Internet Business Daily

A little while back I wrote a post about how I thought ePN was going to die and publishers needed to look elsewhere for their revenue. Since then, ePN has done a total 180 degree turn and has been doing better for me. Their backend is still solid so basically they fixed the only thing that I had a problem with: earnings.

My revenue continues to increase and I’m currently earning an average of $8 EPC (earnings per 100 clicks). This is pretty decent seeing how when I wrote the previous article my EPC was sitting at around $1.50. A ton of the biggest publishers are still banned from ePN for unknown reasons (eBay claims quality reasons but who knows) and I could be banned at any time. Because of this I am still trying to integrate ePN where I can but I’m not investing a large chunk of my time into it like I used to. I figure I’ll just spend any spare time I have into building more BANS sites and promoting them.

The reason I like ePN’s structure so much is because it takes minimal effort from me after setup. If I never put another minute of time into building and promoting sites, I would still get a nice chunk of change every month in my PayPal account without lifting a finger (assuming I don’t get banned). Has anyone else still had success with ePN? Post to the comments, I’d love to know. Unfortunately, ePN is not accepting US applications anymore, so accounts just became very valuable:).

Everyone knows eBay has been struggling lately. Between their new policies and business model shift towards sales instead of auctions, eBay is on shaky ground. This is why I cannot fathom the thought process behind banning 90% of the publishers in the ePN (eBay Partner Network).

For those who do not know what ePN is, it is eBay’s affiliate program. They give commissions on sales of items purchased by buyers affiliates refer. Each month, around the end of the month, a small portion of the partners get banned for “low quality traffic.” eBay is looking for traffic that is more engaged with their site, which just means buys multiple products. This month was different though.

A few days ago about 90% (my estimate based on eBay forum posts and friends of mine who run ePN) of the partner network had their accounts closed for this reason. I was lucky enough to escape with my account in tact, and I’m thankful because I have been using eBay’s affiliate program for almost 2 years now and it is my most successful online venture to date. Hopefully I can keep my account next time they decide to close another set of accounts. This is not the way to keep the people who make you millions upon millions of dollars happy. Get with the program, eBay.

Introduction
I have recently been trying to diversify my affiliate marketing portfolio, and to do that I have been trying different affiliate networks. Over time I will be reviewing each of them but today I want to focus on Clickbooth.com. Clickbooth has been around since 2002 and is one of the largest CPA networks in the world currently used by many of the largest super-affiliates.

Customer Service
Before I start I would like to mention that one of the most important factors to me in an affiliate network, and any company for that matter, is customer service. Customer service includes how easily and quickly I can get a question answered or request handled. I don’t care if you make $10 per day or $10,000 per day, the affiliate should be number one priority. That being said, I recently signed up for Clickbooth and shortly after they contacted me and I was approved. My affiliate manager was quick to email me a couple starter questions (how do I usually promote offers, what kind of offers do I usually like) and from that found a bunch of great looking campaigns to run. So from my experience so far Clickbooth has excellent customer service.

Reporting System
Upon entering their reporting system, I was very pleased. It is very easy to read and displays all the data in a well-formatted page. The backend itself has a very intuitive GUI, which makes my job that much easier. Although I have not been able to send a ton of traffic their way yet, they are definitely first in line for my next big campaign.

Overall
Clickbooth has great customer service, a ton of well-performing campaigns, and an intuitive GUI. One last thing I would like to mention is their ability to keep affiliates up to date with offers and news. They have an active twitter account and blog. If you plan on using Clickbooth after reading this review, please use my affiliate link .

2nd UPDATE: Check out my Facebook Ads Guide review. Facebook Ads Guide is an all-in-one guide to making money using facebook ads for affiliate marketing.

UPDATE: Here’s another free Facebook ads coupon!

I was just over at Neilsweb.com and found another 3 coupons for $150 in free Facebook advertising. You redeem the codes the same way as the first:

• 1. Login to Facebook.
• 2. Click “Manage Ads”
• 3. Click “Billing”
• 4. Click “Funding Sources”
• 5. Click “Enter Coupon Code”

The coupon codes are:

• T5V6-1JKV-TNH9-2MRH ($50)
• 2JXY-WTFK-72Y0-VJ6Y ($50)
• R1X5-0NH7-5FXW-5YEC ($50)

And remember to get your $100 from my previous post too! Free money!

Introduction
A few weeks ago I had started my first PPC to CPA marketing campaign. Although I lost money (about 15% of my $500 investment) I gained valuable data and experience. Since then I have been doing research on my second attempt at affiliate marketing. Zac Johnson was promoting this Ultra Green Tea diet campaign through Advaliant and it looked very interesting.

I knew there was already a good amount of competition because Advaliant is running a contest that gives big cash bonus’ to the affiliates with the most conversions. I decided to go with the Ultra Lean Green Tea diet campaign anyways. This campaign was different than my first campaign because instead of a simple zip code submit as a conversion, a conversion would only count after a 2 page form including a credit card submit. Obviously this will have a much lower conversion rate than the zip submit but it pays $26 CPS (cost per sale).

Research
The first thing I did in the process was research who else was running the same campaign as me. I learned this strategy later in the process during my first go at CPA marketing. This is exactly what I meant by gaining valuable experience even though I took a loss. There were 4 or 5 other competitors in Google’s sponsored results running the same Green Tea campaign. They all had very similar landing pages that matched the advertiser’s page. I did some quick keyword research with Google’s keyword external and found that I would be paying between $1.25-$2 for the top 3 spots in sponsored results. I grabbed a bunch of keywords for my campaign and began the setup process.

Calculations
Next I had to set goals for my campaign. This is an important step in the creation process because without a goal, you will just be spending money and will not know how to tweak the campaign properly. Using the same formula as the first time (CPA/ROI * CR = CPC), I plugged some numbers in and got a general idea of my goals for this campaign. ($26/2 * CR = $1) Calculating this formula gives me a conversion rate goal of about 7.7%. I wanted to give myself enough room to hit my targets, which is why I went with a CPC of $1. This also means I will get less clicks because I will be in lower ad positions.

Creating the Landing Page
The next thing I did was get a landing page. It used similar graphics to the advertiser’s sales page. One thing I did not want to do with this campaign was iframe the form onto my landing page like I did with the last campaign. The landing page is important for “pre-selling” your visitors, which increases the conversion rate. I also included all of the normal components of a quality landing page: contact info, terms of service, privacy policy, about etc.

Setting Up Adwords
The next thing to do was setup Google Adwords. I used my previous method of creating an ad group for each keyword variation, which allows me to directly test the quality score of each keyword. I setup a broad match version and exact match version ad group for each keyword. After setting the campaign live I closely watched the real time traffic of the site and for each keyword that came through, I would create another exact match and broad match ad group for it. I would continue this process until I extracted all of the different keyword variations from my broad match terms. My goal was to have traffic only coming from my exact match keywords.

The Results
I will cut the suspense here and now, I made money on this campaign:). After talking to a few of my affiliate marketing buddies, they all agree that making money on only my second try at PPC to CPA marketing is rare. That being said, let’s get into the results:

The above image shows the data for the entire life of the campaign, including the time it took optimize the keywords. Overall, I had 60 conversions (according to Adwords, which I will discuss soon) at a cost per conversion of $17.84. Since my CPS (cost per sale) was $26, you can easily calculate my profits with the following formula: ($26-$17.84) * 60 = $489.60 profit. Keep in mind this is only according to Adwords.

Many of you will ask: why didn’t you just leave the campaign running if you were making money? When I started the campaign about a week and a half ago, I was making around $100/day profit. My campaign was converting at ~10% and all was going well. I hadn’t even optimized my keywords or CPC’s and I was already making great money. Obviously this was very exciting for me and I thought I finally could move up in the affiliate marketing world. Then, basically overnight, my conversion rate dropped from 10% to 1%. I am still not sure what happened. I kept optimizing my keywords and ad groups, and they were optimized well. My QS was good, my CTR was good, everything seemed to be the same or better but no one was purchasing the product any more. Maybe everyone had purchased the product and there was no longer a market for it, but that seems unlikely. I kept spending money for another 5 days or so, losing money every day. Finally, I turned off the campaign and was happy with the profit I made.

The Curve Ball
One thing that really screwed with my profit margin was the fact that Advaliant was reporting 10 less conversions than adwords was. This wouldn’t be a big deal if the CPA was $1.20 like my first campaign, but since it was $26 per conversion, I really felt the discrepancy in my profit margins. I am still working with my account manager at Advaliant to try to figure out a way to level off the discrepancy, and hopefully they will do good by me. Since 10 conversions equals $260, that means my profits dropped from about $500 to about $240. Advaliant said that the discrepancy was caused by Adwords double counting conversions because of visitors reloading the page, but I do not agree with that. I proved that individual keywords that were converting were not being counted, so that meant double counting was impossible.

Conclusion
Overall, this was a positive experience. I made money and gained even more experience with PPC to CPA marketing. I spent about $1000 and came out with anywhere between $1300 to $1500 depending on whether I get the missing conversions. I am still confused as to what happened when my conversion rate dropped to basically 0%, so maybe someone reading this will have an answer. My experience with Advaliant was decent and I am still waiting to see if they make up the missing conversions to me. I will update everyone with whether they do or don’t. Keeping affiliates happy is very important, so hopefully they do the right thing. I would like to note that they were willing to wire me my money early so I can pay off the credit card bill I had accumulated, which was a big plus for them in my mind. I am already doing research into my third campaign, so check back soon for updates!

Introduction
I have recently been trying to figure out PPC to CPA affiliate marketing. My first attempt was through an offer on NeverBlue Ads promoting a $250 grocery coupon. This CPA offer required a zip code submission to be counted as a conversion. The offer had a low $1.20 CPA, which means for every sign-up (acquisition) I would make $1.20.

This was the first offer I had with NeverBlue, and PPC -> CPA marketing in general. This means I had no history with Neverblue and they would be less willing to accommodate any special requests I had. Also, since this was my first time trying this I did not want to take a huge risk with my money. After reading countless forum posts I realized that you have to take a risk to make a profit. That being said, choosing a low paying CPA deal often means that the CPC’s will also be proportionately lower, reducing my risk.

Some Quick Math
With a CPA of $1.20 I did not have much room squeeze out a profit. Assuming I want an ROI (return on investment) of 100% and my conversion rate (clicks compared to people who actually signed up) was 15%, I would need my CPC’s to be $0.09. This is based on the formula: (CPA/ROI)*CR=CPC. This formula says my CPC should be equal to my cost per acquisition ($1.20) divided by how much I want to make (100% profit) multiplied by my conversion rate. I had asked my account manager to raise the CPA amount, which he did to $1.35. You can use the same formula to calculate what my target CPC’s were at this rate.

Creating the Landing Page
Many affiliate marketers will tell you that creating the landing page usually takes the most time with regards to setting up a new CPA offer. I also found this to be the case. Since I am not a designer in any way I had a difficult time coming up with ways to make creatives for my landing page. So I did what any beginner would do and I put together pieces of other people’s landing pages along with some customization to create mine. I went through many iterations before finalizing the design, but here it is:

The main thing to notice is the zip submit area. Originally, that was not there and was actually occupied by a “continue to the next page” button. The actual zip submit form is located on the advertiser’s landing page, which lowers the CR (conversion rate) because it requires users to click an extra page before signing up. I was not happy with this so I iframed the zip submit area of the advertiser’s page onto my page. Can you tell? This increased my CR. I’m not going to go much deeper into creating landing pages, but feel free to ask any questions and I will answer them.

Setting Up the Adwords Campaign
I will give a quick overview on how I was taught to setup Adwords campaigns. Basically, every keyword should be in its own ad group in the singular and plural form along with exact and broad match types. With this method you should have 4 ad groups per term. This is to control quality score and to better analyze at a more granular level. Each campaign should only have one root word. My original root word was “coupon” so I created a campaign called coupon. I used both the singular and plural form of the word and also had the broad and exact match types. Here’s what it looks like: Coupon, Coupons, [Coupon], [Coupons]. I did this with every variation of coupon-based keywords I had.

The Data
One thing that I was told very early is that you have to run a campaign for a little while before you start to see CPC’s lower automatically. After about 3-4 weeks, here is what my campaign was shaping up like:

This data is for the life of the campaign. In the beginning, my stats were poor and I was losing money. Towards the end I was able to start making money but at that time it seemed almost impossible to actually turn a profit. At that point I decided to cut my losses and stop the campaign. Based on this data it is obvious that for every conversion I had, I lost $0.57. This multiplied by 223 conversions means I lost $127.11. I do not think this is very bad for a first time and I had gained a lot of experience.

Conclusion
Although I had lost money I had learned many valuable pieces of information. I learned how to optimize an Adwords campaign, how to extract keywords from broad match type, how to lower CPC’s through optimizing my campaign and much more. You can read forums and blog posts all day but unless you get your hands dirty, you’ll never know a thing. As always, feel free to email me about any questions you have about my experience.

This is a guest post from AffiliateTips.com – a great place to get started in affiliate marketing and find affiliate programs in almost any niche.

Use Offline Marketing to Increase Your Online Earnings

It can sometimes be difficult to understand how offline marketing can be important for your online affiliate marketing business. Well, if all of your marketing efforts only occur online you’ll risk missing a huge part of your segment. If you want to make some serious money you should consider all of your marketing options.

It’s good to know that it isn’t that difficult to integrate offline marketing into you overall promotional plans. To get the best results possible from your efforts it’s good if you know the basics before you set sail. Read this blog post and you’ll get a head start to your competitors and you will understand why it is so important to get offline to make money online!

Reaching New Customers

Even though you want to make money from the Internet and most people use the web on a regular basis, it’s imperative that you think outside the box to reach as many potential customers as possible. While most use the web, not all of your potential clients/referrals can be found on the Internet doing their daily tasks, such as making purchases and researching products.

To get these potential clients to visit your affiliate marketing site you have to use offline methods to get them motivated. With little effort and often small costs you’ll be able to inform them about what you have to offer. Who knows, this might be exactly the thing that is needed in order to increase your earnings. Even though it might seem ancient in these modern times, don’t overlook the possibilities to post fliers on notice boards in your community. Always try to target the right kind of people for your particular business. Look around your city and select places that potential customers would pass by often. If you for an example promote a weight loss supplement, it might be a good idea to put up fliers close to places like gyms and health stores.

Increase Your Trust

Many people still feel anxious when purchasing something on the Internet and if you have the possibility you really should do everything you can to increase your trust. With millions of sites selling and promoting products, the most successful are the ones that in the consumer’s eyes are the most trustworthy.

If you make an initial contact with potential referrals offline your credibility and trustworthiness will surely increase. People tend to feel a lot more comfortable to make purchases online if they know that there is a real person behind a site. Some of the things you could try are guest appearances in appropriate forums, television and newspapers ads and direct mail. Also check out the possibilities to advertise on your local radio, since smaller stations often have quite affordable prices.

Create a Buzz

Another great thing about offline marketing is that it’s a great way to get people to talk about your business. If you succeed in this you’ll have one of the most effective tools that exist, hardly any other marketing tools can compete on the same level. If recommendations come from someone a potential customer knows chances are great that they’ll visit your affiliate marketing site.

One way of creating this buzz is to hold a giveaway contest that should be promoted online as well as offline. Contact your local newspapers and radio stations and post your promotion on popular bulletin boards at community centers. It’s more likely to be successful if you can get people talking about it, so you need to be original. Spend some time thinking about how you can make your contest more appealing than the others that are out there.

So now that you know the basics it’s time to put it in practice and watch the cash roll in!

While browsing the forums at DigitalPoint, I came across a very exciting post. eBay Partner Network (ePN) has officially extended their program to the PepperJam Network (PJN). This is great news for us eBay affiliates, because ever since the switch from CJ to eBay’s own in-house network, revenue and quality has nose-dived for the majority of affiliates.

Additionally, ePN’s customer support has to be the worst support I have ever come across in my affiliate marketing career. I will spare you my rant about ePN and just say that if PJN’s revenue is better, and their customer support is on par, I will be very pleased. They have already announced that they are dedicating an entire team to eBay affiliates.

I have signed up and am awaiting approval. As soon as I start getting new revenue figures, I will review PJN. I already have a good feeling about them, but then again anything would be better than ePN.

Lately, I have been writing about things that were a little off topic for this blog. My original plan was to have a blog that displayed all the ways I have learned to make money on the Internet, and to help other people discover ways to make money.

That being said, I wanted to give an update as to what was making me money lately. I do not want to give exact figures (you can email me if you really want to know), but I will give an idea as to what is really working and what is not.

Right now, the eBay affiliate program through CJ.com is still making me the most money. This accounts for about 90% of my Internet income (not including my day job at an Internet company). eBay has recently decided to drop CJ.com and go with their own in-house affiliate program, and I have not had much luck with it yet. If this does not change soon, I will need to look for other methods to monetize my traffic. Next in line is Adsense, Kontera, and other direct deals I have made. These are usually insignificant amounts, or one-offs. Also, I have been doing consulting, but again these are usually one-offs and not a steady source of income.

My goal for 2008 is to double my earnings per month from the Internet. Right now, this source accounts for about 15-20% of my yearly income (including my day job). One thing that I have learned is that you cannot give up. I have hit a plateau with my earnings and traffic for about 3 months now, and I have wanted to give up many times. I just need to keep plugging away and hope for the best. My ultimate goal is to be able to work full time on my web sites and money making ideas, like many of my friends already do. Hopefully, this happens sooner than later. Wish me luck!

I have been a CJ eBay affiliate member for about 2-3 months now. Basically how this program works is you sell items for eBay and they give you 40-65% of the commission. This is only a deal you can get through Commission Junction. Then one day Tom Ferris (who told me about this program) and I both stopped receiving revenue. We quickly received an email from the CJ team saying that eBay had a huge bug that did not allow for the tracking of sales. WHOA! We were still getting impressions and clicks tracked, but not that sales (the most important thing to track).

So basically eBay has no idea how much each of their affiliate would have made, and is most likely going crazy over there trying to figure out what happened. So what will happen to all of the money we would have made? That’s a great question and one that I asked the CJ team. The quickly responded with:

EBay is planning on reviewing your prior sales record and trying to calculate a generous estimate of what you would have made while their tracking was down. We hope this answers your question. If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

So here’s the problem as I see it: how are they possibly going to determine how much I would have made? I only started making money with the program a few days before the bug happened. On the other hand, for someone like Tom, he has plenty of data that shows he makes money. Supposedly they have fixed the bug as of the 22nd, but I am still not getting any revenue. I will keep everyone updated on the status of this error, but it seems like this should be a huge issue over at eBay and they should be working 24/7 to figure out what’s wrong.