I just wanted to tell you a story about my first dealings with affiliate marketing products. I wanted to see what all the hoopla regarding affiliate marketing so I started to do a little digging of my own. I started doing research on a type of product that I thought I would be interested in selling.
At that time, I was under a great dealing of stress and I was losing a lot of hair. Needless to say, I was very interested in hair loss products. I did my research and found that it was an extremely big niche because many people were in the same boat and we’re all desperate for answers.
I found an affiliate network that and I signed up. I’m not going to tell you the name of this network to protect your innocence. The sign up was really easy. There was no approval process. You could just sign up and start selling.
This was a CPA network (I’ll tell you what that is later). At the time, I was following along with an affiliate marketing training program that I had found. It instructed me to make money by setting up little ad campaigns to make money.
However, I didn’t use AdWords to set up my campaigns. It was too expensive and very intimidating. I used a smaller company called AdBrite to get started. The first day I got started with my campaign I didn’t make any money. Now, the training program promised that I would make money from day one. I didn’t and I started to put the campaign on hold. Don’t laugh. Yes, that is how naïve I was back then.
The second day of my campaign rolled by, I didn’t make any money. I’ve been had, I thought. I was really disappointed. I said to myself I will give it one more day and I’m done. On day number three, I made my first sale. I made $80 and I was so proud!
Morales, myths and the rest of the story
That sounds like a wonderful little story, doesn’t it? The truth is after I paid the AdBrite administration fee and the 3-day ad campaign my profit was $11.84. Here is one thing you should always keep in mind. When you see bright shining ads that claim they made a lot of money, ask yourself was that their total or was that their profit.
Also, remember that you can’t be too literal when you read an ad. Ads are filled with sexy words in order to entice you and draw you in. It is possible to make money in 24 hours but it isn’t probable. You need to give yourself a little time to see if the training is going to work out. Just because it didn’t work out on your first try doesn’t mean that the product owner was a liar. Be a little patient and test things out before you throw in the towel.
What is CPA (your explanation as promised)
CPA stands for Cost Per Action. There are a lot of networks that work on this premise. The merchant pays you if the visitor takes a specific action. That action can be giving out a zip code, downloading something, signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. The action can be whatever the vendor requires.
Small actions usually have small payouts. For example, if you can get someone to type in his or her zip code, you may get $1.00 per entry. My task was to get people to purchase a hair loss product. I made $80.00 with one sale. However, it is much easier to get someone to give a zip code, which is free. It is a tougher task to get someone to make a purchase, which requires a person to give his or her credit card info and make a payment.
This type of affiliate marketing product requires a little bit of skill but it offers great rewards. You may think, “You made money in 3 days!” Yes, but that was back in 2009 when things were less complicated. Anyway, I have on last morale.
That CPA Network is still intact today. I looked them up but there are so many rumors floating around this company. Some are afraid that their ads don’t measure up to Google or FTC standards. It wouldn’t be responsible for me to give you their info. Make sure you do your due diligence before signing up with any affiliate marketing network.
