Affiliate Marketing Return On Investment/Risk

hydrogin

New member
Jun 24, 2006
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This might be helpful to those starting out in AM. A lot of times affiliates who start promoting an offer and are profitable think that their ROI is 100% because they spend $50 and made $100 that day/week/etc.

But because of payment terms such as Net 15, Net 30, etc., the actual return on investment/risk is not necessarily 100%. This is because there is always a risk that you don't get paid for whatever reason, and you already incurred advertising costs.

Therefore to see your true ROI or I guess break-even point, I've put together a sample scenario below..

Example Scenario -

You start promoting a new offer and you're profitable:

Daily Revenue = $120
Daily Cost = $100
Daily ROI = (120-100)/100 = 20%

Payment terms are net 15, so you're investing/risking $100 x 45 days = $4500

Once you receive your first month's payment, $120 x 30 days = $3600

$3600 - $4500 (initial capital spent) = -$900
..you still have $900 at risk
..but you profited $600 for your 1st month

Based on this info, you need to know how many months of profit you need to earn before you're advertising expense is risk-free .. meaning that even if you get banned on the 44th day of the payment cycle (for w/e reason) and will not be paid, you don't lose your own money but you lose the profits earned from previous months.

Advertising expense incurred = $4500 (45 days)
Monthly profits = $600

$4500/$600 = 7.5 months

After 7.5 months of profits in your pocket, any potential loss of revenue and expenses incurred is not from your own pocket but from profits you have earned from this offer.

So it's a good idea to look at profitability from this point of view and not just your daily profits because it can all be wiped out if you incur cost before you're paid.



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If you think I have made a mistake somewhere above, please feel free to comment and add your input/suggestions
 


@Dr_Ngo
yup that too, my scenario is just a simplified example. Other expenses include your time spent working/researching on the offer, and any costs in designing/developing landing pages, etc.
 
Can you deduct 100% of your advertising expenses? Or do you only get to deduct some of the expenses on the long form?
 
Can you deduct 100% of your advertising expenses? Or do you only get to deduct some of the expenses on the long form?

Dont ask tax questions here... get an accountant. In a nutshell though, the answer is that 100% of your advertising is expensable as COGS.
 
Dont ask tax questions here... get an accountant. In a nutshell though, the answer is that 100% of your advertising is expensable as COGS.

I have one. He is not that bright though.

And who are you again.. I love it when people act like their something when they are nothing. :banana_sml:
 
Therefore to see your true ROI or I guess break-even point, I've put together a sample scenario below..

Hydrogin, all valid points.

When I started doing this years ago, I looked at how I did for a given month as the sum of all of my commissions less advertising costs.

Now I evaluate my month on a cash basis using ACTUAL revenue and ACTUAL costs. As you can imagine, there may be months where the data is not "true." The commissions could result from sales driven last month or the previous month. The advertising expenses could be from yesterday, last week, etc. as Google charges basically daily.

On a related note, I've been burned by the lapse you described a few times.

* SunRocket - Chapter 11
* Sam Goody/Musicland - Chapter 11

In those cases, I had spent money on advertising but never collected commissions. So, in a sense, I had lost "double."
 
When I was brand new and only had a couple thousand bucks to play with, my plan (which I kinda sorta stuck to) was to use Net 15 networks and only push traffic the last two weeks of the month for the first couple months on a new network, so I would get my initial investment back faster, and I didn't have money hanging out there before I started spending on the next months traffic, especially if I didn't have much history with the network.

I still think it's a halfway useful plan for those just starting out on a budget.