Affiliate Marketing (My First Passion) Revisited

We are taking a short pause from the SphinnConn saga - because there have been other fluid pieces of valuable info coming in a I don't want to get backlogged.

Staying focused, my original purpose of this blog was to learn how to make money on the internet through affiliate marketing.  I think it still stands to be my favorite topic when it comes to e-Commerce, online marketing etc.  I got side-tracked from the affiliate marketing topic because in order to sell anything on-line I learned that you need to have good exposure - usually through high SEO- where you show up high on search results.  So, I delved into SEO tips which can go on forever as it is ever-changing- keeping up with google and analytics etc.  I am not equipped to compete with those who eat sleep and drink that stuff.

BUT... I STILL am fascinated by how people can make money off the web- without even owning any inventory and without even having your own website!

I will share an online interview about a guy who made millions on affiliate marketing and how he did it- (thanks David).

http://mixergy.com/mike-colella-adbeat-interview/

This guy Mike Colella was an engineer and quit his job because he started making so much.
He uses Contextual Advertising - Google AdSense Ads-  He would buy them and sell other people's products.  Sending traffic directly to an affiliate site - directly to their landing page.  Clickbank.com offers- high commissions because they are digital products - with no cost to ship - so there is about a 75% commission rate- which is very high.
He also affilates with e-books.  He did well selling an affiliate e-book on solar panels to reduce energy bills - because people like to buy things to save them money.

He started in 2008 just wanting to make money on the internet.  He started a website on fitness thinking he'd make money though putting on Google AdSense.  But didn't make any money.

Then, he started with PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising - with a small budget spending about 10$ a day on Adwords.  Started with fitness sites - and saw a lot of ads in the diet markets - picked the product he saw most often that sold a diet product and became an affiliate of that.
Would spend 20 and make 25 on a sale.  He continued spending money on advertising and making more money.  A few months later made a $5,000 profit and the month after that 25,000 then 4th month 60,000 then 5th month 90,000-(that was with making 250,000 revenue.)
The original product was called "Truth About Abs" - an e-book.

This is all from promoting other people's products!
How'd he do this?
He looked at what ads were showing up as AdWords and modeled his ads after those that were working.
He used an AdWords e-book that helped as well.  He understood the fitness market and how to reach the market by expanding keywords.  Plus, fitness has a very wide appeal.  You can sell it anywhere.
You do not always need to stay so focused around the topics.  You start an AdGroup on AdSense - with that theme - but also try other ways to stretch it.
Think: What are people thinking about, reading about when thinking to lose weight?  ie the word "carbs." And then you bid on those words.
To follow-up, you check if those words are converting for you- if people are searching those words and clicking through and buying.  You evaluate the traffic and see if it's profitable.

Question???
He used people to create the scripts for him - through e-Lance and other outsourcing sites - found people to write the scripts for the Adgroups  It's basically taking keywords- putting them into excel and then putting them into one adgroup.
First script - creating a bunch of adgroups from a big set of keywords automatically- taking the first 10 keywords and putting  into one group- then the next 10 into another group.
The next was to get google keywords from the google keyword tool.  He was putting in single keywords (like 200) and putting them into excel and then breaking them up into Adwords campaigns.
He got his scripts to become automated.  (I need to clarify what they were referring to by the word "script" - this part of the interview was unclear to me...).

To grow - he kept creating campaigns and analyzing the data and getting scripts automated to get it done quicker.
He also invluded a CPA - Cost Per Action offer with a CPA network.  Not a CPS- Cost Per Sale.  Not immediately paying out the money.  It's a trial that converts to an offer.  So they give you a front-end payout because they know the person with sign-up.  It can be filling out a firm, installing a web-bar- it's just a cost per action. 

Now he has a software that helps his determine what is working on the different sites.  It automates the process that finds what's working.  He used to look at sites and see how the owners advertise their sites etc.