Growing Pains Of Affiliate Marketing - Part I

Posted by Hyder on February 7th, 2008

Affiliate marketing can be a real pain in the butt sometimes {quite literally}. When you start out you want to test out your campaigns as much as possible with all sorts of keywords, ad variations, bid amounts and on and on…It can get quite frustrating to not see an immediate return on your investment.

Seeing click prices soar and some algorithm that keeps telling you to spend more money, when you’re not making as much, can be very discouraging. So I’ve made a few points that have helped me focus my strategies better {and give me some off time from my chair}.

Overcoming growing pains of affiliate marketing

Set your campaign period to only show todays date by default, and not the entire month or week. This way you don’t get too exasperated when you see how much money you’ve spent the entire time you’ve begun doing this. Especially if you’ve just entered this area of the internet. You can always change the date ranges to gather data for statistical purposes.
Don’t expect to make money with the first campaign you setup. That’s virtually impossible, if you are able to do so then please get in touch with me by email immediately. Instead, think of it as a mental exercise to see how much you can push yourself in getting more results with the amount of campaigning you would like to do in the future.
Just because Google said your Quality Score is poor and you need to bid more doesn’t mean you have to. Instead pause the keyword, get creative and think of another variation for it and bid on that. Compare results {remember you’re just comparing clicks now, not money made} and if you think Google was right about suggesting to bid more then go ahead and bid more. You’ll know when you can reduce it.
Be ready to spend, but don’t lose it all. Set a limit for yourself to achieve on a daily basis. First, optimize your ad copy. Then improve your Quality Score. Lastly, you can go with lowering your bids once your campaign is showing you some results. Presently, I’ve been doing the first step for the past week and it’s showing results.

These are some of the growing pains that I’ve experienced and the methods I’m using to combat them. I’m no expert in affiliate marketing, or Google Adwords, yet, but that’s what I’m aiming to achieve.

Having a clear laid out plan before you are ready to take on the big bad world of PPC can really help. This point cannot be stated enough. Watch out for more posts in overcoming growing pains of PPC affiliate marketing.

I’m just getting started…

Category: Web Income

~ 3 Comments so far...have your say ~

James Wilcox

February 9th, 2008 at 9:32 am

I think part of the problem is that Google is always trying to squeeze more money out of everyone. My first Adwords campaign was a complete disaster and ended up costing me $150 and not a single sale. The second time around, I spent much less but only netted one sale for $17 and i can’t even get that until I sell 5 more things from 5 different people/credit card numbers…and if my total is over $100. I don’t know how these so-called affiliate experts make so much money…it boggles my mind.
Hyder

February 9th, 2008 at 11:06 pm

James, My first Adwords campaign was a total disaster as well. I’ve not done PPC for over two years now, the past year all I’ve been doing is learning and learning.

Mind you, I have not bought one single ebook to learn new stuff. I’ve just read up all the free stuff available, mostly through bloggers sites and forums.

The only thing that can make a difference in your affiliate strategy is the right kind of information and experience.
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February 10th, 2008 at 6:55 am

I have never been a big fan of aff. marketing. Too much trial and error.