The Jeremy Palmer Affiliate Marketing Test

Affiliate Marketing is defined as:

a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate (publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

As of today, 10.3.2007, I’ve made a total of $380.55 in commissions from Commission Junction starting in Jan 2007. That’s $2,103.55 in sales, 22 sales, 41 items, 1,059 clicks and 72,654 impressions. My best site to date has made $246.11 in commissions, followed by $105.30 and $17.74. As you can see by the numbers, I’m not an avid or dedicated affiliate marketer by any means and have focused more of my time (and money) on dropshipping for my eCommerce business.

As you’ve read recently, I went to CJU 2007 and had the opportunity to meet the one, the only, Jeremy Palmer. He is one of the “big dogs” of affiliate marketing. Thanks to a friend and fellow Utah blogger, I watched a couple testimonials about how Jeremy Palmer has done amazing things for his clients. I met two of these clients at the CJU 2007 Affiliate Marketing Conference in Santa Barbara, California. One of them, Justin Bowem, actually won the Horizon Award as one of the top performers in 2007. These experiences have opened my mind a bit to the potential of affiliate marketing. Obviously there are people making “bank” with commissions on sales.

I got to talk to Jeremy, Justin, and James Hamby at CJU 2007. My time with Jeremy was only for a few minutes, but I got to talk to Justin and James for quite some time. I love asking questions. Here are a few key points I learned from them that are good to take in to account:

1. Learn website design or know someone who does. I’m not a programmer or designer but know a few people around the block that may be able to help me. You can also find people like this at www.guru.com, www.elance.com and www.getafreelancer.com.
2. Be prepared to spend money on advertising. Pay Per Click advertising is key if you want to get quick, targeted traffic to your site. However, getting traffic and getting “conversion” are two different things. Just spending the money to get traffic and not knowing what is and isn’t working is like throwing money down the drain.
3. Analysis, analysis, analysis! Jeremy uses Google Analytics like it’s going out of style. This is a free analytics tool that will tell you almost anything you want about your visitors and what they are doing. Knowing what they’re doing is only a part of the analysis though. It’s also important to know what you want them to do and how to get them to do it. This comes with time and practice.

So, keeping these things in mind, and realizing it may be a shot in the dark, I’m going to challenge myself in front of all my clients and readers.

The affiliate marketing experiment: I recently downloaded Jeremy Palmers eBook about High Level Affiliate Marketing. I plan to print this ebook out and read it at least 2 times within the next month. With the information I learn, I plan to make at least $1,000 in Commissions within the next 3 months. That is at least $333.33 per month net profit starting in November and ending in January 2008. Granted, this isn’t much, but as I’ve said a thousand times – “Small Success leads to Big Success!” I plan to dedicate $250 per month for 3 months to a PPC marketing campaign, something I’ve never done before.

I look forward to seeing the results and then teaching them, in detail, to my clients. Be prepared to get updates from time to time on my progress.