All the spells at Hogwarts couldn’t save me from the disastrous attempt at making money this one was. Here’s why.

I decided to experiment with building up a Facebook fan page related to Harry Potter in an attempt to take advantage of all the hype surrounding the final movie to a decent level of popularity (102,000 fans in this case) using Facebook ads in an effort to build a long-term list of users I can interact with and also suggest related CPA offers to. Now keep in mind that I paid for all these users and in the end I reached 100,000 fans at a cost of $10,000 so about 10 cents per fan. This was a little higher than I wanted it to be, but I figured since this was a longer-term project and since there was a lot of hype around Harry Potter that I’d be fine.

Now, I was right for the most part. I was pulling in around $400 a day in revenue for a single post suggesting a related CPA offer (chance to get free tickets to harry potter 7 part 2 by entering your email type offers and the like). At the same time I was posting useful and relevant content as status updates to my fans and putting out CPA offers about every two or three days after I had reached the 100k fans mark which took about 3 days. This worked well for a while. My EPCs were high and revenues were decent. I made it to about $2500 after a good three weeks of starting the fan page. I realized I had a long way to go before breaking even and it probably was not the smartest idea to dump 10k into an idea before testing for volume on offers. The thing is for every post I made I got about 60k impressions. Of those, out of those impressions I got even fewer clicks. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t like I was striking $1000 a day in revenue. On top of that Facebook was extremely picky on what offers I could post on my fan page as a lot of these links had been reported as spam prior to me linking to them. And I’m sure Facebook has some kind of filtration process as to what links they let get posted.

Anyway, it got harder and harder to find offers I could make use of that 1) weren’t blocked and 2) didn’t make fans want to take me to a stake and kill me for being a SCAM as they put it. Couple the delicate balance of providing useful content and facebook’s CPA offer blocking technology and you get to a pretty slow crawl in terms of revenue and too much frustration and upkeep for it to be worth it. Couple both of those with the fact that Facebook banned my entire account (including fan page) without warning and you get to how Harry freakin Potter cost me $8,000. Ah well you live and learn. On to the next one.

P.S. It’s 4:45am as I’m writing this post, so don’t judge me if it’s full of errors lol.

Just a quick update on what I’ve been up to as far as marketing goes. The last earnings update I did was for April and I skipped out on May because it was pretty much a wash of a month…pretty much broke even on a few thousand dollars of spend. Nothing spectacular…just bits of testing as I try to expand my horizons. June’s shaping up to be a little more interesting however as I’m finally starting to delve outside of my main traffic source and back into sources such as POF and mobile ad networks. Click prices have gotten really high on Facebook and it’s just not as stable as it used to be for me. I’m not abandoning it in anyway, but I am starting to test out places with better potential and not have all my eggs in one basket.

I have been messing around with Facebook fan pages, however as I think that’s quickly becoming the future of all things marketing related on Facebook. I think things will eventually lead for every marketing avenue from big brands to small businesses to affiliates all finding their place on Facebook as a fan page to be more beneficial to them cost-wise and this is in Facebook’s best interest as well. More businesses using their portal as there homepage means more pageviews for FB and a greater valuation/more ad dollars. I was recently able to grow a page to 84,000 fans within 3 days and will probably hit 100k today. I have not yet tried to monetize it as I want to create a relationship with my fans, but it has been an interesting experiment so far. I will make a post on this specifically as I’ve learned a lot about fan pages in just that past few days.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already the end of June. Affiliate Summit East is right around the corner and I just want to step my game up and make some big things happen by then. Something tells me it’s going to be even bigger and better than last year so I’m looking forward to it. In fact, I’m trying to book a suite at the London this year with a few people. Let me know if I know you personally and you’re interested…we’re almost out of spots.

Meetups are truly becoming a global affair as there are two very cool locations soon to be hosting an affiliate marketing meetup…one of them being in Amsterdam hosted by Adsimilis and the other in Puerto Rico being hosted by Mike Pacheco and NDemand Affiliates. I love the fact that these meetups are going down because it gives us an opportunity to travel and hang out with like-minded people in a setting outside of your typical conference setting. If you’re planning on going to either of these meetups let me know!

The Amsterdam meetup by Adsimilis is going down August 6th, 2011 and they’re even featuring a contest that’ll let you go to Amsterdam on them! Winners will be flown to and lodged in Amsterdam for the meetup. The top 2 revenue generators, the top 2 percentage increase, and top 1 referring publisher will win the prize. You can check out the event page for all the details, but one thing is for sure…you’ll probably meet and interact with some of the best minds in affiliate marketing and I’m sure you will pick up at least one golden nugget that will be worth way more than you’re whole trip.

On the other hand, the Puerto Rico meetup by NDemand Affiliates is going down November 19th, 2011. Edit: NDemand Affiliates is also giving away a trip to 2 lucky affiliates to Puerto Rico from a random drawing off of their RSVP page so make sure you register! I’m pretty freakin psyched about this meetup. Mike and his team have planned out the entire day and when I looked at the itinerary I was like wow. Check it out for yourself on the NDemand blog here. I have a feeling there are gonna be plenty of affiliates yelling “I’m on a boat!” at this one. Mike has arranged a catamaran to take attendees island hopping followed by an evening dinner cruise that sails around the Bay of San Jaun. Talk about awesome.

I for one can’t wait for these meetups. If you’re attending either one of these meetups comment below or hit me up on Facebook with a message and we’ll connect! Also, spread the word about these events because how often do you get an opportunity to roll through the streets of Amsterdam or hit the beaches of Puerto Rico with world class affiliates. It’s not the affiliate island Mr. Green April fooled us with, but it’s a step in the right direction =P

Okay so instead of making this “series” a post-by-post thing for each chapter I’ve decided to do put a few together. Otherwise you guys might be waiting a very long time lol. Again, go pick up The 50th Law by Robert Greene and 50 Cent to learn more about these ideas.

Chapter 2- Make Everything Your Own – Self-Reliance

In this business we rely on a lot of entities. We really on affiliate networks, advertisers, traffic sources, and more. 50 advocates becoming as self-reliant as you possibly can because when you work for others, you’re at their mercy. You don’t own your work. This sort of dependency is especially risky in a world where people are hooked to their 9-5 jobs and have no other source of income. It can apply to us affiliate marketers too, however. We’re constantly faced with offers going down, traffic sources banning advertisers, and affiliate networks going bankrupt. In order to be self-reliant, we have to think outside the box whether that means launching our own offer, working direct with a reputable advertiser, or building your own traffic source.

Chapter 3- Turn Shit into Sugar – Opportunism

This chapter mostly talks about taking a perceived negative situation and turning it into something positive. It’s how you look at things that matters. The fact that you’re at a perceived disadvantage might actually be an advantage and forces you to be more inventive than the next guy. As marketers, we’re all opportunistic. We take advantage of everything from the NBA Finals to the death of Michael Jackson and use that the profiteer. Keeping our finger on the pulse and watching trends is what we do. 50 says when you have nothing to lose and fear absolutely nothing is when you perform the best. This explains why when we’re starting out and having nothing to lose we take the greatest risks.

Chapter 4- Keep Moving – Calculated Momentum

This chapter basically talks about how micromanaging is a bad idea and how we continually have to adapt to our changing environment. We have to stop trying to control things and move with the chaos. This means learning how to move beyond flogs as a way to advertise or discovering new traffic sources. Things are always going to be changing in our industry and the Internet evolves and as regulations come into place…it’s our job to maneuver and adapt with that change. Be fluid, and don’t try to dominate using force.

Chapter 5- Know When to Be Bad – Aggression

This chapter talks about how sometimes it’s necessary to be aggressive. Too many times we take the nice route when someone is taking something or keeping us from something because we’re too afraid to be upfront and aggressive. People will try to stop you and take your power from you aggressively or passive aggressively. This can play out in our industry as well. A lot of times affiliate managers push a slew of new “hot” offers on us and we take their word for it instead of being more aggressive and trying to find out every tidbit we can from our affiliate managers to help make our campaigns successful. Some affiliates never ask for a pay bump or even know that they can sometimes get a higher payout if they just ask provided they’re bringing in quality volume. Don’t be afraid to leverage your strengths…if you’re making someone money and driving quality traffic, don’t be shy to ask for a bump. There are plenty of networks and plenty of offers where you could be sending your traffic…use that to your advantage. There’s a whole slew of ways being more aggressive can be to your advantage…from networking, to outbidding, to making bigger and bolder media buys than the other guy.

That’s it for part 2…let me know if you’re finding this interesting and I’ll make for a part 3 very soon.

P.S. There is no affiliation between this blog and 50 Cent or Robert Greene (sorry gotta protect my ass in case 50 comes at me lol)

So last month I said I would delve into new verticals and throw money at testing new campaigns. This was initially because I wanted to diversify, but now it’s also because I pretty much saturated the market I was hitting for the past six months and well…it’s a dry well now (if that makes sense). Well I did that and as a result I had a pretty crappy month, but I also learned a lot.

Revenues: $8,179

Spend: $6,527

Profit: $1,652

So a pretty measly month for April. I am however to blame for that though…definitely could have tried harder. Still trying to find that burning desire you have as a fresh hungry affiliate again

I’ve realized that anybody could be hungry and motivated at the beginning of their affiliate careers…they’re hungry for a reason and it’s because they have to eat. What’s really impressive are the seasoned affiliates who work just as hard if not harder than newbies as if they might not see their next meal…when in fact they actually have the resources to be pretty comfortable. Now that’s impressive. I used to think that kind of hunger and drive came naturally to me…and to some extent it does. But whatever it is I’m going through right now, I’m certainly not working as hard as I should be. Maybe some inspiration is in order.

I wanted to outline some of my failed campaigns from last month and see if we can all learn from them.

One of my failed campaigns (that I may still be able to make profitable) involved promoting a CityVille game guide on Clickbank. Now this is a huge niche with millions of people on Facebook playing these games on a daily basis. There was actually a recent post on AffBuzz promoting this product and how to market it on Facebook so I figured why not give it a shot.

Now I was able to produce fairly decent CTR’s on facebook getting as high as .30% on several ads. Still, even with different ad copies (even successful copy provided by the advertiser), I failed to produce a single sale after 1000 clicks (a lot of those clicks were high priced as I bid high to get the initial surge of traffic). But still, even if I was paying 5 cents a click, it wouldn’t of mattered as my EPC was zero after 1000 clicks. I haven’t given up on it yet…apparently people are making money on these products as affiliates…but I think the real money in this niche is to probably be the advertiser.

Another campaign I tried was an international dating offer for Germany. With this campaign I had an odd issue of being able to get a high CTR on broad targeting, but low conversions and then high conversions, but low CTR when I targeted the age demos that had supposedly resulted in the highest CTR in my broad targeting test. It may be that I’ll just have to further break it down by age and see which ones are actually converting as opposed to playing it simply by CTR, which I should have been doing from the start anyway. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Have you ever tried promoting Clickbank products on Facebook? What was your experience?

Okay well they’re not really lessons on affiliate marketing from 50 Cent, but they are based off of the book The 50th Law, written by 50 Cent and Robert Greene. This book was a really good read and had terrific insight into the true genius and hustle that defined 50′s success and the same lessons and tactics can be used to find success in any field. Since this industry is often all about hustle and internet gangstaz I decided to take 50′s lessons and see how they apply to affiliate marketing.

Chapter 1: See Things for What They Are- Intense Realism

In this first chapter 50 describes how imperative it is to see things as they really are no matter how bad they get and to not get complacent no matter how good things get. A prime example of this is the recent FTC crackdown on affiliates. There comes a time when affiliates need to realize the true nature of the landscape and the various factors that affect our business and that includes the government. Some affiliates will probably continue to be greedy and not see the situation as it is and adapt accordingly – even if that means promoting legitimate offers with full compliance- and as 50 says “might as well kill yourself” if you “lose your grip on reality.”

On the other end of the spectrum, it’s important not to get complacent once you have that initial success. Campaigns don’t last forever and eventually that one-hit wonder will dry up. Are you going to see things for what they really are and scope out the bigger picture or relish in your short-term success only to find out you can’t make rent a few months from now? As affiliates, we can’t be blinded by quick money and lavish lifestyles. We need to continue to push the limits and try something new.

Everyday as marketers we see new things pushed on us. It’s up to us though to stay focused and have a real sense of what’s going on. Does your affiliate manager really care about you and your future success or does he just care if you sent him or her some leads today. In truth, just like small-time drug dealers and new budding musicians, most affiliates are just pawns. The big boss, the record company, and the affiliate network all have their own agenda which is to milk as much money out of you as possible. So seeing things for what they are might even mean not being an affiliate marketer anymore. It’s up to you to see what the trends are and what the real landscape is looking like not just now but a year or five years from now. Things are changing around us all the time. In the music industry it was pirating music and buying it in different forms- something 50 cent capitalized on instead of going along with the CEOs in the record industry. He told them to shove their MBAs elsewhere and was able to see the changing times and do things his own way. It’s precisely this sort of intuition and awareness that you need as an affiliate to not just  grow an empire, but crucial to even staying in business at all. Without it, as 50 cent makes it very clear through various examples, your days are numbered only by however long you’re profitable to someone else.

Disclaimer: This post isn’t to say that there aren’t networks out there looking out for your overall success. I know and work with plenty. Without successful affiliates there are no successful networks, which is what I like about the industry. It’s just important to be aware of the changing landscape of the affiliate space and that means keeping an eye on networks, advertisers, the government, and yourself.

Two things…I’m back from Miami and it’s snowing in April. Maybe I should have stayed a little longer =P It’s crazy how fast four months went down there and that the first quarter of the year is already over. I have to admit I didn’t do a lot of work in March and simply tried to take advantage of the time I had left on South Beach. My income did take a small dip from the previous month:

Revenue: $23,913

Spend: $13,204

Profit: $10,709

ROI: 81%

So a much better ROI than last month, but a little off on the profit side. Being back in Jersey though, I’m finding myself with a lot less distractions so I’m hoping to capitalize on that. I want to try something similar to what Riley Pool did and attempt one campaign a day for April. I started today with a couple fresh offers and I’ll keep everyone posted on how that goes. I know I’ve been slacking on posts, but more to come soon I promise!

So I haven’t done one of these earnings updates in a while and was debating whether or not to do this one. Some people like them, some don’t. But I think it actually serves a purpose in that it motivates me to do better each month and who knows maybe it acts as some level of inspiration for newer affiliates.

I actually didn’t make anything for a few months straight as I just got completely lazy and wasn’t finding any inspiration to work hard with the beach being about five minutes away. Let alone, it got me thinking how true Finch’s guest post on Jon Volk’s blog was about how you’re only as rich as your last campaign. It shows how important it is to build something for the long-term. But last month I finally got back into it, and it’s looking like March is going to beat February’s earnings already. So what did last month’s earnings look like? Well I can tell you it was one of my worst months in terms of ROI. Take a look for yourself:

Spend: $29,334

Revenue: $42,174

Profit: $12,840

ROI: 44%

Usually I’m running at at least 100% ROI. But the margins on this campaign just didn’t seem to be what I’m used to and I just tried to get what I could out of it by way of volume. It also wasn’t close my highest profit month which was around 28k a few months ago, but I’ll take a profitable month. From here on, I do want to focus on building out longer-term projects as opposed to fly-by-night campaigns, but you hear that all the time and it sounds easier than it is. There’s no guarantee with a long term project and it’s not as easy as picking out a trend and direct linking a few ads to it. It takes real elbow-grease, a vision, building a list, and a lot of growth. Being lazy and impatient, I don’t like to wait for returns, but if I’m a smart marketer I will start building something now as opposed to a year from now when who knows what bids will look like and what the entire space will look like.

I suppose it is a balancing act, however. I’m going to continue to focus on short term campaigns for guaranteed cash flow, but I need a long term project that I can sink my heart into. If I’m not motivated by it and if I don’t truly believe it will offer people value, I’m a lot less likely to stick to it. I still think about Walamu.com and how I was able to attain users fairly quickly when I launched it as a freshman in college, but seized to promote it once I knew it would take a lot more marketing dollars to get it to where I wanted it to be. Startups have always interested me, but I don’t know yet if that’s the direction I want to go in. We’ll see.

This is something that I realized only fairly recently in my affiliate career. What I realized is that back when I was first starting off and had nothing to lose and only a dream of success in affiliate marketing, I had absolutely no fear of taking risks. I played with money I didn’t have (not that I would recommend it), and took one risk after another. I racked up over $10k in credit card debt as a junior in college with no clue of how I was going to pay it back other than the fact that I was going to make it work.

Fast forward a few years, and although I’m not “rich” as the title indicates, but I’ve noticed that even though I have a little bit of a bankroll now, I’m actually LESS inclined to take risks as I was before. Maybe I just hate losing money more now that I somewhat know how to make it, but taking less risks means lesser rewards. But it’s funny how when you have nothing to lose you can be so adamant about taking risks, and once you do have the means that attitude dissipates. I don’t know if this is a phenomenon others have experienced, but I think in the long run taking less risks with your money because you’re too afraid to lose a little bit of it is detrimental to anyone’s success.

I think I have to go back to seeing things as I did in my earlier days with nothing to lose in order to gain more success in niches and traffic sources that I haven’t been bold enough to test out yet. Sticking to the familiar works, but only for so long. At a certain point you have to expand out of your comfort zone. Another reason for losing that kind of determination in the beginning is the failure to set new goals. When you’re new, you’re salivating for that first $100 day, then that $500 day, or $1000 day. But what if you’ve been at that $1000 day for a while and take it for what it is. I’ve been there and it’s not a bad amount of money by any means, but it certainly makes it easy to get complacent. I think it’s important to be able to set your sights higher. I just calculated this today and if you’re making $400 a day as an affiliate that’s only $146,000 pre-taxes per year. That’s certainly nothing to complain about and liveable, but if you’re like me and want to trump what you can make in a normal day job by ten-fold or more, then we’ve certainly got to set our sights higher and continually set new goals. At $1000/day we get to $365,000 pre-tax annually, but that’s still not enough to afford me the lifestyle I want. I know I’m in a business where that’s certainly possible, so I suppose it’s time to aim higher.

What do you think? Have you ever felt a similar reluctance to take risks once you’ve made a little bit of money? Let me know in the comments.

As you may know, a couple of months ago I made the move to escape the bitter cold Jersey winter to Miami. There are a couple of reasons I made the move (which I knew was going to be temporary from the beginning) and there are also a lot of things I’ve learned from it.

One of the main reasons I moved was to just start living on my own, pay rent and other living expenses which would hopefully motivate me to make more money (I need a little pressure), and be able to live without depending on anybody else to be there…in a sense to be 100% content with just being by myself. I know it sounds like I’m trying to play the card of misanthropic House, M.D. here, but it was and is a real goal of mine. If you can’t be happy with just you and all you have, then you can’t be happy no matter what other people bring into your life. It was also to learn a sense of responsibility – that if something happens the only person I have to blame is myself. I’m still working on this one and a lot of times it comes from the belief that we can control everything when we really can’t.

All this is not to say that I haven’t been out meeting people though. I’ve met quite a few affiliates here and even hosting a Meetup202 Miami. It was kind of on short notice, but nonetheless it seems pretty apparent that there are a lot of underground affiliates here that don’t really come out. Although, I might have to try getting a network to sponsor an open bar or something – that just might work  There is a meetup sponsored by a few networks going on next week, Feb. 10th in Delray Beach, FL, however. It looks like it’s going to be pretty big, so if you’re in the area check it out (sflaffiliatemeetup.com).

Something I realized while living here though is that there are very few people who live the lives that we affiliates do. Most people have a set routine that they can’t really break ever…get up, go to work, gym, dinner, sleep, and do it all over again the next day. On the other hand, as affiliates we really own our time. And that can be a good thing or a bad thing. For me, I hate to waste a nice day outside so sometimes I just end up spending the day out or just hitting the beach. I guess I’m still not used to the fact that it’s almost always nice here. But owning my hours and deciding to hit the beach takes a toll on how much work I get done. Yet, I feel guilty not taking advantage of the nice weather. It’s almost as if people that are in the rat race or in a daily grind at least have some direction. As an affiliate, it’s 100% up to you to figure out how you want to spend your day.

Another reason why our lifestyles are unlike any others is something that really rang true in Ian’s recent post. We as affiliates work alone for the most part and that can suck sometimes. Sure you can bounce ideas off someone on AIM, but that’s still not the same as having people around you that you can interact with. We miss a whole dynamic of social interaction that people with jobs have access to everyday to the point where it becomes the foundation of there social lives. Think about the office Christmas party, the lunch meetings, the happy hours, and even people dating and getting married to people they meet at work. That entire aspect is kind of missing from the affiliate lifestyle. And I think that’s why people look so forward to events like ASW and ASE. It’s because we get to go out there- out of our isolated office spaces, and actually interact and have fun with like-minded people twice a year. The point of this isn’t to depress anybody out there, but just kind of bring to light how different a full-time affiliate’s life is. Now I’ve never worked a corporate job like some of my friends have and are, but I can definitely imagine them having a lot more of a social experience at work. Maybe not making as much money, but definitely having a better social experience on a day-to-day basis.

These are just my ramblings for now that I thought I had to get out there. Maybe some of you guys have gone through and experienced the same kind of things. Let me know what you think in the comments.