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!

Work the Read/Learn

I want to talk about a very big problem in Affiliate Marketing. I find myself too many times just reading and reading and reading blogs, forums e-books, websites etc. etc. This is a very big problem and prevents many of us to just start. And even when we start it slows us down a lot!!

So what's the solution? I'm trying this "trick" on myself now. I will let you know that outcome.
What I told myself is like this: After every two campaigns that I put up to run I "treat" myself and dedicate a whole evening to read material. This way I get work done and satisfy that need to read.
Another great advantage is that you get to experience the steps of Affiliate Marketing and then when you read about various work methods you can more easily decide if they apply to you and you won't have that "info overload" problem. If you have a higher tolorence that I do then I would say to even try and put up three or four campaigns beofore allowing yourself to read.

Good luck!

Yay! I think I made a mistake

All the pros talk about learning from your mistakes. It always bothered me that I don't think I learn from my mistakes.
I'm excited today because I think I found a mistake and I think I learnt something from it. I decided to go with the approach of waiting for 400/500 clicks on campaign to asess it's profitability. I put up two campaigns so far. One of them has 120 keywords. Since April 8 I got 150 clicks on this campaign with a CTR of 2.5%. It's just taking forever to reach that 400 clicks goal.
So I think when I start a campaign I need to set myself a goal for a minimum amount of keywords. That amount should be significant - Say 500-1000. I'll have to look into this.
A way to do that is to follow Amit's advice to start with breadth keyword research.
I'm getting the impressions so I need to improve CTR:
- By making sure I'm higher than the 8th position
- Perhaps Improving ad copy and the like (not sure about this one yet)

These steps should probably help me reach that 400 clicks goal much sooner.

Good luck

How Much To Bid Part II

In "How Much To Bid Part I" I got a little side tracked, but the information I spoke about were important none the less.

So how much to start the bid with?

So you already know - from Part I - that the initial stage is research. You have no idea what keyword will bring in the sales. In order for you to be able to give all your keywords a fare chance you must make sure they all appear on the first page in Google. So practical steps:
- start off with a unified bid for all keywords. Pick any amount (usually around $0.20).
- Wait 2 days and check the avg. position for the keywords.
- Increase by %20 - %30 all the keywords with avg. position 8 and lower. If some of the keywords are really showing up in high number positions then consider even doubling the bid for those keywords. I would like to just clarify: At this stage you are

Goal: Affiliate Summit East

I haven't really set myself a long term goal yet. I set a goal to make $100 by April 30. Well we'll have to see if I meet that goal.

My "long-term" goal is the affiliate summit taking place this Aug in Boston. My goal is to attend it. I'm going to need $1000 for a ticket + $949 entrance fee + spending money = $3000. So I need to be making an extra $3000 by Aug.

$3000/Mo by Aug 1st!!!!

Good luck

Holiday Game Plan

Since the holiday of Passover is coming I would just like to make myself a game plan. It is custom not to do any work during the holiday. Our sages tell us that any work done on Chol Hamoed will not be fruitful.

I will take the next week to learn. I want to read up on some topics that will help me with my business. In addition it would be a good time to learn the various environments I work with.

So here is my game plan for the next coming week:
- Try and finish Robert Kiyosaki’s book - 6 Hours
- Learn Google Analytics and become an expert – 5 Hours
- Learn the various reports available from Google AdWords – 2 Hours
- Deepen my knowledge and options available from AdWords – 2 Hours
- Learn the art of Pre-Selling
- Review some blogs and forums to learn, learn and learn – The more the better.

And of course enjoy the holiday and have fun with my family.

No peaking

I decided it's important to keep track of my actions, so once again I will write apost eventhough I said I am taking a break.

I checked my campaigns performence today. I did that because I raised the price last night and wanted to evaluate the impact. So far can't really tell.

I'm beging to gain some clicks on one of the campaigns. 52 to be exact. Of course I could not control to check my sales status...so I login into my clickbank account just to see that big ugly $0. The clicks cost me $23 already. But 52 clicks aint gonna cut it. I was very discoureged for a moment. Felt like "what am I doing here" and negative thougths like that. Well my friends, here's the real test for Affiliate Marketers. Dealing with things like that. The absurd part is that 52 clicks is no where neer enough to evaluate. My goal is 400 - 500 clicks, remember?
It's taking so damn long but that's because I only put up one campaign at a time. So another reason to go the multiple way.

So conclusions:
- Do not check sales status before 200 clicks!! Period!!
- Bulk launch of campaigns
- Focus on CTR

I will be putting up a post of my game plan for the next coming week. Since it's holiday I'm can't really do work. I will have to tkae the time to learn some important info and read helpful books.