Zero Friction Marketing Review – Part 2

This is the second part of my review of Saj Purkayastha’s Zero Friction Marketing.  If you haven’t already, make sure you read Part 1 first.

In the first part of my review I went over a brief introduction to the course and then covered the first two modules – Module 1 – The Underground CPA Files and Module 2 – MSN- The Covert PPC Secret.  I was pretty impressed with the quality of the first two modules, however they mostly covered topics I already knew about.  It was really the next two modules that I was really looking forward to.

Now I’m going to dive into those next two modules in the program.

Module 3 – Mystery MySpace PPC Methods

This module dives into PPC advertising on MySpace.  You can start advertising on this social media site for as little as $5 per day which makes it a good platform for testing with a small budget.

The module first dives into explaining exactly what MySpace is and how it works for those who aren’t familiar with it.  Then it goes through and shows you how to find the types of CPA offers that will work best on MySpace.  There are certain types of offers that will work well on MySpace and there are also ones that will probably fail miserably.  Knowing which ones will probably work and which ones won’t is very important and is covered in this module.

There’s definitely a totally different psychology in advertising on sites like MySpace because the people who are vising these sites are not usually looking for a product or service when they see your ad.  It’s not like adverting on search engines where people are actively searching for a solution to their problem.  When you advertise on sites like MySpace, you are essentially interrupting and catching the person by surprise and offering them something they weren’t really looking for.

To be successful at this, you need to use a specific process for not only picking but also targeting your ads at a very specific audience.

Luckily, MySpace seems to have a very sophisticated system for targeting your audience.  You can select very detailed demographics and target people in very specific groups to make sure you are not showing your ad to the wrong audience.

This module goes through everything from teaching you all about MySpace, how to pick the right CPA offers to promote on MySpace, how to specifically target the right audience on MySpace, how to setup your campaigns properly and how to track your profits.

My Take on Module 3

I was actually quite excited to try out MySpace advertising after going through all the training in Module 3, but then when I went to sign up for MySpace I found out that they currently don’t allow Canadian advertisers on the network.  This really sucks because it means I can’t do anything on that network right now.

So, if you’re a non-US resident, be aware that as of right now I don’t believe MySpace is accepting advertisers from other countries.  The training is still good, but you just might have to wait until MySpace opens up their doors to other markets.

Module 4 – Media Buying and Banner Ad Traffic Funnel

Media Buying has recently been talked about more and more by affiliate marketers due to the increasingly strict advertising guidelines of search engine platforms like Google, Yahoo and MSN.  Essentially, what media buying allows you to do is to bypass these search engines all together and just go straight to the source and purchase advertising on websites directly.

I believe this is actually a very good strategy because many good quality websites have abandoned the Google AdSense program in exchange for doing their advertising manually.  What that means is that when you create an affiliate campaign and launch it on the content network, you’re missing out on all the websites out there which aren’t using the AdSense program for their advertising.

For example, I stopped using AdSense a while back but do offer advertising on my website directly.  There are millions of Blogs out there who are doing the same thing.  Actually, even if a Blogger has AdSense installed you can still contact them to purchase direct adverting from them in most cases since they’ll usually welcome the extra boost in income.

The big difference in media buying directly from a website is that you’re usually purchasing advertising on a Weekly, Monthly, Yearly basis and in some situation on a CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) basis.  Unlike a CPC (Cost Per Click) basis where you’re only paying for actual clicks, this can be a bit more risky if someone doesn’t end up clicking on the ad spot banner you purchased.

This is where the art of media buying comes into play.  It is a risk/reward situation.  You are going to need to set aside a budget for testing and take some risks purchasing advertising space on certain websites.

Normally, in situations like this where someone was able to purchase advertising on a website based on a CPC basis OR simply purchase a banner, the best you could hope for in terms of getting a “deal” on the advertising space would be to be able to cut out Google AdSense as the middle man.  Meaning, hypothetically speaking if you are using Google AdWords to purchase content network adverting on a website and your monthly cost in clicks is costing you $100 for example, it could be possible to purchase the same spot directly from the website owner for $75 as an example because obviously Google is taking a cut on that $100/m before paying them.

If that was the only different between taking the two routes, it really may not be worth the hassle to try to secure advertising spots like this just to try to cut out the middle man.  The risk of purchasing advertising space without a potential return would outweigh the cost reduction benefit.

However, there is another factor involved here that I believe makes media buying worth the risk.  That factor is called the “laziness factor”.  I believe the media buying market is not efficient.  What that means is that unlike the stock market where prices of stocks are usually fairly close to the actual value of the company, advertising space on websites is often WAY out of line in terms of its real value.

Some websites are selling advertising space for way more than it’s worth, while others are selling it for way less than it’s worth.  If you learn this game, you could easily pick up advertising spots for $10-$50/month which end up making you $500-$1,000 in profit.  Of course there are risks involved, but the opportunities are there.  Just remember that the more “work” that’s involved, the higher chances that someone is too lazy to do it, so it could be a good opportunity.

For example, if you visit a website and you need to contact the owner to purchase advertising, versus just targeting their site via the Google content network, most people are too lazy to do that so it can be a good way to get a good deal.

Getting back to the Zero Friction Marketing course, what this module teaches you is how to find CPA offers and how to match them up to the right websites.  You need to learn to identify the target market for specific CPA offers and then how to match them up with websites that attract that specific target market.

My Take on Module 4

This was the most informative module for me.  The first two modules pretty much covered stuff I already knew, and Module 3 covered MySpace which I can’t advertise on right now due to being Canadian, so this was definitely the one module packed with stuff I could immediately take and play with on my own.

Zero Friction Marketing Final Review

It’s actually quite interesting doing a review of a product like this.  Normally I speed through stuff like this when I buy it to find the golden nuggets and then apply them to my business, but in this case I went through all the modules in detail so that I could write this review.  Doing that was actually quite beneficial because I learned a bunch of stuff that I would have skipped through if it wasn’t for writing this review.

There are a couple of “downsides” that I will say about this course first.  Firstly, be aware that whenever you’re dealing with affiliate marketing and especially CPA offers you must stay on top of what’s new in the industry.  A course like this is perfect for teaching the basics and fundamentals of making money via CPA offers without using Google, but the industry changes so quickly you need to stay on top of things.

For example, the first module uses a fake Blog (“flog”) as an example of a pre-sell page.  As I mentioned in the first part of my review, I wouldn’t recommend resorting to that kind of pre-sell process because it’s not only unethical but also most probably illegal.  The recent lawsuits launched by the FTC and celebrities like Oprah and Dr. Oz are examples of why you shouldn’t blindly follow what everyone else is doing.  Learn from other affiliate marketers and systems, but always use your business smarts and do what’s right.  It will pay off in the long term.

So, that’s the first thing I would say is a downside in this course.  It’s teaching a pre-sell process that could get you in trouble.  But, there are many other ways to pre-sell people so I wouldn’t dismiss the whole course just for that one little part.  The second thing is that I think the pitch for this product oversells the MSN search engine as some kind of magic bullet that could make you a pile of money and that’s been purposely hidden from you by all the “Guru’s” out there.  Don’t get me wrong, advertising on the MSN search engine is definitely worth learning, especially now with Bing being brought into the picture but I don’t think it’s this massive goldmine that everyone’s ignoring.

I’ve been advertising on MSN for a year now with mixed results.  Some campaigns and keywords do better than others, but I haven’t experienced the “goldmine” personally.  I though that the MSN module might teach me something new that I wasn’t doing already, but it pretty much covered all the stuff I was already doing.

Having said that, I really liked this product.  I think it’s definitely worth the $77 it’s selling for, and it would have definitely been worth it for me to purchase this product a year ago when I was still just getting started.  I’ve wasted way more money and time learning some of the exact same strategies this course covers.  If you’re looking to get into the affiliate marketing industry, I think it’s a good investment to learn from a course like this.  You can’t really go wrong with a $77 price tag and a 60 Day Money Back Guarantee.

To learn more about this product or to pickup your own copy, simply follow this link:  Zero Friction Marketing

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