Become an Affiliate Marketer | Finch Sells

Survived: Two Years Of Full Time Affiliate Marketing

Mar 31 2011

April marks the two year anniversary of my luminous full-time career as an affiliate marketer. I could use this occasion to celebrate the arduous hours spent scratching my balls, surfing for dating pics, or munching reheated pizza over my inbox. But where would be the sense in that?

Two years is a long time in an industry that doesn’t know how to stand still. I quit my day job at the height of the rebill boom back in 2009. And I must’ve pissed off Lady Luck somewhere along the line because my last day at work happened to coincide with the death of all my profitable campaigns. What do they call that in the corporate world? Something like “a difficult period of transition”?

You haven’t felt a “difficult period of transition” until you’ve been sat in your new home office, on the first day, wondering how to make a living for the rest of your life.

The answer, as I eventually came to discover, was by scrapping and slaving away. It might not have been the most graceful jump in to running my own business, but I just about managed to keep my shit in tact. The first year was an eye-opener in every sense. I moved slowly from promoting rebills towards more sustainable offers that didn’t require a WHOIS registration just to sleep at night.

For all the success I enjoyed pushing shameless rebills, my business was in no way equipped to deal with any serious growth. That’s the price you pay for being obsessed with dollar signs but blind to the supporting acts that lay the foundations of any successful business. If you don’t have an accountant, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. If you don’t have somebody you can go to for expert business advice, bam, there goes your kneecap too.

Christ knows how much money I surrendered in 2009 through taxes alone thanks to my stupid tunnel vision. The attitude I adopted was paramount to poison.

“Taxes? What do you think I am? A banker?” I didn’t register a company, I didn’t bother taking on an accountant and I sure as hell didn’t treat my work like a real job.

I had to learn that it wasn’t all about me. And no individual is smart enough to make the correct decision every time in all aspects of his work. So if my first year as a full-time affiliate marketer gave me a reality check, I suppose the last year has been spent acclimatizing to that reality.

I’m still no closer to being able to explain what exactly I do for a living (“Err, I build websites and market products… Ahh, forget it. I’m just a web programmer“), but at least I feel like my business is not about to be swept from underneath me.

One thing I can say for sure, if you’re making those first tentative steps in to affiliate marketing with a very limited budget, it gets easier. It might not feel like the shit is even possible when you’re still turning up negative ROIs, but it does get easier.

It’s amazing how in two whole years of doing what I do, the actual success formula has changed very little. Sure, the traffic sources come and go. The offers are swings and roundabouts. But making profitable campaigns is very easy once you’ve locked down the method in the madness. So much of affiliate marketing is about finding that one sweet spot, and then running with it until it stretches no further.

One of my most successful dating landing pages is something I threw together back in 2009 and have barely changed since. While I’ve learned a lot since then, and keep pushing myself to learn more, you’re never more than one small break away from making it in this industry. One moment of genius, one great idea…and so much can snowball from so very little.

The basic mechanics of affiliate marketing are as simple as they ever were. But moulding everything around it in to a successful business takes a lot more thought, a lot more work and a lot more time. Something tells me two years is just the start.

Recommended This Week:

If you’re based in the UK and worried about your affiliate taxes, now is the time to sort them out. Before the new tax year! I highly recommend Crunch for their flat-rate £60/month service. It takes a few days to get setup, but it’s worth it for peace of mind if you don’t already have an accountant – or fancy shafting your old one.
If you’re not already registered on PPV Playbook, you are missing a beat sunshine. Easily the BEST place to learn from marketers who are actually making money. It has some awesome case studies. The catch is that you will need to pay some of your hard earned pesos to access it. I swear from the bottom of my black heart, joining is worth every penny
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Classic Mistakes Of A Former Affiliate

Jan 17 2011

The riches are so great in this industry that the virtues of patience are easily forgotten.

If you’re a new affiliate, trying to come to terms with the challenges ahead, there are two commodities you’re going to need in abundance – patience and vision. In the hope of having one successful campaign, many affiliates test a hundred of them. When they all fail miserably, the “testing” process is typically so sketchy that to find a golden nugget worth chasing would be like running your hands through elephant shit thrown at a wall.

Let’s take the newbie dating affiliate who calls this a working day:

He knows that a lot of affiliates are making money from dating offers. So he picks out the best dating offer, based on his AM’s recommendation, plugs a few ads in to Facebook, targets ages 35-45, and blows $50 on a handful of conversions that barely break even.

In the face of a loss, he realizes he doesn’t want to lose anymore money. So he rejigs his campaign.

He picks another dating offer, based on a recommendation he sees in one of Nick Throlson’s park video blogs, switches his ads over to Plentyoffish, targets ages 45-65, and blows $50 on zero conversions.

No conversions? Oh shit, it must be the advertiser scrubbing, right? So he chooses another dating offer and relaunches his Plentyoffish campaign. But not before completely overhauling his landing page, targeting a different country and launching at 6am in the morning when any singleton in said market has already whacked off for the night and signed out of POF.

Still no conversions.

He then thinks to himself…fuck this shit, there’s no money in affiliate marketing.

The ability to test variables methodically ranks right at the top of the list for “desired qualities” in an affiliate marketer. It’s no good to have the best ads, the best targeting or the best landing pages. They have to function as a system, cogs turning as one, slowly grinding towards the end goal of profitability.

If you’re still looking for your first taste of success, REGAIN CONTROL OF YOUR VARIABLES.

Once you know beyond reasonable doubt that an offer is converting well for other affiliates, stick with it. Hunt out the traffic source where ads appear most regularly for that offer. Now you have your two most important variables nailed down:

A good offer, and a profitable traffic source.

There are still a ton of variables, and it’s your responsibility to test them thoroughly and transparently. There is absolutely no point in split testing the performance of two different age brackets if one of those age brackets is being redirected through to a different landing page. Every variable matters. And until you regain control of your variables, you’ll never truly know what is working, what isn’t, and what money you’re leaving on the table.

I think most affiliates know and readily admit to the importance of split testing. But not many are patient enough to follow through in their execution. Usually because they either – a) find success and have little ambition to improve on it, or b) start to panic when their daily ROI drops below ballin’ status.

Patience is everything. Expecting miracle results overnight, or even just results, is the classic mistake of many a former affiliate.

In terms of why you’re most likely to fail, a lack of patience is second only to complete disregard for the challenges ahead.

I often use a metaphor that finding success in this industry is like climbing a mountain. Success is there at the peak, but you have to be patient. You have to build your base camps along the way and prove that you can overcome the inevitable challenges. Finding a profitable campaign might be your first step, but sustaining it is another. Surviving through the next FTC crackdown or dealing with a banned Facebook account might scupper your best laid plans along the way. Setting your eyes on the summit and ignoring the beast in front of you is called living in cloud cuckoo land.

Reaching the summit, discovering those riches and having your dream business, requires acclimatisation along the way. It can’t be achieved in one night’s work. If you have aspirations of rolling like Richard Branson, but reservations about spending $5, well let’s just say you’re going to be stuck at low altitude until you progress beyond those fears.

Most of us are aware of the challenges. But If you think your latest idea makes you Reinhold Messner, capable of scaling any peak without putting in the hard hours of acclimatisation and learning from your falls – you’re going to get blown off the mountain. There are many failed routes – tough challenges – before you ever find a way to the top.

Some are self-inflicted… the mistakes you will inevitably make along the way, never a bad thing if you learn from them.

Some are caused by others… everybody in this industry is hoping to use you as a stepping stone to their own summit.

Some are caused by fortune fucking with you… Suck it up and deal with it.

Whatever the reason, if you want to enjoy the riches on that summit, you need to respect what comes before it. There’s no such thing as a success formula in this business, but you can make life easier for yourself by methodically ruling out what doesn’t work.

This is what many of us have done over the years. We rarely have the foresight to know when a campaign will become profitable. But it’s having the patience to learn enough about what NOT to do. This comes with experience, patience and vision.

Every mistake you make needs to be another hazard avoided in the future. And every variable you test needs to be another factor eliminated from your monetary equation. Affiliate marketing is very simple if you take a methodical approach. The problem is that most newbie marketers have a love affair with the desired results rather than the consequences of their actual actions. They stare at the summit instead of concentrating on their next step. Most become former affiliates.

Recommended This Week:

If you’re working in the dating market, check out Adsimilis. Definitely one of the better networks with a wide range of dating offers, all on high payouts, including lots of stuff in Europe and South America. I think you’ll like them.
Feel free to add Finch to your Facebook. Yes, this is the right link. My real name is not actually Finch. Also follow me on Twitter

Cashflow Tips For New Affiliates

Dec 30 2010

Forget the top payouts, best looking affiliate managers and networks with soaring reputations. For a new affiliate who’s just discovered profitability, cashflow is always king. It’s likely that to scale your business quickly, you’re going to need to make some sacrifices along the way. Handling your cashflow effectively is one of them.

No industry fills my ears with as many rags to riches tales as affiliate marketing. I don’t know if what we do is seen as a last gasp stab at financial salvation, or simply a popular way to spend your last 100 bucks. But many affiliates are faced with the challenge – even after stumbling upon a successful campaign – of being able to scale that campaign without clearing everything they have in the bank. Cashflow is the difference between riches and famine.

You’ve probably got a hundred different networks whispering in your ear, all desperate for your traffic. If you haven’t, rest assured this will rapidly become the case as you begin to earn more money. One of the biggest cashflow mistakes, and probably the easiest to make, is to spread yourself too thin.

In the search for offers that convert, it’s possible to end up sending dribbles of traffic to a dozen different networks. This normally results in you rinsing your bank balance, while not a single network sees you as significant enough to be paid weekly. When your bank hits zero, you’re left waiting on those dribs and drabs to be fed back in to your account by the various networks – many of which may be operating on Net 30 cheques as a form of payment.

Forget all the hype about the top payouts. It’s much better to be running a bunch of slightly less profitable campaigns on networks who can guarantee quick turnaround of payment. The quicker your bank balance grows, the faster you can scale. In an industry that changes overnight, you can’t afford to be left trailing in the dirt waiting on a bunch of cheques in the mail.

I read somewhere that a great idea for new affiliates is to invest in a credit card and blast your way to fortunes on the plastic. I can’t remember who said this, but they should be shot and hung out to dry. I can’t think of a worse idea than racking up a bunch of credit card debt on the principle that the “repayments are on their way”. The money isn’t yours until it’s paying for your groceries, so take “Pending Commission” with a pinch of salt and an eye on the worst case scenario.

There are circumstances where using a credit card to fund campaigns is acceptable. But you have to be in control of all the surrounding factors. Factors such as the quality of your traffic, the relationship with the advertiser and the exact promotional guidelines of the offers you’re running.

I’ve said it time and time again but by far the best way of managing your cashflow during the early days is to pick up free advertising coupons. I used to raid coupons for Google Adwords so that I could fund campaigns without having to compromise my own limited start-up capital. If you’re in the UK, snap up a copy of .Net magazine and you’ll receive a free Adwords voucher every month. Or go one step further like yours truly and simply rinse the entire pile in WHSmiths when nobody is looking.

That sounds incredibly trashy and unprofessional, but when I was getting started, I had little money of my own to reinvest. Coupons were like tiny Christmas presents to myself. Here you go, Finch. Have another Adwords account.

If you’re moving in to affiliate marketing from a wealthy background with money to waste, cashflow is probably a mere tickle on your balls. And in that case, you’ll find it a lot easier to succeed in faster time. Affiliates who have managed to build up healthy bank balances enjoy the luxury of being able to run campaigns on a lower ROI, and also work with the higher paying networks who refuse to pay any sooner than monthly.

Commission Junction, for example, is simply not a viable option as a newbie marketer investing in paid traffic. I enjoy promoting their dating offers because the ROI is nearly always higher than what I can achieve with a CPA network. But it comes at a price. That price being the need to float thousands and thousands of pounds on monthly payments. And the fact that you’re working with CJ, of course. A group of incompetent bumberclarts who should start addressing their support emails “Dear Mortal Below Us,” to show how they truly feel.

Another issue regarding cashflow involves budgeting in advance. Should you spend an entire monthly budget in a few days just because you’ve found a profitable campaign? Or should you split the advertising over a whole month? I would always say that if you find something that works, scale it ASAP and get the maximum bang for your buck while it’s on offer. From my experience, dividing your budget over a whole month can have the effect of dividing your workrate too.

Plus I find it’s a very good card to play on the networks you’re working with. If they see you’re sending a boatload of traffic in the space of a few days, and then that traffic suddenly dries up, they will sniff you out in a hurry.

“Hey Finch, I see you had some success with Offer X – how did it back out for you? What can we do to get more leads out of you?”

“Oh, well, I’ve got volume coming out of my arsehole on this one. But I’ve found a network that’s willing to pay me weekly on the same offer. So unless…”

And so you should be able to wrangle some weekly payments out of the equation very quickly. This enables you to refill that bank balance and get back in the game. The faster the turnaround on your balance, the more productive you’ll become and the faster you can scale. It really is a case of get money get paid.

Recommended This Week:

If you’re working in the dating market, check out Adsimilis. Definitely one of the better networks with a wide range of dating offers, all on high payouts, including lots of stuff in Europe and South America. I think you’ll like them.
Feel free to add Finch to your Facebook. Yes, this is the right link. My real name is not actually Finch. Also follow me on Twitter