Here’s an excerpt from a recent email I wrote to one of my affiliate managers concerning one of the many offers I’m promoting:
“I’ve been working very hard recently on increasing my sales. My team’s goal is 300 sales/day, then 400 sales/day in the fall when the market picks up.”
Here was the reply I got from the affiliate manager:
“Hi Amit,
This is great to hear. To be honest, I have been a bit surprised that you have not hit higher levels this year. I know you have had a lot of things on the go but I know you can be our top affiliate again. 300-400 sales per day is a great short term goal and I know you have the drive, knowledge and team in place to accomplish it. Keep 550 units per day as your ultimate long term goal and you will be at the level of our top affiliate.”
Ouch! That REALLY HURT!
But you know, that is EXACTLY what I needed to hear. I had let this offer basically run on autopilot, I mean complete autopilot to the point I didn’t even log into my Google account to check it’s performance.
Over the months my sales basically started to slide for this particular affiliate promotion.
And you know what’s really the sad part? I was just making pathetic excusing as to why the sales were dropping. I basically kept telling myself : “It’s just a slow month, it will pick up next month!”
When I got the above email, it was a rude awakening for me, 550 sales/day!
I came to the realization that I and only I am responsible for the level of my affiliate sales.
It’s so easy to get lazy and just let a highly profitable offer run on autopilot. But you have to remember that even the best affiliate promotions need maintenance, and upkeep. Once you build up and optimize the offer, your time commitment will drop, but YOU still need to set out time to maintain and grow it by:
- Optimizing and Tweaking Your PPC campaigns + Split Test Adcopy
- Split Testing Your Landing Page
- Adding More Keywords
- Expanding on to Other PPC Search Engines
Do this once a month, and more often than that in the first 6 months of the affiliate campaign.
If my affiliate manager for the above offer is reading this post, all I have to say is : Thank You! I’m working an aggressively expanding this particular offer, so watch out!
Even super affiliates need a good kick in the butt every now and then!
Thanks for sharing. Excellent info.
Regarding adcopy, do you handle your copywriting, our do you outsource?
Well, there’re lots of ways to constantly motivate yourself…
If you’re a Type A personality, why not make a wager among your peer group or mastermind that you’ll both compete in the same offer and see who does better. That always gets me excited and lying in bed each night with a notepad at my side.
It kinda drives my wife up the wall, when I’m scribbling lots of ideas furiously in the dark and it can be shocking to have a list of 20-30 new ideas/enhancements to existing campaigns in the morning!
Andrew, are you and Amit going to have a contest?
I constantly set new goals… You must have something to aim for.
What do you think is a reasonable amount of offers to promote at the same time for a single affiliate?
300, 400, 500 sales per day? for me it sounds unreal. i am happy to get 2 sales per day. wrong niche? or something else.
How many landing pages for a market does it take to create 300-500 sales a day? Thanks
Amit,
I do agree with you however I do have to make a comment.. A goal of “sales per day” is good but I normally focus on profitability versus how many units.
Who cares if they have an affiliate doing 550 a day… for all you know, they may be profiting half as much as you.
Am I way off base?
Peter
Hi Peter,
You’re absolutely right, profitability is key. However, for this particular offer I know I can do much better, in terms of sales and profitability.
Amit,
In May this year you had a blog about daily budgets, going from $50 a day to $200 a day. Can you go into more detail about the process of scaling your business?