Mini Crisis

I'm going thru a bit of a hard time. Basically I'm discouraged by the campaign that was making sales. I though all Ihad to do is put it up for content network bid $0.9 a keyword and the sales will come pooring in. Well guess what. They didn't. And I spent a lot of money on the campaign.

I feel overwhelmed with what corrections to make in order to properly sale. The worse part is that traffic is so damn slow on this campaign thru the search network that it drives me nuts!!! Well, I learnt a lessons now didn't I.

I just realized another mistake...this campaign has an alternative ordering method. i.e not thru cc online but thru money order. I think I need to stay away from those since they do not give me an authentic number. If I evenr go the SEO route it can be a good idea.

I might take a little break to start over again fresh. I think I will pause the campaign and maybe come back to it.

Good luck

Hello? Stop Changing Your Mind

So, I just want to update here where things stand.
Based on a recommendation from pjs I decided to focus on my selling niche and try and drive more traffic and increase sales. Adding the campaign o MSN was not and is not really adding much traffic, since the search volume there is much lower. So I went the Content Network route taking Felix's advice to start on high bid. I'm now out $220 on this campaign. I would like to try and anlyze my steps and see why they might have been wrong.

This niche has received only 330 clicks and 4 sales. I think I really do need it to get to 500 clicks to know the persistnecy and correct conversion rate. Only then I think I can afford to move to content network and justify the high bids. I need also more capital to work with, and that I will have only when I'm doing better. Another issue is: This niche is moving really slow. Not getting much impressions. So it might not even be worth the time altogether. Well I'm still learning.
So to sum it up:
- Make a budget for each campaign. Once passed - dump it!
- Put up 10 campaigns at a time
- Once selling, bring it to a positive ROI before starting the content network.

Hope I do better next time.

Good Kick in The Butt

Today pjs wrote a very good post about choosing your clickbank products. He ends off saying how he can't stop stressing the 10 niches statistic.
This is a good kick in the butt for me. Because I think I was getting lazy (and I will explain why soon) and making myself all these excuses why I need to take it slower. So yea, it did take off pressure. But it also took off me working. I need to get back into it. And if 10 niches mathod works. Heck I'm going to try it.

The reason I could not handle 10 niches was because just the thought of it made me cross eyed. It takes me FOREVER (10-15) hours for each campaign. Now, if I was doing this full time that's one campaign a day. But I don't have all day!
So I realized something. There is a niche that is selling. And all niches are getting impressions. And at the end of the day these are the pretty common keywrods that are selling. The ones that have high numbers on google for both search and compatetion. So what I need to do is majorly lay off the keyword work. The initial stage is a trial. You simply cannot put your guts into something that might fail. I have a good example from life. I put in hours and hours on a niche. I segmented all my keywrods. Heck I even made seperate campaigns and landing pages for the various groups. And what was the return on this hard work? between "poor" and "ok" QS on my keywords!!! Can you believe it??? That's an example of working your butt for possible nothing. Although I'm also learning now, so it wasn't a complete waist of time. Plus, if I improve and optimize it I might be able to do very well.
So, action items for myself:
- Pause all campaigns besides the one selling.
- Get 5 more campaign from Clickbank going
- Do all this by Sat night (inclusive)

Self Loyalty

Wow do I have major issues with keeping my promisses to myself!! This might be a big problem with this journey. But it's nothing I do not have control over.

I keep setting myself borders and limits and I keep breaking them. I said I will post more often and yet it has been a week since my last post. I promissed myself no blogs and no forums un till I finish 2 campains and yet I do not keep to it.

To succeed in this business you need major self disciplent.

Anyway, back to business.
I found myself a fellow AM beginner which we share thoughts with. I think this is an important part in AM or any business. Having some one to consult with on your level so you can leatn together.

Secondly, I'm taking the campaign that has sales and trying to optimize it. These are the steps I took:
- Moved the non-selling kw into their own adgroup.
- Started an MSN campaign with the selling KWs. (might expand further)
- Created a content network campaign with the selling KWs theme.
- Added about 1000 misspelling keywords to the selling ones.
- Added domains containing the selling keywords.

I will keep you posted on the results.

The Right Goals

I've decided to start posting more often. I need to be able to back track my thoughts and why I decided to do what I'm doing.

Origionally I thought I need to take to the approach of putting up 10 campaigns at a time to test them.
Since I'm very limited on time, I can only afford to barely post 10 campaigns a month. So That is going to be my initial goal. Every month 10 campaigns!
After I put up a campaign and time passes and I move on to new campaings, I will still monitor old campaigns. On these campaigns I will make sure:
- I'm getting enough clicks to reach 500 clicks within 2 weeks.
- Quality Score on all keywords is "Greart".

My game plan is: Stop everything I am doing to and go back to that compaign and make sure it complies with those requirements.

Another important decision that I'm making is that I'm dedicating my first 10 campaigns to properly study Affiliate Marketing and try and get to a comfortable level of working mwthod. The main benefit of this decision is avoiding all o my dilemas if to invest time in a campaign that might not be profitable. This way I'm not investing time for profit but rather for study, and it is well worth the time. Another side affect is that I will be able to tell in the future if it's worth investing in a campaign.

I'm going to take this plan as it goes and probably have to change and modify it along the way.
I'm going to set a deadline for when this "study" time is over.

I'm also thinkning it will take off the unncessery pressure to just post a campaign. It allow me to take all the necessery steps to optimize the campaign.

Good luck!

April Report

It has been a while since my last post (I seam to be opening a lot of my posts that way. I should probably stop)

It's not because I quit but on the contrary I have been very busy with my campaigns. Before I elaborate more on my work I would like to post the report for the month of April.

So expenses were:

Adwords: $113.31

Income:

Clickbank sales: $44

So the month of April I'm in a loss of a total of -$69.31

My origional goal was profit of $100 from at least one campaign.

So I would like to dedicate this post to try and analyze the month of April.

So first of all the reason I did not reach my financial goal is because I only ended up putting up 2 campaigns. It simply isn't realistic to make money from your first two campaigns. The fact I even made sales is probably very uncommon too.

Another issue is keeping to my tasks. I set myself some tasks for the week of Pessach. I did not complete even one of them. I keep giving myself dealines, aultimatimus and restrictions. And I always end up breaking them.

I would tell myself:

No blog reading until I put up 2 campaigns- FAILED

No movies until I put up 10 campaigns - FAILED

I origionally set a financial goal of $10,000/mo by Oct '08. The problem is, it's just not real enough. I don't know what it means to make $10,000/mon. I don't have a plan to acheive this goal because I don't even have solid statistics to work with.

I therefore have to set a new goal which is not fonancial at all. I need to decide on a method of work. A routine which I can follow for every single campaign.

For every campaign I need to set a maximum amount of time, after which I golive with what I have. Each step of the campaign creation must have a time limit and definiton. When I say definition I mean borders. A good example is keyword research. How wide do I actually go.How many keywords do I start with. and son on...

I will try to make a post containing awork plan.

Then once I have a work plan and real statistics to work with, I can actually have financial goal.

Good luck to us all.

New Goal

I did not check the Hebrew dates of the upcoming Affiliate Summit. Unfortunately it falls out on the 9th of Av. This is a very sad day for the Jewish people. The destruction of our temple occurred in this day, so we fast mourn all day. I therefore will not be able to attend the Affiliate Summit (priorities man).

So my new goal is:
$10,000/Mo within Six months.

I want my Oct 30th report to reflect a profit of at least $10,000!!!
It’s going to take hard work. But I am up for it and will do it with G-d’s help!

Good Luck to us all!