The Highs And Lows Of Affiliate Marketing

by Bryn Youngblut on February 9, 2011

I just found this post I wrote a few months back I never published, anyway I just read it and it’s a good read so I figured I would post it.

Remember the first time you “hit it big”? Let’s say your goal was to make $100 a day (that’s a fair enough starting goal for anyone). The day you hit that number and exceed it was probably one of the most exciting days of your life. Not because of the amount, but because of the validation you got from it. The fact that you proved to yourself that it is possible to make enough money to live on is amazing in its own right.

After a few days or weeks of achieving your $100/day goal you decide to increase it, let’s say you stay modest and move up to $250/day. Having goals is good, if you don’t have goals to work towards it’s very likely you won’t get far.

Eventually you hit your new goal and move up to $500/day. Now things are starting to look really good. Party time? Not yet, we got sales to increase.

A week later sales are increasing and you decide 500 is weak, you jump to $1000/day as your new goal. Dam things are looking real good now. A month ago you were at a measly $100/day, now were doing that in a matter of hours. See a pattern yet?

A week or two later you hit your $1000/day goal and decide it’s time to go big, you raise your goal to $5k/day. Sounds crazy at this point right? Well maybe, but maybe not.

Three weeks later you hit your $5k/day goal. Party time! Everything is awesome right? You are now making more money than you could have ever dreamed before. You are still not satisfied.

You set your new goal at $10k/day.

Sales are good and slowly increasing…when all of a sudden, BAM. The advertiser decided they don’t like your traffic anymore. You panic. You try to find other offers to replace it but nothing can compare and now you are losing money.

Your sales slump so low you are now losing money and have to pause the campaign. You are now making $0/day. Well this kinda sucks.

I know this particular scenario (maybe not in the exact way or figures) has happened to many people, myself included. Although it sucks, this type of thing happens to people every day. The ones who prosper are the ones who learn from it.

You need to look back at everything and try to figure out what happened. Why did the advertiser cut me off? There could be a ton of reasons why:

  • Did you start sending shady or lower quality traffic to increase overall sales?
  • Did you change your marketing practices (ads or landing page) in a way that might drive lower quality traffic?
  • Did you start washing in unapproved traffic sources?

Regardless of what the reason is, you obviously started out great but as you progress and strive to increase traffic, greed can sometimes get in the way.

What you need to focus on is the long term. If you don’t provide quality and think about the advertiser you will never last.

It took me a long time to actually realize this. Years ago when I was first starting out I didn’t even think twice about what an advertisers needs were. All I knew was that I could send them traffic and get paid more money for it than I had spent. If they cut me off, I can just move to another advertiser and do the same thing, etc. This isn’t how a long term business works. If you are serious about this industry and want to last you need to start thinking long term.

I’ve been more on the advertiser side of things for about a year now and have learned a ton I never knew about this side of the business, and I still have a shit load to learn. The main thing I did learn though has to do with quality. If the affiliates and the networks aren’t all thinking about the quality then the relationships will not last.

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Dukeo February 9, 2011 at 11:45 am

A lot of affiliates are in this business for the quick buck and not thinking at all for the long term. The more planning and long-term thinking you do, the longer your business will last…

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2 Temple February 10, 2011 at 5:53 am

This is a great post and is indeed 100% true, once someone gets their first campaign going they’re blinded by the profits to worry about the advertiser pulling out, I fell into this problem. I’ve read posts on this topic before and was blinded to it’s advice when I seen profits coming in, I think every affiliate needs to experience this scenario for themselves to truly be cautionary to it with future campaigns.

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3 Dre February 10, 2011 at 5:45 pm

This is totally true! It suck’s having a campaign so scaled up to the point where its unbelievable profitable and just have it taken from you in one day. It sucks, buts it’s all the more reason for you to deliver high quality leads to your advertisers, they need to make money too!

-Dre

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4 Ben February 12, 2011 at 11:45 am

Thanks for the post Bryn. I remember those days like it was yesterday. Affiliate marketing can be a tough business at times and there is always the possibility of things going bad quickly. It’s happened to all of us. I’ve been a long-term planner and throughout my career I’ve always made a point diversify. The more you focus on diversification, the less likely you’ll be suffer when that one Advertisers cuts you from their offer. When one offer is successful, don’t quit. Instead, find another opportunity with a new Advertiser or even in a new niche.

Best of Luck!

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5 ImagesAndWords February 12, 2011 at 2:09 pm

Good post Bryn. This is one of those things in life that you can’t teach people by telling them ahead of time. Good times always will overshadow any warning of bad news. “nah…that stuff only happens to other people…not me”. The only way to truly learn this is to feel the pain from it.

Also – this reminds me again about the book “Who Moved My Cheese?” It’s a short, good little book about how we as humans can better learn to adapt to sudden changes. Learn how things that seem unexpected might not have been so unexpected if we had paid better attention and stay prepared no matter what.

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6 groomez February 22, 2011 at 11:03 am

It’s the highs and lows that separate the ones that stay in the business and those that call it quits after hitting rock bottom. That, to me, is the biggest mental obstacle in affiliate marketing.

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