In this post I explain a different traffic strategy that I’m focusing on more from now on, which doesn’t involve Google! (IMPORTANT NOTE – be sure to check out the free video download at the bottom of this post and the special offer ($197 discount I arranged for my readers)
If your main traffic generation method is and has been SEO on your sites, then you might well be like many other marketers out there who are feeling a little tired right now. The reason for this is that Google has made some BIG changes with their Google Panda and Penguin updates, which they continue to refresh every month. These changes have caused a lot of webmasters to lose significant amounts of their traffic and henceforth revenue from their sites, not a nice experience!
Media Buying & Banner Ads
What I’m referring to is media buying, which is simply put buying ad space on other sites that are related to yours. This can be done with plane text, but I prefer to use banners myself.
Before I explain anymore about why I think media buying is a great method for getting traffic, I first want to show you an example of this in action with affiliate marketing.
Media Buying for Weight Loss Affiliates
Below is an image of a website that is hosting an image ad. This website is actually running Google Placement Network ads, but the same principle applies for any site. I have marked up the image with a large blue arrow pointing to the banner ad on the site. These sort of banners are not expensive to get made either, I recently hired someone on ODesk to make 11 banners for $70 for me.
As you can see this banner is placed on a highly relevant websites about weight loss, so the match is a good one. Once you click the banner you get taken to a landing page, as you don’t need to have large authority style websites when doing this, like you often do with SEO, which is one of the most attractive things about it. Below is a screen shot of the landing page:
I have only shown the low part of the landing page to show you where the affiliate links are. Once the visitor clicks through on the affiliate link they land on the merchant’s sales page, and the rest is over to the merchant to convert the traffic. Below is the merchant this affiliate is linking to:
So there you have the media buying process in a nutshell. The key to doing this really well and making great money is knowing how to find the right sites to place your ads on, then creating a great ad that will get clicked, and then designed the right landing page for your purposes, and finally if you are doing affiliate marketing then make sure you send the traffic to a merchant that converts for you.
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Hi Matt,
Drop Shipping is Great, but..
This is maybe my chance to start making money online. I have set up drop shipping stores, but I have no traffic and I am now selling one of them on flippa
I will definitely get this course.
Thank you Matt for negotiating such a good price.
Hey Matt,
Would be great to see some numbers from media buying – I tested a number of creatives and sources for a few of my projects but I could never get a higher ctr that 0.2% which obviously means that I have made a loss with a few campaigns (but gained insight in the process).
Do you think that it’s best to buy as many ad views as you can get just to maximise traffic to the site?
Media buying is probably my favorite method as an affiliate. I use it for many types of offers but I will have to agree that media buying for weight loss offers has a great ROI.
Great post… looking forward to reading more.
Thanks,
Jonathan Smith
Arbitrage is the key. If you can pay less for the ads than you get from the affiliate then BOOM you got it.
The question is hot to find the affiliates that close the deal isn’t it?
Hey guys, I am the creator of the course. If you have questions about media buying, I’ll be happy to try and answer some questions.
Jeremy Reply:
August 16th, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Hi there Mike/Matt,
I am very keen on getting this produce buy like other avenues of getting traffic (eg. Adsense), the niche i am in creates some barriers as you will know that Google does not accept casino related PPC ads. Anyway – enough of Google (Tired of their Power Trip lol)
Glad to have this chance to ask you a question. Can you tell me if this course will help if i am an affiliate in the ‘Online Casino’ niche? Since you are an expert at this, can you tell me if there are enough advertising sites that will be willing to put up a casino banner?
Secondly, may be a silly question but if we buy advertising space, isn’t that seen by google in a bad light in terms of it being similar to buying backlinks
Look forward to your reply
Thanks
Jeremy
Mike @ Knowledge.ly Reply:
August 18th, 2012 at 3:08 am
Hi Jeremy,
Yes, media buying is perfect for all the affiliates who are turned away by google. You can find tons of display advertising without google or restriction. If you go the direct buy route, it just depends on the rules the publisher sets for himself. You can use tools like whatrunswhere to find out where other casinos are running offers and either approach them directly or run the ad through whatever network they are signed up to.
No, it does not come up negatively like backlinks.
Hope that helps
Robin Reply:
August 17th, 2012 at 12:52 am
Hi Mike,
I have gone through Matt’s fantastic deal. But, I have a few questions –
1) What are the recurring monthly expenses i.e membership to other sites / programs required for effectively running this campaign ?
2) How much do you spend (approx) for buy ad space for a banner ad (let’s say we want to put an ad on a highly ranked weight loss website ?
3) Is there a refund policy ?
Thanks
Mike @ Knowledge.ly Reply:
August 18th, 2012 at 3:13 am
Hi Robin 🙂
1. No further purchase necessary to learn media buying, we just provide some supplemental tools that will save you time, and negotiated a discount to get you going. We show you how to do it both with and without them.
2. That’s a hard question in generalities, it varies, can be as low as 50 bucks a month to the 1000’s. Depends on the publishers pricing and traffic.
3. Yes, you may refund if you are not satisfied.
Thanks Matt for this very helpful tips! Well, we really should focus on how our audience will buy what we are selling by offering them what they are up to. By this, we can get them in an instant!
Thanks for sharing!
-Rachel
I too have seen a drop in visitors even after adding backlinks, There are many ways to get visitors to a site, this way is good cause your getting traffic from sites that are visited a lot and I suppose you want to target sites related to your sales or pitch pages.
SEO should be done on your website as part of the On page optimization process. But building backlinks should not be done in a manner that could penalize your site’s rankings. Linkbuilding should be done using white hat methods.
This can be done by creating great content and offering guest post articles to relevant blogs within your niche.
Cheers!
I tried paying for traffic and didn’t do too good. Perhaps, my budget was too small or perhaps it was the product offered.
I have worked hard trying for organic traffic.
There are so many different techniques and aspects to this business that can be used.
Thanks for the info!
This looks quite interesting but i have a question. How effective is Media buy in network marketing business model?
Dave Trevino Reply:
August 24th, 2012 at 4:39 am
Hi Bertram
I purchased the product and I think it is a very good course. I also am into Networking and what I plan on doing is finding some high traffic Networking sites / Blogs to put banners on for the purpose of getting targeted leads using a squeeze page. Also I plan on using media buys to drive traffic to my blog a well.
Timely post, thanks Matt. This gives an affordable opportunity to learn about paid advertising options and methods from respected sources in the IM industry.
I’ve been watching over this website Matt for a few months now. I recently started my SEO guide blog (sort of, and a internet things perhaps) and may try affiliate soon. I surely will get a lot of tips here which makes me really excited. Thanks for the tons of information you are providing us. I will check out those videos soon. 🙂
SEO has been a pain in the … but it was the first system that resulted in sales for me. Is there no other free method that is requires less effort? I am afraid of media buys lest I loose too much money.
Media buying is one of the best method that comes into my mind when i think of marketing. if you can pay less for the ads then you will get every thing you want
I am always a little nervous to pay for the traffic with ads, I am a fan of old fashion SEO and strong valuable content. That almost always assures traffic and turnover.
Question for Mike: How do I Google Proof my marketing? I understand some of what your offering and i,m compelled to purchase this course. Media Buying seems to have a great focus on sites that have stable placement in Google already. It would appear that these sites that you refer too are penguin free and most likely not affected as a whole by penalty, yet. But if by chance they are what recourse would you recommend that a person take. My interest would be for traffic sent to my site or offer other than being seen or primarily placed in the organics?
Media Buying has always been a favourite of mine, but at the same time its a big trap for newbies. Just like the search ads its way too easy to blow a ton of money and not see anything else. Best tip is to track everything, plan, and limit. If it works scale up! if it doesnt try something else, and have a strong rotation of all the ads so you get the best CTRs and conversions!
Thanks for the post Matt!