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:).

I see many other blogs that report their revenue each month. It is a simple way to give perspective on the size of a blog and potential of monetization. I was recently asked in a comment to share my blog’s income, so here is my revenue for October:

• Private Ad Sales – $250
• Reviews – $150
• Google Adsense – $149.49
• Kontera – $42.69
• TOTAL – $592.18

Although this was not one of my best months I still am very proud at where my blog has come. An extra $600 per month is nothing to laugh at, especially since I had virtually zero costs to run/advertise the blog. I didn’t do any advertising at all this month and server/maintenance costs are minimal.

I am hoping to get my blog’s revenue up to $1000/month within 6 months. I haven’t been good at posting consistently lately, which I need to change. One thing that is always true about websites is: content is king. The more content you have the more traffic you will receive.

A while back I wrote a quick post about a record traffic day I had. At that time (a little over a year ago) I was extremely happy with nearly 400 unique visitors in one day. Looking back that seems like nothing:). Since then I have had many more record traffic days but yesterday was my greatest gain so far. Here is what yesterday’s stats look like:

Yesterday (Tuesday), I had nearly 1800 unique visitors to my site!!! Amazing. So far today I am already at about 1000 uniques (at 4pm). I started this blog about 2 years ago and it has come so far. From being impressed by 400 uniques in a day and averaging a few hundred, to 1800 in one day and averaging 1200 uniques. I will keep posting as long as everyone keeps reading:). I get comments on almost every post now, which is my favorite part of blogging.

I have been hesitant about trying out Facebook Ads. I’ve heard both good and bad things. Some say it converts really well if you have the right image and ad copy, and others say it does not convert at all. Since reading that, I was not willing to try it out. But then I found a way to get $100 in free Facebook Ads.

It’s very simple. All you need to do is have a Facebook account and add the Visa Business Application. You will then receive an email shortly after with a coupon code. It will have instructions on how to redeem it. Try out Facebook advertising and write a comment on this post to tell people how it went for you. I am currently testing it out on a campaign I am running and will post its performance soon.

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!

I just finished this site’s redesign a few days ago, and figured now would be a good time to throw up a quick post about it. I had been looking for a new theme for IBD for a few weeks now, and I finally came across one that I liked. There were a few common elements that I wanted to keep from the old design, and some new elements which I really wanted for the new design.

• Header Image – One element from the previous design that I wanted to keep was the header image. I absolutely loved displaying a beautiful picture of Santa Cruz, Ca at the top of my blog, sort of as a goal for myself (and others) to want to live in a place like that through making money online. The new design allows for a header image, but I decided to use a different image I took a few years ago. The picture is still of Santa Cruz, but it is one of the beautiful valleys rather than the beach. Do you like the image?
• 125×125 Buttons – One of the main reasons for wanting to change my blog design was that I desperately wanted to accommodate for 125×125 ad buttons. You see these buttons on most business/money making blogs, and there’s a simple reason for that: they work! When someone clicks on one of my buttons and signs up, I get a referral commission. Now I get to display these buttons to everyone who comes to my site.
  

• Easier to Contact Me – Something I really appreciate when visiting other people’s blogs is the ability to easily find/contact the webmaster. With the new design it is now very easy (and obvious) where and how to contact me. I have used visuals to draw reader’s eyes towards that section, so hopefully more people will feel free to contact me. I listed Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn.
  

• RSS Readership – Another thing I wanted to improve with this blog is the RSS readership. On the old design I only had a small RSS button, that no one seemed to see. Now I have a great big RSS button that probably everyone will see:).
  

• Wider Margins – Lastly, I wanted my blog to have wider margins to allow for more content. I really think the new blog design looks much better, and is easier to use.

These are all very important features to me to have on my blog. Although it took me weeks to find a decent theme to hack up and make my own, it was definitely worth the wait. When you decide to redesign your own blog, you should make a list of features that are most important to you before you start looking for a theme. There are enough WordPress themes out there where you don’t have to sacrifice any feature for another. If you need help finding the right theme for your needs, feel free to contact me.

A little over a month ago I was contacted by a Kontera rep who referenced a blog post I wrote a while back comparing Kontera vs. Vibrant ads. Both of these networks provide in-text advertising for both large and small sites.

My first comparison determined Vibrant Media to be the winner, because they paid more and were more of a well known brand. Since switching back to Kontera a month ago, my revenue has stayed pretty much the same. My eCPM is around $1.25, which is actually decent. Assuming Vibrant and Kontera were making me the same amount of money, the question now becomes what other factors play into choosing an ad network.

My account manager, Katherine, has been very helpful. This is one of my most sought after features of any company, not just on the Internet. Customer service and quick response time I value more than making slightly more money with an ad network. Any question I have had she responded to in the same day. For this reason, I am going to continue with Kontera until I get more data to review. Hopefully I can get my eCPM up to $2 through optimization. More updates to come.

You can sign up with Kontera here.

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 wrote a post comparing Vibrant to Kontera (in-text ads) about a year ago, and decided Vibrant was the clear winner at that time. Since then, Vibrant has been making me less and less money each month. They recently lost their Microsoft advertiser account, which could be the reason for the drop.

Right when I was getting fed up with my income from Vibrant, a Kontera account manager emailed me asking about the post I wrote 1 year ago. She said much has changed since then, and asked if I would be willing to try Kontera again. Since I was ready to switch from Vibrant when she contacted me, she did not have much trouble convincing me to switch back and try Kontera once again.

I have already installed the new code and made decent money on the first day of advertising. I got about 35 cents per click on day 1, but reporting has not updated since then. It has been about 5 days since the last day of revenue was posted. One of the major factors I look at when deciding between ad networks is their reporting. Some of the questions I ask are:

• How detailed is the reporting? (Can I see exactly click for click how much I made?)
• How frequently is data updated? (I want my revenue updated every hour, or daily at the very least)
• Does it give optimization suggestions? (I want suggestions on how to improve my campaign)

Kontera has already shown poor update frequency, but I will email my contact to see if this is normal or a fluke. Hopefully I will be making more money than I was with Vibrant, but only time will tell. I will post a follow up post in a few weeks showing either the success or failure of Kontera the second time around.

**UPDATE: (8/20/2007) – Here’s another linkback, thanks! Google Blog

(6/21/2007) – I received another review shortly after this so I figured I would just include the linkback in this post: Tax Rebate. Thanks for the review!

First Blog Review
I received my first blog review for a linkback. I started this program about 3 weeks ago and finally someone has noticed. I have received many linkbacks from sites listing all the sites that run programs like this, but unfortunately those are not my rules and will not receive a reciprocal link.

Free Link Back
Someone finally took advantage of this great program and easy way to get a free link. Since they are the first, I will dedicate this entire post to linking back to them so maybe other people will see how easy this really is. The review of my blog can be found at chemstudioweb.com, specifically at this location. I would like to thank chemstudioWEB for writing the review of my blog, it seems like he both enjoys and learns from my posts. He also listed some of my mini niche stores, which was not necessary but welcomed anyway…thanks again.

How to do a Blog Review for a Free Link Back
The rules are very simple and can be found at: Review My Blog for a Free Linkback. The basics are you have to write a review of my blog, and link to it at least once using anchor text from the following choices: Make Money Online, Learn Internet Business, Blogging for Money, and now SEO Tips. Use any one of those to link back to my site and you will receive a link back to your site. If the reviews keep coming in slow, ill give anyone who does it a dedicated post. Thanks again Chemstudioweb.