How easy it would be if I could say, a doctor, lawyer, engineer, IT consultant, architect, etc … but working as an affiliate is kind of vague isn’t it? When explaining it, I usually refer to amazon, as they were one of the pioneers of affiliate programs. I explain to them when they are surfing the web and they see an amazon book on a website, well if they click on that book it leads them to amazon, and if they buy, the website owner gets a commission etc… If that doesn’t work, then I will talk about one of the myriad of offline referral type companies and referral commissions, refer a friend to your bank = get $25, car insurance referral = get a free gas card, etc…

That being said, I still have to answer the question, What I do for a living. I’ve used the following in describing my profession:

• I’m an affiliate marketer
• I sell things online
• I manage websites
• I own an online media company
• I own a home business
• I’m an entrepreneur
• I own an internet business

I’m ready for a new one now, so if you have any ideas, share.
(and no not a spammer )

In relation to the last post, google credited my account, THANK YOU!

It’s simple to use, just enter your core keywords into digg and hit search. The most popular headlines that match your phrase come up. This is definitely not an exact science and is not a piece of software that will spit out perfect ads for you every time, but it will definitely get your juices flowing and make you more creative. Feel free to play around with the advanced search features as well.

For example take ‘weight loss’, below are 7 of the top 10 results given:

Notice anything special? 6 of these seven all have numbers in their headlines … Hmmm that must be important. Anyways, just wanted to throw this out there. I’m sure some of you can use this. You may also want to check out my post Ad copy: rational vs. emotional.

I know there are a handful of other tools on the web that are similar to help you out with ad copy, feel free to share if you have any.

Well, I woke up this morning to find out I was over $700 in the hole! In my rush to finish I forgot to disable the search network as this was suppose to be a content only campaign. That little check box cost me a pretty penny. I hate to lose money, so any amount is not fun.

Yeah I could have had a lower budget, but content is usually slower to be approved so I figured by the time I wake up it would have just got going. Unlike search where it is usually pretty fast for me.

Moral of the story is don’t get sloppy when launching campaigns. I think I’m going to write up a pre-launch checklist just because of this as there are a handful of things that should be checked.

1. Start Small
If you are just starting out, don’t expect to become the 800 pound gorilla in your niche the first week. I’d suggest picking a smaller niche and getting a profitable campaign under your belt first. Then you can tackle the ringtones, dating, and financial offers. Also, build your campaigns out over time, add a few hundred keywords a day, to get the feel of how to manage the offer. Dumping 20,000 keywords into a campaign will just get you frustrated, not to mention a huge CC bill.

2. Do Your Research
I think one of the most overlooked keys to being a successful affiliate is the research. The niche, competition, offers, keywords, landing pages, etc… This can really make or break you. Spend some time going over each component of the offer. As you get more experience this step gets easier and quicker.

3. Split Test
You’d be amazed at how just the smallest changes can bring a losing campaign into a profitable one. Be sure to split test, if you’re not you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. I’ve literally seen conversions double from just 1 tweak. Test the ad copy, headlines, images, landing page copy, call to action etc… This is just part of the optimizing.

4. Use the Technology Given
Their are a handful of extremely useful tools that are available to the affiliate, lots of them free. Use them. Things like adwords editor, prosper202, keyword discovery, wordze, aweber, typo tool, etc. Take full advantage of these tools. They will not only make your life much simpler but can speed up the process of cranking out campaigns and better optimizing them.

5. Speak Their Language
It’s important on your landing page to speak the visitor’s language. Is your target customer young, old, mothers, dog owners, webmasters, etc … The more your landing page copy sounds like them the more they will listen. Also, pulling your keywords into your lander can really give conversions a nice boost.

6. Outsource
Being a one-man business can get overwhelming very quick. Easy to burnout. Two basic things you can outsource are web design and content. Most of my content and some design work as well as some keyword research I outsource. Plan out a campaign from start to finish and break it up into smaller tasks. This may give you some ideas at other areas you can possibly outsource. It’s helpful to focus on your strengths and hire someone else do the work in areas your weakest in. Use sites like elance, getafreelancer, and odesk.

7. Take the Plunge
You will never get anywhere if you don’t take any action. There will never be a perfect time when all the stars line up for you to start. You have to be willing to risk in order to succeed in this business. Don’t wait until tomorrow start TODAY!

My first campaign

Anyways, so I went over to clickbank to find a good product. (That was the only place I knew at the time, or so those ebooks told me). The first product I chose was Auto Lawn Sprinklers. Since it was the summer, I thought it was a good idea. (You can still promote this by the way, owner is a decent guy from what I remember).

After reading Perry Marshall’s adwords book, I gathered about 100 keywords, stuck them into some adgroups and turned it on. The impressions were coming but the CTR was abysmal, I think around 1%. I remember I thought I was a genius when I started placing question marks in my ad titles. This boosted my CTR to around 3-4% … I considered writing an ebook on that 1 trick alone but said “nah I’ll wait till I get some sales under my belt”

Not much luck

I made a handful of sales, but it was a slow bleed. I didn’t know about tracking or managing bids so I just stopped the campaign, one of my top 5 affiliate mistakes – not tracking. Anyways the rest of 2005 and 2006 I dabbled off and on promoting random clickbank products. Nothing really successful, but didn’t lose too much either. I couldn’t devote much time to affiliate marketing during these 2 years because I was finishing grad school, living in China, and preparing for my wedding in the fall of 2006.

My first Profitable campaign

In late 2006, I was now married, graduated, and living back in the good ole’ USA. I held off finding a job for the sole purpose of trying to earn a living from home. Affiliate marketing was actually a side project of mine, I was really wanting to trade the markets for a living.

How I got my first profits was really an epiphany. I had moved away from clickbank and was promoting more retail type products. This was new for me, so instead of bidding on the obvious core keywords I was bidding on their typos and phonetic misspellings. These clicks were extremely cheap .07-.08 a click. You can check out my keyword typo tool under the toolbox tab.

Paydirt!

1 keyword in particular was getting a nice return. I remember logging into my account 1 day, seeing $320 in commissions having only spent about $15! How’s that for a nice ROI?! This opened my eyes and I have been now doing it full-time for over 1 year. BTW, I still have that 1 keyword running, it’s not as cheap anymore because competitors have moved in, but it is still profitable.

It wasn’t until I moved away from clickbank and started developing my own landing pages that I began to see a good return in my pay per click campaigns.

After this, I began to join more affiliate programs, and test more offers. I currently have around 15 campaigns running, and now it seems it’s only a matter of testing around until you find something that works. You will lose money though, as risk is part of the game. Take it slow in the beginning, if you’re just starting out, don’t try to upload 10k keywords and let it loose in one shot, you’ll most likely quit in frustration. Build your campaigns out over time …

I hope this encourages you guys, just wanted to share my little story with you

Below is the article I submitted, outlining 5 of the hundreds of mistakes I’ve made. I hope you learn something from them and don’t repeat them. They’re not so much mistakes as they are things I didn’t do … I call them the 5 not’s

1. Not Tracking

If you’re not tracking your keywords or where your sales are coming from, you’re flying blind. You will find the 80/20 rule at work here, about 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your keywords. Shave off the keywords that don’t convert and manage the ones that are.

2. Not Split-Testing

Split testing is easy to do, but few people seem to do it. From the ads and headlines, to the images and even domain names. Try to test something out new at least once a week. One of my sites collects opt-ins, I decided to test the placement of it out, and they literally doubled overnight. I’ve been a believer ever since.

3. Not Collecting Leads

You’ve heard it a million times, the money is in the list. Well there is a reason for that. Instead of building someone else’s business, start building your own. Collecting leads is the huge step in this direction, once it grows you can perpetually communicate with them and send them offers. Go ahead, learn email marketing, join aweber, pick a niche, build a site, and start collecting leads. Aweber is always sending out great tips on how to effectively use email marketing to maximize sales.

4. Not using the Content Network

When I first started my affiliate marketing journey, I read in many affiliate ebooks the content network has poorly converting traffic and is waste of time and money, so turn it off. I’m sure many of you have it off right now … well you’re missing out on tons of traffic, boatloads of it. Yes, it is a different beast, but once learned can astound you. Start learning it. And by the way, did I mention it is much much cheaper!

5. Not Doing Anything

This one takes the cake, how many of you have read countless ebooks, forums, blogs, etc … but fail to take any action? Instead of trolling forums, chatting up IM, or trying to come up with a post to outwit that moron on your lovable forum, outline a plan and start taking action. Knowledge without acting on it is really nothing. It says in the Old Book,

Lazy hands make a man poor,
but diligent hands bring wealth.

Get to it …

what is the secret to your success?

Two words

And, Sir,what are they?

Right decisions.

And how do you make right decisions?

One word.

And, sir, What is that?

Experience.

And how do you get Experience ?

Two words

And, Sir,what are they?

Wrong decisions

Simple but true. There are 3 things you can take away from this.

Right Decisions

Are you making the right decisions? Even if you have just a general knowledge of pay per click, there are many things we all know we should do. Track conversions, test ads, test landing pages, expand keyword list, adjust bidding, etc… But are we doing it?

Experience

This is an easy one, many people say they want to work from home doing affiliate marketing but do they take any action? You’ve read hundreds of ebooks, posts, blogs, etc… but have you tried to follow just one of them? To get experience you have to jump in the game. Jonathan wrote an interesting post on how Starting is your biggest battle.

Wrong Decisions

As the affiliate landscape gets more and more competitive, it is becoming more difficult to have a profitable campaign right from the get go. You will have to learn from your mistakes, if you really want to be successful. Check out my out post are you willing to risk, and see how this one really separates the have from the have nots.

So you’ve always wanted to know the secret of the top affiliate marketers. Well here you have it.

Show me any other business where you can risk $500, $200, even $50 on some content campaigns to test if a business idea is viable or not?

Let’s do a simple comparison: say you want to open up a small shop selling electronics. What are the costs involved with that?

• rent
• electricity
• inventory
• wages
• insurance
• advertising
• equipment
• etc…

Now after several months of setup, you have to wait another 1-2 months to even see what kind of profit/loss you will have.

Compare that too search marketing: say you select USB thumb drives as an affiliate product. You can select your own traffic depending on your keywords and run a simple $200 test within 2-3 days to evaluate its potential. Not profitable? move on to the next product …

Just look where you would be if your small shop wasn’t successful, $10,000+ in the red, and several months later could you finally ditch the effort vs. $200 and 2-3 days. It doesn’t compare. That’s why the risk-reward ratio is unmatched in pay per click.

Be willing to risk because the rewards are worth it! Your thoughts??