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As an affiliate it’s great to dream a little and think about those what if I had more money scenarios. Well I came across one of those what if moments a couple of days ago with a hefty price tag of $8,000, but it is actually a pretty good deal. Here’s what I’d do if I had a quick $8,000 windfall.

Since I’m a drummer I’m always perusing the percussion category on eBay for deals or just to see what people are selling. I’m especially fond of drum sets with very exotic woods and finishes and I found the DW drum set below just a couple of days ago and I’ve fallen in love with it. 

The set is made by Drum Workshop, DW for short, and it is one of the most incredible looking  set of drums I think I’ve ever seen for sale on eBay. They are truly a thing of beauty. If you aren’t a drummer it would help to know that DW drums are some of the highest quality and most expensive drums in the world. At full retail price you may be able to find a set like this, drums only with no hardware, for around $12,000 however, this looks to be an exotic wood and paint fade that may have been a custom order so it could possibly be retailed for somewhat more.

The auction ends 4 days from this post and the price is up to a little over $4,000 right now and there is a Buy It Now price of $7,999. And let me tell you what, if the cash were available, I wouldn’t even hesitate to pay the asking price and be done with it. Even though the person doing the auction has a 100% positive feedback rating, I might send the guy an email just to make sure the whole thing is legit before spending $8,000, but that’s about it. You can see more pictures of this once in a lifetime find and check out the drum set auction here.

Now I just need to find the affiliate offer or product that can make $8,000 in the next 3 or 4 days. Any suggestions?

I thought about that title for awhile and then thought, ah heck, just go with it. I’m referring to my earnings with Pepperjam Network, not their total earnings. For the first time since eBay switched over their affiliate program to be managed in-house and by Pepperjam, my earnings this month through PJ will exceed earnings at Commission Junction by around 4 times, and none of those earnings are coming from eBay managed through Pepperjam.

At one time I had been earning around $800 to $1,000 a month with CJ, but since my leads for Apartments.com dropped off and eBay left, there are only a handful of programs I’m still running through CJ. This signals a changing of the guard for the affiliate networks I’ll be working with from now on. While earnings this month through Pepperjam will not be large by any means, I do expect to see continued growth as new programs get introduced and I start working with more of them.

Pepperjam has around 250 merchants they are working with right now and it seems like they introduce new ones several times a week. And PJ just recently added a new feature to their interface where you can now see the best performing offers on their network according to EPC (earnings per click). This makes it easy to find the best paying offers in your particular niche. Just select your preferred category or do a keyword search for merchants via the partners interface, then click the next to last column to the right marked 1-Month EPC and the best offers will be at the top.

The top 5 EPC offers overall as of this post are:

ExclusivelyHome.com - Home furnishings.
EPC = $8.20

Vitalicious.com - Vitamin fortified desserts and goodies.
EPC = $2.41

Barstools.com - You guessed it, bar stools.
EPC = $1.96

PatioUmbrellas.com - Not just your average patio and beach umbrellas.
EPC = $1.69

LifeLock.com - Guaranteed identity theft protection.
EPC = $1.50

If you haven’t partnered up with Pepperjam yet, now is the time to do so because they are offering a $10 incentive to all new members that get approved. All you have to do is sign up and you get that $10 deposited into your account as a bonus.

Don’t miss out on Pepperjam steamrolling through the affiliate marketing space. Join up and check out their offers today and earn an easy $10.

If you haven’t joined Pepperjam Network yet then you are missing the next wave in affiliate marketing. Pepperjam Network has only been in existence for 5 months, has partnered with the biggest affiliate program on the net (eBay) and is already the number 5 affiliate marketing company in the United States. And with the latest viral promotion they’re doing they just might end up moving up a few places in the rankings.

If you’d like to earn an easy $10 all you have to do is sign up for Pepperjam and as soon as you are approved, you get the $10 deposited into your account. Obviously you shouldn’t just join up to get $10, because if you do, you will never make it in affiliate marketing. You should join because Pepperjam is becoming the affiliate network to be a part of. With their recent venture involving the eBay Partner Network it is evident that Pepperjam means business and that is nothing but good news for affiliate marketers. They are the next Commission Junction if you will.

Pepperjam is also running a blogger incentive program where you can earn up to $50 per month for writing about the network and or some of the tools they offer such as Pepperjam Chat. All you have to do is get prior approval for your post, so spammers don’t take advantage of the situation, and you are off to the races. You get $10 for each post and can do up to 5 per month.

Pepperjam has some of the newest and most exciting offers I’ve seen since I’ve been an affiliate and they’re bringing on new and prestigious companies on a weekly basis that you can earn good money with. Join the up and coming affiliate network that will be #1 one day and get $10, plus have the opportunity to earn $50 per month by blogging about them.  If you’re an affiliate marketer, why wouldn’t you join?

Join Pepperjam Network here.

Sometimes it’s better to look at your affiliate marketing efforts in more general than specific terms. If you are consistently finding that what you are doing isn’t working and you aren’t making any money, maybe operator error is the problem.

When I worked as a graphic artist I was pretty well versed in the workings of PhotoShop and Illustrator and it was amazing the things that people in our office consistently had trouble with when using these two applications. I can’t tell you how many times I’d hear the usual groan from another cubicle, signaling someone was stuck in an infinite PhotoShop loop they couldn’t get out of, and I’d walk over, look at their screen for 5 seconds and press Ctrl>{insert appropriate keystroke}, or say, “You’re on the wrong layer” and all would be well again.

Any chance that may be the issue with the latest Adsense optimization problem you’re trying to figure out, or why your site is nearly identical in content and look (without duplicating) than the site that’s on page one of Google for that money making keyword and yours is lost on page 11, or why you end up consistently getting banned from one affiliate network after another? I read in the comments section of a very popular blog a month or so back about someone who was making $50 a day from Adsense by asking all his friends to click on his ads. He had no idea why he eventually got banned because he didn’t think he had done anything wrong!

On a fairly regular basis I get people who want me to look at their Build A Niche Store eBay affiliate sites and want me to help them figure out why they aren’t getting any traffic, don’t have rankings and aren’t making any sales. Instead of answering that question directly and pointing out the obvious reasons it’s not happening for them, from now on I think my standard answer for 90% of those inquiries is going to be, “Would you shop at your own store?” I’ve run across hundreds of these BANS stores that have zero content (no product descriptions) and just think, ‘There’s another store not making any money.’

Sometimes it’s a simple as something I tell my wife to do when she can’t figure out what’s going on with her laptop. “Just reboot” is becoming a mantra in our house when we’re stuck on a problem we can’t seem to solve. Instead of reacting and hammering away at the same thing that isn’t going to solve the issue, sometimes it’s just better to reboot and take a fresh look at what’s going on.

Reacting to operator error just exacerbates the problem, try observing instead.

I’ve been doing a lot of advertising through Entrecard lately and have had some pretty good results. As you can see in the image above at the height of my advertising spree after accumulating 30,000 credits, I had 48 ads running at one time. I have also increased my traffic by 200 to 250 visitors a day via ads.

I still think it takes way too much time to find good places to advertise coupled with the fact that your ads only run for 24 hours. It is quite time consuming to maintain a level of running more than 30 ads a day. However, Entrecard has made it easier to visit the blog you are interested in advertising on by being able to go directly to that blog from the category rather than the individual users profile. This saves you a click for each blog you are interested in placing ads with.

Entrecard has also made it easier to get credits because you can now buy them on the site and they are priced at $9.50 per 1,000 credits and sold in bundles of 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 credits each. So, 10,000 credits will end up costing you $95. It would take you over a month to earn that many credits by dropping the limit of 300 per day. So, in some ways, that is a fairly decent way to spend a little of your advertising dollars.

But it gets even better when you find out you can get Entrecard credits on eBay for less than half of what Entrecard sell them for. I purchased 5,000 for $22 and 10,000 credits for only $40 recently and as I write this post there’s a Buy It Now offer for 10,000 credits for only $30 and there are usually 10 to 12 auctions or sales of Entrecard credits going on at any one time.

Pretty simple math, if you want to do massive advertising with Entrecard and save a bunch of money on the deal, buy Entrecard credits on eBay.