Lightning Q&A Round 3
You know the drill. Keep asking questions. Once I hit the end I won’t answer any more, so get them in now.
Jonathan Volk asks…
How much does this blog make you?
How much a month do you save up in your bank account?
Do you have any long term investments such as stocks, CD’s, etc? Care to share?
1) I’m not even sure really, monetizing this blog still really isn’t the goal or anything. Most of my ad spaces are sold, and then any affiliate sales I don’t even really track.
2) That’s a bit too personal :). I don’t really splurge too often, especially since I’m going to be dropping close to 300k buying and furnishing my house. So pretty much I’m banking everything except what goes into my house.
3) Not yet, but probably in a few months I’ll start doing that with some of my money. I’m not sure how many ventures I’m going to go into in the next coming months, so I want to have most of my money on hand. A simple 401k is probably all I’m going to start up right now.
Georgie asks…
Do you do anything apart from PPC? Do any of your sites rank organically? Can you program in a lang like PHP and SQL and do you use this for your campaigns, so are you technical basically? Do you use the adwords API much?
1) Nope, I don’t do any SEO.
2) I can edit simple PHP, but can’t code it. That’s what a programmer is for :).
3) Nope not really.
Roger asks…
I’m about to launch an affiliate at my company and I’m responsible for us not getting sued. What’s the best advice you can give me to avoid the end all?
Launch an affiliate at your company? You mean launch it’s own affiliate program? I’m not a lawyer, so I wouldn’t take any of my legal advice other than speak with a lawyer about it, haha.
Marko Nikolic asks…
Does the Google Adwords keyword tool give you search volume for US only or entire world? Is there a tool that shows what people in other countries are searching that doesn’t mix in results from North America?
Yeah, just go to the tool and then towards the top you can edit what locations your results correlate with.
Geoff asks…
Do you play Smash Bros? Who’s your main?
On a more serious note, what would you recommend to someone who has read every guide he can find on PPC and landing pages, and still can’t do much more than breaking even?
1) I used to play it like 6 years ago lol.
2) You know the ropes then by reading so much, and know a little bit about how PPC flows. People aren’t going to give their deepest and darkest secrets in a free guide, so you have to do a bunch of testing on your own. Trust me I know it’s MUCH easier said than done, but you just have to keep brainstorming things to test, and then just keep testing them out. Sometimes the little things can take your campaign from breaking even to profiting a lot. If you’re breaking even right now, I’d say first start with trying to optimize your landing page for conversions. If you can get the conversion rate higher, you’ll start profiting instantly.
Gab Goldenberg asks…
How do you measure the value of a subscriber?
And what’s an acceptable CPA to you for getting a new subscriber?
Also, do you start pitching subscribers right away?
I can’t really give much advice about it as I said I just started playing around with it myself. I do start pitching them right away though, but I’ll play around with not doing that as well. Gotta test everything.
TrizNiz asks…
1. Your girlfriend is pretty hot…. How did you meet such a hot chick if you are always busy working on your campaigns in your basement?
2. Does your girlfriend know the extent of your revenue from your online businesses?
1) Yeah she is haha. I met her when I was in high school actually and wasn’t into online stuff. Good thing, because soon after that I was in my basement every day campaigning lol.
2) Yep. Money is money, that’s all I tell anybody. I make a lot yeah but I don’t really care, money isn’t everything. I’ll still ask her to borrow a couple bucks for this or that if I don’t have cash on me, I don’t really act any different so her and my friends are relatively calm with how much I make. Friends are a bit more difficult because they’re all broke and cheap, but to answer your question yeah she knows what I make.
Lisa asks…
Is Aweber really worth it?
If you can get it to make you some money, then yeah it’s worth it. It’s only like $20 bucks a month so you just have to make a few sales to pay that off.
Wayne asks…
How many different verticals are you in right now?
What percentage of your revenue does your top vertical bring in?
1) Around 3.
2) Probably 60%.
Some guy asks…
What’s best for you, landing page or actual website?
I’ve read articles where google is taking down (slapping down) affiliate sites. I’ve always been more on the website side anyways, I like to do it right but the time and work that goes into it is no joke.
1) I create hybrids. They look and feel more like a landing page, but content-wise they look like actual websites. If you test enough and really work things out, you can have an actual website with the same CTR as a landing page, but have increased conversion rates.
Heh alright. I have a quick question or two, if it’s not too late.
1)With your primary verticals, do you promote them essentially only on adwords, or do you spread to MSN/Yahoo? Or even the other cheap arse click places(7search, etc)
2)How many failed niches did you have before you got to your main 3? (rough numbers, exact is obviously a strech)
Great posts though lately, I’m eating it up.
yea sweeet questions and nice post….what do i have to ask? ummm hey when you move is your gurl gonn live with ya? lol jk though!
How much do you make total a month after expenses? What is you average profit margin percentage per campaign?
Hello Paul,
Jonathan Volk asked about blog revenues and you said you don’t care about monetizing your blog.
So my question is: why are you writing this blog? must be a lot of work.
I’m a rookie to all this and want to know:
“What literature do I need to read to get an idea of how this whole ppc/affiliate marketing thing works?”
GReat questions I’d love to see answered too!
I forget where, but I think Paul pointed out that the relationships he builds are the main driver for blogging. Those have huge value. Coming from an SEO perspective, I couldn’t agree more.
Thanks for answering my questions Paul! Look forward to hearing more about your experiences. Personally, I’m not running Aweber but I am running a campaign that’s aiming to build a list. Adwords is ridiculously expensive in my niche, so I’m looking elsewhere. Incidentally, my target CPA is $2 or less. AdWords was doing $10 …
I am still starting out. So the amount of traffic my website is pulling isn’t the greatest. I think this is one reason my applications are getting declined by affiliate networks. What’s something I can do as a beginner to more likely get accepted by affiliate networks?
Thanks for answering my questions. :)
what kind of relationships?
Hi
Great post, quick question:
I’ve never had success with PPC. I can only invest about $100 into it. Can you give me some tips on finding those keywords that atcually bring quality traffic to your site? Keywords always seem to be the hardest part for me as they start off as good keywords with excellent quality scores and then as the days go by they’re BAD quality and super expensive.
Jameel Mukadam
http://www.JameelMukadam.com/blog
I’d like to ask a question..
Do you care if someone knows the TRUE campaign you are making money off ? What do you do if you know someone is competing with you, do you send fraudlant clicks to them or try and report their sites to Google?
For some reason you don’t strike me as the honest guy that likes to do fair business.
How many pages is your main affiliate site?
As a beginner to PPC, should I aim for some obscure niche with low competition and low earnings potential or just go all out and go for a big niche and risk losing everything in my first try?
Also, have you ever read Perry Marshall´s book on Adwords? I´m thinking about buying it as it seems like a good way to read up on adwords basics without trolling the forums and blogs for weeks on end.
Also, do you design your landing pages or are you outsourcing (which would seem like the smart thing to do once you are making money)?
I cant design worth a damn. Should I just go OSWD.org?
Hmm, would you go on a date with me? just a movie…?
;)
yea me too ran 440 away from adwords too cos it was too damn expensive!
sweet one yes yes i would for sure..lol