Long Time Affiliate, Finally Making Push to $100/day Consistently

[Maxin]

Tonight is a bit of a down night as I rework landers on a few campaigns. Probably going to take me another day or two to get the landers ready and restart traffic. Still getting a few conversions here and there, but nothing like I need to get.

Traffic for my dating offers has been steady and enough to use up my budget. Great development.
My newest offer is not getting much traffic and is a direct linking campaign. Ads might be not preparing the visitor well enough. Will tweak tomorrow.

Biggest offer I have needs a much more developed lander. That is one of the landers I am redoing tonight. It will take a good 2-4 hours to get the lander convincing enough for a person to take the offer. But then it will be a solid producer. Getting good directed traffic and a solid click through. This is an offer that could definitely have a good impact.

More results tomorrow night after I get the new landers rolling..

 

[Maxin]

Restarted my MonsterAds campaign though no conversions yet, partly because of low traffic. I will add kws tonight, a few more ads, and dial up bids some. I am also going to tweak my new lander. I think it is close to getting some conversions going, but not quite there. With only 13 visitors to the offer page, I don't have enough data to go on.

Tonight I will add a lander for the new offer @RobEnvyus gave me because the direct linking has produced one conversion after something like 40 clicks. Not good enough. I think a decent lander will be enough to bring this one to life.


And if I can push myself between tonight and tomorrow, I am going to swap out some offers on two of my campaigns that were profitable - though not scaling well - and restart them by tomorrow.

One thing I am learning is that I need a simpler or faster process for getting new campaigns going. Or maybe I am being too lazy about how much work it takes to get a campaign rolling with landers. Seems to take me about 3-4 hours to create a PPC campaign, with a custom lander, plus tracking..probably more like 5 hours sometimes. Then there is hours of tweaking.

I suppose that considering how a campaign becomes like a small cash flowing business, 5+ hours is nothing!! But when the campaign does not go profitable and loses money..then it seems like a day was wasted. Oh well..welcome to the AM jungle!!

My priorities for tonight are:
1. Get more traffic and tweak lander for conversions - click throughs from the lander to the offer are nearly 100% but no conversions- for @JakeMA offer. Should take me about 30 minutes or so.
2. Create a lander for the @RobEnvyus offer. Going with a simple approach for this vertical. Expecting about 45 minutes of work.
3. Substituting some offers on my other campaigns...about 30 minutes for both.
4. Restarting campaigns and running 4 campaigns total!

One challenge I am having is that Bevo media's tracking seems to miss a lot of conversions and invent others. Going to check with support about it.

and tomorrow I will post my first earnings report!

 

[Maxin]

Knocked out several lander changes, improved ad performance to the point I am getting about as much traffic as I want for testing the offer from @JakeMA . Always a big relief to get the traffic issue sort of solved.

I added conversion feature to the MonsterAd page. Will be later tomorrow before I have enough traffic through to see if I can get a conversion, but I am expecting some to happen.

Got around to switching out offers, adding more conversion factors, and turning the ads back on for one of the offers from @RobEnvyusu. This offer has started turning around for me because I started getting traffic finally. The offer itself is great..I am on the learning curve for 1. Getting the right traffic - appears solved. 2. Creating a reasonable converting lander. I think I took another big step in the right direction with that tonight.

Running out of time for creating the other lander for the other @RobEnvyus offer, plus restarting my formerly best performing page with the now shut down offers.

Will tackle two new landers tomorrow and turn on two more campaigns.

Expecting good things to start happening with my new MonsterAds campaign and my new approach on the EnvyusMedia offers starting tomorrow..

 

[Maxin]

Looks like I did not post my progress yesterday. Must have been busy posting on other threads here and forgot.

Here is the report card from EnvyusMedia for today, showing the positive effects of my changes from yesterday:
I tweaked two campaigns and relaunched. I also added a lot of keywords to two campaigns.

And the results today with about 3.5 hours to go are positive for a campaign that @RobEnvyus set me up with.

40 clicks from ads to my lander - Cost $6.8
21 clicks through my landers to the offer - 52% CTR. Slightly below where I was before, but still good per my standards.
4 conversions for $17.20
Days ROI - 152% I am satisfied with this return.

I learned a valuable lesson from @RobEnvyus on this campaign. Early on I could not get traffic. Then I was not getting many conversions. My normal decision would have been to drop the campaign and go to another one. Rob subtly convinced me that I would be better off sticking with the campaign and working through the challenges. I did exactly as he advised me to - because he has total been-there-done-that experience and I sensed that this was a growth opportunity for me.

Also, I know from advising other people in areas that I am experienced in..if someone asks my advice then ignores it, I will rarely bother advising them again. So when Rob tells me his opinion..I take action on it without question.

Man did his advice pay off for me on this campaign! From barely getting one conversion a day, to now getting almost 20% conversions at the offer, plus reasonable traffic from bing at a great CPC, I am thrilled to have a solid ROI on a campaign after roughly 30 days of floundering around and testing.

I am still struggling with the campaign that @JakeMA set me up with, but I know I will get a conversion - because I am not stopping until I do!!
Already I rewrote my lander and improved my click through rate. Now I have a few more additions to make that I believe will better prepare the visitor for the offer. When I get my first conversion on this offer...I already picked out the reward.
My traffic is slow but steady from Bing.

That was yesterdays work..with a big turn around on a campaign that almost nothing was working right even after a lot of work. Now it is the best campaign yet for me.

Today, I wrote 10 articles for the offer from @JakeMA I needed the articles to make the site and lander I created for his offer into a site Google Adwords would approve. I am going to convert all of my landers and my sites over for Google Adwords approval. Tomorrow I will create 10 articles for the campaigns from @RobEnvyus - including the one that is profitable now, plus the one that shut down, and two others he set me up with. @JakeMA also has convinced me to jump back on one of my biggest money making affiliate programs - AnastasiaDate.com! I built an authority site loaded with unique articles, high value videos..even my own products! So I am going to turn that set-up back on somehow.

Now that one of my offers from @RobEnvyus has gone solidly profitable, my plan is to get approved by Google Adwords and scale the traffic by 10X. IF...and it is a big IF...I send 10x the traffic from Adwords, which is possible, and the numbers hold even closely, then I go from making anywhere from $11 a day to making over $100 a day on one campaign. That will be the achievement I set out for.

Game plan for tomorrow:
1. Write another 10 articles for the Envyus profitable campaign.
2. Post the 10 articles on my site for MonsterAds, tweak the lander for more sell through potential, tweak the traffic by creating new ads.
3. Create a sell through lander for another Envyus offer.
4. Find all of my AnastasiaDate articles to rebuild a better site for the MonsterAds campaign.
5. Restart my former profitable campaign offer that was paused with sub offers.

Will be a busy day..but I am excited about getting one campaign to profit. Now to scale!

 

[CPAEXPERT]

@Maxin i like your progress....

 

[Maxin]

Thanks for your encouragement @CPAEXPERT! I feel lucky to have found this forum and the support from everyone including some super affiliate managers and cpa experts like yourself and @tjtutor giving fantastic advice.
My journey is getting rolling now that I have more consistent income from at least one campaign.

Looking forward to joining you in the high earners circle in a few months!

 

[Maxin]

Strange situation happened yesterday. I started getting CPanel errors from my host - Vultr.com Thought I corrected the errors which were coming from a corrupted database on a site I no longer used by deleting the database.

Then i noticed that I was not getting any conversions on my main campaign after 10 click throughs - very unusual. I checked the page and none of the images were showing!

I rebuilt the page with the images, added the same links, slightly moved things around to make the page better for mobile..and turned the ads back on.

Instead of getting from 10-20% conversion..suddenly I dropped to 5%.

I am still getting cpanel errors and it appears there is some virus going through my databases. I am not sure why my conversion rate plummeted. I will tackle these issues somehow this week.

Meanwhile my MonsterAds campaign is still dead in the water. Sending some traffic by the offer, but no conversions. I have a plan to test for getting something going on this campaign. It is by far my most challenging but also the greatest opportunity.

The numbers for yesterday are painful.

62 visitors to my page with 13 organic!! - paid for 49 clicks and sent 42 to the offer - making my new record of 85% based on paid clicks. Only 2 conversions out of 42, though 12 of those clicks saw the page without images. Still have to count them though. The cost was about $8.33 and the income was $8.60. Hanging onto profitability by a thin margin. Should have a better run tomorrow with the images back.

This week's plan:
-Repair the databases and solve the hosting issue
-Add serious conversion factors for MonsterAds offer...I need at least one conversion this week from this offer!!
-Get two more @RobEnvyus offers running with dialed in landers
-Load all the articles for my sites to get onto Adwords. Did not create the new 10 articles I planned to. Had too much client work to do. On Tuesday I will create at least 10 articles and get my profitable campaign onto Adwords - once I have conversions over 10% again. With my lander to offer CTR at this super high rate, plus an increasing organic traffic source, I am getting positioned for the extra costs of Adwords and still be profitable. Will be a challenge to get approved. The articles should do the trick.

Big work day ahead...once I turn in a big project that has been soaking up most of my time, I will be free for almost the whole week to focus on my affiliate marketing. I expect to make a lot of progress this week.

 

[Maxin]

Got some new offers from @RobEnvyus along with some great advice about what I might expect when I get setup with Adwords. I have some work to do, but the traffic would be so much greater that this small $$ campaign that is profitable, could morph into more of an earning monster...with enough traffic.

@JakeMA kicked in with extremely helpful info on one of my offers.

Since I have been up straight delivering a huge client site and database project, I am a bit cooked to take advantage of all the new offers and conversion materials. I am going to take a nap for an hour or so, then put on my affiliate marketing hat and take advantage of all the input from @JakeMA and the new offers from @RobEnvyus.

Good challenge to have - so many offers and so much help to get conversions!!

Still not getting back to the nice conversion rate I was at before, but i will get more traffic and then tweak to get back to the 10-20% rate I was fairly steady at. Now I am going as low as 5%. Still, the numbers work. At a minimum of 60% pass through from my ads through the landers to the offer, the numbers still work well.

Now to get some sleep...more later.

 

[Maxin]

Pretty good performance yesterday with a 13.8% conversion rate at the offer.

But here is where it gets really interesting..

The top number 27 is visitor traffic to the lander for the offer..over a 100% click through

Of course there must be a few double clicks in there or me testing the links probably..for one or two clicks.

I tweaked the lander yesterday quite a bit to improve the mobile look, at the same time trying not to ruin the desktop appearance. While too early to tell..it looks like @RobEnvyus has set me up with an offer I can take to my first goal of $100 a day!

What this means is that instead of losing traffic through the lander and paying for clicks on my ads that never even get to the offer..I have pretty close to a 1:1 ad-offer ratio...SWWEEETT!

Now I am sure a lot of the super affiliates would be disappointed with a 13.8% conversion rate at the offer. In this case, because of the 100 percent lander-to-offer CTR, this translates to a 13.8% conversion rate from ad-to-offer - for the moment at least.

A 13.8% conversion rate means roughly for every $16 I spend for 100 clicks, I get about $59 back. I'll take that all day long!

My next mission for this site is to add at least 10 articles and make a few changes to get into AdWords. Then I can scale the campaign to turn that net income $43 into a net income $126 and achieve this first $100/day goal.

@JakeMA set me up with a lot of new conversion ideas for the offer I have been running for him. I shut off the ads yesterday to stop ruining the network numbers and give me time to rebuild the lander. I will turn that offer back on tomorrow with a ton of new conversion factors. I will be thrilled when I get my first - and at this point - only conversion on this offer!!

I have some client work to do today, but am focused mostly on adding new offers, scaling my working offers (two at the moment), adding two new offers, and getting the @JakeMA offer to convert.

Once I cross the bridge into Adwords and am able to get to my $100/day..then I will soon go full time into AM and let all of my clients go, possibly keeping one or two.

I am having so much fun creating campaigns, tweaking them, and learning every day about different affiliate marketing strategies, not to mention getting to know the super-cool network managers and folks here, that I know I would never grow tired of this career.

Going to hit the content creation mode here and get my sites Adwords ready..then climb the traffic ladder to the top!

 

[Maxin]

Bing shut me down today. I noticed that my traffic had slowed down and decided to check my ads. All but one of them had suddenly been disapproved. The one that had not been shut down was a direct linking experimental ad.

All the plans I had for this week to move the campaign over to Adwords are now on hold until I get the ads compliant and running again.

Bing support wants me to fill out Adult Campaign Qualification forms and other nonsense.

And today was at a 330% ROI on this campaign!

Somehow I will get it restarted, then get the landing site up to Adwords standards, and bounce back with 10x the traffic and income.

Will have to get back to my game plan for all the other campaigns once I solve this...by tomorrow.

 

[ppcnewbie]

Great journey, man. This is one of the 2 journeys I liked the most here till now (and I've followed quite a few), the other one is internalsoul's CPA Journey, but he stopped it a while ago. I like yours now that it's ongoing

Hopefully, you will keep it updated, even though maybe you can't post every single day, but don't let it die like most guys do. And if you get to $100/day, start another similar journey for $1k/day or even more

A few posts ago you said something about trying to scale with AdWords and hoping to get it to 10x. Well, I don't want to discourage you, but there are small chances to scale it up with adwords and keep the same ROI, because AdWords' CPC is usually a few times higher than on Bing, due to the competition. I personally had 3-4 times lower bids on Bing than on AdWords. True, the traffic is lower, but considering that paying a 4x higher CPC on AdWords might not get me a positive ROI, I prefer to stick with Bing.

Anyway, keep up the good job and I'll keep following your journey. Good luck!

 

[Maxin]

Hey @ppcnewbie! Thanks for following along on my journey and the input on Adwords.
I have had an Adwords agency account for a long time, running my own campaigns and for clients. I definitely agree with you that AdWords charges much more than Bing and that the traffic will not necessarily convert as well, making the ROI not scalable.

I have a few concepts that have worked on and off that drive my earnings per click for the page more than high enough to handle AdWords higher prices. The site page I run on Adwords will be slightly different than the one I run on Bing, plus I will go more long tail on Adwords than I do on Bing. The final word will be the kind of results and ROI that I see on Adwords.

Yeah..I have read a lot of journeys and most fizzle out pretty quickly. One journey though, from a guy in Mexico that was on the Black Hat forum went on for months and months, possibly years. I felt sorry for the guy after a while!! But he kept working it...his family thought he was living in fantasy land, that he was lazy for not getting a job, he was about to be kicked out of his house, he didn't have money for gas..it was rough. Then BAM..in three posts over about one week, he hit $100 per day! In Mexico, that is like becoming a top 2% earner...

As for me, I am 100% devoted to making this journey successful, no matter what it takes. Even if no one reads my journey, I am going to keep records of my plans, efforts, results, and challenges. Every day.

Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest chess players of all time, said: "All I want to do, ever, is play chess."
He also said: "I devote 98% of my mental energy to chess. Other players devote 2%."

 

[Maxin]

continuing from previous post...

I am going with the same attitude. Every day I work my campaigns, solve the problems, build landers, test, check the offers, and learn more about how to make a positive ROI. Consistent effort wins every time.

Luckily I have had great support from @RobEnvyus who can solve technical challenges in two seconds that take me hours to whip and @JakeMA assisting with content on offers. With this kind of really selfless support, plus all the great minds on AffiliateFix, I will see success for sure. As long as I keep being productive, get data, and learn from all of the people here and my mentors.

My activity today:
1. Reworked my ads on Bing. Though they are saying eligible, traffic has all but shut down. Going to check them again and submit the Adult form.
2. Redid my links on my ads. My AdsBridge tracking links were super slow to redirect, so I have gone direct temporarily. Going to swap them out for Bevo media links for tracking.
3. Editing the 10 articles I wrote for the @JakeMA offer page. Got to get that one running again and get a conversion!!
4. More work on adding @RobEnvyus campaigns. I am getting my main campaigns back to their full traffic and ROI first, then adding the new ones.

A full day or two of work, but fun stuff!!

How are your campaigns going?

 

[marketerbybirth]

hey @Maxin you are not only hard worker but an all rounder too. Am gonna keep a track of your campaign and have got a strong feeling that they are going to be super successful. You are requested to please share your work with us, you can share some images of the landing pages which you have created enthusiastically. as someone has asked above, it would be great if you can share the names of tools and software beings used throughout this quest....

 

[Maxin]

Hey @marketerbybirth! Thanks for stopping by and keeping track of the progress. I am going to pass on sharing landers at this point - way too much work went into getting them to convert and what would be the fun of denying readers the chance to experiment while creating their own , but happy to share some of the tools I am using.

Once I am back on track with my best campaign, I will write a tools post for ya!

 

[Maxin]

New Bing ads running and delivering much more traffic. As so often happens, getting over challenges brings new benefits.

The click through rate from the ads through the offer were a bit wonky because I did not immediately know that Bing had banned all but one of my ads. The one ad Bing allowed to run was a direct linking ad...naturally contributing to a 100% CTR

Now that all of my ads are running and going to my lander - my numbers are more realistic. No one gets a 100% ctr consistent through a lander to the offer..

Bing My Lander Offer Conv
Tues 34 5?? 23 3
Wedn 54 36 13 2


You have to wonder - what is going on when only 36 of 54 supposed clicks on my ads get to my lander!?
I have no more directly linking ads...oops. I take that back! Just checked and one of my tracking links is a direct linking test...But the numbers don't add up. Only 7 clicks on that ad, still leaves a difference of 11 clicks going into thin air. Ouch.

Yeah..going to have to scrub this campaigns data, set-up new trackers, and get this optimized. I bet I am letting at least 30% of the potential ROI go out the window, if not more.

On a positive note:

Gross Income for the past 3 days from this formerly banned - now back live campaign is $21.50
Ad expenses of $12.84
Without being banned I probably would have had gross income of about $33-$36 and ad expenses of about $17-$19 maybe.

The more typical rate of income has been from $12.60 - about $21.30 per day, with an ad spend of around $4-$8/day..I couldn't get enough clicks to spend my full budget. That seems to have changed now that I updated the ads.

Solidly profitable, but needs to be refined and then scaled as much as I can on Bing, then get on AdWords.

Solving these challenges tonight.

I miss those days of seeing $21+ from this campaign when I am spending about $8 on traffic - buys me a decent lunch everyday!

Though I am after way more than lunch money from all my campaigns..

Getting back to work..

 

[Maxin]

Buckled down finally and took care of installing tracking with multiple landers plus direct linking, with several offers on one page. Still not convinced I set up my conversion pixel correctly because the pixel is javascript, while the networks appear to be looking for either a postback url or html. Not sure if my tracking is going to work. A question for @RobEnvyus to help me quickly sort out.
My tracking set-up was all over the place on this most profitable campaign. Sheer luck got me good numbers. Now I expect to get real data..and make my own luck.
I am also getting much more traffic with plenty of mystery bing clicks that never seem to hit the landing page. At least now I shall have a clue where they go!

Really want to clear out a huge client project ASAP and get back to spending more time on my campaigns. First have to get this formerly profitable campaign cash flowing again. I have had a streak of conversions that I want to keep rolling and improving upon.

I am going to get back to @JakeMA 's offer later tonight. Having to work much of the night on other projects for clients, may as well get my own deals going!

Expecting to see this campaign that I installed tracking on begin performing again. Tracking and testing multiple landers plus direct linking, along with the ads and kws. Will have a complete picture of where to spend more and where to spend less once I get a few conversions through.

More later..

 

[Maxin]

Weird, weird, weird...I thought I had everything sorted for tracking links per Ad, rotating through direct link and my own landing page. Out of 26 clicks to the Envyus offer - not one conversion. Based on running this campaign for weeks, I could reasonably expect between one conversion absolute minimum to as high as 6 conversions or between $4.30 and $25.8

The conversion streak is over. Now I have to figure out what is going on with either the way I set-up the campaign on Bevo Media, or some critical issue between the ads through lander and the offer. Almost 66% of my ad clicks went directly to the offer, direct linking. 1/3 went through my lander. For certain it appears that direct linking is not at all effective, though I am surprised by not getting one conversion. But why no conversions with so many visitors hitting both the lander and the offer?

Strange stuff...

BevoMedia tracking is a well thought out system on the set-up side, even if I am screwing it up somehow, but I do not like the reporting side at all. I am queued up for a report for my ads - and it will take an hour!

I might have to go back to AdsBridge, though I want to go to CPVLabs.
The fact is that I did have some tracking links installed and got conversions.

Have to figure this out ASAP.

My steps towards getting conversions again:
1. Eliminate direct linking. Not one direct link conversion.
2. Eliminate the offer rotator.
3. Get going on another tracker. Might go back to AdsBridge, or something else.
4. Get the conversion pixel to work correctly.

Frustrated by needing to constantly rework the basics on this campaign, but a good part of the problem is my switching up tracking and adding too many variables.

Good news -- Bing approved me to run Adult offers. Might come in handy, but I am sticking with the offers from @RobEnvyus and @JakeMA , not diving into anything more racy they I already have.

Wanted to be reporting about the wonderful scaling operation on this campaign by now. Instead I am back to 0 conversions again and climbing the conversion mountain for the fourth time. I did it before, I will do it again!

What is going through my mind now:

 

[Maxin]

Another oddball day. The formerly profitable campaign is now wrecked and needs a complete rebuild or something. Despite the changes I made with Bevo and Bing, I am getting about 10% CTR through to the offer plus losing about 40% of the clicks from the ads to my lander!
Not one conversion...I am about to rip out tracking and just go without all the redirects directly from my page to the offer. I never really knew what was driving conversions as far as kws, time of day, ads, etc..but at least I was getting conversions.

Now I am getting nothing but big charges from Bing. My ads are now getting enough action to spend my budget. Would be great news except everything else that used to work great is no longer doing squat.

Ripping out all BevoMedia links. Ripping out those slow redirects through Bevomedia. Going straight from Ad to Lander (no multiple lander testing now or direct links) and straight from lander through to the Envyus offer. Done with futzing with BevoMedia for the moment. Only when I get back to conversions will I reassess how I am going to track.

And I have to call out Bing on these disappearing clicks from ad to my lander. Major BS going on when 40% click the ad and never show up on the lander. I know who the liar is..and it isn't my Google Analytics!

 

[Maxin]

Well, well, well....I dug deep into my formerly alive and profitable campaign, spent an hour rearranging things to improve conversions especially for mobile. Analyzing the data from Bing and Bevo revealed most of my visitors are using Android phones with a sprinkling of desktops using Windows and a few Macs.

I thought I had blown my design causing theoe drop in conversions. This started me dialing the design in far tighter for mobile.

That was not the problem though.

BevoMedia tracking, or at least the way I was using it, was the problem.

I decided to check links just as I did when I installed Bevo tracking links the first time. Everything worked ok the first time, though pretty slow. This time?

I WAS SENT TO SURVEY SITES, BACK TO GOOGLE, ANYWHERE BUT MY OFFER!

Bevo also told me my click thru from lander to offer was at 18% which was low for my landers. Now I don't know if Bevo ignored clicks sent to other offers or what. All I do know is I am going back to AdsBridge until I get fully comfortable with Prosper202 or preferably CPVLabs.

Bevo links are gone. I restarted my campaign with no tracking. Yep..a big step back in running a campaign to profit, but now I strongly suspect I will get both higher click thrus, fewer disappearing clicks from Bing to my landers, and best of all..daily conversions that are profitable!

Since I have completed the necessary steps to get increased traffic from bing -super impressed with the performance increase - along with eliminating the problems from sketchy tracking links, I expect the campaign to leap back to profit.

On to @JakeMA campaign work for about 2 hours. Then @RobEnvyus on two campaigns for about 3 hours.

My plan is to be running 4 campaigns by Monday or so.

What an adventure it will be if I come out of this set-back with a campaign getting much higher traffic as appears to be the case, plus has higher conversions!