The last time Tyler Cruz did a contest on his blog, it was a challenge to get people to sign up to Market Leverage and start making money online. There were some awesome prizes like a Flip Mino, iPod touch and AMEX gift cards. So I took the bait and signed up with Market Leverage. I was able to make a good money with them, but could not keep up with the big boys in the contest. I ended up not winning an prizes, but earned a respectable amount. Remember, all the money I make from affiliate marketing comes solely from seo. I don’t pay for any advertising or do any PPC with Adwords.

Well now Tyler is running Affiliate Marketing Challenge 2 with Market Leverage. Because I already signed up with him for the last challenge, I guess I’m automatically enrolled in this challenge too. Once again, I won’t be earning $1,000 with Market Leverage in just a month’s time, but I may get a prize this time because up to 6th place will be rewarded this time. 5th and 6th place get a $100 AMEX card. I would actually like the 5th place prize better then 4th place (iPod Nano). I already have an iPhone, iPod video, and iPod shuffle. The last thing I need is another iPod!

I’ll try to keep everyone posted on how I’m doing in this challenge. It’s already been 1 week since the contest launched, so I have 3 weeks to go!

Well, I’m back from my week long vacation. On one hand, it’s nice to be away from a computer and having to do work… but on the other hand, when you’re addicted to checking stats and monitoring your sites it can be nerve racking not knowing what’s going on. Now I do have an iPhone, so I was able to check my earnings on a daily basis, but without WiFi where I was staying it was too difficult to check all my websites or even do work on them from the phone. I was running on the EDGE network and it was extremely slow due to a deadzone right where I was staying.

Anyway, I got home yesterday expecting my first check from Market Leverage. My affiliate manager said the payment would be sent via FedEx for delivery on the 15th. 6:00 p.m. came and I still didn’t have it, so I logged in to make sure ML had my correction mailing info. Of course, they did. So then I emailed my affiliate manager asking for a tracking code. He couldn’t get it for me because the accounting department had already gone home for the day, but he told me he specifically remembers them sending out my check. So, 7:00 p.m. rolls around and I get a phone call from FedEx saying they had a package for me that was returned undeliverable. They asked me to verify my address, but this time it was incorrect. So how does the FedEx shipping label get printed with an incorrect address when my address is correct in the Market Leverage system? Who knows. I gave them my correct address, and they said I would receive the package today.

I am also missing my Adbrite check for this month. I always get my Adbrite checks on the 8th or 9th of every month. Well today is the 16th and I still haven’t received it yet. It’s so annoying when big companies like this don’t use Direct Deposit. I emailed Adbrite asking if my payment was sent out and all they told me was that my payment was processed and that it could take like up to 21 business days to be delivered. I don’t understand them sometimes. It always comes at the same time like clockwork for 2 years… so why would it be any different this month.

So if I’m lucky, I’ll have 2 nice sized checks waiting for me when I get home. Other then that, my trip was great and everything seems to be in order. Now it’s back to work for me!

Here’s a tip for all the newbies out there. Don’t ever pay for an E-book promising to help make you thousands of dollars by exploiting the secrets of millionaire internet marketers. If you read an E-book title along those lines then you can immediately pass it off as a rip-off. All you will get in these e-books is regurgitated crap and nothing you can’t find on the internet for free anyways.

One webmaster got sick of all the e-books. Jon, the owner of Wicked Fire, created a thread in his forum specifically for giving away all these treasured e-books for free. It’s his way of protesting to the people who help ruin the internet. Jon has received death threats and emails threatening to sue him over this list of free e-books. You can find gems like Duvet Dollars, Day Job Killer, and Google Money Pro. Odds are if you’re looking at buying a “make money online” e-book, you will find it for free in this forum thread. There are currently 37 pages dedicated to providing people with the e-books for free.

I’m not saying ALL e-books are crap, but 95% of them are, especially the ones that try to make you pay for it. Now, you will have to be a member of Wicked Fire in order to get the e-books, but that shouldn’t stop you… registration is free and open to the public. I hope by reading this, I’ve helped save you money!

I’ve tried my best to avoid talking about Market Leverage over the past month or so. It seems like every big time blogger has been promoting the crap out of them. Market Leverage hit the scene by giving out dozens of prizes on blogs through contests. I was skeptical at first… I always am, but eventually I took the bait and signed up with them.

I actually signed up through Tyler Cruz, determined to win one of the prizes he was giving out. I was eying that $200 AMEX card, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. I started very strong in the first week or so of the contest, but then everyone caught up and eventually passed me on the top 4 rankings. Some people are very good affiliate marketers and have earned way more then I can. I guess the contest is still going, but at this point, I can’t win a prize. I’m too far behind.

Since joining, I’ve actually been doing quite well. I’ve always been able to make some money here and there from Azoogle, but since the switch to Market Leverage, I’ve notice a nice increase. Check out my stats from June 11 through June 30.

I was able to rack in $301.05 in a very short amount of time. And you know what’s sweet about that? The $301.05 you see is all profit. I don’t spend any money on PPC like Adwords or Yahoo Search. Everything I make from affiliate marketing is from SEO and driving traffic to my websites organically. So you’ll see people in Tyler’s contest who have $500 or $900+, but you have no idea how much money it took them to make that $900. Maybe the dude spent $800 on adwords? We don’t know. So the contest is actually flawed. It’s based on revenue instead of net income.

I’m going to continue to use Market Leverage until I start to see a drop off in earnings, then I may go back to Azoogle. But so far, ML has been great and my affiliate manager has been awesome. If you haven’t signed up with them yet, then I suggest you do. I just signed up my buddy from Political Blog yesterday and he’s already converted 4 leads for cold hard cash from natural traffic. No paid PPC. Here’s my signup link if you want it.

February was a pretty down month for me when it comes to affiliate marketing. What that basically means is I didn’t do much of anything. I don’t think I ran any new campaigns. I didn’t read up on anything. Didn’t learn any new tricks or test any new keywords. Even though I just sat there in February, I still wanted to share with you guys my earnings from all the affiliate companies. Since I didn’t do any ppc campaigns, all these earnings just come randomly from the sites I already own.

My January affiliate marketing results showed I made $144 in profit in all my affiliate marketing accounts. My goal for February was about $250-300.

February Affiliate Earnings
Azoogle - $140
CPA Empire - $2.50
RocketProfit - $10
Neverblue Ads - $13.70

Total - $166.20

So my profit from January to February went up $20. Sure I didn’t reach my goal, but at least my affiliate earnings didn’t go down. It’s sad to say that I think March (and April for that matter) will be the same as February. I just do not have the time right now to work on affiliate campaigns. It takes a ton of time to research keywords and set up profitable campaigns. Until my wedding is over and I’m settled in, I just won’t the have time to commit to it. So I’ll be stuck earning just $100-200/month from my sites just sitting there.

I’m definitely not giving up on affiliate marketing though. I just have to delay how dedicated I can be to it for a few months. I’ll continue to post my monthly reports though.

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.