Just made my first $50 of affiliate income

by Capitalist_Pig

Posted: 13 years ago 23 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

I launched a single-page testimonial site about three weeks ago, and I logged on tonight to find my LinkConnector account sitting at $50!

When I started on this, I was planning on getting a CTR of 15% on my page, and a conversion rate of 50% once the user hit the merchant's site. Those estimates have proven to be very, very high.

My actual CTR has been 6.80%, and my conversion rate has been 10.26%.

The biggest thing I've learned is that all traffic is not equal. I'm selling toll-free VOIP phone service, and targeting small business owners. Traffic from here (WarriorForum) has a very very low CTR (about 2%), and a negligible conversion rate. Meanwhile, I've been posting to a small business forum with my site in my signature - that traffic, while much lower volume, has a over a 70% CTR rate when they hit my site. 80% of my income has come from this source, which makes up less than 10% of the traffic to my site.

Now that I have some stats to work with, I also see that PPC isn't going to cut it for this. I'd need traffic at $.087 per click just to break even - that's not going to happen.

Finally, I'm hoping SEO will eventually make this site passive. I'm having a hard time ranking it, which I assume is because it is pretty thin in Google's eyes - just a single page on the domain. My next experiment will be using dynamically-generated pages to present 100 or more pages to Google, each targeting a very specific keyword on-page.

In conclusion - IM hasn't made me a millionaire yet, or even let me quit my job... but I'm starting to see the path that will lead to the latter, and maybe even the former in time.

#$50 #affiliate #income #made

paulie888 13 years ago

Congratulations on making your first $50 online! You're absolutely right about the traffic. Not all traffic is created equal, and some sources may convert far better than others.

The key here is not to speculate or presuppose anything - the only way you're really going to know for sure is by split testing these separate traffic sources so that you have hard data on them. Once you've found the best source of traffic for your offer, you then start doing everything you can to ramp it up and maximize revenue.

Paul
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Rory Singh

13 years ago

Congratulations! Over 90 percent of the people who get in to this industry get out just as fast when they learn that there is real work involved. Good for you. If you can make $50, you can make $500, $5,000 or even $50K depending on how far you go.

This forum will help you get traffic however, the people on it are most likely looking for ways to build their own IM sites. You are promoting VOIP services that will naturally be more of interest to existing business owners. So yes, not all traffic is equal.

If quitting your job is your primary target, find out how much income you will need to do this and make it your income goal. When you finally hit it, do it for at least 3 consecutive months before quitting your job.

When you have a sound business plan in place and an income (your job) coming in as leverage, the financial strain is lifted since your bills will be taken care of and your success will come quicker.

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Capitalist_Pig

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Rory Singh

I never thought I would have this issue, but one problem I face with my goal is that I make good money at my day job. By the time I factor in health insurance, self-employment taxes, and all of the other overhead I'll be incurring at that point, I'll need at least $5,000 per month to go full-time - and that's assuming a modest reduction in standard of living.

Still, that's only 100 time what I've done so far. I have no reason to believe that the site will stop making money at the pace it has so far - so even assuming that my methods never improve, and I do nothing but duplicate this level of success, I'll be there in about 6 years.

But yes, you're right -- it would be foolhardy to quit a job because you made money one month online. A quarter is the minimum I'd consider counting on - a full year of consistent growth would make me feel much better.

I have also considered stepping down into a part-time salaried position, to ease the transition. I'll cross that bridge when I get there though - right now, I just need to build more sites

Thanks

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mike gregory 13 years ago

Congratulations on the first sale!! without doubt the best feeling is always that first sale
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lotsofsnow

13 years ago

Make sure that you capture the names before you send them to the merchant. Otherwise you are not building a business, you are just helping to build the merchants business.

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Capitalist_Pig

13 years ago

Originally Posted by hpgoodboy

Make sure that you capture the names before you send them to the merchant. Otherwise you are not building a business, you are just helping to build the merchants business.

I disagree.

While I certainly see the value in listbuilding, that's not the purpose of this site. The asset I am building is not in the list, or in the profit potential of the site, but in the knowledge I'm gaining and the processes I'm building to research, build, deploy, and optimize this type of site.

This is all about (to me) removing as many barriers as possible between my visitors and my merchant's checkout - or in this case, lead form. Having them enter their details on my end would just be one more layer in the funnel.

I never work on one project at a time - I'm building my first list now too, but with an authority site that I'm developing with some colleagues. You can see it at Shooters' Journal | For the new generation of gun owners.

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Fazal Mayar 13 years ago

congrats, the first sale is an historical one that we will always remember right? Lets hope its the first to many.
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- Capitalist_Pig 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Fazal Mayar
  
  congrats, the first sale is an historical one that we will always remember right? Lets hope its the first to many.
  
  Thanks
  
  The way this program is structured, $50 took 4 leads, one of which converted to a sale. The leads will either drop or convert to sales over the next 30 days - I get another $20 each if they convert to sales, so my work to date has a potential value of $110.
  
  You're right though - that first sale was a rush. I got it on my birthday too, which I'm taking as an omen!
  
  Thanks
  
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jonat2005 13 years ago

Hey Capitalist...i concor with you, because sometimes, it may be more stressful for a visitor to fill the form than to have gone through the contents of the page and make a buying decision.
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faysal969 13 years ago

Congratulation for your first sale. This is the best feeling for any Affiliate publisher. Hope your great success.
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O0o0O 13 years ago

Those are some great stats. At the same time 4 leads for 1 sale might be a premature conclusion. You might have to make about 20 sales until you're able to settle on a more accurate conversion ratio. It would also be a good idea to split test your other guns website with a few lead capture forms to see which ones work best.
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Soozi 13 years ago

Congratulations on your first sale, it's an awesome feeling
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mcmillad 13 years ago

Keep testing. That is the most important part of this. Always learn from your mistakes. Congratulations on your success.
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Jermaine Tabor 13 years ago

Congrats on making your 1'st $50.00 aff commission!!!
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janekk 13 years ago

Congratulation man
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Ash R 13 years ago

Great to hear about your first success.

Remember, the way to take this bigger is to identify what worked and scale that up massively. You say 10% of your traffic came from the small business forum - where did the rest of your traffic come from? Sorry if I've missed it.

Seems like you've really honed in on the forum traffic method, why not see if you can take that bigger rather than trying seo?
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Online Ninja 13 years ago

Congrats Bro ... this is your learning process and keep testing different stuff .... so you know exactly what's working and what's not ...
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Agron 13 years ago

Nice work, keep up the work...I'll look at your service (bookmarked) and see if I want it The current 1800 number provider for my companies charges wayyyy too much.
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Point Blank 13 years ago

Well done m8, feels great doesn't it?
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- stesnees 13 years ago
  
  Congratulations on your first sale mate, good feeling eh?!
  
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moneyninja 13 years ago

Congrats. I was so happy when I sold my first amazon affiliate item even though the commission was like $0.34. It is exhilerating!

Keep at it!
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cupul89 13 years ago

congrat Cap very good for beginner!
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MajorPsycho 13 years ago

Congrats! Keep up the good work
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Just made my first $50 of affiliate income

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