Affiliate Marketing Update: 250 Leads in 1 Day
November 7, 2011 Posted by Tyler CruzI gave an update on my recent resurgence into affiliate marketing a couple of weeks ago.
In the post, I disclose how I found a lot of losing campaigns… in fact, the vast majority of them were losers. I did find some ‘winners’, but their profit margins were fairly slim which meant that there was not much room to scale.
I continued to work on my campaigns, testing new traffic sources, split-testing ads, and all the usual stuff, with continued mixed results.
But then a couple days ago, I somehow came into contact with an advertiser (who is low-key) who spends $90,000 – $120,000 a month on one of the same sources I’ve been advertising at.
We got to talking, as he seemed quite interested in sharing information since we were both targeting the same niches and using the same advertising sources, and even though it was a very brief conversation, I came away with 2-3 great ideas and one awesome tip.
The ideas weren’t top-secret or things I’ve never heard about before. In fact, I spent a while pondering the logic behind one of those ideas last year, and briefly did some testing on it… but I quickly became confused and ended my experiment. But after this guy insinuated how it was working wonders for him, I had to give it another try.
And so this past weekend, I spent a fair bit of time testing out this "idea" as well as implementing the awesome "tip" the guy gave me. I apologize for being so vague with all this, but the market is already competitive enough without me aiding the competition. Let me just say that there is a lot you can do with your ads and bidding, and that you should constantly test ideas and split-test ads and campaigns.
250 Leads in 1 Day
I started my new "enlightened" campaigns on Saturday with mixed results. I immediately saw a small handful of ads that had high conversion rates, but it was hard to tell how reliable the data was as the sample size was too low. I ended up doing 59 leads that day – which is good, but would require 3-4 days in order to make a decision as to what ads were working and which weren’t.
So, I tried another technique and created a bunch of new campaigns for Sunday. I immediately started seeing fantastic results… results that blew all my past ads and campaigns out of the water. My conversion rate skyrocketed, while my costs were cut in half or more.
I then created even more ads, bidding more to get more traffic, as I wanted a lot of sample data so that I see what I had discovered and what the real possibilities were.
And this is what the end result was for yesterday (Sunday):
I generated 250 leads in 1 day. They were small payout offers, so the gross total was only $350, but it’s still 250 leads nonetheless.
I’ve never generated anywhere close to this many leads in a day before.
But anyone can generate that amount of leads if they spend enough. What’s important is how much I profited. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to find out an accurate number until tomorrow, when I take a close look at things.
From my early investigations thus far though, while I did find some losing campaigns, I also think I found some absolute goldmines.
For example, the campaign at the top with the 40 leads – about $35 of that should be profit (I’ll find out soon enough what the exact profits are). That’s just one campaign, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I could generate 300 leads on that campaign tomorrow. It’d be at a smaller margin, but the higher volume would more than make up for that.
That means that unless I’m very off in my math, that I’ve found winning campaigns that have a lot of room to scale. So the $350 I generated in leads yesterday wasn’t scaled… that was just my test run! No wonder this other guy is able to spend $90-$120K a month!
Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch
Before I can jump for joy though, I need to be certain that I’ve found winning campaigns and that I didn’t mess up any basic calculations. I should be able to find out sometime later today what the end results were profit-wise for yesterday. I’ll then simply scale up the winners and remove the losers.
The other concern is that my traffic source appears to have mysteriously stopped, or at least slowed down to a crawl, the past few hours. It’s weird because it just happened around 9:30 PM (Pacific) or so… and that really worries me. It possible that it’s simply due to people going to bed… after all, Eastern time is 3 hours ahead… but the traffic stopped so suddenly that it does worry me. My campaigns weren’t paused or anything…
I’ll be able to find out in the morning if the traffic will return or not, but it is certainly very disconcerting…
18 Responses to “Affiliate Marketing Update: 250 Leads in 1 Day”
Congrats on your success, Tyler… Time to scale things up … 🙂
Excellent job! Just a few minor tweaks can have a huge effect on the success of your campaigns – that’s what makes this game so darn interesting.
Congrats. Now you have to scale that 250 into 1,000 🙂
Calculated everything. Will do a follow-up post soon.
Tyler,
why bother spouting out a bunch of useless numbers to your readers without explaining “what” the tweaks were.
Its like reading a post about someone saying how they just figured out how to burn 3x as many calories… but I can’t tell you how because I don’t want people to be skinnier than me.
Plain and simply not any information that people can use, which is probably why your comments are all from affiliate managers.
Just figured you should know that I most likely will stop visiting this site if there is no valuable content.
Seriously, if you’re reading any public blog about the “how to’s” of making money online, you’re kidding yourself. Nobody in their right mind is giving away how they make their money. They’re marketers. This is their secret sauce. Why would Tyler give you, some random anonymous commenter, how he’s going to make $200-$1k profit or more every day.
People, stop looking for the golden goose. Go make/build/invent/breed your own.
Tyler, keep up the good work. Smart people only read your blog for inspiration anyway.
Cheers.
I agree with you, the secret of making money online is a trade secret that cannot just be given away to anybody. Because if they did give it away, that certain information will ruin their business.
Dmitry…Clearly you are mistaken. After all, on your own website you “give away” the “definite guide to making $100 a day online” don’t you?
Are you saying that your ebook doesn’t actually share these valuable “trade secrets”?
I guess you have ruined your business by providing that information?
Lets be honest here… the way that Tyler makes most of his money is likely by getting people to sign up to affiliate programs through him, which is why so many affiliate managers are on here commenting.
If he wants people to sign up through him… or to continue to read his blog… he needs to provide value to demonstrate he is an expert. Otherwise, over time there will be less and less people visiting his blog if it doesn’t provide value.
He should be thanking me for telling him that his “product” was inferior today… as the only way to keep “customers” happy is by knowing what they like and don’t like.
Thanks for your response Nate. The answer to why he should give me, some anonymous commenter, any information is a great question. Why on earth should I visit this blog if there isn’t any value being provided.
Inspiration? What inspiration do you get from an excel spreadsheet? My simple point is that there is no proof in the pudding without some actual information. Again, these are just arbitrary numbers otherwise.
Seriously, if you break down this post… he tells you he changed something, and the changes were good. Ok… what is the value of that? What does the “smart reader” like yourself learn from that. Tweaking campaigns is critical, I agree… but change for the sake of changing is not the answer, and certainly shouldn’t be considered inspirational.
I understand the “point” of not giving the exact niches, etc… but if I told you I just tripled my money in real estate, but didn’t share any of the How to’s… why would you read my blog or come back?
Tyler, wasn’t trying to p!$$ in your cornflakes… just trying to share with you that there are many people online that provide more than just an excel spreadsheet. If you don’t want me following your blog… fine. But understand it is more important to focus on the people that ask for more substance, than it is to focus on the sheep that blindly follow.
He just got a campaign to profit and you want him to explain everything he has been working on to get there?
Congrats for your success! I believe your result motivates many people. Thanks for your share!
Congrats for your success keep doing good work !!!
Hi Tyler,
Good work, but take it easy and try gently forward and let the campaigns go on for weeks and you’ll find the right system.
I wonder if the 9:30 thing is when people adjusted for the end of daylight savings time. Was it exactly/precisely at 9:30? Or closer to 9:00pm (which would be midnight new york time)?
I thought about that at the time, but I believe it’s because it would have been when a new IO for big brand advertising would start… midnight on Monday…
This is definitely interesting as well as inspiring. 250 leads in 1 day… wow, I am working hart… and smart to achieve that myself!
Way to go, Tyler!
Congrats Tyler. Totally failed to notice this one amidst all your wonderful Orlando picture posts.
-Jean
Great Tyler,
It seams in the comments that some people don’t understand that in marketing you need to experiment. At least with ppc you can track and make an informed decision. With others types of ads, there’s no way to know for sure what is it that is working.