How I Got Rich

December 2009 Round-Up

Well 2009 is over and it has been an interesting year to say the least.  First I got into affiliate marketing and then I moved to Thailand.  But first things first:  How was my December?

I left it quite late starting my Christmas sites but in the end I pulled my finger out and got a few up and running.  They were started too late to rank well organically so I decided to promote them via AdWords paying for each visit I received.

This started off well and on some days I was making £50 a day profit and I even made about £80 one day.  The month didnt carry on like this and as the items I was promoting ran out of stock my sales dried up.   I was also on holiday for the last two weeks of the month so couldn’t really set-up any new sites or AdWords campaigns.   I decided to leave my existing PPC campaigns running while I was away and kept my fingers crossed they wouldnt cost me too much.

When I got back to Bangkok yesterday I was pleasantly supprise to see I had earned £883 in December.  I spent about £223 on AdWords.  This is about double of what I’ve made in my last few months and has made me very happy.  If I could make this every month I’d be over the moon, especially out here in Thailand where the cost of living is quite low compared to England.

I know a lot of this has come from the Christmas market but I am determined to keep the momentum going and try and get in the same region this month.  PPC really helped alot as it allows your new ventures to get traffic straight away and get the sales trickling in.

How was your December?

Knock me down with a feather – another £50 day

Another good day in the run up to Christmas.  Yesterday I tweaked my Adwords ads and updated some of my ECUs that were pointing to out of stock merchants and today I have a lower PPC spend and have made more commission.

Break down goes a little something like this:

• Awin: £42
• Amazon: £26
• Adwords: £14
• Profit: £54

Obviously these are all pending but I’ve not had many rejections so far (touch wood) and PPC spend isn’t in sync with sales as there are time zone issues afoot but overall it looks positive.

I’d love to spend today checking my sites and setting up some new campaigns but as regular reader may know I recently started a new part-time day job.  Although the job is only one day a week it also takes a full day to prepare so unfortunately today and tomorrow will be affiliate marketing free apart from the odd bit of stolen time.  I am quite gutted as I only get £35 for the day of work (which actually takes two days) and I could earn more than that from Internet marketing but its not all about the money right?

Stone the Crows! Another £50 day!

The month has ended nicely for me with another £50 day.  Well there was £65.61 worth of sales recorded through Affiliate Window and I spent £19.81 on clicks via Adwords.  This leaves £45.80 profit but I am still waiting for Amazon to update which is taking ages, I guess there must be lots of sales to add up for the Christmas perio but I am confident I have recorded at least £5 worth of commission for yesterday.

Update: Amazon has now updated and about £662 worth of sales were made of which 6% is £39 making the total profit for November 30 £85.52!

The day before I had paused about three of my PPC campaigns which were the ones that lost me the most money but today I’ve still managed to rack up £20 worth of  clicks.

It is getting increasingly difficult to work out which campaigns are the most profitable and which are costing me the most money but I seem to be making money overall so its  not too much of a problem yet.

I am definitely converted to the ways of PPC now and, if all goes well over the next few weeks, will definitely be using it long-term alongside SEO.

I know most of this traffic is Christmas traffic but hopefully I can diversify into non-seasonal niches and see similar results throughout the year.  As I’ve said before £50 a day would be amazing and would really change my life for the better.

November looks to have been a good month with a new personal best relating to sales and commission.  I’ll do a post tomorrow once Amazon has updated but for now its fingers crossed for December!

Blistering Barnacles – Another £50 day!

Last week started off well with my first £50 day but as the week went on things started to dip and on some days I was making a loss on my PPC campaigns but overall, including traffic from SEO sites, I was making a profit.  I was tempted to stop the campaigns for fear of making a big loss but thanks to comments posted on this blog I decided to leave them running and see if they turned around over the coming days and weeks.

I was out and about on the weekend so left them running unattended but last night was pleasantly surprised to see I had accumulated £71.11 from sales in through Affiliate Window for Sunday.  I quickly checked Adwords to see what my daily spend was and was relieved to see it was only £18.25 leaving me with a grand total of £52.86.  I’m still yet to check Amazon as there is a few more hours to wait for the stats to update.

edit: I’ve just checked Amazon and yesterday 46 items were ordered with a rough total of £634 of which 6% is £38 so it looks like I had a £90 day!

There are a few caveats however:

• The timezones between AWin and Adwords don’t match up with Adwords being 8 hours behind Awin so the daily spend doesn’t quite correlate to the daily sales figures.  But generally my spend has been about £15 each day so far this week.
• Not all my sales come from PPC traffic so the Adwords spend might not be that profitable.  I will be looking at the stats more closely to work out my ROI shortly.

But nevertheless, profit is profit and after going over the stats and tweaking my Adwords campaigns I will leave them running for at least another week.

There are still a few weeks until Christmas so its not to late to get a slice of the Christmas pie if you are prepared to use PPC.

My First £50 Day!

After only a few day after posting about how I wanted a £50 a day site I managed to bring in over £50 in sales in one day.  This wasn’t from one site but spread across many but it  is still a new personal best for me and a nice change in my fortunes.

I put this down to finally giving PPC a proper go as most of the traffic came via Adwords ad I had setup in the past few days.  Yesterday I spent £13.01 on Adwords clicks and made £66.76 in commission which gives me a profit of £53.75. Some of the sales came through non-Adwords traffic so I will have to work out exactly how much I earnt from the Adwords traffic but I am certain it is more than the amount I spent.

£50 a day equals £1500 a month which would be amazing.  If I could make £25 a day in the not too distant future I would be very happy.

Hopefully this is the start of something good rather than a glitch in the Matrix.