I Made $182.64 Profit Last Month

“It’s only after you’ve lost everything, that you’re free to do anything.”
-Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Yep that’s right kids, and no you didn’t read it wrong. Did the stats for last month and profit came out to $182.64.

When most affiliate bloggers make a post about earnings, it’s to boast about how much they made and/or for link-bait. Hey, I did it myself a couple times and it does it’s job. But what most affiliates don’t post about, are the bad months, and the very bad months. And last month just happened to be my worst month in affiliate marketing, ever. Nobody has the balls to admit when they’re struggling. I’ll admit I probably wouldn’t have the balls to post this if I hadn’t turned it back around and was doing awesome now. If I was still in a slump I’d probably just keep it quiet.

So instead of telling you how I earned $300k/month and what I did to get there, I’m going to tell you what I did to let myself slip and have a horrible month. Because affiliate marketing really is a roller coaster ride, there’s ups and downs. The real trick I’ve found out is getting off the rollercoaster and onto something more consistent, which is more longterm niches and getting on the advertiser side of things. Here’s why I bombed out in November :

1) TOO MANY THINGS AT ONCE.

Easily the biggest reason. I had way too many things trying to go at once. And it’s hard with at least 5 affiliate managers IM’ing me every day saying “yo man check out this offer a pub is rocking it doing this”. So I’m like alright I’ll give it a shot. I end up giving 5 offers a shot in 1 week, they all lose money and I have to end up pausing them all because it’s too overwhelming.

So while I had a couple campaigns doing well, losing money on all these new offers I tested just sucked the profit away. Got in way over my head with too much to do and not enough time to actually put an effort into it.

2) Beating a dead horse.

I had a campaign that rocked in October, like $5k profit/day rocked and it was great. But I knew from the start that it would be temporary and it would die for a number of reasons. Well around the last couple days of October, my predictions came true and it did indeed die out. Instead of accepting the fact that it died and moving on, I tried to revive it in November. I jacked bids way up, was completely careless, and ended up losing A LOT of money.

3) Playa got dumped!

I usually don’t involve too many personal things in my blog, but since this was a big contributing factor I might as well mention it. My girlfriend and I were together for almost 3 years and I got canned at the end of October. If anybody has been in a long-term relationship and dumped, it’s HARD. For the longest time (pretty much all of November) I barely had the urge to work. I’d sit down at the computer everyday like I always do for hours, but somehow I’d barely get anything done. Just no desire to do anything really, so when things tanked I just kind of said whatever and didn’t really care.

4) Testing things with actual potential.

This isn’t really a reason you should try to avoid, but it’s a reason for the crappy month. I actually had an offer I knew had potential, so I made the investment to test out a bunch of stuff and right now it’s paid off.

5) Played around with some non-affiliate sites.

I had a couple ideas for sites that could go viral, so I spent a lot of time building them, and then spent a few thousand on sending traffic to them. That hasn’t paid back at all, but I thought the ideas had potential (and they still do). So there’s another $5-10k + Time gone.

6) Dating died for me.

I got back into dating for a few months and it was doing pretty well. Margins were still really low, but it profited decently and I got a ton of Amex points. Then pretty out of the blue I get cut by True. Alright, move to Spicy over at Copeac. Does pretty good again, and then out of the blue my EPC gets cut almost in half. Margins were low to begin, so cutting conversions in half had me losing a pretty penny. I tried to beat the dead horse for a week or so but just ended up losing more and more money. Woot!

After actually typing out all the things went wrong, I’m still actually very surprised I managed to profit at all haha. But looking into the future, and looking into now, I’ve turned things around pretty well. The first 2 days of December have been totally awesome and it’s looking only up from here. So now what did I do to turn it around?

Focused on only 2 projects.
I knew I was getting in way over my head, and knew I had to simplify things. So I had 2 things going for me – the 1 affiliate offer that had potential, and the product I’m working on creating and becoming and advertiser for. I told myself that no matter what, I was going to work on these 2 things exclusively. Well, amazing things happen when you actually listen to yourself and commit to something. I’ve been working on this affiliate offer and it’s doing extremely well and growing fast. Instead of making one landing page for 3 offers and testing them all, I tested multiple pages with this one offer, put more focus on ad copy, and tested a couple different offers. Just focusing hard on ad copy alone, my cost per conversion is about $7 lower and my CTR is almost double. This makes clicks cheaper, quality score rise, and more profit. Then I have the product I’m working on that I’m pretty much outsourcing all the work to, so my work comes in just managing it and planning everything.

Getting a grip.
I had to realize that just because I’m glum from being dumped doesn’t mean that life wouldn’t pause with me as well. My house needed to be maintained, I still had bills, and an employee to pay. I already have enough money saved up for quite a few years of that, but when you have a $100 profit month, it still scares you. And I know a bunch of big guys that have plenty of money, but when their biggest stuff starts to dry out, they get worried too…it’s just natural.

Burning and cremating the dead horses. Sure other things out there make a lot of money and other affiliates are doing insane things with them. It was a dead horse for me and instead of going back and trying to bring it back alive, I just burned the horse and spread it’s ashes in the sea. I stopped worrying about what I could be making with these offers, and started accepting what I did make with them. Doing this allowed me to just focus on 1 main offer, which has been paying off great.

Haven’t really posted in a while and just wanted to let you guys know that nobody is invincible, and you really can go from everything, to nothing, back to everything in 1 month. Pretty crazy.


33 Comments

  1. December 10, 2008

    Keep your head homie. We all have bad months, a few months ago I made like $35 in a month after spending close to $10k. These times are usually the best learning experiences.

  2. Gee
    December 11, 2008

    I don’t see why you should be worried Paul. Profits for you wil jump back up.

  3. Stacey
    December 11, 2008

    yeah he sucked

  4. Stacey
    December 11, 2008

    yeah brush the dirty off your knees from suckin dick

  5. December 12, 2008

    I guess everyone has the same experience once, eh ? I still remember the early months when I start this CPA thing – sad but true ! A pure story, yet truly inspiring Paul :)

  6. December 12, 2008

    Sorry to hear about the break-up. Personal problems can really have a terrible effect on business. Hopefully you banked a lot of money to get your through the slow months! I’m sure you will turn it around though.

  7. ben
    December 13, 2008

    pretty much : ]

  8. December 14, 2008

    Damn dude….you were having some stellar months. I mean, anything affiliate be it Whitehat or Blackhat is a really risky venture. Best of luck next month

  9. Anon
    December 16, 2008

    Really excellent post, well done. Very rare to get insights like this. Thx.

  10. December 17, 2008

    hello bro
    its good to show us your “bad month”..it realized us in every business has their potential to breakdown..even affiliate program
    good luck bro~
    =)

  11. December 17, 2008

    Im sure your focus became centered on your ex and not your business. Before you know it you will be dating someone else and you will completely forget about your ex.

  12. December 18, 2008

    Nice post wanna try this out

  13. December 20, 2008

    Great welll done mate, that is quite good actualy :D

  14. December 27, 2008

    For a guy your age you are pretty sharp. In the sense that you can self analyze..very introspective This means you will always bounce even when the odds are stacked against you. What really got you was the worry and anxiety caused by the broken relationship. Your soul kind of died in sense and you couldn’t care about anything and just lost focus of what you where doing ..bet you did even track and optimize your campaigns during this period.

    But congratulations for searching within yourself and honestly sharing with others. All the best .

  15. December 28, 2008

    Stumbled on this just now and thought I would share with you to help sort your girlfriend problems out . Check it out might help: http://www.betternetworker.com/articles/overcoming-your-greatest-fear

  16. December 30, 2008

    Dear Paul,

    I am dead new to the Clickbank/PPC game. I only heard of it yesterday and started researching today. So this blog of yours is one of the first things I have read. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. It puts things in context a bit, has given me some ideas about the pitfalls and some guidance for the future.

    Many thanks :)

    Caroline

  17. December 31, 2008

    I dream of such profits one day. Well Done!

  18. December 31, 2008

    Great post. This will inspire us to achieve such success.

  19. December 31, 2008

    I came across this from Linda’s forum and I am gob smacked

    Your history is one that inspired me to try harder

    Having said that, this is still motivation. Some months will be lean

    It also goes to show that affiliate marketing is not about building a site and forgetting about it. We need to work on each and every website on a regular basis

    Thanks for your honesty

  20. January 4, 2009

    You are absolutely right about focusing on 1 or 2 projects at a time. In most cases, quality, not quantity triumps and this requires lots of dedication and most importantly, patience. Good job.

  21. elegion
    January 7, 2009

    Gee you have to double meta refresh your offers or blank the referrer after the visitor clicks on your landing page to go to the advertiser’s offer , that’s the reason why the advertiser stole your landing page and your keywords; you left everything open for them to see. If you had done that you’d still be making that 100k perday, and now if you keep un-blanking your refs it will happen to you again with another advertiser. Go to blackhatworld.com , they’ll teach you how to protect your self. They also have the double meta refresh script.

  22. January 8, 2009

    Damn, sucks. I’d die if I lost that much, lol. Inspirational post though.

  23. January 9, 2009

    take heart men, i went from making about $2000 monthly through adsense and amazon to making about $800 as I lost ranking on my major site :(

    The tide will turn and the best part of your post is that you understand what you did wrong and can remedy it.. Good luck.

  24. January 18, 2009

    Last month I only profited about $200, but i have started my new blog so im hoping that brings in some side revenue.

  25. January 22, 2009

    Amazing post! It has a lot of moral for those who are not earning from internet. Thanks!

  26. January 25, 2009

    Paul!

    You have not posted in a while! Whats up?

  27. January 26, 2009

    Hopefully next month will be better. At least lessons were learned. That’s priceless.

  28. March 3, 2009

    how’s your profit for February. Like you said, perhaps this year’s buying power be reduced aLOT.

  29. Yiannis
    March 31, 2009

    Today I am coming back to read this post again, it is give me different feel,because i am in this shoes. i read this post 2 months ago when my campaign was runing good. In several days, the campaign suddenly had a sky diving. As Paul mentioned, “when their biggest stuff starts to dry out, they get worried too…it’s just natural.” work,work,work….

  30. November 20, 2009

    At least your making a profit. There are a lot of starving bloggers out there.

  31. November 20, 2009

    It’s a roller coaster, they go up and down. the current economy doesn’t help much.

  32. November 20, 2009

    Good luck next month!

  33. December 25, 2009

    Thanks for this post! It is nice to get some honest feedback from an affiliate marketer when times are tough

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