Designing and choosing ads for my website(s) & spending choices

[Delyte]

So I'm currently very new to the internet marketing business, but I'm very interested, eager to learn, and most importantly, I am fortunate enough to have some time to learn. I recently finished getting my education in computer science, so I'm a fairly well-versed programmer at this point, but I'm interested in non-traditional employment, and the high ceiling on potential pay for internet marketing for creative/clever types seems like a good fit for me.

Anyways, I'm currently working on learning Ruby on Rails. I can't imagine it taking me longer than a week to get a solid website up, as Ruby on Rails is built for quick building websites with many features (Twitter, Hulu, Airbnb, indiegogo, kickstarter, etc are built with Rails). I know the standard, especially for newcomers, is to just slap together wordpress-style landing pages, but I figure with a little extra work, making things pretty and whatnot, ads should convert better, right? Or is that not necessarily true? I'm not sure how much effort it really requires to get good conversions, but with Ruby on Rails' style, aside from the learning time, making attractive websites with Rails shouldn't take more than a day or two, at least websites made primarily ad revenue. Additionally, automating (or at least making easy) the maintenance of these websites would probably help a lot to direct my time towards productive means.

Also, once I have my website(s) developed, I'm not sure what to do for ads exactly. I know I want to get into CPA affiliate marketing, so do I place ads for my own affiliate offers on my own website? Are there systems for that? I know lots of ads are centered around PPC, is that because those systems are more optimized for the browsing user's history, cookies, location, etc, or are there similar methods for creating (and optimizing based on traffic) ads for my own CPA offers?

Finally, my main limitation is spending. I know you pretty much need to spend money to make money, but there are also low budget campaigns you can run. I can spend a few hundred here and there, especially if I expect to get most (or more) of it back to test things out, so I guess my question is how much do I have to invest before I see if a certain campaign is worth scaling? Is it reasonable to spend $200 on a campaign, see that it does well, and then scale it up to $20000? Or does it mostly depend on the campaign? Which types of campaigns scale well, etc.

And just any advice, especially for someone with programming skills, would be very appreciated!

Thanks

 

[Delyte]

Definitely some interesting advice regarding WP vs Rails. I did some research, and WP seems like the better starting choice, but there are a few things to consider for myself.

Regarding Rails:
> I don't have to spend lots on Rails developers or spend a lot of time learning it because I have years of programming experience already.
> Learning Rails gives me the option of going into web development later, or the possibility of picking up some higher paying freelance work which I could feasibly use to fund my affiliate marketing investments
> Rails emphasizes testing, WP fails easily and tests are more of an afterthought. WP sites can be designed well and properly so that they don't fail often, but thoroughly testing that can be difficult. If a site is well tested, the traffic is more likely to convert well I'd imagine.
> There aren't plugins in the same sense of WP plugins, but there are large amounts of code I can rely on online, that I can get for free.
> Rails might take a little longer to build (e.g. requiring more testing, building your own SEO), but not by a huge amount, and the end product should be a little better. And ultimately building the site is only a fixed timeframe, and then the time spent monetizing the site is variable and potentially very long, so if you use a website for a long time, it might be better to have started with Rails because those small payoffs through things like unit testings will add up more over a longer time period
> Rails' focus is more on providing good user interaction and experience, and it may host content, but the primary benefit to Rails is that it can make user interaction a bit more enjoyable or better. So this is a small benefit in the grand scheme of things for marketing, but it could result in slightly better converting traffic. It's probably only worth it if that website is intended to be used for a long time.
> Rails hosting costs more, which might negate some of the benefits


Regarding WP:
> It's much easier and faster to start
> There are lots of plugins/themes available to make things easier to add and customize, however these plugins can cost money for things I could develop myself, or integrate from public libraries in the Rails community.
> SEO is built in, making it even easier to start
> WP is good for providing content, which tends to be what marketing gravitates building.
> WP hosting is cheaper

I think there's still a lot more to say about the comparison. The developer in me wants to lean towards Rails, but I think Wordpress might be the more practical platform in the end, especially if campaigns aren't meant to be permanent. What do you think? Are campaigns mostly short lived, or long lasting ventures? That's the one variable that I can't really resolve at my level of experience.

 

[Delyte]

That's a good piece of advice, and I'm definitely leaning towards WP, and perhaps Ruby later down the line.

Regarding a "home" website, I have a hard time understanding this concept and the purpose of such a page. I know that I need a website to more easily get accepted into CPA networks, which is why developing a site is near the top of my list, but I'm not sure if I should mainly be working on landing pages, or some kind of main page, and what that main page should be. Should it be a niche site that I build out? One that promotes some kind of services? Are my ad campaigns to be primarily landing pages that are subdomains of my "home" site or should they have their own domains? I have one idea of somewhat of a niche that I want to start with, but I just don't know how it will ultimately relate to most of my ad campaigns yet. Any advice is appreciated

 

[Dr. Forum]

I have been working with Wordpress for very many years and i will say that it is the easiest platform where you can incorporate the SEO techniques and achieve the results much easily. This is because of the available tools that make the work easier, talking of Yoast and the likes. I will also say that you may try other free sources and methods that will enable you cut don on the expenses. You necessarily need not to use money to make money, just be smart in everything.