Make Internet Monies 101

[eliquid]

We don't know each other in the slightest, but I want you to know I've learned a lot from your rants over the years, including the ones you go on about how you're not going to get on forums and rant anymore, so thank you for that.

I only rant on people posting inaccurate or false information on this forum, now.

Like Biggy did about dropshipping being dead.

If we allow people to spread false information on this forum unchecked, what good will the forum be to you and others?

 

[JesseEddleman]

I only rant on people posting inaccurate or false information on this forum, now.

Like Biggy did about dropshipping being dead.

If we allow people to spread false information on this forum unchecked, what good will the forum be to you and others?

For clarity, I'm not poking fun. I understand completely, and I appreciate it immensely.

 

[Satvrn]

2017 everyone and their aunt went into drop shipping, thanks to all those retard gurus on Youtube.

Everyone started crying when the payment processors cancelled all their accounts left and right since you can't just take some random China Alibaba seller and expect him to ship on time. CN to US and CN to EU takes 10-15 working days and you often have issues with customs where parcels get stuck or customers have to pay import tax to release their shipment.

Also, if you sell a sneaker for 50 USD and you buy it for 3.50 USD you can expect that those sneakers are not made of 'finest Italian leather' but some recycled car tire that will give your customers skin cancer after 2 weeks.

That's when you're hit with tons of refund requests and chargebacks. Above 1% chargeback you will usually end up on the MATCH list which bans you as a UBO from getting any payment processing, globally.

Facebook banned drop shippers left and right and introduced a feedback score for Facebook pages, asking customers that converted as a sale about the quality, shipping times and customer support.

That's why drop shipping has a bad rep.

It's definitely a viable business model but you just can't allow yourself to go full retard.

 

[Biggy]

Well. This is my last message. As someone who tries to convince me about DS. People believe way too much random stats.

Did I said DS is dead? Yeah I wont say its dead, but most crap is shit. Selling cheap ass products. Classic. Getting banned.

Anyway who ever goes DS good luck. I'm happy that not everyone agrees with me!

Sometimes guys you need to thing wider. Anyway good luck and happy journey!

 

[freshpeppermint]

Okay so far people have mentioned to "utilize suppliers you'll never see on worldwidebrands, dropshipping suppliers lists, Youtube, an IM course" but, if they are not there how would you even find them!?!?!?

So, where do you find products to dropship??

@eliquid you mention the backend and frontend. I always thought that was for software companies. Never knew it worked that well for ecommerce products. I personally never would buy things from emails (which is what I am assuming backend is). It was always buy it on Amazon or buy something outside Amazon if they don't have it.

Does retargetting count as backend? Since, you still need to spend extra in order to get back money.

Also you are a marketing agency right? You create the ads like video/image ads for your clients? What would you say you provide to all these clients like the ability to create cool ads which convert or is it that you are really good with ad platforms or know little tricks on them?

Also, have you not heard of "testing new ideas" and some of them don't work? You are looking at like a fraction of my ads that run all last month, with only the inaccurate FB data showing on the screen.

Wait so does that mean you spent like WAY more than 50k and then eventually found winning ads and THAT is what got you 3-4x money back? Or is 50k like all of testing budget and everything included?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Wait so does that mean you spent like WAY more than 50k and then eventually found winning ads and THAT is what got you 3-4x money back? Or is 50k like all of testing budget and everything included?

All of your questions and more have already been answered by the man you're asking in the long guide he wrote here in the Digital Strategy Crash Course - Day 13 - Paid Traffic.

 

[UFO]

Okay so far people have mentioned to "utilize suppliers you'll never see on worldwidebrands, dropshipping suppliers lists, Youtube, an IM course" but, if they are not there how would you even find them!?!?!?

This comes down to building relationships and networking, it's not rocket surgery. Call manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and vendors. Go to trade shows. How else would you find them if they aren't advertising themselves?

My brother used to work for a company that manufactured tow hitches, locks, and other related items. Decent sized company, you've probably seen their products out on the road and never paid much attention to the brand name. They didn't sell direct to consumer, but they did dropship on behalf of their clients.

Guess how people found them? They were at every trade show related to camping, hunting, fishing, recreation, outdoor hobbies, etc. They ran my brother's ass ragged across the country to go to these trade shows.

This is just one example. Think of how many manufacturers and vendors there are out there. Some are dying for people to sell their products because they suck at marketing.

 

[CCarter]

Some people maybe confused with the Biggy and freshpeppermint type of people of the world.

All you have to do is look at the massive cargo containers shipping backlog happening for the last two years for goods from China to the USA, which we talked about ad nauseam here, and ask yourself: what was in those cargo containers?

No matter what proof you show some people they willfully want to ignore it. You can show them gold bars in armored trucks going to the bank from successful sales, they'll deny the gold is even real. They'll deny the armored truck. They'll deny it's a real bank we are going to. They'll find any minute detail to deny.

It's because they don't want to change. Because if they were to accept this new information, they will then feel the responsibility of having to attempt it versus rather acknowledge the harsh truth to themselves- that they aren't serious about winning in life or aren't willing to work hard.

That's too much for their psyche to handle.

So it's easier to deny reality versus face it, cause than you have to take action and might fail. Failure is too much for some people because they've been beaten down in life already. But failure is a main ingredient in success.

As a baby you can't walk without falling on your ass several times when going from crawling to walking.

Fear is real guys. But you can't let fear dictate yourself otherwise you'll never achieve anything. Go through fear, fail and fail fast.

If you deny reality long enough reality will eventually deny you.

 

[eliquid]

Okay so far people have mentioned to "utilize suppliers you'll never see on worldwidebrands, dropshipping suppliers lists, Youtube, an IM course" but, if they are not there how would you even find them!?!?!?

So, where do you find products to dropship??

Find products you like personally. That you can stand behind.

Maybe just quality products you know people want/need.

Then just reach out to the company and ask if they will dropship for you. If "no", see if you can wholesale.

But the main point is, just ask.

@eliquid you mention the backend and frontend. I always thought that was for software companies. Never knew it worked that well for ecommerce products. I personally never would buy things from emails (which is what I am assuming backend is). It was always buy it on Amazon or buy something outside Amazon if they don't have it.

Lets say you are really into knives. You collect them.

I have a dropship knife on a LP you see from Facebook. It's $14.95 with $6 shipping and you buy it.

You give me $21, but I spent $20 in ads. I made $1 ( high level speaking ).

However, that product cost me, say $9. So really Im in the hole $8 ( negative $8 ). Lets leave out other variables for now ( sake of simplicity ) like my time, etc.... Let's just agree I am in the hole at $8.

I offer an upsell before you check out. Maybe a cross sale. You agree to buy that too. Maybe only 50% of people do this, but you are in and now I made a profit on the front end funnel before other soft costs.

What do I have now, besides your money?

Your email.

Your pixel data ( Facebook, Google, etc ).

Your regular data ( name, address, phone, city, state, zip, etc ).

Did you know, that information above is saleable? Someone will buy it from you? Yes. It's money for me.

I can rent your email, pixel data, and profile data ( name, addy, etc ). That's 1 form of backend sales.

Even if I do not sell your data, I can use that data to build LookALike audiences and reach more people like you, that will buy more from me who might buy 10x more than you and make up the potential loss I had on you, or the small profit I made on you.

Your data is valuable.

Another form is sending you an email(s) promoting more products every 3 weeks where you maybe buy 1 or 2 more things. More revenue for me with no/little cost ( email ).

Another is, maybe I retarget you now on Facebook for other offers over time and exclude you from campaigns as you buy or don't buy. Some ad cost here, but I know you trust me now and it's easier to sell you, so typically less ad cost now.

Maybe upon purchase, you are auto-enrolled into a recurring subscription. $20 a month for "knife of the month" club or something. Easy money each month until you cancel. I have some hard costs ( COGS, etc ) but you can do this digitally too. Yes, you can still do auto recurring, as long as you have a quality backend.

Maybe I send you affiliate offers now ( via FB or email ). Maybe even SMS since I have your phone number from when you purchased. Plenty of people purchase from SMS and that's almost no cost.

At the end of the month, I might have now made another Net $30 off you.. putting me from -$8 to +$22. Or, if you took the upsell in the front end, maybe I've now moved from +$10 to +$40.

By the end of the year, that might move to Net +$200. All for an upfront ad cost of $20 when I started.

Let's say after 12 months, I'm doing $1m monthly total. I'm bored and want more, so I sell at the crazy monthly 15-30x profits I saw businesses going for months ago on Flippa/Empire Flippers... That's an easy $15-$30m payout on a dropship website someone said was dead/late to game on with poor margins.

^^ I haven't gotten this far, but that's what a healthy back end gets you.

That's the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more you could do than what I just listed.

Does retargetting count as backend? Since, you still need to spend extra in order to get back money.

Depend on who you talk to. I feel it is, since it's the same customer ( if you are retargeting existing customers, not people who visited the site and bounced ).

Also you are a marketing agency right? You create the ads like video/image ads for your clients? What would you say you provide to all these clients like the ability to create cool ads which convert or is it that you are really good with ad platforms or know little tricks on them?

I provide anything I can earn money on.

Be that ads, LP changes, revenue generation, new products, intro's to other business partners, etc.

I can't say I do "cool ads" or know "little tricks", I just know how to make "more money" for those who already know their market and have a valid product, but have hit a ceiling on their own until I come in.

Be that ecom, lead gen, affiliate, etc.

But, I do have 20+ years in PPC marketing, so there are some tricks I picked up along the way while being very good on the platforms.

Wait so does that mean you spent like WAY more than 50k and then eventually found winning ads and THAT is what got you 3-4x money back? Or is 50k like all of testing budget and everything included?

No, I spent $50k and that included testing, having failed campaigns, and winning campaigns.

I only brought this up because Biggy mentioned I had a $25 CPA and I assumed he "saw" that on the image I posted with one of those campaigns in the picture. Some of those campaigns were higher.

My comment was, he was only looking at a fraction of the campaigns I ran last month ( the screenshot would be 10x longer if I could capture them all ) and that one campaign was a new product we were testing too. And that also FB have very inaccurate numbers anyways on their UX to begin with.

 

[zak]

^That is exactly the shit I come to BuSo for. Gonna need to re-read it a dozen more times, but damn, just great stuff.

 

[miketpowell]

Are we just calling any business that makes money Arbitration now?

When I was buying FB and making affiliate commissions in 2009 THAT was arbitration in my book. Just me making ads in FB with single-page static LPs I hosted directly on AWS, didn't even use a domain just the AWS URL. Getting all revenue paid from a few networks.

THAT was Arbitration.

Having customers, customer service, and MID for charging credit cards, storing data, sending emails, and much more. That is called running a drop shipping business, and has been around for a while and certainly is not going anywhere.

 

[socialpatterns]

Are we just calling any business that makes money Arbitration now?

When I was buying FB and making affiliate commissions in 2009 THAT was arbitration in my book. Just me making ads in FB with single-page static LPs I hosted directly on AWS, didn't even use a domain just the AWS URL. Getting all revenue paid from a few networks.

THAT was Arbitration.

Having customers, customer service, and MID for charging credit cards, storing data, sending emails, and much more. That is called running a drop shipping business, and has been around for a while and certainly is not going anywhere.

It was traditionally talked about with regard to the investing world, and I guess technically any business that buys and sells for a profit could be considered arbitrage. However, as far as online strategies, I look at "arbitrage" more as buying something in one marketplace (eBay, craigslist, aliexpress, amazon, local store), and selling in another marketplace (ebay, craigs, aliexpress, amz, local store), to capitalize on the differences in pricing of each marketplace.

I would not consider finding a manufacturer in china and private labeling or finding a wholesale supplier and selling on Amazon, for instance, to be arbitrage. Why? Because alibaba isn't a consumer marketplace, its a marketplace for businesses.

 

[perry227]

Someone probably said this but this is arbitrage, to get into arbitration you need to be a lawyer.

I agree with the message above, arbitrage is when you buy something and sell it for a profit without adding any other value to the equation.

Private labeling is adding value, perhaps perceived only, but still value.

Arbitrage is much easier in brand new markets that don't operate efficiently, which is why it's getting very hard in e-com. Folks have made billions on crypto arbitrage in recent years though.

It is money made from thin air, but you have to find the opportunity yourself and have the skills and hustle to execute on it. The best arbitrage opportunities will be guarded like nuclear secrets, no one is going to tell you about one until all the easy money is gone.

 

[yuckystuff]

Someone probably said this but this is arbitrage, to get into arbitration you need to be a lawyer.

I agree with the message above, arbitrage is when you buy something and sell it for a profit without adding any other value to the equation.

Logged in to post the same thing, I was so confused by the wording being used.

 

[CCarter]

Lesson #2: YouTubing

The next lesson is YouTube. Content creators get a share of YouTube ADs once they enable Monetization.

Some of the basic requirements are that you need to be at least 18 years old or have a guardian that can handle Adsense (You'll need to sign up if you don't have one already). You'll need at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched hours on the platform.

Here is a quick instructions about it: YouTube Partner Program overview & eligibility

--

So there are 2 types of content you can create - original and reactionary.

Original Content

Lets start with Original. Original content can be about any topic, niche, or industry or focus. It can be helpful or simple for entertainment. The 4 content types to win over an audience is it should be entertaining, educational, informative, or inspirational. If you can hit 2 or more of the types of content you'll be able to keep your audience engaged. This was briefly talked about in the Polarizing Content thread of the Traffic Leaks Bootcamp.

You can create content about peanut butter like GaryVee said. I once had an idea called "The Honey Mustard Guy", where I would go to restaurants and review their flavor of honey mustard, if they had any. I would also review the food and overall atmosphere of the environment. Me and some former employees came to that idea since whenever we went out to eat I would order honey mustard with my food and if they didn't have any honey mustard I tended to look unfavorable towards the restaurant.

There are women live streaming themselves simply eating food, the topic is called "mukbang". Here is one lady's channel: Eat with Boki

Her channels had 2 BILLION, with a B, views. Her most popular video is her eating Spicy Boneless Chicken (42 million views):

There are also instructional videos like Knitting/Crochet - 27 million views for this single video:

There are gamers that just record themselves playing video games (this is me playing and testing an upload from years/decades back):

There are even channels that just show OLD commercials:

--

So with original content you can create help guides and instructional videos that last for decades. Review videos on products, services, or even walk-thrus. You can even walk-thru a video game if you want, as long as the topic is relevant people WILL watch it. You can play old video games like Super Mario Bros. on NES or modified versions of it like this classic - with crazy commentary (31 million views):

"WTF, there is no floor...?"​

Reactionary Content

You can also create opinion pieces on your favor topic or recent events. An example of something going on in the news or viral and add in your commentary.

That brings us to reactionary content. Basically this is one of the laziest way to do this, but you can talk about recent world or local events, recent viral videos. You basically are commentating on other people's original content. AND sometime those content creators will react/answer back your videos.

An example is this guy's channel: "Mediocre Tutorials and Reviews"

A ton of reactionary videos with his take.

So not only do you not have to be on video for you people with faces made for radio, you don't even have to create your own content if you want to bring some classic commercials back to life.

The key is look for things you are passionate about and can do for 1-2 years straight to build up traction.

Building a YouTube channel can be fast, overnight, or take time depending on your content type. Be willing to put 1-2 years into this and just keep going! It how Kevin Samuels got started, just putting in work and then eventually one video blew up overnight and the rest is history.

The interesting thing about the reactionary video angle is there is NO END to the content since it's talking about current events - and since some shit is always happening daily, it doesn't need to stop.

And then throw your videos up on TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook - and they'll gain traction themselves within your industry/niche/topic.

Video is really where people's attention is at and will continue being at. TikTok overtaking Google shows that people want to "SEE" because humans are visual. It's why I harp in on telling you guys to make sure you have images within your content. Video is simply the next evolution of how we communicate. It's really not the "NEXT", it's been here for 15+ years. Now the technology, internet speeds, and infrastructure is here so anyone can start creating content with the phone in their hand.

Just remember the 4 points - the video has to touch on one or more of the following: entertaining, educational, informative, or inspirational.

- CCarter

 

[TheWeeb]

Proof to CCarter’s wisdom

Just started this store on Etsy a few days ago. No excuses, just take action.

 

[CCarter]

Example of Brand Sponsorships:

There is a whole new generation of content creators making money on the internet in ways that most SEOs cannot comprehend, Invisalign is just one brand in the ocean using the TikTok attention:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1628950905843228672

Look for ladyintgebathroom (no that's not misspelled) on that clock App.

 

[wikibum]

There is a whole new generation of content creators making money on the internet in ways that most SEOs cannot comprehend, Invisalign is just one brand in the ocean using the TikTok attention

Good for them, but I had no idea what she was advertising to be honest. The text in her video is flipped so that would have been a waste of money on their end.

 

[CCarter]

The text in her video is flipped so that would have been a waste of money on their end.

That's a part of the strategy. Make people comment on "mistakes". In fact in theaters now some of the previews don't even show the name of the movie, forcing people to Google and search for it, making them "invest" by investigating, and now since there is some investment, they are a bit more likely to watch the movie.

When humans invest their time in researching something they are 100% of the time going to automatically trust the brand/person they "Found".

Example you see a video of a guy giving advice you like, but you can't find his name anywhere. You'll take 10-30 minutes just looking for that guy, his name, his social media, and when you find him, that "ahh ha" moment happens, and you unfortunately will immediately trust that person, since you invested time in finding this hidden gem.

Think about it, we ALL knew it was Invisalign regardless of her "mistake". There was a ton of edits and jumpcuts in that video. If she wanted to she could have easily mirrored the video on the iphone before uploading. It's done on purpose, it's next level psychology warfare of consumerism.

Back in the 1950s, commercials inputted 1 frame subliminal messages that your eyes could not see but your subconscious could see and process. It was so good it was banned. Obviously Coca-Cola was at the forefront of that.

Everything you are see on a commercial level is on purpose, even the mistakes, because it creates a conversation about the brand, like we are doing now.

 

[eliquid]

This is why I love PPC and never leave it.

You never miss out on trends as a PPC'r