Well, we’re six days into the Inspired Affiliate vs Richard Bonner challenge, so it’s time for an update.

Firstly, right now it looks like Bonner’s ahead of me in the competition.  He’s currently at $744 in revenues, which is almost on track to hit his target of $4,000 in revenues.  As for me, I’m way behind on my numbers to even come close to hitting my target of $5,000 in revenues (for now).

Here are the stats in a nutshell:

Inspired Affiliate
Target Revenue: $5,000
Currently At: $71.00

Richard Bonner
Target Revenue: $4,000
Currently At: $744.00

So, what’s my excuse for trailing so far behind?  I really have none.  He’s simply a few steps ahead of me in learning this affiliate game, and so he’s getting better results from his campaigns.  I’ve also had delays in moving my accounts over to my new company accounts from the ones I’ve setup under Inspired Money Maker to my new ones under Ignite Vision Marketing (Inspired Affiliate).

Also, with the setting up of my new Google AdWords account, that looks like it’s put a damper on my traffic due to this suspected Google "Sandbox" I’m in.  I actually think it’s partly a "Sandbox" thing and partly something related to how Google updates their stats.  I *think* my campaigns might still be getting similar traffic compared to my other account, but the stats are not updating!

For example, one campaign I setup last night is still showing 0 Impressions, and 0 Clicks, even though my other tracking software shows that I am getting clicks and I’ve even made a conversion.  So, I think it may be in part due to Google’s stats being super slow to update.

Maybe for new accounts they update slow, and for bigger accounts they update more often?  I just don’t see Shoemoney sitting around waiting for days to see how many impressions and clicks his campaign is getting.

Here’s what the stats look like in more detail:

As you can see, even though my revenues are not great yet, I’m slowly inching closer to profitability.  In fact, yesterday was my first day where I made a profit of $9.73.  I’m learning to squeeze more value out of each click from AdWords which is good.  However, all these figures are still way too small to extrapolate any kind of statistics or to make informed decisions from.  You don’t want to get two conversions in a row by fluke after making some change and automatically think that the conversions are related to the changes you made.

The whole point here is to realize that people in small numbers are completely unpredictable, but in large enough numbers they are TOTALLY predictable.  It’s kind of like how life insurance companies work.  In a small group of 10 people they have no clue how many people will live or die in the next year.  But, if you give them a large enough sample group (lets say 100,000 people), barring some natural disaster, they can predict with a lot of precision how many people will live or die in a given year, simply by knowing their age, sex and smoking status.  They don’t know who, but they know how many.

Affiliate Marketing seems to be very similar to that.  Out of 10 people, I can’t tell you how many of them will click on my AdWords ads and then convert to a sale.  But in a large enough pool of numbers, it’s easy enough to start seeing patterns in things, and with enough split testing it’s possible to tune your campaigns to make money instead of losing it.

What I’m Learning

So, now that I’m about 1/5 of the way through the competition, do I still think I can whoop Bonner’s ass?  Absolutely!  Most things in life grow exponentially, not linearly.  Right now, even though you can’t see it reflected on any spreadsheet, my understanding of Affiliate Marketing is growing at an exponential pace.

The last week or so, I literally have felt like my head is gonna explode some nights just absorbing the sheer volume of information (and misinformation) out there.  What’s really funny is that as I’m blasting through all the eBooks, forums and Blogs out there, once in a while I run into posts with comments left by Bonner, so I kind of know where he was at each step of the game.

I’m kind of seeing his foot prints left behind for when he was learning that specific technique, tip or trick on Affiliate Marketing.  Of course he’s got a time advantage on me because of it, but I think I’m quickly closing in on him.

Seriously though, I’m just excited to be learning this stuff and finally figuring out how everything works.  Every day I have like 8-10 "aha!" moments on little things that I didn’t understand before.  There is no "secret" to Affiliate Marketing.  There are 10,000 secrets.  It’s just a matter of how quickly you get through them all and emerge on the other side as an Affiliate Marketing Ninja!