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

My "Don’t Give Up" Campaign: Day 39

Remember 5 weeks ago when I published my blog post titled: My "Don’t Give Up" Campaign? If you don’t, then you should probably go read that before reading any further.

I’ve kept my word and have not given up on the campaign, but at the same time, I have not done very much work on it (mainly due to the roadblocks as mentioned in this post). I mean, I have been working on it, but it was more regular maintenance as opposed to any aggressive efforts such as split-testing 10 different interest/keyword groupings.

I mention this because the "Day 39" in this post’s title makes it sound like I’ve been working relentlessly on this campaign, when the truth is that I’ve mainly been keeping an eye on it every single day, adjusting bids on various ads accordingly.

Before I continue, let’s take a quick recap on the results of the first 3 days of this campaign, as written in my original post:

Day 1 Results:

INCOME: $228.00
COST: $1,341.24
TOTAL: -$1,113.24 (-83% ROI)

Day 2 Results:

INCOME: $558.00
COST: $639.52
TOTAL: -$81.52 (-12.7% ROI)

Day 3 Results:

INCOME: $112.00
COST: $142.02
TOTAL: -$30.02 (-21.1% ROI)

What a disaster. But if you look closely, my ROI on days 2 and 3 weren’t that horrible. –12% and –21% ROI is really not bad for days 2 and 3 on a campaign. In fact, that’s actually pretty good.

Your initial goal should always be to break even on a campaign, because if you can break even, then 95% of the time you should be able to profit. It’s just a matter of continued optimization, and as long as your quality isn’t horrible, you should likely get a bump from the advertiser as advertisers love traffic they can depend on. And all it takes is a bump on the offer on a break-even campaign to turn it profitable.

From Red to Black (Green)

I’m happy to announce that I have turned this campaign around, and it is now making money instead of losing money.

Here are the exact numbers on this campaign over the past 4 days:

Day 36 (March 13th, 2013) Results:

INCOME: $200.00
COST: $143.59
TOTAL: $56.41 (39.3% ROI)

Day 37 (March 14th, 2013) Results:

INCOME: $162.00
COST: $139.02
TOTAL: $22.98 (16.5% ROI)

Day 38 (March 15th, 2013) Results:

INCOME: $135.00
COST: $95.03
TOTAL: $39.97 (42.0% ROI)

Day 39 (March 16th, 2013) Results:

As of 12:15pm (not an entire 24-hour period)

INCOME: $110.00
COST: $75.23
TOTAL: $34.77 (46.2% ROI)

It actually turned profitable before day 36, but for the sake of time and length, I’ve only included the past 4 days.

What I Did

I actually just edited this section in before publishing the post as I thought it might be useful to readers. But because this post is already quite long, I will just write it in bullet-form:

• Adjusted bids on ads accordingly
• Scaled laterally
• Split-test and swapped out offers
• Got several bumps on the main offer
• Waited – as my click and campaign history grew on Facebook, my CPC’s shrunk (got down to as low as $0.07 CPC for US traffic)

Why I’m Happy

Estimating that today will end somewhere around the $50 profit mark for this campaign, the past 4-day average works out to $40/day.

That’s $1,200 a month. Basically $1,200 a month of free money that is more or less passive (assuming I don’t attempt to scale it, and just check in on it from time to time).

But it’s not $40/day that makes me happy. It’s the fact that I managed to turn around this particular campaign from a loser to a winner.

Again, if you read my My "Don’t Give Up" Campaign post, you’ll know that this campaign was for an offer that I’ve tried several times in the past, never getting anywhere near break-even, and so the negative history of this offer goes further back than just 39 days ago.

It’s nice to know that if you do stick with a losing campaign and keep plugging away at it, that you can turn things around.

While I’ve been fortunate enough to be making some decent money from affiliate marketing lately, it’s always a nice feeling when you can add another profitable campaign to your list, no matter if it’s a $10/day campaign, a $40/day campaign, or a $400/day campaign.

Why I’m Not

First, I feel like I cheated a little.

The whole idea behind my "don’t give up" campaign was to stick with a campaign until it turns profitable. It was a type of experiment and challenge to myself to see if I could do it.

While I certainly did turn the campaign from a loser to a winner, part of the reason for that was because I swapped the original offer I had been running for another one. It was a very similar offer in which I could keep all my existing ads and targeting and completely just swap the offers, and it ended up yielding a far better EPC.

And so, I feel a little guilty as if I didn’t really make the challenge, since I didn’t end up using the original offer.

On the other hand, the challenge was to stick with a campaign until it turns profitable, not a particular offer. And since I did stick with the campaign, I guess I can let myself off the hook.

After all, I shouldn’t feel bad about adding a new profitable campaign to my list.

Another way I feel guilty, though, is that I feel that I got a little bit lucky on this campaign. While I did split-test around 5 different interest/keyword groupings, the one that ended up being profitable was sort of a mistake.

When I was creating my Precise Interests on the campaign, I had taken a list of keywords that I wrote in Notepad (properly separated by commas) and copied them into the Power Editor. I didn’t notice that Facebook had actually messed up a lot of the keywords by removing articles (a, an, the, etc.) and punctuation, making the keywords a fair bit different than the ones I had originally wanted.

I believe this happens if there are aren’t enough people who match the interest you add; Facebook won’t allow you to add it as a custom keyword interest.

It wasn’t a huge thing I guess… after all, the keywords basically just ended up being the keywords that people actually used instead of the ones I put in.

What I Learned

This was a good learning experience for me.

First, I learned that I probably do give up on losing campaigns too early. This case study proves that. As a result, I will put more effort and time into campaigns before I label them as unprofitable in the future.

Secondly, I learned that 100,000 is not too small of a reach for Facebook campaigns. I used to think that a reach of anything below 1 million was not worth my time, mainly because I always think in terms of potential scaling. But a smaller reach usually means a more focused and targeted demographic, and thus higher CTR’s and lower CPC’s. As a result, I will not rule out smaller reaches in the future (although I probably won’t go much below 100,000).

Lastly, I learned that the elusive 0.15% CTR on US Facebook traffic is not just a fantasy or fairy tale, but actually obtainable. I had always had trouble getting high CTR’s and low CPC’s on Facebook in the past. I managed to get campaigns profitable at CTR’s of 0.06% and CPC’s of $0.90, but always struggled to get a good CTR.

Now, I have CTR’s of 0.40%+ and CPC’s as low as $0.07 CPC on US Facebook traffic. Now I can’t blame others of simply having a better Facebook account or make other lame excuses – I know it’s possible and that I just have to work harder on getting them.

What is Stopping You?

In my My "Don’t Give Up" Campaign blog post, I ended it by writing:

I’d be thrilled if I can make this profitable – even if it’s just $10-$15/day, as that’s $300-$450 month and would be a proof of concept for this mentality/school of thought.

…and now, 5 weeks later, without a lot of work, the campaign is averaging $40/day profit (over the past 4 days).

There is nothing magical or secret to what I’m doing. It’s all very basic stuff. There should be absolutely nothing stopping you from succeeding in affiliate marketing.

There are countless sources out there for learning, but you need to go and find it and teach yourself. The best way to learn though, is to jump right in and get your feet wet. You can read all you want, but there is no substitute for hands-on learning in this industry.

I’ve been getting a ton of people e-mailing me lately, due to my recent success, asking me to tutor them and guide them along. I’m happy to help, but I’m already swamped as it is and just don’t have the time (at least not for free) to do that.

Instead of asking me on how to get started, why not just get started? I’ve already listed places and sources on where you can learn, the rest is up to you.

Getting your first lead/conversion is an incredible rush, and getting your first profitable campaign has a good chance of turning you into a full-time affiliate marketer.

Just keep at it and DON’T GIVE UP!

WOW Trk CPA Affiliate Network Review

The following is a paid review for TylerCruz.com written and reviewed by Michael Kwan. It is completely of Michael Kwan’s opinion and is not influenced by being paid. If you’re interested in having your site or product reviewed, please view my advertising page

As an affiliate marketer, you have a lot of options. There are tons of different affiliate networks out there that approach just about every niche imaginable in just about every country around the world. Over 2,000 affiliates have already signed up with the WOW Trk affiliate network and it appears that number is on the rise. Let’s check it out and see how WOW Trk can help you effectively monetize your traffic and earn some real money. They say that “whatever the industry, you will be able to find offers to suit your traffic.”

The International CPA Affiliate Network

Many of the bigger affiliate networks on the Internet are based in the United States, but that is not the case with WOW Trk. They are based out of the UK, so that means that you won’t have to deal with W8/W9 forms like how you would elsewhere. WOW Trk promises to provide “a wide range of top performing offers for your websites and email marketing lists,” including “fresh and exclusive offers to promote.”

Even though they are based in the United Kingdom, WOW Trk is very much an international CPA network, so they will work with affiliates and advertisers from all over the globe. They promise “the highest payouts” for both the “brand name sponsors that will add value and credibility to your website” and “high-converting offers to fill up your growing ad inventory.”

These don’t really sound like differentiating factors, per se, but if the offers perform as well as WOW Trk says they can, I don’t think too many affiliates are going to complain. They also promise reliable tracking and great support. Indeed, every affiliate is assigned a specific affiliate manager.

The User Dashboard

After you’ve signed up for an account and you’ve been approved (more on that in a moment), you can log into your affiliate account. The first thing you’ll see in your user dashboard is the snapshot page.

Here, you’ll get a customizable list of quick links, network notifications, your account toals, your account manager’s contact information and your referral link; you earn a 2.00% commission for all referrals. Also on this snapshot are your quick statistics for both earnings and volumes, as well as a few “featured offers” that may warrant some attention.

It’s not fancy, but the layout of the user dashboard is functional and easy to navigate. The main navigational links are located near the top of the page and several of these become pull-down menus when you hover over them. For instance, when you hover over Reports, you gain access to the Daily Report, Hourly Report, Offers Report, Source Report, Conversion Report and Referral Report.

What Offers Can I Expect?

WOW Trk is focused primarily on lead generation, so you won’t find much in terms of offers that pay on a per-sale or commission basis. Instead, most of them are gambling offers, surveys, competitions and the like. There are offers for a wide range of countries too, including Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Malaysia, and Singapore, as well as the US and the UK. There is also a category for international offers that aren’t geo-targeted.

Not surprisingly, as you make your way through the list of offers, you’ll find that the payout per conversion will vary considerably. Some offers only pay less than 2 GBP (about $3 US) on a CPA basis, whereas others can get up to 50 GBP (about $75). The highest payout, at the time this review was written, was for the TraderXP affiliate offer: that was paying out an impressive 135 GBP (about $200) per conversion.

While TraderXP is a site that does binary trading, most of the higher paying offers are online casinos and other online gambling establishments that are willing to pay for new members, if you are looking a gambling site, check out this list of slots sites not on gamstop. These include online slots, online scratch cards, online table games, and so forth. WOW Trk has offers beyond gambling too, of course. Enthusiasts often seek out slot gacor machines, which are believed to provide more frequent and substantial payouts, enhancing the gaming experience.

As you click through on each offer, you’re provided with the basic information about what is the payable action, what is the payout, what is the daily/monthly payout cap, what are the valid countries for traffic, and what is the expiration date. There is also a preview link so you can see what your traffic would see. Along with this, you can generate your tracking link and get your conversion pixels, as well as nab the creative files. These are mostly image banners in a range of sizes. I found most offers had about a half dozen banners or so.

Chrome, Firefox and Mobile

While you could log into the main website at any time to do all your affiliate business, WOW Trk has made it easier for you to keep tabs on your account. There is a Google Chrome extension, as well as a plugin for Firefox and a mobile optimized site. Not every affiliate is going to find value in these added offerings, but those who do use them may find them helpful.

Registration Process

The sign up process consists of just a single page. Here, you’ll be asked for the usual basic information like your name, address, e-mail address, password and website URL. It will also ask for your phone number. If you verify your phone number immediately–which requires answering your phone right away and then entering the provided PIN–your account gets approved right away. If you don’t verify your phone number, then it can take a few days to approve your account.

Payment Details

As far as the payment terms are concerned, all affiliates start out on a net-30 schedule. What this means is that all your earnings from June will be paid out by July 30. The page with the payment terms uses the example of January payments being issued by February 30, but of course February 30 doesn’t exist. They might want to change that.

The payment schedule assumes that you reach the relatively low 25 GBP threshold. If you generate more than 5,000 GBP in a month, you can request to be moved to being paid twice a month. If you generate more than 2,000 GBP in commissions in a week, you can ask for weekly payments. Just ask your account manager. Payments are issued by bank transfer, cheque, PayPal or Payoneer. In order to accept PayPal payments, you’ll need to verify your mailing address.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a CPA network that focuses a little more on lead generation, particularly when it comes to gambling and freebies, then WOW Trk might be a good option to consider. The lower payment threshold can be appealing to beginners and the (up to) weekly payments are great for the cash flow of more prolific affiliates. The good range of international offers also helps to address the range of traffic that you may have. WOW Trk may not be particularly revolutionary, but it seems to get the job done if you’re able to send the right kind of traffic.

Getting To The Next Level in Affiliate Marketing

Warning: long post.

Ugh.

I’ve been feeling a bit frustrated lately. March is not going nearly as well as February, although it’s going a bit better than I expected. But that’s not why I’m frustrated.

I’m frustrated because I know that I can reach the “next level” in affiliate marketing if I just focus and work diligently enough, but I have a number of roadblocks in my way, preventing me from getting there.

In order to get to the next level, or even attempt to get to the next level, I need to clear these roadblocks while using tools like backlink packages and more. I will elaborate on these roadblocks in detail below, but before I do, I want to briefly talk about the “next level”.

The Next Level

As you know, last month was my best month of affiliate marketing ever, having grossed just over $100,000, with $31,444.64 of that being profit. It was a phenomenal month for me, and I’m very proud of what I accomplished.

But the truth is, $30,000/month profit in affiliate marketing is really not that much. In fact, some guys will see that number and laugh at it, as they are making 10-50+ times as much. And the real kicker is, I’m sure most of them are not doing all that much different from me either – it’s mostly a simple matter of scaling and finding new winning campaigns.

As I’ve lectured a number of times in the past, a $10/day campaign is not much different than a $1,000/day campaign; if you can make $10 a day from affiliate marketing, then you have the ability to make $1,000 a day as it’s basically the same thing, just on a larger scale. Visit the Client Verge site for more information.

With that same logic in mind, I should be able to jump from $30,000 a month to $300,000 a month. But at my current stage, the next level for me is around the $50,000-$60,000 mark. That is where I want to get.

It may sound a little presumptuous – after all, I only had one month over $30,000 profit on my campaigns so far – but I did do $23,349.91 the month before that, and March is currently on pace to be close to that, so that would be a 3-month average of around $25,000/month, which does show some consistency.

Anyhow, as I say, I want to get to the next level, but there are a number of roadblocks in my path. These aren’t excuses, but simply an acknowledgement of what is stopping me from getting to the next level.

Apart from some small things here and there, I haven’t been launching any new campaigns. I’ve simply been maintaining and optimizing what I already have running. Before I can launch new campaigns and try to get to the next level, I need to get through some of these roadblocks first.

Here they are in descending order of how disrupting they are:

The Roadblocks

Laziness/Fatigue

This is definitely the biggest thing holding me back.

If I told you how many hours I work per day on average, you’ll likely do a Picard facepalm. In fact, I’m embarrassed to say.

In some ways it’s good… it means that I’m not working my life away and am actually getting to “play”. But it’s just stupid when I say I want to get to the next level, because it means that I’m not really serious about it.

I need to put less time into playtime and more time into worktime. Then I can take more of a break when I get to the next level.

Another issue is not just pure laziness though, it’s actual fatigue. For example, as I write this, my eyes are already starting to strain, despite it being 11:55am and being a quarter way through my morning coffee.

I think part of it is due to diet. I’ve been eating crappy again, which usually happens when I’m working more, so I’m going to have to try to work on that.

Lack of Focus

I am usually very diligent when it comes to my work time. I ALWAYS work in 1-hour blocks (for example, I’ll work either 1, 2, or 3 hours, but not 90 minutes), and always time my work sessions from start to finish. I don’t have anything going on in the background such as laundry or baking something in the oven. And in general I just try to keep work time focused on work. Because of this, I’m usually very efficient when I work.

But lately I’ve noticed myself starting to lose focus.

For example, I noticed that I’m actually starting to allow myself to peruse Reddit here and there. I’ll get through a few e-mails (even if they are simple e-mails to deal with), and then peruse Reddit for 5-10 minutes.

Or, I’ll look through some of my instant messaging contacts to see who’s online, and start a conversation with them, with the intention of relaxing.

I normally don’t waste my time when working like this, but have definitely noticed myself doing this more lately.

Not only is this time wasted on non-work stuff, but it breaks my concentration and focus, which make an impact on actual productivity and efficiency.

I’m not going to bother with any self-exclusion methods such as blocking certain sites at certain hours and whatnot – I just need to be cognisant of the fact that I’m drifting off path and snap out of it.

Websites

This one is a real pain in my ass.

For many years, my network of content-based sites is how I made my living. Over the past couple of years though, I’ve shifted towards affiliate marketing.

I’ve already sold a number of my sites, but still own a lot. Even though my remaining sites make hardly anything, they still take a lot of time (and focus).

I’ve been trying to continue to sell the rest off, but nobody seems interested in grabbing them. People these days seem to only look at current revenue and traffic, and nothing else.

I’m basically giving away the sites for free or at a loss. For example, here’s my MMA forum on auction and here’s my gymnastics forum. The latter has no reserve and is currently only at $25. It will cost me over $200 simply to renew the vBulletin license for transfer, so it’s really odd to me why my auctions aren’t getting more action.

I put no reserve on that auction though, even though I’ll likely LOSE money as a result, because I just want to get rid of these sites. I have no time to work on them, and they only take time and focus away from me. Time and focus that I could be putting towards my campaigns.

It’s weird why I’m still hanging onto some of these sites. All my websites together don’t make in a month what I’m making in a day on my affiliate campaigns, so really I should consider putting no reserve on all of them to just get rid of them once and for all. It just hurts a bit because I know I’d be taking a loss on them, and I’ve never taken a loss on a website before in my life.

And I guess, if I really want to look deep into it, part of me wants to hold on to the sites as a sort of safety net. After all, I used to make my living from my websites. If I sell them all off now, I’ll have no safety net for if my affiliate marketing campaigns fail. I’ll be in real trouble.

But that’d just wishful thinking – my websites aren’t bringing in enough money to live off of, so really they’d be of no help in such a situation anyway. Although, if my affiliate marketing campaigns did fail, I’d have time and focus to put into those sites…

But overall, the cons in keeping the sites outweigh the pros in my situation, and I need to get rid of them. They simply take too much of my energy.

Technical Issues

I hate technical issues more than anything, and I’ve been running into a number of them lately.

My computer’s main hard drive is failing and I need to do a proper backup and transfer to a new hard drive before all my data is lost.

I’ve been having a lot of problems with Office lately (I use Excel like a madman, so it’s very important to me), although I think I finally have that solved.

One of my servers is in the process of migration, which is a pain in the ass.

One of my websites was hacked and I need to get it fixed, which would mean hiring a programmer… which would mean shortlisting scores of outsource programmers and detailing the issues, overseeing the work, etc.

Another of my websites needs serious programming fixes, which again takes a ton of time and focus. Unlike having a plumbing problem, you can’t just point to the problem and tell them to fix it. You have to detail exactly what is going on, how the website works, and what you want. All this takes time.

I hate technical issues!

E-mail/Blogging

While I can’t really call my blog a roadblock, as it’s something I plan on keeping for the long term, it certainly does take a lot of time. Time and focus that I could be spending on my campaigns.

E-mail also seems to be never-ending. As I write this blog post, I currently have 1,825 unread e-mails.

I really want to get that down to 0. I am so behind on e-mail it’s ridiculous. Check out software for managing emails here if you’re behind on emails like me.

The Only Real Roadblock

In the end, the only real roadblock is myself. All of the roadblocks mentioned above are things that I can address and work on.

If I really want to get to the next level, then I will smash through these roadblocks so that I can get back to work on launching new campaigns.

It would be so awesome to get to the $50,000-$60,000 month mark.

This Offer Is Not Available In Your Country

So you’re in your favourite affiliate network looking for a new offer to run, when you visit the preview or affiliate link only to see the offer’s landing page redirect to a page with the message: “Sorry! This offer is not available in your country.”

Either that, or you are shown an offer that is completely unrelated to the one you’re actually trying to look at.

This is an extremely common occurrence due to certain offers being available to specific countries only, and then either the advertiser or network using their geo-location script to redirect all other countries to the network’s default landing page (usually a generic worldwide offer).

You will usually come across this issue when looking at offers that are for other countries, or if you you don’t live in the US, like me, then you will get it a lot of the time simply because the majority of offers are for the US only.

Whatever the case, I got tired of all the geo-redirection as it is imperative that I can visit the actual offer landing pages in order to do proper research and analysis, and so I use a proxy service called GeoEdge.

Now, GeoEdge is far more useful than simply being able to view all offer landing pages without being redirected. It is extremely useful, for example, for seeing if an offer has custom landing pages with the native language for different countries. This is vitally important to know so that you can make your own landing pages and ad copy and creative accordingly. You don’t want to be using English-based ads if the landing page is actually in Portuguese. The only way to know this would be to use a proxy service.

Below is a 15-minute screencast I made on GeoEdge, demonstrating its features and how it’s useful to an affiliate marketer. You may want to view it in 720 HD and full screen:

(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.)

One thing I forgot to include in the video above is that similar to the mobile emulator, GeoEdge also includes a browser and spider/bot emulator. This is a handy little feature when doing web development such as working on your landing pages so that you can make sure your site is loading properly in MSIE and Opera, for example. It’s also useful to make sure the advertiser offer’s landing page is loading fine in multiple browsers as well!

Another thing I didn’t mention in the video is how using a proxy service like GeoEdge is beneficial for things such as when you need a new IP or at least get ipv4 leasing. For example, a lot of PPV traffic sources limit pop-up’s/pop-under’s to display once per 24-hour period. This can be a hindrance if you’re wanting to check out some of your competition… but with a proxy service like GeoEdge, you can check out multiple pop-up iterations (if you want to view by a particular country, this will currently only work with the US since GeoEdge has multiple US-cities to choose from).

Another use is for affiliate marketers and ppc experts with multiple Facebook accounts…

As I mention in the screencast, GeoEdge is a service that I use frequently as an affiliate marketer, and it’s one of the tools that I can’t really live without when working on my campaigns.

They offer a free trial if you want to check them out.