Affiliate update!

[FrozenCanuck]

Hey gang,

As I mentioned in an older post, I started promoting on ClickBank to learn about PPC on Google. I expected no real success, but figured I'd learn.

I learned, and I am profiting.

I have now made 6 sales and 5 from different credit cards, with at least one visa and one mastercard, so I should get paid very soon.

My revenue per sale is 50% of a $197 product.
Therefore I earned $594 in commission so far
My adwords spending has been $200 so far.
Not a bad profit.

Most of the sales came in the last 2 months and I have been accelerating my campaign with new keywords, more adgroups and more specific targeting of those keywords via adgroups.

Very cool. Everyone should try this just to learn the PPC basics. In the end, for $400 profit, I probably invested 25 hours of learning. So I am not making much per hour on this but the learning is one-time, the profits go on for a while.

It has given me SO many ideas also, for future marketing of my products.

FC

[kamakiri]

Canuck - Good job on making money, it is a milestone that many people don't get to. Can we have some details? What kind of products are you selling?

Heck, do it a bit more and make an ebook out of the process. You will make far more selling the knowledge than using it. Just look at Carlton Sheets.

[FrozenCanuck]

My campaign is extremely basic.

I advertise a product over google adwords that involves a skill set I am familiar with. I don't want to disclose it but I'm FAR from the only person advertising this product.

I use several different ad groups and I have found some keywords that nobody else is using to push this audio course that I promote, and it is delivering me about 40 clicks per day. I get about 200 clicks per sale as a ratio, and I pay on average 20 cents per click.

Costs me about $40 to make a sale of $100, or sometimes less. I'm refining it as I go.

Clickbank is where I am the affiliate
Google is my only advertising.

Pretty simple.

[overseasplease]

Good stuff.

Are you direct linking or are you using a landing page? A landing page might help out with more conversions if you're not already using one.

[kamakiri]

Costs me about $40 to make a sale of $100, or sometimes less. I'm refining it as I go.

Didn't you mention earlier that your COGS was 50%? If you spend $40 to make a $100 (or less) sale and it cost $50, that only leaves less than $10. Either I missed something here or you did.

[rab911turbo]

Nice post FrozenCanuck,

It's good inspiration. You can start quite simply and still make some money. Plus wasn't there another post somewhere about finding free adword vouchers? It seems that one could get started for practically nothing...

[FrozenCanuck]

I'm directly linking to the sales letter page for the product. I have actually used the product and like it, but I find the sales letter ANNOYINGLY long, as in it would take me at least 10 minutes to read the whole damn thing. It's amazing that it converts at all, but it does convert OK.

You guys think it would be better to actually have a landign page instead that is my own? I actually considered doing this to pre-sell the product because I think my copywriting and rapport-building skills are far better than what is on the sales letter now. I'd have to take the approach of saying, "listen, I have used this product and although I'm sorry you have to wade through a really annoying LONG sales letter, this product is awesome".

??

[FrozenCanuck]

Kamakiri:

The product sells for about $200. A few bucks under so it seems like less. The commission is 50% to me, so I get nearly $100.

I spend about $40 to produce a sale.

What I do NOT like is that most (90% +) of my clicks are coming from one set of keywords that could fade rather quickly, so I need to diversify and find other keywords. I have a bunch of ideas, and this is why I think it's important to know the product you are selling thoroughly. Because I know the market, I know the terms people would search for, and I can come up with keyword ideas that nobody is using for this product. If I picked the most obvious words (many are in my campaign), I will see very few impressions and therefore almost no clicks. Plus they are expensive clicks.

I think as an affiliate you need to be creative and take a product and target it towards a particular niche.

[webgal]

Good post Frozen.

[Stallion]

Very interesting. I think I'm going to take the plunge into the PPC and learn some. Hope to make some bucks. It's pretty cool that you can direct link to the affiliate.

[TimW]

So, on that $200 (or so) sale, you make $100 - $40 in associated marketing costs = $60 revenue, which is 30%.

Not bad if the $40 is your only costs. Of course, at the end of the year, after factoring in (read: deducting) expenses like your ISP, hosting, etc., it will be interesting to see what your net income ends up being.

In my online retail business, I have gross margins of about 30%, too, after factoring COGS, but before expenses. By the time all is said-and-done, I net about 11% of my gross sales.

[Steve-3PO]

Great stuff. Sounds like it's all working out.

Can I ask how you got the agreement with the manufacturer to get 50% commission?

Was it hard to do?

Do you have any advice on how to go about negotiating with a supplier/manufacturer on getting a decent commission?

[JFrenzel]

Hey,

I dont want to ask you to give up your idea, but for someone who has been struggling with finding their muse...... What/Where did you get your inspiration? any suggestions?


Cheers

Jose

[Stallion]

Can I ask how you got the agreement with the manufacturer to get 50% commission?
You don't have to negotiate. There are networks you can join that are full of people that want someone to sell their products.

ClickBank,
Commission Junction,
Amazon Affiliates,

There's a lot of them out there.

[webgal]

paydotcom.com

[Steve-3PO]

Wow! That's just opened up a whole new can of worms for me - I didn't realise that there was a whole industry dedicated to this type of thing - it looks a little daunting, to be honest.

I've had a look at worldwidebrands.com (though it works a little differently), but is there anywhere I can find a reputable site/catalogue that lists similar reputable networks - I really don't want to get stung (and there appear to be a lot of wasps out there...).

[FrozenCanuck]

TimW - I have absolutely no costs aside from PPC. My gross margin is my net margin, bottom line. The only unknowns are return rate.

Guys - PPC and affiliate marketing can be simple, but it is usually complicated. The basic idea is that you go to one of the major sites such as ClickBank. Look through the product listing and find a product that:

1) you think is good quality
2) you know a LOT about
3) you believe you can promote BETTER than most other people because you have deep intimate knowledge of the market / product / focus area.

Usually if you do some research (type search terms into google) you will find that there are a TON of affiliates promoting all of the "good" products that pay high commissions. Most of them actually drive traffic to a landing page that they created. I find that a lot of "review" sites are hardly reviews. They are summaries of the sales letter. Most affiliate marketers know nothing about their end market compared to a real expert. So if you pick something you know well, you can pull people in better through your ability to teach / write / explain / catch interest.

IN my case I did not have to do this (yet). The product is heavily promoted but some keywords were just not discovered by my competitors. So I use PPC along those keywords and I do OK with this.

Update is that I'm now up to 9 sales, with one return, so net 8 sales. That's $800 bucks with total PPC costs of $300.

It is NOT going to allow me to leave my dayjob, but it does inspire some confidence that you can make money in a way that is separated from time investment.

I should actually get a cheque from Clickbank this week. That will be very cool. First cheque ever.

[Vagabond]

TimW - I have absolutely no costs aside from PPC. My gross margin is my net margin, bottom line. The only unknowns are return rate.

Guys - PPC and affiliate marketing can be simple, but it is usually complicated. The basic idea is that you go to one of the major sites such as ClickBank. Look through the product listing and find a product that:

1) you think is good quality
2) you know a LOT about
3) you believe you can promote BETTER than most other people because you have deep intimate knowledge of the market / product / focus area.

Usually if you do some research (type search terms into google) you will find that there are a TON of affiliates promoting all of the "good" products that pay high commissions. Most of them actually drive traffic to a landing page that they created. I find that a lot of "review" sites are hardly reviews. They are summaries of the sales letter. Most affiliate marketers know nothing about their end market compared to a real expert. So if you pick something you know well, you can pull people in better through your ability to teach / write / explain / catch interest.

IN my case I did not have to do this (yet). The product is heavily promoted but some keywords were just not discovered by my competitors. So I use PPC along those keywords and I do OK with this.

Update is that I'm now up to 9 sales, with one return, so net 8 sales. That's $800 bucks with total PPC costs of $300.

It is NOT going to allow me to leave my dayjob, but it does inspire some confidence that you can make money in a way that is separated from time investment.

I should actually get a cheque from Clickbank this week. That will be very cool. First cheque ever.


Maybe you cant quit your day job with your program going as in... but if you're able to scale it or use the profits to get a few more profitable ones up and running you could start doing really well.

I'm going to try affiliate marketing again with clickbank, I've done CJ in the past with no success. I like that you can direct link with CB though. We'll see how it goes.

~Vagabond