www.affiliateconfession.com

While earning money through PPC marketing is great, as an affiliate you also want to be thinking long term. When you get the hang of it, PPC is great for the quick buck, but you have to be constantly churning out new ideas and campaigns because old ones lose momentum and when you shut off your traffic, or lose it, there goes your cash-flow.

Yes, it is nice to make those fast dollars, but maybe you might not want to keep chasing the ever changing Google Adwords carrot or keep putting in the constant work that it takes to maintain your income. Are you setting up your affiliate business now for long term payoffs months or even years into the future?

Just the other day I put up a page on one of my BANS sites and will put up 2 or 3 more pages this week for a very desirable collectible with a fairly high price, but I don’t really expect to cash in on this work until probably the end of 2009 and long after that. This collectible is in a very narrow niche and won’t be released to the public until the spring of next year. For some time it probably won’t show up on eBay, but even when it does later in the year it won’t be at a premium price because these items will still be available from the manufacturer.

However, at the end of 2009 these collectibles will cease to be made and will only be available from aftermarket dealers and yes, you guessed it, from eBay as well. That’s when I expect to start earning nice commissions for these items because of increased prices and limited availability. And what’s a bonus is that these products will be sought after for years to come by the people in this particular market. If all goes as planned, and of course there are no guarantees, the pages I’m putting up now will have been indexed for more than a year and have high rankings for keywords related to these items. And while PPC traffic can be good if you find the right keywords to buy, nothing beats free organic traffic.

I learned about these items only by reading blogs in this niche and trying to stay somewhat current on what’s happening in this field. It’s not something I have tons of time to devote to, but it is an area of interest that I’m somewhat familiar with and along with reading blogs online I pick up magazines at Barnes & Noble every 3 weeks to a month just so that nothing really interesting or important passes me by.

There are a lot of things I read about such as this that I try to add to my network of sites on an ongoing basis because I want to be earning money way down the road without having to put in the effort again and again. Not many items are as suited to bring future ongoing profits as these collectibles will be, but this served as a great example of what you should be looking for to build a stable business and have an income many months and years down the road.

I’ve been with Neverblue for a few months now, but I’ve only been running active campaigns with any effort for about 10 weeks through them. Back just a few days ago I passed the $10,000 mark in total revenue with them in that 10 week period. Do realize though, this is not profit, it is total revenue produced from all the offers I’ve been running through them. Without doing to much research, I can tell you that about half of that revenue produced is profit though, so that’s about $500 a week in earnings I’ve been generating through Neverblue.

Most of the revenue generated in the last 10 weeks through Neverblue has been from what I learned through PPC Coach.

Let me tell you, working with Neverblue rocks. My affiliate manager, Mike, was great to work with and anytime I needed anything I could call him up and he’d get back with me always the same day either by phone or email. I talked with Mike once or twice a week and through close communication he knew what I wanted to promote in my business and kept me informed of new offers and gave me an income bump on a few offers that I was doing well with to give me even more profit. Mike has since moved on to go back to school and I’ve been switched over to super affiliate manager Michelle who I’ve only had the chance to talk to once and she is equally as nice and helpful.

Beyond the helpful affiliate managers I like the way the control panel looks and functions inside your account. When you first log in you can see your revenue produced for the month, for the day and the total amount since being with the company. You can also see links to your current campaigns running, other campaigns recommended for you, the newest campaigns just coming out, your affiliate manager contact info and pic and a bunch of other info.

Once you click over to the available campaigns I love the way this screen is organized. All offers are classified by category and include the number of offers available. When you click to see the offers you can then see the total network earnings, EPC and the payout for producing a lead. If you then click to an offer the creatives are organized under tabs and on the left of the screen you will see the kind of promotions allowed, the EPC and total earnings and the payout and what constitutes a lead somewhere in the middle. It’s great to have all this info right at your fingertips so you can see if this is an offer you want to run.

I try to choose offers with high network earnings and a high EPC, the payout isn’t really that important. That may sound strange to not be concerned about the payout, but what I look for in an offer is if it’s making money for the network at has that good EPC. If those two things are high, I feel like I have a better chance to make money with it regardless of what it pays. If you see an offer with high network earnings, high EPC and a high payout, those are obviously the best.

Organization, great offers, lots of info to help you choose profitable offers and affiliate manager friendly and willing to get to know you and your business is what makes Neverblue rock.

Sign up with Neverblue, earn some affiliate cash and experience their personal service.

One of the best ways to learn about internet and affiliate marketing is to read about the successes and failures of people who have been in the trenches for awhile. There isn’t anything better than to learn from the experiences of others who have been there and done that. If you want to make $5,000, $10,000 or $100,000 a month with a business on the net, you should be reading the stories of the people who have earned that kind of income.

Fantastic you’re probably thinking, but how do I find all those successful people and their blogs without spending hours searching for them? And when you consider your search efforts will turn up plenty of wannabe affiliate marketers that aren’t really making any money at all, it can be a daunting task to get connected to the best information.

But there is an easier solution…

Gyutae Park of WinningTheWeb.com has put together an invaluable resource for bloggers and Internet marketers with his creation of the IM Top Blogs list. Currently the list features 279 of the top blogs on the Internet that deal with making money online, affiliate marketing, traffic generation, PPC, blogging and anything related to marketing on the net. The nice thing about the list is that it’s not just Gyutae’s opinion of which blogs are the best because he has gone through the painstaking task of ranking them according to various criteria such as Technorati, Yahoo Links, Google PR, Alexa Ranking, Feedburner stats, StumbleUpon reviews and other factors. All these variables virtually guarantee that you will be reading the best, most popular blogs available in the IM niche.

The list is constantly updated so you can keep checking back to see where your favorite blogs rank, how many links they’re getting and so you can discover new blogs in the web marketing space you may not have known about. Heck, just a quick look on the first page of 95 sites listed I found at least 10 blogs I’ve never even heard of.

A big shout out goes to Gyutae for doing the work and putting together the list. There’s lots of valuable information contained in the blogs listed here. Spend more time reading through the experiences of these Internet bloggers and stop spending so much money on worthless ebooks. You’ll save some money and will learn more current and useful info for your own business and blogging efforts.

By the way, AffiliateConfession.com is ranked at 159. Thanks for the resource Gyutae!

I’ve been hearing this ridiculous commercial on talk radio in our area lately from beach bum Ty Coughlin of the Reverse Funnel System (sorry dude, no link) and it’s beginning to make me ill. The radio spot starts out with Ty laughing like some big shot, bragging about making a bunch of money on the Internet and then going into his spiel about how a group of his students just passed the $10 million mark with his system and they’re now ready to take on another group of students.

Some time back I had someone ask me to do a review of this system and I asked to actually see it before I did the review, and guess what the answer was…Sorry, I can’t do that. This kind of nonsense should raise red flags, make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and alert your Spidey Sense, or if you’re normal it should just make you want to flee like the bad guys you see on COPS. Don’t ask questions, just run!

I think to get into this deal, you have to pay $50 up front just to turn in your “application” and find out what it’s all about and then it’s another higher monetary commitment after that. Remember, don’t ask, just run.

This is where the Internet gurus get you to believe you can “make money on the internet” just like they did and to play nice I’ll just call it a misconception instead of what it really is, propaganda. Telling people they will make money on the net is a flat out scam. It gets you to believe that all you need is the cyberforce of the web and a computer and you can be rich too. The terminology is used to deflect the desperate into thinking they don’t have to work and do what it really takes to succeed online, build a business.

Gurus claiming they make money from the net or whatever line they’re using is like saying the guy we buy produce from at the flea market is “making money from the flea market”. No, he has a business at the flea market and he busts his tail setting up shop, ordering produce, doing paperwork, stacking watermelons, sweeping the floor, unpacking his truck and so on. The flea market has no magic, it’s the work that John does in his produce business that puts food on his table and pays his bills.

The Internet has no Luke-Skywalker-magic-use-the-force-power either, it’s just a tool like a hammer, it ain’t going to work unless you use some elbow grease and swing it or get really smart and get one of those powered ones where all you have to do is pull the trigger. But nothing’s going to happen unless you have something to put nails into.

Set up shop and use the Internet as a tool to build a business and stay away from the guys that tell you you can build a building without getting sweaty and pounding some nails.

Life is getting crazy around the LeStourgeon household. We’re moving into a time of the year when it seems like every week we have something additional to do beyond what’s already going on in life. Jean and I are both in the Christmas musical we’re doing at our church and need to spend time practicing that, I’m playing in the band at our church’s Harvest Party this week, we’re progressing on our addition to our home and on, and on, and on.

All that to say I’m going to be taking a break here from blogging on a regular basis at Affiliate Confession until the first of the year. I’m not going away and will still be posting at the very least once a week, and even as much as 4 times a week if there is pertinent news and affiliate marketing info to publish.

One of the other things I need to be spending time on are to find additional successful PPC campaigns because some of my highest traffic generating campaigns will be going away after the upcoming election. You can generate a bunch of traffic on the Adwords content network by capitalizing on current events, but unfortunately current events only have a life cycle that lasts for so long and then you need to find additional events to take advantage of. Some things, personalities, events or political figures can generate enormous amounts, but the majority of things you think would be great for traffic, usually aren’t. So, it takes a bit of trial and error to find the ones that work well.

Anyway, If you don’t see as many postings from here until the end of the year, don’t be alarmed, I’m still here, I’ll just be working on other things and still posting occasionally.