Patience is REALLY a Virtue for a Super Affiliate

There are few things more exciting than launching a new campaign and seeing it really transform into a money machine as you optimize it!

I should know, I just recently started a new campaign! Man, is it exciting.

But with all the excitement of beginning a new campaign there are a lot of pitfalls to be aware of, especially if you’re new at the game of affiliate marketing:

1. Not giving a campaign a chance: A lot of affiliates, especially newbies will pause a campaign WAY too early, based on way too little data. If you get 100 clicks and no sales, it’s not enough information to make a decision, for all you know you may get 5 sales on the next 100 clicks. It happens all the time! I would recommend you wait for until at least 500-1000 clicks before you make a decision to pause the campaign.
2. Don’t let quick success fool you: Sometimes affiliates get really excited and bid up their keywords and taking the cap off their daily budget, based on one day, or sometimes even a few hours worth of campaign stats. If you ask me that’s totally nuts, you can’t base anything on one day, that just may have been a really good day. By upping your bids and raising you daily budget too quickly you risk really getting burned. Wait at least several days and then make gradual bid adjustments based on statistically relevant data.
3. Don’t immediately drop your bids either: The other side of having quick success is having a campaign that starts out in the negative, maybe with a $30 Cost/Conv. on a $20 commission product. Now you know the market has potential, so you decided to drop your bids way down to get in the black! If you do this too soon and too drastically, based on only one day of data you could risk pushing your high performing keywords to the 2nd or 3rd page. Only to be surprised to see your campaign dry up. Let your campaign run for a few days to a week and then gradually start biding down your adgroups that are poor performers and bidding up the ones that are converting well.
   

The most important message is to be patient and not make rash, emotional decisions based on little data and statistics. Be willing to lose money for a few days, even a few weeks, so you have enough, clicks, impressions and conversions to make solid statistically valid decisions on how to adjust your bids. And please adjust your bids gradually, lowing and raising them by no more than 5%-10% at a time (in most cases).

The real challenge here is whether you have the emotional fortitude to let you campaign run at a loss for an extended period of time. If you let your emotions get the best of you, you’re dead in the water.