Affiliate Musketeer

Last month I earned £550 commission from one of my sites through Commission Junction.  I spent £200 on Google AdWords to make this money.  Obviously that means that particular campaign made £350 gross profit.  Now when I setup affiliate marketing campaigns, I like to try and keep them all distinct and transparent but this month dug myself a very big hole.  Basically, due to very poor cash flow management and budgeting, I’ve totally messed up this month’s campaign.  Although I made £550 in commission last month, my AdWords bill for that campaign came in BEFORE my commission was paid into my account.  What this means is that since September the 5th, I have been unable to run AdWords ads for this campaign because the cash was unavailable for Google!

Commission Junction pay out on the 20th of every month, so I won’t actually receive that chunk of commission until then!  What that means in practice is that from the 5th September to about the 21st, (16 days!!), my highly profitable campaign is a sitting duck!  I have an extremely well performing PPC Campaign with practically 10/10 quality scores across the board (see one of my articles on how I did that here), I’m whipping the competition with really high CTRs and I have a product that is selling like hotcakes but I’ve been an utter plonker by utilising my full budget last month and being careless with a few other purchases which has left me totally stuck.

I now have to wait until the Commission comes into my account from CJ before I can pay Google and turn my campaign back on!  Doh!

So the moral of this little story is before any campaign, always check your payment dates and budget.  Check your cash flow because it is vital.  Before you treat yourself with that chunk of commission, make sure you’ve paid your immediate suppliers!