My Affiliate Marketing Campaigns Generated $338,997.38 in the Past 12 Months
November 10, 2012 Posted by Tyler CruzWhile trying affiliate marketing off and on over the years, I never dedicated the majority of my work focus and time to it until this past year. Since it was 1 year ago from today when I started to see success and growth, I thought I’d write a post in reflection of my affiliate marketing campaigns from the past 365 days.
I thought it’d be interesting to calculate my total gross earnings and total spend from the past 12 months, and so I did just that. The income numbers should be accurate to within a few hundred dollars (I didn’t bother including the income from some networks in which I only generated miniscule amounts from), and the expense numbers should be accurate to within a few thousand dollars.
Affiliate Marketing Numbers: November 8th, 2011 – November 8th, 2012
Income:
Network #1: $304,934.89
Network #2: $27,418.83
Network #3: $2,578.66
Network #4: $4,065.00
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Total: $338,997.38
Paid Traffic:
Source #1: $158,028.14
Source #2: $96,441.78
Source #3: $46,142.72
Source #4: $2,050.00
Misc. Sources: $6,500
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Total: $309,162.64
Net Profit: $29,834.74
Overall ROI: 9.65%
While many people may see the numbers above and either rock their head back and laugh or shake their head in disappointment, you need to understand that my long-term goal has never been to net $300-$400 a day. I’ve always looked at the big picture and want to net $1,000+ per day.
And the only way to do that is to invest money by trying new campaigns (angles/ads/etc.), traffic sources, and offers. It was my choice to throw the majority of my "real" profit back into my affiliate marketing efforts to try to get to the next stage.
What I Could Have Made
I could have been thrifty and just kept my campaign spend to a minimum, trying to maximize my net profit. I estimate that if I did, that I would have averaged roughly around $200/day net profit throughout the year.
At $200 net profit per day over 365 days, that works out to $73,000 net profit – 2.5x the amount that I actually ended up profiting.
So why don’t I regret it? Three main reasons:
#1 – I found replacement winning campaigns
I’ve had a number of winning campaigns over the past year, and by winning campaigns I mean campaigns that range anywhere from $25 – $500 net profit per day. And they were on different traffic sources and were different offers.
It’s not like I just originally had one campaign that was profiting and spent the majority of its profits by trying to find a replacement. Many of my profitable campaigns died for various reasons, and the only reason I was able to find replacement campaigns is because I constantly invested in finding new campaigns for this very reason (as well as to grow).
If I had never invested in new campaigns and just let my original winning campaign(s) run on auto-pilot, I never would have found those replacement campaigns. Therefore, it’s not exactly fair to assume that I would have netted $73,000 throughout the year, because once my original winning campaigns died, I would have been making $0 the very next day.
#2 – I gained a lot of useful information
Over the past 365 days, I tested a ton of stuff. I probably tested around 25-30 traffic sources, 50-60 offers, 8-9 affiliate networks, as well as various techniques (Ex. bidding strategies, ad styles, etc.).
This is invaluable data. I now know which traffic sources are absolute shit and not to waste my time on them in the future (such as when I did a media buy and ended up paying $10 per click). In turn, I also found some good-great sources of paid traffic.
I know which offers are great, which are crap, and while I still test all offers, I can usually spot potential winners right away now. You get the point.
#3 – I am growing
While not at my peak (my best months were June-July), overall I am growing and improving, albeit slowly.
I wrote earlier how if I had hunkered down and tried to maximize my profit that I would have probably netted an average of $200/day throughout the year. Well, I am currently netting around $350-$400 per day. This wouldn’t have been possible without re-investment into my campaigns, and it shows that I am growing.
Interesting Facts and Figures
- Total campaign gross on November 8th, 2011: $50.40
- Total campaign gross on November 8th, 2012: $1,062.30
- Best gross revenue day: $4,068.90 (June 8th, 2012)
- Best net profit day: $1,778.56 (June 8th, 2012 – Actually had a day of $2,xxx profit, but it was a mistake because I got free traffic from a traffic source so it doesn’t really count)
- Worst net profit day: –$800 (from 1 campaign, a media buy)
Goals for the Next 12 Months
The past 12 months were really crazy for me because it was the first time I ever made any substantial amount of money from affiliate marketing.
About 14 months ago I was making $0 from affiliate marketing, and now I am making around $400 net/day. I’ve come a long way.
Here are some affiliate marketing goals I’d like to achieve in 1 year (or earlier!) from now:
Average $1,000 net profit per day
I’m currently doing around $350-400 net profit per day, so this is an attainable goal. I would love to hit this goal though. $30,000 a month (minus taxes) is an enormous amount of money and enough to do pretty much whatever you want to do.
If in 1 year from now I am writing about how I made this goal, I cannot tell you how ecstatic I’d be.
Break the $100,000/month gross revenue mark
Another attainable goal, as I actually came close to breaking that this year. I think my best month so far was somewhere around $75,000 or so.
Hit $1,000,000 gross revenue over the course of the year
You can’t set a money goal without having a million dollars in there somewhere 
.
Wish me luck – I really want to grow and get to the next level. I spent the past year reinvesting to try to get to the next level, so it’d be nice to get there so that I can start to enjoy some of the fruits of my labour.
28 Responses to “My Affiliate Marketing Campaigns Generated $338,997.38 in the Past 12 Months”
Hi Tyler, why not use what you’ve learned and experienced in web marketing, web advertising and affiliate programs to actually help good companies grow?
Spending all that energy promoting unethical affiliate programs for 30k a year might not be the best way to go. You could be bringing actual value instead.
Just my opinion.
1. I am more than proud of what I am promoting. It isn’t 2009 and the age of rebills anymore – you shouldn’t assume that just because I do affiliate marketing means I am promoting unethetical/shady stuff.
2. I like working for myself. I don’t want a boss, clients, or customers.
Are you proud of email submits?
I agree with you. You work for someone else and they are the ones holding the strings. And be assured you will make only a small percentage of the income you generate for someone else. I only worked for one comapny in my life. I doubled their sales in two years by 11 million dollars, and they paid me around $400,000. My final reward was that I was booted out to make room for the new “brother in law”. So much for working for anyone else besides yourself!
You have done all this from scratch in 14 months. That’s extremely impressive. I think you have the right mindset, i like how you sacrificed earning to test new traffic sources. This is something I’m currently doing/trying to do.
How do you keep track of all your campaign stats over the year so you can easily reference then before starting a new campaign. Excel?
CPVLab – highly recommend it.
Thanks Tyler. I’m guessing you mean CPVlab? I’m using that myself. I was testing 7Search and it seems like low quality traffic. Time to find better traffic sources. I’ve a big list of traffic sources to get through.
Would be cool if you could add a subscribe to comments button to your blog.
Yeah, I meant CPVLab, sorry (edited).
I’ve read mixed things about 7search… concensus seems to be that you need to do massive volume on it to see any real success…
I love that you are publishing your profit, narrow margins and all because this is what I am similarly experiencing with my Amazon FBA store and growing as well.
Thanks for the inspiration!
Very impressive Tyler, chasing after you!
Cool – what are your numbers like currently?
How does paying for traffic translate into higher affiliate sales? What leads are you paying for? How do you get quality paid traffic?
There are a lot of websites out there which explain the basics of affiliate marketing. Basically you’re just buying traffic for cheaper than what you make out of it in return, in the form of CPA-based offers from affiliate networks or programs.
Thx for being so transparent! Keep up the good work man!
-Carsten
Hi Tyler,
Congratulations to your success and it is very interesting that you share information, it inspires me to continue to work with affiliate marketing.
Tyler I wonder how much time or how many hours a week you dedicate to this work?
30K for the all year is good specialty working for yourself. Many have a lot less working like a slave.
That would be a fortune if you where working from any country in South America or Asia.
Cheers
Well as I mention in the post, the $30K is really misleading as it’s not maximized profit… I basically just keep the minimum I need to pay my living costs so that I can put all of the rest back into trying to grow. It’s also not my only source of income…
But what you say about other countries is true, and does make me think about possibly moving somewhere else where it’s a lot cheaper to live…
Yes it is expensive to live here on the island. I`m in Sidney on the peninsula by the way. Thanks foe sharing Tyler & maybe we will meet 1 day.
Hello Tyler,
I am very impressed about your numbers and i believe that many people must be. I do not understand that much about affiliate marketing. My main and only experience has been on creating an ebook and put it on Clickbank. So, i am the one depending on the affiliates and not the other way around. Do you have any books or manuals that you would recommend for someone that it is starting on affiliate marketing? Thank you!
Affiliate marketing is basically promoting CPA-based offers and sending paid traffic to those offers, with the obvious goal of making back more than you spend for the traffic.
Hmm… maybe I should do a series a posts or write a free e-book explaining affiliate marketing for absolute newcomers… I’m just afraid it’d alienate too many of the more experienced readers…
You absolutely should, I would happily read it!
Awesome numbers. I don’t think anyone could laugh at 300k gross even if the profit is only about 10%
These numbers are quite high and you’re saying you’re going for more, Getting 30,000 $ a month, its like living in a dream, makes me think of quitting what im doing and starting to do what you do.
Hi Tyler,
Thanks for sharing this data and more importantly, what you’ve learned out of it…seriously.
Also, one thing that intrigues me is that despite the ~$30K profit, you must have already had $25k/month at least to spend on advertising. So, you not only got your $300K back but an additional $30K net.
You must be doing quite well to spend that much despite your modest ROI. Since that is a large monthly spend…was all that acquired from AM?
Just curious and don’t mean to ask such personal questions but, you spent a TON (from my POV) which means you must already be doing well. 🙂
Will check out the rest of your blog!
Cheers
Affiliate marketing is just something I’ve really been focusing on over the past year. While I’ve tried my hand at it in the past, my focus used to be on running content-based websites. Read my about page for more info (https://www.tylercruz.com/about/).
Also, I get paid weekly from the affiliate networks, so really it’s only the initial seed money that you need, then it all gets put into rotation…
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You did great and due to learning your next 12 month’s report would be quite interesting and worth reading.
This report also means a lot if you converts the currency from USD to INR.
You really rock man, I also want to be like that, but my first goal is to achieve $100 a day from adsense. Currently I am at halfway and working on it for improvement.