Rory Hansen

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Many of the big names in internet marketing are proponents of setting goals for their affiliate and internet marketing campaigns. And, while I’m also a firm believer in goal-setting, I’ve never actually sat down and thought about my affiliate marketing goals– at least, not in any way which would result in a firm, realistic goal.

But, that’s all changing today. I’ve decided that, after many months of saying I’m going to actually start trying to make money online, that I’m finally going to put forth a somewhat serious effort to do so. And the first step in reaching my goal is to state it in black-and-white, here on this blog, so that I can be held accountable for reaching it.

My goal: By June 30, 2009, my monthly net earnings from all affiliate and search marketing efforts are to exceed the amount of my monthly mortgage payments. (For the sake of security and privacy, my target goal will be simplified to $1500/mo.)

So where am I today with respect to that goal? It’s been a while since I’ve actually tallied up the numbers from the myriad of affiliate and internet marketing programs that I participate in. But here’s a decent estimate:

Current status:

• Time effort per month: ~3 man hours
• Earnings per month: $250 US
• Costs per month: < $10 (web hosting)

So, as you can see, although I only spend about 3 hours per month working on the niche sites I run, I still earn about $250 US per month through a variety of programs. To reach my goal of $1500/month, I’ll obviously have to spend more time developing my sites, but hopefully, I’ll also be spending this time smarter than I have been to this point.

Anyway, I’ve got a number of ideas bouncing around my head that I’ll need to start executing on, so I’ll end this post here. I’ll be posting monthly summaries of my earnings results, so that my visitors can track my progress. I challenge you to set your own affiliate marketing goals, too, on your own blog, and through friendly competition, naybe we’ll meet our goals together.

A little bit of history on the Firefox / Yahoo! Search Marketing challenge

So, as many of you may remember, I ran an experiment way back a year or two ago, seeing how much money I could make through Google’s Firefox browser referral program. I started with essentially a $50 credit with Yahoo! Search Marketing, and then expanded to include other PPC programs, such as Google Adwords. Shortly afterwards, after a quick windfall of a few thousand dollars over the course of a couple months, I shut the program down due to the ever expanding cash flow requirements for shrinking profits.

Well, Yahoo! is back with another promotion, giving you a $100 credit towards clicks, so long as you deposit $30 (and not refunding it!). This coincides nicely with the release of Firefox 3.0, as there’ll be a large focus on downloading the new release of the very popular browser.

So, the challenge resumes…

Anyway, I started up the ads tonight, and spent just over $30 for 195 clicks, coming in at an average cost per click (CPC) of $0.17. Google doesn’t like us talking about exact figures, but I can tell you that I lost about $16 overall in the process tonight, as the cost of clicks fromYahoo! exceeded the conversion revenues I earned from Google.

Basically, how it works is that you do not get credit for a conversion if the visitor had downloaded and installed Firefox in the past on that same computer. So, although I had 195 click throughs to my site from Yahoo! Search, with a majority of those clicking on afterwards to download Firefox from Google, I only got credited with a few conversions.

(Of course, it doesn’t help that Google supplies an older version of the browser for download too, probably causing most users to click away once they realize this fact. But I knew that going into this and took that as a known risk.)

Explanation of results

Because existing Firefox users are essentially worthless in this scheme, I made the appropriate enhancements to my landing pages last year, using JavaScript to detect the user’s browser, and if they’re using Firefox, to redirect them to a custom page. This custom page had no link to download Firefox, but instead, a selection of the finest ads that Google Adsense could serve up. I figured that this might offset the cost of Firefox visitors clicking on my ads a little. But, looking at today’s summary, we’re talking puny returns. In the grand scheme of things, click throughs for “Firefox” related keywords are extremely low.

Next steps

Anyway, I’m waiting for Yahoo! to credit my account with the promised $100 credit. Once they do so, I’ll resume my campaign, but I doubt I’ll continue once the funds run out.

Adsense: $236.07
Firefox Referrals: $793.10

Yahoo! Marketing: $167.39
Google Adwords: $271.80
MSN AdCenter: $5.62
Ask! Sponsored Listings: $68.38

Profit: $515.98

Commentary: During the course of the month, I noticed conversions were steadily decreasing. I began to cut back on some of the traffic which was less targetting (ie, the content network traffic) so my costs are slightly below where they were for December. But you’ll notice that my revenue is off by more than 50%. This all adds up to a profit which is about 1/3 of the profit I had back in December.

Why? Really, I dunno. I suppose the easy answer is to suggest that it’s becoming harder and harder to attract users to my site that haven’t already installed Firefox or the Google Toolbar at least once in their past. Either that, or I’m not properly advertising to the right audience.

In any case, if profits decrease again next month, I’ll have to seriously think about whether it’s worth it to keep the Firefox/Google Toolbar site running.

Adsense: $98.05

Yahoo! Marketing: $291.44
Google Adwords: $369.26
MSN AdCenter: $6.24
Ask! Sponsored Listings: $7.40

Referrals: $955.60

Profit: $379.31

So, earlier this week I was looking for information on taxes for small businesses in Canada, specifically Internet-based businesses. I googled and eventually stubled upon the Small Business: Canada section on About.com, which is a great resource!

I ended up bookmarking two links:

• Calculating The Home Business Tax Deduction
• 7 Ways to Make Record Management Easy

I bookmarked the 7 Ways to Make Record Management Easy page because my current method is just not working. Maybe that’s because my current method actually means no method, but that aside, the tips that have been recommended do make sense and aren’t too hard to implement. The page mentions that credit card statements aren’t suitable records for prooving expenses and earnings, which is unfortunate since most of the costs for my Internet-based business are in the form of regular monthly charges to my credit card, such as hosting fees and PPC advertising fees. I guess what this means is that I’ll have to make it a point of actually printing out the invoices from these companies on a fairly regular basis now and then storing those away until tax time.

I also learned that as a sole proprietorship, I can simply fill out one additional form when doing my personal income taxes. That additional form is the T2124 Statement of Business Activities form. And while it looks fairly complicated to fill out, there’s a guide available on the Canada Revenue Agency website called the Business and Professional Income Guide which has step-by-step instructions on how to fill out the T2124 form.

Wanted: Income tax information for Internet-based businesses in Canada

I am looking for books, eBooks, or websites.

If you know of any good ones, please let me know! Revenue from my websites is getting to the point where I’d better cover my bases before the Gov’t comes after me.  : )

Google Adsense: $82.30

Firefox + Google Toolbar Referrals: $2,000.01

Yahoo! Marketing: $435.90
Google Adwords: $539.02
MSN AdCenter: $3.21

Profit: $1,104.18

Cost/earnings breakdown:

Yahoo! Marketing: ($145.96)
Google Adwords: (116.47)
MSN AdCenter: ($0.09)

Referrals: $592.40

Total Profit: $329.88

Milestones Dates:

Nov 2: Started website
Nov 10: Broke $3/day barrier
Nov 20: Broke $10/day barrier
Nov 23: Broke $25/day barrier
Nov 27: Broke $50/day barrier
Nov 28: Broke $75/day barrier
Nov 29: Broke $125/day barrier
Nov 30: Broke $175/day barrier

My goal is to send as much targetted traffic to my Firefox + Google Toolbar website as I can, while keeping the cost per visitor as low as possible. That way, the margins I’m making through Firefox conversions are as large as possible. So, along with Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, I’ve also signed up for MSN AdCenter, in an attempt to buy as much cheap traffic as I can get my hand on.

This is what I’m thinking. If I raise my PPC cost, my ads will appear higher in search results. This will generally send more traffic to my site which should also raise the number of Firefox conversions I get per day. But, on the flipside, I’ll also be paying more for all of this traffic, reducing the profit I’m making. As well, this significantly raises the possibility that I’ll actually LOSE money some days, on occasions when my conversion ratio drops.

So my decision up to this point is to pay just enough so that my ads appear 3rd or 4th or 5th on the search results. Yes, clicks on my ads are much lower when they are positioned like this, but I’m also paying much less per click than if I were to appear 1st or 2nd. So, to squeeze as many clicks as I can while keeping costs pretty low, I’ve had to sign up for other PPC programs. First there was Yahoo! Search Marketing (where I got a $50 credit), then Google Adwords (where I got another credit), and finally, today, signed up for MSN AdCenter (but unfortunately, could not find any promo codes that would work for Canadians). PPC costs seem pretty low when I signed up with my first campaign (between $0.05 and 0.08 per click) at least when compared to Yahoo! Internet Marketing, but we’ll see if the program generates much traffic.

One thing I realize I need to do, is set up specialized landing pages for each of these campaigns so that I can better gauge how I’m doing. Right now, since all the PPC traffic is being directed to the same page, I know that I’m profitting from my PPC participation, but I cannot see if I’m doing better with one program (say, Yahoo! Internet Marketing) when compared to another (like Google Adwords).

Anyway, we’ll leave that for another night.