Feed Flare Affiliate Marketing and Performce Marketing Blog With Real Tips That Make You Money

When it comes to doing media buys through ad networks, it has always been very hard to tell where exactly your traffic is coming from. Until now! Search Massive was created for free I might add, to help anyone doing media buys to weed out the bad traffic sources and get to where the profits are before you start paying for traffic!

Here is how it works in a nut shell!

When you go to certain ad networks and you want to do a media buy, they will often tell you they have hundreds if not thousands of sites they have ad space on. But what you don’t know is, what those sites are and how good the traffic is going to be. So, when you do your buy you could end up getting traffic from somewhere that is not completely relevant to the niche you are marketing and wasting a pile of money at the start of a campaign when your testing things out. Why not rule out the bad traffic sites before you start your buy?

With Search Massive, you can find out exactly what sites a network buys traffic from so if there turns out to be a site you don’t want your ads on, you can tell the ad network to not run your ads on that site. You can also find new sites to do direct buys with. Really, there is a bunch of information you can gather before you launch a campaign, here is a list of features the Search Massive tool does!

• Ad Server
• Affiliate Marketing (CPA)
• Behavioral and Re-targeting Ads
• Content
• Contextual Ads
• Display Ads
• Social Media Ads
• Video / Rich Media Ads
• Video Server
• Web Analytics

As a web professional, this information can help you in many different ways:

• Find Web Publishers
• Find Customers
• Select Partners
• Research Sales Prospects
• Research Markets
• Research Vendors

Keep this in mind! Search Massive is a free tool for anyone to use, for what ever reason you want. What is needed from you when you use this tool for free is input on what can make the tool better or what you might like the tool to do in the future. I think that is fair, don’t you!

Now, head on over to Search Massive today and start increasing your ROI’s

Click Here to visit Search Massive.

With the 1st month of 2010 over with (wow that went fast) here is my first income report for the year. Looking back at what I did a year ago this month in affiliate marketing it is nice to see there is a difference in the volume and what I earned. Last January when I was first taking off I made for the month &2600.00 and grew from there. Lets take a look at January 2010 shall we.

Affiliate Marketing Income Report for January 2010

Regular Earnings (SEO Sites)

• Neverblue Ads – $2276.95
• Media Trust – $790.47
• Max Bounty – $332.50
• Wotogepa – $105.56
• Hydra – $119.19
• Premium E-Cig – 272.26
• Opes Media – $879.34
• CX Digital – 66.91
• Profit Kings Media – 22.21

(Soon, they will all be earning reports from Feed Flare Media)

Affiliate Marketing Regular Earnings Total = $4865.45

Recurring Affiliate Commissions

• Inlinks – $50.02
• PPC Coach – $115.00
• Unique Article Wizard – $115.00

Recurring Affiliate Income Total =$280.02

Monthly Sub Total = $ 5145,47

Expenses For Regular Earnings in January

• Dedicated Server – $154.00
• Unique Article Wizard – $70.00

Total Expenses = $224.00

Total Net Income For January 2010 = $4921.47

Now, I am up from last month earnings by almost 2k which is nice to see. Funny thing is, I was still basically dead up until the second week of January due to the holiday’s. So my income report is really based around 3 weeks of earnings. I did not do to much new stuff last month either, as I was trying to figure out my plan for 2010 – Feed Flare Media was the plan I came up with. I will give you an update on that later this week.

One thing I wanted to point out that I did do last month was cut some of my expenses. I dropped Media Buys Coach and PPC Coach plus a few submitter programs I was using for link building to my seo sites. I want to make one thing clear here too. I didn’t drop the coaching programs for any other reason then I was not using them and I wanted to free up some cash. Running a network costs money and not using 250.00 dollars of coaching programs just didn’t fit the bill. Both, Media Buys Coach and PPC Coach are both great mentoring programs and when I am set up (A little less on my plate) I will re-join them.

Well, looks like I am going to be an affiliate network owner after all! After many hours of deliberation and weighing out the pros and cons of being an owner of a affiliate network. I decided today after my final platform review was done that it is time to move forward with my business plans and start the design process of the website and network.

Don’t get to excited yet – it’s going to be a few months down the road before everything is set to go live for affiliates to join my network. I want everything just perfect before launch and I also want to make sure I have a pile of good offers for everyone to chose from as well with the best payouts I can give.

Here are a few bedrock principles that Feed Flare Media is going to be built around. I am going to be keeping some of the information secret , for now!

Service and education are going to be two things I am going to focus a lot on. Those are two very key area’s that most networks are extremely lacking in. Well, 95% of the networks anyways. Giving affiliates the right tools to do there jobs is key to everyone’s success – right???

Extreme affiliate screening will also be done prior to anyone every getting approved for an account. I use to get so mad when an offer I had converting on a network would get pulled from that network because some dumb ass affiliate does nothing but produce fraudulent leads. I am going to weed you out before you join my network so you don’t end up killing someone’s campaign, or costing us all a bunch of money. I am going to be investing tons of hours and money getting this network off the ground, to heck if someone is going to ruin it!

The same is going to apply to advertisers as well. I want stable, long term advertisers as part of my network so affiliates can all trust that they can build a solid business that is going to last as long as possible.

I personally believe that anyone and everyone should enjoy all aspects of there work. Not just what they make from working. So I am going to take all the frustrations I have had and put them into building a network that people can be proud to be a part of. There is stress and always will be stress when you work for yourself, don’t get me wrong, but what ever I can do to remove some of that stress – I will.

The platform I have chosen to use for my network also has absolutely no tools built into it for me (or anyone else who uses this same platform – and there is 3200 other companies who do) to steel leads from affiliates, like with what happens to Direct Track network affiliates. The platform creators built there system to be trust worthy, honest and dead on accurate – and after a 90 minuet demo today – I can honestly say – it is and it’s packed with features I wish all networks would have.

So with all that being said, it’s time for me to finalize how this new network of mine is going to look – I am so excited!!!

I just wanted to give a little update about something I have known and learned about recently regarding different networks and the platforms they use. It’s no secret that I want my own network in time so it is natural for me to research different platforms that I would invest my money into. I have gone through way to many frustrations personally that I know I can remove owning an affiliate network. Yes I know there are other headaches that show up but I have plans for them as well.

What you might not know, which is something I have known for a while and just had confirmation on today, is that if you are a good affiliate and you are able to really scale a campaign up you may just be losing money and not even know it. Why? Well, if the network you are pulling the offer from is based on a Direct Track Network platform, they have the ability to set your conversion rates on offers to what ever they want them to be. Let me explain!

Example

Advertiser A wants to get traffic to a diet pill offer. He goes to a network that runs on a Direct Track platform. The advertiser lists his diet pill with the network and the network uses there own marketers to test the campaign. Just so you know, all networks have there own in house teams running the same offers you are. During the testing stage of the new offer the network and the advertiser find out that the offer converts on average at 10%. So after testing phase the offer goes live to all the affiliates in the network and sometimes to other networks.

Now, here is where you lose money with Direct Track base networks.

The networks tell there publishers after testing is done that the offer converts at 10% so a bunch of affiliates start running it. There are 5 supper affiliates among the group who are really good at scaling up campaigns to make more then the 10% the offer is currently at. With Direct Track Networks, they can set your conversion rates individually to never convert on a offer higher then that 10% – so no matter how hard you try and scale an offer, you will never make any more money, just lose and the network keeps the difference usually!!!!!! Once the network sees that they lost you as a pub on that offer – they will most likely pull you back in with a higher payout as they know what they can see from you and how it’s converting for you. Shady business eh!!!

Today I spent time with Link Trust, which is another affiliate marketing platform and I went through a 80 minuet demo on the platform and what it can all do. I must say, its one heck of a network system and there is no way for the network or networks using that platform to set your conversion rates to never go past a certain percentage nor will they ever build it into the platform. I have seen the entire back end of the platform as well as I have seen the back end of Direct Tracks and from an affiliate stand point – I would NEVER trust the other Direct Track platform at all.

Examples of a Direct Track Network are – Market Leverage and Copeac

I am sure there are some Direct Track Networks that are honest, but how can you trust any platform that has the ability to set your rates to never go past a certain percentage. I can’t! To be honest with you I have not looked into any other platforms yet but I will, like Has Offers, so I don’t know a whole lot about other systems or the platforms that are custom. When the time comes for me to launch my network I want the best interface and the most honest system I can find. That’s just who I am.

What are your thought’s on affiliate networks having this ability to set your rates to never go higher then a certain percentage???

It has taken a few weeks to get this post put together. I wanted to be able to reflect on my year affiliate marketing in 2009 to make sure I didn’t forget anything I wanted to post about. 2009 was my first real year affiliate marketing and there was a pile of ups and downs I went through.

I saw trends I loved to see and ones that I didn’t – mostly different times of the year types of things. There were advertisers dropping out on me on a regular basis and ones who were stable that I was able to build my business around. There was also some very heavy Celebrity lawsuits I had to over come that hit most of my advertisers as well as some very heavy FTC regulations that hit December 1/09 that caused a bit of a up turn right at the end of the year.

So here is a break down of my earnings by network over 2009!

1. Neverblue Ads – $43,912.00
2. Media Trust – $30,926.00
3. Pepperjam Network – $6539.00
4. Azoogle Ads – $2720.00
5. Hydra Network – $2378.00
6. Copeac – $1863.00
7. Opes Media – $1500.00
8. CX Digital – $1014.00
9. Max Bounty – $845.00
10. Wotogepa – $773.00
11. Market Leverage – $728.00
12. Karaktr Track – $84.00
13. Recurring Commissions – $2000.00

Total Affiliate Commissions for 2009 – $ 95,282.00

I know there is a bit more I have made, like from the reviews on this blog and a few other smaller things I was doing – but as far as my time goes – it’s not worth it to try and remember everything right now. I wanted to see roughly (within a few thousand dollars) what my earnings were for my first full year affiliate marketing. I am happy to report that earnings for January are double what they were for last month all ready too.

As far as expenses go – I wont know that in detail until tax time. There are a ton of perks owning your own business and working from home that you can claim as expenses so it would not be fair of me to post all that on here. But as you can see from any of my other income reports – my day to day costs for running my affiliate marketing business are very low compared to others. Over 90% of my earnings are profit, so to speak!

What I didn’t like in 2009;

There were a few things I didn’t like that happened in 2009. First I guess would be that I didn’t like not having years under my belt of experience. When I was making good money last spring – naturally I loved it but when things started to slow down in the summer I got worried – I had no idea what was next. (keep in mind I am a full time single father of a 9 year old boy, and I am all he has – it’s scary not knowing where or how much money your going to have from month to month) I was always unsure if I could recover  from the slow times, heck I didn’t even know if they were even slow times.

Most of my drops in income were due to re brandings my advertisers were going through – which was another thing I hated seeing. It honestly felt like when I was finally getting somewhere – I would have to re due a bunch of my previous work because of re branding. I was not able to keep growing at the pace I wanted to keep growing at.

I will say that some of my affiliate managers and networks I deal with really need to take a look at how they treat affiliates, the good affiliates. Networks have the ability to help affiliates beyond belief by giving them campaigns and setting them up to make some good money – but when an affiliate comes along that needs that help to grow – they sit of there hands and say we can’t tell you anything because we have to protect our affiliates.

Networks can tell who a good affiliate is, one who will be around for a long time and who wants to build a solid affiliate marketing income. Help them!!!!!! You have all the data in your network to work with these affiliates so when one needs a budget to get going and after you are able to tell what kind of affiliate they are – give them a money maker. It does not always need to be the super affiliates getting these types of deals. The up and coming guys need them more in my opinion. Luckily for me, I recently found an affiliate network who is willing to do just that with me. Look out for some way better income reports in 2010.

What I liked about 2009;

Well the first and most obvious would have to be the fact I have been working from home this whole past year, which carries the added bonus of being my own boss – in most ways. There is still a ton out of my control but I am working on that.

Even though I have had my ups and downs I have always been able to bounce right back, and in a shorter time frame then when I first started. I am able now to ask the right questions about certain offers so I know which ones to avoid and which ones I need to focus on. I can even pick out the good or higher converting landing pages when looking at offers.

I have also learned a completely new aspect of affiliate marketing called Media Buying, which I had no clue even existed a year ago. I would be rolling in that right now if it was not for the up and downs I have gone through with my SEO sites.

I have defiantly built some great work relationships with a few very key people in the industry – which is starting to pay off this month. I have also had my Google account banned. I look at that as a plus because now I don’t have to waste my money bidding on keywords that are way over priced – lmao. See Ya Big G! The ban is only on my ad-words account to btw.

What my favorite tool I used to make money with is;

This by far has to be the Unique Article Wizard tool. In December, I took the entire month off from submitting articles for a few reasons ( mostly because I didn’t know the full impact of the recent FTC regulations that hit Dec 1/09) but I also wanted to see exactly how much money the tool actual generates through articles. I dropped down to just over 3k last month total earnings not using the tool, this month I fired it back up and am double what I made last month in the same time period. The tools simply works well for my niche!!!!

If you want to join Unique Article Wizard, use the peel page add at the top right of this blog to sign up – or, if you guys want a detailed post on how I use it, just leave a comment saying so after this post and I will get to it as fast as possible.

My Goals for 2010;

These are simple goals actually. First is build an email list. I have over 30k unique visitors a month all targeted to health offers. I want a list based on that traffic source. I also want to branch away from one niche and build many profitable campaigns across a wide range of niches. Less eggs in one basket type of thing. And last but not least is hit 30k per month steady income.

2009 Conclusion;

Looking back at everything, I am darn proud of what I was able to do and build off of a very small monthly commitment. My over head is super low and my income is very high for what I am putting out. I have a system in place that is completely repeatable, even with all the crap that has gone on. I have a ton of freedoms I never had before in my life and the possibilities to go almost anywhere with what I am doing professionally.

All in all, 2009 was a great year for affiliate marketing and I look forward to seeing what 2010 brings!

Happy New Year everyone and good luck!

Up Coming Post – A follow up on the Profit Kings Media Review. Profit Kings Media claims they will work with any affiliate (new and old) to build profitable campaigns and I am putting that to the test. One of the owners of Profit Kings and I spent some time on the phone last week going over campaign idea’s and what I needed to do to get it profitable as fast as possible. I am going to report on what we did, how we did it and what my earnings are from it. Lets see if this network is going to do more then just promise us  higher payouts and dumb contests. Will they actually do what they claim they can do??? Stay Tuned!