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
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