
Originally Posted by
robertmedl
Perhaps my nearly 10 years of experience as a small-time affiliate will be helpful to others.
Back when I first started in June 2005, I signed up for every program I could, over 100. I maintained a list of them in a master spreadsheet that had a link to the affiliate site, along with my credentials for each site. Every day, I would click on each link, type in my credentials, and check my stats. Took at least an hour on a good day.
After a couple of years of doing that, StatsRemote came to GPWA and offered a free trial period. I tried it, but since it didn't have all of the programs that I worked with, I still didn't have a single solution for checking affiliate stats. And, at least for me, StatsRemote was not reliable -- sometimes it was unable to connect to some of the sites, etc. And so I just kept up with my master spreadsheet of over 100 affiliate programs.
Around that same time, or shortly there after, browsers started having tabbed interfaces. So, I created a Bookmark folder with all of my sites and used the "Open all in new window" feature when I wanted to check stats. That made things a little faster, but I was still checking 100 sites a day.
I also tried other programs similar to StatsRemote, none of which worked reliably for me, and/or I was unwilling to pay for the service since I am only a small-time affiliate.
A couple of years ago, I took a hard look at my stats and placed the affiliate programs in my master spreadsheet into three categories: never profitable, occasionally profitable, profitable. I left the never profitable affiliate programs and deleted those sites from my sites and my master spreadsheet -- that was about half of the 100 or so that I was a member of. Of the remaining 50, about 10 were profitable, and 40 were occasionally profitable. So, I created a Bookmark folder called "Daily" and placed links to the 10 profitable sites in it. And I created a Bookmark folder called "Bi-weekly" and placed links to the 40 occasionally profitable sites in it. Each morning I "Open all bookmarks in a new windows" for the "Daily" folder and check my stats -- takes 5 minutes; every two weeks, I do the same for the "Bi-weekly" folder -- takes 20 minutes.
I still have my master spreadsheet, and at the beginning of each month I might add or remove a program or two. And I might move a program from my "daily" list to my "bi-weekly" list.
Here's the lessons:
1. Don't waste your time checking your stats. Keep it to under 10 minutes a day.
2. Don't work with an excessive amount of affiliate programs. Sure, you can sign up for a lot if you want, but after a few months aggressively prune those that never convert, have unresponsive staff, don't pay reliably (or at all), etc.
3. Keep your own records, and review them monthly so see if you need to make adjustments, i.e. increase exposure for those programs that are doing well, take appropriate action for programs that are faltering, etc.