Archives for 2010

Happy Birthday To PPC Ian!

Hey Everyone,
Today’s an exciting day! Today marks PPC Ian’s 1 year birthday. It all started one year ago when Unique Blog Designs completed my slick custom blog design and I went live! My first post highlighted my passion for PPC and SEM. Now, 94 posts and 683 comments later, PPC Ian is growing quicker than ever! I wanted to take this opportunity to sincerely thank YOU for your support. It’s my readers like you that have made PPC Ian such a success. Today, I’ll be going through some of my favorite highlights from the past year. I hope you enjoy!
Sincerely,
Ian Lopuch (PPC Ian)

It’s All About The Online Marketing Community

Birthday Cake

When I look back on the past year, I’m extremely excited about the friendships I have developed with other bloggers and the online marketing community in general. How did I do it? Well, it honestly all came down to my blog commenting strategy. I got out there and commented on all the great online marketing blogs. Upon doing so, I met a lot of talented individuals and also ended up driving some serious traffic and quality comments on PPC Ian.

I even decided to launch my own blog commenting contest and the winners Profit Addiction, Dino Vedo, and My 4 Hour Workweek ended up getting their blogs reviewed for free as the prize! Even after the contest, Jeremy, Dino, and Eric have continued to comment like crazy on PPC Ian, I am truly thankful for that!

I also feel blessed that PPC Ian got serious press coverage on some of the top online marketing blogs around! Some of my favorite instances of PPC Ian in the press include: Super Affiliate Jonathan Volk, Celebrity Blogger John Chow, Teen Domainer, ZK’s Web Traffic ROI, Morgan Linton, and most recently my buddy D3so. A HUGE thank you to everyone out there in the online marketing community, I sincerely appreciate your support.

My Sponsors Rock!

I’d also like this opportunity to sincerely thank my sponsors, Marin Software, Acquisio, and WordStream. I have taken a truly unique approach to sponsorship on PPC Ian. Basically, I’m extremely picky and only include sponsors that offer products I personally champion. That’s right: I only include sponsorship from companies that offer killer products, the types of products that search marketers can’t live without! After all, I’m here to empower the search marketing industry. I’m proud to say that I can’t think of better products and companies than these three!

Want to learn more about Marin Software? I highly recommend checking out my exclusive interview with Marin’s Matt Lawson. How about WordStream? You just have to check out their free Quality Score Toolkit that I just reviewed in my last post. How about Acquisio? Stay tuned for my next post, I’m going to review their unparalleled display advertising whitepaper! Sponsors, my sincere thank you for partnering with me in making PPC Ian a big hit! My success wouldn’t have been possible without you!

Some of My Favorite PPC Ian Posts

I’d like to close out by highlighting three of my favorite PPC Ian blog posts from the last year. First and foremost, it was one of my 2010 goals to speak at a major event this year. That opportunity came up and I jumped all over it! What am I talking about? My two hour presentation about PPC, SEO, and Social Media at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

As you may know, another one of my big goals for 2010 is domaining and developing websites that drive passive income. I’m excited to announce that I’ve totally killed that goal. Along the way, I quickly learned that it’s super critical to scale your Bluehost and Host Gator accounts with add on domains. It’s no surprise that others have the exact same goals and are finding my post all about BlueHost Add On Domains extremely helpful. It’s actually the most visited post on my entire blog!

Last but not least, this just wouldn’t be PPC Ian if I didn’t mention my passion for PPC automation. I’m extremely proud of my SEM Automation Buyer’s Guide, my FREE 12 page whitepaper. I’m looking forward to writing more of these in the future!

To close out, I wanted to share a screenshot with you. Take a look below, PPC Ian’s organic listing on Google now has site links. This is a new development, one that I’m quite proud of. It basically means that Google is acknowledging PPC Ian as a blog that has authority. Sweet! Thanks again and here’s to another year of hockey stick growth!

PPC Ian Site Links

Image of Birthday Cake © iStockPhoto – skodonnell

WordStream’s Free Quality Score Toolkit

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 23 10

I’m very excited about today’s post! I’m going to discuss one of my all time favorite Internet marketing systems, WordStream Moreover, I’m going to discuss their amazing quality score toolkit which can be yours absolutely free! It seems like more and more companies are giving away free whitepapers and eBooks these days (and I can’t get enough of it). Well, WordStream takes it a step further and offers an entire quality score toolkit – comprised of a whitepaper, cheat sheet, video, and quality score worksheet – all for free!

What Is WordStream?

If you’ve been following PPC Ian for a while there’s no doubt you’re aware of my SEM automation obsession. I have discussed a multitude of SEM tools in past posts and even wrote a free whitepaper about evaluating SEM applications for your organization. What is WordStream? WordStream is an Internet marketing application that automates and adds immense process to keyword generation, keyword review, keyword grouping, ad copy writing, and much more.

The tool has taken the industry by storm! From my perspective (someone who has used the vast majority of the SEM tools out there), WordStream tackles a truly unique and exciting problem, one which few other tools properly handle. Said another way, I recommend coupling WordStream with your other SEM bidding/management solution if you have one. Below are just a few of my favorite aspects of WordStream (definitely not a comprehensive list, just a few highlights):

Adding structure and workflow to keyword review and grouping, WordStream ensures you always have the right keywords in the best possible ad groups. In turn, this translates to optimal click through rates and therefore lower CPCs.
WordStream is all about workflow. It conveniently organizes the manual activities of keyword review, keyword grouping, and ad copy writing into prioritized queues. You can work through the queues yourself or easily delegate/outsource. Once you’re done, WordStream works wih search engine APIs to upload your work.
WordStream ensures you continuously improve your search engine accouts. Are you adding new, relevant keywords to your account daily? Are they in the right adgroups with the right ad copy? How about custom ads?
It seamlessly integrates with your site, leveraging organic traffic to generate PPC keywords.

What’s In WordStream’s Free Quality Score Toolkit?

As you can tell, I’m a huge fan of WordStream! I’m also a huge fan of their free quality score toolkit. So, what exactly do you get in the toolkit?

First and foremost, you get an amazing 18 page whitepaper all about Google’s quality score. The whitepaper explains the importance of quality score, how you can improve your quality score, and how you can leverage WordStream to improve your quality score. I recommend reading this first as a great introduction to WordStream.
Second, you get a one page quality score cheat sheet. This is a super one pager that you can pass around your organization. Its a great way to educate your management team, should they have any questions about quality score.
Third, you get an amazing mastering quality score video.
Last, you get a sophisticated quality score worksheet that analyzes your Google AdWords account.

I highly recommend downloading WordStream’s free quality score toolkit and learning all about how WordStream can take your SEM team’s game to the next level.

Image in this post © WordStream

Search Alliance Snail Mail

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 19 13

The Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance is upon us! It’s October and the Alliance is happening, right on plan. I couldn’t be more excited and impressed with the Alliance happening on schedule (it’s one of the biggest events in the history of search engine marketing, after all). As you may remember, I wrote about preparing for the Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance. I also wrote about Marin Software’s amazing search alliance whitepaper. Today, I wanted to share an interesting story and a few last minute tips about the Alliance.

Are You Ready For The Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance?

Are you ready for the Search Alliance? If not, don’t worry, you’re not alone. PPC Ian is in the same boat as you, not all of my Yahoo! accounts have a transition plan. As you may know, I’m a huge fan of leverage. I work on the most important stuff and don’t give much time to the lower leverage activities. As such, I have a few smaller personal YSM accounts that I haven’t logged into for a while and I have absolutely no transition plan in place. It’s actually really crazy! About a month ago, Yahoo! started calling me and leaving messages on my phone to remind me about the Alliance! Most recently, they started sending me snail mail. Check out the images of the postcard at the bottom of this post. Click on them to view the full sized pictures. Can you believe it?

I’m Impressed With The Calls and Snail Mail

I’m actually really impressed with it all. Just think about it: These smaller accounts are ideal accounts for Yahoo! and Microsoft. I rarely log in, I let it spend money month after month, and I’m not really measuring the results. Again, it’s all about leverage for me and this stuff is just too small to look at regularly. These types of autopilot accounts are really like a dream come true for search engines. The money just keeps flowing in. When I think about it all through that lens, it totally makes sense why Yahoo! and Microsoft are going to such great lengths to move my smaller accounts over. I’m sure when you add up all the folks in the same bucket as me, we’re talking about some serious profit that could be lost for Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Last Minute Search Alliance Tips

Let’s say you have larger search engine accounts that aren’t yet prepared for the Alliance. I’d like to close out by offering a few tips. First and foremost, let’s start out and look at the root of the issue. Did you know about the Alliance and, if so, why did you wait? If you knew about the Alliance, I’m betting you’re just too strapped for time. You need more leverage.

How do you get more leverage? First, I highly recommend working closely with your Yahoo! reps to see how they can help. You’d be really surprised how much they can get done quickly. My Yahoo! reps have been truly invaluable in the entire process, they are working overtime to make sure the Alliance goes smoothly. Second, I recommend evaluating ppc management software such as Acquisio. I’m just about the biggest fan of SEM software around and can guarantee it will give you more leverage. PPC software will ensure that you’re always on top of your game, one step ahead of everyone else. Best of luck!

My Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance Postcard – Click To View Full Sized Images In New Window

Is Google Becoming Feature Rich?

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 11 10

It seems like I’m finding a new feature on Google every other week! About a month ago, Google launched Google Instant, the algorithm that predicts your search query as you’re typing it in and serves up results in real time. Just in the last week, I noticed two other new features that are quite interesting. Today, I’d like to talk about my thoughts on Google Instant and also these two new features. It’s really crazy. I’d venture to say that the once minimalist Google experience is starting to become feature rich!

My Mixed Thoughts On Google Instant

From a user’s perspective, I have mixed feelings on the topic of Google instant. I’m a quick typist so it doesn’t save me too much time. Moreover, I’m really missing the search box at the bottom of the search results page. I like scrolling through all the search results and entering my next search query at the bottom of the page, but I now need to scroll back to the top before entering my next query.

From a search marketing perspective, it’s possible that Google Instant will shift more traffic to head terms while taking away from tail terms. This is something I am monitoring closely and only time will tell if this hypothesis materializes.

Google New Feature # 1: Annoying Arrow

So, now the fun part – Following are some new features you may have not heard about yet. Check out the screenshot below. You see that little arrow on the left of the search results? This arrow started appearing for me last week. When I move the down arrow on my keyboard, it goes down to the next result on the page. It starts in the premium sponsored results, then goes to organic, then goes to the right rail of paid ads if you keep going down. When you hit enter, it actually clicks the result and goes to that website!

Here’s why I think the new feature is annoying: I’m a big fan of scrolling up and down with my arrow keys. Now, when I scroll down, everything is slower because the rate at which the Google arrow goes down is slower than the normal scrolling of the page. Also, if you scroll back up after going down, the arrow disappears at the top of the page, the cursor goes in the search box, and now you’re prevented from scrolling up and down at all! In short, I find this new feature annoying.

Google New Feature # 2: Promotional Ads That Reference The User’s Search Query

I’m going to close out with a feature that I really like. In the screenshot below, you will notice that I search for site:www.ppcian.com. Basically, I’m trying to see how many pages of my site have been indexed by Google. Check out the Google promotion ad at the top. It references the exact search query I’m buying!

Now, you may argue, "It’s not referencing your search query, Ian. Google is buying your URL and using keyword insertion." I’ll argue back, that’s simply not true. How do I know this? If I type in site:www.ppcian.com/* the trailing slash and star are also included in Google’s promotional ad. If I do it without the star, but with the slash, my exact query gets inserted again.

I’m really excited about this technology. It would really open up a world of opportunity if I could leverage dynamic insertion of the user’s raw query in my search ads. You may be thinking, what does the second query above mean (the one with the trailing slash and star)? Whereas the first one shows how many pages are in Google’s index, the second one shows how many pages are in the "real" index (and not the supplemental one). Definitely useful stuff in the world of SEO. What do you think about Google’s new feature rich approach?

My Volatile eBay Partner Network Earnings

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 4 14

I’m a big fan of SEO web publishing and have developed over 30 sites that drive pure margin to my bottom line. It’s refreshing as a pay per click professional to have SEO margins of nearly 100 percent in my personal portfolio of websites. I’m also a big fan of the eBay Partner Network. I’ve been in eBay’s affiliate program back since the days it was on Commission Junction and it’s always played an important part in my affiliate marketing strategy (although less so over time). Today, I wanted to take a moment to share my September earnings on the eBay Partner Network and in particular the very volatile nature of eBay’s affiliate program.

eBay Quality Click Pricing: Then and Now

Back in November, 2009 I wrote about eBay’s brand new quality click pricing. It has been almost a year now since eBay migrated from its old model of paying affiliates based on sales and leads to paying for each and every click.

Early on, I was a fan of eBay’s new model because my earnings skyrocketed and became much more consistent. While I’m still a fan of eBay, I have changed my opinion on quality click pricing. I like the old model better. Why? My earnings have trended down sharply in recent months and volatility has skyrocketed.

In addition to trending down, my earnings have been very volatile as of late. Case in point: The snapshot at the end of this article is from my eBay partner account. While my clicks are somewhat consistent, the chart shows my earnings per day coming in at only a few bucks per day and they skyrocketing at the end of the month.

I Have Been Diversifying My SEO Affiliate Business

Over time, my Google AdSense earnings have been trending up like crazy! They have been doing especially well since Google’s new leaderboard format. I have been doing well on Comission Junction as well. In August, I had a record month on Commission Junction with nearly $1,000 in pure SEO earnings. Excitingly, I exceeded my August earnings in September. I’m also not doing too bad on ClickBank these days. I’m now trying to make Amazon Associates work, but I have a long way to go.

In addition to diversifying my affiliate earnings by program, I have also been diversifying my portfolio of domain names. I’m proud to announce that I launched five new sites in September and am on track to do the same in October.

All of this diversification is really important in terms of risk mitigation and sustainability. It’s because of diversification that my decline in eBay earnings and volatility really doesn’t impact me. The two takeaways that I wanted to leave you with:

eBay’s partner network is great, but be prepared for some volatility.
Whether you’re managing corporate SEM campaigns, your affiliate marketing business, or your investment portfolio, diversification is key. The graph below is first hand proof that volatility exists even in a program that’s designed to pay you per click, in a relatively consistent fashion.

eBay Partner Network Earnings

Employee Performance Review Tips

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Sep 27 6

When it comes to the pay per click search engine marketing career path, it’s simply not enough to do great work. You need to do great work and get recognized. How can you get recognized? It’s all about dressing up for your job and creating the right search marketing perception. Now, what’s one of the premier ways to set everyone’s perception about your great work? Easy: Your employee self performance review! Today, I’m going to discuss some of my favorite tips for optimizing your annual self review.

Tip 1: Keep Detailed Search Marketing Records

Employee Performance Evaluation

I can’t stress this tip enough! In fact, I wrote an entire post about keeping detailed ppc records. Just think about it: Pay per click can get crazy! There are numbers we have to hit, fires we need to put out, and initiatives we need to complete. When we’re moving a mile a minute, it’s easy to move from one thing to the next without keeping good records.

However, resist the temptation and keep detailed records. When your annual self review comes around, leverage your records to your advantage. It’s time to go into painstaking detail listing out every single project you worked on. It’s time to leverage your records and shine!

Tip 2: Spend An Entire Day On Your Self Review

So now that you have detailed records, it’s time to work on your self review! Your schedule is crazy and you have limited time. As such, the natural tendency is to spend a few hours maximum on your self review. My advice: Spend an entire day on your employee self review. Block out all distractions. Go in a private conference room if you must. Turn off Outlook. There is no higher leverage event in the SEM career path than your self review. Remember, your boss may not know the true details of your accomplishments since you’re moving so quickly.

Tip 3: Go Above And Beyond In Your Self Review

What do I mean by going above and beyond? It’s probably easiest to illustrate this by example: I wrote a 15-page essay for my last self review! I included granular numbers and metrics, accomplishments and projects, successes in my team’s growth, and even pasted some of my recommendations from my LinkedIn (I have 58 recommendations on LinkedIn, after all)! Moreover, I spent some time seriously outlining my goals and aspirations for the next year. One thing is for sure: By going above and beyond in your employee self review:

You tell your manager that you’re really serious about your PPC job.
You know that you did everything in your power to ensure a positive outcome to your review!

Image of Employee Performance Review © iStockPhoto – maxexphoto

Huge Search Marketing Spenders

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Sep 21 8

The corporate world of pay per click search engine marketing is very exciting. One of the reasons it’s so exciting is the budgets are unreal. When you’re managing the kind of money I am, there’s always a reason to be excited (and on your toes). I often get the question, "Ian, how much money do you spend on Google AdWords and other large search engines?" Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question. However, today I’ve got the next best thing for you, information about what the top advertisers spent on Google in the month of June. But, before we get started, I want to thank my pal Robby for sending me the idea (and article) behind this post!

AdAge Reveals What Top Advertisers Spend On AdWords

Recently, AdAge published a very exciting post. This post reveals what top advertisers spent on AdWords In June. I highly recommend reading this article, it’s a great read. Following are some of my favorite takeaways:

BP went crazy and ramped from minimal spend to $3.59 million in June. What really excites me about BP’s spend is the fact that it’s all about branding. Branding gets such a bad reputation in the world of online marketing, but I’m here to say that it’s the future. I’ll explain why a bit later!
AT&T Mobility spent $8.08 million in June, coming in as Google’s number one spender.
Apollo Group (the folks behind University of Phoenix) came in as number two with $6.67 million in spend. I was actually a bit surprised to see them that high on the list. I know a number of great people working at this company and can’t say enough good stuff about them!
It was interesting to see Living Social on the list with $2.29 million in spend. I haven’t heard much about these guys, they seem to have come out of nowhere, definitely a company to keep an eye on.
- My prediction: Many newer companies are growing like crazy in this market such as Inflection. In the coming years, I expect many more startups and newer names on the list. Join one of those startups now and you could be a corporate PPC millionaire. (As a side note, you may wish to check out my article about PPC career paths where I talk about the startup option.)
I do wonder about the accuracy of this list. There are some names I expected to see on the list which are not there. Nonetheless, the data for the companies listed does seem plausible based on my six years of corporate PPC experience. In any event, I think it’s useful in terms of being directional.

PPC Is Just Getting Started, Get Ready For Branding

One of my favorite parts of AdAge’s article: BP spent $3.59 million on AdWords in June. All of this spend was pure branding. In my opinion, PPC is all about direct advertising right now. Most savvy companies are making a positive margin on their PPC spend. This is a good thing and it’s what we get paid to do.

However, when you start looking at the statistics, online advertising is still a smaller percentage of most big company advertising budgets. As these budgets continue to shift online, margins for many advertisers will get thinner and thinner. (I’m talking in aggregate here, of course there will always be super profitable niches.) Online will become more about branding. It makes perfect sense to me: At least BP knows how many clicks they are getting on AdWords (a proactive activity) versus offline impressions (which is a passive activity).

Now, you could look at this in two ways. If you’re a direct advertiser with really high margins, you could see it as glass half empty and worry about evaporating margins. (I wouldn’t look at it this way. As long as you don’t sit still and remain savvy, you’ll find a way to continue to squeeze out margin. If you squeeze margin out of a difficult environment, you will be the rock star of your company.) If you’re a glass half full type of person, this creates a world of opportunity for continued success in the online marketing career path! More money spent online means more opportunity for all of us in the corporate PPC world. Moreover, it creates a world of opportunity for content publishers.

Image of Bags of Money © iStockPhoto – lisegagne

Yahoo Microsoft Search Alliance Whitepaper

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Sep 14 9

At the beginning of August, I shared my tips on preparing for the Yahoo Microsoft Search Alliance. Now that September is here, it’s really crunch time! I just got back from Maui and am really lucky I’m all rested up because we’re in the 11th hour here, the Search Alliance is upon us! With very high probability, Yahoo and Microsoft will complete the Alliance in October-November and Yahoo’s Panama platform will cease to exist.

Are you ready? If not, don’t worry! I just discovered an amazing whitepaper that will help you prepare fast. Today, I’d like to feature Marin Software’s The Yahoo!-Bing Search Alliance: 10 Secrets To A Smooth Transition. You’ll want to download it right away, this free 7 page whitepaper/checklist is truly invaluable.

Marin Software’s FREE Search Alliance Whitepaper Rocks

I’m a big fan of whitepapers! I just wrote a 12 page whitepaper all about SEM Automation. It took me nearly an entire day to write and edit this whitepaper. However, it was totally worth it based on all the positive feedback I have received.

Marin Software, one of my favorite SEM automation companies, is also a fan of whitepapers! In fact, I highlighted their awesome Optimization Beyond Bidding whitepaper just a few weeks ago. Well, they did it again! This time they released an amazing whitepaper all about the Yahoo Bing Search Alliance. And, they couldn’t have released this whitepaper at a better time!

What To Expect In The Yahoo Bing Whitepaper

Since the whitepaper is absolutely free and it’s a quick read, I’m going to save you some time and keep this post short. At the same time, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite aspects of Marin’s paper to pique your interest:

Marin offers 10 no-nonsense tips to make your transition as smooth as possible. These practical tips will immediately fuel your search organization’s October queue.
Have you performed a gap analysis before? Marin explains why this term will become one of your favorite words heading into the Yahoo Bing transition.
Yahoo and adCenter are very different platforms, especially when it comes to search engine specific tracking parameters. Marin discuses the differences between tracking parameters and also throws Google in the mix for good measure.

To close out, I’d like to offer a bonus tip for PPC Ian readers: Don’t forget to learn all about {param1}, {param2}, and {param3} on adCenter. These three simple keyword-specific parameters set adCenter apart from the other search engines with very powerful versatility. Used correctly, they will take your adCenter game to the next level. So, what are you waiting for? You can download the whitepaper here.

PPC Ian Visits Maui

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Sep 12 10

Pay per click can be a crazy career at times. Why? Just think of it as the NYSE trading floor, only it’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. That’s also part of what makes it so much fun in my opinion! At the same time, it’s imperative to take vacations and recharge. After all, career longevity is the real key to making it big in online marketing. Today, I’d like to talk about my recent trip to the Ritz Carlton, Maui, my first "real" week long vacation of the year!

My First Real Vacation of 2010, It’s About Time!

PPC Ian and Nicole In Maui

2010 Has been a crazy year. I have been making stellar progress against my 2010 goals but have hardly had any time off. In fact, I’ve only taken one official day of PTO (paid time off) all year. That’s a good thing in that I’ve truly accomplished a lot. However, it’s a bad thing in that it’s not super healthy to work that hard with no break. As such, I’m extremely happy that my wife and I spent an amazing week relaxing at the Ritz Carlton, Maui.

The crazy thing about PPC: It’s really addictive and you can get stuck in a mode where you really don’t even want to take time off. It’s this strange state that’s brought about by the instant feedback loop of PPC. I was most definitely in that mode. My advice to you: Force yourself to take a vacation! You are in this for the long term.

My First Vacation With My iPad

I’m PPC Ian so you know I didn’t check out completely! I actually wrote and published two blog posts while on vacation: Inflection.com and Commission Junction. The fun part of it all: I didn’t even bring a laptop to Hawaii. I wrote and published these posts on my new 32 GB iPad with 3G. Moreover, I kept up with important work email and campaign management, all on my iPad! It’s important stuff: When your’re a Director, you can’t just abandon your team while on vacation. It sure was refreshing to have long battery life and less weight in my carry-on.

The only downside: Things took a little longer, especially considering I was having troubles pairing my wireless keyboard even though it worked just fine at home. Oh well, I was on "island time" anyway!

Hawaii Is Ideal For PPC

My wife and I love Hawaii. I also love the pay per click career path. The natural conclusion: Find a way to spend more time in Hawaii (maybe a few weeks each year) while working remotely. This may be even easier to swing if I can split the time up into a few separate blocks. This goal is something that will continue to motivate me well into the future! One thing is for sure: I’m blessed to be a leader in an industry that theoretically has no geographical boundaries!

My Best Month On Commission Junction

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Sep 7 27

I’m a big fan of passive income. I’m also a big fan of SEO. Put the two together and I have built a network of information sites that drive passive income from affiliate programs. Historically, my main methods of monetization have been Google AdSense and the eBay Partner Network. However, I set the goal in 2010 of diversifying my affiliate programs. Even though I’m the biggest fan of AdSense around (and AdSense dominates my affiliate earnings), it always a great idea to diversify for added stability. To that end, I’m excited to report than I earned $991 on Commission Junction in the month of August, a new milestone for me. My earnings were at 100 percent margin, all from my SEO sites. Moreover, I spend less than 5 hours per month on this stuff (I’m a corporate SEM Director) so I’m super excited with the results.

My CJ Earnings Are Pure Profit

Commission Junction

My friend Jeremy from Profit Addiction said it best. Jeremy’s tagline "When revenue is not enough" indicates that it’s all about profit and not revenue. You hear a lot about people making thousands and thousands of dollars with affiliate marketing. However, most of the time they are talking about revenue and not profit. There’s a big difference!

Just think about it: Pay per click is getting really competitive. If you’re a savvy affiliate, your percentage margin may be 25 percent tops (most are much lower). Let’s assume I earned my $991 via PPC at 25 percent margin (instead of my 100 percent SEO margin percent). That means my theoretical PPC revenue is $4,000 or $48,000 per year. Not bad!

However, PPC margins can be volatile. As such, I would always swap PPC dollar margin for the same dollar margin in SEO. In short, I’m a huge fan of SEO earnings. Sustainable SEO margin is just like a great dividend-paying stock, whereas PPC is more like active trading.

Affiliate Marketing Is A Small Percentage of My Income

So you may be thinking why is Ian writing about a $991 monthly profit, it’s not that much money. Here’s the cool part and why I’m such a big proponent of moonlighting: It’s all gravy on top of my salary and involves only a few hours a month. (Also its just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my affiliate income as CJ is a smaller component of my cash flow.)

However, I’m here to make a point… I spend the vast majority (99 percent) of my time on my full time job. A good percentage of my full time salary goes towards bills. My affiliate marketing income, however, is pure savings that goes directly into my bank account or other investment vehicles. With only a few extra hours a month I have learned invaluable SEO skills (helpful in my career) while building a stream of pure profit that goes to my bottom line.

Since my $991 is passive and recurring, it’s representative of about $240,000 value in my eyes (I would have to invest $240,000 at 5 percent dividend yield to get that same annual cash flow via stocks). In short, no matter how small your affiliate business, SEO margin is much more valuable than you may think!

Give Commission Junction A Try

I’ve been building out a lot of SEO sites and have been placing CJ ads on all of them. I have been very pleased with my results and highly recommend giving Commission Juntion a try. Many people I know don’t use CJ as much anymore since the eBay affiliate program is now managed by eBay (and not via CJ like it was in the past). However, I’m here to say that Commission Junction has many great offers that convert quite well in SEO, especially in "review" style sites.