So, this post will probably make some of you a few thousand and I hope you decide to let me know if you do. I'm going to share this post because it simply isn't scalable to the level that's worth it for me.

Let me start off by saying that this can be applied to many other niches and if you're smart enough you can make a pretty penny.

As most of you know, making money online can be quite simple if you know where to look. For me, knowing where to look last year was cj.com and all the Halloween costume offers. Some advertisers on cj.com were offering a full 15% on any costumes purchased through your affiliate link.

It all started when I was looking to get a nice costume for a local event. I couldn't find any coupon codes, so I decided to check affiliate links I could use myself. (Most affiliate networks only frown on using your own link for lead generation offers)

I found a nice costume and it hit me... Check ebay for the costume I wanted...

I checked ebay and realized that the prices were almost the same for the costume I wanted and many were not listed even...

So, then it hit me again... I could list Halloween costumes on ebay (just basically copy / paste descriptions from the website) and then once sold, use my affiliate link to make an easy 15% (and for certain costumes that had no competition... I charged extra... ;)). When ordering, I would simply enter my info as the billing contact and then enter their shipping information. That way, I never even touched the packages and didn't have to pay extra for shipping.

Last year I ended up making around around $450 this way I think. It was very easy money because I found a few popular costumes and just kept re-listing them. Boom. Easy Money!

Since I wasn't sure if it would work or not, I was very cautious and only listed every so often. But sure enough it all worked out. Had I been more aggressive (more risk, more time), I'm positive I could have easily made $2500 or more.

Another thing I did to increase sales was as Halloween was getting closer, I would charge about 25% extra what the website was charging for shipping and said it was for rush delivery.

If you decide to do this here are a couple tips:

• Make sure you know exactly what you're selling... Don't say something has "Boots" when it doesn't come with boots... (this = nightmare for your profits)
• Make sure the costume is in stock... I sold two costumes that were not in stock and were not going to be in stock ANYWHERE. I had to just tell them I couldn't sell them to them... DOH
• Clear your cookies after each purchase. Sometimes affiliate cookies only count for 1 sale. Therefore, clear your cookies, revisit your affiliate link, purchase and repeat.

Enjoy.

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Well... Now that we are into October (already?!) I am proud to announce that last month was by far the best month I have ever had as an affiliate marketer.

For the past few months I was stuck at this $170k plateau and I just could not seem to break through it. Thankfully not only did I break through the $170k last month, I increased sales by around $100,000! A nice little payday increase!

This now puts me at 67.5% of my $400,000 goal! What's neat is that last September is when I set my original goal.

That goal was to be hitting $80,000 / month by the next year. Fast forward a year and I am over triple the amount I wanted to hit! How exciting!

This really shows the power of affiliate marketing. When you focus your time and effort into the right areas, it can really pay off!

So I know probably one of the first things I am going to see in the commenter box is "How much is profit?!" Well, let's just say it was in the 6 figure range and that's all you need to know.

I've also been asked a lot recently as to why I took the goal meter down from my site.

I took it down because of a couple reasons. First, my family and friends started to find my blog. While all my close family knows of my situation, I just didn't want them to think that it was because of pride that I was putting it up (instead of the marketing ploy that it was designed for).

I think it's ok to tell people who you don't know your business income because it can be inspirational to many. When it starts getting to family, it can come across wrong. Make sense?

So I decided to only post updates instead of keeping a goal meter so my RSS subscribers can get updates while my less frequent readers (IE friends searching my name) are less likely to stumble on my blog and see my income.

Either way, Cheers to another good month.

I'd love to know how your affiliate marketing went last month?!

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As you continue to grow your affiliate marketing business, it can be VERY easy at times to want to work each and every day.

I mean, if you're like me, sometimes just sitting in front of the television can be too boring so I usually grab my laptop to do some additional work while relaxing.

This kind of pattern shows great work ethic and from most people I know, they seem to work pretty much every day on their successful affiliate campaigns.

But what I have been realizing recently is that I actually end up getting more done when I take one full day off.

I have been taking my Sundays off for a little while now and compared to when I don't... I generally get more done in the week.

Taking a day off is important for your mind to basically refocus and rethink about what is important to get done and what was just a distraction. Filtering through these two things will mean major profits or major lost potential profits, respectively.

Overworking generally doesn't produce better results, it's like a parabola I would say. You reach a point of exponential growth and after x amount of hours you will start to decline in creativity (which is a big part of what affiliate marketing is about) and productivity.

So... Take A Day Off once a week. It'll help you in the long run.

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As I continue to grow my affiliate business, it can be very hard to stay focused.

I have a million and one things I could do in a given day and at the end of the day, there is always more to be done.

So in order to not make projects take years to complete, I force myself to stay focused.

The method that has been working really well for me recently is taking a small period of time each day and making a list of things that I would like to accomplish and ideas for future projects.

I then try to categorize them into urgency using an A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, etc method. I get all the A projects done and then move onto the B's and so on.

Keeping an organized list of things needing to be done can really increase productivity and reduce time it takes to launch (potentially) profitable websites. The more I launch, optimize, tweak, study, etc the more money I make, the closer I am to my goals.

How do you stay focused and efficient?

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If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'll probably know by now that I love goals. It's fun (when you hit them), It's exciting, It's motivating, and my favorite part... it can be rewarding.

For me, the most recent goal has been a long struggle to hit $400,000 in commissions in a single month. It's quite a difficult task for me because I'm having to change my mindset (view one of my favorite posts: the HOW mindset) and think of new and creative strategies for increasing my income.

Well this month, even though I probably won't be hitting the $400,000 mark, I still believe that I'm going to finally break past this $170,000 plateau that I've been stuck at for a few months now.

As my income continually increases, there is only so much I can spend on stuff. I like to continue living in a comfortable manner that is not in excess. What I do however is set a goal and when I reach that goal, I do something nice for myself or girlfriend or family.

So here is my goal list that I have been thinking about and I'd love to see what kind of goals and rewards you guys have! This kind of stuff is neat to me!

• $250,000 / month - Lasik Eye Surgery... Because this month is going so well, I decided to schedule an appointment for next week. Let's hope I can stay on track!!! hahaha.
• $300,000 / month - Buying a nice computer for a friend of mine... He deserves it.
• $400,000 / month - Buying a Roland Drumset. I have been playing the drums since I was 13 and I have a electric set now but this one is my dream set.
• $1,000,000 / month - Taking my entire family and girlfriend's family (hopefully wife by then) to Cabo San Lucas or something similar for 7 days.

So... What are your goals and what are your rewards?

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There are certain times in affiliate marketing or internet marketing in general when getting someone a result may take a bit of time.

An example of this might be if you were running a search engine style landing page which matched your visitor to the best service.

This type of landing page is a bit more uncommon but can work in certain instances.

Either way, if you ever have something that takes more than just a few seconds to get to, you want to let your visitors know!

Statistics show that most people hate waiting for a page to load. In fact if your page takes more than just 10 seconds or so, forget about converting a large number of visitors!

What I have found is that people actually don't mind waiting as much as you might think. Instead they often think of the wait period as a glitch or error.

So therefore when you send people to a page that might take a minute or two to load, always tell them of the pending wait time.

Further more, because people are so used to PC's and Mac's which both fully utilize animation, most people will feel more comfortable waiting if you have some type of progress bar. This progress bar does not need to be real (think of the ajax loading bars), it just needs to simulate a real situation.

If you want to get some really good ajax loading bars, you can check out this website I found on the good old google.

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This is a GUEST POST By Wes Mahler who started one of the most valuable PPC tools called, Tracking202 and Prosper202. He also is responsible for numerous affiliate marketing meetups around the globe, thanks to meetup202.

As more and more ppc affiliates try to penetrate the market place, there is an increasing amount of marketers now using the same-exact keyword tools. Of course, long are the days when you could simply just grab a 100-1,000 generated keyword list, and then throw it into your ppc campaign and make money. At one point in time that use to be some-what true, and it could still theoretically work, but the reason it doesn’t work any more is because now 100 other people did the same thing and now there are so many competitors that the bid price is to high to earn any significant income.

For instance, the Google Keyword tool is still an extremely powerful tool, but it is really more valuable now to analyze specific keywords you are thinking about running instead of using it to find your keyword list. We instead only use this tool now for analyzing a specific keyword, and finding out how much volume a keyword can get, and if you modify the viewing options, you can also see the approximate bid you need to pay to be in 1-3 positions. The Google Keyword tool is really more powerful to analyze your potential keywords instead of trying to use it to generate your keyword list.

Here is the thing to understand: the more people who use the same “keyword generator tool” the less valuable that keyword generation tool becomes. And that is why you can’t really rely on just the Google Keyword tool to get your keyword, which is what a-lot of people still simply rely on to get their keywords. If you were the only one using it, you could get extremely good results because you’d generate your keyword list and no one else would be bidding on those keywords. But because everyone uses the same tool to generate their keyword list, the only actually good keywords that it gives you most of the time, are the same over-saturated keywords everyone else has because they also just took the keywords from there and pasted it into their ppc campaigns. Note, there good keywords, there’s just most of the time to many competitors, and to high of bids to make money.

If you are someone who likes using keyword tools, start to try using different keyword tools than everyone else, and what will happen is you’ll get different results than everyone else, because your keywords are different.

Although I’m not going to post any paid specific keyword tools here, but, paying for a few different keyword tools can in some-cases be good; because now your keyword list is going to be slightly different than everyone else only the free keyword tools. And that slightly difference in keywords can result in having one different keyword that all the sudden now brings high-volume traffic, and has a low bid price, because you’re the only one who is running it. You have a different keyword than everyone else, because your using different keyword tools than everyone else.

For the most part, those who only rely on the Google Keyword Tool for instance, generally won’t do that well in PPC. It could work, but it won’t, because to many people simply do this also, and now the bids are to high on the keywords to make a positive ROI on your money. Now let me clarify, I know people who make a lot of money just using FREE keyword tools, and don’t pay for anything, but they ALSO (in addition) to the free keyword tools get keywords from other places as well. They DO NOT JUST RELY on a free keyword tool to give them their keyword. Even though they are using free tools, they also get their keywords from their own ideas, or other places as well, and because of that they have different results than everyone else, because their keywords aren’t the same.

I’m sure 50% of all PPC affiliates, all they do is grab their entire keyword list from a keyword tool, and throw it into the PPC campaign. I’m here to tell you, if all the keywords you are bidding on now, you simply just generated from the tools everyone else is using, your probably not earning that much. You can’t just generate a keyword list from the same tool everyone else is using and expect to make money any more.

What ultimately I’m saying is this, if you are ONLY relying on like a Google Keyword tool to give you the keywords to bid on your not going to do that well in most cases. You need to use Google Keyword Tool in conjunction with other keywords you can think up that no one else is bidding on. You need to get your keywords from other places just from the keyword tools, paid keyword tools, you need to be creative and get other keywords that aren’t generated in the lists that everyone else already has! The Google Keyword Tool is can ONE of your keyword generation techniques, not the ONLY one. And although there are many factors that go into running a successful ppc campaign, having the right keywords, and different keywords than everyone else will be one huge determining factor whether or not your ppc campaign be a success.

Here’s an exercise: For your next campaign, use everything but a keyword generator to find the keywords you will run. Don’t use a keyword generator, use something else, and see what kind of results you may get.

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As you may or may not know by now, I am a big advocate of PPC Coach

Recently, PPC Coach, Will, was interviewed by Harald Anderson of Clickbooth. This interview actually contains a load of good information for both new and experienced affiliates.

You can check out the interview below:

You can check out my review on PPC Coach here. (Opens in a new window to not disturb the interview)

You can check out the PPC Coach website here.

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For whatever reason I accidentally skipped part. 6 in the series of Affiliate Marketing Mistakes You Don't Want to Make...

So I renamed the last post to part 6 and this one is the true part 7. (Will the real part 7 please stand up, please stand up... hahaha - the things we listen to when we're young...)

Anyways, For this post I want to talk about one mistake that has cost me thousands of dollars over the lifetime of my affiliate marketing business.

It's not some complex issue like some of the earlier parts of this series... but rather one of the most simple mistakes one can make.

The affiliate marketing mistake you don't want to make is forgetting to check your landing page in every major browser.

Even just recently, I created a landing page and sent a $200 test in traffic to it to find out that my jump links were not working properly in internet explorer and firefox... (Thank you for working Google Chrome ;)).

Out of the $200, I made 0 sales which is fairly unusual for me for this type of item.

Either way, after losing $200, I quickly discovered that my lack of testing a site cost me in what could have been discovered in just an additional 5 minutes of testing.

So, don't make the same mistake! Try your websites out in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Safari. Beyond that, I don't really test.

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One Affiliate Marketing mistake you don't want to make:

Thinking you know what the heck people want...

Let me tell you a secret... NOBODY knows exactly what people want. Your target audience is different than you. They are not you, nor will they ever be.

Very often affiliate marketers (both new and experienced) get into the mindset of thinking that they know what their visitors want or what will make them convert simply based on what THEY would like.

Honestly, the only way to be able to tell is by testing. Sure you might add something that pisses 5% of your visitors off, if it converts better overall, then leave it. You'll never be able to make every visitor happy.

Here is a classic example:
You go onto a landing page and want to leave but before you do you get one of those automated chat robots that popup.

So many internet marketers refuse to use these because they think it will annoy their visitors. The truth is, these things are on so many pages because they WORK. Besides, the visitor is leaving your page so... think about it.

Another classic example is using the live person videos or sitepal. A lot of people think that this would annoy visitors but the truth is... these things do increase sales (almost always).

You job as a marketer is to get the most out of the traffic you have. Every person that visits your website theoretically is a potential customer. Your job is to persuade them in whatever way possible.

In my last post for example, I posted a pretty sneaky tactic... you have no idea whether it works or not until you test it.

This is why testing is so important. Those who do not test things are losing out on so much money it's crazy. Probably one of the reasons I am where I am is because I do like to test things out.

Always test different styles of adcopy, always test multiple landing pages, always test new headlines, always test different calls to action (buttons vs. video (see last post) vs. text vs. etc...).

Enjoy the extra income.

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