Two days ago I made the most I’ve ever made in one day — and I learned some valuable lessons.

The dollar amount was something I thought might be possible by the end of the year — but all the stars were aligned, I made a bunch of sales and met my goal early.

The amount I made is very healthy — and yet there are PLENTY of Marketers that make much more on a REGULAR basis. So if you’re frustrated and think you can’t do it, you’re wrong.

There’s plenty of proof around you that you can.

After reaching my goal so early in the year, I started thinking why? What has helped me do so well the past few months and what lessons can I share on this blog?

This is what I’ve come up with — this is based on MY experience:

One: Work Ethic.

First and foremost, I have a tireless work ethic despite the many many times I’ve failed. Unless you’re a genius, it’s going to take a lot of trial and error to find your groove. If you’re not 100% focused and motivated in making this work, quitting will be all too easy. I put about 2 hours of work in before I go to my full time job and another 2 hours when I come home. This is partly because I’m obsessed, but the point is, you have to want it.

Two: Focus.

Have you made some sales and now you’re in a rut? Focus on exactly HOW you made those sales and then duplicate. For the longest time I bounced around from tactic to tactic with no real focus. Then my wife pointed out, “you seem to make money advertising landing pages on PPC — why don’t you just stick with that?” I listened to her and she was right. Focus on what works for you and keep fine tuning.

Three: Yahoo Search Marketing.

I think a major contributor to my success lately is tapping into Yahoo Search Marketing. For the longest time I only used Google Adwords — because I was comfortable there. To ramp up for the holiday season, however, I copied over my best campaigns over to Yahoo and the results have been fantastic. I was leaving a lot of money on the table — are you?

Four: Times and Countries.

Within Google Adwords, you can set which countries see your ads and at what time. For the longest time I was constantly refining the countries and times, but could never come up with a definite “perfect”. Now I just leave the ads showing all the time and to all countries. The result is sales while I’m sleeping and sales from all over the world. This assumes of course that the programs you promote accept sales from all countries — the ones I currently promote do, so I set my ads to all countries and English.

Five: Fine Tuning Your PPC.

While on the topic of pay per click, I’m always fine tuning my bids and monitoring my campaigns. I don’t know if this is ideal, but it’s what works best for me to keep my campaign and costs in check. It only take a total of 1-2 hours per week so it’s worth it. Things can get out of control quickly if you’re not paying attention.

Six: Diversify.

Diversify the products you sell, but have one niche you’re strong in. I have one niche that I have a lot of campaigns running under, but recently I’ve diversified. Many have been losers, but many have been winners and have contributed to a very large income bump. It’s important to have a focus, but I didn’t want all my eggs in one basket — plus I knew there were other products outside my niche that I could make money with. This probably goes against what the gurus tell you, but it’s just based on my personal experience.

The bottom line is, I started trying to make money online in 2002 and I didn’t start receiving decent checks until 2006 — so if I can do it, you can do it.

The above is what has helped me. The only thing I didn’t mention is my membership to the Wealthy Affiliate University. I think you can still be successful without an educational service like this, but for me, it just made things happen much quicker.

I tried to really pour a lot of “heart” into this post in celebration of Valentine’s Day tomorrow (corny, I know) and I hope you got a lot out of it.

I welcome your comments below!

Talk to you soon,
Ryan

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Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click, Yahoo Search Marketing