Rohail Rizvi

It’s hard to believe that the summer is over already and that it’s SEPTEMBER. Crazy.

That means there are only four months left in 2010 and the busy holiday season is coming up. Time to start grindin if you haven’t already because there’s  a lot of money to still be made with people heading back to school and coming off of “vacation mode.”

Wanted to do an update post, however, about August and list my goals for next month.

It was an interesting month to say the least. Here’s the snapshot:

* I couldn’t show this as August earnings, due to it being September now, but it’s all from last month. And:

Traffic was split between another network. So that equals total revenue of $37, 778.90. Total spend for Aug. was:

So that’s a profit of $18,508.69. The interesting thing is that I only ran traffic this month for about 13 days total- about the first eight days of the month and five days at the end of the month. The reason for that is I was promised weeklies by the network I was working with and it’s the first time I’d really done any sort of volume with them.

I got pretty freaked out when my payment kept getting delayed so I paused all my traffic until I finally got paid 3 weeks after when I first started my campaign. I was almost scared I wasn’t going to get paid. So I was paused for more than two weeks and the crazy thing is before my first payment from the network was due I ran enough traffic to hit my credit limit on all my cards and so decided  to delve into my checking account to keep running traffic. Not the smartest idea looking back now I know. I even went into overdraft a few times in anticipation of payment. It’s a good thing I finally got paid by the network, but it was not an easy two weeks going without any cash in my pocket, which was right before ASE. I’m working with the network again now as they’ve promised to make payments on time now, but hedging my risk by splitting my traffic with multiple networks.

So I hit my best month ever and some of my best days ever with some $3,000+ profit days.

For this month, I want to continue to scale and I strongly believe I will hit my first $50,000 profit month in September. I’m looking forward to trying out new advertising platforms.

The only thing I regret about this month is that I put in so much time and credit towards scaling this campaign out, that I didn’t get to win a new iPad from Convert2Media for pushing $5,000 of revenue in my first month =(  Would’ve been really cool to win one, but oh well.

One more thing – I’m sure by now you’ve probably heard about the floods in Pakistan. I’ve been trying to help raise some money for helping the victims of the foods and it’s surprisingly harder than I thought after posting about it on Facebook and Twitter. The floods have barely been getting any media attention and disease is spreading fast. If you’d like to help, please donate through my page: Help the Pakistan Flood Victims . That country has been dealing with a whole lot of shit, and as much as I hate the kind of morally corrupt behavior that I see from the country of my origin, it’s not all the people and they still need help. I’ve only donated a little so far, but I’m hoping to match all donations. Thanks everybody.

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Well that marks the end of another Affiliate Summit.

NYC is as usual consistent with suite parties, rooftop parties, and its fair share of strippers.

On the business side of things, however, it seemed like there was a shift in the presence of networks, advertisers, and affiliates alike. Many networks downgraded the size and flashiness of their respective booths from previous summits and some networks chose to opt out of a table completely. This isn’t to say it might not be worth the return as different networks have varying objectives. Just an observation. EliteClicksMedia had a huge suite at The London which was cool and they kept the party going. It was cool to have a chance to talk with them and meet up with others in the industry.

Started Monday off with lunch with one of my AMs. Following that, I hit up a couple of sessions with one of them talking about marketing on Android devices given by Michael Martin from MobileMartin.com and the other by the founder of 99designs.com, entitled “Crowdsourcing.” Definitely learned a lot at both sessions and was especially impressed by how quickly Android devices are taking over the market share. We hear a lot about mobile marketing, but Michael’s session definitely helped make it clear that mobile users aren’t searching for anything – they’re more about finding things right away [think local] – and what that means in our efforts to approach mobile users.

Monday night was the Neverblue and CPX Interactive party at Good Units @ Hudson Hotel. The set up was kinda cool and unlike anything I’ve seen before – the club reminded a lot of people of what their high school gym looked like. It was a clever concept though and the place was decently packed. We left early though and headed to Clickbooth’s party at Hudson Terrace. This place had open bar and less people, but it was definitely a good time. Ian Fernando got to break it down and sober Kris Trujillo from CashTactics.net made sure we knew where we were at. Good times, shout out to both of them as well as Benny Tejeda who unfortunately had to dip early. It’s good to know that there are some good people in the industry. Great hangin with all of you.

Good Units @ Hudson Hotel

Neverblue

Good Units

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There’s something to be said in this day and age about networks that can give you one-on-one attention. It’s rare to see that now even at smaller networks and it’s something that separates all the run-of-the-mill networks from the best.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think it’s important for networks to see and help their affiliates grow. In effect, each affiliate is an asset and if you’re not taking care of your assets you’re letting your business die.

Profit Kings Media, run by 19 year old Yousif Yalda, is one of my favorite networks and has never failed to address my concerns whenever need be. Honestly, I think there’s been maybe ONE time when I haven’t been able to reach Yousif directly on AIM. This kid never sleeps! Even though I don’t do as much volume as I wish I did on PKM, Yousif is quick to give me a gut check when I need it and is never shy about being brutally honest when I need to do to see success. He’s always helped me out with ad copy ideas and traffic sources, which is important when you’re trying to get off the ground. What’s most valuable is that he’s almost always there to help out. Add to that PKM pays weekly via direct deposit and you can’t go wrong with PKM.

I hope he doesn’t mind me posting his info, but if you’re interested in signing up hit up Yousif directly on AIM at PKMYousif and if you want to learn more about the owner check out his interview with Jonathon Volk here.

Check out ProfitKingsMedia here.

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When we join an affiliate network what are we all looking for? We know the basics, but what about things that we haven’t yet seen networks do. I asked myself this and here are some of the things that I think networks need to do in order to succeed as this industry grows:

1. Transparency of quality – We’ve heard this one over and over, but it doesn’t seem like many networks have made network-wide transparency much thought. One of the most common things affiliates complain about (rightly or wrongly) is about getting scrubbed on an offer. One way to combat this might be to let affiliates know what the pre-determined scrub rates are based on the quality of leads being generated. That or an incentive based system where better quality leads get higher payouts than average.

2. A non-compete promise – Now that affiliate networks and ad networks are competing against affiliates and running offers independently, there’s an even greater need for trust between affiliates and networks. It’s obvious that the affiliate has to create value here somehow, but there’s something networks can get out of this predicament as well. All ethical arguments aside, money is money and there are some networks who are going to steal what affiliates are running. I can’t think of a definite way to stop this other than making sure affiliates provide more value. Perhaps, however, networks can require affiliates to produce a certain quantity of leads through a certain traffic source in order to maintain the non-compete. This keeps click costs lower among affiliates and still guarantees networks a piece of the pie without the elbow grease. Further, it motivates and makes it easier for affiliates to scale.

3. Availability – Let’s lower the number of affiliates to affiliate manager ratios. These days it seems as though even the smaller networks are having a hard time assisting all their affiliates. Either that or hire more affiliate managers. It makes no sense to have a thousand affiliates and five managers when a majority of those affiliates aren’t experiencing any growth. I would much rather have 20-30 affiliates in my network all well-managed and growing than hundreds who are just floating clueless in the water. Seriously, networks are waayyy losing their potential to grow in revenue and quality by trying to grow too fast without the proper support. Sure those tweets with tips are helpful sometimes, but if you’re brand new it does take a little more than that. I’m not saying networks should be holding affiliates hands all the time. But they might want to at least initially if they want to see them learn and grow into independent affiliates.

What are some things you would like to see in your version of the “perfect affiliate network”?

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Hey everybody.

So I’m finally a graduate as of a month ago. Since then I’ve been pretty much enjoying my freedom and more recently cracking down on myself to focus. It’s make it or break it time for me in affiliate marketing. I really have to take a hard look at what I’m doing right, wrong, and whether this is what I should be doing right now.

Time goes fast and I’m already 22. I’m not working for an investment bank nor a start up like I had imagined just three or four years ago. I’m still working hard at being an affiliate and haven’t ever stuck to anything for as long as I have AM. I love the challenge and I love the potential to make a huge amount of money. There are downsides of course like the nightly grind and frustration from having so many campaigns fail after some short term success. I’ve been learning every step of the way though.

The reason why it’s make it or break it now is because if I don’t get a job now and instead wait even one or two years before trying to get one, the odds are unlikely for me to be able to get one at that point. Employers are obviously going to be asking what I’ve been doing in the meantime and if I haven’t done anything impressive in the mean time by chances are pretty much shot (who knows what they think about AM). But in any case, my whole heart is in AM. It’s just hard now getting back into it after an entire semester. It’s like starting from scratch. Things are completely different in the industry and truth be told it just doesn’t feel like the same place it was before. Sure people are still making money here and there, but it’s been pretty quiet on the stage other than the inevitable guru guides that come out from time to time.

Facebook which is where pretty much 100% of my AM has taken place has changed it’s rules almost 180 degrees and especially for affiliates (yet Facebook loves affiliates, right? ) I haven’t had that much trying trying to gets ads approved, but more so it’s the fact that even with CTRs of 0.20% and above click costs don’t come down enough to even be profitable enough with 60-70 cent epcs. I keep asking myself if I’m doing something wrong, but I’m running my highest ctr ads with the highest converting ads. Of course there’s still money to be made on Facebook, but for the amount of time I’ve been putting into it lately and for the lack of longevity, it really hasn’t been worth it. I’ve never figured out how to make Facebook profitable on broad demos, but I’m trying that now – we’ll see if it’s possible. I’m tired of running short term small scale campaigns – it’s too much of a headache for too little of a profit. I need change. I’ve been here way too long to not be hitting big league campaigns now.

Ruck from Convert2Media  recently published a post where he talked about the need to focus on one offer when starting out. That’s partially been my problem as I’ve been very ADD in the past with offers and probably still am. It’s like why waste time waiting for ads to get approved when you can find new ones — but that doesn’t always work out so well. I do need focus and I have been focusing primarily on one offer this month. However, it seems I’ve run it too long already as its being scrubbed from $1.00 EPCs initially to now 60 cents. I guess focusing on one offer doesn’t always work out and unfortunately there are no good offers out there right now to replace this one – I’ve tested them all (if anybody has hot dating offers hit me up!)

I remember reading Robert Kiyosaki’s books Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant years ago. And in it I remember he told us to focus on building assets and more specifically a system for those assets to self-sustain. I highly doubt that’s what 90% of affiliate marketers are doing and I know I haven’t been doing that. I used to consider campaigns assets, but what kind of asset only lasts a month or two? I know some guys are with sustainable offers like CPS and maybe even some CPAs along with guys building lists which is a definitely a great way to build an asset. But that’s definitely something I see lacking in my own operations that I need to fix. What’s the point of being on the computer 16 hours a day if what you’re building isn’t going to last and you’re not getting to spend time away from your campaigns because you always have to be watching your stats? That’s no business. I need to start seeing that and change my strategy.

So some things I need to consider:

• Risk not getting a job in the future by staying full time AM now with student loans to pay off
• Focus on one offer at a time in a niche that offers several alternatives
• Build a list or some other form of an asset
• Start to scale out into broader audiences if I want to reap greater rewards

What are your guys’ thoughts on the matter? Do you guys see yourselves running a sustainable business? Or are you like me and you’re always chasing the next hot offer?

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Some of you might know that I’ve been in Istanbul for a few months now studying abroad. I have one more semester left to graduate after this current one and since I REALLY want to be done with school, I figured going to a foreign country for a few months would be a nice way to pass the time and experience new things.

As a city, Istanbul is pretty awesome. There are so many things you can do here and I still haven’t even gotten to all the places I wanted to see in this city after 3 months. Part of that has to do with studying for exams and visiting other parts of the country of course. Turkey itself is a beautiful country and I recently took a vacation down to the south coast of Turkey, which I spent at a nice five-star resort modeled after a Russian palace. It was quite cool. Following that I took a quick four day trip to Dubai and got to explore the desert along with everything else that Dubai has to offer. I have to say that partying directly across the al Burj was pretty awesome. Dubai gets a bad rep, but in my opinion it’s still a fun city with a lot to offer, I guess no matter how much debt it’s in.

Now I’m back in Istanbul with a short amount of time left here. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to ASW, which REALLY sucks because I’ll be missing out on Vegas and seeing all my aff buddies.  Guess I’ll have to wait til ASE.

As far as affiliate marketing goes, I’ve been getting time here and there and launch campaigns and last month in fact was my best month yet surprisingly considering the limited amount of time I’ve spent on it. November 6th 2009 was my first $1,000 profit day and I had a few more high numbered days following that. But eventually I started getting scrubbed and had to pull the plug. No worries, plenty more opportunities to come.

When I come back, I’ll be buying my first car so until then I need to hustle hustle hustle so I can get that 370Z or 135i.  However, I will be in Europe for most of January so we’ll see how much time I can get between traveling and studying for final exams. It is nice though to get somewhat of a break from all nighters and I have to say working less has actually made me more successful. So take that for what you’d like, but make sure you at least take a vacation once in a while!

Talk soon.

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Finally some progress! And along to go with it – finally a brand new theme and upgrade! Hope you guys like it.

Right before ASE 09, my AM progress really started to pick up. I’d been in the “dead zone” or “dip” for about six months. Nothing I tried was working and I threw a whole lot of crap at the wall just to see if something would stick.

Fortunately, things are going okay now and only going to get better. I’m now chipping away at my $10,000 worth of PPC debt from failed attempts and stupid mistakes. In fact, I’ve already paid off one of my credit cards just by using what little credit I had left on it (less than $100) by continually re-investing it into profitable campaigns.

Here’s a recap of spend and revenues for Aug. 2009 so far:

Revenue: $4620.23

Spend: $3104.54

Profit: $1515.69

Add SEO/ old clickbank articles: $395

So around $$1900 for the month. Much better than scraping for nickels and dimes in my room to buy a meal from the dollar menu a few months ago (seriously, it was that bad).

Keep in mind this spend involved a lot of testing during the beginning of the month so most of it resulted in a loss. But I will post another one of these probably two weeks into September. I expect it to be a lot better. This is the first time I’ve ever really posted revenue/spend numbers and it’s kind of gut wrenching to put it out in the open, but I think it’s going to help me bring in bigger numbers in the future because there’s no way I’m satisfied with just that. Grateful yes, satisfied no.

I’m really starting to focus on what I’m good at now. Just because everyone is pushing rebills, doesn’t mean you should too. There are a whole lot of offers out there that can potentially make you money and it’s all about just finding that somewhat hidden offer that not a lot of people are going after and killing it.

This marks a new turning point in my AM journey. I went from easily making $100+ days when I started to losing a lot of money and now back doing bigger numbers than I started off with. It’s so weird now – I was in the garage and saw my old burnt out laptop sitting there with sticky notes on it with a big $250 a day written on it. It feels good to reach your goals, but it also makes you want to work harder. I definitely am aiming to see consistent $500 a day profit days by the end of September (hopefully by next week) and most certainly $1000 by December 31st, 2009.

If there’s going to be a rags-to-riches affiliate story in 2009, it’s going to be me .

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Okay so this post is definitely long over due, but what can I say – I learned so much at ASE 09 NYC that I’ve just been cranking out campaigns non-stop and making more money.

First off – this particular Affiliate Summit (my 2nd summit) was made particular awesome due to two reasons.

1) Ian Fernando inviting me to his private dinner.

2) Adam and the EliteProfits.com team sponsoring part of the dinner and balling out at Club Touch.

I have to say that it was indeed quite an opportunity to take part in Ian’s dinner. If you ever get the chance to go, you’d be dumb not to. It was at a very unique and upscale restaurant only a few blocks away from the conference hotel. There were about 20 or so people in attendance including the sponsors and everyone got to share and learn from each other in a great setting. Really gotta give it up to Ian for letting me come through.

Now another thing that made the dinner so great was the fact that Adam from EliteProfits handed everyone in attendance a vintage 2000 bottle of Dom Perignon! I can definitely say without a doubt that everyone was very very happy with their gift. EliteProfits didn’t stop there though. After running into Adam at the exhibition hall, he invited me to come hang out with his crew at Club Touch in VIP. I thought for sure since I was going there anyway later on and he and his crew were super cool at the dinner.
Biz Markee was due to perform there although he made a quick one song appearance…lame. Nonetheless, that didn’t ruin the party for anyone who was hanging out with EliteProfits. Our table definitely had the grey goose flowing all night courtesy of EliteProfits. I think we had the best spot in the club too. It was definitely a good time getting to talk to Adam about AM as well as meet and talk with the rest of his crew.

Later on in the night we got to chilling in the upper level and I got to meet a lot of affiliates I had only read or heard about like Dennis Yu as well as chill out with Ian and Ad Hustler. This is pretty much the point of the story where the rest is forgotten or withheld haha.

I have to say though that it definitely wouldn’t have been as good of a weekend without EliteProfits throwing it down. Up until recently, they had been a completely private network. These guys have been in the industry since the heyday and definitely know how to look out for their affiliates and most of all they actually know what they are talking about. When I talked to Adam I knew he knew his stuff and that he had done it and continues to make stuff happen in affiliate marketing for himself as well as his affiliates.

I highly suggest you check out EliteProfits today and get in touch with Adam. This is one network you do not want to miss out on.

After you’ve done that, check out this slideshow from the party: Slideshow

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The guys of Tracking202 and Tracking202 PRO fame have just recently launched their own affiliate network, notably called Revolution202.

Now aside from the fact that Wes and Steven are stand up guys along with the rest of the 202 team, why is Revolution202 itself a pretty exciting thing for the industry?

It’s probably because Revolution202 is the most highly integrated network that exists today. For years affiliates have had to constantly deal with their network and their tracking separately. Now, with the launch of Revolution, I know for a fact that we’re going to see a whole lot more convergence between tracking and managing our offers, and who better to bring that to us than the 202 team.

There are just so many different arrays of the industry that 202 is starting to bring together and it seems like a network was just inevitable…and I too am surprised at how early we were able to get one from them. Things like Offers202 and Stats202 have made it exceedingly simple to find and keep track of everything in one place. With Offers202 you have the ability to search for any particular offer you might be interested in and see which affiliate networks are offering them (even if they’re not on Revolution). With Stats202, you can have your subids updated automatically every ten minutes and combine all your affiliate stats and subids into one interface.

Usually convergence is something that’s frowned upon in terms of a business. I mean…how many people do you know that wear a TV wrist-watch to work? However, I don’t see this as that type of convergence. What we’re getting from 202 is integration and simplification like we haven’t seen before from other networks…but something that I think most affiliates have been craving for a long time. 202 isn’t in the tracking business…it’s in the business of helping affiliates make more money. And with the launch of Revolution202, I couldn’t imagine a better, more useful network to join.

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Many of the following guidelines might seem like obvious obvious stuff that you’ve heard a million times, but it’s worth it to really make sure you’re not committing any of these fatal errors. It is easy to make these mistakes, even if you’ve heard the guidelines before like I had.

1. Waste money on useless products/coaching. I’ll be honest here. It’s a huge waste of time and money for the most part. I was part of PPC-Coach for since December 2008 and just came to cancel my membership this month. It’s great if you’re starting out, but you could do a lot more by just TRYING stuff instead of hoping someone will hand you down their magic campaign. Seriously, all you need a few good posts from WF, your brain, and the determination to test, test, test. That’s what it all comes down to and it’s what I failed to realize the first time around. Almost ANY offer can be made profitable, if you do the right testing.

Using PPC-Coach I actually wound up LOSING money. Why? Well I thought I had it made with polls and moved onto their search strategy (which was along the lines of bid HIGH and Google will discount your clicks). Well that didn’t really happen and by the time you knew it I was out $10,000. Yeah. Big mistake. Better idea- follow your gut, use your  brain, and be rational. (*While I liked the tools and there were some insightful posts, the quality died off as the program went on.)

2. Don’t track. This one is huge. I was lazy and part of the reason I didn’t make my grants campaign work was because for some reason T202 wasn’t showing my stats even though I had installed the tracking code, and I didn’t bother to figure it out. I figured oh well, I’ll just go by the daily profit and loss. Uh NO. Before you do anything, do yourself a huge f***ing favor and make sure your tracking is working. In all honesty, I wish I had gotten Tracking202 PRO so my lazy ass wouldn’t have had to worry about most of the usual stuff involved with tracking.

3. Link your credit card to Adwords, etc. Bad idea (in the beginning). I was desperately throwing shit against the while trying to get something to stick…and nothing did. The higher my credit card bill went up, the more desperate I got to try just one more thing and maybe have it turn around. That didn’t happen. I had my $100+ profit days with PPC in the past and thought I could get another one to do it for me, but unfortunately not before I maxed out my cards. And now I’m pretty much stuck with a very large PPC bill that I’m looking to get rid of using SEO/free methods of marketing. Really ONLY start off in PPC with what you have, and not what you wish you had. Not only is it safer, it will force you to look at your numbers much more carefully and not go balls out setting $150/day spending limits.

4. Don’t track your Landing Page to Offer CTR. What a really dumb thing to do when I look back on this. Although I did on a daily basis keep track of my EPC, rarely did I put as much importance on my landing page to offer CTR. This is probably one of the biggest metrics you have because….any clicks that you’re not getting to your offer is the same as burning piles of cash. You just want to make sure you burn as little cash as possible. Another metric to look at is which ad is producing the most conversions. An ad might have a higher CTR, but converting less than another ad with a lower CTR.

5. Advertise on Google Search. The longer I’ve been in this industry, the more I realize just how MANY different sources of traffic there are. We’re all suckered into Google Search in the beginning until we wake up and realize…WHY GOOGLE SEARCH? Dealing with QS, getting slapped, and inflated click prices…why bother when you have so many other traffic sources to test out. NickyCakes posted a huge list of places you can advertise that you can find here.

These don’t have to obscure traffic sources. I still recommend Google content network as its the easiest way to get a ton of cheap traffic. The first place I started off with in AM, Facebook- while it isn’t looking like the greatest place to advertise right now with clickbot issues, is still a great place to get cheap traffic provided you think outside the box.

All these tips sound repetitive and obvious I am sure, and like I said I myself had heard many of these guidelines before…but it still happens! When you’re starting off, you might think you know all the answers and will follow everything according to guidelines, but trust me it’s easy to mess up when you play the game with emotion as opposed to being rational and getting your math skills in order.

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