Doing PPC affiliate marketing takes a certain amount of risk, and the amount of risk your willing to take will ultimately determine your success. Its about whether you take too much risk or too little risk, but it’s how you manage it that’s key to your success.
A lot of people avoid risk at all costs, if you’re one of these people then affiliate marketing, especially with pay-per-click, is NOT for you. On the other extreme there have been stories of people that have lost $1000s on Adwords overnight, not knowing what they were doing. Actually, I don’t consider that risky, it’s just flat out stupid.
I remember when I first got started with Adwords, I admittedly played it safe, I kept my daily budget low, and my cost per click low to make sure I didn’t lose my shirt! And I also had a idea of how much I was willing to invest in a campaign to test it out, something like 300 clicks at 0.10 a click.
In the beginning your really have to think of your ad spend as an investment in your education. And not freak out that you spend $50 and don’t make a sale. I mean come on, if you’re willing to spend $30,000/year, all on loans, to get a college education, that will keep you broke for the rest of your life, then what’s a few hundred dollars on Adwords to learn how to become a millionaire-or at least never have to work a job again.
Once I started making some money at affiliate marketing, and I was spending $300+/day on Adwords, I took a leap of faith and took out $10,000 from my home equity line of credit and put it in my business account. And that made all the difference in the world! It allowed me to really accelerate the growth of my business. Test more markets, and aggressively expand the markets I’m in.
Would you do that?
You got to be willing to push yourself out of your comfort zone if you want to become a super affiliate. If I showed you how you could take your campaigns from $300/day profit to $3000/day profit, but you’d have to spend $2000/day on Adwords-starting tomorrow, would you be will and ready to do it?
When I first started spending $2000/day on Adwords, it freaked me out, it really pushed me out of my comfort zone.
You see a lot of people would not be willing to spend $1000s a day on Adwords, even if they did double their money. Risky-yes-if you don’t know what you’re doing. The key is to manage the risk, here are several tips to doing that:
- Even when you have a successful campaign going, never take your daily budget from $5/day to $1000/day, overnight. Take your daily budget from $5 to $50 the next day then $200, then $500, then $1000, that way you can monitor your ROI each day and make sure you’re making money. Also by gradually increasing your daily budget your avoid an infamous Google Account Review-where they pause you account for two days with no explanation.
- Make sure you do your research and homework before doing anything. If those dummies who started a Google campaign and lost $1000s had bought Perry Marshall’s Ebook and studied it they would have saved themselves their financial disaster, and maybe actually even made money right off the bat! Just like in real estate, doing your research and becoming knowledgeable about the next market your going into, or even about PPC affiliate marketing in general (if you’re a newbie) is the best way to minimize your risk and maximize your chances of succeeding.
Once you gain more success and profits as an affiliate you’ve got to be willing to take bigger risks to take your business to the next level. If you’re making $500/day in profit, it will require a much bigger risk to go into a market where you can make $5000/day profit, you may have to invest more into making your site and lose more money upfront testing it.
Similarly if you want to hit $50,000/day profit, you have to take an even BIGGER risk.
A lot of people’s income plateau’s when they hit a few hundred a day in profit or a few thousand a day in profit, because they’re in a comfort zone and are not willing to push themselves to the next level.
Is your business stuck in a rut?
comfort zone perry marshall risk management
One of your best posts to date.
I see too many people complaining and moaning that PPC is too hard.It is hard, but then again, everything worth doing to make money is. People are still in the mindset that affiliate marketing is easy because of the countless ebook offers they are bombarded with.
I am in the same boat as you. I lost a LOT of money with adwords before I finally “Figured it all out”. In heinsight, it was all worth it. PPC is no longer easy.It requires thought and not everyone can grasp it.
In the end, it is an investment in your education. Some people are just not willing to invest in themselves.
Hi Dave,
Glad you enjoyed the post! It’s amazing-people are willing to spend $60k for culinary school, to make $30k a year when they graduate-not even enough to cover their loan payments. However, they won’t invest a few $1000s to learning ppc marketing to make millions in return?!?
hi amit:
It seems that in order to become super affiliate, one has to go PPC route, is that true? is there any other options?
What’s your take on affiliate marketing via emails(permission marketing)?
look forward for your replies!thanks!
CY
Hi Cy,
Although most super affiliates use ppc to driver their sales, there are also super affilates who use SEO, email lists, and blogging as well. I can only speak for ppc affiliate marketing, since this is my area of expertise.
I can only recommend Perry’s courses. I started out 3 years ago with buying the Adwords book and last year I entered his Coaching Class. It was very interesting to be part of this smaller group of people that really wanted to learn more about Online Marketing. Although Perry is THE AdWords King, his Coaching class goes a lot further than AdWords only. You learn how to get people to your site (ppc) AND how to convert that traffic into revenue (testing, tracking, live chat, etc etc etc).
Richard