Zero Friction Marketing Review – Part 1

This is the first part of a multi-part review of Saj Purkayastha’s Zero Friction Marketing.

First, before I dive into my review of this product, I’d like to give you guys a bit of background as to why I wanted to take this course.  As many of you know, I’ve been seriously pursuing PPC affiliate marketing for over a year now and in that time I’ve grown my affiliate marketing revenues from $0 to around $15,000 / month and my profits from about -$800 to +$6,000/month as a PPC affiliate marketer.

I mention my numbers and experience so that you have a basis for where I’m at in terms of skill level while you’re reading the review.  Having one year of experience under my belt (8 months full time), I’m not a total noob but I’m also not a “Super Affiliate” expert making 6 figures a month. 

Based on that you can gauge where you’re at compared to where I’m at.  If you’re still struggling to make your first $1,000 in revenues in affiliate marketing, some of the stuff I may consider “beginner level” or “easy” might be exactly what you need to learn.  If you’re making more than $10k/m in profit already, some of the stuff I may consider “intermediate” or “advanced” in this course, you may find easy.  So just keep that in mind while reading this review.

Why This Course Grabbed My Attention

There have been a lot of changes with Google and Yahoo lately that aren’t exactly “affiliate friendly”, especially when promoting CPA offers.  Many people have noticed their campaigns getting “Google Slapped”, while others have actually had their AdWords accounts banned.

A lot of this has to do with Google’s aggressive stance on not allowing “questionable” offers on their paid search, as well as “questionable promotion tactics”.  To stay on topic with this review I’m not going to go into too much detail about that, but I will say that most of the “questionable” offers that Google is referring to are those that utilize the “rebill” model. 

What that means is that they promote a product or service with an introductory price (usually Free) where you only pay for the shipping price to have the product shipped to you, and then if you don’t cancel, the advertiser simply continues to charge your credit card until you do. 

Now, personally I don’t see anything inherently wrong with that model of business as there are many things I purchase that way all the time.  When I bought my cell phone, I got a “free” phone and then they billed my credit card every month after that.  When I signed up for my Internet connection, my ISP gave me a “Free First Month” and then billed me every month after that.  My digital phone service I just got last month followed the same system.

I think the real challenge with these “rebills” is not so much the marketing model, but the fact that some have made it virtually impossible for customers to cancel their “free trials” for whatever reason.  This apparently pissed off a lot of consumers, which trickled down the line and resulted in Google not wanting those kinds of offers on their network it seems.

The challenge, however is that the CPA networks are currently FLOODED with “rebill” type offers as they are what’s working in the marketplace right now.  With the economy the way it is, most companies are trying to entice customers with any kind of “freebee” they can think of. 

People out there want free stuff, but at the same time a lot of them aren’t prepared to pay for what they’re really signing up for and they feel cheated later on when they realize that there is no such thing as a “free lunch” so they go complaining to the FTC.

Of course when affiliate marketers promote these offers using fake blogs (“flogs”) and promote offers with advertisers who purposely make it impossible to cancel a subscription, I don’t blame the consumers for getting pissed off.  But not all “rebill” offers are like that.

I’ve noticed a lot of new “rebill” type offers are now much more up-front with people as to exactly what they’re signing up for, and offering much better ways to cancel their “free trials”.  However, it seems like the damage with Google has been done and they’re very weary to allow anything resembling a “free trial” to pass onto their network.

This puts a predominantly Google PPC focused affiliate marketer like myself in a tight spot.  Almost all of the top CPA offers on networks are “rebills” and Google doesn’t want those on their network.

That brings me to why I wanted to take this Zero Friction Marketing course, because as Saj’s sales page mentions, he doesn’t focus on Google.  His course teaches three affiliate traffic strategies that don’t use Google at all:

1. MSN PPC Strategies
2. Media Buying Strategies
3. MySpace PPC Strategies

So that’s predominantly the main reason I was interested in this course.  I’m not looking to learn how to do PPC affiliate marketing, as I mainly already know how to do that, but I am looking to learn stuff about MSN and MySpace and Media Buying that I don’t already know.

Some of you may be looking to learn about CPA affiliate marketing generally so this may be even more up your alley.

Anyway, let me dive into the review now.

Zero Friction Marketing – Course Setup

The course is basically broken up into four main modules:

1. Module 1 – The Underground CPA Files
2. Module 2 – MSN – The Covert PPC Secret
3. Module 3 – Media Buying and Banner Ad Traffic Funnel
4. Module 4 – Mystery MySpace PPC Methods

Each module comes with a set of videos and reports / process maps in PDF format that you can use as a reminder after watching the videos.  The videos can be viewed online on the main coarse page, or they can be downloaded to your computer for viewing at your leisure.

The video’s are recorded at a high resolution (1068×552 pixels) MPEG-4 format and are essentially a screen capture of the person’s computer screen as he walks you through each step in the course. 

Both the sound and video quality on the videos is done very well so no complaints there.

In this first part of the review, I’m going to cover the introduction to the course and the first two modules as they are what I’ve gone through so far in the course.

Introduction to the Course

In this section I’m going to cover what you’ll see upon purchasing the course.

After you make your purchase, you will be sent to the main coarse page which has all the goodies on it.  Everything is given to you on one page at one time.  This is not one of those courses where you have to complete one module before you are given access to the next one.  You can literally download the whole coarse onto your computer before watching the first video.

Personally I really like that.  I like to organize my courses into folders and subfolders so that I don’t get lost and being able to downl
oad everything makes it easier to do that for me.  Here’s what my folder looks like after downloading everything:

A Word of Advice About Bonuses

As with most courses like this out there, there are a bunch of bonuses included in the course.    When you get the course, download your bonuses and put them in a separate folder from the rest of the course, but DO NOT start going through your bonuses.  Focus on the course you just purchased!

I’ve made that mistake before, where I get distracted by the bonuses and the bonuses lead me to other courses which I end up purchasing and then those have their own bonuses and it never ends.  If you purchase this course, then go through it first and then look at the bonuses after.

The Download Process

For the most part, the download process was relatively painless, although I would have preferred if the files were named differently.  Meaning, the files for the first two modules all start with a number, 1-7 for module one and 8-17 for module two.  Then for module three the numbers start back at 1 and go up to 5 and module four is 1-7 again.

If you download all of the files into one folder, that creates a big mess.  It would have been much more convenient if the file names started with:

1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4 etc. for module one.

2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4 etc. for module two.

3-1, 3-2, 3-3, 3-4 etc. for module three… you get the picture.  That way even with all the files in one download folder it would be easy to see which files is for what.

Also, it would have been better if the reports / process maps had module numbers as a prefix as well, instead of just the title.

This isn’t a big deal, I’m just mentioning it as something to keep in mind when downloading your files.  Download the first module and then go organize your files before downloading module two, three and four, otherwise you’ll have a download folder with a lot of files in it and you won’t know which is for which module.

Module 1 – The Underground CPA Files

This first module of the course really dives into the very basics of CPA Affiliate Marketing.

This module will be especially good for those who are totally new to affiliate marketing and especially CPA Affiliate Marketing.

The module starts off by explaining what exactly is CPA affiliate marketing and how it differs from other affiliate marketing models where you only get paid when a sale is generated.

The CPA offer model of affiliate marketing makes it possible to get paid and make money even when the consumer only offers as little information as their email address or zip code, compared to traditional “per-sale” affiliate marketing where a sale has to be made before the affiliate makes a commission.

Next the course dives into finding and getting accepted to CPA networks.  Although I’ve never had any problems with that, I know quite a few people find this quite challenging.  There is a whole video dedicated to showing you exactly what the networks will want to know about you, and the best process to go through for getting approved.

Next the course covers the 8 different types of offers you’ll find on CPA networks:

1. Zip Submits
2. Email Submits
3. Long Forms
4. Short Forms
5. Sales
6. Free Trial / Sales
7. Downloads
8. Pin Submits

This clarified a couple of things for me especially in terms of explaining a couple subtle differences between “short form” and “long form” type offers.  There is even one type of offer mentioned in there I didn’t even know existed.  The course uses a real CPA network to show you exactly how to tell which type of offer is what.

The next topic covered is how to pick offers.  Things like EPC are explained and then a 5 point quality score process is taught for picking the right CPA offers to run.  It’s a pretty good way of picking offers, although I take a much more intuitive approach myself.  I think I’ve been picking my offers using these qualifiers anyways, I just wasn’t doing it consciously.  If you’ve never picked a CPA offer though, it’s a good place to start.

Once you’ve picked you offer, the next step taught in the course is to choose which of the two methods of promoting the offer you’re going to use: Direct Linking or Pre-Sell Landing Pages.  Once again everything is explained as to how to get the links from the CPA network for direct linking and for pre-sell landing pages.

Next the course dives into the last two sections which teach you the best place to find domains, the best place to get hosting and how to get the two of them setup properly, as well as how to setup review type pre-sell pages and how to setup a WordPress Blog for your landing pages.

One final bonus video in this module shows you how to setup a company website for yourself to make it easier to get accepted into the CPA networks.  Once again I have this Blog, so that hasn’t been a problem for me, but if I didn’t have a Blog then this video would be useful for having a presence to show the CPA networks.

My Take on Module 1

This first module was basically a beginner’s course into CPA marketing.  For me personally, it didn’t have a lot of new information that I didn’t already know, but for someone who’s just getting started this is definitely a really good way to get you up to speed.

I wish I had these videos a year ago when I was first getting started.  It would have saved me a lot of trial and error.

If you’re a beginner, this is a really good module to go through step by step.  I went through it even though I already knew all the stuff and picked up a couple little tools I didn’t know about.  If you’re already up to speed with CPA Affiliate Marketing basics you can skip this module in my opinion.

The one thing I did not like in this module is one of the example pre-sell pages that is taught is basically a flog (fake blog), and from my understanding the FTC has been supposedly really going after these.  That video was recorded in April 2009 though so I think at the time flogs weren’t being targeted by the FTC.

Just keep that in mind while going through this module, so you don’t get too excited and start pumping out flogs and end up getting in legal trouble with the FTC or the CPA networks.  I know some CPA networks now don’t allow flogs as a promotion method.

Besides the flog example, I found the info in this module pretty detailed and complete.  If I was coaching someone today from scratch on how to do affiliate marketing, I would just give them these videos and tell them to watch them as a starting point.

Module 2 – MSN – The Covert PPC Secret

This second module is one of the three modules I real
ly wanted to go through. 

PPC traffic from MSN is something that I haven’t really spent a lot of time learning how to capture properly, instead focusing most of my time on Google.

Most “gurus” out there talk about how Google is the dominant player in the marketplace, but this course points out some interesting statistics and factors that I previously wasn’t considering.

Essentially, Google may have the volume of traffic, but does it really have the best conversion rates on that traffic at the best prices?  With most PPC affiliates largely ignoring MSN as a traffic source it could be the source of some really nice profits.

Being a Google user myself, some of the stuff covered in this module was somewhat new to me.

As an affiliate marketer it’s always important to remember that you are not promoting offers to someone like yourself.  You’re most likely going to be promoting to a totally different demographic which has different habits compared to you.

I already learned this lesson once before when I optimized one of my campaigns for Firefox and totally forget to check the changes I made in Internet Explorer, since I never use IE anymore.  Later on, after spending a lot of money on PPC traffic I realized that over 80% of my visitors in that one niche were using Internet Explorer!  What’s worse is that when I went to load up my site in IE, the page looked like crap due to some CSS issues I didn’t realize I had.

The page had looked fine in Firefox but it looked like crap in Internet Explorer.  Once I made some fixes, the conversion rates improved significantly for me.

In the same token, assuming that your audience is using Google as a search engine just because you use Google is mistake.  Just the other day my Dad was telling me how he likes certain aspects of Yahoo much better than Google for his searches.  MSN, along with the new Bing engine are also very popular with certain demographics.

At the end of the day, the main point to consider is that it really doesn’t matter how many people use a search engine or how much traffic that search engine can send you.  What really matters is how many of those people end up buying something.  If MSN traffic converts better than Google or even at the same rate, but is cheaper then it only stands to reason it could be a good place to build a profitable business.

The first couple of videos in this module go through some general background information about MSN and their PPC platform and teach you how to get an account setup with MSN.

Next the module jumps into how to organize your MSN Campaigns and AdGroups, how to configure your geo-targeting and time of day/week targeting, how to setup your links and budgets and a few other minor settings to get setup properly for a campaign.

Once you’ve got that mastered, the course dives into some ad copywriting tips.  I don’t care what anybody says, writing ads is an art-form that takes some time and a lot of experimenting to master.  You’re not going to master it from watching a couple of videos on the topic, but this module does give you some good tips to get started.  Remember, you don’t have to be the best ad writer to make money as an affiliate.  You just have to be better than most people which honestly isn’t that hard.  Most ads out there are crap and people never split test them.

Keywords is the next thing covered in this module.  This is where the course taught something totally different from what I’m used to.  The strategy he uses for picking keywords is totally different from what I learned from PPC Classroom and other programs.  I don’t want to give away what’s taught in the course, but let’s just say that you don’t need any fancy keyword tools that cost a lot of money, and you don’t need to be bidding on thousands of keywords.

The next two parts of the module covered dynamic text insertion and the content network, and I just skimmed through these as I already know how to do that on MSN.  For those of you who don’t know the difference between the Search Network and the Content Network, you’ll want to pay attention here so you don’t end up bidding too high for your keywords.

The last big section in this module dives into “Precision Tactics” which really just teaches how to setup your campaigns for keyword level tracking.  This section really wasn’t very useful for me as I use Tracking202 for all my campaigns to track everything to the keyword level detail, so I wouldn’t set my campaigns up the way it’s taught in this video.  It shows a method of keyword level tracking using subID’s that is simple and it will work, but it exposes your keywords to the networks you’re running with.

Some people don’t care about that too much, but I prefer the ability to mask my keywords and to get way more accurate tracking from Tracking202.

My Take on Module 2

Once again, almost everything taught in this module I already knew so I didn’t really get a lot of new information from this module.  It’s mostly targeted towards people who are just starting out.  I wish I had these videos a year ago when I was just starting out, as it would have saved me a lot of time.

The two main things I took away from this module are:

1. The philosophy of using MSN as a CPA traffic source.  Most gurus out there kind of play down the MSN platform, saying that Google gets way more traffic.  However, I now realize that it’s not always traffic that matters, but the type of traffic.  I won’t know for sure until I run some tests myself, but I’m definitely going to invest more time into learning how to use MSN search better as well as the new BING engine.
2. Even though I didn’t personally learn any new techniques or strategies for setting up campaigns in MSN search, the fact that I knew everything being taught in itself is confidence boosting.  Sometimes it’s not so much what you learn, but rather the confidence of knowing that what you already know is enough can be very valuable.

If you’re already an affiliate at the same level where I’m at more or less, you’ll probably already know most of which is taught in this module.  However if you are at the level I was at a year ago, just getting going, this module will save you a lot of time – and money on trial and error.

Summary of the First Two Modules

The first two modules in this course were definitely thorough enough to bring a beginner up to speed really quickly.  There are a lot of time and money saving tips and processes taught that I had to spend a lot of trial-and-error time and money learning myself since these videos weren’t available a year ago. 

My only criticism form Module One would be that a flog (fake blog) landing page method is taught without warning the student that those may be subject to new rules and guidelines from the FTC and some of the CPA networks.  However, that video was created back in April 2009 which is before the FTC came down hard on Flogs. 

As far as Module Two is concerned, the only thing I would have liked to have seen is a lesson on how to use a software like Tracking202 to mask your keywords from the networks and to get more refined keyword level tracking.  I understand that it might be a little bit above the skill level of most beginners, but I still think it’s something everyone should learn.  Of course if you don’t care about masking your keywords from the networks, then this really doesn’t
matter.

All in all, I’m pretty impressed with the quality of the material in the first two Modules.  I don’t think I’m the perfect target audience for them as I already know most of the stuff being taught, but for affiliates who are still trying to crack that first $1,000/month in income from affiliate marketing, this course would probably be perfect for you.

Next I’m looking forward to the next two modules on Media Buying and Myspace PPC as those are two areas I haven’t ventured into at all yet.  I’m sure it’s not rocket science, but a this point in my affiliate marketing career, anything that saves me time is valuable and I think the next two modules will do that for me.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this review coming soon…

In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about Zero Friction Marketing simply Click Here or follow this link: Zero Friction Marketing

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