If you answer yes to the follow questions, then chances are you’re an affiliate day trader:
- Do you spend 6-12 hours a day monitoring your Adwords campaigns?
- Are your affiliate promotions running on slim margins (10%-50% ROI), requiring that you have to keep a tight watch on your campaigns constantly?
- Are you unable to take a day off from watching your campaigns without breaking into a cold sweet that you may be losing money?
- Are you constantly checking your stats?
- Are you feeling overwhelmed because you’re managing 100s of affiliate promotions at once?
Now if several of the questions above really struck a nerve with you, then you’re a day trader, not trading stocks, but trading affiliate promotions. Now all I can tell you is that you don’t just have a JOB, you have a BAD JOB!
A lot of affiliates get burned out by this approach, it’s not what they expected. They thought that by being free from a job they were going to have a dream life and do all the things they wanted to do. However, they just end up having another job!
This is exactly what happened to me when I first quit my job! I had a lot more “free” time, but somehow my productivity went down and my income stagnated.
If you want to work less and make more as an affiliate, and have lifestyle (=money+TIME), then here’s what I suggest:
- STOP Checking Stats More than Once a Day – Constantly check stats will not only give you a potential nervous breakdown, but it kills your productivity. Check your stats once a day for campaigns your actively working on, and once every few days for campaigns that are running on autopilot. This will be tough at first, but trust me, you’ll be a LOT more happier and productive
- Focus on a Few Large Affiliate Offers – Find affiliate offers where the top affiliates makes more than $100k a month (ask your affiliate manager about this). Build up a few of these offers. Hire a programmer and writing company to make a custom affiliate site for you, with keyword targeted ppc landing pages. A few large campaigns are easier to manager (and have more potential for long term profits) then 100s of smaller campaigns
- Bid Low and Shot for High Profit Margins – A lot of affiliate bid high enough on an affiliate offer to “maximize profit.” I prefer to bid low and make around 100% ROI on an affiliate offer, EVEN if i make LESS total profit. Do you know why? Because it’s less maintenance; I can let it run on virtual auto-pilot since my margins are so high it will make a profit even during slow periods. That frees up my time to work on other affiliate offers and REALLY maximized my profit if you know what I’m saying.
- Block 2 Hours Out of Each Day for Productive Tasks – This one is a bomb shell. Make a list every night of THE most important tasks (for your business) that must be done the next day. Now as far as I’m concerned the most important task, or productive tasks are tasks that DIRECTLY IMPACT YOUR INCOME. Such as launching a campaign, adding keywords, writing and testing new ad copy, etc, etc. Now the next day shut off your cell phone, skype, IM, googletalk, don’t check your email (etc…), just spend two hours straight working on productive tasks. If you do this, your productivity and income will SKYROCKET, but I’m warning you, this takes discipline.
We’ve all been brainwashed into believing we have to work 9am-5pm for 5 days a week, even if we’re self-employed. If you can get more done working 10 hours a week/2 hours a day, than working 9-5, which would you rather choose?
affiliate marketing pitfalls
Amit,
I like the investing analogy as I spent years doing that professionally and can attest that it is far more profitable and creates a more enjoyable life to have a few big winners in the market and hold them for a long time as they keep growing and your money keeps compounding. Many people get caught up in the day trading mentality because they like the rush of making a few points here and there all the while unaware that the only people getting rich are their brokers and the IRS. That’s why Las Vegas has no shortage of people who love the rush of instant gratification but (usually) get parted from their money sooner or later.
IMO Amit did a great analysis with a day trader, I think intially that is the goal of avery affiliate marketer or as Amit would say midset.
1 campaing = $50/day
100 campaign = $5000/day (Woooohoooo)
Activity = Results
SuperAffiliate
1 campaign = $50/day (Raise this campaign to $1500/day)
SuperProductivity = SuperResults
Still in learning mode
Vijay
Vijay
Hi Amit,
I really enjoy reading your blog. When you say that you ‘bid low’ can you talk about that more? My sticking point seems to be this; say I have an offer that pays $20 and I expect it to convert at 1-2%. I would have to bid a maximum of 0.20 get get 100% ROI. But like you have blogged about before in ‘how super affiliates set their bids’, if I bid that low my good converting keywords probably wont be on the front page. What do you do in this situation?
Thanks for the information!
Hi David,
Great question! You want to bid high in the beginning to make sure your keywords are getting maximum exposure. But once you have gained some history with Google, and collected statistics as to what converts and what doesn’t, it time to optimize your campaign until you’re at 100% ROI.
In most cases this means lowering your bids on a lot of keywords, and in some cases upping the bid on the high converting keywords.
Great article Amit. Right on point too! I’m working on checking my stats less and less. I have to get out of the day trader mind-set.
Hi Amit,
A I agree with everyone here, Great article. Checking stats several times a day definitely takes time away from being productive. One should be maximizing their time to focus on what things should be done to be making money in that time.
Thanks Amit!
Hey David,
Have you read the 4-hour work week? It’s a great book I just finished reading. The author is a 29 year old who talks about how he’s able to travel the world and have his online business work on autopilot for him.
I wrote a review of the book on my blog, http://www.scrappybusiness.com if you are interested.
Your recommendation to build sites by hiring a custom programmer/copywriter is a good idea. I’ve been spending way to much time designing my own custom graphics and building pages myself that it reduces my productivity to focus on stuff that I’m actually good at doing.
Thanks for the tips
Amit, nice meeting you out at aff summit! I am totally guilty of checking stats too much. I am making a “resolution” to check stats/analytics much less, and work more on what really counts.
Cool blog by the way……Todd
If one is just starting, what kind of niches or affiliate offers are you pushing? I am having no success with the items that my AF manager at Azoogle gave me
Ive tried alot of things and its been 3 weeks, its pretty much I make $75 for $55 I Spend. 33%