What We've Changed to Suddenly See Profits

What We’ve Changed to Suddenly See Profits

Today marks Nate and my third straight day showing a decent profit, which is a first for us since we began our jouney into affiliate marketing. So I wanted to take a minute to reflect on the four main components we put into practice to start turning a profit. Now of course these aren’t the end-all, be-all of success, but they’ve certainly helped us turn a very large corner to where we’re now seeing profits of $100+ a day. Those “secrets to success” are:

Content is King

One of our major turning points was to learn, if you’re working in Google Adwords, to stay away from search. I know this sounds weird, but on the content-only network there is no quality score, no required minimum bids and much, much less competition. While it’s nearly impossible to get into the top 5 ads in search for competitive niches like dieting, dating or ringtones without an incredibly optimized landing page, all it takes in content is a good minimum bid and a good click-thru rate. Give the content network a shot today!

Crowded Niches are Crowded for a Reason

There’s money to be made there! Sure some people can get lucky with niches that are high in traffic but low in competition but those are tough to find. Just like there’s a reason why there’s a lot of competition in profitable niches, there’s a reason why there isn’t some competition elsewhere; those niches just don’t convert as well. If you’ve got a limited budget and you absolutely need to make money if you plan to go any further, why not spend that money somewhere when you know there’s money to be made?

Bid High, Budget Low

One of the biggest mistakes we were making was setting our bids too low. We were afraid of losing money — as most n00bs are — so we set our bids at 10, 20, or 25 cents a piece and paused any keyword that went over that. While we didn’t lose a lot of money, with bids that low our ad didn’t show nearly often enough and thus – we didn’t make any money either. If you have a limited budget of only $100 or $200 a day (or less), set the budget for your campaigns low when you’re testing a niche so that you never lose a whole lot of money if your ad doesn’t do well. But you’ll never know if your ad does well or not if you don’t pay enough to find out. You’ll get better data, better conversions and better be able to optimize a campaign if you have a $200 and spend a dollar a click than if you spend 3 cents a click.

Find a Mentor

Not everyone is lucky enough to find someone in affiliate marketing who can really help them out. Someone who has been successful themselves and is willing to share their secrets (as I’m sure you’ve discovered, as we did, most people in this industry and pretty tight-lipped). For us, we met someone at Affiliate Summit East whom we befriended and were able to learn a lot from. Without his guidence, we definitely would still be floundering. Of course finding a mentor is easier said than done but if you can, take full advantage; it might be the secret step you need to finally turn a profit!