Blog Joe Blog! » Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing â€“ Dude where’s my Campaign.

joetinsley — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:30:46 +0000

Well Iâ€™m back with another minor status update. I have to say things have been quite interesting since the last time I posted. A couple of days ago I received my first EPN check, it was incredible small but hopefully only the first to many more.
I finally jumped out of my safe zone of running email and zip campaigns and ventured off to sale kitchen appliances. I must say I think I did fairly well. On this particular appliance I was selling the payout for a conversion was $11.25. I carefully selected a hand full of keywords and setup about 4 ads to rotate between. I try to make it a habit to create my campaigns and ads the night before so that all I have to do before leaving for work is un-pause everything. Well the morning I surprisingly had conversion within the first hour of running the campaign, my spend hadnâ€™t reached $0.35 yet, sweet! I thought hell I must have finally done something right because the day had just started. Well that was the only conversion I had that day for that appliance but my zips and email campaigns continued to sale, so overall it was a pleasant day.The second day, the exact same thing happened, I had an early morning conversion before my spend reached $0.25. What the hell, whoâ€™s behind the curtain pulling the levers.

Big smiles where on my face, I was excited and was anxious to get home so that I could try and figure out how in the heck could I increase my traffic volume? Well later on that day I received a notice that they where pulling the kitchen appliance campaign, G-Wiz!
Lesson learned, donâ€™t get too cozy with the campaigns your running thing can change at anytime.

Well here are my numbers for March 23, 2009

MTD Revenue: $88.40
MTD Spend: $28.01
MTD Profits: $60.39

Affiliate Marketing – Catch Up

joetinsley — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:30:28 +0000

A couple of days have gone by now. I have been pretty busy with some other projects. I’m finally getting around to finding a web designer to work on one of my websites that I have had for more than 4 years now. Needless to say I’m pretty happy about this. We haven’t talked about pricing yet so this could all take a turn for the worst. Wish me luck.

My numbers below includes the dates from the March 5^th through March 8^th. I basically let my campaign run none stop over the weekend to see what kind of profit I could produce. Friday was actually good Saturdays was ok, and Sunday and Monday was pretty painful. I’m not sure if that’s a standard trend for the weekend or not, it would be nice to know. A marketer could run campaigns from Tuesday through Friday if these days have been tested and proven to be good converting days.

MTD Revenue: $36.05
MTD Spend: $14.40
MTD Profits: $21.65

So according to my calculations I’m behind. If my goal is to produce $3.30 a day then by the 8^th day of the month I should be up to $26.40. I’m actually behind $4.75

Affiliate Marketing – Slow Day

joetinsley — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:30:18 +0000

I have to make this a quick post, it’s late and I spent too much time working on code for this other project I have. Today wasn’t one of my best. I don’t understand yesterday was pretty good and I ran everything exactly as I did yesterday. I think it’s about time I changed it up perhaps there’s no more juice to squeeze out of the campaign I’m running. Today wasn’t a total failure but regarding my overall goal I think my MTD Profit should be $13.20 instead of $9.32

Well here are my numbers for March 4, 2009

Today Revenue: $2.30
Today Spend: $1.22
Profit: $1.08

MTD Revenue: $18.25
MTD Spend: $8.93
MTD Profits: $9.32

Oh yea last night before I went to bed I check the status of my eBay affiliate account and saw that I made a $5.29 commission.. I thought was pretty cool. I’m not sure if I’m going to add it to this total yet. This test was really to focus on my Paid Media efforts.

Affiliate Marketing – Three is a crowd

joetinsley — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:30:36 +0000

I thought today was a pretty fantastic day. I started my day of running with 3 campaigns. One out of the three received zero clicks, yea I said zero clicks. This was a small campaign I created to push my bottle openers. Am I mad, nope didn’t make any money but didn’t lose any either. My second campaign was that test campaign that I spoke of last night, the one in which I considered would be out of my comfort zone. I generated a fair amount of clicks but I had to set my CPC rate to $0.75 to do so. The payout was $30.00 so I figured I would let it run until my spend reached $8.00. If I reached $8.00 without getting a conversion then I would shut it down and move one. Well guess what happen, I didn’t have the balls. That’s Right I got scared and pulled out when the spend reached $3.42. I don’t know, I’m a big chicken I guess. My third campaign I think performed beautifully. I spent a total amount of $1.63 but generated $7.90. So basically if I didn’t decide to run that additional test campaign today I would have came out pretty good. At least I would have gotten a head of my daily goal of $3.30 per day.
I have to say right now this is totally fun and I feel 100% confident that I will produce $100.00 in profit by March 31^st. I don’t want to sound cocky but perhaps I should have set my goals a bit higher… baby steps Joe, baby steps
Here’s my numbers for last night March 3^rd 2009

Today Revenue: $7.90
Today Spend: $5.05
Profit: $2.85

MTD Revenue: $15.95
MTD Spend: $7.71
MTD Profits: $8.24

Affiliate Marketing – FaceBook

joetinsley — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:30:53 +0000

Fell a little short on the second day; believe it or not it’s not that easy to spend money. Well spend money responsibility that is, I could always go in and set my CPC rate to match Google recommendations.Â But that wouldn’t be too smart.
Today I opened a Microsoft AdCenter account and placed a ad on Facebook. Both didn’t go well for me simply because I technically don’t know what I’m doing. The Facebook Ad initially got shot down because I had an extra space between two words. AdCenter, I just don’t get right now, I basically went at it cowboy style without reading any documentation and I probably wont get to read any until this weekend.
Last night before I went to bed I realized a flaw with the goals I have been setting for myself. I think it puts me into a position that makes me scared to lose money. And that’s actually a big flaw. You become successful in this game by testing different techniques and campaigns and with testing you’re going to lose money. So heads up, tomorrow I’m going to lose money. I’m not going to purposely try to lose money but I am going to step out of my comfort zone. What’s my comfort zone well it’s a CPC rate of $0.06 and below, their great but the traffic and conversions for me are very slow. So stay tuned in for tomorrow and wish me luck.

Today Revenue: $3.45
Today Spend: $1.64
Profit: $1.81

MTD Revenue: $8.05
MTD Spend: $2.66
MTD Profits: $5.39

Affiliate Marketing – Baby Steps

joetinsley — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:30:48 +0000

From March 1^st to March 31^st I’m going to see how much money I can make with affiliate marketing. I figure If I set a minimum daily goal of $3.30 I could consider myself successful since that would guarantee me a $100.00 payout. Of course I would one day want to make $100.00 per day but I figure I need to take baby steps before I aim to become a super affiliate.
So for March 1^st 2009 here are my numbers.

Today Revenue: $4.60
Today Spend: $1.02
Profit: $3.58

MTD Revenue: $4.60
MTD Spend: $1.02
MTD Profits: $3.58

Campaigns will run from 09:00 A.M.Â to 12 midnight

Hustle 2009 â€“ Final Cap.

joetinsley — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:37:00 +0000

Well the Hustle 2009 challenge has been over for some while now and I didnâ€™t quite make it to my goal.
It was a good run and I did learn a few things in regards to where I should place most of my focus.
There are a few programs that as you can see totally did not work out for me. Amazon Affiliate, Sedo, and even though I made a profit with Ebay’s Affiliate program I didn’t think it was a program I should spend a lot of time with.

Moving forward I plan to stick close to selling items on Ebay, selling my Push-N-Pop bottle openers onÂ Google Base and pushing products via Never Blue’s affiliate program.

Here are the final numbers from my Hustle Challenge

Goal $300.00, Final Numbers
Ebay Sales – $74.12
Ebay Affiliate Profit – $5.91
NeverBlue Affiliate – $12.35
Sedo Domain Sales – $0.00
Amazon Affiliate – $0.00
Push-N-Pop Bottle Opener – $10.00
____________________________
Total – $102.38

Hustle 2009 – Day 24, Quick Jab

joetinsley — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:30:49 +0000

It’s 5:20 A. M. Saturday the 31st.Â I’m checking my different accounts to see if there where any movement on Jan 30th. And there where a few. I made an additional $0.46 with the Ebay Affiliate and I had a increase of $2.50 added to my NeverBlue account. Again nothing really big but every little bit counts towards the goal.

Track record as of Jan 30th.
Goal $300.00, and only 7 days left
Ebay Sales – $74.12
Ebay Affiliate Profit – $3.98
NeverBlue Affiliate – $9.65
Sedo Domain Sales – $0.00
Amazon Affiliate - $0.00
—————-
Total – $87.75

Hustle 2009 – Day 23, Every Penny Counts

joetinsley — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:10:18 +0000

I have been on the road a lot these past couple of days so I’m looking forward to the weekend. In aÂ matter of fact I’m thinking about going into work early tomorrow just to get it over. I’m so looking forward to the weekend not just for the rest and relaxation but because I have a site to build and some additional tests that I would like to run.Â Lately the affiliate marketing tests have been coming out on the positive end. I mean nothing to quit my job over but it’s nice to have finally not lost money for a change. Don’t laugh when you see my numbers.
Yesterday (Jan 28th) I spent a total of $0.10. Yes that is correct $0.10. Basically I turned on my Google Adwords Campaign and forgot about it because I had so much going on yesterday. It generated 2 clicks but one of those clicks happened to convert @ $0.70, so I made a profit of $0.60, yea I’m a baller now.

Today (Jan 29^th) I spent a total of $0.30 and again generated 2 clicks and converted on one of them @ $1.25 for a $0.95 profit.
Here are some additional details

JAN 28, 2009

Clicks – 2
Spend -$0.10
Convert AMT. Â - $0.70
Profit – $0.60
IMP – 98
CTR – 2.04%

JAN 29, 2009

Clicks – 2
Spend -$0.30
Convert AMT. – $1.25
Profit – $0.95
IMP – 72
CTR – 2.78%

I opened and started a Facebook ad manager account, and I’m going to just say that I don’t know what I’m doing quite yet because it is totally not working for me. So I think I’m going to abandon facebook in regards to advertisement until I understand what I’m doing.
To complete this post I logged into my EBay Affiliate account to pull some numbers and it looks like I happened to have made $1.02 extra on the 28th, hell that’s better than nothing.

Track record as of Jan 29th.
Goal $300.00, and only 8 days left
Ebay Sales – $74.12
Ebay Affiliate Profit – $3.52
NeverBlue Affiliate – $7.15
Sedo – $0.00
Amazon Affiliate - $0.00
—————-
Total – $84.79

Hustle 2009 – Day 19, The wheels are spinning

joetinsley — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:59:23 +0000

Well it’s been a while since I have blogged about the Hustle challenge. Lately it seems like there’s not enough hours in the day to get all of the things I would like to get done completed. I’m working on a schedule to address this issue.
Well here’s what’s been happening since the last Hustle post. I was able to sale all of my items that I set out to sale on Ebay and thought the whole process was successfully. I generated $74.12 from my sales on Ebay. I mentioned in a previous post that my Ebay affiliate account made a whopping $2.50. Since then I’ve joined another affiliate program, ( NeverBlue ) but did not get anything up and running until midnight Saturday. There were lots I wanted to do to get started. I created a custom landing page and added some code to the landing page so that I could track its behavior. It’s important to me to at least have gained some knowdelge about affilate marketing after this challenge is over. The method I chose to drive traffic to the landing page was Google Adwords. So after doing some keyword research I loaded Adwords up with about 75 keywords. 4 or 5 hours within running the campaign I realized that only 5 to 10 of my keywords where really driving the traffic, so I pared my listed down. A couple of tweaks later and I was able to find what I call the sweet spot. That’s basically the perfect balance between CPC and Clicks. I hope this makes since, I’m not an expert. But what I’m trying to say is that I was able to produce clicks @ $0.14 and $0.16 per click. Oh forgot to mention the payout for a conversion was $1.25, so it was very important for me to keep the CPC low. Well to make a long story short. I ending up spending $12.69 and only made $2.70. I know what your thinking, G-wiz that sucks, but this was actually my best day ever, I learned a bunch. I don’t see it as a bust but as a learning experience and can’t wait until the morning to give it another run. Â This test brought up several what if’s that I would like to try with the next test. What if I just sent traffic to the conversion page instead of my custom landing page? Currently the way I have things setup a user would have to click on a Google Ad, then my page, then the conversion page. That’s a 3 step process to make a buck 25. By removing my landing page I will have decreased a step and added another layer of confidence to the user. What if I run my ad during prime time, 8am -5 pm, instead of on a weekend at 4 am, what will my CPC, and CTR look like then? Man I’m so psyched,Â If I nail this down it will open up so many doors for me. Hmmm it’s going to be interesting and I can’t wait.
until tomorrow..

Track record so for.
Goal $300.00, and only 12 days left
Ebay Sales – $74.12
Ebay Affiliate Profit – $2.50
NeverBlue Affiliate – $2.70
Sedo – $0.00
Amazon Affiliate - $0.00
———————————————–
Total – $79.32