$10,000.

How many people can say they've generated that much revenue in one day? Not many. In fact, you might not even believe people make that much or anything close in the affiliate marketing business on a daily basis. You'd be wrong, but you are entitled to your opinion. Your next logical question should be something along the lines of "well, Scott, how do you know?" Let's just say I know from experience that it's achievable and maintainable, but achieving that much revenue every day isn't the problem.

The problem is keeping it.

Depending on a lot of variables that I won't touch on right now, your profit margin for these types of sales can be anywhere from 15-50%+ if you do it right. While that might sound, taste and even smell like what you might imagine a million dollars would, think again.

What most seasoned affiliate marketers know and what many of the greener affiliates are starting to realize is that profit is never cut and dry in this business. Sure, you might profit $5,000 out of that $10,000 but where are you going to get the money to maintain your sales the next day? What about growth? What about variations in your profit margin? What about unforeseen expenses and things of that nature? Yes, it can be confusing. It's expensive.

Despite your large buffer of money, you always need more money to spend on ads the next day, and the next day, and the next day. This is a never-ending cycle that's hard to break free from. Don't get me wrong, you'll start building up a nice chunk in the bank account but it won't be what you expect. And all because for the business to work, you have to keep re-investing in the business on a daily basis. PPC (pay per click) is certainly not free.

Some people might be satisfied with a business like this despite the aforementioned drawbacks but if you're like me, you like to fix what isn't broken.

What if you could go from that 15-50%+ profit margin and take it up to about 95%+? Would you do it? I certainly would. And as I was doing it, I would tell other people about it in my blog. Not that it's some big secret, but it definitely needs to be discussed and utilized.

You guessed it. I'm talking about the golden goose, the holy grail, the cat's pajamas: organic traffic.

Now before you angrily hit the back button on your browser and talk about how much of a hack that Scott guy is, just bear with me. The people with the most successful affiliate marketing campaigns are doing three key things to be successful:

1. Bidding on short-tail, high-volume keywords
2. Paying much less than you per click
3. Getting paid more than you per lead/sale

I know; it's enough to make you want to curl up into the fetal position and cry. It's not impossible to out-do these guys, but it's going to cost you.

Here's the good news: you don't have to out-do them on pay per click if you can rank for the same keywords organically. Sure, it's a no-brainer but have you seriously considered it? If you ranked in the top ten results for a short-tail keyword or two and funneled that into your same marketing campaign, your profit margin would go from measly to grizzly.

In fact, if you're already sending PPC traffic to a website, you're already getting ranked organically for those terms. Now if you start getting other people to backlink to your site, you're going to start climbing the search result ranks. After a while, you can start diverting your direct marketing campaign money (PPC) toward getting more and more back-links. At some point, you're going to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000-10,000+ backlinks and at least a few of those will be from authority links. Eventually, you can cut off your PPC spending altogether if you so choose.

Of course, at this point you'd be fully maintaining a website full of high-quality information and resources with a nice marketing funnel. Google would love you, Yahoo would love you and even I would love you. And you would love your profit margin.

Now whether all of this is 100% accurate is still up for debate. Call it another case study I'm doing, but I'm definitely gunning for some short-tail keywords with a couple of my landing page sites. If it fails, it fails and I'll definitely let you know (after a reasonable period of self-pity and self-loathing), but if it works, you'll definitely be the first to know.

Stay tuned.

Popularity: 6% [?]

As promised, I ran a one-month case study on a particular offer. In fact, it was this particular offer-

Consumer Incentive Promotions - $250 Grocery Gift Card - ZIP SUBMIT

This is offer #553 from NeverblueAds.

Here are the final stats for sales-

CPL: $1.20
Clicks: 9,689
Conversions: 2,228

Total Sales: $2,673.60

Advertising was done solely with Google AdWords on the content network to keep the study simple.

Here are the final stats for ads-

Starting bid: $0.50/click (Beginning of study)
Ending bid: $0.35/click (End of study)
Average CPC: $0.24 (Overall)
Average Ad Position: 3.3
Total Clicks: 7443
Total Impressions: 7,005,653
CTR: 0.11%

Total Spend: $1,758.60

And the ending total-

$2,673.60 - $1,758.60 = $915.00

And for the gritty details, here is the ad I ran:

Grocery Content Ad

As you can see, there's nothing amazing about the ad and the URL itself is a redirect. With a little updating, this ad can be improved significantly to increase the low CTR and increase the honesty factor of the ad (as it was slightly misleading).

Keywords: food stamp, food stamps, recipe, recipes

Popularity: 54% [?]

What is it that separates you from success? It's not for a lack of trying, that's for sure.

Like many, you've probably been beating your head against a wall for quite some time now. You've got dark circles under your eyes from lack of sleep and like a drug addict, you can't wait until your next fix. You live from sale to sale and that's why you'll never get ahead.

If there's one message I've been preaching since I started ATB, it's that you should use your traffic to its fullest extent.

That doesn't mean terrorizing each user you get with an insane display of crack-pot ads and pop-unders for them to see later. It definitely doesn't mean pop-up messages when they leave your site. What it means is this: if you pay a search engine to send a click your way, you should find multiple ways of using that single click not just to push sales but to create potential sales.

Potential sales are sales that haven't happened yet. They're sales that neither you, nor your customer know will happen. But given the right opportunity, they're almost guaranteed to happen.

Here's why.

A few years ago, I had a job as a store salesman. To train us for the position, our instructors told us that there is no such thing as "I'm just browsing." They drilled that into our heads because they wanted us to believe that no matter what, a sale had to happen. If a customer walked into our isle with that curious look but says "I'm just browsing," that's when we started really "helping" them because to us, "I'm just browsing" means "I want to buy but something is standing in the way." Usually, that something was either that they had no idea what they needed or .. their wife.

The funny part is, whether browsing in a store or browsing the web, you're usually facing the same obstacles. That's why it's important to keep the same determination in mind when selling to eyes on a web page.

Of course, you're no dummy. You are fully aware that some people are literally just curious to see what's on your site. Your competitors will look, they might even have a mean streak and click on your expensive ads. It just comes with the territory. In fact, it's all the more reason to work on your squeeze.

There are several mainstream ways to go about squeezing sales out of your customers after that initial click:

• Collecting Emails - I won't go into it again but suffice it to say, it's absolutely necessary. If you aren't doing this, you aren't serious about making money.
• Offering Similar Products - If you've ever spent ten minutes browsing through Amazon.com, you'll notice they'll always tell you what else customers bought when they purchased the particular item you're looking at. That's because they know it increases the likelihood that you'll buy it on impulse. Think about it.
• Building Your Organic Rank - That's right. Keep your customers coming back to a site they can actually use and link to. You give your customers something to talk about and suddenly, you won't have to pay so much for people to click your ads because they'll be coming on their own and bringing their friends.
• Offering Free Things - As long as the free things you're offering are of some use, people will typically come back. They'll say "where did I find that one thing? Oh yeah!" and suddenly, your customer has returned. And that means a chance for more money.
• Updated Content - Regarding 'free things', if that same customer comes back and sees updated content they're more likely to see what else is happening on the site just because they're curious. If you get people to subscribe to an RSS feed that's attached to the blog that's attached to your landing page, then you'll have a full list of people that you can actually give information to. Just make sure it's decent information and hopefully information they can't get elsewhere.

I could think of more, but I just wanted to get you thinking about what else you should be thinking about when you're building your landing pages. This sort of determined frame of mind will lead to more sales and less sales withdrawals (those periods of depression and insecurity you feel between sales).

So take a step back, take a good look at your sites and think: am I doing all I can do to squeeze my customers?

Just don't squeeze too hard.

Popularity: 4% [?]

That title was my attempt at humor, but seriously- it took Hostgator a long time to get with the program and make WordPress 2.5 available for Fantastico.

I must say, though -- it was worth the wait. There are a few new features I really like, but since I'm so behind the times, I won't bother mentioning them.

Instead, I'll give you an update on my life at current-

First, if you'd like to know what's been keeping me so busy, I've been working on a couple of Facebook applications. One of them is out (the first version anyway) and it's called Blobs (click to add this application).

This app is far less complex than the other but still makes me happy. The gist is that you get to upgrade your blob to battle other blobs in hopes that you can be the best amongst your friends. The affiliate marketing angle (duh, of course) is generally the same as other games. To get gold, you fill out offers. Easy enough.

Second, I started exercising more. I've been riding a bike to work and I'm pretty happy about that. The only down-side is that I'm riding a cruiser bike for now, until I do some research and find a decent road bike. The upside to riding a cruiser like any other bike is that I depend solely on my leg muscles and they burn more often. Needless to say, I highly recommend riding a bike instead of driving a car (if you're able); it saves money and keeps you fitter.

Anyway, so I'm devoting more time to those things. Meanwhile, I have my campaigns on a sort of auto-pilot for now. I use the term auto-pilot loosely, as I check them daily and make small adjustments here and there. But for the most part, they're running strong by themselves.

I'll be writing more posts soon, so stay tuned.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Man am I lazy lately. And rightfully so. Things are going well with the biz and things are highly busy at work, so I'm procrastinating a bit with blog posts.

It's not without pain though. My Alexa ranking just jumped up to 126,038. Ouch. That means a bunch of people stopped visiting that normally do. My bad.

Don't worry, I'll get my second wind soon.

In other news, my research with the offer I'm going to divulge to you is going well. I say 'research' like I'm out in the field with binoculars, but that's hardly what I'm doing. I'm just letting the ads run and tweaking them to see what works best.

I'll post on it soon.

Scott

Popularity: 7% [?]

So like I was saying, lately I've been testing the content network out on a few campaigns. And to my surprise, the profit margin isn't actually that bad. I mean, I'm not unhappy with any profit margin but so far, it's been around 25% for the ones I've been running.

What does that mean for you? Keep an eye out, because I'm going to be telling you what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. That's right, boys and girls. I've been conducting this experiment for you people.

Why? Because I like you and because there's plenty of love (money) to go around on this one. So keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for my how-to post on content-based campaigns. It's going to rock your socks, my newbie friends.

Anyway,  I'm pretty happy about all this because I can afford to pump some decent money into these little offers before I hand them over to you fine people.

For now, I'll see how they scale.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Lately, my peeve has been people who are ruining the good image of internet marketers. Everyone knows we are a highly respected bunch. Hey, I kid, I kid.

But seriously -- as far as internet marketing goes, the people who want to "get rich quick" make the rest of us look even worse. So my advice to you is: put some effort into it.

I'd venture to guess that most of those who just throw up some crappy site in hopes of  wrangling in some extra bucks don't end up making the kind of money that people like my friends and I do. That's because they end up getting Google Slapped or some business like that or their site gets swiped because it's so simple.

And the worst part about it- in the past, it's caused Google to crack down on sites that are low in quality or even slightly low in quality. A good analogy would be to relate it to the real estate market. One site goes down and because that was closely related to another, the sites around it get penalized for having similar qualities, even if they are technically within guidelines.

My point is simple: create quality and you most likely won't get slapped. The side benefit is that your minimum bids will get lowered for more competitive terms and you'll be able to compete with the big boys.

To create quality, I recommend writing articles or having articles written for you on the topic you're marketing. Additionally, you should provide a contact page and ideally, a blog to house the aforementioned articles. (Note: You may want to turn comments off). This will get your site indexed a little more thoroughly. On top of that, it's good to have things like a terms of service document as well as a privacy notice (if you collect information). This will help in a few ways: Google likes sites with more pages, Users trust sites with more pages and it's just a better way of doing business.

Remember: it is an actual business, so things like this matter.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Hey boys and girls, the numbers are in for last month and they are looking delicious.

• Affiliate Sales - $100.00
• Google AdSense - $49.98
• Private Ad Sales - $22.56
• Aweber Signups - $7.98
• Referrals - $6.42
• Adtoll - $2.59
• Amazon Book Commission - $0.08

For a grand total of $189.61!

Looks like I can quit my job and buy a mansion. No, but seriously .. this month has been a good one despite the recent sparsity of posts. One thing you'll notice is that we more than tripled last month's total -- AGAIN. That's right, baby.

This just goes to show -- if you stay dedicated and push through the low times, your work can start to pay off. Also, it shows that John Chow is right when he says you don't necessarily need a ton of traffic to increase revenue, you just need to monetize the traffic you already have.

And here's the graph you've grown to love-

FusionCharts Graph

Fantastic.

Scott

Popularity: 6% [?]

Well, I'm 25 now. Yesterday was my quarter-century mark and I am realizing how little time I've had for this blog in the past couple weeks and it's annoying the hell out of me, so I thought I'd post.

Lately, what's been on my mind has been the B.S. posts that people keep spewing out to keep people interested (you know who you are). Those posts aren't fooling anyone. They're trite and boring.

So let's cut straight to the chase with this one. What people ask most often .. the number one question .. the big cheese of questions is: how do I choose offers? Well, how about I choose for you? That's right, for those of you just getting started, I'm just going to pick an offer I'm trying right now or that I have tried and I will tell you all about it. Sure, it might get a bit more saturated as a result, you might have even tried it already, but remember- my intentions are to benefit you. My only catch is that I want you to report when you try it, if you do, and let us know how you're doing. It helps inspire people and plus, I get more comments that way which makes me happy inside.

Beach Bum Systems (2236 on Neverblue)
I've been running this for a long while now using email to promote it. I recommend you do the same. The conversion rate is above 1% and, as I always say, e-mail conversions are free after you've paid the first time. So take advantage. The best crowd this converts for (for me) is the make-money-online crowd but you might try another angle.

Anyway, let me know how it works out if you do try it or even if you have tried it.  Good luck.

Popularity: 5% [?]

If you watched 60 Minutes the other night, you probably saw the clip on sleep. The gist of it was that not getting enough sleep can lead to several known issues: overeating, decreased mental agility, decreased response time, decreased sexual appetite and more.

So it made me think of my current situation. Sure, I make a decent amount with internet marketing but we're never satisfied, are we?

I asked several friends how much sleep they get on average per night and here's what they said-

Wes Mahler: ~8 Hours
UberAffiliate: ~7 Hours
Jonathan Volk: ~7 Hours
Brandon Hopkins: ~7 Hours
Steven Truong: ~5 Hours
Me: ~6 Hours

You've seen these guys. They're doing pretty well for themselves and, as you can see, they get at least seven hours of sleep each night.

Then there's me. I get around 6 Hours per night and that's been pretty constant for the last few years. Coincidentally, for the last few years, I've put on some extra pounds. Seriously, I used to be around 170 and lean; now I'm 190 and rounder. As I said, yeah- I make decent money but think of how much more I could be making if I was firing on all pistons. The same goes for you. If you aren't getting enough sleep per night, you might want to reconsider.

If you do a search on this topic, you'll find some interesting stuff. If you want to read up, just do a search on 'sleep and weight gain.' Among the first results, you'll find this article by Colette Bouchez titled The Dream Diet: Losing Weight While You Sleep. Here's the interesting part:

...have you ever experienced a sleepless night followed by a day when no matter what you ate you never felt full or satisfied? If so, then you have experienced the workings of leptin and ghrelin.

How Hormones Affect Your Sleep

Leptin and ghrelin work in a kind of "checks and balances" system to control feelings of hunger and fullness, explains Michael Breus, PhD, a faculty member of the Atlanta School of Sleep Medicine and director of The Sleep Disorders Centers of Southeastern Lung Care in Atlanta. Ghrelin, which is produced in the gastrointestinal tract, stimulates appetite, while leptin, produced in fat cells, sends a signal to the brain when you are full.

So what's the connection to sleep? "When you don't get enough sleep, it drives leptin levels down, which means you don't feel as satisfied after you eat. Lack of sleep also causes ghrelin levels to rise, which means your appetite is stimulated, so you want more food," Breus tells WebMD.

The two combined, he says, can set the stage for overeating, which in turn may lead to weight gain.

This alone kind of shocked me. I mean, it makes sense but it explained a lot about my current state.

Like many other Americans, I was fooling myself into thinking longer days would lead to more work. In reality, I probably got less done and with decreased quality than if I were bright-eyed and bushy tailed from a good night's sleep.

Now I'm not blaming a bad diet or bad work ethic on not getting enough sleep. But I am saying it can contribute to these limiting factors. And when it comes to your business, you should do everything you can to make it work more efficiently and profit more. If that means getting your 7-8 hours/night, then so be it. And who doesn't want to sleep more? Sleep is amazing.

Personally, I jumped on the sleep train last night at around 10PM just to get a jump start on this experiment. The experiment being: whether an increased amount of sleep will lead to an increase in productivity and money in general. I must admit, I do feel much better today than I normally do but that could be placebo. I'll have to see how it goes over the next few weeks.

If I didn't mention you in the post, please feel free to comment on how many hours you get per night. I'm sure it would be interesting to know.

Popularity: 7% [?]