What are the similarities between affiliate marketing biz and a house made up of cards? They can both fall anytime without warning. Yes, it may not take the same amount of time to set them back up because you now know how to but it will still take the same amount of effort to get it back up to the position it was before. And when it keeps falling constantly, it just becomes frustrating.
In affiliate marketing, once your campaign dies, for whatever reason, your income dies. Most times seeing that income dying just hurts. You could be enjoying the day with your family and friends or at work, only come back to see your campaigns were slapped beyond recovery and your source of income was stopped.
Take Google for instance - I was talking to a Google representative over the phone and I remember what she said to me. I called to find out what I’m doing wrong or what I’m not doing that my landing pages are given poor quality scores each time I put a campaign up, no matter how hard I try to improve them. She said to me, “as an affiliate, it is hard to succeed.” On the other hand, Yahoo! told me exactly what I need to do when they removed my ads for editorial issues. Is Google just that cocky or do they really care about the “user experience?”
Google isn’t going to hold my hand and tell me what I need to do to make things better because they have hundreds of advertisers lined up to take my spot. And then there are networks and advertisers. Sometimes your offers will go offline without notice. Other times, the network/advertiser will ask to stop the traffic because it is not banking out for them even though you finally figured out how to make it profitable. Basically, I have NEVER seen the potential of one offer because before I can even scale it up to its full potential, something happens. Either my campaigns are slapped or the offer is pulled. I just hate seeing income disappear so fast without warning!
After experiencing so many hurdles in the last few months, I started thinking about my business model. Is it the nature of offers that I run or is it that I do a poor job at everything because I don’t have much time for the business as I would like to? Whatever it is, it is really frustrating to see the income dying just unexpectedly. Basically, your business, your income and your livelihood is always in someone else hands-be it Google/Yahoo or the networks and the advertisers. They could flip the switch tomorrow leaving you scratching your head in utter confusion and anger.
I know in business things are never smooth. Perhaps affiliate marketing is like that too-a roller coaster. For some reason, I still believe it is possible to create a long lasting campaign and things are not so short living. It would be impossible for me to go full time until I figure out how to make my campaigns last long or figure out what Google wants to avoid constant slaps.
I believe that it is possible to succeed as an affiliate in spite what Google says. I’ve done it and seen it myself. Affiliate marketing has shown me potential and I’m going to continue trying to learn and grow my business.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. What has your experience been in affiliate marketing? Has it been similar to mine? I also want to hear from people who have gone full-time. Share your stories! 
-G
When advertisers don’t pay for the leads/sales, do you think the affiliate networks should come forward and do the right thing, that is, pay the affiliates out of their pockets?
I think all affiliates would agree with me when I say, networks are suppose step up and pay the affiliates the money they owe in a situation when the advertiser refuses to pay for the leads that were driven under the guidelines of the advertiser and the network. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of the affiliate to run around after the network begging for the money they owe. After all, that’s what networks are there for, to look out for the interest of affiliates. Otherwise we affiliates can just go directly to the advertiser and deal with this kind of headache directly with the advertiser.
I’m waiting for approximately $2,800 in payments from network-X (won’t say the name just yet) for one week’s worth of leads. The advertiser, who has done shady things in the past with others, now refused to pay the network for the leads I drove until further investigation. They claim that lead quality sucks. Funny thing is, I’ve been driving leads to the offer of last 2 months. Just last week they noticed the lead quality was bad? Why didn’t they say anything before?
Anyhow, I sent my affiliate manager the screenshots of my campaigns, which clearly shows that I’m runny ads for the same keywords they run. So in a way, I’m their only competition so far on search. And in some cases my ads show up before them. I belive, this is the reason why they don’t want me out there since now they have suspended their offer until further notice.
Anyway, I just want to be paid. I don’t care if they stay or not. This advertiser has been jumping from network to network. They were kicked out of Azoogle for stealing affiliates data and now at this new network, they are refusing to pay for the leads.
Affiliate marketing sometimes just gives me a lot of headache. Things haven’t been smooth for me lately. With offer dying without notice, this advertiser not paying, I’ve hardly seen an offer stay alive for more than two weeks in last two months, leaving me to scramble for a replacement offers. This month I did break my personal records and got up to $1400+ a day but it only lasted for 7 days. That was in the beginning of the month. But since then, I haven’t been doing much. I’m taking a break from AM for now. Hopefully I’ll be refreshed next month and start from scratch.
-G
May was a good month in-terms of revenue but not so good in terms of profits. In may, I saw my highest revenue ever done. 5k more than my previous record. Again, nothing extraordinary but okay nonetheless. However, the profits were not as impressive as compare to the jump in the revenue.
My Numbers for May:
Revenue: $22,893
Expenses: $16,003
Profits: $6,860
ROI: 43%
In May, I spent close to $15,000 with Yahoo. What I noticed is, Yahoo traffic is a little less in quality than Google, therefore conversions rates are slightly lower than what I use to get on Google. The reason for I think is, in Yahoo you can’t accurately target keywords like in Google. In Adwords, you can define keywords match types, however in Yahoo, there is no such thing as keyword match types, instead, you can either set you keywords or adgroups to “advance” matching or “standard” matching. Advance matching will give traffic from all related keywords in your niche for that keyword in your adgroup. So, your traffic could be coming from keywords that are not even in your adgroup and never intended for.
I did n0t spend much with adwords this time. Only about $250 this month.
I won a 4GB Ipod Nano in May:
On a positive note, this month I won a 4GB Ipod nano from Hydra. I generated little over $18k with Hydra and $4k with Azoogle. Hydra rewards its affiliates every month for generating a certain number of revenue. If you do 5k a month, you will get $50 Best Buy gift-card and if 15k, then you win a ipod nano and so on.
I should be expecting my ipod in a month or so. I need to ask my AM when they mail out the rewards. I’m not really sure.
Goals of this month:
This month, I was on track to generating $30k but due to lead cap restriction on my main campaign it may be hard now. I was easily doing $1000 a day so far this month and had planed to scale up the campaign. But then I was told to not generate more than x amount of leads for this offer. That’s what’s called a lead cap, when you are told not to generate more a certain # of leads a day.
This month my biggest hurdles will be dealing with the lead cap on my main campaign and finding new offers to fill the void. Another issue for me would be my credit limit. I only have 20k limit on my CC. But my goal remains to do $30k this month and we shall see how that plays out.
-G
Hey folks, sorry about such a late post. I know you must be thinking, does this guy even care about his visitors? Trust me I do. I care a lot about my marketing business, this blog and its readers. Some of you emailed me and asked me to post April’s earnings because seeing other make money motivates you to work hard and I absolutely agree. When I first started, reading other people’s blog and knowing how much they made motivated me. I hope my post inspires you to do the same. Never give up. Success is just around the corner.
So with further adieu, here are my numbers for April
Revenue: 15,331.44
Expenses: 9117.92
Profits: 6214.32
ROI: 62.16%
Summary:
This month I saw my first $1000 a day. It came after I found this one offer that worked wonders with the traffic I had. After the Google slap last month I was only doing $100-$150 a day with Yahoo traffic. Few days after the slap, I joined Hydra network and got a AM whom I explained what niche I was in and what kind of offer I was looking for. She found a offer that worked right off the bat and I was quickly back to $600-$700 a day and a week later I hit $1000 a day. I was running only Yahoo traffic.
Unfortunately, the offer went offline and I have no other offer to replace it with. So, I’m back to $100-$150 a day with my old niche. I’m no longer doing google search traffic either since Google slaps are becoming more frequent. Before a campaign use to last me good 2 to 3 months before getting slapped. Now, I would be luck if it lasts a week. I will change my marketing strategy just to please Google.
So far for the month of May, results are not looking so good. I may take this month off and relax. I’ve had a busy April taking care of some personal stuff and of course with day job. I think by next month, I will be more relaxed and have more time.
Tip of the month:
I will leave you guys with a tip that may help you start new offers and get your revenue up.
Tip: It’s very important to engage with you affiliate manager. You affiliate manager has access to stats like which offers are doing well, how much the top guy is making and so on. You can use this info to set your own goals. But if you don’t ask, you will never find out this info. So, it is very important to talk to your manager and don’t be afraid to ask them questions. Call them or hit them up on AIM.
Moreover, if you explain to affiliate manager, what kind of traffic you run and what kind of offer you want to run, they will help find it. They may even suggest new offer in new niches and give your tips. These guys are there to make you money so use them.
-G
Hey folks, I’m few days late in posting my monthly results this time. My time is been pretty much occupied with day job and other personal things.
I had planed to get into a new niche last month but had to delay the project because of some personal commitments. I did pay $1200 to get a new landing page done including content and copy writing but didn’t launch the campaign. I decided to wait until after May when I’m somewhat free.
For now, I’m just re-launching all my existing campaigns again from scratch. Google slapped my campaigns again at the end of March. Speaking of google slaps, Google tends to slap you much faster when you put a sign-up form on your landing pages.
After May, I’m going to be more active in my affiliate business, launching new campaigns, testing, increasing my earnings and updating and monetizing this blog. I need to start preparing my self to quit my job in next year or so. Not sure if I will quit when I get up to 100k a month. Reading blogs of other people who are quitting their day jobs, I’m seeing quitting your job brings other challenges like your health suffers because you work more hours, you tend to slack off at times then your business suffers. I guess it’s part of living and learning. But definitely, I would quit in coming years and will see how I handle it and the great thing about day job is, you can apply for one again any time
So here are the March stats.
Revenue: $14,504.98
Expenses: $7821.65
Profit: $6683.33
ROI: 85%
Reason for high ROI?
You must be wondering how did I get such a big jump in my ROI from last month? Well, previously my stats were not entirely accurate. I use to report my expenses in Canadian dollars and revenue is USD. My stats were reflection of my expenses (in Canadian dollars) subtracted from my revenue (in US dollars). This month I got a new US credit card and opened a new US adwords account. So, both revenues and expenses are in US dollars and stats are accurate.
-G
Where is the money going?
To be honest with you I’m losing 100s and 1000s of dollars with having to do exchange rate and paying conversion fee on my credit card and to my bank. The profits I make are in US dollars. But at the end of the month when everything is said and done, I end up with way less in Canadian dollars than what it says in my book.
Basically, I have a business account in Canadian dollars. The money I get paid is in US. So every time I go to the bank with my cheque or every time I get a wire, the bank charges me 2.5% fee for currency exchange in CND.
On the other hand, I pay my bills In Canadian dollars. I have a business CC in CND dollars, however I make my payments (everything except for Google Adwords) in US dollars. My CC company charges with 2.5% for currency exchange as well. So every time I get billed in US, I get slapped extra 2.5% on top on the amount charged.
Yahoo is pain in the ass. They don’t have billing in CND dollars. So, I end up paying 2.5% extra when they charge me. They don’t have pre-paid billing either. So, I have to fund my account first to continue running my ads. They require you to have 3x your daily limit budget in your account all the time.
Get everything in USD
For everyone outside of US, you need to open a US banking account, get a credit card in USD and get a new Adwords account in USD. Basically, do everything in US dollars.
I recently opened a new bank account in US dollars, applied for a credit card in USD and opened up a new Adwords account in US$.
Can you change the currency setting in your Adwords account?
Unfortunately, Adwords doesn’t allow that. Once you open an account in one currency, you can’t change it afterward. You will need to open a new account in your preferred currency.
Can I transfer my account history to my new Adwords account?
Again, the answer is No. With a new account you will need to build up history again. However, I must point out that, when you transfer your campaigns to your new account, domain history will automatically be transferred over, which is good. I was talking to an Adwords representative and this what he had to say about transferring account history and quality score from old account to a new account.
Adwords support:
It is possible to transfer your account keywords, ad text, etc to a new account. However, it is not possible to transfer account history information…While your quality score will start fresh, there are several factors of quality that will carry over and so will help you in establishing new quality score. These include: the historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group, the quality of your landing page, and the historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google. Consequently, while factors such as account performance will be lost, several factors of quality score will remain.
Is there a good USD credit card for Canadian affiliates?
The only card which is comparable to my AMEX card is the BMO Mosaik MasterCard. You can get this card in USD. You also have the option to choose either 1% cash back or Air-miles reward miles. I went with air-miles since I had airmiles reward miles with my old card. I basically switched my airmiles points from my old card to this card.
http://www3.bmo.com/mosaik/usd
-G
Marketing isn’t about just splashing a creative landing before your user’s eye. It’s about converting that user to a sale, lead or an action of some short. If you’re letting your users click away (without them taking an action), you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. Why would you let your users click away? If you can’t make them buy your product, why not take their email, so you can promote your products to them later.
It’s harder to convince someone to buy something at first try but if you can persuade them over and over by sending email follow ups and educating the user about the product, you will increase your chances of making a sale and will definitely make one.
I increased my revenue by building an email list
Early this year in January I added an opt-in box on my landing pages and starting collecting emails. To this date I’ve collected about 3k subscribed emails. I collect around 60-70 subscribers a day. I generate $20-30 extra a day (at least one sale) through these subscribers by sending them links to related offers in my follow-up emails.
Suggest me a good tool to build email list
I use Aweber autoresponder to collect emails and send follow-ups. Basically, you set up emails that will be sent to your email list as soon as someone subscribes. You can set up as many follow-up emails as your like with whatever intervals between follow-ups as you like. For example, I’ve set up my first follow-up to be sent right when someone subscribes and 2nd after 1 day.
How much it costs?
Aweber will cost you $19/mo. This is just a fraction of price comparing to what you will make back from your email list. They also have yearly subscription which costs $193/yr.
They also charge for hosting your email list. Once you have over 500 emails in your list, you will extra $10 a month and so on.
Right now I have 3k emails in my list and I pay $30 a month. However, I make at least one sale equivalent to $20 a day from my list. Last month I made little over $ 250 from my email list by sending them follow-up emails. That’s a profit of $220 a month.
As you grow your list your profits will go up as well. Imagine how much you will make if you have list of 100,000+ subscribers.
-G
Oh man, what a month. I had so much going on and no time to myself in February. I saw a Google slap across my entire account, had a bad a experience e with outsourcing of this new blog template (as you can see its not 100% still), had an interview for PPC coach position for PPC Classroom 2.0 and my full time job pretty much kept me busy.
This months numbers
First and for most, let me update with you with my numbers. Again, in February I did approximately the same numbers as last month. I was hitting 75% ROI until middle of the month when my campaign got slapped. I saw one my strong offers go. Now my campaign is literally hanging off this one offer which has history of disappearing and coming back. It’s very unstable.
Revenue: $14,9238.08
Cost: $8980.30
Profit: $5942.78
ROI: 66.18%
The only majaor difference I saw this month was my ROI was higher than previous month. Just Look at the difference higher ROI makes in you overall profits. To me higher ROI means lower cost (which is always good) and higher profits (this is one number everyone cares about).
In next post I’ll discuss how raised my ROI last month. I applied a new technique to promotional method and as a result I saw an increase in my ROI.
-G
=> This is a review post.
T3Leads.com is one of the leading CPA affiliate networks available on the internet for you to participate in.
T3leads.com is a pay per lead affiliate network that sells generated leads through a unique auction system that allows affiliates to maximize their profits. Publishers have their visitors fill out an application form (considered a lead) but the payout is not predefined because advertisers in the niche bid and essentially compete for the leads.
Generally all of T3leads offers are finance or business related and they are really great if you are involved in that niche. The finance niche is going to be very popular due to the recession as people will be looking for ways to make alternative streams of income.
At T3leads, they guarantee the highest conversion rates in the industry - ranging from 1:6 to 1:10, and high product leads can earn you as much as $30-$45 for every approved lead. Most other lead products pay up to $20 and if you run these websites well you can make some good money through PPL.
Signing up for T3leads is very easy and straightforward. Once you have signed up and verified your phone number though convenient automatic system you are given an administrative panel that is easy and simple to use. If you click on the header of websites and in the drop-down menu select “public websites” you will be given a medium to large selection of landing pages. These landing pages are obviously geared towards PPC-marketing. If you want to create your own website you can select “private websites” and you will be able to download a special script to install on your hosting. Affiliates need to send a few qualified leads before they reach “approved” status and become active affiliates.
As for payment, there are different options paid bi-weekly assuming that the affiliate reaches the minimum of $100. If you’re looking to promote T3leads, the program pays 5% on all leads generated from referrals for life.
Customer services are vital in affiliate marketing, so that you can get help quickly and avoid too much downtime. T3leads.com has a good support base and you can contact support team either by phone or email. Friendly affiliate support is always available, and ready with answers to any question. The support team can also help with technical problems.
Top affiliates at T3leads earn bonuses, as well. Some of the gifts that had been presented to affiliates in the past include products from Sony, Apple, and Geek Squad. In addition, every affiliate who earns at least $300 will receive a free ePassporte card, which allows you to have immediate access to your T3leads payments.
If your site focuses on the financial market and you are currently promoting payday loans, auto loans, debt settlement and similar T3leads.com can be the best solution for you. These niches are the most lucrative as we all know. Sign up with T3Leads.com and start making money.
I saw a few people posting their results for the month of January and I though I should do it too.
I know some affiliate marketers don’t like to post their numbers and some people might think of this as bragging.
Motivation: Seeing others make money makes you want to make money
Actually, when I think about it, this can actually serves as an influence post for the readers. This serves as a reminder to me and is motivational to people reading that making 5 figures a month while doing this part-time is possible.
My first notable month with revenue over 1k was April 2008. In July, I was doing 17k in revenues. My results for January are pretty much the same it has been since August-September of 2008. I’m still doing 15k to 17k in revenue and my profits have been in between 5k to 7k with one exception a in July 2008 when I had 10k profits that month. That was nice
My January results:
Revenue: $15,230
Expenses: $9595
profits: $5635
ROI: 58.7%
No, I’m not pulling this out my ass. These numbers are genuine. For those who might thinking they are fake, just save your breath.
Revenue postings by other affiliate marketers
I saw two affiliate marketers update their numbers this month. I’m subscribed to their blogs.
The first post I saw about monthly earnings is by Richard Bonner. I found his blog yesterday. I’m impressed with his blog design (Hey Richard, where did you get your template?)
His Jan. results were little over $30k. Check out his post.
http://www.richardbonner.net/affiliate-marketing-results-january-2009/
Another person, who posted their January numbers were Jonathan Volk. He is one of the bigger affiliates. He is reporting his biggest month at $300k. Check out his post.
http://www.jonathanvolk.com/how-to-make-money-online/record-breaking-month-over-300000.html
