Internet Marketing Blog

I’ve been posting my progress on the forums every couple of weeks. I hate bumping a thread with minor updates, but on my blog, I can do anything I want. So I’m gonna update my progress every couple of days for those of you who want to see updates more often.

Quick Summary of what’s happened so far:

• Started adwords campaign May 30, 2007 in the Mortgage Refinance Niche
• Chose Getsmart.com at CommissionJunction.com as the merchant to promote
• Built the landing page with adsense & affiliate links and setup the adwords campaign.
• June 14, Getsmart ended their affiliate program and left CJ.com.
• June 14, Started promoting new affiliate lendingtree.com and Loanweb.com
• Split campaign into 3 adgroups based on statistics gained so far

Here are the detailed posts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Here is today’s update:

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Here are the numbers so far:

Adwords Cost: $1080.08

Adsense Income: $89.18

Affiliate Income: $2045.00

Net Income: $1054.10

I made a mistake this past weekend by bidding $6 on a few of the keywords.  I wanted to see if I could get on the first page of the content network and thereby get more clicks and higher conversions.

I didn’t really have the bankroll to do it properly, so I wasted about $30-$50.  It’s hard to give an exact number since the costs and # of clicks on the content network are averages.  Anyway, when I have the bankroll, I will try bidding much higher.

Also, loanweb finally came out of the red and is profitable now.  Only slightly, but enough to keep testing it.  I’m really happy lendingtree is very profitable so far, maybe more so than getsmart was.  Time will tell….

I hope everyone had a good weekend.  It was father’s day here in the USA, so I spent some time with my dad.  What I really love about internet marketing is that it works for you 24 hours a day.  I made $213 yesterday, while watching golf and eating junk food.  Today I’m going for a hike with my two dogs, then go to the pool for a swim and work on my tan.  But when I get back, it’s back to business (maybe).

Today I’m gonna try and do some of the things that were frustrating me on Saturday.  Writing articles, bookmarking to social sites, and post to some forums.  I’m not even going to start an email campaign.  I know, the money is in the list.  But I just can’t bring myself to do that yet.

It amazes me that rss feeds haven’t done better in internet marketing.  When I find a blog I like, I bookmark it and/or add it to my google reader.   That’s really all anyone should have to do, rather than give out their email address and subscribe to some list.  I wish all the people I subscribe to had an rss feed passing out the same information to their feed subscribers rather through email.

There is the occasional special offer that you wouldn’t want to publish in an rss feed, but that is simply solved by password protecting the post so that only members can read it.  I can’t tell you how many lists I join to get some free report, only to later unsubscribe because they had nothing else unique or interesting to offer.  They usually just send out the canned affiliate provided newsletter to upsell me on some other product.

Anyway, it’s getting too hot outside, so I need to get going if I wanna go hiking.  Here are a few shots from last week.

Like I said, internet marketing is great!  I’m not rich, but make enough so I don’t have to go into a job everyday.