Living a healthy affiliate lifestyle can be extremely difficult.  In fact, this is something up until recently I’ve really struggled with!  In high school, I was always very athletic and played numerous sports including football and weight lifting.  If you knew me then, you would of said I was a pretty fit guy that was very athletic…

The problem started around 10th grade for me, I started smoking.  I was around 16 years old at the time and had made a friend who smoked (also around age 16) and he convinced me to start smoking as well.  This was the first choice I made that would have a huge impact on my health and how healthy I would be in the coming years.

Even though I had started smoking, I was still very much an active person.  I ran all the time, played sports, etc.  When I graduated high school in 2003, I weighed 175 - 180 pounds and despite smoking was in pretty good health.

This is where the second problem developed.  After I got out of high school I slowly became less and less active.  I quit playing as many sports as I did during high school, I was however working a job that did keep me pretty active which helped to keep the weight off, however, after a couple of years, I slowly gained about 25 pounds and was sitting at 200 pounds…which for a person who is 6′1″ isn’t really that bad in my opinion.

The real problem with my weight began when I got laid off from the steel mill I was working at and started working full time from home doing affiliate marketing.  I gained another 50 pounds putting me at 252 pounds.  It was at this point that I realized I had to change my lifestyle or I would be able to continue living the life I loved much longer.

When I stepped onto that scale and it read 252 pounds, I was shocked!  It seemed like just the other day I was a ripped young man weighing 180 pounds with a six pack.  Now, because of my laziness I had a 2 liter.  It was as if a light bulb turned on and I realized suddenly that I needed to fix this problem.

I had worked hard the last two years to build an income to support my family and allow us to live a life where money was never an issue any longer.  It was a great feeling when I reached that goal, however, I now felt like I wasn’t going to be able to fully enjoy it because I was smoking (always out of breath) and overweight (always out of breath, plus I ached standing for long periods of time or walking long distances).

So what did I do?

I decided to quit smoking and on the same day that I quit smoking I also started on a diet and strict exercise schedule!  In fact, it has now been 1 month since I’ve made the decision to change my lifestyle (I made the decision on July 18th 2008).  I haven’t smoked in a month, neither have I strayed from my diet or exercise schedule.

In the month that I’ve been doing these three things, I’ve lost 10 pounds, can breath after walking a mile :P  and also have tons of more energy.  I feel like I did in high school again in terms of my energy level.

So how does this apply to Affiliate Marketing?

Well, as I said, you can work as hard as you want to create an income that allows you to travel the world, own nice things, etc. but unless you are healthy enough to enjoy it will it matter?

Also, if you can push yourself to quit smoking, or stick to a diet, or exercise regularly, think of the willpower you can build and you’ll be able to use it to help yourself succeed in your business the next time you don’t feel like working because you’re too tired!

Conclusion:

If you currently are a smoker, I encourage you to try to quit, I have tried over 2 dozen times before I’ve finally succeeded.  If you are overweight (even slightly) I encourage you to get on a diet and start exercising.  If there is something in your life that is keeping you from being as healthy as you can, I encourage you to change it!  You only have one life and one body so treat it right!  You’ll be glad you did!

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The 20/80 Rule isn’t really a rule, but actually a truth that most new affiliates don’t even realize exists.  By understanding this “rule” you’ll be able to know what to get rid of and what to keep!  It will help you with that overwhelming feeling you get when you have 800 adgroups that you’re trying to split test.

So what exactly am I talking about?

80% of your affiliate income will come from 20% of your work.  This means 80% of your work will in essence be no good.  80% of your keywords will not need to be focused on which allows you to focus on the 20% that will bring in the majority of your income.

Let’s say you launch a campaign with 10,000 keywords.  Once you split up your keywords into your adgroups, you’ll then upload them into either Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or Microsoft Adcenter.  Within a week or two of running a campaign, I would have ~8,000 of those keywords gone!

This is how super affiliates quickly get their CTR up and keep it up and also how they are able to manage campaigns easily.  You can’t be afraid to get rid of keywords that aren’t converting or are but producing too low of a CTR.

I’ve counseled numerous affiliates on this matter!  Too many affiliates are afraid that if they delete keywords or adgroups from their campaign then they may miss out on sales or conversions, when in fact, the truth is they most likely are losing out on tons of conversions and leads because they aren’t deleting these “bad” keywords.

By keeping keywords that aren’t performing great in your campaign you risk the chance of it having an effect on your entire campaign.  Keywords that receive tons of impressions but hardly any clicks ends up lowering your overall CTR which can effect your super performing keywords and stop you from receiving the twice as many leads from them.

Keywords that are receiving tons of clicks but aren’t converting are again going to effect your bottom line and your ROI.  This is why it is imperative that you are tracking at the keyword level and making sure you are getting rid of keywords that are no good instead of trying to hang on to them.

Conclusion:

I know this isn’t the best post on this blog, and it’s defintely not the best written, I’ve reread it now about 10 times as it’s been sitting in my drafts, but the bottom line is, it’s very important not to try to hang on to keywords that can and WILL sabatoge your entire campaign!  While this might not be the best written post I’ve done, it’s a very important subject that you need to remember when tuning your campaigns!

If you have anything to add to this, I’d love to hear it in the comments below.

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Since this blog has really been in full swing (about 2 months now) the number one question I receive is, “How much do you make?“  My answer has always been unchanging and the answer I’ve always given is, “I don’t reveal how much money I actually make online.”

I’ve always felt that telling how much you made online or posting your checks was considered bragging and I personally didn’t want people to see me or my blog as a form of bragging.  However, I feel that I was wrong in my judgment against those that post their checks.

I’ve had several people tell me lately that I need to post my credentials because it allows my readers to know if they can trust the advice I give them or not.  I’ve never thought of it this way, however, after a little coaxing from someone I’ve decided to go for it.  So without further adieu…

I’m currently making approx. $200,000 dollars a month, of which $100,000 a month is profit from affiliate marketing.  I use several different networks

including AzoogleAds, NeverblueAds, Hydra, etc and my income is very diverse among them.  However, the majority of my income comes from one network and that network would be ClickBank.  I currently am running 3 different offers on ClickBank that is simply doing phenomenal for me at this time.  My last check that I received, before I went to wires 5 months ago, was for the amount of approx $51,000 dollars.

Also, here is a picture of my AzoogleAds Account last month showing approx $20,000 from affiliate marketing.

Now of course there will be haters that will say I photoshopped the above images, so besides the checks and account screen shots I have something else that can easily prove I know how affiliate marketing works and that I’m the real deal.

Not only am I currently doing 200k a month with affiliate marketing, I’ve also helped several very well known “super affiliates”  get started in this business.  So of course, I’m sure I’ve got you all curious now and you’re wanting to know who they are…  Well, no worries cause below is a list of them and also a link to proof of them stating that I helped them get started.

Paul from Uberaffiliate.com (Source) - Paul is currently making over 250k a month from affiliate marketing, needless to say, his statement is a little outdated.

Yep, mystickcal got me started in affiliate marketing and taught me the basics, and now I’m making about $500/week with it.

Jonathan from JonathanVolk.com (Source) - Jonathan is currently making approx 170k a month from affiliate marketing.

Today, I want to talk about one of my mentors. His name is Derek and he runs a blog over at ClickConsultants.com.

Artarmon42 from Wandering.net (Source) - Artarmon42 is currently making over 300k a month as well.  Make sure to check out his last post on his blog showing off his two Mercedes!

I’ve tried a couple of times to break into affiliate marketing, but always lost money I stumbled onto Mystickcal’s offer to teach newbies how to actually make money in affiliate marketing, and have averaged 150+% profit every day since!

I’ve also mentored over a dozen other affiliates who are currently generating an affiliate income ranging from $3,000 - $8,000 a month.

So as you can see, I’ve helped numerous people get started in this business and I think between the check and the proof that I’ve helped several of the top affiliates today get started should put everyone’s mind to ease when trying to decide if the information on this blog is accurate or not!

NOTE: As I said, I’m currently making over a 200k a month from affiliate marketing, 100k profit a month, so I’m sure some of you are going to wonder why I only posted one check and one screenshot of another account for around 70k.  The answer to that is because I use so many different networks for the other 130k that I didn’t feel like uploading tons of checks and editing them and stuff.

UPDATE: The ClickBank check posted above isn’t actually one of my ClickBank checks.  I haven’t gotten an affiliate check since I first started affiliate marketing, I’ve always signed up for direct deposits or wires.  It was stupid to post it, but I was told I need to post a check and I didn’t have one, and I didn’t feel comfortable posting a bank statement or something like that.  I do gross approx. $200,000 a month, with approx. $100,000 a month being profit and $50,000 of that is from ClickBank.  The AzoogleAds screen is real you can search all you want, you won’t find a match.

I relied too much on the fact that I’ve helped people like Jonathan, Paul, and Artarmon get started in this business that I didn’t think it would matter to use a fake check to make the post more interesting, I figured the proof of me helping them get started would prove I know what I’m talking about and that I must do well enough in my affiliate marketing endeavors.  Apparently I was wrong and I apologize to anyone I may of offended, but you can check out the rest of my sources and see that I do know what I’m talking about.

I’ll probably be doing another post tomorrow showing more proof (different kind of proof, it’s better) that I make what I make.  So hopefully that will clear up any misunderstandings.  So why am I admitting to this?  I’m explaining this because I don’t feel it will be long till somebody figured it out anyways, so I just wanted to be honest about it upfront to stop any rumours from spreading…although I probably just started the rumours!

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This post is a trick I’ve picked up and I’m going to be completely honest, I did NOT discover this trick or tip, and I can’t remember who I heard it from in order to give them credit, but what I can say is that I’ve personally tried this technique out and it has yielded excellent results thus far.

So what exactly am I talking about?  I’m talking about a technique that allows you to direct link to an affiliate offer yet receive the quality score that a major authority site in the niche you’re competing in would get!

It’s so easy you’ll kick yourself for not thinking of it, as I know I did when someone told me about this technique.  Anyways, without further adieu…

Most people recognize this screen inside Adwords.  It’s the screen where you enter in your ad details.  You enter in your Headline, Description 1 & 2, Display URL, and Destination URL.  You’ve probably used this very screen a million times by now!

So what is so special about it this time?  We’ll let me explain to you how this technique works now.  Your destination URL is the URL in which Google uses to give you a quality score.  Depending on how well the site is and how relevant it is to the niche the greater the quality score you’ll receive which allows you to receive lower bids yet also get your ads into the top spots for those lower bids.

In this technique what we are doing is simply changing the destination URL and display URL to that of a major company inside the niche.  For example, sticking with our auto insurance example that you see in the picture above, we would change our links to point to Allstate, StateFarm, Geico, etc.  Any of those sites will work.

So of course, the question is now…why would I want to send free traffic to any of these sites?  We’ll the answer is, you don’t!  After you setup your ads, you should have two of them per adgroup for split testing, you’ll then go your keywords that are inside that adgroup.  You’ll see an edit button to the right of the keyword, click it! (see in picture below, the link is purple)

After you click on the edit link for a keyword you’ll come to a screen that looks something like this…

If you notice, for the keyword you can change the Destination URL for just that particular keyword.  So what this means is that even if your ads point to Geico, Allstate, or whoever…if someone does a search and this keyword is triggered, it will override the Ad’s Destination URL and inside use the Destination URL that is listed for that individual keyword.

What this means is that you can link to a site like Geico, Allstate, etc and get the quality score that that site would get and then simply have all your keywords destination URLs point to your real landing page or direct link to the offer!

Of course this would mean a heck of a lot of work going though each keyword clicking the edit link and changing the URL…

Thank God for Adwords Editor!

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Sometimes in our lives the things that are holding us back are simple problems that we face.  In affiliate marketing this is no different.  The problem is a lot of blogs talk about big problems you may be facing in affiliate marketing, however, most blogs don’t think to talk about the small things that could be affecting your business.

Hopefully this blog post will address some of the little problems that most affiliate marketers face at one time or another and can hopefully shed some light on ways to fix the problem or at least lessen the stress!

Running out of Money?

When you first start becoming successful in affiliate marketing most people have the problem of running out of money!  It is extremely important to make sure that you have your credit fixed as well as you can and as fast as you can if you have problems.  I understand not everyone has perfect credit, but in this business you’ll soon find out that having good credit can help you out tremendously when you need cash and you’re just starting out!

Another way to making sure you have money when you get started is to use a coupon in order to receive free money/clicks.  Most pay per click networks like Adwords, YSM, or Adcenter offer free coupons with new accounts.  The great thing is, you can typically use a different credit card and have multiple accounts and use a coupon for each account you create!

The last choice you have is asking friends or family members to give you a loan.  I personally would only use this as a last resort as borrowing from friends or family is not something that is normally very wise when it comes to business.  However, if it’s just to get you started for a month or two, I don’t see a major problem with it!  Although becareful, I would hate to see someone ticked at you because you didn’t repay them back or they feel later on down the line that you screwed them when they realize how much money you’re making!

Finding a Solid Niche

New affiliates often have trouble deciding on the type of niche to get into and which one to pick.  However, this is often times way too thought out!  As a new affiliate I don’t recommend looking for that perfect niche that is going to have 0 competition but billions of searches done per month!  Instead, you need to just simply enter some of the niches that you know are already profitable niches.  Ones in which other affiliates are already making money in.  Just because sometimes saturated doesn’t mean you can’t make money in it!  I’m not saying you’ll be able to make tons, however, you should be able to at least get a profitable campaign going which will help you get your feet wet!

Too many new affiliates focus more on which niche they are going to try to conquer instead of actually focusing on building their landing pages, keyword lists, and writing their ads in order to ensure they’ll have an awesome campaign.  Worry more about site, keywords, and ads instead of which niche you are going to enter!

Time Management

Another problem affiliate marketers have is issues with getting things done, setting deadlines, etc.  This can typically end up starting as a small problem and growing into a massive problem!

Here are some steps you may wish to take in order to make sure you are completing things in a timely manner…

1. Reward yourself for completing a certain project or goal.  Setting goals and rewarding yourself when you hit a goal is a great way to keep yourself motivated and on track!
2. Try creating a schedule.  Write down a list of everything you need to get done and schedule it from what time you’ll start on it till what time you should be done with it…give yourself a little more time than you think it will take that way once you complete it early, you’ll feel proud of yourself.
3. Start with easy tasks.  When creating your “to do list” you should try placing the easiest tasks at the top and the harder tasks at the bottom.  By doing so you’ll more likely finish the easy ones which will give you a boost of confidence to get the hard ones done.  Most people that start with the hardest tasks are not going to want to start at all!

These simple problems all have very simple solutions and ideas that can help you overcome them, however, most of the time these issues are overlooked!  I hope you’ll be able to conquer some of these problems and also please share in the comments if you have any more simple solutions for the problems above!

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