PPC Coach Review: Why I hate PPC Coach
PPC Coach is the bane of my existence. Let me tell you why…
First of all, I know my postings have been erratic at best. I’m still around and I contribute heavily in different forums even though my Twitter and Facebook activity have slowed down. Aside from all the summer activities and trips and broken down computer issues more times than I can count, mostly, I’ve holed myself up to get deeper into the world of PPC marketing (Pay Per Click marketing). I’ll get to my actual PPC Coach Review in a minute…
So I get a lot of inquiries through my various sites and the most common question I get is : “How can I make money fast?”
When I outline the specific steps it takes to be able to quit their day job, a combination of laziness and/or scaredy cats come out.
Everyone’s looking for some magic pill and a 3 step answer to their financial dilemmas. The hardest part is dealing with the unrealistic expectations of those that have ‘decided they want to work at home now.’ I often get comments such as these:
I really want to make money fast, but I don’t want to have to pay to do this.
I don’t have any money to spend but I have to make money fast.
I just want a job where I can work on my computer. Do you know where I can get one of those that’s not a scam and where I don’t have to spend anything?
I don’t think it’s real if I have to pay money to get the information I need.
So anyways, this is for 10% of you folks that really understand what hard work is. When you work for yourself, you are in business. Yes, you may wear all the hats of CEO, CFO, Marketing Exec, Customer Service Representative, and Janitor, but that doesn’t diminish your business in the least. You have to treat it like a business or risk going out of business within the first 1-12 months.
What I’m hoping to get across in this post (which has been brewing for quite some time) is that if you aren’t afraid of hard work, losing a bit of investment capital, and brain-racking-aha-moments that will keep you up some late nights and having you miss some kick ass parties because you’d rather throw up some PPC campaigns, then you getting to a position of working for yourself in the comfort of your own home isn’t just possible but probably and being done by thousands of affiliate marketers across the world.
This is about the only way that I know of where you can legally print your own money. I’m sure you’ve seen all those hyped up ads of people making $12,248 in 10 days or ‘earn $72,558 in a month’ or some bullshit like that all over the place. Warning: 97% of them are scams. They are most likely some offer to sell you an ebook of how to ‘type little ads’ and make thousands with Google. The trouble with most of those awesome sounding Easy Google Cash, Google Fast Cash, Easy Tweet Profits or like offers is that they give you the outline of what you need to do, but they never reveal how to keep getting your ass handed back to you on a silver platter by Google, Yahoo, MSN & Facebook advertising platforms (amongst a hundred others).
That being said, that leaves the other 3% which are as real as you can get and will blow your mind with their money making tactics. You will never view the internet the same way again.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
IMHO, it is the best way for you to market a product (which you do not have to create, stock or ship) and get them into the hands of millions of consumers that want that product right now. You’re basically leveraging the traffic from search engines through their advertising platforms:
- Google Adwords
- Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM) Right now you get $125 credit with Promo Code USTD09
- MSN Adcenter
- Myspace
- 7Search
…just to name a few, and directing that traffic to laser targeted products. You do this by creating an ad (exactly like the ones you see on the top and right sides of Google) and then targeting your audience by bidding on specific keywords that you think are relevant to Googlers.
When that ad is displayed your ‘punter’ (also known as the clicker, Googler, potential customer, etc.) will click on your ad and will get sent to the offer you direct them to. So at first, you will mostly likely start off in a niche that is less competitive so that you can learn without losing your shirt. I would hate for you to think this didn’t work by starting in a niche like Ringtones and having super affiliates pummel you into the ground…then you’d walk away penniless and thinking this doesn’t work when in fact, you’re one great ad away from financial independence.
What is CPA?
CPA stands for Cost Per Action. This is where it starts to get even more interesting. Cost Per Action affiliate programs are where you get your punter to simply enter an email address or zip code and you get paid on average $1-$1.50. There are longer form CPAs that pay up to $200+ for information such as names, addresses, age, etc. Now I know that the email/zip submits don’t sound like something you could retire from, but let’s say that you promote an American Airlines offer and got 1,000 punters to enter in their email addresses for 2 American Airlines tickets.
Well, even at the low end of $1 per email, you’re looking at $1,000 for a few hours worth of work. What makes CPAs so attractive is that the punters don’t even need to make a purchase for you to get paid. Of course, you would need to factor in your costs of advertising so even you if were to take home only 25% of that, that’s still $250 for setting up a campaign that generally takes me about 1-2 hours these days.
The next thing you do is find more CPA offers and scale your success. Rinse & repeat.
What Are Affiliate Networks?
So the next question is, where do you find these offers? You get these offers from the hundreds of affiliate networks out there. The best advice is to stay away from the smaller ones. They can have cash flow problems to a point where if an advertiser doesn’t pay them because they don’t like the quality of your traffic, then the affiliate network just won’t pay you. The larger affiliate networks have the ability to cover such losses if they want to keep you as one of their marketers.
Some really great ones (which have always paid me on time) are:
- Flux
- EWA (Private Network) You’ll have to leave me a message if you want to join this one because they work on a by invitation only policy.
- Azoogle
- Maxbounty
- Tatto
- Commission Junction
- Advaliant
- Clickbank
- PayDotCom
You can also set up private deals, but we’ll get into that at a later date as well.
PPC Coach: What is it?
Ok, so if at this point, your mind is racing a million miles a minute, then PPC Affiliate Marketing may be the right direction for you.
PPC Coach is a forum that I joined back in May. It is a community of just under 3,000 affiliate marketers.
I hate PPC Coach.
Here’s why. Every day, I log on and my routine is to read the newest ‘relevant’ posts since my last visit. And from there, I have to work EXTREMELY hard to not let it sidetrack me. There are tons of new ideas and techniques posted by the brainiest of the braniacs and I have to make sure that I stay on course or I can easily find a new project to deter me from my immediate goals.
Other reasons I hate PPC Coach:
- If you’re slacking and not making money, the forum will call you on it. They don’t let you get away with shit.
- You can’t be an asshole to others in the forum without getting some shit kicked back at you or even kicked out of the forum.
- The people there won’t just give you the damn answers, they will guide you and teach you, but you HAVE to learn it for yourself.
- There’s a bunch of know-it-alls that are killin’ it in this field and they’re all like 19. I think I’m among the top 20 oldest folks there.
- They’re always on top of the trend, so for a while you feel like you’re runnin’ to keep up.
- They have so much information on that forum that I couldn’t just finish it in a day. It’s been months and there are thousands of threads I may never get to for the sake of moving on to new stuff.
- There’s always at least 200 (or more) people on it that are way smarter than you.
- It’s 99% testosterone and 1% estrogen. Could be a plus if you’re a woman seeking a man or a teenager (ahem).
Ok, so really, all these things produce this love-hate relationship with that place, and seriously, it’s all love from me. I went in know zilch about PPC Marketing and have been able to generate amazing ROI’s that range from 10%-300%. My campaigns average about 50%-100% ROI after my testing phases. It’s a hell of a lot better than any of the stock trades I’ve made in the past.
How does it work?
Well, this is a paid members forum and there are 12 months that are truly segmented off. Each month Coach (Will Hamerl) covers 1-4 different techniques that you can apply to make money both right away and long term. The goal is to get you to making $100/day with the 1st month’s techniques before moving onto the more complicated yet lucrative projects.
The first month is the hardest. You’re probably going to question your sanity and even have a few gray hairs pop up, but follow it and keep pluggin along. You’ll find that things start to click and all of a sudden, you can rightfully say you own your own internet marketing company.
So I pay just over $40 USD (he bills in Canadian dollars so it’ fluctuates a dollar or 2 each month, but it’s the best $40 investment I’ve ever made in my online business) every month. But here’s the kicker – the reasons why you’ll NEVER cancel this forum if you’re serious about making online cash are:
- All of the tools that he provides as a part of this membership are FREE. Yep, free. The tools are worth the membership alone. If you’ve ever had to hand craft 4500 keywords for Google Adwords by hand into groups of 50, or if you’ve ever wanted to take 500 KW’s and create individual adgroups for them…well, it’s a pain in the ass to say the least and takes hours. But his Adwords Magic tool will spit it out in seconds.
- Any tool that he didn’t create himself (and you want to buy from an outside source) he gives you the commission back on. For example: I just watched a webinar on a wordpress cloaker tool that retails for $197. Well, with all the bells and whistles and after coaches discount, we paid less than $99 for it.
- You’ll get individual attention from Coach himself. I can’t tell you how many times I shot over landing pages or domain names for him to critique. He’s always gotten back to me within a day, and often times within a few hours or less.
This is a place for only the serious online warrior. And I can’t praise this place enough or Coach enough for the structure of the place and the kind of community he has created. If you have ever visited WickedFire, you’ll see the difference is night and day. Yes, you get some cool info on WF, but I’ve also seen people get chewed up and spit out over there.
This place has everything I need between the community help, 1 on 1 help from coach and the free tools. I can’t see myself leaving (ever) so if you need any assistance, make sure to send me a private message there & I’ll do what I can. My handle there is leebo1010. I’m working on a Yahoo Search Marketing geo-targeting direct linking guide (which I hope to find time to finish here in between the different campaigns), so be on the lookout for that in the forum.
This Sounds Too Good To Be True
I’m sure it does if you don’t have an entrepreneurial spirit. The truth is, that you have people from all over the world, both genders and all age groups kicking ass in affiliate marketing. And quite frankly, I’m proud to say that some of the people who have helped me the most are on average 10 years younger than I am. This just gets me more motivated.
This is HARD work. This will give you sleepless nights from wanting to jump out of bed to check on your campaigns. This will upset some of your family members and friends because you’ll be so wrapped up devising campaigns that you won’t be attentive enough. The first $10 you make will be the hardest of probably your entire working life. However, once you understand how to make $10, you can scale it and make it $20, then $50 then $100 per day.
There are a couple of folks that still posts regularly in forum which you’ll recognize quickly, who are making over $1,000 on a bad day. They’ve got their life so tightly organized that they still have time to help newbies along the way, and I will forever be grateful to them.
How Much Time Do I Need to Devote?
That’ll depend on how much time you’ve got and how quickly you want to make your first $10. Many people moonlight with PPC until they are consistently making enough money every day to quit their full time jobs. So I’ve met some awesome guys who would work their jobs 9-5 then go home and work 6-midnight on their campaigns until they’ve made enough consistently to quit or until their full time jobs started to cut into their PPC action.
I however, have had the luxury of devoting my time to this (though with lots of interruptions) and have learned more about cookie stuffing and Facebook’s dick roll than I ever wanted to know (not that this is what’s promoted, you just get an education in the industry). So I have campaigns that I set up my first month there that I haven’t touched at all that’s still making me a great ROI.
What Other Costs Should I Be Aware Of?
- You will need to buy a domain (your website name). I use NameBoy to help me figure out the name, but I don’t buy it there. I then mosey on over to 1and1 to buy my domains because they’re always having some sale and more importantly, they ALWAYS give you free anonymous registration which other places will charge you another $8-$10 for. Right now the promo is $6.99 for a dot com domain name, but that changes constantly.
- After you get the name, you will need a place for your domain to reside so you need to get a hosting package. I personally use Hostgator (which I’ve used for all my sites even before PPC). There’s a mad discount where you can get it for 1 penny your first month if you use the promo code: wordpress. And I just opted for the baby plan which costs me $7.95 for unlimited domains.
- There are only about 500 other tools that you CAN buy if you want to, but you don’t need ANYTHING when you first start out other than the free tools Coach offers.
I’ve used some earnings from PPC to get the tools that I wanted/needed most. I’ll make a post of my faves later too.
Ok, that’s my take on PPC Coach. Since you all are so curious as to how I make the bulk of my cash these days, you now have my secret.
Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to answer it for all to see. I’ll start posting some techniques that I use for keyword research and adgrouping as the year progresses.
Good luck on your internet ventures!
~PS Didn’t you know that hitting F5 makes money show up?
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I’ve been told and pitched to about ppc coach as well before, but i’ve never taken a liking to it, because simply, lazy or just dont care for it.
i know 15 year old kids that is making more money that I am in a year and it does piss me off, but it’s what you put into it that counts, they have more time because they dont have kids and a job running them around =P ahah yes im jealous
i cant wait to read up on your techniques and skills – dont let that post pass
Thanks Pheak. Yeah, I just have to make sure to take time out to actually write the posts.
It’s really wild all the young ‘kids’ that are totally blasting us old folks out of the water, but it’s inspiring actually. It just shows that they’re not stuck in the same ruts in terms of thoughts and ideas…and yes, it helps to not have other obligations…but it does take a bit of financial commitment because I’ve never run across anyone who didn’t lose money at the beginning.
This one guy just got back from ASE and he had his first 6 figure month last month…and he shares all the details of his campaigns minus keywords & ‘exact’ product, but I can figure that out for myself, so it’s been exciting to say the least.
I’ll probably just post the basics and ramp it up unless I get some good questions I need to address first. And I’ve been a little reluctant to share too much about which coaching program I’m a part of, but really, there’s a lot of the internet to share.
sum it all up, Google it!
you can find anything, any type of information, any type of documentation on the Internet, it just takes a lot of time and dedication to the research. a 6 figure month sounds like the shiet! – im waiting for that one myself =]
i’ll share my ideas too whenever you post that up – i dont mind sharing (minus the exact specifics of course =P)
You know, I’m a big Googler myself, and learned most of my stuff on it, but it can also waste precious time when you’re trying to complete a campaign and move onto the next one. The other danger is that people are spewing all sorts of crap and bs on the net so you’re constantly having to decifer if it’s useful info or junk. Thank God so much of it’s useful…
Well, good, I can’t wait to have your input on some of these techniques I’ll post.
Lee,
Excellent write-up. I’ve been playing around with affiliate marketing for the last couple of years. I am now interested in looking at it on a more serious level. This entry was very helpful to me.
I think you sold me on PPC-Coach. Do you still recommend them? Any other services?
Thanks again,
Mark
Hey Mark, So sorry it’s taken so long, but we were moving our host which just got completed 10 mins ago. Here’s the reply I had written for you which was lost in transition:
“Hey Mark. Yes, I totally still think it’s a great place for new and intermediate affiliate marketers. For more advanced marketers, the maker of PPC Coach has a site called Media Buy Coach that has even better support & step by step tutorials with real campaign examples. The difference in monthly dues is reflective of the earning potential IMHO.
However, I would definitely start with PPC Coach if you’re not at an advanced level just yet or without about $5k to test with. Give me a shout when you’re on PPC Coach. I just gave out another one of my converting traffic sources (low volume but consistent).”
Your Pay per click tips are awesome and will absolutely help those in the Internet Marketeter game. Please keep it coming.
LOL, you stole my signature!!!
Are you kidding! Your sig was such an inspiration when I first started!…I just borrowed it for this post:-)
LOL, no problem. Glad to see you are doing well. Hope the rest of your year is as action packed as the first half.
making money always takes time specially in the internet, you have to exert some good amounts of effort to earn more.`.;