Q&A Round 1

A while back I made a post asking readers to ask me questions that I would then answer in a series of video posts. I haven’t gotten a decent webcam yet and want to answer questions, so I’m just going to get to some of them here.

If you have a question, leave it as a comment on this post and I’ll get to it.

p38 asks…

How long do you usually work on a campaign before it goes live?

It depends on the campaign (like with everything), but if I had to give an average…I’d say I work on it for about 3-5 days. I’ll research similar pages out there advertising what I’m going for, build a quick landing page myself that resembles the more popular ones, build some keyword lists, and then upload. Once I test out my traffic and see that it’s actually converting and making me sales, I’ll pause everything, break my stats down, and recreate everything. Then after I relaunch, I do the major tweaking and split-testing as I go.
 

HustleStrategy asks…

Do you enjoy what you do (to the extent that you would do it for a normal salary) or do you enjoy the money? Are you going back to school? Why/why not?

I love what I do…you simply can’t beat it. I’d do it for a normal salary. It’s risky, exciting, rewarding, and you’re the boss. You just cannot beat it. I’m probably not going back to school – not immediately at least. I’ve put a little thought into taking a couple night/online courses, not sure what major. I’d probably do something that interests me, not something that would possibly “help my job”…physics maybe.
 

LearnPHP asks…

Is it true that not all niche sites do well?

Of course it’s true. I’ve had plenty of niches where everything is targeted: the site, the traffic, the adcopy, etc. But they simply didn’t convert to sales. No matter how much you try to narrow it down to those in just “buying” mode, many still want to just look. That’s where the uber affiliates and struggling affiliates differ. A struggling affiliate believes that everything can work, and work for months on end trying to get this one campaign to work. An uber affiliate puts some time, money, and testing into a campaign. If it doesn’t work, they move on to something else.
 

Jonathan Volk asks…

Do you often promote ZIP offers?

Actually, I’ve never put time into trying ZIP/email submit offers. The only thing I’ve ever run them through is Facebook. I’ve talked to some people who seem to have had a little success with them, so I’m sure it’s possible. The key here would be getting cheap traffic, and then selling them on the landing page. Which you could sell them by saying “All you have to do is submit your ZIP code and we’ll send you your ipod” or something like that, but then traffic quality with the networks becomes an issue because none of the traffic converts on the merchant end. I’m sure you could get some pretty shady things going with zips/emails.
 

p38 asks again…

Do you try to stay away from offers that require credit cards?

No sir. A good affiliate can get the buyer to pull out his credit card. Take the challenge! Make the visitor trust you, and they will pull out their card.

George Kim asks…

Last few articles you have written are e-book material. Have you ever thought about creating an ebook? Free Affiliate guide?

If I made an eBook, I’d have to sell it for $7. Yeah right. I don’t really care about making a book, maybe I’ll make a smaller one just to put on my sidebar and give away for free like everybody else does, but if I want to talk about something I’ll usually do it here. I do have a couple big projects coming up that should be preeeetty nice though. You guys will be finding out first from this blog, but be pumped.
 

Rajuthan asks…

What do you do with your profits?

Bank it baby. For real though, most of it goes into other projects, or just in the bank. I don’t really spend that much money on myself, my vacations come from Amex points and my toys come from affiliate networks and their reward programs. I’m hopefully buying a house in a couple months time so I’m just kind of putting away for that, and everything I’ll have to fill it with.

Alright, hopefully I answered your questions well enough. Once again just post any others you have here and I’ll hit them up. Q&A sessions are easy writing for me, and quality content for you, so let’s keep them coming.