Facing Challenges
November 7, 2007
I try not to take my meager affiliate marketing success for granted, but I’m really starting to think that the internet gods are out to get me. This past week I encountered a series of events that will likely put an end to my streak of growing monthly revenues.
First, I got burned once again by having a site built entirely around an affiliate program. The culprit was again AzoogleAds, who canceled a program I had just started to cash in on. It was an awesome offer where the program paid $15 per sale…no matter how much the customer spent or what they bought.
After a few months of experimenting with my site, I had just reached the point where I was getting steady traffic and sales. I was looking forward to the possibilities…until the offer was pulled this weekend. The only good news is that I learned from past mistakes and signed up with another pet meds affiliate program a couple weeks ago as a backup. The kicker though is that they only pay 12% of the sale total, which has averaged out to be about $5 per transaction. (Sigh)
I also found out last week that one of my primary Clickbank affiliates raised the price of his product as well as the commissions to affiliate. Why is this bad news? Well it shouldn’t be, except it appears the new price has lowered conversions by almost half! So while it is great that I am earning a couple extra bucks, it doesn’t matter much when I am only making half the sales. It has only been a week since the price increase, but I think I will send the guy an email if the poor conversion rate continues.
So the bottom line is that the first week of November has been a complete bust. Considering this month also has a major holiday within it, I don’t think I will be breaking any records. It is getting to be that time of year where you need to have a shopping site to make the best money, and that is where my heavy investment into Clickbank is going to cost me.
Despite all the negative news, I am excited about two new website projects I have coming up. Neither one deals exclusively with an affiliate offer, so I should be more protected from these major setbacks I have been experiencing. The new goal is to create a value service for the visitor and hope that I can draw thousands of visitors. Not all of them will be shoppers, but the law of averages says that some of them will be. The best part is that I will be able to rotate ads and offers, so it won’t matter if one of them doesn’t convert or gets cancelled. I’ll keep you updated on progress.
November 7th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
It’s better that it happened now, than when the income was much larger. It’s good to see you had a “Plan B” as well.
Looking forward to seeing how the new sites develop.
It’s also great to see some honesty on the net - not just hype
November 11th, 2007 at 4:06 am
Thanks Paul. I like to think that I am smart enough to learn from my past mistakes, but this industry can be incredibly humbling.