Uncommon Early 20s Man

Well the end of the month is tomorrow and its official that I have been doing affiliate marketing for about a month now. Not counting my past attempts but for this campaign. When I first started I had no clue on how and what I should do. I had a broad picture and past experience but that wasn’t enough to compensate for knowledge that was beyond me. However I had a fighting spirit that told me to jump on it now and you will succeed. I kept making mistakes on the first few days but after a while I started to have a PPC mind and I learned from the mistakes. In the beginning how did I started?

First of all I had a goal. My goal was to make money and take it. So I made a small goal for this month and aimed for $500 gross. In the first week I was at $47 gross and in my mind I was thinking “Entrips, I think you are crazy and $500 gross is pushing it” The second week went by and I was at $97 gross. I was thinking..hmm if I have to double or triple that I would have to do more work and no fear on losing money. I was willing to use up $500 from my own pocket. So we are now at week three and this is where the “boom” came upon. I jumped 192%. Amazing isn’t it? Well here comes the 4th week which is the week of may 25th. Now I know exactly what to do and I’m getting better and better each day. This is a very motivational post because if you think about it, I went from $0 to +47%, 106%, 300%+  increase in gross.  So who ever is trying to start affiliate marketing I suggest that you start now because within a month you can be where I’m at. But with my help you can probably pull this off in half the time it took me.

Just like everything in life, we make bad choices while we think it is better. Earlier today I had a collection of about 2,000+ keywords that I have been waiting to test out. So I was being aggressive because if I want to meet my goal this week I have no choice to to let it go. New landing page, new links, new beginnings was what I was thinking. As the day goes by I’m like getting confused. I set out 2,000+ keywords and I was actually thinking, “well if i let about 2,000 keywords go I should have a minimum of 3-5 leads today. My bids were just average and I was going to bid higher tomorrow when QUALITY SCORE kicks in. Remember that if I’m bidding at .50 and I have a higher quality score then you, I’m paying for clicks CHEAPER. So it was average because I’m on a budget. Just about 12 hours pass and I spent a lot of money on clicks already and I was thinking..what!? No leads. I was aware of the # of impressions and which keywords were being clicked. Hmm.. still no leads. Now I see it!! Quickly! Pause all campaigns! . I repeat Pause all campaigns!!

It seems that my new landing page was working properly. But 2/3 of the campaign was through a directory link so I can test out a new landing page. So I have tested 2 landing pages at once. 1/3 was on my main site which proved that it was able to convert and the other was through a directory www.entripunow.com/(landingpage here) .  So 2/3 of the clicks was going to the directory and it was going to a 404 page!! Affiliate Marketers worst nightmare!. So the 1/3 was getting traffic but the majority was in my new landing page in the directory. As of right now I’m trying to fix all my links and make sure they work properly. I also found out that in that move, I also messed up my tracking. I made a new campaign and multiple ad groups so all the links are all the same and that was the cause.

I hope that made sense to everyone. I’m like half asleep right now and in a state of panic.

In the past month I have made a few hundred USD. I tell people everyone who I talk with, if they are interested. I filter out people who wants to do it and who doesn’t. Believe me , I can tell who wants to start and who just wants to do it. There are two different types of people. One person jumps on it and read everything I posted and wants to get started. I will be impressed if someone IMs asking me “how do I start PPC?”. If I have to push someone then its a burden on them to get started. Basically its two groups of people. One is someone who wants to start and another who wants to earn a few bucks and handle it like a job. Here we go again with Employer vs. Employee. I am an Employer while someone who isn’t as motivated is an employee waiting for me to give them a job. When my business flys (yes it will i believe in me) then I can give you a job to do while I spend my vacation in cancun. I just don’t want to waste my time on someone who is interested and who just wants to jump with me and other affiliates in deep cold water not knowning what happens when you surface.

I’m more than happy to help someone start, don’t get me wrong. But its hard to help someone who doesn’t want to start. Its the real world, no one tells you whats the best way to retire. Honestly I do plan my life but i have no idea WTF a 401k is or the # of work hours social security will pay you. But not to discourage anyone who wants to learn, I will help you. I don’t want to keep people from getting an education. Anyways the point of this post was to help anyone who wants to get started.

1) Please. Seriously, Read my blog. I know its not that much information but its gets you the mentality.

2) Before jumping in cold water PLEASE READ!. Seriously I can’t emphasize enough. I get people whos trying to start ask me questions that are explained better in blogs than asking me. Just GOOGLE IT!!!

3) Know the following :

USE OF GOOGLE.COM OR YAHOO.COM !!! Html , Adobe Photoshop, dreamweaver, use of FTP,

Please search for the information you need. Thousands of bloggers like me have post this numerous times. I see people buying landing pages and they could had just spent about an hour or 2 making it themselves. Just know the VERY basic. I have not mastered any of the above and I don’t want to because knowning the basics will go a long way. 90% of you probably have a myspace and know what HTML is and some photoshop to crop your myspace pictures. Dreamweaver is a whole new ball park. It took me 2-3 hours to find out how to insert a picture on my first time. FTP is just moving files from your computer to the internet. Same thing as posting a picture on photobucket or myspace. They just make it easier for you so you don’t have to login and do all that easy stuff.

4). Buy Domain and Hosting ( Total Estimated Cost : <$80 / year.)

Domains is your name. I bought www.entripunow.com for like $6. Hosting, I got mine for one year prepaid. If you need any of it, just let me know. I can probably hook it up with 2-3 domains + 20-30% more disk / bandwidth space. I’m suppose to earn around $100 a referral but I’m just going to give it back to you guys so I don’t earn anything but able to get you guys started.

5) Sign up for affiliate Links. If you look in the right side I have links with my referral. I earn a very small amount for each referral. If you find this informative you guys can sign up and I can thank you. If you just hate me then just go to the web site itself. ( Sign up with me and I’ll help you more ). My income is not through referrals so I can careless of referring people.

6) Sign up for paid traffic. As of right now, just “google” free credits for adwords, msn, yahoo paid traffic. I don’t have a link for it (i think) and if you know where to go you can earn free $100 on yahoo.

7) All set? Check if you have everything from steps 1-6.

Make a Landing Page ( will post in detail later on). The landing page is just links to your offers. You are the salesman, saleswomen of your company. Make it look NICE!

9) Get some tracking on the landing page. There are a bunch out there. Google it and find out which suits you well.

10) Add keywords. Keywords are gold coins and the source of your income. It is also the ugly duckling when it comes to getting the wrong ones. Just TEST TEST TEST.

Alright I think I covered it very briefly. There are more to it but this is the structure on how everything works. If you have any questions just IM me.

I am so down right now. Its like 3 days ago I was up 200%  Now I’m down to 0%. Because of this I started to do “evaluations” every week. A full evaluation is basically trying to see the past 7 days stats and check every single aspect. You can check kws and take out the ones that are not converting, CTRs, QS, profit vs loss, ad group, ad copy, and of course the landing page. This should take away any technical problems you have in the campaign. But don’t wait until the following week if your having problems in day 1 -3. I would do half evaluation and just remove keywords that are not converting. I suggest a full evaluation so you can improve the campaign and save some $ on stuff you shouldn’t be paying for. Remember that you should always check stats 24/7 to see if something is going bad. Catch the problem before it becomes huge. Now if you are on vacation, depending on the length of time you are away,make sure you check it every now and then . You need a vacation too so don’t stick around in the computer giving your girlfriend a hard time when she wants to go to the beach and your making a landing page. If i was on vacation I would do a 2 day test on the campaign. Remember to NOT set NEW campaigns while on vacation or a few days before. If a campaign is looking bad, just leave it on for another day. If the next day it is still doing bad just pause it or stop it. So that way you are not losing money and hopefully that wasn’t your own campaign, so you still make money drinking a pina colada.

One thing I learned after having an increase of almost 300% since last week is GREED. My first goal like I said before was just to make a few leads and I will be a happy camper. Now that I’m constantly getting leads 24/7 I’m feeling like I should always check my account and see if I made a lead. I found a pattern that I make a lead about every 4-6 hours in a day. But when I check every hour I start getting impatient and thinking what I am doing wrong. HELLO! Entrips! Wake up!. You just said you make a lead every 4-6 hours and every hour you check? haha. Well this whole thing is new to me and making money this fast is pretty extraordinary. Today was I guess an “average” day. It wasn’t that big of a money making day but I still got some leads. Yesterday was just too crazy for me because of all the leads.

Well today the campaign are doing its job and its doing a good job handling all the work. This has to be my best day yet and its profit vs loss is waaaayyy better than yesterdays. Like I said there was so much frustration and depression. Today was a bright day for me. Basically the main topic I wish to cover is the motivation. Working in front of a computer for about 40+ hours a week isn’t all that fun. Sure you can go to youtube and myspace but after a few hours it gets so boring. Affiliate Marketing is boring. YES. I said it. Basically all you do is the same things over and over until you get good results. Do you really think that getting keywords, working on landing pages and losing money is fun? Gets boring after a while. However the boringness pays off when you see your profits.

The profits are the only thing that fires people. First you have to suck it up and lose the money with the boringness that PPC gives you. Then you have to learn how to expand your business. You have to learn all the tips of the trade and this can take hours. Like I said before there are no books that will tell you EVERYTHING. The “EVERYTHING” I’m talking about is the minor tips but has a huge return. No one is going to tell you the exact detail on how they succeed. When PPC gets you down you have to learn to get back on your feet. Its very hard to not give up on PPC. It can get discouraging at times that you just want to throw in the towel.

So yesterday was the worst day ever. 80% of yesterday was bad because I lost money and I didn’t expect to lose that much. In the evening of that day, I got one lead off the campaign and in my terms, I “fixed” the situation. I let the campaign loose overnight to see if I would lose again. I increased my bids +.10 to see if that would make a difference. Well it didn’t make a huge difference but it was noticeable. I woke up earlier today and it was another day of trabajo (work in Spanish). I always check how much I spent on my traffic first so I can estimate how much traffic I got and the % estimate of how much leads I receive. I spent about the cost of a starbucks frap. However I made a few leads. Not bad right? So today looks like a brighter day and I have to work more! and get more results. As of right now let me get breakfast :/

So 2 hours ago I was hiding in the dark because my leads were not working as well as how I wanted it to work. People said never give up. So I didn’t. I knew I had a problem with my campaigns and I fixed it. Since I didn’t give it time to convert, there was no way it would convert with out some magic right? Well Since I have been up since 7am, getting frustrated and pissed off and on the verge of drinking my problems away, I saw a lead. So in my last post I told you guys how I would solve my resolution. Well I gave up and fell asleep for like an hour and I woke up and saw a lead made. Good job! for SLEEPING. So remember just how other affiliates say, You get your good days when you are about to buy the world, then you get your bad days when you just crashed and burn. So if you ever have a problem FIX IT!

So this past few weeks my Profit Vs. Loss has been the alltime lost. I had days where it was really good and now it is going downhill. So what is the problem? As of right now I have been brainstorming of what the problem is. I know people are still making money off the niche I’m doing so the problem is not the network itself. My landing page has not changed so that can’t be it either. Time to reevaluate my keywords. In the beginning my main goal was to get some keywords and make One Sale. My goal this week was make $1,000 Gross. My Loss from Yahoo Search Marketing is huge compare to my leads. So this time around I had more experience one what keywords to use and not to use.

It is hard to determine what I done back then but I do have my logs and keywords. My adcopy is better than last time and my Quality Score is at 5 Bars. Everything is running smooth. This time around my main goal right now is going to be changed. I’m going to do my hundred keyword test. Basically it is just putting a bunch of keywords together and testing it for conversion. I have been doing that but in a different way. I would put 1,000 keywords and expect a return. More keywords = more conversions. Well DUH! it doesn’t take a rocket  scientist to figure that out. However you also have to put in consideration the amount of keyword Costs vs Daily Spending Budget.

Hypothetical Situation

If you put 1,000 keywords loose then in about ONE day you will be PAYING for 1,000 keywords correct?. So lets say for example all my keywords got like 100 impressions each (1% CTR)and I got 1 click @ AVG CPC = .50. Then lets say for that cpc I get 2 clicks from EACH keyword. That will mean that I am spending about $1 per keyword and ONLY 2 chances for EACH to convert. If you do the math in that one day you will spend $1,000. By the time you get a conversion its either by luck or finding a good keyword. So what am I getting at?  Well just like every affiliate marketer no one has $10,000 to burn to begin with. If you did then 1) you saved up. 2) you have a mind of a business man and hate your job. But wait isn’t this a good way to test? YES it is but if your on a budget, losing $1,000 in one day kicks your behind. Then tomorrow you get discouraged and give up and wished you had just bought that new laptop from apple. If you had $10,000 TO BURN then that gives you 10 days to test. In that 10 days each keyword , hypothetically OF COURSE, it will get 20 clicks which means a chance of 20 times to convert. So what? What if 2/3 don’t convert in 10 days? I would be happy with 1/3 of the 1,000 keywords to convert. That is about 333 leads. So in the end of the 10 days you got 333 converting keywords and say payout was $10 = 3,330. You lost $6,670. Bad? No thats good. So delete/pause 2/3 of the non converting keywords. Run the 333kws for 10 days again. So now lets say for every 5 clicks they make a sale 5:1. Total spent @.50 = $1332 Spent. Then your gross is 3,330!. Gross - Loss = Profit = $1198 Round it off to $2,000 PROFIT. So will it take a month for me to actually profit since I lost $6,670? NOPE. In that 20 clicks in a converting keyword you would probably had gotten at least 2 leads. So you would have NOT lost $6,670.

So I figured out where I was going wrong. I don’t let my campaign run long enough to give me some conversions because I get too impatient. I let it run for one day. I lose money I get discouraged then I give up and move on the other keywords. Call me stupid but I learned my lesson. I think I should let campaigns run for at least a few days and having 20 clicks minimum then move on.

“Show me a Successful man I’ll show you a failure”

Wow its like 7am right now and I’m hard at work already. I feel that in the morning my productivity rate is at its peak performance. No one is awake and everyone is still sleepy and no one to talk to. The best time of day to manage everything. The hardest part of finding the right keyword is well. . finding the right keyword. If I knew all the answers right now, I would be a super affiliate. But for now I’m not. There are so many keyword tools out there and I have not tried them yet. So far for my niche I am focusing on the long tail keyword.

A long tailed keyword is a chain of keywords that has about 3-5 keywords. For example, if you were promoting acne, you would use :

1. How to treat acne
2. Best acne medicine for teenagers
3. remove blackheads with best medication
4. Best medicine to treat blackhead
5. free proactive trial

Those are just a few examples. So why wouldn’t you just use “treat acne”, or “acne medicine”. This has to do with the type of customers you are looking for. In PPC you don’t want to waste your money on people who are just researching acne. The customer has to be someone who has a potential of buying the product.

In reallife situations, lets say we go into a  dealership. So I walk in and you walk in with me. I talk to the sales rep and ask him I want that White BMW Z4 in the corner. So simple enough because I know what I want and he has a high potential to make a sale. After I buy my car you talk to the sales rep and ask him “I need a car”. In order for him to help you as much as possible hes going to ask, what kind of car? what color? you want a sports car? do you want 4 doors?. ETC. So now hes refining your search and you have a small potential of giving him a sale because you are not targeting what you want. Maybe you just came there to test drive every single car but don’t buy anything.

I hope the gives a bigger picture on the types of keywords you might need. Don’t get me wrong the short term keywords are good too if you have some money to burn.