Starting Over After 20 Years: My New Affiliate Marketing Journey

[yankeedoodle]

I wanted to share a bit about my journey and what I’m doing now, partly to document my progress and partly to connect with others doing similar things.


I’ve been in the intelligence field for about 20 years, mostly doing programming and automation work. It’s not exactly “James Bond” stuff — more like data pipelines, backend systems, and process automation. Over the years, I’ve worked with a wide range of clients, projects, and technologies, so I’ve picked up a decent amount of technical experience.


But way back when I was a broke 18-year-old, I got sucked into those “get rich quick” affiliate marketing schemes you’d see plastered all over the internet. Affiliate marketing itself isn’t a scam, but those ads sure made it easy for scammers to take advantage of people like me who didn’t know any better. Long story short, I lost what little money I had, joined the military, and that was that.


Over the years, I’d occasionally try again — halfheartedly — but I never really understood what I was doing or had the discipline to make it work. Fast forward 20 years, and here I am again. This time, though, I’ve got the experience, the patience, and the mindset to actually make it happen.

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The Plan​

I already run a small business that makes anywhere from $30,000 to $60,000 a year, depending on how much I feel like working. That gives me a cushion to experiment.


To start, I’m going to be my own product. I’m selling a niche item on eBay — not going to reveal too much detail yet since it’s a small market, but let’s just say it’s R-rated, not pornographic, and fully allowed on eBay.


My first experiment is with Juicy Ads, to see if I can drive more views and watchers to my listings. I’ve put $100 into Juicy Ads to start. I fully expect to lose that first $100 — that’s fine. I learn best when I’ve got real skin in the game.

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The Setup​

My background is in automation, Python, and data science, but I’ve never touched ad networks before. So this will be my learning phase.


Here’s what I’ve done and what’s next:

• Integrating Juicy Ads’ API and eBay’s SDK.
• Building a basic landing page and redirect system to track traffic sources and click behavior.
• Logging timestamps for every click-through.
• Using the eBay SDK to poll watcher counts every 60 seconds, compare deltas, and determine if the ads are actually converting into engagement.

It’s not elegant yet, but it’s data-driven, and that’s what matters.

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Current Results​

So far, I’ve spent $19 of the $100 and I’m seeing about a 0.2% CTR to my eBay listings. It’s hard to tell if those clicks are translating into watchers since eBay doesn’t provide that data directly, but I’m working around it.


As for profit — technically, I’m still up about $70 total, not counting the ad spend. But I’m not focusing on profit yet. The goal right now is to build measurable systems, not chase short-term returns.

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The Next Steps​

Once I’ve got the tracking nailed down, I’ll start refining the targeting, creative, and landing flow. I expect to burn through this $100 as “tuition” — just the cost of learning the ropes.


From my research, it looks like affiliate marketing hasn’t changed much in the past 20 years — which is good news. It’s still about finding optimized patterns, running experiments, and scaling what works.

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Anyway, that’s where I’m at right now. I’ll keep this thread updated as I go, and if anyone has ideas on how to more efficiently correlate Juicy Ads clicks with eBay watcher activity, I’m all ears.


Thanks for reading — and here’s to doing it right this time.

 

[yankeedoodle]

Two-Week Update: Progress, Lessons, and New Tools​

Hey everyone,
It’s been about two weeks since my last post, and things have been pretty hectic lately. Work has been eating up a lot of time, especially with the furlough situation — it’s thrown a wrench in my schedule.


Still, I managed to squeeze in some time to focus on my eBay store and my advertising strategy. After a good amount of testing and research, I’ve come to a solid conclusion:

Display Ads Don’t Drive Sales (At Least for My Niche)​

All of my sales so far have come from the same five or six repeat buyers. These folks are loyal, and instead of chasing new customers through ads, I decided to reach out to them directly.
I asked what they liked and didn’t like — and honestly, that feedback has been way more valuable (and cheaper!) than any ad campaign I’ve run.


Trying to use Juicy Ads for a blanket advertising campaign just isn’t efficient for my niche. It’s too specific. So, for now, I think relying on eBay’s organic traffic is the best option.

A Better Future Strategy: Build a Twitter Funnel​

If I were to try again in the future, my plan would be to:

1. Create a Twitter account dedicated to showcasing my product.
2. Grow it naturally with content, engagement, and sharing.
3. Link that Twitter profile back to my eBay store.

That way, I’d be building a more qualified audience — people who are genuinely interested — and even an extra 5–10 buyers from that would be huge. For my setup, that’s a major win.

Current Numbers​

I’m up about $2,100 in two weeks, which I’ll gladly take as some solid “beer money.”
That increase isn’t from marketing — it’s purely product-driven — but I’ll take the win.

New Tools I’ve Built​

I’ve been tinkering with a few tools to help optimize my campaigns and better understand ad performance.

1. Ad Scraper​

I built a scraper for my eBay ad campaigns that:

• Collects all the sites my ads appear on.
• Logs ad dimensions, stats, and more.

However, I ran into a snag. I’m using Playwright in Python, which runs a generic Chromium browser. Since there’s no profile or cookies, ad networks can’t tell who I am — so I just get random, low-quality, cheap ads from all over (lots of Chinese or Turkish junk traffic).


Without proper targeting data (like cookies, region, or demographics), I can’t replicate realistic ad results. It might not be worth refining this scraper further — I’d rather focus on finding my own campaigns and running the numbers myself instead of chasing competitors.

2. Statistical Relevance Tool​

It calculates whether a site or ad placement is statistically significant in performance.


For example, my eBay campaigns averaged a 0.2–0.3% CTR (about 1 click per 300 impressions). If a site has thousands of impressions but zero clicks, the tool uses p-value testing (set at 0.01) to flag that placement as statistically bad.


That lets me remove poor performers, save money, and raise my effective earnings per click. It’s a smarter way to trim the fat from my campaigns.

What’s Next: Crak Revenue and Simple Offers​

I’m now working with Crak Revenue to find some good affiliate offers. They’ve been solid partners in the past.
I’m starting with single opt-in offers — quick, easy conversions where users just need to enter an email or sign up for a free account. These typically pay $3–$5 per signup, which is perfect for testing and refining my system.


Once I’ve got a repeatable process, I’ll move toward double opt-ins and resale offers, which have higher payouts but also higher friction.

The Plan Going Forward​

Next week, I’ll focus on getting actual measurable earnings tied directly to my new strategy — not just organic sales. I’ll share results once I have them.


Thanks for following along — I’ll keep you all in the loop as things develop!

 

[Graybeard]

Use googleheadless or some form of selenium. These API's can accept cookies and then return their data. Use GEO specific residential proxies also no data center IPs—that's easily detected.

Take advantage of your technical aptitude—that is rare.

There is no law that stops you from using 'adult-lite' traffic and not xxx like juicyads has also. Interesting thread—dropshipped; or you use a fulfillment center; or your own warehousing?