www.affiliateconfession.com

Hopefully this month’s affiliate earnings report will give a little inspiration to those that may have been watching their earnings go down instead of up. That’s what had been happening to me for the last 3 months and culminated in last month coming in at only $1,500 in earnings which as been the lowest amount I’ve earned as an affiliate since starting this blog. However, that all turned around in March as it was my first five figure month in affiliate income with total earnings coming in slightly over $10,500.

The big difference this month came from promoting Clickbank and CPA offers through ppc marketing. I have to give the credit to PPC Coach for the pay per click skills and attending the first Dot Com Steak Out and talking with my buddy Kiley Lenstrom for an attitude adjustment. I don’t know what it was for sure about hanging out at the Dot Com Steak Out, but a switch just went off in my head after being around some serious money makers in this business. Really, your attitude makes a huge difference in how much you can make in affiliate marketing.

Total revenue produced in March came to $12,298.65 with expenses of $1,726.88 which made for a total net income of $10,571.77. Everything breaks down as follows:

Google Adsense – $1,479.20
Commission Junction – $418.35
EPN – eBay – $205.32
Meal Planner Ebook – $187.00
TripAdvisor – $113.26
Clickbank – $567.73
Neverblue
Market Leverage
& Azoogle
CPA Offers – $9,070.73
Amazon.com – $158.17
Other Affiliate Programs – $98.89

Total Revenue – $12,298.65

Total expenses – $1,726.88

Total Income – $10,571.77

I had no idea this month’s income would increase by over 7 times from February’s income and double my previous record for earnings, but that’s the beauty of affiliate marketing. One month you may think it’s over and the next you end up making enough to carry you for several months. It can happen anytime so don’t ever give up on your affiliate career. Keep working, keep trying new things and keep learning, because you never know when things will turn around.

No, this is not an April Fool’s joke.

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In every affiliate’s career there are good income months and bad months. February was a bad income month for me for a couple of reasons. I spent another $800 on 100 articles for content and article marketing and did some advertising that just didn’t pay off. Also, the eBay Partner Network was way off for me this month.

One of the ppc campaigns I ran this past month, that was one of those, “This will definitely work” campaigns, has drained me of over $200 without a single conversion. Almost the same thing happened with Facebook as well when I spent about $120 to earn a mere $36. Luckily the merchant getting traffic through the ppc campaign has a 45 day cookie so it might just pay off. The reason I spent so much on that campaign is that a single conversion could erase all the losses because were talking about $2,500 products with a 10% payout. Hopefully it will be worth it because with pay per click marketing, things can turn around in a single day.

So in effect, I spent about $1,100 this month that brought zero return so far. The articles however are producing some decent seo results for one of my BANS stores and if nothing else, this site should produce some decent Adsense revenue once I add it to all the content.

Total revenue produced last month was $2,825.57 with expenses of $1,317.14 that gave me a net income of $1,508.16. Everything breaks down as follows:

Google Adsense – $1,319.10
Commission Junction – $225.56
EPN – eBay – $186.99
Meal Planner Ebook – $187.00
TripAdvisor – $110.59
Private Advertising – $105.00
AzoogleAds – $288.00
Amazon.com – $187.58
Neverblue – $27.00
Other Affiliate Programs – $188.75

Total Revenue – $2,825.57

Total expenses – $1,317.14

Total Income – $1,508.16

You never know what’s going to happen month to month. All you can do is keep plugging away and focus on the things that work and trash the things that don’t. Forward is the only direction to go in the affiliate marketing game. Remember, things can turn around in a single day, or even just a few hours.

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I’ve had a couple people ask me to post my earnings for the entire year over 2008 so I though I’d add everything up and see how it came out. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the total came in at just over $41,000.

There are a lot of affiliate marketers out there that make way more than this amount, and they do it every month, and then there are also a lot of wannabe affiliate marketers that never earn their first $100 and end up doing something else, like mlm or surveys (Does anybody really make money doing that?). I guess I’m somewhere in the middle of the big bucks and the nothing, but the most important thing $41,777.32 for a years worth of affiliate earnings brings me is freedom, and I’d rather have that than just about anything.

The monthly totals are listed below and you can click on the name of the month for a breakdown of the earnings for that specific month.

January Net Earnings – $3,211.68
February Net Earnings – $2,439.62
March Net Income – $2,746.44
April Net Income – $2,352.31
May Net Income – $3,029.99
June Net Income – $3,479.61
July Net Income – $4,312.31
August Net Income – $3,818.06
September Net Income – $4,740.63
October Net Income – $5,315.48
November Net Income – $3,324.31
December Net Income – $3,006.88

Total Net Income for 2008 - $41,777.32

My consistent money makers over this past year have been Adsense and the eBay Partner Network by using Build A Niche Store although my BANS store earnings have dropped off quite a bit since the middle of the year. However, I’m not giving up on my most profitable BANS stores and have a plan to bring them back to life with added content and article marketing.

Don’t fret if you’re not making the big cash of the top affiliate marketers because you have to start somewhere and there is plenty of room in the affiliate marketing space for lots of people to make $41k a year. This is just a stepping stone though and hopefully this year will push that total even higher.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Well, 2008 certainly didn’t end as planned at $10,000 as the goal for December, but income did come in slightly over the $3,000 mark, so my wife and I can still put food on the table and maybe get a coffee at Barnes & Noble, lol!

I wasn’t anywhere near the goal mainly because many of the PPC campaigns I tried during December just didn’t work out and in fact much of what I tried lost me a good chunk of change. One campaign that I though for sure would produce well was losing me about $90 a day for almost a week until I finally shut it down. No amount of tweaking was able to get it ultimately in the black. I had one day where I made some profit and spent the rest of the week foolishly losing money. Sometimes you just have to wait and see where things are going, but I probably waited too long on that one.

Then there was the complete shutdown of the content network that Google hit me with about 6 days before Christmas. I don’t know whether Google decided to review my Adwords account and slapped me like an unwanted stepchild while they were having a looksy or they just like messing with people around Christmas because they are evil. Starting about 10 days before Christmas impressions on Google’s content network slowly dwindled down to nothing except for 1 campaign. And 6 days before Christmas I was getting zero traffic from the content network. Yes, I mean nothing, not a single impression for 15 out of 16 campaigns.

As with Google’s great customer service and full disclosure policies, there was no notice emailed, no disapproved ads or alert in my Adwords account, simple zero traffic and impressions for 2 weeks. The search network was down a little, but I was still receiving some traffic. During the busiest time of the year online and while I was peaking with a food related offer paying around $15 a lead and producing 10 to 12 leads a day, Google arbitrarily decides to cut off my content network traffic. And they’re motto is, “Do no evil”, really? As if by magic, most of my campaigns on the content network at present are nearly back to normal levels, again, with no explanation.

Anyway, I still wasn’t even close to the goal I set but was able to produce a decent income for me. And for that, I’m a happy camper. Total revenue produced was $5,225.09, and with expenses at $2,218.21 actual income was just above $3,000. Everything for December 2008 breaks down as follows: 

Google Adsense – $1,148.32
Commission Junction – $271.68
EPN – eBay – $295.60
Meal Planner Ebook – $102.00
TripAdvisor – $168.66
Clickbank – $202.16
Private Advertising – $155.00
AzoogleAds – $1,333.95
Pepperjam – $15.50
Neverblue – $1,457.90
Other Affiliate Programs – $74.32
 
Total Revenue – $5,225.09
 
Total expenses – $2,218.21
 
Total Income – $3,006.88

I’m glad that 2009 is here, the holidays are over and it’s time to get back to work. I think 2009 is going to be an exciting time with everything that happening in the economy and the plans I have for the upcoming year. I’ve set goals and adjusted priorities to focus on the things that have been producing income for the long haul and have decided to put lesser income producing projects on the back burner.

What about you? Are you going to rock in 2009 or sit by and watch things happen?

Popularity: 9% [?]

It’s time for another affiliate income report and earnings for November were down by roughly $2,000, but I still managed to pull in over $3,000 last month so I don’t really have anything to complain about. The two biggest factors contributing to the decrease in earnings were eBay income from my BANS niche stores was down significantly by over $600.

I had 5 days last month where I earned exactly $0.00 from eBay which is probably a record since I’ve been using BANS. It’s probably been 3 or 4 months since there’s been a single day of zero earnings from eBay. Also, my two biggest PPC campaigns have lost most of their momentum. That’s the life of an affiliate marketer and you just have to ride out the ups and down and keep moving forward.

Even though income from paid search was also down there’s always something to learn from every turn of events in your business if you look hard enough. What I’ve discovered in the last 3 to 4 months or so while digging into the world of pay-per-click-marketing has been invaluable and all the keyword research in the world and figuring out what you think are the best ads means nothing until you see exactly what happens to your keywords in your campaigns and how they end up converting. Every cool technique around will never stand up to looking at your campaigns and conversions and having that “Bingo” moment for yourself when you finally understand what works and why it does.

Anyway, back to the regularly scheduled income report…

Revenue for November was $5,557.50 and was down $3,000 from last month’s income report, but since expenses were also down by about $1,000 total earnings were at $3,324.31. Everything for the month breaks down as follows:

Google Adsense – $1,314.09
Commission Junction – $54.31
EPN – eBay – $393.06
Meal Planner Ebook – $153.00
TripAdvisor – $121.03
Clickbank – $44.36
Private Advertising – $190.00
AzoogleAds – $485.45
Pepperjam – $31.50
Neverblue – $2,598.20
Other Affiliate Programs – $172.50

Total Revenue – $5,557.50
 
Total expenses – $2,233.19
 
Total Income – $3,324.31

I still have a goal of earning $10,000 this month and of course December is the best month of the year for that to happen, but things will have to change quite a bit from what’s going on so far because most of my PPC campaigns are sucking big time in the earnings department. However, I have gained a pretty significant insight this past week that cost about $300 so far, so hopefully that insight can be turned into some positive cash flow in the next week.

In all your quest for cash this month don’t forget what Christmas is all about. I have to keep reminding myself of that on a regular basis.

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