www.affiliateconfession.com

I was just over at the Build A Niche Store forums reading that version 3 is in beta right now and barring any bugs, should be released within another week. The question was posed in the forum regarding a release date on Friday and answered Saturday, so BANS v3.0 looks like it will be available the first week in February.

The most significant upgrade in the new version of BANS is that all the links going to eBay will now be masked to look as though they are going through your site instead of directly to eBay. This will have significant SEO benefits because the search engines won’t see external eBay links on your site, they will only see what looks like an extension of your niche site.

The second significant upgrade for the eBay affiliate niche store builder is that you will now be able to build a store for 14 different countries eBay is in instead of the 5 countries you can now build stores for.  Each individual eBay site for a specific country does require that you become a member of that specific affiliate program. This is because commission structures are different for each country.

The contries to be supported by the new version of BANS are listed below: 

eBay.com - US
eBay.co.uk - UK
eBay.ca - Canada
eBay.com.au - Australia
eBay.at - Austria
eBay.be - Belgium
eBay.fr - France
eBay.com.hk - Hong Kong
eBay.in - India
eBay.it - Italy
eBay.nl - Netherlands
eBay.com.sk - Singapore
eBay.es - Spain
eBay.ie - Sweden

There are several more new features in the upgrade, but these two are the most significant. You can also expect a few more new templates added to the 9 that come with BANS already.

I am planning on a 5 part series that will explain how to build a  store with BANS encompassing everything from how to do a basic installation, to brainstorming a profitable niche, to getting traffic by writing articles and other topics. I was planning on starting this series next week, but want to wait till version 3 of BANS is out.

If you already own Build A Niche Store, version 3 will be a free upgrade.

Get more info about Build A Niche Store here.

Alan

Tags: build a niche store, bans, seo, search engines

One of the reasons for Affiliate Confession as stated on my About page is to show affiliates “how to make an honest $2,500 or so per month” because a lot of what you hear about is either people who make $25,000 or more per month or so-called gurus “making millions” from the internet. But there isn’t enough info and a good reality check about how to get started with process and dealing with the heartaches you can end up going through trying to just eek out a living on the net.

Through much trial and error you have to get to the $2,500 per month mark before you can get to the $25,000 mark. Part of that $2,500 mark has been a fairly consistent Adsense paycheck every month. I’ve been trying to bump that up past $1,000 per month, but it has been nice to at least be where it’s at.

To provide a little evidence, my Google 1099 form for 2007 just came in yesterday’s mail and shows my total Adsense earnings for 2007 at $12,349.64. I wanted to share it with the readers of Affiliate Confession to show that earnings of $1,000 per month with Adsense are a real and attainable goal to shoot for. Yes, maybe we can all hope to attain and set goals for the tens of thousands some make in monthly incomes, but this is just a good example of what’s possible on the other end. Google is about 30 to 40% of my total internet income.

Google Adsense Earnings For 2007

On my about page I talk about showing affiliates how to make $2,500 per month, but this month looks like it’s going to be somewhat higher. Income is already ove the $2,500 mark for January as of Thursday the 24th and I’m calculating the total should end up around $3,600 for the month. There are some advertising expenses this month around $250 or so, but January is looking very good so far at possibly $1,000 more than December and Adsense should be up a little at around $1,300 for the month.

Keep pressing on.

Alan

Tags: google 1099, adsense earnings, monthly income, set goals, internet income

Last night we ate at Island Pasta, our favorite restaurant in Melbourne FL. The restaurant got its start in one of the alcoves of the Historic Downtown Melbourne area as a small laid back place that had about 8 tables 5 years ago. It has since moved onto the main drag in the downtown area and is now 2 to 3 times the size and is one of the hottest restaurants in Melbourne. If you get there past 6:30 on a Friday night expect to wait at least 30 minutes to get a table.

You can sit inside or outside at Island Pasta and because there was a wait we took first available seating. We weren’t sure we wanted to sit outside because the temperature was in the 50’s and after waiting at a table out near the street, I was getting a bit cold. We ended up sitting in their alcove seating which does have a closed glass door to the outside and it turned out to be very comfortable.

We went with some friends we hadn’t seen in some time and I had the Portobello Ravioli which is usually served with with a roasted garlic cream sauce, but to make it a whole lot healthier, I always ask for the marinara sauce instead. The dinner comes with a salad and Island Pasta has some of the freshest salads around. I got the creamy curry dressing on the salad and I usually ask for it on the side because they put too much on, but was busy gabbing and forgot to speak up. The dressing is pretty popular and Island Pasta bottles and sells it.

After the salad came the ravioli, which was quite delicious, but had a little too much parmesan cheese on it.

Jean and I shared a glass of White Zinfandel to complement the pasta and she had the Volcano Salad with a side of spaghetti. We don’t drink very much, but some times it’s just nice to have a glass of wine with dinner.

We had a nice evening out and ended up going to our local Barnes & Noble where I always get a decaf, cafe mocha and usually get the medium size (the silly name for medium is Grande) but last night I got the small or “Tall” size. Next time I’ll get the Grande. It’s worth the approximately 30 cents more to get an extra shot of espresso. Even though it’s decaf, it gives it a much strong coffee flavor.

My friend Jeff and I spent much of the time at the restaurant and B&N checking out his new iPhone which is pretty cool. If you’ve never seen one up close and personal, the touch screen is truly amazing. The ladies almost left us at the restaurant because we were spending too much time surfing the web on Jeff’s phone (like I need to do that more). They were almost out to the car before Jeff and I even left our seats. I finally had to nearly drag my friend to the car.

Some of the pictures above could be better, but I’m still getting used to my new Nikon Coolpix S200. You press the button half way to focus and I haven’t completely figured out where that half way point is yet. I guess I need to take more than one picture of each item.

Alan

Tags: island pasta, melbourne fl, iphone, nikon coolpix

I’m a little late on checking back on this one, but I issued the 30 Day Blogging Challenge back on December 17th and just wanted to check in and see how everyone is doing? Several people took up the challenge and started at different times (there really is no beginning and no end) so it didn’t really start on Dec 17th. It started, or starts, whenever you decide is best for you and ends 30 days later.

The goal of the 30 day challenge is to build up your writing skills, learn to be consistent and to get noticed. All the top bloggers post from 1 to 5 times a day and if you expect your rss readers to follow you and not delete your feed, then you have to give them something to read every day, at least until you establish yourself with 30 days of consistency.

One reader of Affiliate Confession has already reported he has finished the 30 day challenge and has seen great results. Tim at Yimto Affiliate Marketing Blog has gone from posting every few days to posting every single day and even though he has completed the challenge, he is continuing to blog consistently at least once a day. Tim has seen his number of visitors go from 0 to 130 per day and although he attributes much of that to Entrecard, he believes his results would have been much less significant if he hadn’t have taken the challenge. Take a look at his Analytics screenshot to see his traffic increase.

Tim is now passing on the 30 day blogging challenge to his readers and encouraging them to be consistent as well. He has seen the results and knows that anyone else who takes the challenge will come out of it with positive results.

So, for the rest of you who took the challenge or are in the middle of it, how is it working out? Have you seen traffic increase? Have you seen your writing skills increase? Have you made contact with more bloggers and become part of a larger community? Have you been consistent, or maybe skipped a few days? Feel free to comment on your progress.

And if your blog is not where you want it to be, it’s never too late to start the challenge.

Alan

Tags: blogging challenge, analytics, affiliate marketing, entrecard

Thankfully I listen to my wife…sometimes. She keeps saying I should listen more often, I should probably listen to that advice. Case in point is Affiliate Confession itself, because it wouldn’t be where it is today if it had strictly been up to me.

I had the idea to start a personal blog and write about my internet marketing adventures probably more than a year ago, but kept it in the recesses of my mind for all that time. My wife kept telling me, “You need to get that personal blog started and tell people what you do.” Every now and then without nagging she would ask me, “Have you started your blog yet?”

We then started to brainstorm domain names for the blog and we’d only been thinking about it for a few minutes when my wife suggested AffiliateConfessions.com (plural) because she thought it would be a good idea to let people know how much work and how difficult it has been to build up my internet businesses. I could “confess” about the trials of affiliate marketing. Unfortunately the plural domain name was take, but obviously AffiliateConfession.com, the singular, wasn’t taken.

It turned out to be a great url because I get keyword traffic from affiliate confession for which I’m number one in Google and I fight for the top spot with the plural affiliate confessions. I do get some traffic from people looking for the Clickbank Affiliate Confessions ebook. It’s not that big of a deal to be on top for these keywords because hardly anyone uses them, but it does work out to be about 5 to 10 people a day for some combination of those words.

I picked up the domain name in the middle of October and didn’t make the first post until November 1st. I did about 5 posts not very consistently during November and frankly wasn’t all that motivated to blog on a regular basis. I had a lot going on with my other sites and didn’t think I had the time to devote to this on a regular basis. All the time my wife kept asking me how the blog thing was going.

What made me finally decide to get things rolling was when I read John Chow’s October income report where he reported $23,000 in earnings for a single month. It was probably mid November when I read the post. I  had been reading John’s blog off and on for a few months and this was the first time I had seen his income and it completely blew me away. I thought, “All he’s doing is blogging about the same stuff I do, I ought to be able to get some of the same action he’s getting.”

On November 22nd I started blogging consistently with the post on How I make Money Online and have made at least 1 post every day since. I was also fortunate enough to get a guest post on Shoemoney, won a contest on John Chow’s blog, and got mentioned on several other blogs only a couple of weeks after blogging consistently. Of course, none of that would have been possible if my wife hadn’t encouraged me to get AffiliateConfession.com going. Thanks for your support and gentle prodding my dear Jean. I love you a bunch.

I also want to thank the readers of Affiliate Confession as well. I appreciate everyone who reads and everyone who comments. I hope to reward readers with more how to’s, information on affiliate programs, info on how to make more from the eBay affiliate program and maybe even bigger and bigger contests.

Thanks for reading,

Alan

Tags: blog, internet businesses, domain name, john chow, shoemoney