Today we are bringing you a case study from Dave Mac, an affiliate marketer that has been in the industry for over 15 years. He has been working with Clickbank for very many years and earning up to $20 000/ month on the platform.
Dave Mac has also been putting out a lot of YouTube content in which he shares advanced tips related to the affiliate marketing industry. In turn, he has helped a lot of people to make money online through affiliate marketing.
Read this interview, as he shares with us his journey on how he got started in the affiliate marketing industry, his experience in the industry, his biggest wins, challenges and so much more.
Dave, take us through a little bit from where you got started, what’s your background story before you got into affiliate marketing, and how did you get into the affiliate marketing industry?
I grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and have been working in IT full time since I was 17 years old.
I got started in affiliate marketing in 2007. Back then, I’d just moved to Japan with my family. I’d been a computer programmer in Australia, but because I was unable to speak Japanese my employment options were limited. So, I looked towards the Internet as a place to make money. I tried a lot of different ways of making money, such as Adsense, SiteSell, and article marketing and nothing worked out until one day I unintentionally created a blog that got instant love from Google.
What exactly made you focus on Clickbank rather than other affiliate networks?
Clickbank was the first network I was involved with because it was easy to join. Over the years they’ve also had the type of offers that just convert really well. I don’t use Clickbank very much anymore though and that’s mainly because from about 2010 I started to seek out offers that had less competition than those on Clickbank.
What was the biggest day, month, and year you’ve had since starting affiliate marketing in terms of earnings, and what were the numbers?
I’m small fry in terms of my earnings because affiliate marketing is not 100% of my focus (some of my channel subscribers who have implemented my methods earn more than me!) My best day ever was just shy of $5,000. Best month: $20,000. The best year is approximately $200,000.
Let's talk about picking offers on Clickbank. How do you go about picking good offers?
I tend to go for Nutra offers. I really only go for other verticals when an offer type starts to take off. For example, there were times when Forex robots did extremely well on Clickbank. A lot of people use Gravity as an initial selection point when choosing a Clickbank offer. I tend to look at the offer itself and use Gravity as a secondary or tertiary indicator.
What type of Clickbank vendors or offer owners do you prefer to work with?
I’ve never worked directly with a vendor or offer owner on Clickbank. Outside of Clickbank, especially with vendors who do not use a network, I want to work with vendors who pay regularly and on time.
What are your best traffic sources for affiliate marketing?
I like paid and free search engine traffic, and native. With search engine traffic you can pre-qualify visitors based on their search terms. With native, you can advertise a lot more “edgy” offers. I haven’t tried Facebook traffic yet and this is something is want to get more serious about this year.
Have you ever lost a ton of money at once while doing running ads? If so what exactly happened and how much did you burn?
Oh yes! When I first became aware of Clickbank (all the way back in 2005) “Google Cash” by Chris Carpenter was massive in affiliate marketing. It was an ebook teaching people how to advertise on Google Adwords (now Google Ads) and make money with Clickbank. I stupidly decided I could go it alone without the $49 ebook and randomly picked products to advertise on Google targeting words like “lose weight”. I burned through about $5,000 before I decided affiliate marketing might not be for me :)
Apart from that, what are the other big headaches that you’ve faced while working as an affiliate marketer?
The biggest one I can remember is when I was promoting products through Paydotcom with paid traffic and the site just stopped working. I had a number of campaigns that had been making money regularly that suddenly just couldn’t take orders anymore. That was about two months when I saw a huge dip in income. This was around 2015, and the site has since changed hands I believe.
Do you work as a solo affiliate or do you have a team working with you?
I do everything solo. I’m a bit of a lone-wolf when it comes to my working style.
You create and post a lot of content on your affiliate marketing endeavors on Youtube. How has that helped your business?
My channel has been great in ways I never expected. I’ve met some awesome people from all over the world and I’ve made new friends. I’ve had some brand deals. I’ve been able to better think through, organize, and document everything I know about affiliate marketing. I also get to do interviews like this!
Tell us more about your training programs. What was the motive behind starting it and how many students have you helped so far?
I have two training courses, both courses have the training and also case studies showing the techniques I teach actually working. One is for Microsoft Ads and the other is for Native Ads. When I started my channel I had no plans for a course, but over time my subscribers were more and more asking for me to create them. When I created them I wanted to differentiate myself from other course creators, which is why I included case studies. So far 274 people have taken my courses.
What's your motivation to keep on going and keep making moves? Is it all money, lifestyle?
My motivation in affiliate marketing is the same now as it was when I started: I want to have more than one income source so that I can do my best to keep my family financially secure.
Conclusion
The team at Partnerkin would like to thank Dave Mac for sharing with us what he has learned and practiced in his 15 years of experience in the affiliate marketing industry. We believe that our readers have got a number of insights from this.
You can always check out Dave Mac on his Youtube channel with the name Dave Mac.
