So I have decided to jump in and do some CPA Affiliate Marketing. So now I need a Plan of Attack!
I have a few ideas on what “niche” and market that I am interested in getting involved in. so…
- Pick out the niche and product that I want to start targetting.
- Find an “aged” domain that has all of the properties that I am looking for, or add a sub-domain to one of my existing sites (this is the way that I am leaning for these tests).
- Pick out specific products that I am going to market.
- Start working on gathering content and keyword related articles. I am going to use a basic version of wordpress for the CMS as I have found that it works very well, and it is easy to add content to.
- Start a PPC campaign. For this I am going to start with Adwords as it is still the Cadillac network when it comes to volume of traffic.
- Refine keyword list, refine landing pages, repeat.
My goal is to break even in what ever area that I decide to get started in, however I am going to give myself a month to do this. I am also setting a $$$ limit on what I am willing to put up. I don’t want to dig myself into such a hole that nothing I can do will get me out of it.
As for timeline I am planning on having my niche, domain and products decided on this weekend. Then the landing page, contact page, about page and at least 5 other articles related to the product group published. From there it will be getting some easy links to get spidered. This will take me about a week or so. Then the PPC, this I am planning to have started by the second week of July.
I will have a series of weekly posts every Monday or Tuesday as the experiment runs its course.
Marketing Leverage has gone crazy with the contest sponsorships. Not that I am complaining I have joined in a few hoping to get something out of them.
The one that I ALMOST missed was John Chow’s. Today is the last day to enter. All you have to do is reply to his post or write a blog post with a trackback and a link to Marketing Leverage.
This is my post for the contest 
Today I have sold my last link placement through TextLinkAds. I recommend them if you are interested in selling some text link space. They are very easy to deal with and the payouts are fair.
Currently TLA is the main way that this blog makes money. It is about 25% of my total online income currently, but I am expecting more. I have added the ability to sell private ads using OioPublisher. This is a great plugin, very easy to install and manage. The only downfall, if you can call it that, is that it costs money. I will write a full post on it in the very near future, because it really is worth everything that you pay.
Right now I am offering 3 site wide banners and 1 inline ad. I have “default” banners located there now, so there are 4 spots available, so get them now before they are gone
My next step in my hobby is to let one site die and build on another. The killer for me is that the site that I don’t have to time for is the one with the more profitable niche, however I have more “fun” writing for the other site. Since this is a hobby I am going to leave it this way. I may not let the other site die prese but maybe I will just let it sit and buy some post for it in the near future.
For my next step I am going to start to investigate my entry into the affiliate marketing space….again. There seems to be a number of people doing the same, but I am sure that I can succeed. I have a monthly profit goal in mind that I want to reach for the new year. If I reach it, I may plan on making this hobby into an actual company. This has the advantages of limiting my personal liability, but it costs money.
That is enough rambling for tonight. Maybe in the future when I have more cash flow into this blog I will post my earnings like JohnC and TylerC.
Ciao
I am not a fan of writing sales letters. However it is not something that I am willing to out-source when I am in the testing phase. There shouldn’t be a need for me to shell out mid-$XXX for a decent sales letter when I am not even sure that there is a market for my idea. So that is why I am stuck doing it myself, and it is not easy. I can write about a lot of stuff and simply ramble on, however to write a good sales letter there is a form that should be followed, and at the end I should be able to convince myself to shell out the dough for my letter.
All of that moaning aside, I have almost finished my first. There is some tweaking, design stuff, etc but the content, flow etc is there and done. I am going to spend a couple of hours this weekend finishing it up and putting it live. From there I am going to start research for an AdWords campaign and then get that started for one week on Monday. I still have to get my newsletter software finished and tweaked so that while I am testing I am building a potential list.
If you are wondering how I am planning on doing a reasonable test without a product, I am going to have the same set-up and when they fillin a bit of information to take them to the paynow page, I am going to have a blank page that describes that the check-out is closed temporarily and if they want to hear back via email when it is online they are to confirm there address.
If I they get reasonable conversions I will move onto the product generation phase. Then really start the marketing ?
But, before I can get there, I still ahve to finish that damn Sales Letter.
