Any chance of a mentor?

[ornum]

I'm going to put some cash into adwords (about $500) and finally give afilliate marketing a good stab. However, I know how easy it is for a newcomer to filter away their money, so I was hoping to find an experienced afilliate marketer to help me get started. In return for this service I can offer web development services using the following technologies.

PHP
MYSQL
HTML/XHTML
CSS
SEO
iQuery
Wordpress - Theme development and plugin development
Photoshop

I already have a website just about ready to go, but It is in a highly competative market so advice on this would really help me out. The niche I'snt carved in stone yet, so I'm ready to give whatever suggestions I can get a try.

Thanks!

 

[StackCash]

I would try to direct link some high converting lead gen offers to build your budget. You can't direct link on Google Search, but you can using Google Content image ads.

Research your niche. Look at what your competition is doing. Get a nice list of relevant keywords. Split them up into groups of 50 and make an ad group for each keyword group. Apply a daily budget (at least $50) and have an idea of what your max spend per keyword will be. Use the banners provided by your network as the image ads in each ad group to get started. Run the ad groups. Each ad that doesn't get a conversion and hits your max spend gets canceled. Replace it with a new image banner that you created. Keep doing this process until you find a winner or run out of money.

In the meantime, keep hammering out the SEO on your website. Get some natural traffic flowing. Once you have some steady traffic coming in, hit it with PPC.