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A lot of you seem to be quite interested in the robot game I am developing, so here’s an update on how thing’s have been progressing.

First, I’ll reveal a bit more about the actual game. The game is called RobotWarz, located at RobotWarz.com, and is an online multiplayer flash-based game where players can quickly sign-up for a free account. They they build their own custom robot, which has many customizable options, and then proceed to fight other robots in an arena-style environment.

Only a couple of weeks in, we’re obviously still only in the very early development stage, but currently have a good underlying programming core developed. Basically, the main fighting engine has its framework laid out and now work is starting to focus on other elements of the site such as the user registration, control panel, etc. The graphics will be amongst the last things that get developed.

While the game is currently playable at an extremely basic level, it’s constantly being modified and improved so it’s still in early alpha stages. We hope to offer a public playable beta version sometime in December, possibly a private beta version before then.

Initial Site Up

I put up a basic splash page at RobotWarz.com in order to start building up a mailing list and to provide any news and updates for those interested. I created a Twitter account (@robotwarz), an AWeber mailing list, and put up a forum.

The splash page was just made by me so it’s not a hint of what the actual site or in-game graphics will look like, but I’m actually pretty proud of how decent I made the temporary textual logo look!

It will most likely be very difficult to gain an early following to the game before it’s released since I have no prior games to leverage any traffic from. We will probably just have to wait until the game is released before word starts to spread.

Monetization Plan

RobotWarz will be free to everyone, with the option of upgrading your account to a Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum account on a monthly subscription basis. The price ranges for the paid accounts will be approximately $2, $5, $10, and $25 respectively.

There is a great blog post written by Colm Larkin in which he compares how much money flash game developers can make by offering the game for free with the upsell of purchasing the entire game or upgrading the account in some way, to simply slapping ads in-and-or-around the flash game.

“Luckily there’s a better way to fund game development than scrounging for ad-pennies. It’s been proven in almost every form of consumer entertainment ever made, from theatre to music to cinema and yes, even games: ask the consumer of the entertainment to pay you for providing it. That’s it. Asking the players to fund game development takes away the dilution effect of trying to get ads to pay everyone’s cut, and directly rewards the developer regardless of the size of their ‘aggregated traffic-power’. It works for all those other kinds of entertainment, and it certainly works for the rest of the gaming industry.

And it can work for flash games too. Several developers have been successfully charging players for full versions of their free flash games, by integrating a payment processor such as PayPal. This method (often called a “demo”, write that down) is so proven that almost no console or PC game doesn’t use it.

Others have tried splitting out the purchase into smaller bundles using a microtransaction/virtual currency provider, and are charging for decorative things like a fancy hat or small upgrades like level packs and new weapons instead of selling the whole game in one go. In fact recently launched providers such as MochiCoins, GamerSafe and Heyzap have made it easier than ever for flash developers to take payments from players.

One advantage of the idea of using virtual items, temporary powerups, or other small purchases is that you aren’t putting a cap on how much your biggest fans are able to spend on your game. Generally speaking selling virtual items works best in a persistant-world / MMO style of game, where you can put all kinds of social and economic effects into play to really leverage the idea…”

He provides a number of examples. I will post just two of each method below:

Flash Games Supported by Ads:

Desktop Tower Defense

One of the original ‘break out hits’ of modern free flash games, created by a single developer, and supported by ads inside & around the game:

Total Plays: 15 million in the first few months
Gross Revenue: ~$12,000 in that same time frame
Gross eCPM: ~$0.80

Mytheria

A fairly typical successful flash game, though not a massive hit in terms of plays:

Total Plays: 3.7 million plays to date
Gross Revenue: ~$8,200 to date
Gross eCPM: ~$2.22

Flash Games Supported by Sales/Memberships:

Fantastic Contraption

A free-to-play flash game, hosted on it’s own site plus some portals, with a premium unlock for $10 that let you make your own levels and play other people’s custom levels. Included solution-sharing via unique URL that helped it spread virally:

Total Plays: Over 3.5M unique users in the first 3 or so months
Gross Revenue: For every unique site visitor, he converts 0.5% to a paid version [at $10] = ~$175,000
Gross eCPM: ~$50.00

Now Boarding

A free-to-play flash game hosted on various portals that had an upsell to a downloadable for-sale version (at ~$15):

Total Plays: 4.2M – 6.2M plays (some portals made it impossible to track this, hence the range) over the last year
Gross Revenue: 10,500 sales so far x $15 = ~$155,000
Gross eCPM: ~$25.00-36.90, depending on above

Early Signs Show Positive

In the Fantastic Contraption example above, it shows the game converting to sales at 0.5%. I had a friend create a poll on a flash game related-site which has an audience which will also be RobotWarz’s target audience, asking them if they would purchase a monthly subscription to RobotWarz, without giving them any details of the game, just that it’d be better than the game they’re currently playing.

So far, 13% of them said that they would purchase a monthly subscription and 8.7% said maybe. That is a lot higher than I was expecting, as I would have been quite happy with 5%.

Now, this is of course only a poll and there were around 30 votes so it’s not the most accurate thing in the world, but it does help to give a rough idea of what can be expected.

I am quite confident that the game will take off and be pretty popular, so the fact that 13% have said that they would purchase a monthly subscription is very encouraging.

Porting to Facebook and iPhone

If the online version of RobotWarz proves to be popular, I will be porting the game to Facebook and the iPhone. This type of game should work very well on both platforms.

More to Come Soon

I will try to give you guys more details on the game as things progress. I’ll try to give another update in a couple weeks – by then I may even be able to show you some early screenshots of the game.

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This is a guest post by Dan Walker. Dan hasn’t been in the affiliate marketing game that long but gives out some great tips and technical tricks at Dans Blog.

To coin an old saying; everybody has to start somewhere. This is also true of affiliate marketing, there would have been a day where some of the super affiliates you read about now earned nothing or even made a loss. Retrospectively you could say they came from nothing to the riches they enjoy today, but the whole idea of coming “Zero to Hero” in something like affiliate marketing often gives off the wrong ideas to people new to the field.

A lot of startup affiliate marketers that I know personally or that get in touch with me through my blog take this phrase too literally. I’m in the same boat as a lot of affiliate marketers, I don’t have a job (I’m a full time student) and there are no jobs in the current economic client, I’m pretty broke and I’m looking for a way to turn my spare time I usually spend playing games to make some extra cash – hopefully it’ll turn in to a full time job eventually. But one thing I’m come to realize and the new affiliate marketers should too is that risk plays a big part in affiliate marketing. If you’re in this for the big bucks, you’re really going to have to spend money to make money – if you don’t dare, you’re in the wrong place.

Let’s put it into perspective. For example one of my friends, we’ll call her Carol, spends $250 a month on clothes. Now when it comes to affiliate marketing, she spends maybe $10 on a domain, $10 on some hosting and then she hopes to make money instantly. Why didn’t Carol just spend $100 less on clothes that month and use it on affiliate marketing? Chances are she would of learnt a helluva lot and maybe made a small return. In order to learn, you need to test, in order to test, you need to spend. If losing $25 to a bad campaign is putting you down in the dumps and making you think about quitting – your mentality is all wrong.

I’m not new to the game, but I’m not a pro either. I’ve earnt $100’s, but I’ve lost $100’s. If I spent $500 and made $450, I don’t see that as a loss right now, because I’ve spent $50 on learning so much that it was worth it. Too many newbies are losing $10 on a campaign and deleting it. Spend a bit more, if it doesn’t convert; pause it and investigate why, ask for help from any affiliate marketing friends you may have or ask on a forum for advice.

Now this post isn’t here to discourage you low budget startups, it’s here to give you a warning that you need the right mindset to make big money in this game. This isn’t to say that starting from nothing is impossible. You can setup a free website, put some amazon affiliate links on it and wait for the SEO traffic to trickle in slowly, you might make $xx a month to start with, if you really go for the SEO tactic you could make $xxx or even $xxxx. But starting from nothing is a slow process and I’d recommend you get used to testing and losing a bit of money – if you can’t afford to lose $100 each week, try a new campaign each month.

Whatever your situation, you can start affiliate marketing and earn a profit, it’s just whether or not you go about it properly. Don’t get overwhelmed by the losses you’ll make, just keep thinking of the day you crack how to run a successful campaign.

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If you’re wondering where the hell I’ve been for the past week, it’s because we finally launched the new Movie-Vault.com on November 2nd. Unfortunately, there were a lot of technical issues that arose which required most of my time and attention.

We tested the new site on the development server over and over again, but it seems that no matter how much you prepare for a massive revamp on an existing site, there will always be issues.

It is always much easier launching a brand new site from scratch that it is revamping an existing site because you don’t have to worry about content migration and conflict with existing site mechanisms.

Five Years in the Making

While the launch of Movie-Vault.com’s massive revamp was delayed briefly, it finally got launched. This was something that I had been planning on doing for literally years – roughly 4-5 years in fact.

I just kept putting it off because I knew just how big and expensive a project it would be (the revamp cost me close to $10,000).

Check out the new and improved Movie-Vault.com for yourself and let me know what you think.

Bugs

As mentioned in my introduction, there were a number of bugs that plagued the relaunch. Most of these have been squashed and attended to, but there are still a few more scattering around in there.

The lead developer for this project is away until Monday so I’ll have to wait until next week for the rest of the bugs to be fixed. But again, most of the remaining ones are very minor.

The biggest issue was the bridged integration of the main members system with the vBulletin forum’s member system. It appears to work fine with new users, but it created quite the issue with existing forum members. The forum is currently functioning fine right now, but the integration is disabled until a better solution can be worked out.

We’re Not Done Yet!

While the new site looks complete, there is still more work to do in addition to fixing any bugs that remain.

For one, I need to update the content on the site to reflect the revamp. For example, our advertising page is out of date and I am not going to accept paid text links on the site anymore in order to aid in getting our PageRank returned (even though I don’t believe in PageRank as a useful metric) and increase the overall quality of the site.

I also need to send out a newsletter to site members to let older members who haven’t visited the site recently know about our revamp. I am waiting for all the bugs to be finished before I do this, however.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I need to round up staff again to help contribute reviews and news to the site. We once had a very active and fairly large staff which did a superb job, but after years of my neglecting the site and not giving it the attention and TLC it deserved, most of the staff moved on.

Fortunately, we have a bustling forum which will be the first source I look to. There are already members there who post their own movie reviews, so it should prove to be a good resource.

Win An Official 2-Disc Pirate Radio Soundtrack!

In part to help celebrate our relaunch, Movie Vault has partnered with Focus Features to give away 5 official 2-disc soundtracks from the upcoming film PIRATE RADIO which will be coming to theaters across the US on November 13th, 2009.

How to Enter:

To enter to win one of 5 official 2-disc soundtracks from Pirate Radio, all you have to do is:

1. Follow @movievaultnews on Twitter
2. Tweet the message: "I entered to win a Pirate Radio soundtrack at Movie-Vault.com"

That’s it! On November 30th, 2009 we will award 5 random winners and contact them by a private Tweet. Be sure that you stay followed to @movievaultnews and have tweeted the message above in order to be eligible.

This contest is open to US residents only, however feel free to follow us on Twitter and tweet about this contest anyways!

The Movie Vault twitter account is brand new and currently nobody has entered the contest so your chances of winning are currently 100%…

Movie Vault Interviews the Goat in The Men Who Stare at Goats

One of our staff news posters conducted an online interview with the goat in the new film The Men Who Stare at Goats.

This will be posted on the site within the next day or two.

As Movie Vault begins to grow again, so will our opportunities to deliver high quality unique content. We’ve already interviewed celebrities and film producers, etc. in the past, so it’s exciting to have a nice revamped site to feel confident to represent again.

Growth will Take Time

Movie Vault had fallen into such a downward spiral over the past 2-3 years that I know it’s going to take time to grow it into the site I know it can be. I first have to convince past staff members that it’s a site worth contributing to, in order to give the site quality and timely content again.

It will then also take time to get our site mentioned, known, and reintroduced to the film industry again and to return to the authority status we once were fortunate to have.

Anyhow, be sure to check out the new and improved Movie-Vault.com and let me know what you think.

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I’ve been working so many hours lately it’s crazy. I need to do errands such as get my badminton racquet restrung because I broke 2 strings the other day, pick up more printer ink, etc., but I just can’t seem to pull myself away from the computer.

There’s simply so much work to be done. I plan on relaunching Movie-Vault.com on November 1st, PublisherChallenge launches a new competition set up for November 1st as well, and I’ve been extremely busy working on the very early stages of my upcoming game.

I’m looking very forward for when Mass Effect 2 and then Starcraft 2 are released so that I can take a real break from work and immerse myself into some nice relaxing gaming. I’ll save the vacations for next summer.

Game Development Updates

As mentioned in a comment I left on my blog yesterday, I decided to forgo the investing idea and just fund the whole thing myself.

I received a lot of criticism for the investment opportunity I put forward, but I still stand behind it. In fact, I think it was actually a very generous opportunity. But I’m fine with how things turned out, as now I can now reap all the rewards (if any) myself.

There is a lot of risk though – I’ve never developed a game before, so this is a completely new venture for me. Together with Movie-Vault, this will have been $20,000 that I’ve invested into my projects during the past 6-8 weeks, which is the most I’ve ever invested at once before.

I still have a mortgage to pay, so this really is quite a risk for me. But few people get anywhere by always playing it safe.

The game I’m developing (or am getting developed, rather) is an online multiplayer robot-themed game. I am currently going through various early mock-up designs (seen below) for the robots that will dictate the look and feel of the whole game, so this is an important stage of development.

The game will take between 2-3 months to develop… probably about 6 weeks to get a beta version out there with several follow-up weeks to tweak and polish it.

I am extremely excited about this game. It’s so different from anything I’ve ever done before that it’s a wonderful and refreshing new thing to get into. I love games, anybody who knows me can attest to that, so this could be the start of something beautiful.

New PublisherChallenge Competition

It’s been a slow time in the affiliate marketing industry due to a number of factors including the economy, FTC rulings, and flog and rebill slapping. As a result, PeerFly’s Awesome Autumn contest had a very poor turnout.

But they’re back with yet another contest (their 6th in a row) for the winter, aptly titled PeerFly’s Wonderful Winter. The winter season usually picks up for most affiliates due to the Christmas shoppers, so here’s your chance to start with a fresh new competition.

Like its previous competition held between September and October, this winter competition is a bit different from many of the prior ones held on PublisherChallenge in that it is strictly tier-based. While there is still a separate category for New Signups, there is no Main Category in this competition.

Instead, everybody competes against himself to make as much as possible. Anybody who makes it to a tier will win the corresponding prize, regardless of how many people are eligible.

Some of the prizes of this contest include digital cameras, Macbooks, VIP Las Vegas trips, a 2009 Honda Accord Coupe, 2010 Honda Acura TSX, and a top grand prize of a 2009 Lexus GS 460!

Movie-Vault.com Revamp Updates

I was really hoping to relaunch Movie-Vault.com on November 1st, but now I’m not so sure it will happen. There’s still a number of things to do on the site, and tonight is the last day the programmers work before the weekend.

If I can get them to go into the office and work on Saturday then we might be able to make it. Worst case scenario is we launch on November 2nd or 3rd though so it’s not the end of the world.

I also have a giveaway contest I need to set up and launch once the new site is up, so I really have a lot of work on my plate.

Now I’m starting to realize how those 2 badminton racquet strings broke…

Work has mostly focused on fixing small bugs and making small changes here and there, although there were a number of larger new features implemented.

It looks as though we might be able to relaunch on November 1st, but a lot of it will depend on how smooth the forum bridge and integration goes, as that could potentially be a bit difficult to implement.

Here’s another screencast video I made showing what new progress has been made on the site. This time I made notes beforehand in order to make the screencast a bit more organized, which also helped reduce the length of this video to 13 minutes (as opposed to 28 minutes for the last one):

As you can see, the site is really coming along now and looks just about to be complete, but there’s still a number of more things to be done. At its present stage, I’d say it’s around 90% complete.

I contacted one of my old contacts at one of the marketing firms that does work for film studios, and already have a little contest lined up for when the site launches next week. We’ll be giving out five official 2-disc soundtracks for the upcoming film by Focus Features, Pirate Radio, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I haven’t decided what type of contest I’m going to run, but I’ll probably make it pretty simple such as some type of Twitter follow or re-tweet contest.

I had kept procrastinating and putting off this much-needed revamp to Movie-Vault.com for about 5-years now, so it feels good to have finally done it.

As I mentioned in my last post, I had never commissioned any Flash work before so I was not familiar with what the costs were.

I have contacted dozens of flash game and design studios and am still waiting to hear back from most of them since it’s the weekend, but it seems that the cost for this project is looking to be more towards the $20k-$40k mark, which I was not expecting. Some people even quoted me $80k-$250k! Maybe I should get into the Flash development business.

So, there is no way I’m going to do this for $5k anymore as I wouldn’t get anything of decent quality for that. I’m not even sure if I want to continue with this anymore since the costs (and thus risk) are pretty much 2-3 times what I was expecting. But I’ll have to wait to hear back from more studios before I can get an accurate median quote.

I did get a quote from one studio for $10k. They’ve done work for big clients including Nintendo and they seem to have an impressive portfolio with some high-quality games, so I think this project may be able to get done well and properly for $10k-$15k, but there’s no way it’ll be done decently for $5k, so I’m either going to drop this idea and leave it for another day or else see how many people are interested in investing at these higher levels.

That’s the reason for this post – to see how many people are interested at these new levels. Since the level of risk in this has increased by quite a bit, I have increased the return rate %, the length by 2 months, and included a new clause to compensate.

I am basing the following options on the project costing $15,000:

Investment Options

If you do the math, the site would need to make a total of $18,750 during the first 20-months in order for you to break even. This works out to an average of $937.50 a month.

Here are two sample scenarios:

Guaranteed 100% Return Clause

If, after 20-months, the investor has not received back 100% of their original investment, they will continue to receive their 80% share until they do. This effectively guarantees that the investor will make back 100% of their original investment. The only question is how long that might take… if the site ends up making virtually nothing then it could take years.

Buyout Clause

There is a buyout clause in which at any point I can buyout the shareholder for 5x their investment. This buyout will be on top of any return they have received so far. For example, if an investor invests $2,000 and after 5 months I want to buy them out, they will keep whatever Returns they have made so far, plus $10,000 (5x) for the buyout.

Notes

• I will only accept investors up to when the cost of the project is met (Ex. If 3 investors want in at the $5,000 level then it will be closed there).
• The 20-month Return timeframe will begin once the site is finished its development and goes live to the public.
• The Return is based on site income, whether it be from advertisements on the site or paid memberships and will be paid back to investors once a month until the 20-month timeframe has finished.

Other Information

I did not include the FAQ and other information here since that can be read in my previous post.

If you’re interested in investing or have any questions, please contact me.

And it’s not like things are slowing down; my $10,000 investment on Movie-Vault.com’s revamp is nearing completion and will be launching in about a week which will require my focus and energy.

So why then have I just started yet another project?

I kept telling myself not to; that I already had more than enough on my plate, to say the least. And with the big revamp of Movie-Vault.com which I consider to be a massive project, adding yet another project to my list should have been the last thing on my mind.

But the idea kept finding its way back into my head, and I couldn’t get rid of it. When that happens, which isn’t all that often, the only thing I can do to stop thinking about it is to give in and develop the site.

And so here I am again, starting yet another project. And this one is pretty big, too.

The Project

Since I only decided to go ahead with the project today, I am not revealing very much about it yet since I don’t want others to possibly copy my idea and develop it before I do. As development progresses, I’ll reveal more information.

Right now, all I can say is that it’s a flash-based multiplayer game.

The game will be free but there will be a paid membership which is optional. I am considering adding two membership options, each being monthly. The “Bronze” will probably be somewhere around $1.99/month and the “Silver” $4.99/month. If the game takes off, it’s obviously easy to add higher-priced Gold and Platinum accounts.

In addition to the paid memberships, there will be ads on the site to help support the free non-paying accounts, which will most-likely account for 95% of the members.

Want to Invest?

For this project, I think I think I’m going to accept a limited number of investors – basically acting as shareholders, which is the reason for this post.

I have not yet received the quotes for this project, but I am assuming it will cost between $5,000-$10,000. So, it’s not the biggest project. Now, depending on the interest (or lack thereof) on investing in this, I may look to get the game done in a higher-quality and level of scale, and invest more into it, something like $10k-$25k, but I think that $5k-$10k should cover pretty much what is needed for what I want.

Investment Options

Note that nothing here is set in stone, especially since I have yet to receive the quotes for the project and the fact that I’m sure some of you will provide better insight into investment options and numbers.

I am basing the following options on the project costing $5,000:

I will only accept investors up to when the cost of the project is met (Ex. If 2 investors want in at the $2,500 level then it will be closed there).

The Return is based on site income, whether it be from advertisements on the site or paid memberships.

If you do the math, the site would need to make a total of $6,666 (bad omen? haha) during the first 18-months in order for you just to break even. This works out to an average of $370 a month. Therefore, if the site manages to make $13k during the first year-and-a-half, you’ve doubled your investment.

There will be a buyout clause, where at any point I can buyout the shareholder for 5x their investment. This buyout will be on top of any return they have received so far. For example, if an investor invests $1,000 and after 5 months I want to buy them out, they will keep whatever Returns they have made so far, plus $5,000 (5x) for the buyout.

The 18-month Return timeframe will begin once the site is finished its development and goes live to the public.

FAQ

Why do you want investors? Don’t you have confidence in your own projects?

This is the first and most natural question, and one that I’d personally ask if I were in your position.

I always have confidence in any project that I end up taking on, or I wouldn’t take them on in the first place. And I have already started the steps in getting this project started (I’m currently getting quotes). I’m therefore ready to fund this project entirely myself, but would rather have investors in this for 2 reasons:

1. I want to minimize my risk.

I already have a lot of money tied up in various projects (Movie-Vault.com revamp, my affiliate marketing efforts, and my other sites) at the moment and don’t have a whole lot of money to spend on new projects. I can and will fund this entirely myself if I need to, but would feel more comfortable if I had investors.

2. I think this would make for a good blog post series.

As ridiculous as this may sound, I can assure you this is true. I often do things for the side-benefit of it being good blog content, and this is one of those things.

I think it’d make for an interesting read to see how both investors in an online project fare from their investment, and how the project itself turns out.

I’m guaranteed to make money on this right?

No! You’re not guaranteed anything. Not a penny. You could invest the full $5,000 (or whatever it may be) and end up $5,000 poorer. This is an investment, and with investment comes risk.

The site could easily fail miserably, so you should feel comfortable with the investment and level of risk involved, and not have to take out a second mortgage on your house if you make nothing back.

Many of my projects have failed, so be prepared for that.

Wait a second, why do you get 25% for doing nothing?

First, it’s my idea and nobody is forcing you to invest

But the main reason is that I’m not “doing nothing”. I am overseeing the project and while that may sound easy, I put in countless hours seeing that everything is done correctly. For example, just overseeing the revamp of Movie-Vault.com, I’ve already put in a good 40-50 work hours working with the developers.

As an investor, you’re the one doing nothing. I’m the one actually working on the site.

Do I get partial ownership of the site along with my return?

No. Merendi Networks Inc. retains full copyright and ownership of the site. Your investment is purely monetary and based on the site’s income.

How can I trust you to report the real earnings and pay me correctly?

You’ll have to trust me and have full confidence in me to report and pay the correct amount as this project isn’t big enough for me to set up some type of joint-PayPal account, etc.

I can give screenshots of PayPal payments, etc. and set investors up with access to the Analytics stats, but in the end you’ll have to trust me. If you’re even the slightest bit apprehensive about trusting me then you shouldn’t consider investing.

Give me some examples of your other projects that have made money

PublisherChallenge.com was my most recent project (since Movie-Vault.com hasn’t relaunched yet) and cost me roughly $7,000 to develop. At 10-months-old, it has brought in $55,000 to date.

PokerForums.org is around 5 years old and has cost me roughly $3,000 to develop and maintain. It has brought in close to $250,000 in site revenue.

TylerCruz.com is several years old and has cost me roughly $1,000 to develop and maintain. It has brought in over $30,000 in revenue, not including affiliate referrals.

Each of these are good examples of where the investment wasn’t very much, but the sites required a lot of my own time and effort. This is more evidence to respond to the “Wait a second, why do you get 25% for doing nothing?” question above.

Remember though, many of my projects have failed, so don’t expect ROI’s such as these to be guaranteed.

How would I sent you the money to invest?

This would depend partly on how the developer is willing to accept payment. If he is willing to accept payment from a variety of sources then having you send the developer the payment would be the best option.

Otherwise, I’d probably just have you PayPal me the money and I’d probably get you to pay the PayPal fees as well (2.9% + $0.30 if you’re from the US/Canada, otherwise 3.9% + $0.30).

I want to invest, but I have a few questions…

Contact me for any questions you have or if you’re ready to invest. I will only divulge details of the site to serious buyers.

Recently I was asked how to scale a campaign on Google’s Content Network.  For many, this can be a very challenging, daunting task.  For me, this is one of my favorite pay-per-click platforms to promote affiliate offers.  Let me explain.

Google’s Content Network is an extension of their Adwords advertising.    Using the Content Network you can target your advertisements via site placements (URLs) or by keywords.  You then have the option to either bid CPC (cost-per-click) or CPM (cost per one-thousand impressions).  The Content Network is very different than placing advertisements on their Search platform.  In this post, I’m going to explain how use Google’s Content Network to promote your affiliate offers and how to dominate your competition.  In the coming weeks, I’m also going to hold a real-life case study using this manual on my blog.

Before we jump right into things, there are a few things you’re going to need.  First and most important is a budget.  You’re going to need some money that you’re willing to invest to test out your campaigns.  Recently, I wrote a guide on “PPC Marketing 101.”  In that guide, I explained how investing in your campaigns a lot like getting an education is.  You have to spend some money to learn, before you can make money.  So for that matter, I suggest starting with $5,000 a month dedicated just to Google’s Content Network.  This should be plenty of money for you to learn the ins and outs of the platform and more-than-likely begin profiting.  Please don’t get yourself into credit card debt or spend money you don’t have.  Don’t try to take on this task until you have the money to invest!

Once you have your money set aside, you’re ready to begin.   You’ll also need to have an account at your favorite affiliate network or program that you want to promote (I recommend Copeac).  The key to being successful on the Content Network is finding traffic that is cheap, yet effective.  For many this is also the most challenging task, but it is possible.  Also, a lot of people try to setup their Content Network campaign the same way they do their search campaign.  This is the WORST mistake.  Even though they are both on Adwords, the internal structure to each campaign is very different.   Personally I recommend having one Adwords account dedicated to search and another one dedicated to content.

When your account is ready, you can begin creating your campaigns.  When you’re targeting someone on search they are actively searching for your product or service.  With this, you’re able to laser target the traffic to your offer.  The content network on the other hand is different.  Those ads are placed on websites all around the Internet.  Therefore, your objective is to interrupt the reader and have them click your advertisement to eventually convert. “I Lost 59 LBS” – This is an example of a headline that you could use.  You want to make the visitor notice your advertisement and follow through to complete your offer.

Getting traffic on the content network can also be challenging.  Given that you’re not targeting someone who is actively searching for a product; your traffic quality is going to be lower.  That is why I like to go after the cheap traffic.  To find cheap traffic on Google’s Content Network, you need to use keywords that are of popular news items.  An example of this would be “swine flu” or “h1n1”.  Websites all across the Internet report daily on new outbreaks, prevention tips, vaccines, etc.  Therefore it is very beneficial to use this story to your advantage to getting cheap traffic.

When setting up your Content Network campaign it is important to note that your ad groups are used to describe what you’re targeting.  Google only looks at the first 50 keywords in each ad group to determine where to place your advertisement.  Therefore one of your ad groups could look like this:

Ad Group Name: Swine Flu Group 1

Keywords:

• about swine flu
• and swine flu
• asian swine flu
• avoid swine flu
• bird swine flu
• ca swine flu
• cdc swine flu
• current swine flu
• death from swine flu
• first swine flu
• get swine flu
• getting swine flu
• great swine flu
• h1n1 swine flu
• how to prevent swine flu
• human swine flu
• information on swine flu
• is swine flu
• japan swine flu
• latest on swine flu
• mexican swine flu
• national swine flu
• new swine flu
• pandemic swine flu
• prevent swine flu
• preventing swine flu
• recent swine flu
• shot swine flu
• stop swine flu
• swine flu
• swine flu 1918
• swine flu 1919
• swine flu 1976
• swine flu advice
• swine flu affair
• swine flu alert
• swine flu americans
• swine flu areas
• swine flu article
• swine flu asia
• swine flu australia
• swine flu avian
• swine flu birds
• swine flu blog
• swine flu canada
• swine flu cases
• swine flu chart
• swine flu clinic
• swine flu clinics
• swine flu cure

There is no need to copy this word-for-word as I just used Google’s Free Keyword Generator to make this list.  You would then want to create an ad copy to go along with this ad group.  An example may look like this:

“The Swine Flu Kills”

Prevent the Swine Flu with the all new XYZ Multi-Vitamin.

Notice how the headline is designed to get the attention of the reader while the ad description goes on to explain more what you’re trying to promote.  You could then direct traffic to a website that promotes multi-vitamins.

Please note: The above is just an example; I’ve never created a campaign based around the Swine Flu.

By using “popular news stories” to generate your Content Network campaigns, you’re able to find a lot of cheap traffic with large amounts of volume. If you’re creative you can make a lot of money while the topic is hot.  The possibilities are endless with this method as long as you’re willing to take a risk and think outside the box.

Last of all I always want to remind people of one thing.  There is NO substitute for hard work.  This blog post, a PPC coaching site, etc. is NO magic pill or formula.  Successful Affiliates are successful because they’re willing to be dedicated and work harder than everyone else.  You have to be willing to make sacrifices and put the effort into this, if you’re ever going to be a Super Affiliate!  Good luck!

To learn more about how to make money online, check out Ryan’s blog at SuperAffiliateTwins.com.