www.affiliateconfession.com

It’s time for another income report here at AffiliateConfession.com and it’s a record month for affiliate earnings mainly due to some nice contest winnings in May which lets me cook the books a little. I didn’t report that I won $750 in cash from the Webmaster-Talk.com contest and I’ve used that to cover $543.66 worth of advertising expenses this month. When the $750 has been spent I’ll again take off advertising from the revenue total.

Google Adsense and the Microsoft Affiliate program contributed significantly to the record this month as well. The breakdown of earnings this month is as follows:

Google Adsense - $1,492.96
Commission Junction - $50.37
EPN - eBay - $778.60
Meal Planner Ebook - $119.00
TripAdvisor - $222.83
Clickbank - $189.95
Private Advertising - $105.00
AzoogleAds - $17.30
Microsoft - $400.00
Other Affiliate Programs - $103.60
 
Total Revenue - $3,479.61
 
Total Income - $3,479.61

You may have noticed that Commission Junction revenue is down by a large margin and that’s because most of what I was earning through them was from eBay who has now moved over to their own private program management and Pepperjam Network. Also, I was earning some decent money through generating leads with Apartments.com and had been up in the range of $200-$250 per month, but their landing pages stopped converting and now the same amount of clicks sent their way is earning me $40 rather than $200 per month.

I’m continuing to work on PPC and have had some limited success and with earnings this month I’ll have an even bigger advertising budget than last month, so things are looking up.

If you haven’t joined Pepperjam Network yet then you are missing the next wave in affiliate marketing. Pepperjam Network has only been in existence for 5 months, has partnered with the biggest affiliate program on the net (eBay) and is already the number 5 affiliate marketing company in the United States. And with the latest viral promotion they’re doing they just might end up moving up a few places in the rankings.

If you’d like to earn an easy $10 all you have to do is sign up for Pepperjam and as soon as you are approved, you get the $10 deposited into your account. Obviously you shouldn’t just join up to get $10, because if you do, you will never make it in affiliate marketing. You should join because Pepperjam is becoming the affiliate network to be a part of. With their recent venture involving the eBay Partner Network it is evident that Pepperjam means business and that is nothing but good news for affiliate marketers. They are the next Commission Junction if you will.

Pepperjam is also running a blogger incentive program where you can earn up to $50 per month for writing about the network and or some of the tools they offer such as Pepperjam Chat. All you have to do is get prior approval for your post, so spammers don’t take advantage of the situation, and you are off to the races. You get $10 for each post and can do up to 5 per month.

Pepperjam has some of the newest and most exciting offers I’ve seen since I’ve been an affiliate and they’re bringing on new and prestigious companies on a weekly basis that you can earn good money with. Join the up and coming affiliate network that will be #1 one day and get $10, plus have the opportunity to earn $50 per month by blogging about them.  If you’re an affiliate marketer, why wouldn’t you join?

Join Pepperjam Network here.

Good news for all those having trouble with their Build A Niche Store affiliate sites and the eBay Partner Network, BANS will now work through Pepperjam Network! That means you can now build a BANS niche eBay store (currently only available for US stores) and completely bypass EPN so all your tracking would go through Pepperjam.

An email went out to all current BANS users this past Friday announcing an update from the Build A Niche Store developers. If you already own BANS, you can you can switch current stores to Pepperjam Network with an update if you choose to make the change. You can also download a complete version of the US Pepperjam BANS store set up as well. However, all new BANS buyers will be directed to download the current BANS EPN store software and if they want to build a new Pepperjam store from scratch or make an update to Pepperjam, they’ll have to go to the update area for the correct files. This is being done because Pepperjam is currently only able to support US eBay affiliates.

If you set up a store or update a current store to work through Pepperjam and then decide you want to change back to EPN, there is also an update to be able to convert back.

If you use BANS and want things to stay the way they are through EPN, then these updates aren’t for you. This is only an option for BANS users as the eBay Partner Network is staying put. eBay wanted to expand their reach and attract new affiliates and therefore formed a relationship with Pepperjam Network.

I won’t be updating any of my BANS stores at the present time, but will be working on a new store shortly that I will run through Pepperjam just to see how it works and be able to report back. In fact I’m going to go grab a new domain name as soon as I hit the publish button.

If you aren’t currently a BANS user you can get Build A Niche Store here.

And if you don’t belong to Pepperjam Network, you should because they will surpass Commission Junction someday and you’ll be left in the dust. You can join Pepperjam Network here.

Pepperjam Network recently announced they have partnered up with eBay’s affiliate program and are now offering the same high payouts that eBay is. I don’t know if anyone has said this yet, but this is a huge coup for Pepperjam in the affiliate marketing space. Commission Junction isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but for Pepperjam this signals they mean business.

I’m sure eBay was a substantial revenue source for CJ and since eBay’s transition over to the eBay Partner Network, it remains to be seen how much revenue this move will be able to generate for Pepperjam, but it certainly will be exciting to watch.

But you are probably asking yourself, ‘Why join eBay through Pepperjam?’ And I posed that very same question to Robyn at Pepperjam when I sent her an email asking, “eBay just recently brought their affiliate program in-house and they now manage it themselves, why would someone want to partner up with Pepperjam when they can join the eBay Partner Network directly?” To which she responded:

“There are many benefits of choosing to promote the eBay Partner Network through Pepperjam, including the dedicated team of experienced affiliate managers we have ready to help affiliates in real time, as well as aggressive payouts.  For more details, log into your Pepperjam Network account.”

And when you do read up on the info in your Pepperjam account you will see this:

**COMING SOON - Pepperjam is currently working with eBay to release access to EPN’s Link Generator, widgets, and more to Pepperjam Network affiliates. Stay tuned for other exciting announcements.

This is good new because my initial look at eBay through Pepperjam wasn’t all that exciting. At first the only creatives were just banners and links that all went to eBay’s home page and could not be deep linked. All that has changed as I checked this morning and saw that any banner and any link can now be deep linked to any page on eBay. I also see there is a section for eBay Advanced Links as well, although it doesn’t appear to be functioning as of press time.

Because I make most of my revenue from Build A Niche Stores that have to be directly linked to eBay, I don’t see using Pepperjam there, but I can see direct linking to individual categories and searches on some of my sites and on blog posts through Pepperjam to get a little better tracking. At least at this point there still seems to be some issues with EPN click reporting, indicating a large number of clicks occasionally for no apparent reason.

I continue to be impressed with the way Pepperjam Network is looking and especially with the eBay partnetship, in a very short time they are shaping up to be a serious contender for the affiliate marketer to do business with. It seem like on a daily basis they are adding new merchants and offers and may someday be the “go to” affiliate network on the web as CJ once was.

Don’t get left in the dust wondering what happened to all the good affiliate networks, join Pepperjam Network here and take advantage of their pertnership with eBay while you’re at it.

Another income report for Affiliate Confession shows a significant increase over last month to the tune of about 22% even though expenses were the highest they’ve been this year. Total expenses including advertising, PPC and outsourcing to Elance.com came in at $304.73. PPC advertising is paying off for my BANS stores and my single best store earned $658.44.

Significant gains were made this month at eBay and Clickbank and total earnings for May were $3,334.72 and after expenses, net earnings came in at $3,029.99 for the month. The breakdown of earnings is as follows:

Google Adsense - $1,375.97
Commission Junction - $150.47
EPN - eBay - $893.54
Meal Planner Ebook - $102.00
TripAdvisor - $191.97
Auction Ads - $43.50
Clickbank - $399.24
Private Advertising - $70.00
AzoogleAds - $46.85
Other Affiliate Programs - $61.18
 
Total Revenue - $3,334.72
 
Advertising & Expenses - $304.73
 
Total Income - $3,029.99

Commission Junction sent out an email last month stating that some past due and under reported eBay member sign-ups as far back as February were to be paid this past month, but I have yet to see any revenue from that.

The month of June should turn out well as I have $750 from the Webmaster-Talk contest winnings to spend on PPC or other advertising plus I’ve budgeted anything over $2,500 in earnings to go to advertising as well, giving me a total of $1,279.99 to spend. As long as I keep earning that back the advertising budget should be very nice. Most of that will be spent towards pay per click.

The Black Ink Project continues this week with the first session being taught by Amit Mehta entitled Pay Per Click Mastery. With all the money I have to spend on PPC, I will be especially interested in today’s class. With another 22% increase in affiliate income in June that would be an all time record.