My responses are decreased.
What is working now?
Al

The volume of effort is simply going to be in direct proportion to how much money you want to make. If I wanted to make 10 sales a day, for example - I would do a lot more than if I was only striving for one..:-) If I was going to promote that offer you have above without PPC, I would honestly do it exactly as you intimated above.

1)Articles, CL posts, Press Releases –> all hitting the root domain on a redirect to the affiliate offer

2)As I've mentioned before - I would also build a secondary wordpress blog on a subdirectory (i.e. top level redirects, on the secondary directory you are going to aggregate content and post the articles you using above to drive the traffic to the affiliate offer)

This gives you the added benefit of building a site that has value down the road - you get natural organic traffic for free, and you can automate a signifcant percentage of the blog building with RSS aggregation tools and of course, most importantly, you have your own content to boot from above.

CL traffic is generally less valuable so you will need to have more eyeballs to convert what article traffic will - and in my experience (and it's pretty extensive in this area) article traffic is a great lead gen - but won't convert as well as PPC on first blush.

The other thing you might want to do is simply swap out the redirect on the home page for an opt in, which sends them a free report, then forwards to the 28 dollar lead gen offer - the only downside to this is while you may get more names up front (always a good thing!) you are going to have some atrophy on the conversion if it's a form on the affiliate side - as many people won't want to fill out two forms in a row. ( but you have their name and can send them to this form later, as well - the name is always the most valuable thing in this process - and I do less of this than I should as well)

Using a straight redirect is dead simple and beats the brains out of these people telling you to build 5 dollar mini sites - most WON'T make 5 bucks a day in adsense - and it's much easier to register 10 99cent .infos - one stacked hosting plan and redirect until your eyes bleed and let the AFFILIATE sell their own stuff to your customer. ( by and large they will do a better job than we will) Buildindg the secondary blogs (on secondary domains) allows you to build an asset as well - and when you don't want to redirect anymore ( as no reputable will from the index) you simply put a different front page on the site that points to the blog, you've made your money - and now you have a completely legit content site that has, in my opinion real value.

On straight amount of content - just figure out how many hits it takes to convert one sale - then, how much traffic one article is sending - one cl ad - on press release, etc - and then multiply out to meet your goals - all becomes very predicatable and a function of simple math after you've got enough stuff "on the street" so to speak…you simply adjust to meet your budget.

Or, just forget the above and put it all on the Lakers in 6. Less work and far more exciting - even if you lose.

Question,

Lets say you've got a campaign in the financial market that pays out at $28/lead on a first page submit. This can obviously bring in some serious clams at that price per head, how would you go about maximizing your efforts with no PPC? Like how many articles would you be writing per day? how many ads in craigslist?

I'm taking a break from my niche sites and getting into running multiple high paying/converting campaigns, but I dont want to use PPC, and dont want to build a website, just get a good domain for redirect, do my kw research, and start plugging away…

"down in a hole… loosing my soul…" One of my favorite tunes of all time…

Per question #2 - they won't let you do it..:-) You have to either 1) redirect from the root URL ( they do allow), 2) send the traffic to a landing page of your own creation ( the traditional article marketing approach used by most - like this blog, for example would illuminate this approach in the resource box) or 3) use a link cloaking script that will essentially emulate the process of a naked affiliate link as you can cloak, use framed landing pages, etc which are harder to discern (quickly)and effectively are tantamount to straight to the affiliate.

(I recommend simply sending them to an opt in page, collecting the name, and THEN redirecting to affiliate landing page as this is kosher, effective and you can follow up with your own sequence as well)

Per question #1 - I occasionally use the landing page created by the advertiser, and if it's a proftiable niche and think I can do better (and plan on spending some time in the niche) i will make my own copy and again, using redirect - will send from my landing page to the order page on affiliate side (by passing several occassions of sales letters, opt in's etc)

With Article Directories - I work hard to follow the rules - especially with EA - they are a great source of FREE traffic and you don't want to poison the relationship with nefarious intent..:-) If i use an article blast service (ie - article marketer) I will occasionally use cloaked links straight to affilaite program - as once syndiation is finished I can swap out my landing pages en masse with the click of a button ( changing the destination link in my cloak adminstration)

Hope that was clear..:-)

I was curious to know if when you're referring to landing pages, are you using the ones provided by the advertiser/product? Or are you creating your own, and then directing traffic to the provided squeeze page?

Second question; Are you putting straight up affiliate links in your resource box on eZine?

Cheers!

Thanks for the recommendations! I was actually inquiring about another site I have though - more of a magazine style project. ( I know this one is messy!) I will drop you a note via email..:-)

greatings Wangjel

Good luck though - hope you and your wife are successful in your efforts to adopt!