arithmetic doesn't add up

[Chianti]

I have only just signed up to WF after reading about IM in other forums for the last couple of weeks. Thanks to everyone who posts on this forum. It's the most useful resource so far, and on top of that it also has the best vibe.

From what I've managed to fathom (trying to wade through bullshit has been the hardest aspect of finding out about IM), I'd expect an average successful noob affiliate campaign to obtain 200€ a month, before then leaving it alone and starting a new one.

1) How long could I realistically expect that passive income to last, if only spent a couple of hours per week keeping the campaign ticking over?

2) Based on what I've read, my theoretical arithmetic looks something like this:

backlinks: 100-200 from web2 articles and blog comments
impressions: 100 per day (3000 per month)
click-throughs: 2%
conversion: 3%
affiliate payment: 4%
item price: 20€
revenue per month: 1.44€

Getting the 200€ target with these figures would require 15,000 impressions per day, which seems very unreasonable to expect(?) For one thing, I doubt my VPS account would even be able to handle that traffic(?).

Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this arithmetic?

Thanks.

 

[Chianti]

Speechless! I just downloaded Mike's spreadsheet from this thread -
Absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much.
It's now much clearer to me what 'campaign' conceptually means.

So my original questions have changed.
From the spreadsheet -

CPC Advertising
CPC $0.10
Clicks 2,500
Payout $10.00
Ad Spend $250.00
B/E Units 25.00
B/E Conv Rate 1.00%

Actual Conv Rate 4.00%
Units Converted 100
Revenue $1,000.00
Gross Profit $750.00
ROI 300.00%

3) Are these figures a realistic starting point for a campaign? For instance, isn't CPC going to be more like $0.3 and conversion rate more like 3% (which would then wipe out the ROI)?

4) Is 2500 clicks likely to take a day, week, month, or more? I know that's a difficult question, but at the moment I have no idea whatsoever what traffic rate is to be expected when doing CPC.

5) I suppose that after selling the first 100 units, you'd re-invest another 250$ and keep doing it again and again until the ROI dropped off to 0% for whatever reason. I know this is a difficult question, but how many units would usually be sold over the lifetime of such a campaign? Or alternatively, how much time do campaigns usually span before they come to an end?

Thanks!

 

[Naterz]

Your killing yourself with the numbers bro.. It will help when you get knee deep in the shit, but for now make the campaign. Test and figure out what works for you niche. Make that money. Its defiantly more than an hour or two a day job. Just the numbers alone on a large campaign can take an hour. Its impossible to calculate risk on something you know nothing about.

 

[somebody]

For 3, 4 and 5, there are no right answers. It will depend on the niche, demographics, offer's LP, the actual offer, the amount which you are spending per day, your bid amount, your traffic source, etc.

Test and find out. Don't start with payday loans or something of that sort if you don't have money to burn.

 

[Chianti]

OK, cheers.
Thanks for the replies.

"Its impossible to calculate risk on something you know nothing about."

Nail on the head. Shit, my wife's going to kill me when I lose this cash.