Affiliate Money Maker

Affiliate marketing is potentially a great source of income and  there are people who make a living off it and have quit their daytime jobs. However, it’s not a secret to anybody that out of all the people starting as affiliates only a small part will be successful and make a noteworthy income. While there are different tricks to how you can make it happen, knowing why it might not happen is just as good - so as to be warned and try to avoid the pitfalls that can kill your success.

There is a great list of a total of 99 reasons why you can fail at affiliate marketing over at AffEarners forum. Go give it a read and try not to repeat the mistakes listed there!

Good news for all the international affiliates: Leading Edge Cash has just launched 3 more translated web sites for VigRX Plus. The latest additions are the German VigRX Plus, Japanese VigRX Plus and Russian VigRX Plus.

Is this a good opportunity for the affiliates out there?  Let’s see:

Google.de:  only 22,500 results for VigRX Plus in German. Potential market? Germany, Switzerland, Austria, people using the Internet in German from elsewhere.

Google.jp: only 20,500 results for VigRX Plus in Japanese - and Japan is surely a nice, large and profitable market to work with.

Google.ru: this is totally incredible - only  822 results for VigRX Plus in Russian! And the market is really huge - not only Russia itself but many former Soviet Union republics where people speak Russian as well - enormous really!

So if this all has persuaded and inspired you, you you might want to have another look at my post about succeeding in an international market as an affiliate and get to work. In case you have not yet registered as an affiliate with LEC go ahead and do it now - and feel free to ask me any questions, I will happily share my experience with you. Good luck!

If you’re an affiliate marketer like me and use blogs to generate income - or even if you’re only considering using a blog for your business - Blog World Expo is an event you will benefit from greatly. See for yourself: the sessions will cover everything and anything about blogging from tech tips and tricks to going viral to optimizing your blog for the search engines. The speakers include such notable names as Jim Kukral (who even posted about how you cannot afford to miss this event), Shoemoney, Brian Clark (whose blog you should read - every post on it - if you wish to learn to blog efficiently), Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim, Mike Arrington of Tech Crunch and even ex-Googler Vanessa Fox. You bet these people are well worth listening to. Blog World and New Media Expo will  take place  in Las Vegas  on November  7-9,  2007.

Now here’s the best part of it all: if you register before October 19 you can get a 15% discount if you use the promo code AFFILIATE15. So hurry up and register now!

MoreNiche has just announced the launch of a new product for its affiliates to promote. It is WassOnline and it’s an online community for gamers where people can find reviews and tips and discuss different online gambling sites. Infact there’s much more that they offer for their members - from gambling news to poker tutorials to ratings of online poker rooms to even live poker tournaments. It’s not even about casinos only - they also have sections on bingo and sports betting so it pretty much caters to anyone. Member can participate in the forum or even set up and run their own gambling blogs. What’s even more interesting is that the signup is free.

What does it mean to you as an affiliate? First of all, for those not very well familiar with terminology let’s do a bit of an explanation.

There are different schemes of affiliate commissions used in modern affiliate marketing. All the products MoreNiche had so far as well as most other programs I talk about on this blog are based on a pay per sale model: you drive traffic to the offer, people buy products and you get a percentage of each actual sale as your affiliate commission.

There is another model you might be familiar with if you ever did any AdSense - pay-per-click. In this case, you get paid for every click on the ads placed on your site. But because of that kind of traffic being less targeted, you hardly ever get paid more than a few cents a click really - that was the main reason for me to switch from AdSense to affiliate.

Pay per lead, on the other hand, is more efficient for the advertiser and likely more lucrative for the publisher / affiliate (you). You are getting paid for a lead which simply means a person you bring to the affiliateoffer has to leave their contact information, fill out a form, join a membership based site, etc. You don’t care if they end up buying anything from the merchant - all you should care about is whether the signup form on the merchant site is prominent enough and if people can get an idea why registering should be beneficial for them. And if I understand anything about sites and their conversion rates, WassOnline is designed specifically to make people want to join.

Of course, pay per lead model does not offer payouts as high as pay per sale - but provided high volumes of traffic it all adds up very fast. MoreNiche offers $2 per lead on Wass Online so jump on this offer while it’s still hot.

Checked my email this morning to find out I had a sale in JoeBucks affiliate program! It’s been a while since I registered with them but this is my first sale there.

JoeBucks has plenty of products ranging from weight loss to men’s health products and I do need to pay more attention to it as there’s a lot of money to be made there. Many of their sites have multiple language versions. So far, I’ve only been using one product (penis enhancement pills) on one of my Spanish language PE sites. The site has been getting some traffic but most of it seemed to go to another product featured on that site, one from a different affiliate program. Really nice to know that JoeBucks producs on my site sell as well.

The payment system JoeBucks uses has an option of getting paid through Payoneer, an online payment system similar to ePassporte, which is very convenient as you get your payment in a matter of hours since the payout date. I certainly have opted for it, and what’s even nicer is with JoeBucks, it’s not gonna cost me a cent to create an account with Payoneer and get their card - infact I have the card already as they made me one as soon as I registered with JoeBucks. With ePassporte, it cost me $35.

Anyway, the month has just started so I have almost 2 more weeks to increase the amount of my first payment from JoeBucks - their payout periods are twice a month.

It’s been a while since I’ve last posted here as I’ve been travelling but a lot of things have happened in the meantime so it’s important that I mention them.

First of all, I’ve had 3 VigRX Plus sales (VigRX Plus is a product of Leading Edge Cash). These are all still from the Spanish speaking market and I’ve yet to catch up on this with French-speaking and English-speaking markets - I mean to look at them some time soon.

I’ve got my first payment from MoreNiche. Their minimum payout amount is $100, but if it’s your first time getting paid you gotta wait an extra month - it’s an anti fraud measure they have in place, with all further payments you just get your money next month after you make it. Like I mentioned earlier, they have two payment options: cheque or epassporte. I switched to epassporte and got my money immediately after it was posted - very convenient.

Since my last post here I’ve had a total of 7 downline signups: 4 in WorldNiche, 2 in Leading Edge Cash and 1 in GenBucks.  But what’s even more important, I’ve finally had my first downline sale! It was for ClearPores, a skin care product from WorldNiche. What’s interesting is that I don’t even put any effort into promoting this product myself and never had a single sale for it personally.

There is an ongoing agrument among affiliates about whether building your downline creates an additional competition for you - well in this case, I haven’t created any competition for myself. I guess the more products an affiliate program has, the less are the chances you would create yourself additional competition. I would also like to repeat what I already mentioned in one of the affiliate forums I visit sometimes - out of the seemingly large numbers of people that will sign up as your downline, only a small part will start actively promoting the affiliate offers - and making successful sales. Typically, these are the people who are either already experienced affiliates, or highly motivated and willing to put the effort it takes into learning and becoming successful. But the trick is that these people will find their way around in any case - and I’d rather have them in my downline than competing against me as somebody else’s downline or as affiliates who signed up directly.

What made me feel really good is that most of the events mentioned above happened while I was travelling - here goes the power of passive income!

Thought I’d post a quick update as it’s a very important moment for me psychologically: I finally got my first HerSolution Gel sale. I first got my site up and running when this product was just announced by WorldNiche but had no luck with sales. They have redesigned their site, and finally I see it works! My current conversion rate for it is 1:160 so in my opinion it’s still pretty decent and gives me an idea at least how much traffic I need to make it really work for me. The commission is still 60%, as promiced by WorldNiche after the site redesign.

I am now on holiday for two weeks so posting will be scarse at this time but thought I’d post this one. I got waken up by a text to my mobile telling me I made another Lovecentria sale - this time for $4.50 (somebody signed up for a trial there). This is my second Lovecentria sale and a total second sale for MoreNiche. My current conversion rate for Lovecentria is 1:23 - not bad, in my opinion, and even that is while not doing much while on holiday!

I got my first payment through ePassporte from WorldNiche. ePassporte is their alternative payment method and I thought I’d opt for it instead of waiting for the cheque to be mailed then cashed by the bank. Only thing is, I have just opened this ePassporte account so it will now take me some time to receive the ATM card from them - and will cost me $35 to order this card - but with the amount of time it saves me, I believe this is a worthy investment.

To opt for  payments through ePassporte in Worldniche, you need to go to your  info and select ePassporte as a payment method. There is a minimum of $100 payout for thsi payment option. With their bi-weekly payments I think it’s definitely worth doing.

Among  other news: I’ve had a downline signup in WorldNiche and one more sale in LEC - still VigRX Plus for the Spanish speaking market.

Those who are more or less familiar with the affiliate scene know that some affiliate programs such as MoreNiche have a tradition of choosing the affiliate of the month. The criteria for the AOTM include the affiliate’s performance, being active and helpful in the member forum, etc. This month’s affiliate of the month at MoreNiche is Ricki a.k.a. Casual Riches who has been a great inspiration to me since I joined MN. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions for this blog.

AMM: I have read that you’re pretty new to the affiliate business - can you tell me how you first got into it and what made you consider this way of making money online?

CR: Well, I have actually been making money online for a while off and on. I started out getting sucked into buying e-books from so called “gurus” and trying to be an affiliate for them. It didn’t work out as well as I thought it would so I decided to look for something else and that is when I found MoreNiche. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

AMM: I see you’ve only started promoting MoreNiche products recently - did you expect AOTM to happen so soon for you in MN?

CR: I wanted it to happen but I didn’t think it would. I thought it would have taken quite a bit longer.

AMM: You’ve been very active in the MN forum, for which I personally am very grateful to you as I learned a lot from your posts - how important is it for an affiliate marketer to participate in a community?

CR: I think the community is one of the most important things of any affiliate program. The amount of support and help that newcomers can get is excellent if there is a good community behind them. It definitely increases sales.

AMM: Being a good affiliate marketer takes a lot of knowledge and experience in many different areas. What are the most necessary skills for an affiliate marketer, in your opinion?

CR: The most necessary skill for any affiliate marketer would have to be just having the drive to succeed. The reason that most affiliate marketers fail is because they think it is a “get rich quick” scheme and end up giving up. If you are willing to learn and put in hard work then that is the most important skill. The rest will fall into place for you.

AMM: I guess to be successful you need to have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve in the long run. What is your personal goal in the affiliate business?

CR: My personal goal in the affiliate business is to be able to make a living on the income that I bring in from it. It might seem like a dream but I believe I can acheive this goal.

AMM: Building a downline: some affiliate marketers are all about it, while others think of it as building your own competition. What are your thoughts on it and what do you do about your own downline?

CR: I think it is a good idea but I do also think that it does make you build your competition. Although, if you work with your downline closely then it can be a very good thing for everyone involved.

AMM: And finally, what is your advice for those willing to make money as affiliates?

CR: Learn as much as you can, set goals, create plans, act on them, and never give up. It is simple if you put your mind to it.

Thanks for your time Ricki!

Ricki also has a blog at Making Myself Richer where he shares his experience as an affiliate marketer.