Affiliate Marketing Tips from Super Affiliate Zac Johnson

Time for another Jim Cramer Action Alerts update. It’s been a couple weeks since my last post, but the portfolio performance just keeps going up. The initial investment of $300 to join the program was well worth it. Since joining I have bought and sold every time I received one of Jim Cramer’s Action Alerts emails, saying to do so. My portfolio is now worth $62,141.35 and up an amazing $4,894.60 (8.55%). I always like to buy some stocks on my own (which I track in separate portfolios), but Jim Cramer’s picks are almost always winners…. I’m not always so lucky with my own picks It’s been just under nine months since joining Action Alerts Plus and its now up almost $5k! Every post I have made so far has been showing solid gains and I’m not gaining any compensation from these, nor on referrals (I wish he did have an affiliate program, I praise him so much!)… but if you are looking to start investing, Jim Cramer’s Action Alerts are the way to go!

Last month I did a lot of testing with AuctionAds. There was a lot of speculation on how the program would perform. I heard some people say it makes more than Google Adsense, while I’ve heard many others say it made them nothing. The program seems to perform best on shopping or product related sites, as the user would be more likely to make a purchase. How would AuctionAds compare to other network I run on my sites?

I don’t have any shopping or sales related sites, but I went ahead with testing anyway. At first I was seeing some very low numbers and wasn’t too thrilled about the program, but still wanted to test it enough so I would earn my first check with them. My target was to make at least .01 per click with the program. From my initial testing with only one 468×60 banner on one of my sites, I was pulling only .0037 per click. Unhappy with the results I decided to throw a couple more 468×60 banners and some new skyscrapers. I targeted the banners to show items ranging from funny tshirts, celebrities, games, ipods and more. I was able to push a lot more volume and the earnings per click jumped up a decent amount.

Play Around with Your Ad Targeting to Increase Clicks & Earnings

While the earnings above are hopefully still updating, they still give a pretty accurate average on how the month ended out. Total earnings for the month ended at $216.27, from over 3 Million impressions and 23,565 clicks… rounding out to just under a penny per click, at 0.0091. I would like to see a few more updates to last months stats (as they are delayed), and to push the earnings per click to at least a penny.

Auction Ads Earnings for May 2007

Even though the numbers from last month were low, I will still push the program this month because of the new higher payouts coming into effect this month. Also, I only started running Auction Ads on the 9th of last month. With the new higher payouts in effect and a full month’s worth of running the campaigns, I would really like to see end of the month earnings around $750 and a little more than a penny earned per click. If I continue to see a penny or less per click, I will have to play with the targeting more, or replace the campaign with better performers.

I just returned from my town’s “Founder’s Day” for Tom’s River, NJ. My church was there and they were handling out pamphlets that were based off the new Spiderman movie. My mother first saw the pamphlets about a week ago and mentioned to the pastor that I had a Spiderman costume. At first I had dread the idea of putting on the ridiculously tight costume again and it was also super hot outside today. In the end it was worth it and I had a good time making a lot of people happy, especially the children. Here are a few pics for the event.

Handing out pamphlets at the “Son Rise Community Church” Stand

Everyone Wants to Get a Picture with Spidey

Lots of Spiderman High-Five’s Throughout the Day

Even the Radio Stations Wanted some Spiderman Footage!

Helping out with Army National Guard Recruiting!

Spiderman’s New Hummer!

Making money online is great, but giving back is even cooler. Nothing better than seeing all the kids faces and how happy they were. Will we see Spidey again? Who knows… that costume sure is annoying to get on and off!

Top Commenters
Congratulations to Jess, Matt and Steve Yu for their top placement and participation on this blog during the month of May. As promised the Top three commenters will be awarded their respected cash prizes. This time around I’m going to give thanks to the top five commenters for June by making a post on July first with a link to your site and a short description on your site. Not only will the post send traffic to your blog/site, but should also help with your search engine listings. I really do appreciate all the comments being made on the site, keep it up!

Review Me & Make Money
The "Review Me & Make Money" promotion is also still going on. Other sites just give you a link back for a review. When you write a short (200 word minimum) review on this blog, not only will you receive a link back to your site, but also the chance to win $50! A winner was already selected from the first set and paid, and the second set of reviews are almost complete. Send your review in today and you could be the next big winner!

RSS Subscribers
Just in time for the new month, my RSS Feed tracker is now showing 250 subscribers! I would really like to see 400-500 subscribers by the end of June. Thank you to everyone that has subscribed and to all of my loyal readers for their participation in the blog.

Technorati / Alexa Rankings
Rankings for both Technorati and Alexa are still steadily increasing. At the moment, this blog ranks 59,312 on Technorati (Authority: 79) and has an average of 42,216 on Alexa. Still waiting for the next PR update from Google… but iwebtool’s prediction for the blog is a PR5.

Future Blog Postings
I still have a lot to write about. Coming up soon will be more reviews on networks, a posting on a terrible domain registrar, AuctionAds performance through May and much more! Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already do receive blog updates. (Also, if anyone can figure out the “Stack Overflow” errors that appear when using Internet Explorer to view this page, please let me now! I’ll gladly post a reference to your blog in return! )

Time for another great money making affiliate network review! Today I will focus on the financial benefits you could have by joining NeverBlueAds Network. To view past network reviews, you can refer to the "Network Reviews" section. Also keep in mind these are not paid reviews or testimonials, my reviews on these networks are from my personal experience only.

Overview:
NeverBlueAds has been a well known network for a few years now. At almost every marketing conference I eventually meet up with my good friend Jordan at the exhibits. Time and time again we would talk about how we should be making money together, but it wasn’t til last month that I actually started running a few of their offers and made some dough. Sure, I ran them in the past, but not enough to make them one of my more valued networks and revenue sources. From reports below you will see how I went from $0 in March to $1950 in April, then over $5300 this month (May)! Best part is, I was able to add this new revenue source without having to remove another advertiser or campaigns. Monetization is key!

Ease of Use:
I love the NeverBlueAds login area, it’s one of the fastest loading and most basic (yet effective) setups I have seen. Once logging in you are given a full layout featuring your currently earnings over the past few months, new offers to the network, network news and the top performing campaigns (sorted by search, web and email), as well as your affiliate manager contact info. The search feature at the top of the page allows you to search through all available campaigns, while being able to sort by category, promotion type and if the offer is incentivizable or not. Selecting your offers is just as easy. Simply select your desired offer, then choose from the various selection of ad copies/banners. You are then provided with your HTML code or text link.

Profitability:
One of the main reasons why I am so successful with NeverBlueAds is because they can offer some of the highest rates in the industry. With volume they can even increase your rates to show appreciation and help you out with better returns. When comparing NeverBlueAds to other networks, it was quite obvious they are paying out higher than others, and if you find differently, let them know and they will work with you. As mentioned earlier, take a look at the "Quick Stats" chart to the right. Once you login you are able to see this performance chart of how you’ve done over the past three months. This chart alone shows you the profitability of NeverBlueAds, I was able to go from $0 to $5000+ in only two months!

Quality of Ads:
High payout rates won’t matter much if you can’t back them up with quality offers. Take a look at MySpace.com or some of the other high traffic social networking sites, they are all serving high volume and quality ads. Through NeverBlueAds you can run these same offers. Whether you are looking for quick contest/trial offers, or high end purchase/lead offers, NeverBlueAds can supply you with both. I personally have done very well with their freebie type offers. With over 150+ offers on the network, it shouldn’t be hard for you to find an offer that will convert with your traffic.

Below is a screen capture of the campaign search setup. The "Network Earnings" feature is really great, this rating system lets you know how the offer is performing network wide for all affiliates running the offer. Pay outs are listed under either "Lead" or "Sale" based on what type of offer it is. You will also find that some offers are able to be incentivized. These are usually high paying, credit card required offers.

Here are just a few of the campaigns available focused on "Money".

Stats Tracking:
In addition to the great user interface at NeverBlueAds, you should also enjoy the stats area. You have the ability to sort by campaign, date, creative, web site or sub ids. With sub ids you can test different ad creatives and see how their performance compares. This feature is great if you are testing to separate mailing lists or want to run banners on rotation, then pull out the less performing ones. Below is a quick glance at what a report would look like if you wanted the general daily performance chart

Great stats are key to making big money with your site!

Why Do I Like This Network:
I’m really enjoying the past two months that I have been promoting NeverBlueAds. The addition of their offers to my sites have been performing extremely well and the stats provided through their site makes it so easy. In the beginning it took some testing to find what offers were performing best and what locations were best for clicks, but things are on auto-pilot right now and looking great. I look forward to new high paying and quality offers being added to the network so my site users won’t continually see the same offers.

Final Review:
After final review, I rate NeverBlueMedia with 5 out of 5 "Zac Stamps of Approval". I’ll admit, I was very skeptical when my good friend and rep Jordan first told me that sites were making big money from running offers that have been around forever and are already being advertised on a ton of sites. After much testing and monetization, I soon enough became another one of the those sites cashing in on these offers. It will be nice to meet up with Jordan again at Affiliate Summit East, but this time we can talk about all the money we made, instead of the usual "why aren’t we making money yet!". Sign up today and see what type of extra revenue your web site can start pulling in.