MarketLeverage is holding a promotion to bring new affiliates into their network. Not only are the requirements low to win, but winning a prize is entirely up to your earnings. The contest started on the first of April and runs through May 31st, 2009.

Here’s a breakdown of the prizes available:
Grand Prize: Apple MacBook Pro (specs)
1st prize: Dell 24″ Flat Panel LCD Monitor (specs)
2nd prize:16GB  iPod Touch w. accessories (specs)
3rd prize: $200 MarketLeverage Visa Gift Card

How to Win:
The contest is open to all new affiliates that join MarketLeverage through this blog between the 1st of April, 2009 til the 31st of May, 2009. Participants must make a minimum of $1000 in order to qualify for a prize. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes will be awarded to referred affiliates to MarketLeverage signed up through this blog. The grand prize winner across all participating sites will receive a MacBook Pro.

Why You Should Win:
This is “why you should win“… not “why you should enter“! If you haven’t already signed up for MarketLeverage, then you are eligable to win a prize. Why you should win, is because so many people are lazy to join a new network and the actual amount of people who signup and generate commissions between now and May 31st, will actually be a generally low number to compete against. This contest spans for two monts, so if you can make just $20 to $30+ a day, you are almost gauranteed one of the prizes above! ($1,000 needed to qualify to win)

Free ZJ Blog Shirt Just for Joining!
As a bonus, I’ll send out a free tshirt and sticker pack to any affiliate who join MarketLeverage and are accepted into the network. Once you are signed up and approved, use the contact form to send me your postal address and your MarketLeverage affiliate ID. Now everyone is a winner!

Join MarketLeverage and Win Prizes!

Last month I first wrote about the Direct Agents & Vista Print Dream Getaway. I thought this was a really creative contest because it leveled out the playing field for affiliates looking to win a great prize. No longer would you have to focus on competing against the monster affiliates on the network, but only those who promoted VistaPrint related offers. In addition to the VistaPrint contest, Direct Agents is also holding a “Bidz Affiliate Challenge“.

As of last week, here were the current standings:

Vistaprint ‘Dream Getaway’- 24 days left to go!
- Extended to April 30th!

* 1st Place: 1,890 sales (3500 sales to win)
* 2nd place: 681 sales (2500 sales to win)
* 3rd place: 424 sales (1000 sales to win)

Bidz ‘Affiliate Challenge’- 9 days left to go!

* 1st Place: 5,633 sales (4500 leads to win)
* 2nd place: 734 sales (2000 leads to win)
* 3rd place: 626 sales (1000 leads to win)

These numbers aren’t just important to everyone in a top prize position, but it shows the power and volume that people are pushing on these two great offers. Even if you have only pushed a few leads on VistaPrint or Bidz, don’t be discouraged. Direct Agents is rewarding each affiliate that can push 200 leads on the offers, to be entered to win a Nintendo Wii.

Based off just the 1st place affiliates in each category, we are talking some serious money. VistaPrint pays out around $10-$13 per lead, multiply that by 1,890 and you have nearly $20,000. Same applies for the Bidz promotion. The current payout on Bidz is $7… the first place affiliate has already racked in almost $40,000 in earnings just on that offer alone!

$50 BONUS: ZacJohnson.com Exclusive
Direct Agents wanted to make a special promotion for my blog readers and are currently offering a $50 prize drawing to any affiliate who signup up to their network through this blog. A random winner will be selected by Direct Agents May 31st, 2009. To liven up the promotion even more, I’ll gladly send a free ZacJohnson.com tshirt pack (with sticker and pens) to any accepted affiliates who sign up through the blog to Direct Agents. Once accepted, simply use the comment form and send your postal address and Direct Agents affiliate number.

No matter what type of ad campaign you are running, click through rates are an important step in measuring the success of a campaign. Having a high click through rate on ad platforms such as Facebook and Google Adwords will not only lower your costs per click, but can also increase your ad volume. Increasing your click through rates for links on your web site or blog is also important, as it usually will lead to more revenue.

I wrote up a few tips for increasing the click performance of ad campaigns. These are not focused on any one specific marketing method, but written to make your think twice about your campaigns and how you can improve them.

Tempting Your Readers
Instead of telling your viewer what a product, or service is… instead grab their attention and get them wanting to know more. When you see an awesome movie trailer, aren’t you just dieing to see the full movie? You can do the same thing with your advertising.

TEMPTING: “I Found This Amazing New Weight Loss Formula”
NOT TEMPING: “Product X Will Help You Lose Weight”

What’s the Benefit of Clicking
No matter what you are  doing online, there is always an end goal or purpose. Usually people are looking for information, or simply to be entertained. Either way, if you are lucky enough to have someone take a few seconds to look at your ad, you want to make it clear to them what they are getting, in response to clicking your ad.

BENEFIT: “Click Here for Money Savings Tips”
NO BENEFIT: “Click Here to Visit My Site”

Advertising Works Best, When It’s Not Advertising
Nobody wants to see an advertisement, it’s a distraction from a users experience. Making your advertising more relevant and obtrusive to your site visitor is a major part of your sites success. This has been one of the most well known and successful methods for web sites to make money with Google Adsense. Instead of placing advertisements on your site that try and stand right out to the user, try blending in your ad copy with your articles and web content.

EFFECTIVE: “Text Placement with Content, or Side Menus”
NOT EFFECTIVE: “Big Red & Yellow 468×60 Flashing Banner Ad”

Setting Limitations on Your Offers
We’ve all seen late night infomercials, and I’ve always found it humorous when they say, “call in the next five minutes to save…“. It may seem funny, but they still wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t work. People want to make the call within the next five minutes, because they think they are getting an extra value if they act now. Add something to your ad copy to make the user want to take action now.

LIMITED: “Today Only: Save 25% on All Orders before Midnight!”
NOT LIMITED: “Save 25% on Your Next Purchase”

Matching Up Ads with Relevant Content
Showing your advertisements along side related content is almost a no brainer. Unfortunately, so many web sites still completely ignore this issue. How many times have you visited a web site, reading an article, then you see completely non-relevant advertisements on the site. Sure, it will take more time and effort to place relevant advertisements, but in the long run, your readers interaction with the ads will increase heavily.

RELEVANT: “Insurance Ads on a Health/Finance Site”
NOT RELEVANT: “Insurance Ads on a Teen Gaming Site”

These are just a few methods you should be using to increase your click through rates. I will cover more tips in a future post.

I was just talking with the Unique Blog Designs team and was able to secure TEN coupon codes for their new Affiliate Theme. The coupon code will save you 15% on your order. Depending on which package you select, you can save between $15 and $30. This coupon is limited to TEN uses, and will expire after the tenth use.

How to use this coupon code:
1.) Order your Affiliate Theme through this link.
2.) On the order form page, simply place the coupon code “5255D15E05” in the coupon field.

That’s it. Remember, the coupon is limited to TEN uses and will automatically expire once maxed out. If you use the code and it works, then it’s still good.

When you throw a blog contest that last a few weeks, and you see the weeks just fly by, it truly gives you an idea of how fast time flies by!  We are now at week 3, in the “Follow Me on Twitter & Win Lots of Prizes!” contest promotion, which leaves only two more weeks for new winners. If you haven’t won yet, than that means you still have a chance to win some of the bigger prizes given away in the final two weeks. One blogger will also receive $100 for writing about this contest on their blog. Current odds of winning are 1-12. This weeks set of winners are listed below.

This Weeks Winners (WEEK 3)
- PepperJam $100 Deposit into Account
Twitter Winner: Timothy_Jones
- 5 MoneyReign T-Shirt Packs
Twitter Winners: simpso1ja, sensonize, Schlossy, homebizresource, BenSpark
- 1 PPC Coach Membership
Twitter Winner: amesseligman
- 1 Signed Joel Comm “Twitter Power”
Twitter Winner: steven_sanders
- 4 Signed Gary V “101 Wines” Book
Twitter Winners: michaelkwan, ClarkeW, bluewaves1, msdanielle

If you weren’t one of this weeks winners, you still have over 40 chances to win in the coming weeks. If you haven’t already, here’s how to enter.

1) Follow me on Twitter.

2) Then twitter: I just entered to win a ton of prizes from ZacJohnson.com! You can too, just follow @moneyreign and retweet http://xr.com/zacblog

Posting the comment once to Twitter will keep your entry active for the full contest.

Next weeks prizes are:

Week 4: Winners Announced March 20
- Motive Interactive 16G iPod Touch
- Hydra Network $100 Best Buy Gift Card
- PepperJam $100 Deposit into Account
- 5 MoneyReign T-Shirt Packs
- 1 Signed Joel Comm “Twitter Power”
- 4 Signed Gary V “101 Wines” Book

For a full list of prizes and contest rules, please visit the original contest post.

Congratulations & Good Luck!

Seems like more and more affiliate networks are getting in the contest game and offering up some sweet prizes for affiliates to push their offers. In the latest contest news, Direct Agents is looking to giveaway a very nice Dream Vacation in their Vista Print contest.

While other networks offer up prizes for affiliates that can push the most volume overall, or increase their previous months commissions by a certain amount, Direct Agents is taking a different approach. This contest is focused entirely on “Vista Print” related offers… which means ANYONE can walk away as the winner in this contest.

Vista Print Offers Available
Once you are running on the network, you have the choice of three different Vista Print related offers to run. Vista Print Checks, Free Business Cards and Free Return Address Labels.

The incentive to running Vista Print offers, is that they are really quality stuff. I’ve personally ordered from Vista Print for years, as well as promote their affiliate program. It really is great when you can run a quality offer that you would also personally buy from.

Contest Details
This contest promotion runs from March 1st through April 15th. There will be three top prizes awarded. The affiliate who brings in the most Vista Print leads, will receive the grand prize dream vacation, while second place will win a nice MacBook Air or Sony Vaio, and third place receives a $500 American Express Gift Card.

Final Contest Tips
As mentioned earlier, with an offer specific contest, this one could really go towards anyone who focuses in on this offer and does some heavy promotion. Vista Print has been around for years and has a very familiar name. Since most of their offers are FREE, with just a small shipping cost, the conversion rate is higher than most cc required offers. Get creative and get fun, and you could be in your dream destination, paid for by Direct Agents!

The growth and power of Twitter just keeps getting stronger. While many are sitting back and just simply enjoying what Twitter has to offer, others are finding ways to cash in, build cool apps or just networking and meeting up with new people. It’s no surprise that Twitter was a huge success and grew rapidly among web geeks and affiliate marketers, but it’s going mainstream now more than ever.

In Joel Comm’s latest book, “Twitter Power“, Joel has put together what some might call the “Bible for Twitter“. Whether you are new to Twitter and need a better understanding of what it’s all about, or if you are looking to accelerate your online business through Twitter, Joel Comm has it covered.

Twitter Power is available in hard copy and is made up of 232 pages, and retails for $24.95 (only $16.47 on Amazon). My favorite thing about the book, is that it’s not all text. Joel goes into detail on a lot of different topics, but almost always hase screenshots and image references to keep you interested. Whether you a web veteran or a Twitter newbie, it should be an easy and fun read.

Win a Free SIGNED Copy of Twitter Power!

I got my personalized signed copy, and you can too! For the next few weeks I’m giving away a signed copy of Joel’s new “Twitter Power”. Entering is easy, all you need is Twitter! Just head over to the “Follow Me on Twitter & Win Lots of Prizes!” contest post for full details.

Check out Twitter Power over at Amazon.

Less than a year ago, I wrote a post on how my blog readers have generated over $100,000 in earnings for themselves through NeverBlue. Last week I was looking over my stats again, and saw that my referrals to NeverBlue, (through this blog), have now earned over half a million dollars for themselves! Not only is this very impressive and rewarding for myself and NeverBlue, but it also shows the continuing growth in affiliate marketing and the amount of people moving towards working for themselves online.

“Congratulations to Zac on reaching the $10k affiliate referral commission mark with Neverblue this month!! To date Zac has sent approximately 1400 affiliates to Neverblue and the number keeps increasing. It is awesome to see that Zac’s referral have made over $500,000 in revenue with us. We are excited to keep growing with the affiliates and help Super Affiliates like Zac reach the $1 MILLION milestone!”
Tina Chien
Business Development Manager

With the latest milestone of $500,000+ in earnings from my blog readers, this just solidifies my reasoning for starting a blog. With so many ebooks and sales programs out there, I created this blog with the intention to offer everything I could for free, and that is just paying off more and more every day. The emails and response I receive from readers is astounding. Living the life of an affiliate marketer is truly amazing, and I look forward to seeing more of you accomplish the dream of working for yourself and becoming financially independent!

Thank you to all of my readers.

Carl “Kidblogger” Ocab recently sent me an email wanting me to take a look at his new “Ultimate Blogging Theme” for WordPress. He sent me over a limited license theme to try it out and see if I like. I love working on mini blog sites, and am always looking for the best new wordpress themes to work with. After looking everything over, I spent a couple hours working on a new blog and ended up really liking the usability and look of the site. I was actually so satisfied with the theme, I went ahead and purchased the unlimited $97 version, which also gives you access to more color schemes and options.

You can visit the Ultimate Blogging Theme web site here, or you can just read below for a quick over. I know everyone loves “long sales pages” , so I will just highlight a few of the top features available through the theme.

Limited vs. Unlimited Ultimate Blog Theme
- The limited version comes with three different colors schemes, and is only available for use on one domain. The unlimited version is an unlimited license and also has six different colors to choose from. If you purchase the unlimited version, you can also remove the copyright/”made by” tag on the bottom of your wordpress them.

Great Navigation and Ad Placement
The biggest problem I have when setting up a new blog or mini site, is having to mess with the header and side menus to try and get the ad placement I want. Carl spent a lot of time finding where the best placements are for advertisements, and how to get people to click through your blog and subscribe to your rss feed. Everything is customizable and that makes my job that much easier.

Upload & Ready to Go
- This is a very advanced them is ready to go, right out of the box. The only you need to do is upload the files, then activate a few plugins and start customizing your blog.

Walkthrough Videos & Tips
- When I first started playing around with the new theme, I was a bit confused on how to setup a couple areas of the blog. Fortunately, Carl already has that covered and he created a super easy walkthrough video that shows the whole install/customization process. In addition to the walkthrough process, as a license owner, you also have access to a 20 minute video featuring “hardcore tips and advice” from Carl.

Yes, I’m using the Ultimate Blogging Theme!
This isn’t a paid review from Carl, but as I mentioned… he did give me a free limited version to play around with.  After seeing what it could do, I went ahead and purchased the full version for unlimited use and for more customization. I’ve already created a few new blogs with the theme and very happy with how they ended up looking. I will do a follow up post next week to show you how they came out.

SAVE $20! – ONLY SIX TWO DISCOUNTS LEFT!
Carl also provided me with ONLY SIX discount coupons for my blog readers. If you would like to purchase the Ultimate Blogging Theme, you can save an instant $20 off the $97 retail price. This coupon code only applies for the full unlimited license version. Use coupon code: ZACJOHNSON

- Click here for more on the Ultimate Blogging Theme

Years ago, the rush for promoting cell phone ring tones started. Millions of dollars were made, then over the past years the market died off for most promoters, as competition and new marketing terms/effects came into play… but it is still making a ton of money today. The most recent hot campaigns to come around, are the same concept, but targeted towards horoscopes, celebrity gossip and finding your true love… all on your cell phone! Of course we have all seen the banner ads all over myspace and many well known entertainment sites. Why do we continually see them all over? Easy… it’s because they work and are making so many people killer money!

I was talking with my good friend Tina the other day from NeverBlueAds, and she let me know that they just closed an amazing deal with CellFish Media, one of the best and largest cell phone offer providers around. NeverBlueAds is now the exclusive provider of Cellfish SMS offers. What does this mean for you? Higher payouts and better creative offered from NeverBlueAds.

Three Great Offers and Landing Pages to Choose From!

Here are their three main offers that are run exclusively through NeverBlue Ads.

3645 – ZodiacMatchGame.com – Payout: $9.00 / sale
Converts: Converts on a PIN submit.
Promotions Allowed: Downloadable Software, Paid Search, Email, Web
Preview Link

3736 – PerfectMatchGame.com – Payout: $9.00 / sale
Converts: Converts on a PIN submit.
Promotions Allowed: Downloadable Software, Paid Search, Web
Preview Link

3457 – LoveLifeAnswers.com – Payout: $9.00 / sale
Converts: Converts on a PIN submit.
Promotions Allowed: Downloadable Software, Paid Search, Email, Web
Preview Link

All offers are not incentivizable, and can only be targeted towards the US.

NeverBlueAds is currently paying $2-$3 dollars above the competition for other SMS offers, and if you can provide volume, let me know and I can negotiate an even higher commission rate for you.

Want even more stats on why you should be promoting the new CellFish offers from NeverBlueAds? Here are some of their internal stats on the offers:

- CellFish is the ONLY provider that carries T-Mobile as a carrier.
- Though most of the major ringtone providers have temporarily stopped accepting Sprint, Nextel as carriers due to the regulations in place, Cellfish isn’t really affected due to high level compliance in the industry.
- Most of the affiliates who have tested the offers are all Social Media and contextual network related.

If you’re already promoting these offers and making a killing… sorry If not… then you should be.

- Join NeverBlue Ads