THIS is Why You Need to Start Affiliate Marketing
July 21, 2013 Posted by Tyler CruzThis post is meant for those of you who have been on the fence about getting into affiliate marketing. It’s also meant for those of you who may have tried it in the past, but essentially gave up. But not everyone that carries out marketing discovers all its tenets, for Digital Marketing somehow always slips through the crack. And those who give up, certainly haven’t come across Marketing Heaven, for these companies turn the table around.
No, it’s not going to be another long-winded verbal lecture on perseverance and not giving-up. The text message marketing is also a good idea these days as people are on their phones all the time.
Instead, I’m going to try to light a fire under your ass by showing you exactly what happened to me today.
For “Fun”
Today I woke up, made some tea (which is rather unusual for me as I usually drink coffee), and started my stopwatch to track my morning 3-hour work session, just as I do everyday.
I did my usual routine of analyzing and optimizing my previous day’s campaigns and looking at my overall numbers, and then proceeded to tend to my e-mails. One of my e-mails was from one of my affiliate managers announcing a new offer on their network. Just as I always do if the offer piques my interest, I checked it out in more detail to see if it was something I would want to run.
At first, I almost did, but then I decided to run 2 different offers instead, simply because I loved the angle opportunities for them.
Due to the simplicity and speed of launching campaigns, I actually find it kind of fun sometimes, and not work or a chore. In fact, while I was setting them up, I thought to myself how it is almost relaxing (especially the image sourcing part).
This isn’t always the case. Sometimes it’s a real pain to set up a new campaign (landing pages and foreign-language offers can be annoying). But generally, setting up a new campaign is really quite quick and easy to do – and I’m including all tracking and initial split-testing set-up as well.
Anyhow, it probably took me around 30-minutes to set these 2 campaigns up. They were each using offers from different networks, and I set them up on Facebook, direct linking.
5-Minutes Later
5-minutes later, all my ads were approved and now I was just waiting for traffic to start. There is usually a bit of a delay when a new Facebook ad is approved or unpaused. For me, it tends to take between 30-45 minutes.
To this day, I’ve had a 99% ad approval rate. Run legitimate ads and offers, and you should never have a problem.
1-Hour Later
One hour later, I was pumped up. BOTH campaigns had already brought in conversions and were profitable right off the bat.
This is without any optimization or adjustments of any kind.
From that point on, you can be sure that I kept refreshing my stats constantly throughout the day.
Whenever you find a new profitable campaign – no matter what size the campaign is at, it’s always a huge endorphin rush and a real high.
The Results
Okay, so here’s how the campaigns did.
Before I continue, please note that these are essentially “raw” campaigns. That is, they are completely unoptimized and have not been tested (for example, I only used 1 angle per campaign).
They also only ran since around 1-2pm, so approximately half the day.
Taking these things into consideration should show why I was so excited despite these not being the hugest of numbers – there is definite scaling and optimization potential.
Campaign #1
Okay, so this one actually peaked around dinner time and then started to drop off.
This could be due to dayparting or a number of different factors, but here’s how it fared:
It’s definitely not the greatest ROI at first glance, but considering that it’s a “raw” campaign, these are actually awesome!
I mean, if all I did was simply pause 6 of the ads and keep #2 up, my profit on my $245.10 spend would have been $134.90, since the ad performed at a 55% ROI with a decent conversion sample.
That’s a 3-second adjustment right there. See the potential now?
The only issue with this campaign is that the potential reach is not the greatest, but it’s enough to where the campaign should make some decent coin before it potentially fizzles out and needs to be paused (and rejuvenated again later!)
Campaign #2
This second campaign is kind of crazy because it was so casual in how I came about it.
When I saw the campaign, I casually told my AM “Hmmm… that could do well on Facebook”, and didn’t think much of it.
Then this morning, after I had set up Campaign #1 I remembered what I had said about this campaign, and thought to myself “What the hell – it only takes 20-minutes to set up, why not try it?”.
And it’s a good thing I did, because here are the results. First, the Facebook data for this afternoon:
Not the best CTR’s (I’ve NEVER been great at obtaining high CTR’s on Facebook…), but slightly better than the Facebook average of 0.035% – 0.04%.
Where I make up in poor-mediocre CTR though is in the “quality” of my ads, which yield higher conversion rates.
Although, I should mention that earlier in the day, my CTR’s were awesome. Obviously this changes as the sample size increase and due to other factors such as dayparting and Frequency, but it gives me hope that I can improve upon this in the future.
And of course, I only tested 5 ads!
The potential reach on this campaign is a fair bit larger than Campaign #1, so it should last a good while before starting to fizzle out. My targeting on it is also a lot tighter, and can easily be opened up.
Here’s how Campaign #2 fared:
Without ANY optimization, it generated $214.50 profit in less than half a day (from around 1-2pm to 10:30pm). That’s an average of around $24 profit/hour.
The Potential
“Potential” is such an easy word to throw around in affiliate marketing, and although I have only 1 day’s worth of data on a somewhat limited Reach, I do have a good sample size of data already and I do believe that the following is a realistic expectation:
With some basic optimization, Campaign #1 should be able to average at least $50 a day profit. I mean, it did $40 today on its first day with no optimization and only running half a day.
Campaign #2 has even more potential, as I can open up the age range, and some other angles might work on it as well to a degree (although I actually consider each angle to be a separate campaign). Considering that it did $214.50 profit today in 9 hours without any optimization, I think it’s fair to say that this campaign could be averaging $300 a day profit with super basic optimization.
Now, take those two numbers: $50/day and $300/day, and average that over 1 month. That works out to $10,500 a month profit.
The Moral of the Story
These 2 campaigns took me 30-minutes to set up from start to finish, only ran for half the day, and already brought me in over $260 in profit.
With some basic optimization, it is not unreasonable to estimate that these 2 campaigns will yield a monthly profit of $10,500 a month.
Obviously not all campaigns will be successful off the bat. In fact, most won’t. But that’s not the point. The point is how simple it is to actually get a profitable campaign going. You just need to keep at it.
Again, I direct linked, and set up extremely basic and “obvious” campaigns, doing completely 100% whitehat methods as I always do. It’s not rocket science.
Yes, the campaigns could die at any point due to the offers going down, competition (unlikely), and traffic eventually dying out, but the money you make during this time will be more than enough to keep you going to find new profitable campaigns.
Personally, I am still busy with tackling my e-mail inbox (making great progress!) and having to take care of a number of tasks such as getting my corporate taxes done and selling off more of my websites, but once I take care of those things, I’ll definitely be working hard on growing my affiliate marketing income.
My “big” goal now is to hit $100,000 profit a month. I know I can do it – I just gotta keep at it. In July of 2011 I did $0 in affiliate marketing, and last month I did $52,000 profit, so I know it’s possible.
Just like when I used to dream of one day hitting 6-figures gross in a month, I now set my eyes on one day doing 6-figures profit in a month. The difference now is, I actually think it is just a matter of time before I hit that goal, whereas before it was more just a dream.
KEEP AT IT. It’s not rocket science. It’s just perseverance.
You’ll thank me later. In fact, when you’re making 6-figures a month, I expect a nice gift basket from a nice corporate gifting company.
Whoaa!! Great stuff are they email submits ?
Hey, any chance you could share a link to the landing pages? I’m brand new to this.
Cheers!
Very good post Tyler :). The real truth is that maybe 1 out of 10 campaigns yield such a good ROI from the start. But having on mind that if someone can lunch 10-20 new campaigns every day, it’s a big possibility to hit one or two winners from the beginning.
@Thabit – highly doubt… take a look at cpc’s ;). Profit margin for email submits is way too low.
@Matt – he said he was direct linking 😉
Cheers 😉
Ahh missed that, cheers Nik.
I glad that people like Tyler have succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Tyler is nothing if not persistent. He just keeps sharpening his business skills and has outlasted many of his detractors and adversaries. Even other people in this space who are considered authorities must acknowledge and respect this man.
Tyler has never been afraid to dive into a business project and fail spectacularly and that’s why he is successful. I have always followed and related to swashbuckling entrepreneurs who leave it all on the floor. Watch their actions and see what they went through to get to the top. Hats off to you Tyler and I wish you much success.
Great post Tyler! Seeing how possible things are is such an inspiration.
Just a question. Doesn’t Facebook ads disallow direct linking, or is that a Clickbank only restriction? Am I missing something?
As long as you don’t run offers Facebook hates, you can direct link. So, no adult, rebills, or things of that nature.
Protip: Facebook bans certain verticals, offer, and promotion styles.
Even if your offer is “legit” it can still get banned. Why? The MyWot score. Install the toolbar and make sure your offer is green. Yellow / red = account ban.
Thanks for the info Dr Ngo. Didn’t know about MyWOT before this.
I have a Clickbank offer that I wanted to give it a try on Facebook Ads but its WOT score is pretty low. Do you think I should just forget about it or can I possibly iframe the offer under a new domain to get it approved on Facebook Ads?
Yeah, I’ve had my AM warn me before if a certain offer has a sketchy WOT score. Generally, I only run offers on FB if it’s already proven to work there (I ask my AM).
Thanks for the awesome tip Ngo. I never knew about this tool til now. I am actually running some email submits that are red but Facebook approved the ads. Hopefully I am good.
Just trying to get my feet wet a bit with Facebook. I’ll turn off this offers as soon as I can find one with a green MyWOT score.
Thanks.
Thanks for the info Tyler!
Do you know any good free affiliate ebook?
https://www.tylercruz.com/zac-johnsons-six-figure-affiliate-blogging-ebook/
Thanks a lot for recommending Zac Johnsons book. I certainly added a few new weapons to my arsenal. Thanks
I’ve been trying Facebook ads for one of my own websites but low conversions so now very tempted to try sending to an affiliate offer.
Thanks for posting
Nice results, but i doubt anybody would get something similar lol You might have set up everything simply in 20 mins but you surely used a proven ad template with good pics and that converting fb offer. That’s why both were profitable right off the bat…
Do you do 100% Fb ads lately? were these offers in the dating vertical btw?
Sometimes I just use what the offer provides. Seriously, I’m not doing anything special…
But in this case, can we know which vertical you did?
Also, you forgot to answer about if Fb ads is where you’re making most of your income lately…
So…? lol
Tyler, what tool do you use to optimize and manage your FB ads?
Me 🙂
And I assume you’re counting CPVLab (tracking) already.
Fantastic post Tyler. My one question is are you using US or International Facebook traffic?
I hope you keep up the posting. This is fastly becoming one of the top aff marketing blogs.
US primarily. I generally start with US, then if it works, I’ll expand to other countries (if available).
Hey Tyler, great inspirational post! It kicked me in the ass to get back at it. I had a FB campaign that was profitable from the start and ran it for a month and a half at 40+ percent ROI, and then it started decreasing rapidly. I was lazy and stopped tweaking it. Was also disappointed that I couldn’t seem to scale it over $3k ad spend in a month. Time to revisit.
Question: Do you use your own tracking for FB campaigns when you’re doing direct linking?
Thanks for all you write.
Kevin
No, I use CPVLab.
40% ROI is awesome. And yeah, unscalable campaigns are a pain, but I mean if you have it on auto-pilot at $1,200/month profit, why not just repeat 9 times over and get to 12k/profit a month, and repeat? I mean, that’s kind of what I do. Whatever is profitable, I’ll keep.
Yes, it’s a bit of a pain to make sure they’re optimized and stay fresh, but that only takes 2-3 hours a day and still yields 5-figures monthly profit. I would never throw away a campaign like that!
Right! Like I said, sometimes I need a good hard kick in the ass. I’m tweaking that campaign right now..
Have you been able to get peerfly offers direct linked approved?
I haven’t even been able to input a peerfly aff link into FB ads. I use a lander on my server. sometimes I’ll redirect that landing page to the Peerfly offer, after the ads have been approved.
I love articles like this, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for a fun and very interesting teaching of how easy it can be to make money, I’ve been spurred to try.
Hey Tyler,
Do you have any suggestions for affiliate networks? One thing that has always annoyed me when I start affiliate marketing is there are so many networks I’d like to narrow it down to 1 or 2 and just focus on those. Also, do you just advertise on Adwords and FB?
Thanks.
PeerFly is pretty good.
I advertise on a large number of traffic sources, depending on the offer and situation. I wouldn’t recommend that though when you’re just starting out…
I am looking on Neverblue and most of the campaigns have an EPC of like less than 5 cents. No way to make a profit with that. Should those be ignored?
Going to do a blog post answering that right now 🙂
Hi Tyler,
You mean angle a couple times in this post. Could you explain a bit more of what you mean by that and maybe add an example?
Watch https://www.tylercruz.com/affiliate-marketing-campaign-walkthrough/
Hey Tyler,
what an motivational post! Thx!
Why don’t you bring out an Affiliate Marketing Case Study, where you walkthrough from scratch. F.e. How and why you choose an offer, how to set up a LP for this offer, tracking, optimizing a.s.o?
I think it would be very helpful for your readers to get something like this in much more detail.
Watch https://www.tylercruz.com/affiliate-marketing-campaign-walkthrough/
Man, this is the video we all know about :-). I meant a REAL CASE STUDY including running a campaign, optimizing and scaling :-). It dont matter for me, when it costs 200, 400 or 500 $. I would love to learn from you!
Thanks, see you soon!
I have been trying to get started for the last year or so with no luck. I have no experience and have bought several ” systems” that were supposed to show me how to do up from start to end. But all ages were give me videos on how to do research and pick products And nothing on how to setup the sitedo back links or anythingI would love to be involved if you can offer any help It would be greatly appreciated
I keep forgetting that you should have “fun” with your marketing. I’ve been chasing the next shiny thing. Appreciate the post. It’s encouraging 🙂
Tyler would you recommend FB for a “newbie”?
Think of it this way – there’s no such thing as a “Kiddie playground” for affiliate marketing… obviously everyone is trying to make money everywhere, so there is no especially easy place. That being said, Facebook is a good place to start because of targeting and budgeting.
Simple answer: NO
What if my spending doesn’t go in right way, and the traffic doesn’t convert??
Very motivational post, Tyler. I am sure those who started but gave up on affiliate marketing will get the needed motivation from reading this. And of course, newbies too will get motivated to get started with affiliate marketing!
[…] all seen the claims of affiliate marketing programs – make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month while doing absolutely nothing. […]
I started out with affiliate marketing 14 months ago and I’ve been in love with this business since then.
I’m turning 21 this december and I’m looking forward to earn six figures before I hit that number.
Any tips?
Test like a madman.
Well said 😛
I entirely depend on CPC.
What do you think which one has more money : CPC or CPA
Hi Tyler cruz,
is it true by using Affiliate links we can get more traffic?. If a new visitor who doesn’t know about the banners and Affiliate links who may click the links but what about the veterans is there any chance if they will click our sites . If it happens means as you said its a luck and we got much traffic. Thanks for such a lovely post with understandable images
On my point of view, I would be more concerned on the amount of converts rather than the traffic I get. And it is something others have mistaken on.
Hey Tyler, great post, very inspiring! I’m looking to get into affiliate marketing myself, but it seems like all the tutorials say you have to build a website or fan page to get started. Is it possible to do affiliate marketing by only creating Facebook ad campaigns? And where do you get your marketing offers from? Thanks!!
Yup, you can direct link without even needing a website.
However… you’d likely want to set up a tracking site… although I believe there are now some that run as 3rd party ones so you might even be able to get away with that.
:’)
Really motivational!
You rock man, You really rock it.
That means, its all about finding the right offer, testing that and pick the winning one…then then scaling it.
Thanks for the case study. 🙂
Thank you so much for every necessary guide
As a certified internet marketing consultant, I help clients increasing their online presence and improve business results considering ROI through web presence optimization – the combination of search engine optimization (SEO), search marketing, interactive PR, content marketing and social media marketing, Social Network Marketing. The end result: their company is easier to find and building geographical audience base when their prospects are searching, and they present a clear and compelling message everywhere online. I am offering the best SEO, SEM, SMM solution for any company using my ethical seo technique, organic search development and traffic based social media marketing strategy that will increase online presence as well as popularity. I am careful about your ROI(return on investment), so I offer you a time-framed goal for your business. SEO Expert Bangladesh Nayem Mahmud
good post
good