Section 3.1 - Affiliate Marketing 24 Hour Challenge

Many of us have spent numerous hours writing, researching, contemplating, analyzing and reviewing the internet for ways to make money. I'm at a point where I want to see what can work, how quickly it can work, and how I would do giving myself a "test" to see if I can start from NOW and achieve a sale.

Remember "The Apprentice?" On that show they are given a task and a time limit. And that's what I'm going to do. It's a way to learn, and maybe a way to earn. So, experiment 101: Affiliate Marketing 24 Hour Challenge.

So: Set a goal and set a time limit. Then do your most effective work with the knowledge you have, and see if you can succeed.

GOAL: Make a sale (hopefully "profitable") of an affiliate product.

TIME LIMIT: 24 hours.

If you have any questions, please comment to me below, OR, go to Global Business Builders and click on "Live Chat" to talk to me.

Here's an outline of what I'm going to do...follow along if you want to try too! (Yes, it's OK to try this at home!)

1. Pick an affiliate product based on something being popular but not too competitive (meaning not too expensive to promote, and not too many people promoting it)

2. Devise a marketing campaign and a way to promote so that a profit can be made.
3. Execute
4. Monitor
5. Test
6. Adjust

On your mark, get set, GO!

Right now is 5:00 Central time, 4/29/2008.

I'll update this publication every hour on the hour until 10:00 pm tonight. Then every hour starting 9:00am until 5:00pm tomorrow.

Right now is about 5:30. I'm off to do some research. Roughly, here is what will be done:

• Check some Affiliate Forums
• Look at Clickbank
• Look at Commission Junction
• Determine other possible affiliate programs to join or promote that allow Search Engine Marketing (not all companies allow this, keep in mind).
• Search Google
• Start locking in on some Keywords for Search Engine Ads
• Use AdWords to get an idea of cost and placement using "Traffic Estimator"
• Create the Google AdWords campaign
• Monitor, test, adjust

Learnins and comments will be added as we go along so that this can be a useful log and learning experience.

OK, next update in 30 minutes at 6:00 pm.

******** 6:00pm UPDATE *******************

OK, I've found a few items to investigate further. Still a lot to do to narrow in. Here are some thoughts:

• HubPages "Tag Cloud" in the "Top Hubs" shows Entertainment, Family, Business, & Health as the largest, tags. And many of the articles support those areas as being popular.
• I'm going to check "Best Sellers" on Google. Esp. eBay, Amazon, and maybe some other sites. This will give me a little market insight.
• I'm going to check some of the top sellers at Clickbank. I have some terms to learn about, and I'll share after I've learned them.

OK, that was just a small amount of progress because I only had a little time since the last update. More to come! Talk at 7:00pm.

******** 7:00pm UPDATE *******************

Ok, work continues on "best sellers." The way this is done is by typing into Google "best sellers" ebay. Here's the link: http://product-index.ebay.com/best_selling_1.html

And for Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers

These lists give some insight into what's selling. I still want to take a look at the Affiliate forums, look at other best sellers at Clickbank, and best seller lists related to: entertainment, family, business, health.

Back at 8:00!

******** 8:00pm UPDATE *******************

1. This is the search I used for entertainment: "best sellers" entertainment -books -videos -dvds The "-" is used to remove books, videos, dvds because I want to exclude search results containing those items and get to something other than those items. What comes up are: memorabilia sites, audible feeds or eBooks (of lectures, books, etc), Tvs, Posters, Arts, Games.
2. For family: these words come up in a "best sellers" family search: gifts ( I really like the bestsellers at this site, lots of learning products: shopping.discovery.com ), fragrance and oils, clothes, tents, luggage, and more.
3. Business best sellers: research reports, how-to information, briefcases, laptops, display products, business information, and more.

4. Health best sellers: health aids, health supplements, nutrition, herbal supplements, drugs, minerals, and more.

More at 9:00.

******** 9:00pm UPDATE *******************

Here are the categories for ClickBank:

1. Business to Business 2. Health & Fitness 3. Home& Family 4. Computing & Internet 5. Money & Employment 6. Marketing & Ads 7. Fun & Entertainment 8. Sports & Recreation 9. Society & Culture

Let's go see what is doing well under those categories. But first, we need an explanation of the statistics that are shown with the products under those categories (this information is available under "rankings help" in the Clickbank Marketplace:

1. $Earned/Sale: Average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. The average includes and is adjusted down by refunds, returns, etc..
2. Future $: Average total recurring bill revenue earned by the affiliate due to sales.
3. Total $: The sum of all initial sales and recurring revenue divided by the number of initial sales. It is the average total $ for all sales, initial and recurring.
4. %Earned/Sale: Average percentage commission earned per affiliate per referred sale.
5. %Referred: This is the percentage of publisher's total sales that are referred by affiliates. I believe that the remaining percentage is due to the publisher's sales and efforts.
6. Gravity: Number of distinct affiliates who earned a commission by referring a paying customer to the publisher's products. This shows how popular/how much competition for that product.

So, my thinking would be to choose something that is not being promoted by the masses, say a Gravity of 80 to 130. Also, something not being heavily promoted by the publisher, say a %referred at least 70%. Something that has at least a $35 commission or higher. And, something that has a good pitch page. So, here are some that looked good along those guidelines:

1. Business to Business: SaleHoo Wholesale, Keyword Elite, SEO Elite, NicheAnnihilation

2. Health & Fitness: Hypnosis, No-Nonsense Musclebuilding (comes with a website which you brand with your information). This category, did not have many commissions over $50.
3. Home& Family: The Magic of Making up, Dog Food Secrets, Kingdom of Pets.

4. Computing & Internet: Registry Cleaner, IPhone movie & TV downloads, Article Wizard (gravity is 50, but I like the idea).
5. Money & Employmen: Forex Killer, Legit Online Jobs, The Profit Lance AutoWealth Course, Get Paid to Submit Photos.
6. Marketing & Ads: Credit Secrets, Blogging to the Bank, HyperVRE Adsense.
7. Fun & Entertainment: Movie Downloads, MP3 download sites.
8. Sports & Recreation: MP3 downloads, The Simple golf swing.
9. Society & Culture: Jamorama Guitar courses, Government resources, Government Records.

OK, now I'll look at the items, start getting a feel for the ones to take to the next level of research: keyword research and AdWords pricing.

See you at 10:00.

******** 10:00pm UPDATE *******************

Still looking over choices, checking Google for competition, and looking at Keywords and Prices. This may take some time. Possibly I'll Post at 11:00. Otherwise, tomorrow morning.

******** 1:00am UPDATE *******************

Well, this took a few more hours, but here's the status for the steps I described earlier:

1. Pick an affiliate product: update> I decided to go with a work at home promotion.
2. Devise a marketing campaign and a way to promote so that a profit can be made. update> For this step, I decided to choose an ad on Facebook, and a PPC ad using Google AdWords.
3. Execute: update> The Facebook ad is running. I am about to complete the AdWords ad shortly.

4. Monitor

5. Test

6. Adjust

Next update in the morning 9:00 if not sooner.

******** 9:00am CST April 30 UPDATE *******************

Ads are running on Google AdWords and Facebook.

Stats: Google has had about 300 impressions (shown up on the search results page) and has had 5 clicks. Since impressions were low, I added to more sets of keywords to the keywords that were there. This is part of the monitor, test, adjust activities.

Facebook has had about 35,000 impressions and 6 clicks. Both required a bid over $1 for the keywords.

I have the ads running for the US, all age groups, and for everyone. The ads will appeal to those who want to take some control of their lives, to be their own boss. Or, they may need ways to make extra income.

No sales..........yet!

******** 10:00am CST April 30 UPDATE *******************

The ads continue...I like what is happening with one of my keyword phrases in Google AdWords. It is getting a Clickthrough Rate of 11%. The other Keywords are much less even though the positioning is about the same. Will continue to monitor and test. If no sales in a little while, will probably put the price of the product in the ad, that will keep down the tire kickers some.

******** 11:00am CST April 30 UPDATE *******************

The kewords in Google AdWords are getting Clickthrough Rates of between 3% and 16%. The one at 16% is not getting much traffic, but it is the winner I would stick with (if this weren't a challenge) because 1. It is showing very high relevance, which gives the campaign and my account credibility with Google, and could allow me to lower my bid. 2. A high CTR means it is getting the right message to the right people.

So, I will soon (even though this is a race) go and remove those other keywords that are costing and getting low CTR...

******** 1:00pm CST April 30 UPDATE *******************

I created an ad variation on Google AdWords, and want to see if it gets some activity. Google will alternate with it and the first ad, seeing which one gets the most attention. This fancy word for this is "split testing." It doesn't affect the Google quality score, except in a good way if one ad works better than the other.

******** 2:00pm CST April 30 UPDATE *******************

Still no good news about a sale... Will review statistics and give some more thoughts on approaches to try.

******** 3:00pm CST April 30 UPDATE *******************

Ok, let's discuss Google AdWords. You have 3 choices for keywords:

1. Broad match.
2. Exact phrase match.
3. Exact term match.

Let's say you have 2 (usually you'll have more, much more) terms:

cars

all about cars

Broad match. If you have -cars- then it is a broad word and will always bring back any match on that word. For -all about cars- , a broad match will trigger your ad on any search term containing that keyword, and in any order.

A phrase match uses quotes around the phrase and the keyword will trigger your ad whenever that exact phrase is included in a search term, even if other words are part of the term as well. For instance, in our example "all about cars" would return pages with: all about red cars.

An exact match uses brackets [exact match] around the keywords andthe keyword phrase will show the ad only when a Google user types in that exact term. So, [all about cars] will not return: all about car.

I started my campaign with [exact match] keywords. This is a tactic for getting placed higher, because the exact term match has priority over phrase match and broad match all things being equal.

Still no sale...

******** 5:00pm CST April 30 UPDATE *******************

The Google campaign has run about 15 hours. Has had about 500 impressions, 21 Clicks. CTR = 4.2%.

Facebook campaign has run about 17 hours. 48,000 impressions, 11 clicks. Very low CTR (which I've experienced before with FB).

8 clicks from social media sites. So, grand total of 40 clicks in less than 17 hours. But final result was, no sale. This product did not have a conversion of 3% which is usually expected, but 0%.

This Challenge will be closed in less than 1 hour with a discussion about final lessons learned.

******** 6:00pm CST April 30 Final Update & Notes *******************

OK, one last check to see if a sale......no, no sale.

Remember the rule for stocks/options in the stock market? Get rid of the losers quick and hold the winners. Most people make the mistake of selling the winners quick and holding the losers too long.

I consider this choice too low in converting. If it had even a 2% or 3% conversion it would have made a sale and broken even.

Lessons learned:

1. Learn more AdWords information, try to get costs down
2. Allow more time for keyword and competitor research (to see what other competing offers are out there and what other affiliates are doing)

3. Try some broad keywords with negative keywords combos
4. Look for keywords that get decent searches that aren't so competitive

Loopster