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In this “gangster” video I go over, landing pages, Facebook traffic, CPV traffic, emotional benefits, mindset and so much more.

Most people think of the word “gangster” as a negative word, but it’s actually derived from a VERY positive word. (SERIOUSLY!)

The reason why I am giving this video to you on my blog is because I realized something I haven’t done in a long time was GIVE BACK to my blog readers and list subscribers.

I mentioned in this video that one of the ways to gangsterism (is that even a word?) is to be grateful and to give back.

So here I am, giving this HOUR LONG, content packed video to YOU – without requiring you to optin or trying to sell you anything.

Just my way of saying, THANKS.

After you’re done watching, let me know what you think by leaving a comment! (and hitting the “like” button!)

YOU GUYS ROCK!

Going through some of my comments I noticed that a lot of you have asked where I buy traffic from. Outside of the regular Google/Yahoo/MSN, here is my list of traffic sources along with some coupon codes and stuff for you too!

It’s time to diversify you’re traffic. Google is no longer the king of traffic and not to mention all the BS quality score and slapping affiliate accounts shit they do. Not that it should matter anyway, Google only accounts for 20% of all traffic on the internet!

So here is my list of traffic sources. We do a ton of media buys as well, and I posted a previous post on Media Buys previously.

CPV (aka PPV) Networks
Below is a list of some of my favorite CPV networks. Yeah there are a couple more, but not worth mentioning since they never converted for me. I’ve heard the same from a TON of people saying that other companies like Clicksor, etc. don’t convert well.

Direct CPV
Coupon Code: TK25
The new kids on the block. They have a pretty strong network and growing daily. They seem to be targeting affiliate marketers as their main advertisers so this may be a good buy for a lot of you. If you go through my link and use the coupon code above they will give you $25 in free traffic. We have only tested a couple campaigns so far and it seems pretty decent. I’ll let you know once we get more results.

Traffic Vance
Traffic Vance has been around for a while now (I’ve been using them since 2007) and has the best converting traffic I have seen as far as CPV networks go. It is definitely getting more competitive in the CPV area, especially on Traffic Vance, but still plenty of room for everyone to play. Another thing about Traffic Vance is that not a lot of people are using the In Text Link traffic. It’s HUGE. Make sure you get a good rep cuz mine isn’t that good.

MediaTraffic
Media Traffic is decent. I’ve been using them for about 2 years on and off. Their traffic is pretty much hit or miss. But if you use their Run of Network traffic, and just find an offer that converts on certain targets, that’s the best way to play with them.

AdOnNetwork
I’ll be completely honest about AdOnNetwork. I barely use them, but I hear they are pretty decent. Anyone who has used them can chime in the comments and say wussup.

Third Party Engines
You would be surprised how much traffic 3rd party engines can bring you. Below is a list of my fav’s and one’s I’ve been using for a very long time.

7Search
Coupon Code: DIGIPROMO
7 Search has been around for a LONG time. I remember buying traffic from them back in 2004 for so many markets. Especially back in the arbitrage days. Regardless, they have good traffic for certain markets and you not much competition in a LOT of markets. Use my link above and use the coupon code and get a 20% match on your initial deposit up to $200 bucks.

Findology
I’ve worked with Findology back in the day along with 7Search. I used to ONLY use third party search engines when I first started marketing online. I can definitely say they have some good traffic and it converts REALLY good on some markets but not so great on other markets.

AdBrite

These guys are pretty good, but damn they have weird traffic. That’s because it comes from SUPER long tail websites. BUT here’s the best part. It’s cheap. So you can find like 1,000 sites that make you a couple bucks a day and you’re good to go. Hope you got some GOOD tracking because you’ll need it with this one. AdBrite also has banners you can promote with, which a lot of other networks don’t.

Miva
Miva is another 3rd party engine I’ve been using for years. These guys have been around for a while and have decent traffic. Haven’t done anything with them recently, but plan on it soon. Get $25 matched when you deposit $25!

Marchex
Marchex has been around forever. They used to be called something else and I can’t remember for the life of me what it used to be called. I’ve ran traffic with them for over 5 years now and nothing but good stuff. They have good placements in niche markets that can be dominated. Try to get a rep here if you can too, they have a SOLID team that will upload your campaigns AND optimize them for you. Can’t really beat that!

Self Serve Media Buys
We’ve been getting into Self Serve media buys for a while now. It’s usually hit or miss depending on the market you are going after. I’ve only experimented with two different networks with minimal results.

BidPlace SB
BidPlace SB is decent. It’s an easy to use platform, but their review process takes forever. I’ve made SOME money with them, but haven’t played with them in about 6 months. Check it out if you can. It’s extremely easy and their reach is pretty damn good too!

AdReady
This platform is pretty cool. You can create your own banners within their interface (kinda like MySpace Advertising’s but better) and you can select which sites you want your ad to show on from their network of sites. Slick.

I know I’m missing some networks here, but these are the one’s that came to my mind at first.

I’ve also been HEAVY on Facebook Advertising.  I’m not even using them for affiliate marketing.  But I am using them to build brand websites and authority sites.  I’m blowing a ton of money and not making a dime yet, but I am capturing VERY qualified people and have major plans to monetize all these peeps. Stay tuned for that post (probably won’t be for a couple months! )

Media buying can be a tricky game if you don’t know what you are doing.  The #1 factor for media buys is demographics.  So any offer you are promoting should match the target demographics.  This yields higher conversions without having to test so much to figure what is working.

There are some important sites you need to know of when going into media buys and these are what I suggest (Ya, I know these sites are already known, but do you use them the way you are supposed to?):

1. Google Ad Planner – This site allows you to search sites that have media available for purchase by demographics or by URL. Excellent resource.
2. Quatcast – Type in any URL into Quantcast and get demographics.  You can then look at the affinity sites that Quantcast gives you and look at those demographics.  Quantcast is a kick ass demographics research tool. You can then take these demographics and use their planner (or Google’s) and find more sites for the target market you are going after.
3. Compete – Very similar to Quantcast except they give you keywords.  Compete also has a paid version where you can do more in depth analysis
4. Alexa – Alexa is unique in that it has been around the longest and it may just have “better” and more accurate data than the others.  I could be wrong here, so someone correct me if I am.

Now that you have your demographics and target URL’s you want to figure out which Media Agency’s have that demographics.  This is probably the more important website of all time when doing media buys and market research. Not many people know about this website and you should.  comScore’s services are a bit expensive, but if you got the money, USE IT on this.

comScore - This website IS the all encompassing website for media buys, market intelligence, media planning, tracking, and everything.

Every month they release reports that analyze the whole internet marketing scene. Be sure to watch their Press Releases section at http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases

Make sure you download their “comScore Media Metrix Ranks Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for October 2009″ report.  They have a new one every month.  This thing is amazing.  Shows you upcoming trends, what’s hot, and where media is being bought.

Table 2 shows you “Top 10 Gaining Site Categories by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors.” Now who wouldn’t want that?

Below is the one from October. It basically says that eCards is a upcoming trend along with other markets. Get your Christmas campaigns up NOW!

Table 4 is what particularly interests me. This is probably the BEST table to use when starting out with media buys.  This list is a list of the Top 50 companies that own media on the internet. The table below is a copy of it. Why not start contacting these companies and negotiating deals?

Building relationships with people at these companies will only help you.  It’s 90% of how low the rate on your media buy can go.  Seriously.  Search for them on LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc. IF you have a chance to go to Ad:Tech – GO and meet these people. Become friends with them, tell them what you do, then tell them to hook you up. Simple right?

Most people tend to over look this factor, but CTR (click through rate) is the MOST important aspect of your online campaigns.

Why?

CTR determines two important things:

1) How many visitors come to your Landing Page (if you use one) or Offer from your advertisement.

2) How many visitors click from your Landing Page (again, if you use one) and to the Offer.

This first part is obviously huge because the more people you can GET to your landing page the more people you have to review your landing page and offer. Your ad copy/creative has to be enticing and provide some kind of emotional benefit. It has to make the person want to click and get to your site for more information.

I’ve noticed with text ads, you want to use emotional benefits and other aspects which will be explained later on in this post. But text ads are pretty interesting because you have to fit your whole pitch in 3 lines, which can be difficult to do sometimes. A cool little trick I use is to look at my data in HexaTrack (or any spy tool) and view the ads that have been there the longest and find common words in each ad. I then write all those words down and try to incorporate all those words into my ad copy.

I’ve seen my ad copy swiped so many times, it’s ridiculous. That’s why people who do that will never REALLY succeed. Because they are not creative. They just can’t think of their own ad copy or be creative. Remember, creative people will always outdo people who copy others. Because they are ahead of the curve.

With banner creatives, there are two approaches. The ghetto banners that look like they were made in Microsoft Paint work like gangbusters. Plain and simple – the ghetto-er the banner, the better it will perform. However, this is NOT always the case. In one of our recent media buys the sites we were advertising on were authority sites. The “fancier” banners with nicer graphics seemed to out perform the ghetto banners (by .2% !!!). This is where we had to look into demographics. We put these websites into Quantcast to learn the demographics and we even find backlinks in Google to see what kind of sites are pointing to these authority site. You can punch all these sites into Quantcast as well. After looking at the demographics, you can make your judgement on what banners would work the best.

So hopefully you know why increasing the CTR on your ad is extremely important. Better Ads = Better CTR = More eyes on Landing Page = More Sales.

So now what about landing pages? CTR is so damn important on landing pages that it can make or break your campaign. Your copy, your design, your text size, colors, you name it. You have to ENGAGE the user and make them feel “home”.

We always try to get the copy/design on our landing pages to get a 30% CTR. That’s the lowest we will go before we scratch the copy/design and create a new one. Some of our landing pages have over 80% CTR and after analyzing why, it makes a lot of sense.

When you write good copy on your landing page, you have already presold the customer. The higher the CTR on your landing pages in turn means more customers.

Over the years, the clear winner has always been a landing page that truly get’s in touch with the customers mind. Combine that with an emotional ad and you have a winning combination.

However, I noticed something about landing pages that was pretty interesting to me. CTR is NOT always the most important thing! We always thought CTR was the most important factor on the landing page.

Guess what? It WASN’T.

It’s about QUALIFYING CUSTOMERS earlier.

CTR on the landing pages could mean you got people to click through but not all of them are qualified. For example, we ran a test and split test two pages. One was getting a 33% CTR and the other was getting a 29% CTR.

BUT – the 29% CTR page was making more money.

This was because we had REAL good anchoring and calls to actions. You’ll be surprised on how you can increase the number of qualified customers just by viewing heat maps of your landing pages.

ClickTale and CrazyEgg are both pretty good services to look at heatmaps and videos of your users movements. I personally use ClickTale just because I’ve been using it forever now.

So what you do is look for where your heatmap is red (heavy viewing) and you put relevant links to your offers in there. Now just don’t put in something like “Get It Now!” or shit like that. Get creative and make certain parts of your copy click-able. This is what is called anchoring in NLP. You can start with certain words or phrases in the beginning of your copy and then you can anchor those same terms to make them click on certain words or phrases. (again utilizing emotional benefits…)

Another thing you want to do is see where the users interest is not really there anymore on your page. Make sure you are always engaging the user. Find the RED heatmap parts and try to incorporate the same copy/text/design/calls to action into the yellow and green parts of the heatmap.

Red obviously meaning more eye balls and time spent and green meaning no time spent. (not sure how the color scheme actually works on other services, but there should be a legend to go by.)

Your ad copy and/or creative have to be on point. They have to have somehow get emotional benefits out to the prospect. What you want to do is rationally map out the pathway from a particularly desired feature (of the product), which gives relay to a rational benefit (how does it benefit the user), which in the end leads to an emotional end benefit (how should it make the user feel?), which makes me feel GREAT about myself!

Understanding emotional benefit is no longer a mystical concept. It’s simply “something nice I feel about myself because I use your product or service.”

In our world it also applies to CONSIDERING using your product or service. So an emotional benefit is “something nice I feel about myself because I click your ad.” And this all occurs below the level of consciousness, whether you realize it or not!

Here are 37 Emotional Benefits to use with your AD copy and such…