My Affiliate Marketing Experiment – Part 5

John, that's a pretty impressive return on a PPC of that budget. What did you average out in terms of your CPC? Unless you're using carefully planned out long-tail keywords, it's pretty hard to generate much traffic for under a couple hundred dollars.

From my experience with Google Adwords, most campaigns are going to average at least $2 per click which means that your conversion rate has to be huge to make a profit.

Nev, I think that's one of the perils of running an affiliate program monetising almost purely with paid AdWord (think you mentioned briefly you used Adsense too), but as a long term business, I do question viability and sustainability, and profit margins do get smaller and the need to constantly keep a watchful eye on our AdWords campaign can be quite effortful. Still think it's not pure SEO wins, but utilising a blog like what John has been using, building a readership and relationship based audience will be better.

But nonetheless, it was fun reading your post - keep the open to learning attitude there! John, thanks for letting Nev post this - it's a good learning opportunity for everyone who's following.

Wow, what a great post!

I currently run a service-based business, but would love to expand into other areas as well, and affiliate marketing seems like a good way to go.

Neville, your experiment effectively illustrated the effectiveness of the basic principle of affiliate marketing and how it does indeed have the potential to generate real income for those who persevere.

However, in order to persevere, it seems that the one element that you'd need, which did not seem to be a part of your experiment, was choosing a product and market that you were actually passionate about.

If it's 100% all about the money, then I don't believe that this is enough to get someone through the learning curve and inevitable pitfalls that are part of ANY new business.

You hear this from all of the affiliate marketing experts as well - that your chance of success are drastically bolstered if the product is something that you yourself are excited about and have spent your own money on.

Yeah you are so right, you have to keep an eye on your PPCs campaigns in order to bring some money home, other wise they die out.

Thanks for the series of this case study.

Personally, I value tremendous this type of posts that show from beginning to end a business concept. Instead of just theory.

These type of case study posts are worth 100% more than just a theory post.

Thanks again Neville and John for share the case study.

Alex

good experiment. I personally like to stick to adsense when my traffic is built for a website. Adsense gives a stable rate and i can guess how much will i be earning when my traffic will rise. When i used affiliate marketing alongwith adsens. It decreases my adsense clicks. and affiliate clicks dont give that much money. Any the scene may differ depending on different niches and websites.

The keyword prices in adsense are high and often very high. Do you use other ppc systems. If yes, can you share?

Neville, if my maths are not wrong you made a profit of $900+ in only 5 weeks for something that is set-up (after the initial keyword research) and maintained in very little time. I really fail to understand why you stopped. I am just running an adwords campaign for a product that makes me $40-70 per sale, by limiting the daily expenditure plus the costs per click I aim at low cost keywords that will bring a profit in all cases. My own biggest challenge is the writing of the ads, targeted and aimed at each keyword, but my conversion rate is getting better and better as I learn, SY

Nice Post,

I've been trying implementing affiliate marketing into some things I do. I have yet to make money from it. But I have hope that soon it will come through.

Caleb

Nev, glad to see you finish the series. It's nice to know that you can pick up and play like this but so can others. I'd prefer other methods of earning money online, but thanks for the glimpse into ppc type marketing.

content was great, thanks for the content! Affiliate Marketing Waiting for excitement about the new content.

Great job illustrating what you did. Not very often do you see someone illustrate a specific niche and the keywords associated. I just read through all 5 parts at once - I hate being episodic about things... Worthy guest posts!

Hey Neville, thanks for posting this series, it was an interesting read.

SEO beats PPC eh?

btw. somebody I know was looking to market electronic cigs off line and they turned out to be carcinogenic (due to the powder) so he had to drop the idea.

So with these dodgey affiliate offers, I think it is well worth spending some time to check out if they are the kind of products that you want to associate with.

Great post as always. I loved the first 4 too.

THanks for the 5th part, i was waiting for this, is it finished now?

You mentioned prices on keywords being driven up and I realize now why it's difficult to promote offers from networks. Nice going with ecigs. I'm going to hve to think of a less saturated niche to target.

another great post neville. thanks !! ;)

Nice post that Greensmoke had a nice set up I ran if for a week then went back to the 32 clicks :)

And the saga ends huh...

Nev, I been reading your blog for years. You may even recall that I did my own water experiment, and turned it into a highly successful summer business. (I still to this day run "Human Hydration Services" each summer). This series has been a great read, and if you ever need to know anything else about affiliate marketing I'm always glad to help. I know enough to keep my electricity turned on if you know what I mean.

Glad to finally see the end! Too bad you stopped

Another great post, thanks for the content!

So, is it finish?

I will start my experiment in it -- the money seems worthy.