A great potential of internet marketing and affiliate marketing is that you are able to make a lot of money being a “one man show.”  In fact, near the start of my internet marketing career I was working about 8 hours a day and was making very decent money.  I also see this type of stuff written on internet marketing blogs all the time discussing how this is a business that you can make a decent chunk of change with only yourself as an employee.  This is true!

I would like to however encourage you to think about how much more your earning potential would be if you weren’t stuck doing a million meaningless tasks that could easy be done by someone else.  Immediately most of you are jumping to a cost in your head about how much you’d have to pay a full time employee, but I implore you to consider the cost of not having an employee.

Having a person that is able to do all the small repetitive tasks that you must handle each day in this business frees you up to focus on more important tasks thus allowing you to expand your earning potential to peaks you never even dreamed possible.

Want even better news?  You don’t have to pay hundreds a week for a full time employee.  There are countries all over this world where $2 – $3 dollars an hour is a lot of money to them.  In fact, I’m currently working with a girl who is working for me part time (20 hours a week) doing content creation and link building whom I’m paying $50 dollars a week salary.

I have used other people for as long as I can remember to help me handle tasks that took too much of my time away from doing what I’m actually good at doing…  Marketing!

Anyone can create landing pages, design blog themes, website themes, gather keywords, prune data, etc.  It’s those that get (understand) marketing that become great internet marketers, so instead of putting your focus on a billion other things, focus on what you are…a marketer!

Leave the rest of the stuff to those that are good at those things, hire a blog designer, a landing page designer, find some cheap help to create content for your websites, etc.  Everyone talks about all the great benefits about working online, working from anywhere, small start up cost, worldwide audience, etc.

Just don’t forget with a worldwide audience you can find good help at a very affordable price!

Hey guys, I know it has been for freaking ever since I have posted on this blog and well to be honest, I was going to write a post explaining everything, however, I decided that it was just too much to go in to, so instead I decided to just start posting again and act like nothing ever happened!

I have been so busy and have continued to learn so much about affiliate marketing and internet marketing.  I am so appreciative of those that have stayed subscribed to this blog via rss or email and I hope you enjoy this post and that it will help you avoid a mistake I made when starting out working from home.  I plan on writing several posts about mistakes I’ve made over the years of being involved in internet marketing.  How many?  Well, to be honest I don’t know, so we will start at Post One and see how far it goes from there!

So let’s get started!

One of the first mistakes I ever made when it came to affiliate marketing was when I first started out.  Those that have been reading my blog since I started it has most likely read my story several times and know that I immediately found success with my very first affiliate marketing campaign, however, even though I found immediate success, I also ran in to a huge problem.

Success…

Huh?  My first problem was success in affiliate marketing?  Yep, and the reason for this was because I immediately started making $100 dollars a day in profit almost overnight.  I quickly optimized my campaign, and the profit seemed to grow each day beyond my belief!  So what was the problem with that you ask?

Well, believe it or not, I did not prepare for this success and it came at a rough time in my life.  I had been laid off from a steel mill that I was working at and went from making $400 a week to collecting about a $100 a week via unemployment! :/  Needless to say when I started making a $100 a day I got pretty excited.  Instantly my wife and I started going out to eat on an almost every other day schedule, we went out and purchased a brand new car, and started just flat out enjoying the money that was rolling in.

What I should have done however, was reinvest that money back in to my business.  The awesome thing about affiliate marketing is that almost anyone with half a brain can stumble across a campaign that will make you money, however, a downside to this business is that when you are first starting out most people don’t have the knowledge to build a campaign and get it to the point where it consistently brings in revenue for a long period of time!

By taking the money you create and being careful with it and reinvesting it back in your business you ensure that you won’t run in to capital issues when it comes to creating and setting up future campaigns, which is exactly the problem I ran in to!

Because I started spending all the money I was making, when I started my second campaign and it took off like a bat out of hell, I didn’t have the funds to keep it going.  I was spending more money that I had available.  I quickly had to apply for several credit cards and ask friends and family to loan me money.  I was lucky enough to have people in my life that helped me out, however it came at a cost, for the credit cards it wasn’t a huge issue as I just paid them off at the end of each month, but for several of the loans I took I made deals to pay them a fee for allowing me the short term loan.  Whereas if I hadn’t been foolishly wasting my money, I would of been making pure profit from my campaigns.

This post isn’t a huge wake up and smell the coffee type post and to most of you it may seem like common sense.  For me…I got excited and hopefully this post will stop another person from making the same mistake I did!

Make sure you add me to your RSS feed as I’ll be sharing other mistakes I’ve made, some that have cost me thousands of dollars!!!

If you haven’t read the first post about Setting Limits on Distractions I’d suggest you read that first as this post continues that one.

So now that we’ve set hours and we’ve learned how important it is not to use your job as an excuse, the next thing I want to talk about is when you are actually working and how to set limits on things that could distract you while your working.

Email

Email is great! In fact, it’s probably the number one way that I communicate with people I work with…even more so than Social Media or Instant Messaging networks.  While email is great for business and essential, it can become distracting.  If you are anything like myself, I probably get close to fifty emails a day!

I love receiving emails from people and I try to respond to every single one of them, but the bottom line is that I’ve realized I can’t send a paragraph or two email back to every single person that writes to me.  It’s just not possible for me to do it!  There is just too much, so much in fact that I could spend most of the day responding to each one and I’d still keep falling behind!

So how do you do it then?  Well, I don’t really think there is a great way, I think you just have to admit defeat haha!  I try to write back to as many people as possible, and I even have a folder saved on my computer with answers to questions that I get all the time that I can simply copy and paste in to an email and send whenever I get asked that question.

Mostly, I’ve learned to simply hit the delete button on some emails instead of trying to answer them all…

Instant Messaging

This is probably one of the biggest distractions for affiliate marketers or any internet marketer that exists when they are working.

I use to be horrible at this!  I use to have my instant messaging program up all day long while I worked and even if I was just on doing recreational stuff online, I’d have it open.  I’d be chatting with people online all day long everyday!  It was a huge distraction!

Eventually I had to learn to set hours for having IM up, and now I don’t even do that, I only get on for about a hour late in the evening.  The funny thing is you hear people talk about how much networking helps them, and that’s their excuse for keeping their IM programs open, but guess what, I haven’t noticed a drop in revenue since I’ve quit using it…now my friends simply send me an email…

imagine that… haha!

Statistics

Another thing I see affiliates get hung up on is all the stats that are out there, it’s so easy to start looking at your stats with the affiliate network and offers your using, your Google Analytic  stats, split testing stats, heat map stats, etc, etc, etc that before you realize it, you spent the day looking at stats and never actually applied those stats on anything that will help you grow!

Stats are great and they are the key to affiliate marketing, but if you are always looking at stats and never putting those stats to use, it does you absolutely not good!  Glance at your stats then make the changes you need to make where ever you need to make them!

Conclusion

There are so many more distractions when it comes to working from home, but those are the ones that I think can take most of your time and are the most common for all affiliates.  If you have any others, I’d love to hear about them in the comments and also give us an example of how you don’t allow them to become distractions!

Hey guys, I’d like to take a minute and thank all of  those who sponsored this blog this month.  Without them, there wouldn’t be regular updates here!  So, do me a favor and check them out if you haven’t yet!

SEO Intelligence – Get a free trial account today by following the link!

EWA Private Network – EWA is an affiliate network that is by invite only, but is opening up their doors for a while to allow all affiliates a chance to join!

Direct CPV – Need affiliate traffic?  Need it cheap? Direct CPV sells CPV and PPV traffic!  Use code JMB25A for $25 bonus!

Are you interested in seeing your message here?  Find out more about purchasing a banner ad or sponsored post on Click Consultants by visiting our advertising page!

Here are some other products and services I recommend:

LocalLeadPlan - My buddy Chad wrote a great guide on local affiliate marketing also called local lead generation!

Aweber – This is hands down the best software for email marketing (collecting emails).

MarketLeverage – One of my favorite affiliate networks!

Again, thanks to everyone that makes this blog possible!  That includes both sponsors and my readers that support them!

PS: Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for the second part of Setting Limits on Distractions!

One of the biggest factors that keeps me from completing work that I know I need to complete is… other people!

While there are so many great benefits to working from home, there is one huge disadvantage!  That disadvantage is that no one else seems to realize that you do indeed… Work!

I’m sure this is something that most of you experience or have experienced in the past with family members and friends, however, I’ve come to realize one important thing about this phenomenon that I’d like to share with you today.

As much as we like to blame other people for the things that we don’t get done, it’s not entirely their fault!

I know I know I can hear you know… they should respect that you are working, give you your space, not interrupt you, show you some respect…blah blah blah!!!  The bottom line is that it’s your job to set limits on distractions that will inevitably come your way as a work from home entrepreneur.

I can’t even begin to express to you the number of times that I’ve been working hard on a new website, updating content, or working on an affiliate project and I’d get that phone call…my dad asking me to help him with something, or my wife (now ex-wife) needing me to do something for her, or even my daughter when she’d interrupt me.  It’s frustrating!

Of course I’m not trying to be a prude about it, and there are times that I welcome the interruptions, especially from certain people (like my daughter) however, the problem is that I enjoy helping those around me just as I’m sure that you do, and there are too many times when I ignore what I need to get done in order to help someone else with something that could wait until I have free time.

This is a sure fire way to have your affiliate earnings or websites drop in revenue.  If you’re not careful you’ll constantly have more and more distractions come your way and it will become easier and easier to put off stuff that you must complete in order to take your business forward!

So what are some things you can do to help avoid problems with family and friends?  How can you say “NO” without them getting upset or them feeling like you just don’t’ want to help them?

Set Work Hours!

I just heard the groan…I know lol, one of the greatest benefits to working from home is that you are free to create your own schedule, however, just because you have specific hours set does not mean that you always have to work during those hours!

If something comes up, by all means, change your work schedule for that day and enjoy the time with your family, friends, or other obligations, but by having a set time of when you work, your family and friends will over time become accustomed to you not being available during those times!  And those times that they do call and you are extremely busy you can simply say, sure I can help as soon as I get off work at 4pm!

Don’t Use Your Job As An Excuse!

This is pretty self explanatory, but in order to avoid any confusion, let me give an example from my own personal life…

There are going to be times when you simply don’t feel like helping the person that is asking, whether it’s because you are extremely tired or maybe just in a foul mood, it’s imperative that you don’t use your job as an excuse to get out of it, especially if it’s with your spouse or children!

I remember one time my wife was asking me to help her with the dishes and to pick up the house, I didn’t feel like it…at all! So what did I do?  I told her I had some work that needed to get done and needed to be done as soon as possible.  I then retreated to my office, shut the door, and loaded up World of Warcraft (if you don’t know what game that is, your an idiot! Just Kidding!!!).

Of course, no sooner than I started to really get in to it, my wife comes barging in to make sure I was actually working…okay fine she was just trying to be a good wife and bring me something cold to drink…and busted me!

Needless to say the next time I had something important to do and she needed help with something, she didn’t believe me!

So, if you are being asked to do something by someone else and you don’t feel like doing it, then tell them your grandmother died (for the 30th time) and hope they don’t bust you, but never ever use your job as the excuse if it’s not true because when the time comes that you actually need to do something important your family and friends won’t believe you when you need them to!

Stay Tuned

If you’re not subscribed to my RSS feed, I’d suggest you do so now so that I can charge more for advertisements on this…errr actually I mean so that you don’t miss Part Two of Setting Limits on Distractions!

If you are going to work in this business, that is the affiliate marketing business, you need to learn one thing…

You will fail, in fact, you will most likely fail a lot!

There isn’t much you can do about it, oh wait…there is one important thing that you must do with failed campaigns…

Learn from them!!!

Seriously, if you are expecting your first campaign to be successful in this business you have a ton to learn.  Failure is part of business and in this business it’s amazing just how much you’ll fail.  In fact, 90% of the campaigns I start never make money.

There is no formula to always have a successful campaign, there are so many factors that stop a campaign from becoming profitable, including factors that are completely out of your hands.

Don’t give up, instead keep learning and pumping out campaigns and your time will come and you’ll make a ton of money from this business.

With All Sincerity,

Good Luck

In the last post about understanding how Google ranks ads, we talked about how Google rank ads in the Search Network.  In this post, I was to discuss how Google ranks ads that you are bidding on in the Content Network.

We already know that they care about bid prices and quality score, and I’m pretty sure most of you realize by now that the higher your bid the better, but we also know that you can’t just bid extremely high cause you’ll lose money, thus, just like with the search network side, there are things you can do on the content network side to raise your quality score in order to get a higher position with a lower bid.  This will allow for higher profits margins and more traffic from being in higher ad positions.

So let’s take a look at a couple of the factors that affects your quality score on the content network side of Google.

• The Ad’s Past Performance On The Site & On Similar Sites – Just as Google takes your ad CTR and stuff in to effect on the search network, they also take this in to effect on the content network.  However, the major difference is that with the content network, Google looks at it on a more site by site basis instead of across the board.  This means that maybe on one set of sites that are similar to each other you are getting a great CTR while on another set you aren’t doing as well.  Google most likely (it isn’t always the case) still give you a great position on the one set that is doing well, and will only penalize you for the sites you aren’t performing well on.

• Relevance of Ads and Keywords to Site(s) – If you remember in the last post, the search network post, we said that Google looks at how relevant your ads and keywords are to your landing page.  On the content network, Google is more concerned at how well your ads and keywords relate to the website they are being displayed on and not so much on how well they match your website (landing page).

• Your Landing Page’s Quality – Even though Google looks more closely at how related your ads and keywords are related to the website you are advertising on in the content network, they still care that you have a landing page that is of high quality.  There are tons of factors that determines if Google sees your landing page as a quality site or not, so the best I can do in this post is link to a page at Google about landing pages.

Those are the three main factors that Google takes in to account when determining your quality score for the content network side of Google Adwords!  You can see pretty easily that Google doesn’t have near the amount of stipulations for the content network as they do for the search network.

It’s a pretty well known fact that they are more strict on the search network then they are on the content network, however, it’s still imperative that you are using the above factors to your advantage when bidding on keyword or placement targeting on the content network.

In affiliate marketing most of the time, it’s the little things that boosts your ad over your competitors ad…the extra time you take that your competitor doesn’t!

So a couple posts ago, I said I was going to do a blog post letting everyone know what’s going on in my life.  So this is strictly a personal post.

First, my wife and I were not able to save our marriage, we both made too many mistakes before either of us were willing to wake up and try to actually fix it.  It was a case of both of us wanting to be right…even when we were dead wrong!  All the papers are filed, so we are just waiting on the courts now and we’ll be officially divorced, although, we’ve been separated for a year and two months now, so…yeah

Also, I decided to finish my degree.  I’m a huge fan of learning…I believe you should never ever stop learning in your lifetime and that you should always push yourself to learning as much as you can.  I had went to school went I left high school, but left when I got married and started internet marketing and then affiliate marketing.

Since my wife and I split, I had a ton of free time and I was sitting around at the house doing nothing…which is never good, so I decided I needed something that would get me out and around other people on a weekly basis…hence I decided to go back to school and finish my degree in Psychology…

If there is one thing that can help you in the business of selling, it’s probably knowing how people think!

Just kidding!  Actually I just really enjoy the subject!

I’m also going to throw a post up here telling of all the big changes happening at Click Consultants (like the CC Forums becoming FREE!!!) and also all the big changes that are yet to come!  Trust me there are a ton!  So watch for that post!

Anyways, I went through a bit of a rough patch in my life after the divorce, but I’m glad to be back and am planning on being back in full swing from now on!

There are several factors that determine where Google places your ad when you are bidding on keywords in Google Adwords.  These factors are all added together to come up with, as Google calls it, your Ad Rank Score.  Some factors have more weight than other factors, but every single one of them is important in making sure you get the best possible ad position for your ad.

In this article I’ll discuss the factors that determine your ad position when you are bidding on keywords on the search network of Google Adwords.

In the next post I write, I’ll discuss the factors that determine your ad position when bidding on keywords on the content network of Google Adwords.

The formula for Ad Rank is pretty simple…

Ad Rank Formula = Max CPC Bid x Quality Score

Most of you know what Max CPC bid, it’s just the maximum you are willing to spend per click and is a number you set in your Adwords account on either an ad group level, or if your smart on a per keyword level.  It’s the biggest factor determining in what position your ad will appear within the search results Sponsored Links section.

This means that you can’t bid .10 cents on a keyword like auto insurance even if you have the best quality score possible and expect to show up in position one… it just isn’t gonna happen…

Moving on, so what affects your quality score?

The quality score you receive is based on a number of factors, however, once again there is one major factor that tends to be the most important.  That is your CTR (click through rate) of your ad.  The higher your click through rate, the higher your quality score.  The reason for this is because Google is out to make money…I know…shocker…right?

The only way that Google makes money is when someone clicks on your ad.  If you write an ad and Google shows it yet no one ever clicks on it, then they make nothing.  So naturally Google desires for you to have the highest CTR that you can, which also benefits you!  It means more traffic for you, and more money for Google as their being paid per click and the higher your CTR the more clicks you are getting for the same amount of impressions.

So the two biggest factors is your Max CPC (Max Bid) and Ad CTR (click through rate), however, what happens when you have a competitive bid price and a great Ad CTR but yet you still just can’t seem to beat that one competitor that is outranking you?

Well, there are several other factors that Google uses to determine your quality score, and while they may not give you as big of a boast as having a high CTR would give you, they can still help you tremendously.

• Your Account History – Not only does Google care about your CTR that you are currently getting on a campaign, but they also take in to account the overall CTR that you’ve received for all your campaigns, ads, and keywords.  The better CTR you have long term, the strong your account becomes.

• Ads Relevant to Keywords? – Google also takes in to account how well related your ads are to your keywords.  If your writing ads about selling a dog training ebook, yet your keywords are on ringtones, that will lower your quality score.

• Ads & Keywords Relevant to Landing Page? – Another factor that will affect your quality score is whether or not your ads and keywords are relevant to your landing page.  Again, if you are bidding on keywords and writing ads on things that aren’t related to the actual product or service you are promoting, it will negatively affect your quality score!

There are several other factors that will affect your quality score, however, the ones listed above are the ones that I’ve found to affect your quality score the most.

While Google doesn’t show the actual quality score you have, they do now give a number 1-10 to help you see how a keyword is ranking quality score wise.  You can see this quality score by going to an ad group and looking at the keywords and turning it on by click the show/hide columns button and selecting it.

In the next post I write, I’ll discuss what factors determine your quality score when bidding on keywords on the Content Network, so make sure you subscribe to my feed if you haven’t yet to make sure you get an update when the next one is posted.

Update – Understanding How Google Ranks Ads on the Content Network

Hey guys, my buddy Chad over at CDFNetworks just released his new local lead generation course.  I just finished it myself and I think it’s one of the best complete guides that I’ve seen on the internet about local lead generation.

Local lead generation is affiliate marketing, however, instead of using CPA networks like Market Leverage, AzoogleAds, etc in order to get offers, you find local businesses that are looking for leads, like maybe a local dentist office, and enter in to a contract with them to supply them local leads using the same methods that you are using already for affiliate marketing.

The biggest difference is that you are advertising in Google Adwords, Yahoo, etc locally instead of advertising your stuff across the entire country.

There have been several large affiliate marketers talking about this method of affiliate marketing lately at a lot of different affiliate marketing blogs, however, no one has really put together much information about it in to an easy resource.  For example, Shoemoney talked about the possibilities of local affiliate marketing on his blog.

This is what Chad has done!

His course includes an ebook that explains everything you need to know about local lead generation, but it also goes much further by including sample contracts, sales proposals, invoices, etc to help you do it correctly and so that you are taken seriously when you go in to your local dentist office…don’t want them thinking your an idiot do ya? Haha!

Anyways, it really is a great course if you’ve been wondering how local lead generation works or if you’ve been wanting to give it a go.  It’s only $79 bucks and honestly, after reading it and looking through all the stuff you get, I think it’s worth every single penny.

Your probably thinking this is another course that is just going to take your money and provide you with nothing of real value like so many courses in this industry does…however, I encourage you to at least visit his site, view his video, and read about the course before just completely writing it off!  As I said, I’ve personally gone through it and although I’ve never personally run any local affiliate programs, I must admit that I’m pretty excited to give it a try.

He’s running the program through ClickBank which means that it offers a 60 day money back guarantee if you’re not completely satisfied, so trying it out for yourself can’t hurt you…