Autopilot disaster
Some of the more common internet marketing “systems” on offer at the moment are based on advertising using Google Adwords with the aim of driving web traffic to a website that sells a product (either your own or an affiliate product, through Clickbank, for example). One of the selling points of these systems are that you set them up and they run on “autopilot”.
However, this can result in disaster.
At least two marketers that I know of (and probably a whole load more) have recently set up such systems to sell a product, checked that they work – and they can work very well indeed if you get them right – and let them run.
One of the marketers went on holiday for a couple of weeks. He checked his income every other day and all looked well; he returned from holiday happy in the knowledge that the system had earned just over $5,000 on autopilot. But all was not well! When he checked his Google Adwords bill for the period, he discovered that the $5,000 of income had cost him approximately $5,600 in Google Adwords costs, some $3,000 more than he was expecting! His $2,400 profit was actually a $600 loss!
The other marketer just let the system run for a month and lost about £300.
Both were experienced enough to know better, but I suspect that they got over-confident.
The lesson to be learnt here is to be very careful what type of systems you let run on autopilot. Systems that do not have costs that vary with number of visitors/users/buyers can be safely left as the worst that can happen is that income diminishes to zero. Systems with variable costs, such as Google Adwords, must be monitored regularly and preferably every day. If they stop working, change them or stop them. Your potential losses are large.
Try to enjoy your holidays this year. It’s a great feeling that while you are away your autopilot systems have paid for the trip!
