Ah, still struggling away. The biggest challenge this last week has been to find the time to work on my projects.

In preparation for my launching into PPC and pumping out as many campaigns as I can afford, I’ve had to pile on the overtime at work. That means I’m working about 50 hours in the day job, and then working throught the night with my online stuff. It’s infuriating, but I’d rather have the money available and ready for PPC when I need it rather than having to wait around.

I’ve just launched another Facebook campaign which is doomed to fail, but with every failure I get that little bit closer to where I want to be. I’ll keep that running til tomorrow and then report back on how much money I’ve not made.

I mentioned that I’d signed up to PPC Coach a few days ago. Well I’ve read a crap load of stuff on there and learnt quite a bit, and once I’ve got my head around some of the technical stuff then I’ll be making campaigns like there’s no tomorrow.

Tonight is all about working out how to use the tracking system to log clicks and keywords sent from the PPC engines, and then I’ll take a look at integrating all the code I’m using for the landing pages into Wordpress.

So, a real fun night ahead of me - I can’t wait to get stuck into some annoying code.

If you’re thinking about using Facebook to send some traffic to a well known affiliate-friendly company such as Amazon, let me save you from spending your hard-earned cash.

Max CPC: $0.26

Clicks: 495

Total ad cost: $121.59

Conversions: 2

Revenue: under $5

The figures speak for themselves. The lesson here is this - failure isn’t something to be avoided. It’s to be rejoiced over, not that we should parade our faults for the world to see, and not that we should be proud of falling short.

But we rejoice in the fact that we put in the effort, we ran the race. And believe me, this is a race that can be won. I don’t advocate putting effort into something that isn’t viable, but this “internet marketing” lark is certainly doable.

I see my failure as one little step towards success, I heard someone once call it “failing upwards”. I’ve spent years looking, and reading - I know a lot about internet marketing and yet I’m the first to admit I’ve never really got stuck in there.

I never tried. Well now I’m trying.

I’m letting the failures be my motivation, pushing me on, further and further into my full potential.

I know I have it in me. And I will work for all I’ve got to see this through. So I’ll leave you with a quote from a guy called Randy Pausch which my mentor often likes to use:

Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough.

Ok, so I just wrote that to get some attention - but they did abuse me, kinda.

It’s been a week of trying new things for me, and I thought to myself,

“Hell, why not - everyone else uses it”.

I left a campaign on targeting the majority of the Facebook users in the UK (about 7.5 million). It’s not even been 24 hours yet and the billing is staggering - I worked my way up to over $100.

Yes, I know that’s nothing to you hardcore pro internet marketers, you who smoke $50 bills, good for you. But to me it’s a lot of money to lose in one day.

It’s not all bad, because at least some of 480 people I sent across to my aff link will convert. I wasn’t expecting killer conversions, but hopefully it’ll be enough to cover some of the losses so I can optimise and start over.

There’s not really much optimising that can be done with Facebook Ads though, maybe target a smaller age range. I guess in a way that makes it somewhat easier to tell what works and what doesn’t, unlike traditional PPC where you have a myriad of keywords to select from.

The affiliate stats are so slow at reporting, I’ve paused the campaign for now while I wait for it catch up. I’m full of both excitement and dread to see how my first one’s gone.

What if I didn’t do the 301 redirect right and I’ve sent them all to a black hole?

I better not have screwed up.