect to do that with every little $40 launch and expect to make a ton of sales. Now on the other hand if you had a list you just say "hey guys check this" out and some will if they trust you and you make money. You need a niche and you need content...you cant just set up some review pages and a bonus or two for all the new launches and expect very much money....I don't know why but it doesnt work anymore. You need a niche, people that trust you, and a list and then promote to them quality merchandise and they will keep buying from you...make sure what you are selling them is truly great and has good sales copy and they will back from more. You have to think long term these days not just go from product launch to product launch. These new products should only be part of your overall marketing strategy that goes along with your other marketing, list building tactics that is relevant to the niches your are in or want to be in. Just my 10 cents.

[Kevin Hastie]

So, a question to people making money.

Are you making more money promoting IM products or can you make as much promoting other niche products?

It seems like the IM products marketplace is pretty crowded and the ones with the big lists are always going to get the majority of sales. Correct me if I'm wrong. Sorry, if this sounds cynical, it's not meant to be :)

Cheers,
Kevin

[tonyg]

Hang in there Mark

Kevin you are really not far off there. Like mason was saying it is difficult to really turn a profit on the ~40 priced products since those that have a trusted list get the sales. SAC methods work well but it gets tedious with so many people competing...Yes you can make money in other niches. I am in two totally diff niches besides IM. Check cbtrends.com and observe new products...most people don't both but some actually gain popularity and the competiton will be insignifican for some time but be careful udin PPC on those because a lot flop. I hope I have answered your questions adequately. Pm me and I we can get into more detail.

[David Meade]

Hi Kevin,

I'm involved in 2 niches outside of IM at the moment. Neither of them have launched but I hope one of them will next week. It's been delayed a couple of times which is very frustrating because I want to take advantage of my search engine listings. My search engine listings have been very steady for the last week (my main site is number 1 for the product name) and I've at least 2 others in the top 10 at all times.

I've had a lot of people use my affiliate link since it became active. They should be locked into my affiliate link and will hopefully buy. I've also had a few subscribers through a very crappy squeeze page I put up.

The products are in very popular niches and the guys creating them have done this before so there will be lots of people promoting with their lists and lots of people hopefully using the search engines to find the product.

I can't say exactly how I'll do when the products launch but I hope to make some money from them.

What I wanted to say is this. The advantage to creating multiple review pages link building etc is that my sites will hopefully stay ranked for a long time and thus make a nice residual income with minimal effort in the future. They will continue to make money because these are long term products in a long term market and people will always be searching for it. I know this because of similar products in the market.

This can apply to products in the IM industry too. I'm putting in quite a bit of effort for the quick list formulas and I'm already in the top 10 for my main site. I know that's probably going to fluctuate a bit for a week or two, because google likes to wreck my head like that :). But after the initial buzz of this product has worn off, I believe that this product will continue to sell because it's a really good product.

I can only wait and see. I'll keep you posted on my non IM niche and maybe actually answer your question next time :)., sorry if I've rambled a bit.

Dave



So, a question to people making money.

Are you making more money promoting IM products or can you make as much promoting other niche products?

It seems like the IM products marketplace is pretty crowded and the ones with the big lists are always going to get the majority of sales. Correct me if I'm wrong. Sorry, if this sounds cynical, it's not meant to be :)

Cheers,
Kevin

[Mason Tanner]

I will say that I have not made one red cent in the IM niche. Use the product launches like OAC to build your list and thats about it. Write articles and send ppl to your squeeze page since google makes you do a lot of stupid stuff with adwords or they will slap your entire account and have editors breathing down your neck every time you start a new campaign...trust me this is what im going through right now. Once they start slapping you they will slap everything even campaigns that have been running for weeks....ppl make Adwords friendly squeeze pages but it is not worth the risk and besides you will not get a good opt-in rate because they force you to add links and a bunch of content and blah, blah, blah...i am tired of them...but with articles you can send them anywhere you want and do it your way and get their names and then redirect them to some kind of review for the product in question....this way you can build your list even though you probably wont make any sales (you might, but probably not) then when you get that fat list promote those new launches that are in the low price range by just shooting an email to your list and don't waste a ton of time. In other niches make newsletters and reviews...you can use adwords to send them to a review where they have the option to opt-in to your list (just send traffic to blogger or something)...this will get you a few opt-tins for free because you will be making sales to off-set the cost of Adwords and hopefully turn a profit in the process...also again write articles and send ppl to a squeeze page to expediate the list building process and provide them with USEFUL content and slip a sale in here and there...thats what i do. hope that helps someone.

[BrianJ]

Mark,

I am not the ppc guy, still learning as well. That being said I would kill
any keyword phrases that are not based on the product being sold.
"List Building" is just too general and these people have no idea
what the heck "automated list builder" is and most likely the conversion
will be quite low.

As many others here on JV Notify have mentioned that making money within
IM products can be done it is terribly competitive and if your paying for
traffic the clicks for product based searches are usually very high.

If your just getting started with internet marketing Mark I would point
you in the direction of learning basic seo concepts and start by doing
the grunt work / driving traffic free.

This takes time and the learning curve can be high simply because their is
so much info online and plenty of it is not accurate or is out of date. However
if you stick with it an can teach yourself how to drive free traffic it becomes
easier.

I also want to mention that if your going the way of product review sites
and your targeting IM understand that your core audience will have a certain
mindset if their searching for "review" and "bonus" type keyword phrases.

These people already know about the product and are looking for a real review
or a solid bonus. If your just starting out it will be hard to bring these people
into your camp - you have no name or no product recognition. You also do not
have any way of "proving" your methods work by the way of a screen capture
showing a big affiliate commissions (unless of course your making money and
you do have these types of screen caps).

I am not trying to push you out of promoting these IM products Mark, but
I do want to give you my thoughts on it.

Bottom line: You swimming with sharks buddy :o

[Mark Gray]

Hi Guys,

thanks for all your replies, they are quite illuminating.

I think the overall lessons are stick with it, learn as much as you can with SEO
and traffic manipulation. Do as much as you can to gain peoples trust, offer high
quality products for free (if you have them) keep all your review sites etc fresh with new and relative
content.

I also believe that writing totally original articles makes a difference (please tell me if i am wrong),
i think the amount of info that gets duplicated is crazy and people get sick
of reading the same old stuff over and over again.

My partner and I (sweet Emilie) have decided to start from the beginning again
but in a more methodical method.

We are going to start with the SAC stuff.

We will read all the books/manuals and watch all the videos and try to get 1 campaign a week
up using these processes.

Also i will be implementing the ALB stuff on these sites to attempt to start a list.

This time we will also continue to use USFREEADS as a guide for who is looking for what
(only place i made any money beleive it or not). and then ascertain wether or not that
niche is worth looking into further and taking it further.

We will also be going for the IM stuff that JV notifies us off a couple of times a
week but will start to be more selective.

We have definataly spent enough money now and have enough TOOLS (GN, ALB, SAC) to
help us do the job correctly and well, its just a case of being more ritualistic with
the methods, for instance using the SAC the way i did ( a little hap-hazardly) just
totally blew my head off !!! i had no way of monitoring traffic at all (apart from built in stats)
which just plain upset me LOL !!

I also believe that having definate goals, like $50 a day after 2 months study, preparation
and work is definataly doable then take it from there as you learn more.

I will admit here and now, i think i came into this "game" looking for a quick buck, not a lot
just something, and then once i had it i thought it would be easy - ITS NOT !!

Now i am in the mindset that this will take time, effort, patience and a lot of let downs before
we succeed but i firmly beleive to get to our goal of $3000 a month steady income is achievable in 12 months if its all DONE PROPERLY !!

SO please dont get annoyed with me coming here and being downhearted, upbeat and sometimes
just down right crazy, its just who i am, HOWEVER i am NOT a quitter and will be here
for the duration.

thanks for your help guys, and when i make it, the drinks are on ME !!!

Mark & Emilie

PS BRIAN - I have always swam with sharks, they just happened to be tenement glaswegians
and it was face to face ROFL :):)

[Chris Freville]

Mark,

I'd honestly say its that much harder for a newbie without a list to make an impact than it is for someone who does have a list.

This may sound obvious, but the search engine free traffic is so crowded these days that its very difficult to stand out.

Build yourself a small list, then try again. You will succeed. I know this much is true.

..and thanks for your support :)

Chris

[Mark Gray]

Well guys here is an update !!

I HAVE MY FIRST SUBSCRIBERS !!

And its in double figures (only 18 but its a start).

I am well chuffed.

I woke up 1 morning and had an idea about using Adwords to get my list started
so i created an add for a specific item and created an opt in page and BOBS your uncle
its working.

i am so grateful to you guys for your encouragement, i would like to give you all a big
kiss ! but i wont !

Now i do have another question, is there anywhere i can find template newsletters or
great information on how to create one?

thanks

Mark

[charleskirkland]

Aweber has a number of templates, you can also find free articles to add to the newsletter

Charles

[lakshay]

Probably u didn't have a proper pre-launch plan!

Which you obviously need!

Now I don't mean to insult or anything, but you see launching along with John is not really a smart idea!

get on with ur list building and have methods to generate free traffic...

Put out as much content related to what you know as possible...

A tip here: Give 90% info for free, charge the top dollar for the rest!

btw... PPC is not really for you unless ou have some money in the reserve to sp,it test and optimize conversions, so STAY AWAY from it or learn from a PPC expert like Nikhil...

I know I am sounding a little over the top but I really want you to succeed, especially since you are a JVNP member now...

-Lakshay

P.M. if you need some help with traffic generation...
I built a list of 78 people in my first week of list buillding from FREE TRAFFIC!
I am sure I can find the time to talk to you over Skype to get into the spcifics!