You might have seen variations on this type of landing page or banner and that’s because it can work great! Who can resist clicking that ‘play’ button?

The basic idea is to take a screen-shot or pic to use as the ‘video still’, then use Photoshop (or another graphics editor) to make it look like a video player.When selecting the picture to use, browse around Youtube and see what videos make you want to click on them. Usually you’ll find that the image is one that you want to see what happens next. For example, if I see a guy sitting there facing his webcam I am probably not going to be as inclined to click as I would if I saw a big shark just about to bite something (you get the idea!)

You can download the source files for the project above here

Getting creative with this style of LP is the key. The main thing that will influence your CTR isn’t the play button, or any of the video player effects…it’s the picture you use. It can get tricky because you don’t want to mis-represent what you are promoting, yet be provocative enough to get clicked.

One scenario I have seen a lot is using pictures of ‘hot girls’ in the video player frame to promote dating offers. This can be a little deceptive, and often traffic from such tactics doesn’t back out for the advertiser which can result in getting kicked off the offer….so use at your own risk.

Get creative with trick to click and try something that you haven’t seen before.

What I am talking about is adding variations of your targets. Most affiliates will add a URL target to their campaign like this:

walmart.com

A very generic example, but you get the idea. Now, that strategy is fine…you can make tons of money but if you are not bidding on all variations of your targets, you are leaving money on the table.

What do I mean by variations? This is going to vary depending on what PPV network you are running the campaign on so I will speak generally. One simple variation is adding a period to the beginning of your target like so:

.walmart.com

What you will find is that these targets often have as much traffic at 1/2 the bid price. In addition, this variation can often convert BETTER. I have seen conversion rates jump from less than 1% to over 30% just by adding a period to the target.

So what other variations can you do? Start by taking out the .com;

walmart
wal mart

Notice I am adding spaces also? You can add spaces to create tons of variations:

walmart .com
walmart com

OR remove periods, or spaces;

walmartcom

Not all of these variations are going to get traffic on all networks. It doesn’t hurt to add as many as you can though, you can delete the ones that aren’t getting traffic.

Play around with variations. It is a really simple yet effective technique to give your PPV campaigns a boost.

The mastermind I did at Affiliate Summit West in Vegas went well, and I have even more goodies to share this time. I can’t wait to hear Jonathan’s insights on Facebook marketing too!

The session will be held on Tuesday April 20th at 6pm. If you are interested you can read more detail and sign up here

If you have any questions about the session please contact me

It’s a good question because PPV has literally exploded in popularity this year. As more and more competition jump into the game, bid prices are getting higher. It seems like something that is just going to become over saturated quick right? I think that’s a very narrow way to look at things…

You see…right now a lot of affiliates have got banned from Adwords or Facebook and could never get Media Buys working just right so they are jumping on the PPV train. PPV is nothing new…it’s been around for years and will continue to be around for years. Most of the affiliates jumping into PPV are going to cause some temporary saturation, then leave either because they couldn’t make PPV work or they want to move on to the next greatest thing. This isn’t just the way it works in PPV mind you…the same thing has happened to every other traffic source that affiliate marketers jumped on. Does it mean just because we don’t talk about article marketing anymore that it doesn’t work? No way!

If you’ve been in the game long enough, you know that you just have to ride things out sometimes.I jumped into lead generation offers back in the day when they were popular. It was very competitive because everyone was getting into it. I stayed the course while people were busy getting into rebills and actually saw my margins getting better and better with less competition.

So if PPV seems competitive right now just know that a lot of affiliates are going to be dropping off this year which will leave more money on the table for you and I!

When to direct link or build a landing page

I wouldn’t direct link this offer https://www.cash-in-24-hours.com/

The reason being that there is a lot of information to fill out…SSN, bank info, etc. Remember that PPV marketing is interruption marketing. Someone is not sitting down ready to fill out all that information when they see your ad.

I would direct link this offer because it only requires a few fields of information.

It’s not always as simple as a short form though. Offers like this look like they would do really well but most of the time they don’t convert until the customer gets to page 3-4 of the lead field. I find that even when the offer starts out with a short form like that, it is better to make a landing page to pre-sell a little bit. On my landing pages I make it VERY clear what someone needs to do…’Click this button then on the next page enter your name and email..’. Pretend you are talking to someone who is using the computer for the first time.

This health insurance offer I wouldn’t want to direct link because the page is just kind of blah. With the colors and layout, nothing really stands out.

I would prefer to direct link this offer since it is very clear what the customer needs to do in order to get a quote.

Note – some of those offers have exit pop’s so you would need to talk to your AM about removing those before direct linking on a PPV campaign.

Spend time time looking at all the offers on Offerbuzz and see if you can find some offers that would work well with direct linking.

Could you explain how you would use the subids to track your PPV with direct linking? I want to know which keywords and which URLs are profitable and hope to do this with direct linking.

The easiest way is going to be using Prosper 202 and just setting up a direct linking campaign. Just make sure you have ‘target passthrough’ enabled on the PPV network you are using (unless it’s Traffic Vance in which case you can use %%$KEYWORD%%)

Does straight demographic targeting every actually work? and have you ever managed to get a very high traffic top level domain to convert i.e. like google.com amazon.com etc. if so how much did you manage to make from it?

Demographic targeting yes…like the example I use in the PPV Playbook is pure demographic targeting. It doesn’t always work that way but it can work really well if you find the right offer.

I do target high volume domains but never as broad as ‘google.com’ I don’t know how someone could effectively monetize that. When I go after high volume domains, I usually just bid on one URL and rotate a bunch of offers.

What’s the best way to use prosper to track which ppv targets led to an aweber email capture on your popup lp. I want to redirect and prepop an email submit after the capture, but not sure how to pass to prosper which targets resulted in a aweber form conversion.

What I do is use the tracking pixel to track opt-ins. To my knowledge there is no way to use Prosper to track pre-pops/conversions (I could be wrong).

Ive tested TONS of landing pages, and cant’ seem to get a CTR over 2%. Can you show us some examples of good lp’s and why they are so good?

That’s not bad for a PPV LP. Your CTR is not going to be very high. The main thing is getting a really good picture and having not much text on the page. I honestly never really worry about CTR on my PPV lp’s. Some of my lowest CTR LP’s are the highest converters and vice versa.

How many URL’s should I start with?

As a general rule I use 50-100. Some people do more but unless you have a large budget, it can be hard to not bleed money using that technique.

When should I give up on a campaign/how long should I test?

I find that most people actually put too much time & money into testing. I can’t tell you how many people I have seen banging their heads against a wall trying to get a quiz offer working. I usually test very small (like 2-3x the offer payout) and if I don’t see much promise I move on. Don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again…if something is not working try something totally different; new LP, direct link, new offer, new PPV network, etc. Most of my successful campagins, while maybe not profitable right from the start, showed at least a little promise early on.

If you decide to bid on ‘facebook.com’, ‘google.com’ or any other high volume target you need to set your daily budget low. Once your campaign starts with one of these targets you can literally blow through thousands of dollars before you can even pause your campaign.

So, how do you deal with high volume targets like this? First, you don’t want to bid on something as broad as ‘facebook.com’…I don’t know anyone who has successfully monetized something like that. The way to approach high volume targets is to pick the target first, then decide on a number of offers to rotate and test. I know conventionally we pick an offer, then try to find targets that would work for that offer. What I like to do with high volume targets is find the traffic first, then pick and offer that could match it.

You can find high traffic targets any number of ways; Aelxa rankings, Google trends/buzz, etc. Pick just one to start with, then make a list of about 5-10 offers that you think could work for that and rotate them on that one target. You can also spy on your PPV competition to see what they are up to on those targets as well.

I wanted to talk a bit about using scrapers & tools for your PPV campaigns. See…most people will use scrapers and get the exact same results as everyone else. If you promote your weight loss offer and type the keyword ‘weight loss’ into the scraper your going to be doing what pretty much every other PPV marketer is doing.

So how do you use scrapers and still be creative? The trick is to do some brainstorming before you use the tools. In our weight loss example above it’s pretty obvious what most people would be targeting; ‘weight loss’, ‘lose fat’, etc. What you need to do is get in the head of your potential customer and think of the reasons someone would want to lose weight. This is something a lot of new PPV marketers have a tough time wrapping their heads around. It’s not really difficult, it’s just different from what most marketers are used to doing. Really quickly off the top of my head, the reasons someone wanted to lose weight could be:

• Getting married
• Going to a reunion
• Getting back in the dating scene

After coming up with a list of these ideas (and this is something no tool can really do…you have to sue your brain), you can plug these types of keywords into a URL scraper and get different results than most people.

Tools are great and can save you time but some people complain that using them gives you the same results as everyone else. If you do a little brainstorming first, you can get unique results with any tool you use.

Scenario 1 – Aren’t you a little old to sell girl scout cookies?

So basically what this would entail is taking your laptop with a wireless cell card around door to door and asking people to fill out whatever offer you were promoting. It could really be any offer…go knock on people’s door and ask if they would like a free 30 second car insurance quote.

Scenario 2 – Salvation army without the bell ringing

This one might get you into trouble with the business you were standing in front of but you could stand in front of home depot with your laptop telling people to enter their email for the chance at a free $500 Home Depot gift card.

Scenario 3 – The flea market maverick

Set up shop at a local flea market. Sell some trinkets or whatever and have your laptop sitting there for people to fill out offers. If you can find some incentivizable offers you can offer them something right there on the spot for filling out your offer.

So would this be a good way to spend your time? Probably not the best no. You could potentially make some money doing this though, and it might be ok if you hired someone to do the actual leg work. This post was not really meant to suggest you go out and do these things, but rather think of creative ways to promote offers.

The 8 week series is going to look like this:

Session 1 – Niche Research & Offer Selection

Learn what offers to focus on with PPV traffic. How do you spot a winning offer? How do you research niches to find profitable offers? This and more will be covered in our first session.

* Niches & offers to focus on and what to avoid
* What to look for in an offer
* Types of PPV campaigns to use with specific offers
* Niche & offer research
* How to recycle spam

Session 2 – Target Demographics & Collecting targets to bid on

Learn how to get in the mind of your target audience. Forget bidding on sites like ‘Geico.com’ for your car insurance campaigns. Find out what targets to use that nobody else is bidding on.

* Why understanding demographics is so important
* How to research demographics for your offer
* Creative ways to find targets to bid on

Session 3 – Landing Pages

Learn how to design landing pages specifically for PPV marketing. Find out what elements can increase your CTR and conversions.

* When to direct link or use an landing page
* How to create landing pages specifically for PPV marketing
* How to split test your landing pages
* What elements increase CTR

Session 4 – Tracking & Offer Rotation, budget and bidding

Learn how to set up tracking correctly and analyze stats, rotate offers, and make sure your campaigns stay profitable.

* What programs to use to track your PPV campaigns
* How to track direct linking and landing pages
* How to rotate offers correctly
* How to analyze your stats to turn a non profitable campaign into a winner

Session 5 – Building an Email List

Did you know that PPV is a great way to build a huge email list? We’re going to show you how to collect emails, and market to that list over and over. You can collect opt-in emails for as little as $0.01 with the potential to earn hundreds from that one customer.

* What niches to build lists in
* How to build a landing page to capture email’s
* Putting an opt-in email form on your landing page
* How to convince people to give you their email address
* How to structure your email auto responder series for maximum profit

Session 6 – Dynamic Landing Pages

We give you the code to put on your landing pages to make the magic happen. Find out how to display information about the site your audience was visiting, Geo targeting, and much more.

* How to customize your landing page with dynamic keywords
* Using Geo Targeting
* Using dates, times, & more
* How to make the text on your page customized to each visitor

Session 7 – Incentivizing

How to incentivize PPV offers

* What types of offers allow incentive’s
* How to target incentive offers for maximum profit
* What types of landing pages work well for incentive offers
* The work flow of an incentivized offer
* How to stay out of trouble when incentivizing

Session 8 – Case Studies

In our last webinar we are going to show you a number of successful campaigns we are running. This isn’t going to be a generic session…we are going to show you our exact campagins; landing pages, targets, and stats.

* Were going to show you our own campagins
* What made money, lost money, and how we optimized
* Tricks we found to squeeze more profit out of our campagins
* Exact niches, offers, landing pages, and targets

You will also get 1 month free membership in my PPV Playbook forums and 3 months free membership to Affportal.com (Current members of the forums or Affportal get $100 off the regular price)

Do you need this to be successful with PPV? Nope. Are we going to reveal any magic techniques and systems? Not really. You will get some pretty cool lessons, tips, tools, and a chance to ask as many questions as you want…if you apply everything and WORK hard it will help you make more money with PPV.

We are doing a free intro to PPV webinar on Thur Feb 4th at 9pm EST which you can register for and get more information here