www.affiliateconfession.com

The figures are in for the monthly affiliate income report and it’s a new record and one that’s another significant milestone for any affiliate marketer. After expenses, actual profit was over the $5,000 mark finally realizing the goal set for September when I missed it by only $260. It’s also significant because earnings have doubled since starting this blog 1 year ago. Combined earnings for both September and October came in slightly over $10,000, meaning the average was over $5,000 for each month.

Leading the increased earnings were Google Adsense which was almost $500 more than last month and the eBay Partner Network by utilizing Build A Niche Store came roaring back and was over $1,000 again. However, I did spend a little over $300 for some search traffic to a couple of my BANS stores making my profit just a little under $300 more than last month. I’m not sure what happened with EPN in September as it was down to half of what I usually make.

Total revenue for October was a record as well bringing in $8,515.41. As you might assume, expenses were also at a record high of $3,199.93 of which $2,700 was from pay-per-click traffic, but that gave me a healthy profit of $5,315.48 which is obviously also a record. Everything breaks down as follows:

Google Adsense – $1,525.75
Commission Junction – $82.43
EPN – eBay – $1,013.80
Meal Planner Ebook – $119.00
TripAdvisor – $176.28
Clickbank – $88.72
Private Advertising – $140.00
AzoogleAds – $637.55
Pepperjam – $51.89
Market Leverage – $23.00
Neverblue – $4,342.85
Other Affiliate Programs – $314.14

Total Revenue – $8,515.41

Total expenses – $3,199.93

Total Income – $5,315.48

I’m hoping this trend continues, but next this month will be quite a challenge as my earnings through PPC seem to be trending down towards the end of October and the beginning of this month. Traffic from my most profitable campaigns is down significantly and I can’t seem to get anything working in the last couple of weeks. Of the 20 to 25 PPC campaigns started in the last 2 weeks, nothing is producing much volume. Sometimes you just never know when Google will be nice to you, you just have to keep working at it till something breaks through.

Since we are heading into the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season there’s lots of opportunity for affiliate marketers to do well during this time of year and with the election wrapping up in the next couple of days, there’s a great opportunity to earn there as well. Really, you almost never have to worry about finding ways to earn money online and rather than go into a long winded discussion about that, check out Zac Johnson’s 5 Ways to Cash In Big Before The New Year for some ideas.

I’m setting a goal right now to earn $10,000 in December and I told my wife we’d have a huge celebration when we hit that mark. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to earn some great income coming up in the next couple of months, but also in your quest to earn big bucks in affiliate marketing, don’t forget about what this season is really about.

Popularity: 10% [?]

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.

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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.

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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.

Popularity: 8% [?]

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.

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