Often I see people ask others what was their first successful campaign and how long it took them to find success. I can understand why people ask this, unfortunately it is always different for everyone and the thing to keep in mind, not all campaigns will be successful. It it possible to find success on a campaign quick, but not be able to reproduce the results for a while.

Either way, here is my story. Keep in mind, this was years ago and this will no longer work for several reasons (you will see why).

The affiliate offer was Entertainment Books, you know – those books that have coupons and special discounts in them. The affiliate network I was working with was Copeac, they are unfortunately no longer around.

I was using Google Adwords to drive traffic to this offer, I was direct linking (Google Adwords will no longer allow this). I was targeting keywords related to entertainment. I was able to generate leads pretty quickly, I think I got lucky, there wasn’t much competition and the keywords were easy to come up with. I didn’t use any keyword tools, I just used my brain and brainstormed.

At the time I was not using any third party tracker and was sending keywords directly to the affiliate network. Keep in mind, this was before most trackers were available. I do not recommend doing this anymore, in my opinion you NEED a tracker these days to find success.

Again, things change – you won’t be able to duplicate this anymore. Google no longer allows direct linking and they have become much more strict. Also, as mentioned above, it is very foolish to attempt to promote any offers without a third party tracker.

Either way, I hope this is a good read and helps answer this question for anyone who was wondering.