That means there are only four months left in 2010 and the busy holiday season is coming up. Time to start grindin if you haven’t already because there’s  a lot of money to still be made with people heading back to school and coming off of “vacation mode.”

Wanted to do an update post, however, about August and list my goals for next month.

It was an interesting month to say the least. Here’s the snapshot:

* I couldn’t show this as August earnings, due to it being September now, but it’s all from last month. And:

Traffic was split between another network. So that equals total revenue of $37, 778.90. Total spend for Aug. was:

So that’s a profit of $18,508.69. The interesting thing is that I only ran traffic this month for about 13 days total- about the first eight days of the month and five days at the end of the month. The reason for that is I was promised weeklies by the network I was working with and it’s the first time I’d really done any sort of volume with them.

I got pretty freaked out when my payment kept getting delayed so I paused all my traffic until I finally got paid 3 weeks after when I first started my campaign. I was almost scared I wasn’t going to get paid. So I was paused for more than two weeks and the crazy thing is before my first payment from the network was due I ran enough traffic to hit my credit limit on all my cards and so decided  to delve into my checking account to keep running traffic. Not the smartest idea looking back now I know. I even went into overdraft a few times in anticipation of payment. It’s a good thing I finally got paid by the network, but it was not an easy two weeks going without any cash in my pocket, which was right before ASE. I’m working with the network again now as they’ve promised to make payments on time now, but hedging my risk by splitting my traffic with multiple networks.

So I hit my best month ever and some of my best days ever with some $3,000+ profit days.

For this month, I want to continue to scale and I strongly believe I will hit my first $50,000 profit month in September. I’m looking forward to trying out new advertising platforms.

The only thing I regret about this month is that I put in so much time and credit towards scaling this campaign out, that I didn’t get to win a new iPad from Convert2Media for pushing $5,000 of revenue in my first month =(  Would’ve been really cool to win one, but oh well.

One more thing – I’m sure by now you’ve probably heard about the floods in Pakistan. I’ve been trying to help raise some money for helping the victims of the foods and it’s surprisingly harder than I thought after posting about it on Facebook and Twitter. The floods have barely been getting any media attention and disease is spreading fast. If you’d like to help, please donate through my page: Help the Pakistan Flood Victims . That country has been dealing with a whole lot of shit, and as much as I hate the kind of morally corrupt behavior that I see from the country of my origin, it’s not all the people and they still need help. I’ve only donated a little so far, but I’m hoping to match all donations. Thanks everybody.

NYC is as usual consistent with suite parties, rooftop parties, and its fair share of strippers.

On the business side of things, however, it seemed like there was a shift in the presence of networks, advertisers, and affiliates alike. Many networks downgraded the size and flashiness of their respective booths from previous summits and some networks chose to opt out of a table completely. This isn’t to say it might not be worth the return as different networks have varying objectives. Just an observation. EliteClicksMedia had a huge suite at The London which was cool and they kept the party going. It was cool to have a chance to talk with them and meet up with others in the industry.

Started Monday off with lunch with one of my AMs. Following that, I hit up a couple of sessions with one of them talking about marketing on Android devices given by Michael Martin from MobileMartin.com and the other by the founder of 99designs.com, entitled “Crowdsourcing.” Definitely learned a lot at both sessions and was especially impressed by how quickly Android devices are taking over the market share. We hear a lot about mobile marketing, but Michael’s session definitely helped make it clear that mobile users aren’t searching for anything – they’re more about finding things right away [think local] – and what that means in our efforts to approach mobile users.

Monday night was the Neverblue and CPX Interactive party at Good Units @ Hudson Hotel. The set up was kinda cool and unlike anything I’ve seen before – the club reminded a lot of people of what their high school gym looked like. It was a clever concept though and the place was decently packed. We left early though and headed to Clickbooth’s party at Hudson Terrace. This place had open bar and less people, but it was definitely a good time. Ian Fernando got to break it down and sober Kris Trujillo from CashTactics.net made sure we knew where we were at. Good times, shout out to both of them as well as Benny Tejeda who unfortunately had to dip early. It’s good to know that there are some good people in the industry. Great hangin with all of you.

Good Units @ Hudson Hotel

Neverblue

Good Units

There’s something to be said in this day and age about networks that can give you one-on-one attention. It’s rare to see that now even at smaller networks and it’s something that separates all the run-of-the-mill networks from the best.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think it’s important for networks to see and help their affiliates grow. In effect, each affiliate is an asset and if you’re not taking care of your assets you’re letting your business die.

Profit Kings Media, run by 19 year old Yousif Yalda, is one of my favorite networks and has never failed to address my concerns whenever need be. Honestly, I think there’s been maybe ONE time when I haven’t been able to reach Yousif directly on AIM. This kid never sleeps! Even though I don’t do as much volume as I wish I did on PKM, Yousif is quick to give me a gut check when I need it and is never shy about being brutally honest when I need to do to see success. He’s always helped me out with ad copy ideas and traffic sources, which is important when you’re trying to get off the ground. What’s most valuable is that he’s almost always there to help out. Add to that PKM pays weekly via direct deposit and you can’t go wrong with PKM.

I hope he doesn’t mind me posting his info, but if you’re interested in signing up hit up Yousif directly on AIM at PKMYousif and if you want to learn more about the owner check out his interview with Jonathon Volk here.

Check out ProfitKingsMedia here.

1. Transparency of quality – We’ve heard this one over and over, but it doesn’t seem like many networks have made network-wide transparency much thought. One of the most common things affiliates complain about (rightly or wrongly) is about getting scrubbed on an offer. One way to combat this might be to let affiliates know what the pre-determined scrub rates are based on the quality of leads being generated. That or an incentive based system where better quality leads get higher payouts than average.

2. A non-compete promise – Now that affiliate networks and ad networks are competing against affiliates and running offers independently, there’s an even greater need for trust between affiliates and networks. It’s obvious that the affiliate has to create value here somehow, but there’s something networks can get out of this predicament as well. All ethical arguments aside, money is money and there are some networks who are going to steal what affiliates are running. I can’t think of a definite way to stop this other than making sure affiliates provide more value. Perhaps, however, networks can require affiliates to produce a certain quantity of leads through a certain traffic source in order to maintain the non-compete. This keeps click costs lower among affiliates and still guarantees networks a piece of the pie without the elbow grease. Further, it motivates and makes it easier for affiliates to scale.

3. Availability – Let’s lower the number of affiliates to affiliate manager ratios. These days it seems as though even the smaller networks are having a hard time assisting all their affiliates. Either that or hire more affiliate managers. It makes no sense to have a thousand affiliates and five managers when a majority of those affiliates aren’t experiencing any growth. I would much rather have 20-30 affiliates in my network all well-managed and growing than hundreds who are just floating clueless in the water. Seriously, networks are waayyy losing their potential to grow in revenue and quality by trying to grow too fast without the proper support. Sure those tweets with tips are helpful sometimes, but if you’re brand new it does take a little more than that. I’m not saying networks should be holding affiliates hands all the time. But they might want to at least initially if they want to see them learn and grow into independent affiliates.

What are some things you would like to see in your version of the “perfect affiliate network”?

So I’m finally a graduate as of a month ago. Since then I’ve been pretty much enjoying my freedom and more recently cracking down on myself to focus. It’s make it or break it time for me in affiliate marketing. I really have to take a hard look at what I’m doing right, wrong, and whether this is what I should be doing right now.

Time goes fast and I’m already 22. I’m not working for an investment bank nor a start up like I had imagined just three or four years ago. I’m still working hard at being an affiliate and haven’t ever stuck to anything for as long as I have AM. I love the challenge and I love the potential to make a huge amount of money. There are downsides of course like the nightly grind and frustration from having so many campaigns fail after some short term success. I’ve been learning every step of the way though.

The reason why it’s make it or break it now is because if I don’t get a job now and instead wait even one or two years before trying to get one, the odds are unlikely for me to be able to get one at that point. Employers are obviously going to be asking what I’ve been doing in the meantime and if I haven’t done anything impressive in the mean time by chances are pretty much shot (who knows what they think about AM). But in any case, my whole heart is in AM. It’s just hard now getting back into it after an entire semester. It’s like starting from scratch. Things are completely different in the industry and truth be told it just doesn’t feel like the same place it was before. Sure people are still making money here and there, but it’s been pretty quiet on the stage other than the inevitable guru guides that come out from time to time.

Facebook which is where pretty much 100% of my AM has taken place has changed it’s rules almost 180 degrees and especially for affiliates (yet Facebook loves affiliates, right? ) I haven’t had that much trying trying to gets ads approved, but more so it’s the fact that even with CTRs of 0.20% and above click costs don’t come down enough to even be profitable enough with 60-70 cent epcs. I keep asking myself if I’m doing something wrong, but I’m running my highest ctr ads with the highest converting ads. Of course there’s still money to be made on Facebook, but for the amount of time I’ve been putting into it lately and for the lack of longevity, it really hasn’t been worth it. I’ve never figured out how to make Facebook profitable on broad demos, but I’m trying that now – we’ll see if it’s possible. I’m tired of running short term small scale campaigns – it’s too much of a headache for too little of a profit. I need change. I’ve been here way too long to not be hitting big league campaigns now.

Ruck from Convert2Media  recently published a post where he talked about the need to focus on one offer when starting out. That’s partially been my problem as I’ve been very ADD in the past with offers and probably still am. It’s like why waste time waiting for ads to get approved when you can find new ones — but that doesn’t always work out so well. I do need focus and I have been focusing primarily on one offer this month. However, it seems I’ve run it too long already as its being scrubbed from $1.00 EPCs initially to now 60 cents. I guess focusing on one offer doesn’t always work out and unfortunately there are no good offers out there right now to replace this one – I’ve tested them all (if anybody has hot dating offers hit me up!)

I remember reading Robert Kiyosaki’s books Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant years ago. And in it I remember he told us to focus on building assets and more specifically a system for those assets to self-sustain. I highly doubt that’s what 90% of affiliate marketers are doing and I know I haven’t been doing that. I used to consider campaigns assets, but what kind of asset only lasts a month or two? I know some guys are with sustainable offers like CPS and maybe even some CPAs along with guys building lists which is a definitely a great way to build an asset. But that’s definitely something I see lacking in my own operations that I need to fix. What’s the point of being on the computer 16 hours a day if what you’re building isn’t going to last and you’re not getting to spend time away from your campaigns because you always have to be watching your stats? That’s no business. I need to start seeing that and change my strategy.

So some things I need to consider:

• Risk not getting a job in the future by staying full time AM now with student loans to pay off
• Focus on one offer at a time in a niche that offers several alternatives
• Build a list or some other form of an asset
• Start to scale out into broader audiences if I want to reap greater rewards

What are your guys’ thoughts on the matter? Do you guys see yourselves running a sustainable business? Or are you like me and you’re always chasing the next hot offer?

No. I’m here:

AKA Rainy & not to mention boring Jersey.

But I guess that’s the price we have to pay sometimes as marketers right? Even though I would have loved to go somewhere as its my last spring break as a college student ever. But my friends are too broke, so it didn’t happen.

I guess I finally have more time for affiliate marketing, something I was vying for all of last week when exams were going on. Funny how we no longer want something once we have it.

On that front, I’ve been doing decently well, but I’ve got to get myself off of short term campaigns. For the past few months I’ve been killing it with email submits having easy days of making $1,000 in a day, but they die down SO fast. They’ve allowed for a decent learning experience however. People say they make a killing off of them on PPV, but I’d imagine they last even shorter considering the amount of volume you can get via PPV.

So where am I focusing now? I’m trying to take my last shot at rebills and see if I can ever manage to squeeze something, anything out of the one thing everybody seems to be making a killing off of. We’ll see how that goes. I’m also focusing more on CPL offers and still on Facebook ads even though I’m getting entirely too sick of it. The truth is, it’s the easiest platform to run on especially when you have fb ads manager.

I guess I should take this lack of a spring break opportunity to focus on making my first $5k day happen.  I’ve just been feeling real mellow lately and things have been all over the place. I’ll be done with school in just a few months, but after having come back from Turkey I haven’t really been able to connect with a close group of people. It’s been kinda lonely, but more than that I don’t really know where I fit in. Truth be told only place I feel like I’m around people who get me are ASW and ASE, although that’s not the only reason I attend those events.  The gf is off partyin in Miami, and I should be somewhere too. I need to take a solo vacation or something after school is done. Thinking about going to one of Tony Robbin’s live events in Fiji. What’s worse is after school I’ll probably be living at home doing full-time AM. Guess it’s less lonely than living in an apartment by myself with no one else around.

I don’t know what this is. Consider it a pouring out of the heart or something to that effect.  I’ll post up more about affiliate marketing in the near future and hopefully get to the point where I can write about stuff that’ll actually be helpful to someone. We’ll see when that happens.

As a city, Istanbul is pretty awesome. There are so many things you can do here and I still haven’t even gotten to all the places I wanted to see in this city after 3 months. Part of that has to do with studying for exams and visiting other parts of the country of course. Turkey itself is a beautiful country and I recently took a vacation down to the south coast of Turkey, which I spent at a nice five-star resort modeled after a Russian palace. It was quite cool. Following that I took a quick four day trip to Dubai and got to explore the desert along with everything else that Dubai has to offer. I have to say that partying directly across the al Burj was pretty awesome. Dubai gets a bad rep, but in my opinion it’s still a fun city with a lot to offer, I guess no matter how much debt it’s in.

Now I’m back in Istanbul with a short amount of time left here. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to ASW, which REALLY sucks because I’ll be missing out on Vegas and seeing all my aff buddies.  Guess I’ll have to wait til ASE.

As far as affiliate marketing goes, I’ve been getting time here and there and launch campaigns and last month in fact was my best month yet surprisingly considering the limited amount of time I’ve spent on it. November 6th 2009 was my first $1,000 profit day and I had a few more high numbered days following that. But eventually I started getting scrubbed and had to pull the plug. No worries, plenty more opportunities to come.

When I come back, I’ll be buying my first car so until then I need to hustle hustle hustle so I can get that 370Z or 135i.  However, I will be in Europe for most of January so we’ll see how much time I can get between traveling and studying for final exams. It is nice though to get somewhat of a break from all nighters and I have to say working less has actually made me more successful. So take that for what you’d like, but make sure you at least take a vacation once in a while!

Talk soon.

Ugly and bulky enV to sleek iPhone

Finally got around to getting an iPhone. As you can see, I was running with a quite ugly looking phone from LG on Verizon called the enV. It was great for texting as it opened up into a full QWERTY keyboard, but seriously felt like carrying around a brick.

I was kind of concerned about being able to text on a touch screen, but I played around with it on the train ride back from New York after I bought it off some corporate guy down by Broadway (shady phone sales off of Craigslist FTW), and I was really surprised by how accurate it is while texting. Seriously, I thought I was gonna have to hit backspace multiple times, but the only errors made were when I accidently slipped and aimed at the wrong letter.

Now the phone is the 3G version, but it’s only six months old and I got a case with it. The reason I got it really was because I just cannot stand worrying about stats and absolutely must get Stats202 on this thing asap (just got it- this thing is awesome! Stats202 FTW)

The reason I got the 3G is because I can unlock it and take it with me when I go abroad. I’d rather not take a brand new 3GS when I’m overseas. When I get back, I’ll probably sell it and opt for an AT&T contract with a 3GS.

Seriously, even though most people probably have on already and I’m probably the last affiliate marketer to get my hands on one, get one! I don’t care much for all the apps and whatnot, but the luxury of seeing your stats by pulling your phone out of your pocket cannot be overstated.

“Striving is leaning emotionally into a goal, a target- yearning for it, feeling pressured by your lack of it- tearing around like a chicken , with its head cut off, trying to get it. That’s striving.

Working is moving relentlessly toward your target, one step at a time, in an organized and disciplined way.”

The book notes that there are three reasons why we struggle and why struggling is not the same as effort. Struggle is not an honorable thing. And the two reasons for it are

1) The goal you are trying to reach isn’t coming fast enough.

2) Your actions are incorrect (wrong strategy).

3) Frustration from having placed a goal into a particular time frame, only to find that life has denied you.

Realizing the fact that I’ve been suffering many of the same symptoms, I need to set a rather medium term goal and have a well-defined method. I’ve been testing way too many offers and I continue to do so in the hopes that one of them might take off. I was consistently making $200-250 a day until this week and it is really depressing to see it all go back to square one again.

So my medium term goal is to make $500 a day consistenly by the end of December 2009.

Further, I’m now gonna take a very clearly defined approach as to which offers I work on and when I test new offers. I think the following will work best for me:

• Focus on ONE offer at a time (if offer is offered in multiple countries, then just one country at a time.)

• Only move onto another country/offer once that particular one is consistently making $100 a day profit.

• Work for a maximum of four hours a day (yeah right like I’m gonna be able to do this one, but I’ll try.)

If anyone has any other tips on how to scale a profitable campaign or perhaps their own specific method on when/how to approach testing new offers, feel free to post them in the comments .

1. Google Tasks FTW – So many companies have tried to innovate and revolutionize the “to do” list, and of all the downloads and apps I’ve ever tried to replace the sticky note, nothing has come as close as Google Tasks. This little feature is neatly tucked away at the bottom of my GMail screen and the reason it works is because I’m forced to look at it if I want to check my email…which is pretty much all the time. There’s no escaping the to do list with Google Tasks.

2. Mint.com – If you haven’t checked out Mint.com, do it today! This thing kicks ass and beats just about any financial app out there. Forget plugging away at your calculator, figuring out your budget, and how much you spent. All you have to do is upload all your accounts/loans/assets/debit and credit cards and this site automatically tells you what your budget should be and if you’re staying on top of it. It tracks your net worth on a daily basis and makes all sorts of bar graphs and pie charts that make u feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Check it out – Mint.com.

3. RescueTime – Here’s one application that I haven’t used as much as the rest, but I probably should. RescueTime runs in the background of your computer and keeps track of which websites/applications you spend the most time on. This way – if you’re spending too much time on say Facebook or AIM, Rescue Time let’s you know by email and even sends you daily/weekly updates on where you’ve been spending your time. Get RescueTime if you’re at all concerned about productivity.

Do you use any of the following? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!