Have you ever put in a ton of time into a campaign and then realize that it simply isn’t paying off? Perhaps you made a few sales or simply saw an increase in traffic to your site or landing page but if you added up all the hours you spent promoting with the money made, you’d realize that you’re in the red big time. Although you may be tempted to keep on working on the campaign so that you can turn your loser into a winner, it may be time to simply walk away and cut your loses. But, how do you know whether to keep going or to try something different? Here are a few pointers that work for me.

Look at the Product

First and foremost, if you’re getting great traffic to the pages you’re using to promote the affiliate campaign, but not enough conversions, take a look at the product. What about it is not making customers want to click that ‘buy’ button? Is it a valuable product that offers information not readily available on the internet? Is the copywriting for the promotions concise and compelling?

If you’ve done everything you can to set this product up to be purchased but you’re not getting any sales, you may want to go ahead and dump it. Alternatively, are you making good commissions from the product? If you’re working your butt off to sell a product but you’re not receiving enough of a commission, you might want to rethink your strategy.

There are numerous products out there with huge commission rates that you can get, and sticking with one that isn’t paying well isn’t going to help you at all. Take the time to search for a new product that is going to sell well, and that you’re going to make good commissions from.

Evaluate the Product’s Saturation

Next, you want to evaluate the product’s saturation. Let’s say that you own a pay as you go fax site that advertises online fax services. However, you’re finding that you are not getting as many affiliate conversions as you would like. In this instance, you may  have to switch affiliate products that you are advertising. By dumping a product or simply switching it to a better converter, you may find that you are able to increase your commissions.  For instance, there are some products that simply convert better than others.  Rather than sticking with the non converting – non popular product that doesn’t seem to be selling, why not begin promoting the more popular product so you can get a slice of the pie as well?

When you take the time to weed out campaigns that aren’t doing very well, you will have the time and energy to focus on products that are hot sellers and that make you great commissions. Affiliate marketing is all about adapting to change and tracking your progress. Know when to dump an affiliate campaign to avoid using energy on something that isn’t going to work.

OK so something is bothering me and I would like to share it with you. I won’t mention any names but a well named Internet Marketer has let me down big time. Here is the dealio. In June or July he posted a contest for his students to sell his relationship eBook and the person that sold at least 10 copies would get a 30 minute consultation. I worked my butt off and wrote a ton of articles for the contest. And, happily I won.

I was so excited and couldn’t wait. I checked my email every day and finally wrote asking about the consultation. He told me that he was a bit too busy right now and would have to get back to me when things settled down.

I was a bit frustrated but since he really is a big marketer, I figured, he’ll eventually get back to me. I mean his reputation was on the line and he couldn’t forget about his mentee now could he?

Months went by and I heard nothing. He soon sent a note out for another contest where if you sold 10 more products you would get 30 days of UNLIMITED email messages with him. I was super excited and tried once again.Only I sold 2 more this time, I contacted him and asked if I could cash in my telephone consultation for 30 days of email consulting and he said, “Sure.” I was so happy. He sent me the special email address and I wrote one question in which he answered quickly. I then wrote several others and heard nothing at all.

He totally wigged on his promise AGAIN. I am so frustrated with Mr. Internet Marketer that I could scream. I am even thinking about NOT promoting his darn relationship book any more. But then again, it does make me a bit of cash so maybe that wouldn’t be so smart. But, then again, the heck with em. Do I really want him making mone off my hard work and effort. I’m torn.

One thing I have learned is that no matter how big you get, you should always keep your word. When you promise something, especially a free consultation or to get a project done, then you should deliver. Reputatin is very important -even if you’re just starting off. Otherwise you’re only out for yourself and that just plain sucks.

Over the weekend, I completed a preliminary 5 month analysis of my business endeavors and I have decided that I really need to work smarter and harder to accomplish my first year goal of $5000 a month.  To accomplish this, I must cut my expenses and really, really, really apply what I’ve learned thus far.

To kick off this goal, I plan to produce 1001 articles by January 1, 2009.

This gives me about  7 months to really crank out quality content. I am going to be an article writing machine and my plan is to produce 4.5 articles a day or 143 articles a month.

Right now, I average about 2-3 articles per day (not including weekends). With my new plan, I will double this amount and create even more articles.

I will then use my produced  to create 1-2 more niche sites (a month) and make some affiliate sales using bum marketing techniques.

I’m fired up folks and am getting started on this plan right away. I will definitely keep  you posted about my progress.

Wish me luck! I do believe that I can do it! The pressure is on. Will you join me?

Yes, I know. I promised to only check my affiliate commissions once a month but curiosity got the best of me today and I checked. I couldn’t resist. I tried so hard but the more I thought about not checking the more I wanted to check. It was like I just couldn’t help myself and I had been so long. 16 days to be exact. Anyway, I checked and noticed something peculiar with my stats.

For a while it seemed as if I was making an affiliate sale every other day or so which was very exciting to me because there was a time (about a year ago) when I made nothing for a year. Then there came a week, then 10 days when I made absolutely nothing at all. Hmmm.

Although this was a bit discouraging, I’m trying to rationalize this and here’s what I came up with:

With affiliate marketing, there seems to be flows and tides. Sometimes the sales flow in and some times they don’t. This is just a fact of life.

If you want to make more sales then you can’t get frustrated. You have to keep bum marketing, writing ads and articles, and can’t stop when you experience a bit of success. In fact, one guru told me that you have to write not 5 but 30 articles per product if you really want to succeed with bumm marketing. If you do this, I’m told that you’ll surely drive traffic to your websites and will make more consistent sales than if you only have 5 articles or so (like I do now). Guess I have to write more. Whew.

If that is the case, then I have to write faster. I can’t take forever writing articles. To create 30 articles, would take me about 3.5 hours of writing fast. With so many articles and products to promote, I can’t spend hours laboring over my content. I have to get those articles written and out there so they can make me money.

If a promotion isn’t converting well or at all, that it has to be dropped. I, for one, can’t put all your time and energy into losing campaigns. It would really suck to write 30 articles that didn’t even result in one sale. So, my plan is to concentrate on my past winners so that I can see some more profits.

In conclusion, affiliate marketing can be tricky as the sales have ebbs and flows. And, if I really want to see more sales, I guess I’m going to have to realize this and keep promoting and writing those articles. Hopefully this will result in more consistent sales.

I’ll keep you posted in 15 days after I write more articles and then check my stats again.

Have you ever heard of cross promoting? Cross promoting is when you merge your offers to play off of one another.

Consider Amazon, for instance. They are masters at cross promoting. Every time you purchase an item or simply browse for an item on Amazon, they provide customers with complimentary products that you might like as well. And, in more instances than not, you end up purchasing more products.

As an affiliate marketer, you too can use the power of cross promoting to skyrocket your affiliate profits.For instance, let’s say that you have a dog training website and you sell a very popular dog training eBook that you wrote. Instead of only selling your original dog training book, you could sell your affiliate partner’s books or short reports on how to keep dogs healthy, how to cure your dog of ailments, etc. But this cross promoting stuff doesn’t just stop there.You can also sell physical products too. For instance, let’s say that in the book, you talk about the importance of clicker training to train your dog to behave better. Well, on your website, you could also sell dog clickers. These dog clickers will make the training much easier and will fatten your wallets.

The key is to sell everything that your customer needs to be successful in their dog training endeavors and to keep your customers happy. By doing this, you will not only provide your customers with one-stop shopping, they’ll come to see your site as the leading authority on everything related to dogs. They’ll then be more likely to come back to your site for other purchases, as well.

In conclusion, you should maximize your commissions whenever you can. Not only will you provide a better user experience, you’ll make more commissions.

So, get out there and start cross promoting now.

Just about every single day, I check my affiliate and advertiser sites about twice a day. It is like an addiction of sorts. I don’t really know why I do this. I guess it is because I am really just excited to see how my sites are doing and want to know if what I‘m doing is working.To me, this is crazy behavior because I seem to get caught up in the monetary side of this business and lose a bit of focus. In addition, I think that this type of monetary focusing causes me more harm than good. For instance, when I have a higher income day, I feel awesome, on top of the world, and am so proud of myself. Then, when I have a lower income day, I feel a little bit down and depressed.

Although I eventually look at the bigger picture and realize that I am in fact making great progress towards my goals, I have decided that during the month of April, I am NOT going to do this at all. I am only going to evaluate my stats at the end of the month so that it can be a huge surprise.

By looking at them once a month, I plan to put an end to agonizing over the numbers and focus on providing value. Instead, I am going to focus on my personal April challenges of rewriting two PLR articles a day, writing four articles a day, creating and promoting one niche site/blog, and completing all my clients’ projects.

I am not going to worry about the numbers at all. Instead, I am just going to do my best, enjoy the process, and see where it takes me. Wish me luck, because I just love checking those stats! I’m already having affiliate-checking withdrawal symptoms.

Kristi

Guess what? My very first successful affiliate campaign has gone out of business and stole my commissions of $242.77. I am very ticked off because I put a lot of time and energy into promoting their products.The bad thing is that my promotional efforts were doing well. I was so proud of my campaign. I used article marketing to a tee and it seemed to be working quite well as I was making about two to three sales a month.

Since I watch my campaigns like a hawk, I recently realized that my stats stopped being updated as frequently. This was weird. I mean, I was consistently making two to three sales a month, and then nothing.The real kicker was that I never received ANY of the money for my efforts. Apparently Selmedica had a $250.00 threshold and I wasn’t able to reach it in order to request payment.

Well, I was curious about my declining stats so I did a search on Google and realized that none of their affiliates were getting paid the money they were due. The FBI was looking for them and the company had disappeared into the night (with my cash). Affiliates all over the ’net are talking about Selmedica and how they lost thousands of money from this company. I guess I should be glad that it was only $242.77, but that isn’t exactly something to pooh-pooh. As a writer who normally gets $15.00 an article, I would have to write 16 articles to make that much. As an Internet Marketer, I wrote five articles to get my sales.This entire situation has made me realized that working as an affiliate can be risky business. It is extremely important to choose your products carefully and only deal with reputable companies.Here are some tips that may help you avoid this problem in the future:

1. When you promote a company that is not well known, make sure you do a background check. Make sure the company pays their affiliates properly and that there is no hanky-panky going on. Also, periodically do a search to make sure that no one is making complaints about your chosen company.
2. Read the fine print. Make sure you read and understand all the terms. For instance, what are the commission rates? What are the conversion rates for the product? How are affiliate commissions tracked? Are there payment thresholds required in order to receive payments? If so, make sure they are low so you don’t have to wait a long time for your first payment.
3. Choose affiliate programs that have been around a while and that offer great customer support. A toll free number or help desk would be awesome for affiliates!
4. If you notice any problems, then stop promoting the products right away. This will help safeguard you against any problems.
5. Never promote more than one product with a company until they have proven their worthiness. For instance, I promoted about three products for Selmedica instead of just one.