Affiliate Marketing Plunge: I’M IN THE GREEN!!

August 5, 2008 Posted by Tyler Cruz
Paid Advertisement

Man, what a ride.

I first started my foray into the world of PPC affiliate marketing a bit over a year ago when I lost $1,000 in just under a month. I then decided to try my hand at it again a couple months ago, and finished June $400 in the hole.

I kept at it, since I kept seeing improvements in my average ROI, and it seems to have paid off since I managed to finish July IN THE GREEN! I know the correct term is “Black” and not green, but it’s not easy been green, and my spreadsheet shows my profits in green :-)

Let me tell you, it’s a most wonderful feeling seeing yourself progress. It’s a great challenge, and when you succeed you get a huge high. Here is my affiliate data for the month of July:

77

As you can see, I finished with a profit of $26.29. While this amount may seem ludicrous, especially considering that I had to spend $885.71 to make $912.00, the fact is that I finished with a profit.

My ROI finished with an average of 2.97%. Notice how there isn’t a negative sign in front anymore? :)

Here is the progress of my total average ROI, taken after the first week and then every few periods thereafter: -57.12%, -53.42%, -43.71%, -36.83%, -31.76%, -25.67%, -19.57%, -13.53%, and now +2.97%!

Soon, I will begin to put less emphasis on the ROI and more on the net figure. After all, you could have an ROI of 100% and spend $50 to make $100, or you could have an ROI of 50% and spend $500 to make $750. I’d rather make the $250 than $50.

If you take the data from the last 7 days, you’ll see that I actually profited $116.14 with an ROI of 62.32%. This would work out to an average of $16.59 per day, or $497 a month. If I created 19 more campaigns just like this one, that would turn out to be $10,000 a month profit.

Unfortunately, the past few days have shown very poor results, but hopefully things will pick up again soon. I also have a huge surprise that I’ll be unveiling within a few days so be sure to stay tuned for that.

Posted: August 5th, 2008 under Miscellaneous  

35 Comments »

Comment by Richard Subscribed to comments via email
2008-08-05 04:30:08

Congratz on the results, it can only get better from now :) Hopefully.

Is that just the one campaign you are running by the way?

Richard

 
Comment by Chris
2008-08-05 05:33:52

Great work, congratulations on getting out of the red. Just goes to show that if you stick at something like this it can work out well. I hope it continues at this rate increase for you.

 
Comment by Web Freak
2008-08-05 05:56:57

Thats great, we expected that, anyways, why NeverBlueAds is always $0 ?

 
2008-08-05 07:26:12

Isn’t that the best feeling? So many times I run a campaign for an affiliate and I know it will work, but it just takes forever to show the profits… When you finally turn that corner it is fantastic!

Congrats!

 
Comment by EntreBlast
2008-08-05 09:15:21

Congrats! You did great those last four days of July. Can’t wait to see how things continue to go.

 
Comment by Work Plus Faith
2008-08-05 09:21:08

Congrats, Tyler!

I also finished July with +ROI (”in the green). Here’s my stats: http://workplusfaith.com/?p=41

I’m also in the top 5 for your Market Leverage contest. Doesn’t look like I’ll be catching “The Behemoth” to get the monitor but I’m working to stay on the leader board! (my ROI is on the “+” side for the contest as well.)

Again, congrats!

Tim

 
Comment by Dave Fitzpatrick
2008-08-05 10:12:59

That’s great. Wish I could say the same, but my ROI is still in the negative. I guess I could ask for some tips, but finding profitable campaigns and optimizing is all there really is to it.

 
Comment by charles Subscribed to comments via email
2008-08-05 10:16:13

I always wanted to join market leverage but they require SS# and i dont have. Is there anyone in here who would like to sponsor me?

Thank you
Charles
Money Making and Blogging Tips
http://www.resourcesandmoney.blogspot.com

 
Comment by Esoomllub
2008-08-05 13:15:15

Thanks for posting your results. I am always wondering whether to jump in to the PPC game on a more permanent basis. My prior experiments were generally lossy to just about breakeven. I’ve always been an organic SEO type guy, so PPC has been something reserved for experiments to date.

 
2008-08-05 13:43:39

nice results! it is nice to know that you aren’t losing a lot of money now.

 
Comment by Marketing Deviant
2008-08-05 15:59:48

Nice! Hope you’ll do better and show us how later on :)

 
Comment by Clog Money
2008-08-05 16:41:30

Congratulations man,

I read recently that if you can get a campaign to break even in the first month, then you can kick in the optimisation the next month and make a good profit.

I’m developing a statistics package at the moment which would help. I’ll send it to you when I’m happier and see if it helps you out. Who know’s you may even think it’s sellable ;)

 
2008-08-05 16:45:54

Well done, I’d be happy with that profit but I would struggle to spend that much in the first place!

Regards,
Carl

 
Comment by 2008 movies
2008-08-05 20:33:06

I bet your really happy to finally be in the green, ive been following your plunge since you started!

 
Comment by shafi
2008-08-05 23:05:30

That is very good. Are they going to tax you on the revenue or just profit ?

 
Comment by Thorsten Bonn
2008-08-05 23:48:55

Awesome results Tyler. Like you said, it’s the fact that you now know how to finish in the green rather than the red that makes the campaign worth it all.

From here it’s just a matter of time and sclability until you reapply what you know and hit the 5 figures in extra cashflow per month.

I have only been blooging for a few weeks but have already surpassed the goals I set for the first month, that’s all that counts.

Cheers…

 
Comment by Paul Piotrowski
2008-08-06 00:54:46

Very inspiring!

About how much time do you devote to your affiliate marketing efforts each day for this one campaign?

Comment by Tyler Cruz
2008-08-06 00:56:09

I think I spent a total of maybe 5 hours working on it in July.

I’m going to try to go crazy in August though.

Comment by Paul Piotrowski
2008-08-06 04:18:19

Wow, that’s it eh? That’s nothing.

Very good investment of time.

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2008-08-09 11:08:56

I would hope every few days you were tweaking and testing. That is the only way to end up on top in the end.

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Comment by Life is Colourful
2008-08-06 03:09:24

Tyler, is it necessary to spend on AdWords advertising? Can you optimally use that budget and increase your revenue.

I never have used Adwords since last 4 years but my affiliate income is though not $1000 but it reaches $400-500 without spending any money on advertising.

Of course, I understand that to grow more, advertising is necessary but without that - it works as well.

2008-08-09 11:08:04

It’s all about testing. I would say 80% of my traffic is free, and 20% PPC. PPC is a nice way to get very targetted traffic right away. Free traffic usually takes time to build up to, so when you start out in AM or IM, you need to use PPC (or paid banners) to get traffic right away.

 
 
Comment by yahoo web hosting
2008-08-06 19:28:32

Well…I guess it just takes persistence. Congrats. Personally, I don’t make enough money to have persistence….unfortunately.

 
Comment by AnotherMMOblog
2008-08-06 21:59:19

So, if you’re going to spend tons of time on it in August, does that mean you’ll be testing out a few different options?

- AnotherMMOblog

 
Comment by Nick Throlson
2008-08-07 02:25:43

Making Some Good Profit Now Off Your Blog

2008-08-09 11:09:50

This isn’t from his blog …

Comment by Tyler Cruz
2008-08-09 16:56:16

And $27 is hardly good profit ;)

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Comment by Georgia
2008-08-07 09:00:22

Congratulations! Waiting to read further result because I’m sure this just a beginning of succes.

 
2008-08-07 16:21:57

congrats on the results.. keep at it :)

 
Comment by Dennis
2008-08-08 09:24:16

Very nice results! Quick question?

How did you get started in PPC to CPA?

Are you a member of any PPC to CPA forum, like PPC-Coach?

 
2008-08-08 18:09:01

[...] and tried a few different techniques, but it was only last month that he was able to finally get in the green with his PPC affiliate marketing. Read his post to find out how much he finally [...]

 
2008-08-09 20:17:52

[...] Tyler Cruz is in the green. Congrats goes to him as he is one of the few bloggers who showed his (brutally honest) loss of money in PPC before making a comeback. PPC isn’t as easy as some people make it seem, there IS money to be made however, chances are just against you when you start out! [...]

 
2008-08-11 00:01:15

[...] begin, I’d like to let readers know that I am not a super affiliate. In fact, I’m still struggling to learn the game. However, I have learned many important lessons from the plethora of mistakes I’ve [...]

 
Comment by Dennis
2008-08-12 03:52:03

Is there by any chance I could have a copy or template of the spreadsheet you’re using to track your progress in the Affiliate Marketing Plunge? I think that will help me out a lot to actually see my own progress in AM.

Thanks

 
2008-11-12 02:46:43

[...] believe the last real update I gave when I was still actively working on my campaign was my Affiliate Marketing Plunge: I’M IN THE GREEN!! post. Basically since then, I haven’t touched my campaign, being preoccupied with other [...]

 
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