alright let’s talk about some eternal advertising principles that are gonna make you better with paid traffic number one trust the data this is pretty self-explanatory but it can help to understand a little more of how your brain works basically if you read or know anything about statistics and big numbers our brains are not good at big numbers so you should always trust the data more than your own instincts you should trust the data more than your best guess as to what people might respond to you should always you should just always trust the data it’s looking you right in the face it tells you what is the truth you may have opinions you may have guesses you may have educated guesses you may think you know as I do often that you know what you’re talking about in a particular realm and then the data will show you otherwise so always trust the data just look at what works best and go with that instead of having any opinions remove opinions from the equation your opinion doesn’t matter my opinion doesn’t matter the best you know expert on the planet doesn’t matter if it doesn’t get the results don’t trust it just trust the data trust the results another thing especially with paid traffic that we really need to reiterate many times is that with paying for ads there is no wasting money so many people are so worried about wasting their money I hear so many people grump and complain that you know thirty dollars down the drain ten dollars down the drain whatever like you know somebody recently just said that you know they tried being ads basically and they spent you know $10 $20 $30 whatever and they were like almost it sounded like they were gonna go go try to like you know storm the offices of Bing and in assault them for having stolen $30 from them when really Bing did exactly what being they would do they gave you a shot on their platform they allowed you to communicate with you know for that $30 he probably reached thousands and thousands of people what a powerful platform that he did not build being built that platform and they’re allowing him access to their users that he has no right to other than to pay for it and so it just cracks me up when people get so mad about wasting money but it’s it’s your responsibility to understand what you’re doing you know that there is no wasting money on on being you’re always learning and there’s no wasting money generally in ads you’re always just learning so this is the eternal advertising principle you’re not wasting money you’re buying data I learned this from the very first paid traffic course I ever took many years ago and I just see it pop up so many times in it it will save you so much anguish and frustration if you can just accept this there is no wasting money you’re always just buying data if you spend $10,000 on an ad that you know gets blasted out to a an audience that is not receptive to your message that was not that’s your fault you know you you chose to do that and here’s the here’s the flipside it’s not about blaming yourself or whatever that’s really not the direction I want to take this what I’m trying to say is that you just learned you spent ten thousand dollars to learn what audience definitely doesn’t respond to your message so there is always a positive side to buying traffic you’re always learning what does and doesn’t work and the goal is to you know get better and better at learning what works and getting rid of the things that don’t so don’t think of it as wasting money eliminate that phrase from your mind if you feel if you hear yourself thinking it or or saying it just remember oh yeah that’s not a useful phrase for me anymore I’m always just learning I might spend a lot of money on learning something that doesn’t work you know and that’s that’s part of the game so you want to do this game for a reason you think it’s fun I think it’s fun and just these are the rules of the game you know if you if you the faster you learn this the easier everything will be because you will see that it’s true I mean you’re you’re not wasting money ever yes so you’re investing in learning what does and doesn’t work and everything is always a test markets don’t remain the same people don’t mate remain the same there are sort of eternal principles as we’re talking about here but this has been true if you want to check out the earliest version of this concept that at least I know of you can check out Claude Hopkins scientific advertising there’s a great book from the early 1900’s late 1800s from basically the guy who invented coupons because he realized the value of testing things and he knew that no market no product no public perception is ever going to stay the same so he always needs to be testing so that’s what he used coupons for is as a split test he would test two different coupons with different copy on them and whichever one brought in the most sales he would then move that to be the control and he would run that coupon versus another one and he was always testing so just remember that everything is a test in marketing and in business at least in marketing never get to you know if you’re doing affiliate marketing offers come and go offers will work really well for a while and then they’ll start to die out and then a new offer will come and you know copy will work really well and then die out and there are certain principles that are always true but at the end of the day everything is always a test and also everything can always be improved it may or may not be worth your time to improve improve it however much you can but everything can always be improved so keep that in mind another eternal advertising principle that will save you probably years is to always remember to start by modeling what works before getting creative you may or may not be a genius marketer it doesn’t really matter even genius marketers even Dan Kennedy one of the best marketers on the planet I just recently listened to a talk of his and he said that you know he can think that an advertisement or a campaign is going to work extremely well but he always tests it against two or three or four other ones just in case and you know in this particular talk he said you know the one that I just recently did I’m I think he said I’m the highest paid marketing consultant in the world and I think he you know does that intentionally and I believe him he is he’s probably the greatest you know marketer alive and so he’s very well paid for his time and they pay him to make five guesses basically they don’t pay him to know for sure exactly what to write in the in the copy they pay him to be able to guess really well and even then he still has to try five different variations and he said that the one that he thought was the worst actually performed the best so going back to always trust the data no matter who you are even if you’re dan freakin kennedy you always want to you know everything is always a test everything can be improved and don’t trust your instincts above the data so start by modeling what works that’s going to help you so start by looking at what’s working in that particular niche or if you’re trying to sell a certain product look at how other people sell that product what are the pain points they talked about what are the you know aspirations that that market has what are the what do the images look like that they use to represent things what is the price model you know so always start by modeling what works before getting creative and trusting your your instinct or your creativity even if you’ve read a million marketing books all right the next one is averages so I’ll probably mention this a lot but what you’re looking for when you’re doing paid traffic if you’ve ever run a decent campaign for a long time you know that it’s all about the averages it’s about the you know daily average the monthly average everything in paid traffic is about averages the cost per click is an average cost per click some of the clicks that you bought if you if you bid 30 cents some of the bids that you bought are at 30 some of them were at 5 and somewhere in the middle is an average cost per click of 20 so you know but each individual click was a different price but it all comes together into an average if you have an average cost per acquisition of 30 dollars that means sometimes you paid 300 to get that cost to get that conversion and sometimes you paid a dollar but altogether it a virgin to $30 cost per acquisition if you track a campaign over months or years as I have had the opportunity with clients then you get to see that it’s up and down it comes in waves there are things like market you know shifts like for example we’re about to be in q4 which is a big market shift into e-commerce so you could see that on average a store you know an e-commerce store might make $1,000 a day but if you look then most of the month most of the year it’s losing money and then right at the end it spikes up and it’s making ten twenty thousand dollars a day so as an average you know over the year it made a thousand dollars a day but there were days and weeks and months when it wasn’t making a thousand dollars a day it was losing money or it was only making you know breaking even or whatever so just keep in mind the averages are very important and this goes back to event versus process you know process thinking is going to look at the averages and say okay well I had a really rough week there where I was losing money every single day but I guess when I look at the average of the month I actually made you know $2,000 profit okay cool so it’s still a winner but if you would have given up in that event in the week then you wouldn’t have gotten you know to the success of the average so this will make a lot more sense the more campaigns you run but just keep in mind that averages are very very important and they’re kind of like the when you’re dealing with paid traffic you want an average cost per acquisition of $30 that doesn’t mean your every single day all day long going to be getting $30 cost-per-acquisition that’s almost impossible to happen I don’t think it is possible realistically sometimes it’s gonna be 60 sometimes it’s gonna be 10 but if you as long as the average is 30 then you’re good if your target acquisition is less than 30 so same with you know click-through rates they’re gonna be averages they’re gonna be changing evolving but you’ll look for patterns and trends just pay attention to averages keep them in mind and hopefully these eternal advertising principles will be very helpful for you in your paid traffic journey