Pursuit of Profit

The profitable days are starting to come more often and the stress of starting an affiliate campaign is beginning to fade. I had a few $150+ profit days now which is really promising this early in the game.

To achieve this I followed some simple steps and stuck with them:

Found a killer product to promote on clickbank. I had heard from people that this product converts well, so I decided to give it a go. When researching a product to promote you want

Set up a targeted adwords campaign. I found one aspect of the product I am promoting and found as many keywords as possible in relation to this. For example if you were promoting a product such as a car there are a few different areas you can focus in on (obviously you don’t promote cars for clickbank but the example works):

Safety
Efficiency
Style
Performance
Price
Warrenty

For this example lets say you chose style, because it is a selling point. You would find every keyword imaginable related to the style of cars:
cool car
stylish automobile
sleek
etc..

Then you go on to google adwords keyword suggestion tool and put them in get suggestions, take those suggestions sort through them then take the ones that fit and put them right back in the adwords tool for more suggestions and continue doing this till you have 1500 or more keywords.

Next step is making sure your landing page relates to the keyword searches that people are looking for. Have images and phrases that relate directly to style and automobiles. With multiple calls to action ie: buy now, free trail, take a test drive.

Create targeted ads to display on adwords. Small ad groups of very similar keywords with equally targeted ads work best and will increase your quality score (more on this in future posts).

Check everything over and get it live. This will get you going, once the conversions start you will be able to identify which keywords sell and which keywords stink.

Adjust your bids accordingly to the performance of the keyword.
If you have a conversion ratio of 2% and your commission per sale is $50 you want to aim for an ROI of 100% so you would multiply your conversion rate by your desired cost per sale. So you want to pay $25 per sale ideally, this would be .02 x 25 which equals $0.50 bids.

Keep on adjusting and tweaking and you will soon have a profitable campaign.

June was a rough month that had me second guessing this affiliate marketing game. I came pretty close to my stress threshold this month. I put my life savings on the line as well as borrowed money with high interest rates. I was losing money like no tomorrow, with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Now my losses are getting progressively smaller each day, while still spending the same amount of money. Yesterday I even turned a $30 profit! 30 bucks does not sound like much after losing up to $450 in a single day, but it is huge that I’ve tweaked my campaign in to the green! If this trend continues I’ll have no problem making my July goal, and I’ll be well on my way to 10k a month!

As my affiliate campaign continues to run my losses are gaining! I was running profitable for two days making about 70 a day, which was a mixed blessing. As soon as I saw a profit I bumped up my daily budgets on adwords and my conversion ratios plummeted for some unknown reason.

Last week on Sunday I lost $450, 450 DOLLARS IN A SINGLE DAY! I know in my heart of hearts I will not be making my June goal of $20 profit.

I am a little over $2000 in the hole right now, and things haven’t even begun looking up. I know I won’t be able to get my affiliate campaign back on track and becoming that profitable in the next 5 days. But I am glad I have tried this, I’m learning more each day about affiliate marketing. The hardest part is not pulling the plug and cutting my losses, but I’m in too deep to turn back now.

Even though I won’t make this months goal, I hope by next month I will be a little bit closer to my 10k quest!

All I think about is my affiliate campaign. I check Clickbank constantly to see if I have made anymore sales, then cross reference that with my adwords account to make sure my budget is not getting away from me. The past week and a bit have seen a whirlwind of activity, here is a short list of a few things that have taken place since June 5th.

June 5th Site and landing page are completed traffic starts to flow in from adwords, no sales.

June 6th I got my first sale, now I know my conversion tracking and systems are working.

June 7-10 Sales are increasing, but I am still losing about $70 a day.

June 11-13 Adwords stop running because I have hit my limit on my credit card, time to move some money around.

June 14-15 Sales are still climbing, but my losses are staying the same. Which means this campaign is getting closer to becoming profitable.

June 16 My credit card has hit its limit once again, and my ads are down. I have just called to get an increase on my credit card limit. Also my first pay period in clickbank has come to an end, which means I will be getting my first check in the mail pretty soon!

Every penny I have is on the line on this campaign, I just hope it becomes profitable sooner than later!

May was a pretty uneventful month for me online, but made offline. I started a new job and settled in to a new place. I was lucky enough to make $15 through adsense which allowed me to complete my May goal of $10.

Here is a snap of the earning statement.

I have now realized that I am not cut out to be making big adsense checks and I am not wasting anymore time and effort trying.

I am soley focusing on Clickbank affiliate marketing at the moment. My site is now up fully loaded with keyword rich content, contact page, privacy policy, and a killer landing page.

I had to get out of my comfort zone for doing this. I am spending up to $300 a day on adwords in hopes that my campaigns will become profitable, but for the time being I am continually losing money each day.

Yesterday I had to go get a new credit card with a bigger limit so I can cover my costs while I wait for my first check from clickbank to come in the mail. Obviously I am stressed out and even contemplating pulling the plug, fortunately for me I have friends in the game and they give me positive reassurances that my campaigns are doing fine, and they will level out over time.

On the plus side with my new credit card I’ll be getting airmiles out the wazoo!

The past 15 days have been crazy! Moving into a new place is something that takes up a ton of time and effort. This was my first major move so I didn’t really know what to expect. Now all the boxes are put away the internet is connected and the living has officially commenced.

Starting a new job is another major event in my life! I am working a late shift and it has really thrown my whole routine out of wack. The adjusting has been difficult, especially when do I work on my own stuff. I was rushed before work and too tired after.

I’ve worked out a routine of getting to bed as early as I can so I can use my waking hours, which are my most productive, for projects.

I am glad that this month’s goal is only $10 because if it was anything more I don’t think I would have made it. If you let your income streams slide for a few days they begin to crumble. You constantly need to work at them to strengthen them! I really need to take my own advice and get back to posting more!!

It’s already May 7 and I have made almost no money online so far! I have earned a whopping total of $2.74 through adsense. I will not reach my goal this month, which is $10 not $20 like I mistakenly stated in a previous post, at thatrate. I will have to bump up my earning power!

This month I want to work on my link building and the affiliate site. For my link building I am going to use a domain I already own and develop it in to a link directory. I will point as many links as I can towards it, and build a solid page rank for the next update and do three way reciprocal linking to Pursuit of Profit.

The domain I am going to use for the directory is www.axonseek.com, so far it has phplinkdirectory installed on it and a template that I need to do some hacking on. I believe it will have it at a PR4 - 5 by next update, so it will be a strong backlink to have.

Another option I was considering for link building was setting up a directory on the Pursuit of Profit domain. So for example something like www.pursuitofprofit.com/directory. The benefit of setting up the directory this way would be all backlinks and recipricol links would be pointing at the Pursuit of Profit domain name and all the traffic involved with both the blog and the directory would be going towards one Alexa ranking.

The affiliate site is still sitting on pause until the landing page is built. Building this landing page is turning in to a more work than I had anticipated, but when it is done it will be my main income stream.

The possibility of earning huge dollars off of an affiliate campaign can make an it the highest work to profit ratio available to us web marketers. You build a site once, update, tweak and continually reap the profits.

Blogs can make money as well, but the effort to profit ratio is extremely small. If you want to make big money online you have to be selling items or services. Tip of the day: Sell downloads or anything you can automate and then pump as much traffic as you can to the site!

That’s all for today, but look out tomorrow for pictures of the basement with the ping pong table set up!!

Affiliate marketing has become the lifeblood for droves webmasters and internet marketers. Starting out can be difficult because people who are earning in this area don’t want to share their secrets and potentially create a competitor. Affiliate marketers guard their holy grail of keywords because it is their lively hood, it is the magic they have found that profitably turns traffic into money.

I have ran and run affiliate campaigns, some took a profit and some took a loss. Here are a few of the tips that I have learned over the years and want to anyone starting out. These are my do’s and don’ts that can make you money, there are plenty more out there. Add your do’s and don’ts to the comments!

Don’t!

1. Pick a product or service you know nothing about

2. Assume your keywords are profitable without researching them

3. Writing one ad for all your keywords

4. Throw up just a landing page without related content on other pages

5. Enter the most competitive markets without any experience

6. Leave your keyword bids the same day after day

7. Continue chasing your loses on keywords in hopes they will turn profitable

8. Think you are lucky and your products will convert without work

9. Believe that you are done work once the site is up and receiving traffic

10. Promote a product based solely on it’s commission amount

Do!

1. Research your competitors pages, ads, and keywords

2. Match keywords and phrase in your ads with your landing page

3. Dynamically insert keywords

4. Tweak! Don’t be afraid to change your layout, colors, content, ads, keywords and everything else related to your campaign

5. Split test

6. Adjust your keyword bids in accordance with their conversion rate

7. Use keyword research tools

8. Categorize your keywords into groups, write ads for each group

9. Make a site that has plenty of related content, a privacy policy and a contact page

10. Realize that affiliate marketing is an on going process

Remember that affiliate marketing is growing and changing. You have to adapt to these changes and continually learn new tricks and techniques or you will be left behind.

To me this month is all about breaking out of my regular routines and getting in to new areas. This is true for both my online income streams, and my personal life. I just moved in to a new place on the first and started a new job!

Tuesday was not the most fun day I have ever had. I got to bed late Monday, started moving at 7am Tuesday and began my first shift at my new job at 3pm. Tim Horton’s coffee was the life saver that got me through this extremely long day. Here are some pictures from the move:

Our Van

Our Real Van!

Filling Up the New Pad

Now that we have all our big furniture, rooms and electronics set up in the new place, it is really feeling like our own place. The media center is awesome, plus there is a tv in almost every room (wasteful sort of, cool definitely).

So nice I had to take a pic twice!

This is Where it All Goes Down

The basement is an unfinished amazing area that will host many poker and ping pong nights.

Endless potential

Ping Pong: like tennis if your were 100 m tall

The new job is very interesting as well. I am doing tech support for a software company that is a big name on Clickbank. Seeing how professional and dedicated this company is to their customers has given me a new found faith in software customer service.

As for income streams stay posted! I have a blog about tea, which I am an avid drinker of (coffee has sneakily snuck its way in to my morning routine lately). This blog was put on the back burner after one post hit the frontpage of Netscape and my old server crashed. But after talking with my partner on the project we both agreed that now is a great time to get back to the blogging action on the world’s best drink, tea.

May is going to be a very exciting month all around!

Well first off thanks for continuing to follow my journey. Month one is now complete and the $5 goal was met and surpassed! A lot happened in the first month of this journey.

I started with a free blogger blog

within a week I had made enough money to get a domain

a domain was donated to my by Dylan (another blogger).

I started up an affiliate site through clickbank, and began sending traffic through google adwords

I have began re tooling the affiliate site!

That brings me to today!

May is another big month for me. I have to make a big $10 this month through my efforts. I know that the momentum will follow from the previous month. Got any suggestions for more revenue streams?