Internet Marketing Blog

Well it’s Saturday and I’m getting frustrated. One of my best converting adwords campaign is dead. The merchant getsmart.com has cancelled their affiliate program with commission junction. I was just getting it started and after two weeks and $650 net profit, they quit on me. WTF!

The bigger problem is I’m having trouble breaking $300/day. Sure, I’ve had bigger days, but on average, that’s all I make. I mean, $300/day is not bad, it’s a living. But why not $3000/day? Maybe I should work harder. I’m only putting in about 10/hours per week. Most of that time is spent just checking stats, participating in forums, and tweaking bids.

Maybe I’ll give article marketing a another shot. I have several articles already done, but not much traffic ever came of them. What’s the point of having hundreds of useless backlinks? I want traffic. I’m tired of paying google, msn, and yahoo for traffic. All the experienced marketers in the forums swear by writing articles, social bookmarking, building lists, etc… I’m a ppc guy. I love writing ads, researching keywords, and crunching numbers. I hate writing articles, and the thought of building a list just makes me cringe.

I suppose niche marketing is a not that difficult. I find potentially profitable niches all the time. I just don’t feel like writing the articles about something I care nothing about. Many niches aren’t suitable for ppc. I have a great plr company, infogoround. They have tons of articles covering several niches. But you can’t submit plr to ezinearticles. Again it comes back to writing. Whether submitting to article directories, building up your autoresponder, or posting to a blog.

Sorry, I’m just in a negative mood today. I guess I should stop being lazy and start writing, building links, bookmarking, and think about building lists. Maybe try and put 40 hour week in. LOL. I make myself laugh sometimes. I miss the days when all you had to do was put up a banner. I’m gonna start with putting up a sign that says “Why Not $3000/day?”

If anyone is reading this, thanks. I’m flattered. Odds are nobody is. Yet…

Well, here are the final numbers. Getsmart is ending their affiliate program. Go figure.

Here’s the math:

Adwords Cost: $547.95
Adsense Income: $52.90
Affiliate Income: $1145.00

Net Income: $649.95

ROI: 649.95/547.95 = 119%

So I’ve ended the getsmart campaign and going to switch to lendingtree. However, I don’t know how it’s going to convert and I will have to adjust my ad copy, landing page, etc.. to adjust to the new affiliate.

Also, lendingtree is the parent company of getsmart, and when you apply for a loan with lending tree, they popup a window that offers a getsmart loan. That really sucks for me and will also probably hurt conversions.

But, I am now armed with a ton of data about keywords, which adcopy had a higher ctr and lower cpc, and the kind of traffic to expect in this niche. I should be able to create another profitable campaign.

Either way, I made a few bucks and I think we’ve learned a few things along the way.