www.affiliateconfession.com

Time for another affiliate earnings report and unfortunately income is down for January by a fairly significant amount. One of the reasons for this was an $800 expense for content outsourcing that doesn’t have any direct earnings payback for the current month it was spent in. Unlike spending that much for advertising that has an immediate direct payoff, it’s likely to be 3 months or so until that $800 starts to earn back some revenue.

With PPC when you stop spending, you stop earning. But I’ve decided to outsource much of my content writing and build up some of the most profitable or highest earning potential sites that will take some time to see a return. The content being created now however, should pay off for many months or years to come. I’m looking at having a much higher and more solid Adsense income of some $3,000 to $4,000 per month and resurrecting my best BANS site that has in the past earned up to $1,000 per month. This BANS site has huge potential and is especially relevant to what’s going on in the economy right now. It’s too valuable an internet property to not give it the best effort to get it back to bringing in more revenue.

Total revenue was $3,630.12 and expenses were $1,543.26 giving a net earnings of $2,086.86. You may notice earnings for Amazon listed below. This has normally been classified under “Other Affiliate Income” because earnings were minimal, however this past month was over $250 for Amazon which is pretty significant since between my wife and I it took over 1 year to earn our first $100 through the big A, but I’ve found a way to earn some decent extra cash through PPC and I’ll probably blog about it in a future post.

January 2009 breaks down as follows:

Google Adsense - $1,376.02
Commission Junction - $52.70
EPN - eBay - $401.92
Meal Planner Ebook - $68.00
TripAdvisor - $137.74
Clickbank - $161.87
Private Advertising - $140.00
AzoogleAds - $412.75
Amazon.com - $259.60
Neverblue - $433.10
Other Affiliate Programs - $186.42
 
Total Revenue- $3,630.12
 
Total expenses - $1,543.26
 
Total Income - $2,086.86

Yes, income is down a bit from the highs of last September and October’s average of $5,000 per month, but sometimes you have to take a step backwards to ultimately move forward. More outsourcing is in the works for this month as well and eventually it all should pay off in a big time way.

Even though I had major revenue reductions this month from eBay, Adsense, Azoogle, Market Leverage and a few others, I still managed to have a record month in affiliate earnings. Most all of the increase came from pay per click earnings to the tune of more than $2,100 profit. I owe nearly all of what I’ve learned about PPC to PPC Coach. The bottom line you see below would have been $2,100 less with out it.

I’m not sure what’s going on with eBay, but many an affiliate are seriously complaining about revenue drops in September. I was down $300 in eBay earnings this month and nearly $750 from the month before that. What’s very odd is that my earnings per winning bid have gone from $4.80 in July 2008, to $3.52 in August, to $2.25 for the month of September. That’s a 55% reduction in revenue earned per winning bid in 3 months time. There will certainly be shifts in earnings, but I’m not liking the trend. Time to contact eBay.

Regardless of the inner workings of eBay I’m very thankful for the overall increase this past month. Total revenue for September was $7,292.33 with expenses at $2,551.70, making for a net profit of $4,740.63. It all breaks down as follows:

Google Adsense - $1,055.10
Commission Junction - $109.28
EPN - eBay - $458.61
Meal Planner Ebook - $170.00
TripAdvisor - $105.76
Clickbank - $45.83
Private Advertising - $35.00
AzoogleAds - $694.45
Microsoft - $200.00
Pepperjam - $33.00
Market Leverage - $73.35
Neverblue - $4,042.50
Other Affiliate Programs - $269.80

Total Revenue - $7,292.33

Total expenses - $2,551.70

Total Income - $4,740.63

My goal for September was to earn $5,000 profit, but I missed it by only $260. Hopefully with Halloween promotions and PPC looking nice this month so far (and maybe some favor from eBay), the $5,000 will be reached in October. As always, remember to diversify your affiliate income to make up for when eBay and Adsense aren’t as nice as they could be.

On the heels of Monday’s PPC earnings of over $200, yesterday was a significant milestone in my affiliate career as I realized a record profit of over $500, of which $446 came from pay per click. The two PPC campaigns that are the most profitable for me more than doubled in volume and earnings from the previous day.

The last few days of nice profits have been a really great way to end the month, however I don’t think it will be a record overall for the entire month. I got hammered this month on eBay earnings and Adsense income suffered a bit because of the slowdown during this time of year in the travel industry. I make the bulk of my Adsense earnings from travel. While earnings from PPC is up significantly this month, combined Adsense and eBay income is down by more than $1,000.

While it is great to earn this much in a day, and do the bulk of it from PPC, it’s not really where I want to be with by online endeavors. The earnings from paying for traffic are very tenuous and could go away tomorrow. One of the campaigns is a little more stable than the other and should be able to  make a profit for the next few months, but I don’t expect the other to last that long.

This is why it’s so important to diversify your income as an affiliate and why I sometimes harp on this point. You just never know where your income might come from month to month. It has been the story of my affiliate career to do really well with one source of income only to have another source drop significantly or even completely dry up. I used to make $200 to $300 per month producing $1 leads for Rentalo.com from my travel sites, but no longer use their program.

It’s nice to make $500 in one day, but at this point I’m only considering it bonus money. I’ll get really excited when I make that kind of money every day for a month. 

One bad thing about vacations is that it can be really hard to get back into the swing of things. Our week long getaway at Grayton Beach in the Florida panhandle ranks up there as one of the most enjoyable vacations I’ve ever taken. We had plenty of time for activities, business planning, eating some great food, long walks on the white sandy beaches and of course the all important relaxing, making it hard to return to normal life.

We chose this location because Grayton Beach was voted best beach in the nation in 1994 for its white sugar sand, its state parks featuring deserted stretches of beach and a phenomenon known as coastal dune lakes which exist in only 5 locations worldwide and our recent discovery of this area’s themed developments. My wife read about Grayton Beach several years ago and we finally got the chance to take a vacation here.

We stayed in a beautiful 4 bedroom 3 bath home that was much larger than what we needed, but was also much less expensive than what it would have cost us for a room or condo at a resort or a “vacation rental” for a week. The home was ideally located in a community on Highway 30A that runs along the beach towns of Walton County. Watercolor, Seaside and Alys (pronounced Alice) Beach are some of the planned towns that were within a few minutes drive or slightly longer bike ride from our accommodations.

These meticulously scripted developments all feature shopping, tons of nice restaurants, bars, numerous coffee shops and of course ultra-pristine beaches with a non-commercial, very relaxing atmosphere. The only drawback of this Disney like lifestyle is that it’s hard to find a home in any of these planned communities valued at less than $1 million, meaning that prices in restaurants and shops are relatively expensive. As an example, the occasion did call for a tasty $12 (ouch!) margarita at what became our favorite taco bar. If you’re concerned about spending money here, it would be less expensive to be a crackhead in Grayton Beach than it would be an alcoholic (I’m sure the Chamber of Commerce will love that line).

Here are some more pictures of a super enjoyable vacation:

Beautiful beaches:

I actually got my wife to ride a Waverunner with me. Not much of an action pic, but this is where we picked up our Waverunner. It was actually several miles west of Grayton Beach in Destin, FL.

Enjoying coffee at PJ’s, the best coffee shop in Grayton Beach:

Insane property values on Grayton Beach. This is a $13 million home we saw in a real estate magazine and then realized it was right beside our development’s beach access. I’m not sure why it’s so expensive.

We had a great time, but it’s time to get back to work and implement some of the plans made on vacation and things I’ve been learning at PPC Coach to offset what is shaping up to be a very slow September for affiliate earnings. The goal is always to make life more extraordinary than it is normal.

I’m not the accountant in our family. Crunching numbers for hours at a time makes me loony, but I do love to figure out affiliate earnings every month because it gives me a legitimate excuse to be obsessive about checking stats, which I usually have a bad habit of doing way too much.

I was hoping to get to $5,000 in earnings this month, but actually had a slight drop. This month was a good example of why you should keep your affiliate business diversified. Revenue shifted quite a bit from some solid earners into newer and unexpected income streams. While earnings from the eBay Partner Network were down by about $400 and revenue from my top BANS store was down by nearly $600, other affiliate streams almost replaced it. Earnings from Azoogle, Clickbank and Market Leverage were up and after advertising expenses, profit was around $500 from these three. I also earned a nice $282.51 from Site Build It which I rarely ever promote.

Pay per click advertising between Facebook ads and Adwords showed the most promise this month as a spend of $1,115.11 (this is what I can specifically track)  created revenue of $1,609.90, realizing a profit of $494.79. It’s now a matter of weeding out the losers and attempting to tweak and ramp up the winners.

Total revenue did come in at over $5,000 this month, but costs were at an all time high. Everything breaks down as follows:

Google Adsense - $1,415.24
Commission Junction - $110.37
EPN - eBay - $719.19
Meal Planner Ebook - $102.00
TripAdvisor - $177.03
Clickbank - $266.83
Private Advertising - $175.00
AzoogleAds - $1,152.85
Microsoft - $200.00
Pepperjam  - $49.70
Market Leverage - $252.85
Other Affiliate Programs - $405.46

Total Revenue - $5,026.52

Total expenses - $1,208.46

Total Income - $3,818.06

The goal for September is to reach $5,000 in earnings even though this month is traditionally very slow and we’ll be on a nice beach vacation for a week. Hopefully we can avoid the 3 storms churning up the Atlantic ocean as I write this. Our last vacation was rained out, so it would be nice to get a break from that.

Remember, keep your earnings streams diversified to avoid getting crushed when that big stream turns into a tiny creek and your income suffers significantly because it’s the only thing you have going.