Starting in April, I noticed a significant dip in commissions, initially from EPN. Reviewing posts at the EPN forum, I started to see others with similiar observations and complaints. Coincidentally there was a reporting error (for a small range, commissions were double posted). Currently the sites and network that I have created has been incredibly steady. Earlier in the month I did not see a decrease in traffic or clicks, just a decrease in commissions.
As the month progressed, I started to see a dip in other areas. Google Adsense was showing a drop in clicks as well but earnings are still holding up? My Commission Junction stats were also showing similar results. Immediately I thought it could have been due to Google slap, but checking Google, all of my sites are still indexed, and I’m still receiving organic traffic. Like wise, my paid YSM clicks were down as well. What does this mean?
During April of 2008, I experienced the worst month of my affliate career. I initially blamed it to the transition from CJ to EPN, but it’s odd that I’m seeing similar results 12 months later. It’s definitely not as bad as 2008, but it’s a very significant drop compared to March/2009.
Here are my theories, and I would love to hear yours if you have any.. or if you’re experiencing similar results.
- United States economy is finally hitting the affiliate marketting sector. Currently, all of my sites have been primarily targetting US traffic. People are making less money and are possibly losing their jobs. Internet spending is down. This could be the reason why my paid YSM clicks are mirroring my earnings dip. Oddly, my Google Adsense clicks are down, but the earnings are still in the averages. I’m thinking that people are compensating the lower click throughs by raising their cost per click… and because of that I’m making more or the same but with less clicks? I’m still digging into this one.
- The other theory, which I’m not leaning towards is the tax month. April 15th is the tax deadline, and often if you’re paying, you’ll wait to make that payment at the end. I’m not liking this theory too much since the clicks/traffic seems to be similar across so many of my niches.
I’ve identified a problem and a threat to my earnings. It’s time to react and compensate this issue. Possible solutions…
- Create more sites now, and take advantage of this knee jerk reaction to produce more sites. Find new productive niches?
- Find the highest performing sites and attempt to improve them. This is a bit sketchy, since I don’t want to negatively impact the performing sites. I don’t want to focus on the low performing sites, since I want my efforts to be financially productive during this weird phase. I would work on the low performers as a experiment when I have free time. I need to turn the ship around now.
- Adjust my PPC campaigns. I could be targetting the wrong customer base or I’m being buried by other PPC marketers. So I might need to gamble a bit more and pay for higher priced keywords to gain those sales and commissions.
The bottom line, it’s not a time to whine and complain. It’s time to see what the problem is and see if you can fix it.
Are you guys seeing similar issues with April (and now May)? Love to hear your thoughts, so please comment!
Thanks!
hanji
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Perhaps you can try Adwords, pretty even still for us.
How do you automate a YSM campaign? Perhaps you have an upgraded account?
Never went with Yahoo because it seemed too difficult to automate.
All the best
I personally prefer YSM over AdWords. I’ve played with it, but it seems that my ROI is WAY better in YSM. Could be the niches, etc. I seem to break even or fall short with AdWords where YSM has less impressions/clicks, but they convert for me.
Not sure I’m following you on the ‘automate’ questions. What are you referring to?
Thanks!
hanji
Google has the adwords tool which we use offline to generate campaigns, if you can code (which we know you can), then it works wonders at quickly generating ads from your database of keywords. The only way to do this with Yahoo is perhaps by importing a campaign coded in their format. But you need like a monthly 500 ad spend to get this account upgrade.
Perhaps your keyword lists are only a few dozen, so this is no concern for you…
I am surprised that you do not have many more readers. You have a terrific resource here!
Hello
I you have any resources for automatically generating AdWords campaigns.. I’d like to see them and read up on it. My biggest issue is that my conversions/ROI is so poor with AdWords vs. YSM. I know it’s nothing to do with AdWords, but how I’m ‘working it’. Love to get a better handle on it.
Thanks for the kind words. I’m trying to get more readers.
How many keywords do you typically work with in your Yahoo campaigns?
Hello Pardy
Usually less than 100 keywords per campaign. Again, just from my experience, I’ve been finding better conversion with lower keyword numbers. I use to use buckets of keywords. When I ran AdWord campaigns, I would model them similar to my ‘winner’ YSM campaigns. Same keywords, same ads, etc.