The area where affiliate loss patience most quickly is when they actually launch a campaign:

Here’s a couple scenarios that I’m sure will sound familiar:

#1 DUDE, WHERE’S MY TRAFFIC?

Okay, you start a campaign, you immediately notice that you’re getting very little traffic from the keywords you’re bidding on, so you drastically increase your keywords to “get better ad positions.”

Then you start getting lots of traffic, however, you end up spending $200, and only make $40 in affiliate commissions.

You pause your campaign.

Now this is more of a newbie mistake. The fact is that with Google Adwords it can take a few days to a few weeks before you start getting decent traffic, as you build your history.

If you’re on a tight budget it’s better to be patience and wait for the traffic to build up.

Now if you find your ad positions are WAY too low, like position 56, then you have two options:

1. Bid up your keywords.
2. If you’re bidding on keywords that are WAY too competitive (i.e. insurance keywords, mortgage keywords, etc) you need to go back to the drawing board and find converting keywords you can buy for cheap and get on the first page for.

#2 OH NO, MY CONVERSION SUCK!

You’ve got a campaign going with a solid amount of traffic coming in everyday and you’re getting consistent sales everyday.

But you’re losing money EVERYDAY. It’s might be as much as few hundred bucks A DAY.

At this point you’re probably thinking: “Shit, I need to do something fast to get my campaign in the black!”

Now, if you’ve been doing this business for at least 6 months, you know there’s 3 basic areas where you need to improve your campaign to get it profitable:

1. Your Landing Page Copy
2. Your Google Ad Copy
3. Your Choice of keywords and Bid Amounts
4. A Combination of the Above 3 Factors

So here’s what a lot of people do: make drastic changes to their campaign, either to one or all of the above factors.

Of course, this is purely driven by fear, fear of losing money!

What happens to their campaign?

Nine times out of ten, a campaign that would have been a consistent winner fizzles out.

The more you can control the urge to make rash changes, and the more you realize that you must get statistically relevant data before you change ANYTHING about your campaign, the more you will win in this game.
Now a lot of you have asked what exactly I mean by statistical relevance. When I’m split testing an ad or doing an A/B split test of a landing page, I use a tool called Splittester.com, to check to make sure that the winning combination (ad or landing page) is REALLY winning within the margins of statistical error.

Also, as a rule I will not pause a adgroup unless it has AT LEAST 300 clicks and no sales.

GOLDEN TIP

Most ppc affiliates are constantly monitoring their stats, like day traders watching stock prices. I call these affiliates ’stats checking junkies.’

The truth is that stats checking junkies are more likely to make rash changes than someone who check their stats no more than once a day - the disciplined super affilaite.

If you’re a stats checking junkie it’s killing your business, and YOU KNOW IT.

Here’s how I do my stats checking:

Established Campaigns:

My team sends me reports everyday with : adspend, commissions, profits, & ROI for each of my campaigns, so I can see at a glance how my business is doing on any particular day. This also includes month reports, etc.

In addition to this about once a month I’ll actually go into to my Google campaigns and see how my campaigns are doing in terms of keyword and ad group performance.

New Campaigns:

My team sends me the same daily reports for a new campaign, as for established ones. Also, for a new campaign I’m logging into Google everyday to see how my keywords and ad groups are performing, for the first few days of the campaign, I’ll log in multiple times a day, but ONLY for the first few days.

Once my campaign is profitable than I’ll check my campaigns much less frequently and simply let them collect data on keyword conversions and split tests.

Now if you’re a hard core stats checking junkie, checking your stats ONLY once a day is going to be harder than a chain smoker never lighting a cigarette again.

To break out of the cycle of stats checking junkie addition I recommend these remedies:

1. Self Discipline - suck it up and only check your stats once a day. Let’s face it, this one is not going to happen for most people.
2. Get Busy with MULTIPLE Campaigns - Launch your campaigns in bursts, not one by one. I suggest launching 3-5 campaigns in a 2 week period. Then do step 1 (much easier now).

Why #2?

By launching campaigns in batches of 3-5 (or more) it will keep you from getting too attached or emotional about any one campaign. You’ll be able to make rational decisions based on statistically relevant data, instead of rash decision based on emotion.

The less attached you are to the success of any one of your campaigns, the more logical and objective your decision making process will be.

Once you launched a batch of campaigns, force yourself to check your stats only once a day. This will be easier since you’re already less attached to the success of any one campaign.

By check stats only once a day, you’ll become even more unattached to the success of your campaigns. You’ll see the cloud of emotions, fear, and doubt clear from your mind and you’ll start making decision that will explode your income.

Try it.