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

[Maxin]

Launched the new campaign and went with direct linking on two different offers to see which one has legs. Researched the competition to figure out how to structure my page.

Also researched my other campaigns competition and found out that my ads are not even showing up as far as I could detect. Bing is really weird about displaying ads. Never had this problem with Adwords.

I am going to have to shift my focus to other campaigns and put the formerly profitable campaign on the back burner. It isn't doing much of anything any more unfortunately. I will run a conversion test on the landers, but getting around 30 clicks a day is not going to work. I need to get back to the days of 100 clicks, with 40% CTR through the lander, then 15% conversion at the offer. Those numbers worked nicely.

At least tomorrow I may have some more data on my new campaigns.

 

[Maxin]

I got one conversion out of five visits with 17 click throughs. Makes for a low volume, but profitable day. Spent $1.78 today and made $4.30. Considering all the other days without conversions, my new lander is not quite at break even. The click through rate though is over 40%. Just crazy variance. Going to keep this campaign going, create more ads, research keywords, and keep plugging.

My other campaign is getting almost no traffic. My ads must bite I will create a few more ads and make something happen.

I heard a great saying on an entrepreneur podcast: "Actions create transactions."
That hit me like a ton of bricks and I repeat it to myself often. The more action I take - not research, not buying the next shiny course - but heads down, working till it hurts action, the closer I get to transactions.

Tonight I am creating more ads, and possibly a new campaign. Best investment though is to somehow get my numbers up for my recent campaign. Not getting any clicks - only 3 or so in a day.

 

[Maxin]

It turns out I have more conversions on my new lander than I knew about. The campaign is solidly profitable for two days running. About $5.88 spent and $8.60 earned. This is perfectly reasonable performance for me at this stage with an ROI of 47%. My new lander's CTR has risen and is steadying out around 25%. I am going to save my current lander as a template, then add one new conversion factor per @RobEnvyus advice -that I totally blew last time and crashed my conversions - then run another 50-100 visitors by.

Here is how the accounting math works out:
My average CPC is around $0.12
100 clicks = $12
0.25 CTR *100 = 25 clicks to offer
25*0.17 = 4.25 conversions
$4.3/conversion *4.25 = $18.3 gross revenue
ROI*= ($18.3-$12)/$12 = 52% ROI


*Not counting software tools, hosting, time spent, hair lost, late night donuts, or wall repairs required from throwing anything nearby when another challenge pops up

I wanted to get to closer to 200% ROI. My greed kicked me out of profitability quickly when I made too many changes to my lander and lost most of my CTR and all of my conversions. For now, I will sit tight on this campaign lander, test some new ads to increase traffic and CTR, then SAVE my well performing lander, make small conversion factor changes one at a time, and see if I can get up to 30 or 40% CTR to the offer. I would be happy keeping at 52% ROI so long as I can boost my traffic to the former rate of 100 clicks per day.

With a combination of 100 clicks per day, plus a 35% CTR to the offer, my net income would rise to $13.85/day, or around $415/mos passive income. Nothing to sneeze at when just getting started.

Onward to improving 1. traffic 2. CTR through lander 3. total profitability with keyword adjustments

Adding another campaign with a full blown lander and the email list...more updates tomorrow.

 

[davidfrost]

"Finally Making Push to $100/day Consistently"

Hi. For how long were you able to maintain it?

 

[Maxin]

@davidfrost Hi David! I noticed that my CTR fell to 0 today from my lander to the offer - unusual. I checked my site through my ads and noticed two things: several call to action buttons had disappeared and suddenly there was a pop-up light box that I never set-up!! Crazzzzy. Looks like the recent update for some of my plugins made hash out of my page. So 21 clicks and 0 CTR and 0 conversions because I did not check daily for phantom changes. Who knew. I corrected the page, trashed the pop-up, added a trust factor and am expecting much better performance now.

I will probably get back to at least the 47% ROI or better. Plus, I am creating new ads, my current ads are doing much better with my PPC CTR around 0.8%, up from 0.4%, with several ads over 1% I need more traffic, and I will be golden on this campaign.

@Aki Bui Appreciate the support man! I am sharing, blow by blow, my experiences with everyone who can maintain interest in a long, slow, uphill climb in the affiliate marketing world. I think the PPV world or mobile would be a faster approach than my method of PPC and building authority oriented sites, but I will stick with this approach for at least another month or two, will testing PPV and mobile more on the side. Once I get my previously profitable campaign back online, I will keep adding more every day, building bit by bit. And you are welcome to visit, ask any questions, and learn from my mistakes, and my achievements - when they happen.

 

[Maxin]

My last changes sent my CTR from lander to offer much higher. Now closer to 35%, sometimes reaching 50%. Positive for sure.

I also took a different angle and created three new ads. I suspect they will perform reasonably well, but time will tell. My goal is a crazy high level of 200+ clicks to my offer per day. That could turn this campaign into one taking me at least 50% of the way towards this initial goal. Depends on how well my ads perform. At least my cpc is very comfortable at 0.11 to 0.14 usually.

@JakeMA Helped me out hugely on one campaign that I ran, got decent traffic to the offer, but I did not get them to convert. We shall see if I now have the secret sauce as I am building a new lander from scratch based off some great ideas Jake shared. Thanks Jake!

Plus, I am building out my financial offer page as well for a few offers. Busy week, but this is the way - actions lead to transactions!

 

[Maxin]

The new ads are delivering far more traffic, probably around 3X over the old ads. While the new traffic is good news, the drop in CTR on my lander is bad news. I am just below 10% CTR lander to offer.

I tweaked my lander with one small change on the call to action (CTA) button. I expect that to help some.
My second change is to the ads. I will now mention my offer in the ads to make sure I am not surprising anyone that visits. The surprise factor must be why I shot myself in the foot on my lander CTR to offer rate.

My goal is to keep the same high traffic (already 45 clicks in the afternoon when I would struggle to reach 23 clicks for a whole day before), jack up the CTR from 10% back to the 30% ish range, then get another bump to 25% on the final conversion because the end to end campaign has no surprises, is completely consistent, and offers a lot of value. We shall soon see if my ad changes improve the results. I expect that they will.

Solving part of my top end traffic problem is a positive step. Now the lander CTR and final conversion rate are up next..
What is pushing me along now.

 

[PurePay]

Good luck!

I believe with will one can achieve anything!

 

[Maxin]

Managed the double whammy of lowing my click throughs and crushing my conversion rate..nice!

I knowingly reduced my ad CTR because I wanted only visitors ready to sign-up for my offer, not all the tire kickers or those already signed up. All good. Dropped to below a slower pace of clicks, but my CPC has also dropped like a rock! Instead of paying $0.15, I now pay around $0.09..sweeeet! When I get my lander tweaked for conversions, which is inevitable but a squirrly process for me, I will enjoy a higher ROI. I managed to cut my CTR from lander to offer down to low of just over 5% from the recent 25%. Just one change to the ads, and one change to my lander on the CTA cooked my goose.

Also posting the offer of @JakeMA as I write this. Should be rolling in a few hours. Need another 8 campaigns going for sure. Going OCD on this last campaign because it was profitable and I managed to push it off the cliff has taken my focus from the big picture: launch a shightload of campaigns, tweak, test, optimize. So it shall be.

On my march to 10 new campaigns with solid chances..

 

[Maxin]

Relaunched a campaign from @JakeMA tonight. Getting back on my campaign launching treadmill - at least 5 campaigns per week.

My latest update to campaign #1 (former positive ROI) is aimed at restarting the traffic and improving CTR from lander to offer plus conversions. I managed to kill all the above before.

I have decided to follow @RobEnvyus advice and get about 5 to 10 campaigns going and tweak from there. Beating one campaign up too much prevents me from moving forward.

Tomorrow I will launch my insurance offer campaign with an oddball angle. Will be an interesting experiment...

2 campaigns running out of 10 planned.

Motivation level: about 80% -still going and focused, but gut punched from losing all conversions on Campaign #1.

 

[Maxin]

Bing once again took over some new keywords and shot through my budget because Bing set my new keywords to 7X my bid. Thanks Bing! The good news out of this bad budget busting episode is that my ads shot up to as high as 2.76% CTR.
I just changed the ads back to the correct setting and will turn them back on with about 50% more budget.

Adding two new campaigns this weekend plus testing two new landers on Campaign #1

Big picture update: About 85 days into my journey. Less vacation and several other distractions, I probably have about 60 days into this journey. Some highs include getting two campaigns profitable, and a lot of challenges when I could not get conversions.

My updated plans:
-Run each new campaign with 3 landers split testing
-Run with minimum 2 offers, preferably 3 campaigns.
-10 ads with 3 different angles
-Major keyword research based on market surveys.

 

[Maxin]

Getting back to profitability on Campaign #1 with @RobEnvyus helping me adapt to Clickmeter for tracking.

While Bevo media is free and offers several extremely convenient features, the clink transfers were very slow and I also found several diverted clicks. There may have been something else going on, but I am steering clear of Bevo Media for now.

I spent today learning the ins and outs of Clickmeter, figuring out the conversion tracking process, and updating my ads and keywords for getting more traffic.

The good news is that my conversions are getting back to the profitable point again. Once I set-up the tracking, test it, and confirm Clickmeter is working, I will be able to get back to solid profitability. With my added features on Bing, I can also get well over 100 clicks to my landers without too much difficultly, making the campaign a potentially solid performer.

If and when I figure out some of the more advanced geotargeting tricks with Bing, I could see over 300 clicks to my lander. Would be awesome..but also dangerous.

I need another two or three campaigns producing some revenue ASAP.
After I optimize and track tonight on Campaign #1, I am going to focus on my other two campaigns to drive revenue through other verticals and diversify my revenue sources.

 

[Maxin]

Back into double digits again on conversions and over 50% ROI. Glad to be back into profit for sure.

Still not getting my conversions to show up with Clickmeter.com Going to work through the system again tonight and get it correctly triggering, plus add the keyword parameters. So far I have largely been lucky with reaching profitability because my tracking has not been working.

My keyword research and list creation techniques have driven my traffic up to the point where I can get close to 20,000 impressions and a potential 400 plus clicks. That would be enough activity to possibly drive this campaign into triple digits net profit. Not there yet, but it looks possible.

I applied a few of the same keyword list building techniques to my other campaigns for @JakeMA today. Need to get my income diversified and get some MonsterAd campaigns coining..soon!

Right now I am pleased with my progress on this journey. I have a campaign that appears to be settling into profitability at low levels, but is becoming scalable. I will only scale once I have my tracking working well, giving me details on effective keywords, effective ads, and demographic conversion data. I want to fix the tracking issues today. Then tonight I will add about 30% to my daily ad spend and track the results.

I can't wait to get over $50/day profit with this campaign, plus get one of @JakeMA 's campaigns kicking over. Then I will have pretty well achieved my goal. Not there yet, but I am getting closer by the day.

 

[K]

You're well on your way to becoming a successful affiliate!

Keep up the updates, would you say this follow along has helped you?

 

[Maxin]

Hey @K! Thank your for the kind words of support.
I think this follow along and the support from all the members here especially @RobEnvyus @JakeMA, @tjtutor, @cpateacher, @seeqer ,@Rvfamily and many others has been the difference in this attempt for me vs several others. I was determined to keep the follow up updated no matter how long it took to get to my goal nor how many failures I had along the way.

Getting one ppc search campaign profitable showed me what areas I needed to up my game, and how it takes serious focus and determination.

I still have not achieved my goal and have several more campigns now getting traffic. This time though, I have more confidence in my ability to solve each challenge. Plus, I have all the community here and a few specific mentors that are top experts for guidance. Ultimately, your Affiliatefix creation and the great people here have made what seemed impossible, possible and even fun. Yeah..AffiliateFix has helped change my life to a new level. Well done @K!

 

[Maxin]

Quick update about how important and potentially dangerous tracking is.

I lost all of today's traffic to my offers because of my work modifying links from Clickmeter. I thought I had the subid's and tokens sorted out, but the links not only would not register a conversion, they would not bring up the offer. So I lost all of my ad spend for the day across three campaigns. Ouch.

Live, test, and learn.

 

[hiimjeremy]

Interesting results. On one campaign, the survey based lander got a strong CTR. On the other campaign, the survey based lander dropped the CTR significantly and killed conversions.

Changed the survey lander that killed conversions to not be automatic and less offensive with some questions.

Adding a new campaign today focused on mobile traffic. Will run it on Mobicow and see if I can get a few conversions with a sweepstakes offer.

Nice!

What type of sweepstakes offers are you running at the moment?

 

[CPAEXPERT]

That used to happen a lot with me too in the beginning , while setting up a new campaign.

 

[Maxin]

Hi @KSixJeremy and @cpateacher !
I was unning several offers - a $500 Visa card, Win an iSomething, plus surveys for cash. I have had a few conversions but not rocked the house by any means.

My plan for this upcoming week is to launch another few survey campaigns using my new tools and skills with getting traction for my ads.

Now my ads for all but one campaign can get enough traffic to go through my budget. That is a huge improvement from where I was before. I dug deep and created keyword lists in the many thousands. Now instead of competing for the main words, I pay less, get more traffic, and higher conversions at the offer.

From 1-3 clicks per day on one of @JakeMA 's offers, I got it up to 23, and will get it back to the 80-100 level soon. All good.

But the main thing is, I have found that the conversions for the higher dollar offers take much more sophisticated lander development. I may not be up to this task for creating world-class sites and landers. I know that the competition research for some of the higher dollar offers shows I would need to buy the lander, as in, have it custom made at probably a few hundred a pop. It would change my business model significantly.

One way or the other, I will get my other campaigns to run positive. May take outside help though.

Thanks for the support @cpateacher!

 

[Maxin]

I made some changes to my tracking. Lowered my CTR to the offer but raised the conversion rate. Today I am devoting most of my 4 hours of work to tracking and improving my landers.

Since I have traffic now for 2 out of 3 offers, I will continue focusing on them until I get all of them converting.

Next