Part 2: Own vs Rent

So, what was that first crucial change I made after that sleepless night? It started with a simple, yet powerful, realization about control...

Transaction To Transformation

My first thought was I could (just) add a pre-lander – a “bridge” page (basically a web page I control and own and can tweak its message very quickly) – to the whole flow.,

Between the traffic and the offer.

That way I’d have control from the traffic I pay and get before it goes to the offer.

So a few hours later…

I changed from treating my campaigns as “Hit ‘n’ Go” and the transactional marketing approach, where I was sending traffic directly to the offer…

to this…

So now I’d buy traffic sending it to a page I control and can tweak easily (the pre-lander).

This would allow me to show people what I wanted, before they see the actual offer.

So I could “warm the visitors up” first, sort of pre-selling them, on what they’ll see next.

This way they’d be a lot less people seeing the offer but those that do reach there, would be more “qualified”.

They would have been “pre-sold” on the message I wanted them to see before the (sales) message on the offer page.

And that approach alone got me the first positive results in a long time.

And while I was still long way recovering all those loses, I was excited I was onto something.

Think about this.

Think about the last few promotions you’ve run and how you promoted that offer (whether your own or others’ one) and whether or not was successful.

Anyho, for me it was for sure a step towards the right direction.

But I felt something was still missing…

Adding a “bridge” page was just step one (and got my first profit).

The real key was learning to OWN traffic, not just control it.”

I kept asking myself, how can I control traffic…

And then I remembered reading this from a friend in one of his posts…

“…Most beginners in the Internet Marketing scene, tend to think of the offers (or networks) as the “asset”; the most important part.

But if we dive deeper into the meaning of the word asset, you’ll notice that the part where we have the most (direct) control as media buyers (with our campaigns) is the traffic sources (e.g. Facebook ads, Google ads etc).

This is because when you treat the traffic as the asset you can then “plug ‘n’ play” style campaigns at your will and be on “greens” most of the time.…”

While this quote was directed mainly to media buyers and not business offers & creators directly, I remember thinking “that’s it! I need to think (and treat) traffic as an asset.”

I must have read this quote a dozen times.

I kept reading it and reading it.

But the more I did, the more I felt something was still missing.

I realized that I still wouldn’t control it (to the extend I’ve had in my mind).

Because I wouldn’t own it.

(Read this last statement a few times)

So I started looking for ways to own the traffic.

Stop Renting, Start Owning

Let me share with you how important – owning the traffic – is for me.

I’ll use an example from Real Estate as I think everyone can understand easily.

Think about the difference, between “renting to live” and “buying to rent”, for a moment…

When we rent, we pay some money for using the house.

The house is the asset that brings the money.

Not to us. But to its owner.

But as long as we pay the money, we are taking advantage of all the house’s amenities.

After all we pay for them.

Now how about when we own the house and we rent it out to others.

That house now becomes our asset.

And since we’ve already paid for it (to buy it), it can now give us money in continuity (from renting it out to others).

Right?

Do you see the difference?

Now we have total control of that asset (we own it) and we make money off of it too (by renting it out).

Consider what if we have 4 such assets that are already paid for and owned by us and we rent them out to others?

We get monthly recurring revenues from all 4.

Right?

And we still own those assets.  

But now, since we own them, later down the road, we can “fix” one or more of those up, “upgrade” them etc and sell them for a higher price than we paid to acquire those assets.

This way we’ve made the initial investment back (from collecting rent money before we decide to sell them) AND we’ve made a profit by selling them later on.

With me so far?

Now let’s bring this point home…

Driving Paid Traffic Directly Linking to any (affiliate or own) offer is like us renting the house (the asset) from someone else (the traffic source – the owner of the asset – the landlord).

We use it as long as we pay for it.

That’s it.

Our interaction is purely transactional.

And while we have some control on where to send it (& pause, start it etc), it’s not our own asset.

Because, it’s not working for us all the time.

The minute we stop paying for it, we have it no more.

Not to mention that the landlord (traffic source) can kick us out any time they want…

So if the key to bigger and more long term returns (including more control) is in owning the asset…

Why not just do that online too with our campaigns?

We know that we have most control in traffic.

We can send it where we want. We can start & stop sources. We can even select devices, browsers etc.

We just don’t own it.

Here’s what happened when I started to also own the traffic (the asset)…

At first, I begun having days like this…

And this…

And not too long after, days like this.

And in a minute or so, I will show you what I did.

But the key that makes the difference is in owning that asset; the traffic.

From Transaction To Ownership

There are many types of assets we can build as marketers.

Landing Pages, Prelander pages etc.

In this case, however, we are talking about traffic assets.

And that is the type of asset you really want to “own”.

And that is… Subscriber (email, push, pixel, bot messenger etc) Lists.

Building lists with people that are interested in what we are promoting/offering, we build our own traffic source asset(s).

Our own traffic source that works for us day in & day out.

And we put these traffic source assets, those Subscriber lists, to work for us.

The interesting thing is It costs* the same paid traffic as if we’re just sending it directly to the offer.

The best thing, however, is that the returns, both short and long term, far exceed those of just direct linking to an offer (see screenshots below).

And you can even use that traffic you now own for other (own and/or affiliate) offers.

Not even on the same vertical!

The Systematic approach

The example I’ll use is from building my own traffic assets in the Dating vertical.

Note that the vertical/Niche in this example is irrelevant. It could have been another niche like for a nutra/health related product, what have you.

The Method I discuss here is applicable to pretty much any online offer (including your own products and services)!

The screenshot below is from a few campaigns I run back in August 2019.

These were for Single Opt-in Lead Generation Offers with one of the networks I was working back then.

Take a look at the overall Earnings Per Click (EPC) which as shown above is ~ $0.44.

Just in case you’re not familiar with the term EPC, this is  metric that gives an indication of how much money an offer will make for us if we send 100 clicks (people to visit the page) to it.

Note however that most (CPA Affiliate) networks tend to count (& average) EPC on a per 1000 clicks.

For some, this is a good EPC. But let’s say this is average in the chosen lead gen vertical.

So just to make sure of the EPC importance, that EPC tells me (that in theory) if I’d send 1000 clicks (visitors) to those offers, I’d get $441 -and some change- in revenue.

However, focus on that top offer on that screenshot for a moment. Here’s the screenshot again.

That offer’s EPC is $1.67. That EPC tells me that if I’d send 1000 clicks, of the same quality (this is key), I’d get $1,670 in revenue.

(In case you’ve not worked out the offer conversion rate on the above campaign: 51 leads from 182 unique visitors = 28.02%.

That’s around 1 every 4 people that saw the offer, took the desired action and I got paid for it.)

Now I don’t know about you, but I’d take that $1.67 EPC (& 28% conversions) any day of the year…

And am willing to pay $0.60 per Lead(!) to get that. ($0.6 was my cost per lead. That means that I was paying 60 cents for every unique person sent to that offer.

The key here is that they were also my own email lead before they saw that offer. Note I didn’t even bother with the Cost Per Click. It was made irrelevant!)

I got that $1.67 EPC while I was building my own traffic assets (initially just an email list).

That EPC, for the small amount of traffic I’d sent, translated to just a bit over $300 for that day.

Just on that offer alone.

That didn’t include the 242 conversions from an exit-intent asset I was building…

At the same time.

With the same traffic…

And the combined money I made when I took this whole traffic asset building game to the max.

In this case 4 different Traffic Sources…

An Email List:

A Push Notification List:

A Facebook Pixel List:

And a Google Remarketing List:

The Exit Strategy

I call this whole combo of traffic sources asset building – The Omnifarious Method.

(By The Way – if you want to see a list of the tools I used, take a look here)

The most important key take away however is that am now in full control of the asset “the traffic”.

I own it.

No one can take it away from me.

I have 100% control of it.

And I put it to work for me.

You see, that change (and shift of mindset), in how I treat traffic, enabled me to go from results like this…

And a tracker view like this…

To days like this…

And a tracker view which was much more pleasant in the eyes to watch :-).

And remember I mentioned that once you own the traffic you can use it anyway you like and that it works day in day out for you for the long term?

I was actually using a variation of the method I’ve developed back in 2013.

Here’s a screenshot from an email I’d sent to an email list I owned, for an (affiliate) offer, promoting a software tool on JVZoo affiliate platform.

Now one might be tempted to think that this is all good but that was back in the old days.

As all screenshots given so far are from 2019 (& the one above in 2013!).

I left those dates in on purpose.

I wanted to be clear that this is not a tactic – a hack – that works for some time and then stops.

It’s primarily a shift in mindset.

It’s my key strategy.

And strategies rarely (should) change.

Especially if they are good strategies.

With that said, here’s another screenshot, from September 2021, showing the returns from “renting out” my own traffic asset to others…

…Using the traffic assets I’d started building back in 2019 (& still building today).

And here’s another screenshot from my ad tracker, when I started a new test, late March 2024 until 31st of December 2024.

And another, from inside the dashboard of one of the (in this case) affiliate networks I’ve worked with, showing weekly payments made to my account, using the same strategy and method.

This is something that works through out the years and not just one time.

And this is what building (your own) digital assets is all about.

There is a -massive- difference in actions and mindset of how one operates as a transactional marketer and one that builds their own “traffic” assets.

I call this collectively being an… “Omnifarious Marketer”…

I hope you’ve enjoyed my story/case study.