June 22nd, 2009 Add Your Comments Bookmark and Share

The reason I ask is because I don’t think I am. I don’t think that I’m prepared to manage something that is so sensitive and delicate. An activity that requires such huge amounts of micro-management to get the most from it. When I started making money online I had dreams of a passive income, of making money without the need to trawl through every detail with a fine tooth comb and be constantly monitoring things. There are a number of reasons why I don’t think I’m cut out to do PPC and here they are:-

1. Offer Expiration – I still can’t get my head around just how often offers are dropped from the ad networks. Of course this is a pain in the ass if you’re promoting offers through organic traffic but when you’re paying for the traffic and sending it to an offer that is no longer available then it becomes a major issue i.e. you’re throwing away money Living in the UK really doesn’t help with this either (I’ve lost count of the number of times I wake up to an offer stopped e-mail), neither does the thought of never being able to take a holiday without turning of your PPC (and hence earnings).

2. Bright Candle Theory – It’s simple, the brighter it burns the less time it lasts. It’s the same with PPC/affiliate arbitrage. The more profitable the margin between what you spend and what income it makes the quicker people jump on it and the less time it lasts. All of a sudden you’re looking for something “new”. This continuous process is not passive income.

3. The Margins – I’ve read a lot about PPC and promoting affiliate offers over the last 3 years and there is something that always sticks in my mind. Why do people always talk about income and not profit? Even the super duper mega whooper affiliates are constantly talking about “doing” $xx,xxxx a day, very few will ever mention how much of it is profit. When they do talk you can see that anything above a %50 ROI is seen as being really good. Think about that for a second, you need to risk $200 a day in order to make $100 – and this is after you’ve got things nailed down and turning a profit. You have dreams of earning $2000, $3000, $4000 a day with PPC Affiliate marketing then I hope you’re ready and willing to put the thousands of dollars a day on the line?

4. Exchange Rates – Yep, that old bug bear again. You pay for traffic at one rate, you get paid from the affiliate network at a totally different one – minus all the fees. Even when you’re turning in amazing campaigns that are giving 100%+ ROI it’s still crap to see the real figure (i.e. what shows up in your bank account) not being that much more than what you’ve paid for the traffic.

Of course all this doesn’t mean that I’ll be giving up. As with most things in life doing stuff in moderation can be fun and as long as my house isn’t on the line and it’s not matter of life and death then using pay per click is a valuable learning experience. What I will say though is that when it comes to affiliate marketing I’ll certainly be concentrating most of my efforts on organic traffic – if nothing else at least it means that I can have a break every now and then.

Are there any other chickens out there like me or is everybody else maxing out their credit cards for a shot at the dream?

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Paul B