Affiliate Marketing Plunge II: Day 10
June 15, 2008 Posted by Tyler CruzFirst, an update on the Affiliate Marketing Challenge. I’d like to encourage everyone who hasn’t entered yet and is eligible (hasn’t signed up to MarketLeverage) to sign-up. There is an 8GB iPod Touch, Mino Flip Video Camera, $200 Market Leverage Rewards Amex Card, and a 2.0GB USB Pen up for grabs, and so far competition has been pretty minimal so you stand a good chance of winning something.
In fact, you currently only need to make $0.01 in order to take fourth place since there are only 3 participants who have generated any sales yet. Remember, first place gets an 8GB iPod Touch and second gets a video camera — not too shabby for generating only a few bucks in commissions!
Participant CD8065 secures his position on top with a current $21 in sales, while CD8036 remains close on his heels with $21. Taking up the rear is CD8021 with only $1.60, but since he currently has no competition breathing down his neck, he has nothing to fear and could simply ride his way to a free $200 cash from MarketLeverage having only generated $1.60 in commission!
| 1st | CD8065 | $21.00 |
| 2nd | CD8036 | $12.00 |
| 3rd | CD8021 | $1.60 |
| 4th | OPEN | $0.00 |
It’s not too late to enter: in fact, the contest doesn’t end until July 11th so you still have plenty of time to participate. Full competition details of the Affiliate Marketing Challenge can be found here.
Busy as Heck
My God, I’ve been busy. I think I worked close to 60 hours this week. For some reason, affiliate marketing takes so much time. I’m sure a lot of it is because I’m a complete newbie and so there is so much to learn.
I’ve been finding it really difficult to juggle PPC affiliate marketing, my blog, and my other 20+ websites. I went from finding it hard to get myself to work 4+ hours per day to finding it hard to pry myself away from the computer to eat.
I’ve also been having a lot of difficulties sleeping. I get so excited with constantly checking my stats and working on my campaigns that I keep myself up at night or wake up unexpectedly early. I know that checking your stats constantly is not a good thing, but I know that this will wear off eventually. It’s just that, when you’re starting out, making just one lead or sale can completely turn your day around.
Here are my latest stats, as of yesterday:
You’ll notice that I got back into the red the past two days. I didn’t change too much with my actual campaign in regards to keywords/landing pages other than resuming a previous offer that was performing really bad for about a day to see if it might turn around (grab more sample data), but it still failed to bring in a single lead/sale so I paused it again.
I also started using Yahoo Search Marketing, but unfortunately it has not brought in a single sale or lead either… yet.
I’ve generated $257.25 in commissions and spent $552.27 so far, currently leaving me down $295.02. But I’m very optimistic. I haven’t really done any work on the campaign for a couple days, and there is a LOT of optimizing and testing to do. Also, while my current overall ROI is -53.42%, it’s still an improvement over the -78.21% from last year. It’s also an improvement from 2 days ago when it was at -57.12%. An increase in 4% ROI is nothing to scoff at.
Wish me luck on improving it – I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes soon.
18 Responses to “Affiliate Marketing Plunge II: Day 10”
It’s only a matter of time before you’ll be in the green. Loosing money in the beginning is part of the game. When I find some more time i will also give PPC affiliate marketing a try.
Now worries Tyler. Within a matter of time, I bet your commissions will become terrifically awesome!
Well… I guess I’ll just have to win the contest.
And if you need help building links from PR pages to help out with generic search engine traffic, let me know! 😛
Jay
Small error:
“while CD8036 remains close on his heels with $21”
should say $12.
Good luck Tyler! The experience you gain will hopefully eventually put you in the positives!
You know Tyler, you can always set up your adwords to be a CPA, this way you only pay when someone buys from your ad.
Example – there is a campaign with Market Leverage called “Earn Google Cash” which pays 25 bucks per sale after the buyer spends only 1.95. If you set that up in adwords to pay 5 bucks when the sale goes through, you make a clear 20 bucks and are not spending loads on PPC as we all know Google surfers are are just that, surfers and don’t buy a whole lot.
Next note, do a Google search for a Microsoft Adcenter Coupon for $75.00 in free clicks if you find it sign up, MSN has all the older people searching online which means, they have the money to spend.
Have you done any research on Search Engine Demographics?
I keep trying to register but it keeps saying your signature does not match your affiliate name on the T&C page!! It’s driving me mad – I know what my name is! Has this happened to anyone else or is it just me?
Great Chart, The red profit amounts are referring to Negative right ?
Keep up the good work man. Affiliate marketing is a difficult task at times but you’ll get it soon enough!
I remember the same feelings you had when I first started affiliate marketing and trust me, when you launch a new campaign, it doesn’t go away. 🙂 I’ve had many nights being up to 4 – 5 in the morning just working away because I couldn’t sleep! Hehe.
so you keep trying new campaign if they fail?
[…] same time I begun my affiliate marketing campaign, I have also seen quite a bunch of bloggers like Tyler Cruz, Gyutae of Winningtheweb, Jason of the Theuniversitykid (he hit his first $1,000/day), etc taking […]
they have not called me
CD8107 $960.40 wow . What he is smoking ?
I don’t think hes smoking anything lol, but that’s great to see his results!
Told you I’d have to win.
Tyler, what kind of information are you tracking in your SUBID’s? I could definitely help your ROI.
Hey Tyler,
Do you think its possible to learn PPC with smaller campaigns? I don’t really have the stomach for the kind of risk you are taking on right now. If I tried investing only 20% ($10 a day) or so of what you are doing, do you still think I could learn the game?
The best way to learn PPC marketing is to grab your self some coupons to start off with like a adwords coupon or yahoo search marketing where they give you x – amount of free clicks. I have a page on my site that offers up some and at least your not burning up your cash all up front to figure things out.
Just a tip Dave to help save some upfront money but at least you can see how it works and test a few campaigns to see if they are going to convert decently before you put your money into them.
And, before you start email your affiliate manager to see if they have a list of keywords for what ever offer you are trying to promote which will also help you not to lose money. I know CJ has done that for me when I have asked.
Collin
Sure, but it would take a lot longer to optimize and improve your campaign(s) since you will have a lot less data to work with.
For example, if your budget is $10 per day and you average paying $.20 CPC, you’ll only be getting 50 clicks per day. If you convert at 2% and assuming you get a 100% CTR from your landing page to your offer, you’ll only be generating 1 lead per day.
So… certainly you can start with such a budget but it would just take longer to grab enough data to optimize your campaigns.