As you know, I gave myself a target in January to double January’s earnings from affiliate marketing. To summarise, I started one new site in January and turned on a PPC campaign for a previously successful campaign. I made a gross proit in January from affiliate marketing of £150 and you can see the full break down of how I did that in this post. Did I achieve my goals in February?
OK, in February I started a new site over at this url. I have posted fairly regularly about how this site was set up and how it’s doing in my affiliate marketing series here. I also turned on an old PPC campaign that I hadn’t had enough money to run since September last year. I made a few minor tweaks on two other sites such as adding in AdSense and Amazon Associates. My target was to double January’s earnings and here’s how I fared:
Income:
ebay Partner Network: £139.67
Commission Junction: £100.00
AffiliateWindow: £49.07
Amazon Associates: £0.58
USFreeAds: £25.00
Google AdSense: £5.46
Total income: £319.78
Expenditure:
Google AdWords: £108.00
Hosting: £20
Total Expenditure: £128.00
Gross Profit: £191.78
As you can see there’s a huge increase in PPC spending on one of my sites which actually ran at an £8.00 loss for the month. However, the product is entering high season come the spring so I’m confident that getting cookies onto user’s computers will come to fruition next month. I also think it will be useful moving forward to be able to trend the entire campaign over a full year and thus identify troughs and peaks in earnings for this particular site.
My new site didn’t perform well at all. I have made a commitment to this site however and still have high hopes for it. It is still very early days yet so I’m not prepared to give up just yet. I am concentrating on two key sites, the Bar Stools UK site being one of them, and will continue to add content and build links and try and generate organic traffic. I have been through the figures and my simple calculations do not justify any PPC spend on this site so all the resource time should be put into SEO.
The organic traffic trend for the month is attached below:
As you can see the trend is upward, albeit very slow but I’d expect this. Traffic is all organic and is being driven purely by organic rankings. See below for a list of the top 50 keywords for the month:
bar stools uk
z bar stool
matilda bar stool
z bar stools
john lewis bar stools
tivoli bar stools
matilda bar chair brown
bombo bar stool
matilda bar chair
matilda stool
retro bar stools
assembly instructions for bombo bar stool
jack bar stool
mathilda bar stools
mathilda gas lift stool
ruby red bar stools
sam bar stools
(breakfast,bar) (stool,chair,seat) folding
4 square coloured plastic bar stool
71cm bar stool faux leather
85cm high bar stool
abs kitchen stools
abs modern silver barstool
aero flower stool
bar stool manufacturers
bar stool star feet
bar stool uk buy with back blue
bar stools bombo leather
bar stools bonded seat
bar stools in chrome and faux leather uk
bar stools over 85 cm
bar stools square base
bar sttol matilda
barstoolsuk
bistro bar stool
bistro bar stools
black bar stool sale
black bar stools with sqaure base
black folding bar stools
black wood retro style folding bar stool
blue with back stool uk buy
bombo bar stool copy
bombo bar stools uk
bombo bar stools white
bombo barstool in white
bombo barstool leather brown
bombo black “”bar table”"
bombo stools reviews
brushed steel bar stools
buying stools
I am confident that the site will improve in it’s performance as I tweak the offers. I am of the opinion currently that the prices charged by my merchants for some of the stools are a little high and do not provide real value to my users. It will be my goal for March to source better deals on the products to make them more competitive.
Conclusion
My goal was to increase my earnigns by 100% but I only managed a 62% increase. Whilst this is a little upsetting and maybe even disheartening, I’d be happy with a month on month growth rate of 62% so I mustn’t let this get me down. I shall continue to attempt to double my earnings for March and am therefore looking to increase affiliate revenue to £640 for March without increasing PPC costs. I have high hopes for my PPC campaign moving into March and hopefully the Bar Stools site can chip in with a higher revenue figure too.
Actions for February:
- Build Links to my PPC Site
- Build Links to my Bar Stools site
- Source better merchants for bar stools whose prices are more competitive
- Continue to add content to both sites
- Increase revenue to £640
What do you think? Am I shooting too high? What do you feel about my conversion rate given my apparent highly targeted search referrers…am I under performing?
March 4th, 2010 at 9:40 am
Nice post, I like the detail, very good for us newbies to read stuff like this to give up an idea of what is possible.
From my experiences in AM I am now a pessimist so I’d say you were aiming too high to double your income for next month but don’t listen to me!
Do people actually buy barstools online? I suppose they do as I wouldn’t know where to buy one offline.
March 4th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
I’m a noob too! I’m floundering my way into AM at the moment and asking myself all the questions no doubt you’re asking. The difference, perhaps, is that I’ve actually been doing SEO and PPC for other companies for about 6 years! Now I want to make money for me and not other people so this aspect of things is very new to me.
I’d tend to agree with you on the doubling earnings call, the only challenge I’d put forth is that I am confident that my PPC driven aff site will start to pick up once the weather gets better and I’m hoping that the backlog of cookies on user’s machines will see me well in March. But that could be a fantasy!
As to your question about buying bar stools online…if I were to go off my stats as a guide, I’d say no, they don’t
I just have a gut feeling that they do though and, as you pointed out, most offline bar stool shops only have a limited stock and there’s not that many of them out there to begin with so I hold out good hope for this site, despite it’s weak start out fo the gates.
July 10th, 2010 at 10:31 am
affiliate revenue is much higher than on ppc ads so i signed up at clickbank;”:
August 22nd, 2010 at 11:23 am
affiliate revenue is always higher than ppc revenue that is why i love affiliate marketing*.: