MOVED BLOG www.willischan.com

I moved my blog to http://www.willischan.com

It has a new post as well.

Stats #14 – Gotta Stabilize campaigns 2 and 3…

After having my stats slowly fall I looked into my campaigns and realized that I need to stabilize my second and third campaign before I continue. They are the sole reason why I’m losing so much money this past week. To change this downfall I’ve completely revamped my landing pages for all of my sites(even for campaign 1). So far I have good and bad news. The good news, campaign 2 and 3 are doing great now. The bad news is that campaign 1 plummeted for 2 days(sat and sunday). I’ve already reverted my first campaign to the original landing page and have left campaign 2’s landing page as is. Now that I’m turning a profit from all my campaigns I hope to turn my stats around. So yea… Landing pages do have a huge affect on leads as I have mentioned before.

Blog

I’m almost done designing and coding my blog. This is the first time I’ve ever made a wordpress theme. I didn’t want to design a sophisticated theme so I just stuck with a very basic layout. Now that I’m 80% done it feels really good to once again jump head first into the project and accomplishing something I’ve never done before. I’m actually pretty proud of myself at figuring it out on my own lol. Hopefully all the functions still work since I tried not messing with them. If all goes to plan my next post will be from my new blog. I still need to figure out a way to transfer my posts to my new blog(probably just have to repost them).

Stats

Not the best but hopefully the changes will take effect next week. Seeing these stats are really discouraging….  These stats are for aug 1 – 18.

Spent: $900.37(OW)
Gross: $1396.90
Net: $496.53

Impact of the landing page

I made a post a long time ago regarding the results of tweaking a landing page. So far I have seen that changes, even small ones, can affect the outcome of a campaign. Today, I made drastic changes on three landing pages. two of them were completely revamped. The only thing remaining the same is the background color. These changes were made because of the suggestions from my affiliate manager. Since he has helped me increase my earnings I thought I would give his ideas a shot. Plus, they weren’t half bad either. Some of the landing pages were rushed anyways so changing them helped quite a bit.

What have I been doing today?

As stated above, I worked on my landing pages. I completely really early so I just spent the rest of the day lounging around. It’s not about how long you work, but how much you get done. I felt like I got a lot done today so it’s time for a break lol. The results the new landing pages will bring won’t be available until I post my stats monday

Always listen to your affiliate manager

Okay well not always Try to keep their ideas in mind at least. I’ve been through 3 AM’s on azoogle and 2 on copeac(AM as in affiliate manager… i sometimes use AM to say affiliate marketing). I have first hand experience with both good and bad affiliate managers. Some of them I have no idea how they even got the job and others just don’t understand AM from a beginners point of view. So far I love my current managers. My current AM helped me A BUNCH today. He just IMed me out of the blue and tossed out tips left and right. I will prob spend all night and tomorrow working on the changes he suggested. If you don’t have a good relationship with your AM, I suggest you start talking to him/her or request a new one. I wouldn’t say a manager is essential in affiliate marketing, but it will help your earnings more than you think.

What Have I Been Doing Today

I really haven’t done much in regards to affiliate marketing. Today is a day to relax I guess. I will however probably do some work tonight. I have to goto a BBQ thing today so I really don’t feel like working. I did however make a list of changes I needed to work on so this day wasn’t a total waste :p

School is Coming

Yes… school is arriving once again. So far my attitude with school is “bleh”. I think I don’t entirely like it because I’m not getting applicable knowledge that I can use on a day to day basis. For example, I’ll never need to know the MOLES of helium in a 102 g sample or why the cosine of pi is pi itself(is that even right? I don’t remember lol). UGHhhhh maybe this year will be better. I’m at a new school and I may actually learn stuff that I will use towards my career. I never took computer science at my old school so maybe I will like the upcoming year in school since I signed up for it. Who knows… I do know however that I will have less time to work on my affiliate stuff.

I will try to post more

I’m gonna post more to see if that will increase the number of readers currently visiting my site. I read a post on johnchow.com which encouraged me to at least try to post once a day. Besides, I always wanted more daily readers and this may be the only way for that to work. It’s such a simple concept, but I never really found a reason to do it. Now that I have future plans for my blog, more readers = just what I needed. I’m not really sure how to structure my everyday posts, but they will proably be the same format day by day.

What have I been up to today?

I woke up today and immediately went to work on my second campaign. As I had mentioned, the previous campaign 2 consisted of a sub-niche of the offer I was promoting. To get more leads I have started a whole new campaign just tackling the niche itself directly. I have already uploaded the bulk of keywords I wanted to use and am just waiting for results. Will probably have it by the end of tomorrow actually.

Re-Learning PHP

I have also started to relearn php. Why relearn? I felt I needed to get back to basics on the language. When I first started learning I just jumped head first into using php to output data on my website. I only learned what I needed and left it as that. Now that I can see myself being a web developer as a future career(along with AM), I thought it would be necessary to relearn it. I’ve already got a book and started going through it by following the examples on my local php server. Hopefully it won’t take me too long to get through the book. I’m not just stopping there, ruby and .NET is next. I will probably need to take a class for .NET though.

QuickUpdate on Stats

Yesterday was one of my worst days when it comes to AM. I had close to zero leads and lost quite a lot of money. Hopefully they will rebound, but if I keep having days like these my stats by the end of the month with be pathetic.

Stats #13 – Making the push to campaign 2

I should really write my blog ideas down because I always forget what to talk about when I start writing. I’ve done a little reflecting these past few days and have really appreciated how far I’ve come. Although it is nice to see the results I’m getting, it’s also disheartening when I compare my stats to others. When I talk to my affiliate manager and he throws figures out like 100 leads a day, I just feel like any other noob. Yea, most people always say that you shouldn’t pay attention to what others are making, but it’s hard not to. In fact, if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t even be working as hard as I am. Without them, I would have stopped long ago when I reached a few hundred a month. I never knew of the possibilities my earnings could become without some reference. Because I have seen the money potential behind AM I have been doing nothing but trying to play catch up. I already have some work scheduled to be finished by the end of next week. Hopefully it will get me a step closer to other AM’s that I always hear about.

Campaign 2:

A quick recap: I have three campaigns. my first campaign is stable and earning money. My second is unstable and earning money. My third is unstable and not making much money.

I have decided to make a huge push to get campaign 2 going. I already talked to my AM and he is in the works to bring back an offer that had worked for me last month, but was pulled. With that out of the way it’s time for me to expand my campaign. So far, the second campaign consists of keywords regarding a sub-niche of the offer. Technically, it really shouldn’t be run with the offers available at azoogle/copeac, but I have no choice since the sub-niche offer I initially started the campaign with ended 2 weeks after I started. I didn’t want to throw it away so I just switched out the offer.

So yea, this week I plan to just tackle the niche itself alongside the sub-niche. I will have 2 campaigns running this offer and I expect the campaign targeting the niche itself will be the stronger of the two(even though I spent months on the current sub-niche offer). Because of this, I hope to see another revenue stream of at least $500 more per month. I made around $450 with the sub niche alone so if my expectations come true I hope to earn waaay more. That was however with an offer that was pulled the beginning of this month. Hopefully my AM can bring it back ASAP. I’m already breaking even with my current campaign b/c the offers just don’t convert for me. Like I said before… the joys of affiliate marketing. : /

Stats:

I’m not too happy with these stats. They are alright I guess. The slump is due to the fact that I’m throwing money at campaign 2 and it’s not producing splendid results. These stats are for Aug 1- 11. The 11th was last Saturday.

Spent: $521.77
Gross: $922.35
Net: $400.58

Still Chugging Along

I’m still plucking away at my campaigns. I’m trying to get my third campaign going, but it’s not happening. It did show some light earlier, but slowly died down. I plan to just increase the bids next month, but will just keep it static for this month. I know for a fact I can get leads, but they’re just not coming through. Plus, the fact that there is not a lot of offers available for this niche is also very painful.

MSN

After a few days with MSN I can truly say that it is pretty good. I mean, sure the traffic volume sucks, but at least I’m getting conversions. Even if it’s 1 lead, it’s 1 lead I will never get if I never tried. If you get decent traffic with other search engines then I would say give msn a try. If you get pathetic traffic/clicks with other engines, then more than likely you will get 0 traffic/clicks from msn. Also, like I said before, MSN has a very slow interface. It can easily take you numerous hours just setting up all the adgroups depending on your campaign size. If you don’t think your time will be well spent working on msn campaigns then don’t do it. Also, I made the mistake of setting up all my adgroups without familiarizing myself with the system. To make it a long story short, I basically had to reenter the campaign because I screwed up. The only other way to fix it was to go into every ad group and change it(which would require a few page loads). Because that method would have taken ages, I just deleted and started over. ouch…

Also, MSN loves to screw with you be rejecting ads and keywords. Check out all the emails I got with the rejected content:

Campaign 2:

I seriously need to work on this AGAIN. the offer disappears so fast and it’s making me wanna cry. This is like the third time it has happened on an offer I liked. They stay up for a month and disappear. Ahh the joys of affiliate marketing.

Quitting Job 

Yep… I am officially quitting me job tomorrow.  No not because I am earning enough to sustain myself through AM, but because of school. I will be going to school in another city so no point in working anymore. I was only payed around $8 an hour working part time so that equals to about $200 a week. Yea pretty pathetic. What’s weird is that people have been working there for YEARS doing what I do. Then again they get payed slightly more at around $10-$13 an hour. Still pathetic, but yet again great for the type of work. Won’t get payed that much for being a cashier anywhere else(at least I don’t think so).

Stay tuned for monday when I post my stats again.

Still building my empire…

Wow this has been a very busy week. All I have been doing is slowly expanding my campaigns. Either adding more adgroups or just simply duplicating them.

MSN

Yea you heard me. I’m working on duplicating my campaigns to MSN adcenter. I’ve heard great things from many people saying how much adcenter converts better than anything else. Time to put that line to the test! I do have to admit that I have used adcenter before and was not very impressed. Then again I only half assed it and barely got a few adgroups in. Now, I plan to get most if not all of my campaigns in adcenter. I can already tell I’m gonna hate it b/c their system is just waaaaay too slow. Not only is it only slow, it is also one of the most clumsy and feature lacking system I have ever seen. I mean… even the dynamic keyword insertion doesn’t have default text to replace the keyword if it’s too long. This is gonna drive me nuts, but the results better be damn worth it.

Enhance

Like I have noted earlier, I wanted to try more of the third party ppc networks. So far I have tried Enhance for one of my AM offers and was not impressed. I only threw $50 at it so I didn’t lose too much money. Clicks came in FAST and if you’re not careful you could lose a lot of money. Out of the clicks I got, I would say 10% were valuable traffic. Out of that 10%, I would convert like 3% of that group. I averaged about 1 lead every $10(so I had like 4-5 leads total). Not very good. Although those stats do suck, I have to say that I’m quite impressed with the fact that I was able to get a lead at all! There’s a reason why most people only stick to the big 3 when it comes to AM. Enhance surprisingly has a very awesome system for adding campigns, adgroups, etc. There are many features that allow you to make campaign wide changes with only a few clicks. Load time is fantastic, but I do have to say that enhance doesn’t massive changes very well. If you try to make changes to a very massive campaign it may come up with errors and you will end up redoing those changes until it goes through. Other than that I like their system.

Shitty Stats

Well my stats have fallen by a lot. I blame it on praising them in my previous post. Every time I make some over the top comment on my great performing campaigns they fall shortly after. ugh… it’s been 2 days already and today has been the worst. My ecpc is like at $0.25 AHhhhhhhh!

Moving to an actual server!

I actually started this blog to keep track of my success and to inspire others. Because of that I really had no reason to put the blog on personal hosting. Now that I see more potential in my blog, I’ve decided to move my blog to it’s own hosting and domain. This won’t take place for quite some time however. I plan to use this as a learning experience with wordpress. Not only am I just going to move my blog, I’m going to design and code a template. This way I can finally have some input on wordpress designs and know a little more about the technologies that bring a blog to life. I haven’t even begun designing anything so it will take awhile before the big move happens.

That’s it for today. Happy reading!

Stats #12 – So far so good

So far I am very pleased with my campaigns. I’m still working on my second and third campaign to bring it up to a level I’m pleased with, but that will take some time. I’ve already spent 3 hours straight today and yesterday adding new ad groups and I’m still seeing very little gains. Maybe I just need to increase my bids… who knows.

Stats are down and up

Stats lately have been very unpredictable. One day my ecpc is over $1 and the next it’s $0.50-$0.70. Then again this is affiliate marketing and it is to be expected. I’m just glad it doesn’t stay at $0.50 ecpc lol. Having over $1 ecpc is almost too damn good. I’ve seen stats of others and they are usually around $0.70. Some of the top earners are extremely banking from $0.40 alone. I seriously wonder how they are doing it and what they are promoting. Hopefully I will learn a few tricks in the next few months myself that will allow me to do that.

Adsense

I initially started making money from adsense, but stopped due to lack of motivation and a lot of discouraging outcomes. Now, I hope to start up my adsense revenue by creating some content sites. It will give me time to rejuvenate from AM. I seriously need to take a break, but don’t want to lose my momentum. Getting back into adsense will definitely give me something new to work on while still gaining more money.

Blog stats

I said that I would post blog stats in an earlier post so here they are! I started with around 5-10 steady readers and now that I’ve started to post on forums and blogs more I’m getting much more traffic. Here are my pathetic stats..

Bought new computer and ram

I may have mentioned this in an earlier post, but I have bought a new laptop for school and AM. In fact this is my first laptop. I’ve always used desktops in the past… even for my first year of college. Now that I’ve made the switch I’m sure I will get more things done with the ability to work anywhere I want. No more roommates watching my back or bothering me while working on my campaigns ever again!

Some specs:

-windows vista
-AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology
-1 gig ram(2 gigs now)
-200gb HD
-DVD +- R drive
-15.4 inch screen

Here’s the official toshiba page for my laptop

Here’s the ram I bought to make it 2 gigs

Stats

This is for August 1-4 (wed – sat)

Spent: $182.16
Gross: $373.85
Net: $191.69

Recovering

I got my wisdom teeth removed on Wednesday(Aug 1st). The procedure itself was painless b/c I was knocked out, but the hours following were killer. My throat was on fire and the wounds from my extractions were all painfully throbbing. I don’t think the pain meds did much to ease the pain, but they did get me pretty relaxed. It was a narcotic so that was probably why heh. Anyways I can’t wait to pig out on a steak or something. Eating nothing but yogurt, applesauce, etc is not working for me. I’m constantly hungry!! Enough of that. Time to get to the juicy stuff… Affiliate Marketing!

No More New Campaigns

No more new campaigns for now. I’ve got my hands full with 3 and I don’t feel ready to move on. I’m glad I’ve pushed myself to start 3 campaigns, but there has got to be a point where I just stop making campaigns and start actually working on them. One campaign has 50,000 words while another only has 5,000…. yea a little lopsided. I might look into keyword tools to further help me get more terms. we’ll see.

What I have been working on 

So far all I’ve been doing is adding A LOT of keywords. keywords I should have added long ago but was too lazy to move forward with it. After adding keywords my next plan of attack is to expand to more search engines. I’ve been saying that for quite a few posts, but that’s my weakness so far. Moving 50,000 word campaigns is no small feat. If you guys got any tips it would help me a lot. So yea… that’s my next goal.

Hopefully my next post will be longer. Until next time!