TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

I Made an Affiliate Marketing Chatroom – Join Us!

One of the most unproductive things you can possibly do is spend all day hanging around in a chatroom. The main problem is usually that you never want to "miss out" on anything, and therefore feel the urge to read everything.

That is partly why forums are so popular – because you can read and participate in discussion at your leisure, and never have to worry about missing out on anything.

But chatrooms do have benefits that forums do not. Responses are much faster/instant, communication is usually more in-depth (longer conversations as opposed to just 1 forum reply), and the atmosphere is usually on a more relaxed and personal level.

There are a lot of fantastic affiliate marketing forums out there, but I couldn’t find any active affiliate marketing chatrooms, so I decided to create one myself.

How to Join

To join the chatroom, simply go to https://www.tylercruz.com/chat.

Or, if you’re a mIRC/IRC client user, connect to us on Freenode (chat.us.freenode.net) in #affiliatechat.

Discuss, Learn, and Share

The whole point of this chatroom is to learn, share, and network. Brainstorm campaign ideas with others, ask for recommendations of good offers in certain niches, discuss recent affiliate marketing news, and make industry friends and network.

So, come on by and say hello!

New Monthly Net Income Record: $33,883.66

It’s April! A new month! And you know what that means… it’s time for me to give an update on how my affiliate marketing campaigns fared for March.

This is the third post in this new monthly series, and I hope that I continue with them for a long time.

February 2013 was my best affiliate marketing month by far. I ended up grossing over $100,000 and netting $31,444.64, which was the most I ever made from affiliate marketing in 1 month.

I had predicted that March was going to be quite bad (in comparison), but I’m happy to report that my prediction was wrong and that I actually ended up setting a new personal monthly net record in March 2013!

Here are the overall numbers for the month:

March 2013 Affiliate Campaign Income:

$83,204.00

While March didn’t gross as high as February, it still did pretty well, and I think is my 2nd or 3rd highest grossing month.

But that’s just gross income and not net profit. Paid traffic is called "paid" for a reason…

Expenses:

$49,320.34

Traffic Source Breakdown:

• Traffic Source #1: $688.28
• Traffic Source #2: $111.92
• Traffic Source #3: $240.68
• Traffic Source #4: $31,502.77
• Traffic Source #5: $14,605.66
• Traffic Source #6: $2,171.03

My expenses were significantly lower last month. It’s partly due to optimization, but also due to the fact that I was spending less on new campaigns and new traffic sources. I spent a lot of March on trying to take care of non-affiliate marketing things, which is why I didn’t run a lot of new stuff.

Net Profit:

$33,883.66

Yay! That’s a new monthly net profit record for me! My previous monthly record was $31,444.64 made just 1 month prior, in February 2013.

This new record is only $2,439.02 more though, and to be fair, February did have 3 fewer days. So February actually had a higher daily average, but March had a higher total number.

On the other hand, my ROI skyrocketed from 43% in February to 69% in March.

Year-To-Date Affiliate Marketing Results

2013 has been a fantastic year for me so far.

Just 3 months in, I’ve already grossed over a quarter million dollars in revenue, of which $88,678.21 is profit.

Here’s a monthly breakdown:

If we were to assume that I finish the year with no growth or decline, but continue the average of the first quarter, I should finish the year grossing 1 million dollars and netting $350,000 profit.

That’s assuming a lot though. Things can change in this industry at any second.

Plan of Attack for April

Expanding on what I briefly mentioned earlier, I actually didn’t spend all that much time on my affiliate marketing campaigns in March.

My goal lately has been to catch up on e-mail and get rid of side projects (websites) that stray energy and focus away from my affiliate marketing efforts.

I managed to sell 1 site in March, and during the final week of March started to reduce the huge amount of e-mails that have been haunting me for months. It’s a good start, but I still have a lot more to do.

I plan on continuing this in April. My goal is to sell 1 or 2 more sites, and get caught up with almost all of my e-mail. I also need to do my taxes (both personal and corporate) which I’m not looking forward to.

I’ll likely launch a couple campaigns here and there, and definitely continue to maintain and optimize my existing campaigns, but apart from that and blogging, my focus will definitely be on reducing my side distractions.

As a result, I don’t expect April to be a new record month for me. In fact, I’ll be quite happy if it performs anywhere close to how March did.

I guess we’ll see what happens in another month from now when I write April’s report. Wish me luck!

The April Fool’s Post That I Almost Posted

Tomorrow is April Fool’s day, and while I’ve posted April Fool’s jokes on my blog in the past, I decided not to post the one I had in mind for this year.

For the past two months, I’ve posted a recap of my affiliate marketing earnings of the previous month at the beginning of the following month. It just so happens that this would coincide perfectly with April Fool’s day.

My idea was to write up a fake post, making it sound as real as possible (just like the the one from six years ago). The lie was going to be that something catastrophic happened to my campaigns, such as being banned from Facebook or having an advertiser go under and not pay me. I was going to write that I had finished March in the red by around $21,000 or so.

I was going to write it as convincingly as possible and let it sit for a day or two before posting my follow-up "April Fools! I Got Ya!" post.

Why I Didn’t

While I believe that I could have fooled at least 50%+ of readers, in the end I decided that it was in poor taste.

March was, in fact, very good for me (I’ll have the real monthly report posted in a couple days), which was a surprise as I had predicted that it would be rather dire (see the "The Sad Truth About March" section near the bottom).

Affiliate marketing can be a major roller coaster, and things can and will change dramatically at a moment’s notice, whether it be for the good or the bad. Writing a joke/fake blog post that I was banned from Facebook or screwed by an advertiser or network is in poor taste because these types of things do happen all the time! And they are absolutely devastating when they do.

While affiliate marketing is probably something like 70% hard work/perseverance, 20% skill, and 10% luck – the luck factor has such a strong weight to it when it does hit, that it’s just not funny to joke about.

When bad things happen in affiliate marketing, they can easily cripple you instantly. You can go from making $50,000/month net to $4,000/month net overnight. This isn’t just hypothetical – this happens to affiliate marketers all the time.

A killer offer can go down, a network can die, an advertiser can prohibit you from running their offers, competition can increase dramatically, a traffic source can ban you, offer terms and payouts can change, etc.

I don’t want to make it sound like affiliate marketing is pure luck and chance because it isn’t. Hard work is usually rewarded eventually, and skill and perseverance can battle bad luck when it arises. But that doesn’t mean that bad things don’t happen.

Ask any super affiliate, and I’m sure they can list off a number of devastating things that have happened to them on their campaigns – most of which were beyond their control.

In the end, basing an April Fool’s joke on the fact that I was fortunate enough to have a good March but pretend that it was horrible instead, is just in really poor taste.

The Real Post

This post has been getting pretty depressing so I wanted to leave on a happier tone.

As stated earlier, I will be posting my real affiliate marketing report for March within a couple of days. Despite my prediction that the month would be quite bad, it actually ended up being a new record high for me. Weird, but I’ll take it!

Keep an eye out for the post.

Ad-Tech’s Affiliate Nation Mega Party

Are you going to attend ad-tech San Francisco this year?

If you are, be sure do hit up the biggest party where you can be sure a lot of big players in the industry will be at.

Networking in extremely powerful in any industry, but is even more helpful in affiliate marketing as it only takes 1 gem shared to you by another affiliate marketer to make all the travel expense and time pay for itself.

While you can meet and greet in the exhibit halls, some people are only really available at the parties. And the change of atmosphere (and alcohol) can have a certain "loosening" effect on some people, allowing them to open up a bit and share more with you than they normally would.

The biggest part at ad-tech San Francisco this year is the Affiliate Nation Mega Party.

Hosted by Affiliate Nation, which is comprised of Clickbooth, CPAWay, and MaxBounty, the "ad-tech San Francisco Affiliate Nation Mega Party" starts at 9pm on April 9th, 2013 and is being held at The Grand.

Drinks are free (open bar), there will be Go-Go dancers, and various performers.

I’m promoting this party because I’m actually one of the media sponsors.

To attend, you’re going to need to RSVP.

Where: The Grand – 520 4th Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
When: Tuesday, April 9th, 2013 9pm – 2am
Details: Open Bar, Go-Go Dancers, Performers, and much more!

Here’s a short video promotion for the party:

(Note: You may need to visit the post directly at TylerCruz.com if you’re reading this via e-mail or RSS in order to see it.)

Have fun!