www.affiliateconfession.com

Another affiliate income report is due and July turned out to my best month in affiliate earnings so far, topping last month by 24% which was also a record month. Fortunately I haven’t been slowed down at all by the summer slump many affiliates experience.

Two of the biggest increases in July came from a new record in AdSense earnings, beating the previous best month by $200 and earnings from the eBay affiliate program for the first time crossed the $1,000 per month barrier thanks to Build A Niche Store. Earnings were also good from Pepperjam Network, Market Leverage and AzoogleAds.

Expenses were a bit higher than usual this past month due to experimenting with PPC and having some success. I hope to scale that up a bit this month. Total income for July 2008 came in at $4,312.31 and breaks down as follows:

Google Adsense - $1,694.94
Commission Junction - $35.94
EPN - eBay - $1,196.73
Meal Planner Ebook - $85.00
TripAdvisor - $216.63
Clickbank - $88.08
Private Advertising - $140.00
AzoogleAds - $182.20
Microsoft - $300.00
Pepperjam - $278.09
Market Leverage - $219.50
Other Affiliate Programs - $302.77
 
Total Revenue - $4,739.88
 
Total expenses - $427.57
 
Total Income - $4,312.31

Three things I’ll be working on this month to hopefully increase the income again will be paid advertising through Facebook Ads, Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing, getting more incoming links to my travel sites and continued work on my Build A Niche Stores. A single BANS store produced more than $800 in revenue this month and I’d like to get that store over the $1,000 barrier.

I’ve also started working on a store mash-up that can bring in content from eBay, YouTube, any RSS feeds, ClickBank, Amazon, Overstock and more that could be pretty lucrative. I’ll be explaining more about that coming up in a few more weeks.

With another 24% increase in August that would put things over the $5,000 per month mark which is a fairly significant milestone in earnings. I’ll be taking a week off this month and a week off in September for a birthday and anniversary so it will be hard to keep up the steady pace of seeming non stop work for the next couple of months. Hopefully there are enough things in place to keep the income on auto pilot while the work pace slows down until mid Sept.

Have you ever had really big plans for something in affiliate marketing and then had it completely go south on you? Have you maybe even been making some money in a niche and started to make plans to ramp it up and all of a sudden your revenue drops like a rock before you get the chance to scale?

If you’ve been doing business as an affiliate for any length of time this may have happened to you, maybe even more than once. It happened to me in the apartment rentals niche about a year ago as I was planning to ramp things up considerably based on some very good results I was having with Apartments.com. I was making in the area of $200 to $250 per month producing leads for them at $10 each and getting one of those leads for about every 50 clicks I sent their way. Then they redesigned their landing pages about a year ago and I now produce a lead for every 200 clicks sent their way.

I’m not sure what happened there, but I was no longer able to send traffic directly to an email form that actually produced the lead. Apartments.com changed their landing pages to include a small email form on each page of an individual apartments set of pages and the conversion rate dropped by 75%. Couple that with the fact that my traffic had dropped by a little as the season changed, and I went from making an average of $225 per month promoting apartments to about $20 to $30 per month making it hardly worth the effort to continue to work in this niche.

The larger plan I was seeing was to develop a big site devoted to apartment rentals for a specific niche of renters all over the nation. In looking at Google Analytics stats for my apartment sites I could see that there is an overwhelmingly higher percentage of renters in a very specific market and I had plans to exploit that to its fullest. While that idea is still on the back burner of things I would like to do in affiliate marketing, after the bust, the steam kind of went out of my idea. But the good news is, Rent.com has just revamped their affiliate program and is now paying 20 cents per registered visitor and $25 to $70 per confirmed lease, so the big plan for an apartment rental site is a little closer to reality once again.

So what’s the whole point of this discussion?

Don’t play the single affiliate program game and get yourself stuck in the position of relying on only one source of income from one or even two programs. While I took a $200 per month hit a year or so ago, it was just another day in the life of an affiliate marketer. Sometimes I do look back at all the things I’ve made money from and thought if I could only get these at the level they once were, all at the same time I’d be making $6,000 or $7,000 per month. Yes, that would be great, but what I’m really thankful for is the programs that have been in place to cover for the ones that all-of-a-sudden decided to take a dive.

You will go for a ride on the ups and downs of affiliate marketing if you stay with the game long enough. The best thing to do is have a diverse selection of niches and programs to work with that will act as shock absorbers when the ride gets bumpy. Check out my Make Money Online page for the variety of networks and programs I use to earn a living.

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.

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.

It’s time for another affiliate earnings report and income was down a little bit from last month mainly because expenses were about $200 higher this month. I’ve been doing a little more advertising, experimenting with PPC and paying for some services over at Elance.com. Hopefully these things will produce an increase for this month’s earnings. I also discovered that Microsoft Adcenter affiliate program is now run through the Microsoft Partner Program as it has been for some time, so I signed up for that again and that should increase revenue as well. Currently Microsoft AdCenter is offering $75 in free clicks for new sign-ups. It’s a great way to start off learning how to do ppc without risking your own money.

April total earnings came in at $2,602.64 and after much higher advertising and other expenses, net revenue was $2,352.31 for the month. The breakdown of earnings is below:

Google Adsense - $1,298.93
Commission Junction - $335.99
EPN - eBay - $361.56
Meal Planner Ebook - $136.00
TripAdvisor - $183.68
Auction Ads - $77.19
Clickbank - $164.29
Private Advertising - $35.00
Other Affiliate Programs - $10.00

Total Revenue - $2,602.64

Advertising & Expenses - $250.33

Total Income - $2,352.31

I did get an email from Commission Junction earlier in the month stating that they were going to include a make good adjustment in our next check for ACRU’s (new members) earned through eBay because of reporting problems that go back as far as February. We’ll have to wait and see how much that might increase income at $25 a pop. I have no idea whether I’ll get several or none.

Combined earnings from CJ and the new eBay Partner Network came in better than just CJ did last month, so it looks like the new EPN is going to be a good thing although myself and others are still seeing some anomalies in EPN reports.

This month will continue to see expansion of my Build A Niche Store network as there are 10 stores now online and more content is being worked on by writers hired through Elance.com as I write this. The Black Ink Project with Jeremy Palmer starts on Monday and I continue to work my way through Aaron Wall’s SEOBook learning much about SEO, PPC and other marketing info. If I get nothing more than a better education on how to build successful PPC campaigns out of these 2 courses, I’ll consider that a success.

Looking forward to a busy month of May.