I’ve done it again. I’ve started yet another website! Don’t get mad at me though, affiliate marketing is still my top priority as we move further into 2008. I just told myself that I would go through my list of 50+ domain names and actually build sites for all the domains instead of just letting them sit there. So today I wanted to introduce everyone to my latest creation, Xbox Woot.

Xbox Woot is blog about Xbox 360 games and information. Since I own a 360 and play games every now and then, I’m hoping that posting on this site will come very easy to me. The first question some of you might have is why Xbox Woot? Well, “woot” is a term used by gamers to show excitement. I don’t think I’ve ever said “woot” in my life, but I know a lot of people do, so it fits in a domain name.

There are so many video game sites and blogs out there that I know this will be a tough one to start. I mean everything I post about will be recycled news that hard core gamers probably already know. The best thing I can do to attract readers is to put a spin on it. I’ll try to add some humor and wit to the posts to keep it interesting.

The wordpress theme is a free one I found online. The only thing I did was make the custom header in photoshop. That’s pretty much the extent of my graphics design skills.

You can see I’ve already slapped Adsense on it. Adsense is the easiest to implement and until the site starts receiving more traffic, then I’ll leave it at that. You can always explore more advertising options later on.

So if you’re a 360 fan, go ahead and bookmark this one. I’ll be posting on it daily so please check back often.

So I figured I would share some of my affiliate marketing earnings with you guys so it will help motivate me to succeed and improve every month. For the month of January I made $86 in CPA Empire, $34 in Neverblue Ads, and $116 in Azoogle. Sounds pretty good for the first month, right?

Now keep in mind that not all of that money was earning through PPC campaigns. If you head over to some of my websites like Gator Envy or Pimp Myspace, you will see I have affiliate links on there. Gator Envy has a link in several locations for ringtones and Pimp Myspace has several links for stuff like webfetti and zwinkies. Since I’m not paying to drive traffic to those sites I kind of feel like the money I get from them is free.

All in all, I spent $64.17 (really only like $39 because I had a $25 free coupon) in Yahoo Search Marketing and $27.49 in Google Adwords. That’s a total of about $91.66 ($66.50 of my own money) spent on PPC campaigns.

As you all know, I pretty much lost money in all my campaigns. The first campaign I ran for zip submit leads was the most successful of them all. That’s where the bulk of the $86 in CPA Empire came from.

So far in February I’ve been pretty quiet with PPC. I’ve paused all my campaigns (because they didn’t work). I will relaunch one of my earlier campaigns on Thursday this week and start a brand new one that day as well. I just wanted to take some time off to gather myself and review my campaigns/landing pages to find out what was going wrong.

So if I made $144 in profit in all my affiliate marketing accounts (remember a lot of that money comes naturally from some of my websites), I guess my goal for February should be about $250-300. If I can tack on an extra $200 or so every month then I’ll be near $2000 per month by the end of December. I’m already 4 days into February now with only $9 in my affiliate accounts (thanks to a ringtone lead in Neverblue). So I’ve definitely got some work to do.

As I write this email, I’m still awaiting my 1099-MISCs from 3 different ad companies. I’m not sure if the federal law states that we need to get them by January 31, or if they need to be post-marked by January 31. But it’s now February and I’m still waiting. It’s not like I’m dying to pay my taxes, but I just want all my tax papers so I can be organized and get it over with. Based on estimations, I’m looking to owe a couple thousand dollars in taxes because of what I made online. It’s not going to be fun paying that!

So far, I’ve received my 1099 from Google, Azoogle, and ValueClick Media. Google was the first to get it to me, and that was probably 10-14 days ago. Azoogle came a day or two later, followed by VCM on the 30th. I am still waiting for a 1099 from Yahoo and Adbrite. I’ve double checked my information with both companies, and my address is correct. Hopefully the mailman didn’t lose them!

I’m not sure if I’m going to file my taxes right away so I can get it over with, or if I should let my money sit in my high interest savings account for another 2 months and collect interest. Knowing me, I’ll do it right away just so it’s done and I can move on.

Anyone else still waiting for their tax forms?

I’m coming off another week of affiliate marketing, with another failed campaign. I ended up losing money again. Now I know a lot of people will say to be prepared to lose money in the beginning, and I am to an extent, but at some point you have to pull the plug. I probably spent about $20-30 this week in Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Ya that’s not a lot of money, but for someone who is just testing things out, you can get a good number of clicks for $25 and at least get an idea if your campaign will work. With that $25 I got probably about 50-60 or so clicks (this niche was more expensive then the previous zip submit ones I did). Out of those 55 clicks, only 1 freaking person converted to a lead. DAMN that sucks.

So when people aren’t converting there could be several things wrong.

• Your landing page sucks
• Your ads suck
• The offer sucks
• Your keywords suck

Now, I put quite a bit of time into this campaign. I designed a badass (in my opinion) landing page that was almost identical to the offer’s landing page. If made awesome ads and picked really targeted keywords (Google even gave a lot of my keywords Great and Good quality score… something I didn’t get on my last campaigns). The only thing this leaves is the offer sucking. But really I don’t think the offer sucks either. So I’m at a complete loss as to why I can’t make money from this campaign.

Why Affiliate Marketing Sucks

Because no one will freaking tell you anything! Affiliate marketing is so different then any other make money online method. It is very secretive, if someone finds a good campaign they’ll never tell you and will do everything in their power to throw you off track. People on Wicked Fire forums aren’t helpful either. If you ask for help, half the people call you a newb and just say that you suck to bad.

So why am I still trying? Because Making money from Adsense SUCKS! I’m so sick of watching my earnings drop every single day and I’m sick of getting like 2 cents a click. It’s not worth it. If I had sites that I could line up private advertisers, I would… but I don’t so I’m stuck with the shitty alternative. I’ve got to keep trying though, and keep failing or else I’ll never get anywhere. Like I said, people in affiliate marketing aren’t helpful and won’t show you step by step how to succeed. The only way to succeed is to do it on your own.