If you’ve followed this blog at all for the past coulple of months, you know that I am in love with Market Leverage. (It’s kind of sick, actually.) In this short time, I have found a few offers that generate enough profit that I could realistically quit my day job and be a full-time affiliate. (Not quite ready to do that yet though.) However, one thing that I haven’t really done anything with is Market Leverage’s referral program.

According to Market Leverage they have “The Industry’s Best Paying Lifetime Referral Program.” They will pay 5% of the commissions earned by each Publisher that you refer. That ads up to some scratch if you can get a nice referral base under you.

Here’s the deal…

I’m holding my own mini-Market Leverage contest. I want to see who can earn the most over the next 30 days. Winner gets $100. Easy Peasy.

Sign up with Market Leverage!

Bonus Entries

In addition to signing up above, if you blog about and link to this contest, I’ll increase your eligible earnings by 25% That means that if you make $2,000, your contest entry will be for $2,500.

Once you have signed up, post below so that your entry will be counted.

Also, feel free to join in with the contest discussion going on over at the DigitalPoint Forums. I’ve Made $15,535.20 in the last 30 days – I’ll Pay You To Do The Same!

Sign up with Market Leverage!

If you run out to Google and you search for ways to get quick traffic to your affiliate offers, you’ll no doubt find the ‘Gurus’ that tell you that PPC is king. They’ll tell you to generate a list of keywords and create several ad groups centered around groups of 50 or so keywords. They’ll give you numbers and show you how to calculate the maximum CPC that you should bid. Then they’ll tell you to split test ads and focus on getting your click through rate up. They’ll also tell you to avoid the content networks and CPM ads like the plague. “Oh, they don’t convert well.” “You’re just throwing your money out the window.” You know what?

It’s all a bunch of baloney!

These marketing gurus either don’t know what they’re talking about (possible) or they aren’t telling the whole story (more likely.) There are 2 sources of affiliate traffic that you can’t live without. These are sources that I’ve seen very few talk about. Want to know what they are? Would you believe that some of the best sources of traffic for your affiliate offers are the very things that marking ‘gurus’ tell you to avoid -  ads run on content networds (e.g. AdSense) and CPM banners. Don’t believe me?

(Click on the image for a better view)

Notice a little jump in there? Look at how my earnings increased on 8/17. That’s right when I started tapping into these sources. Think about this…

Ads On The Content Network

Ads on the content network are dirt cheap. You don’t have to worry about quality score and click through rates. That means that you can literally get clicks for $0.05! The only way you’ll pull that off in search is if you have a super quality score.

Also, you’ll usually get 10x more impressions on the content network. Even if a term doesn’t get a large number of searches, there could be thousands of relevant sites out there that your ad could be displayed on. Even with a low click through rate, you’ll generally get more traffic than you would with search.

CPM Banners

CPM Banners are a different kind of animal. The main concern of PPC ads (making sure you get quality clicks) doesn’t apply here. The whole point is to get as many clicks as you possibly can per 1,000 views. With an effective banner, you can get clicks for $0.01 or even less! Now, your traffic may not be as high of quality, but your getting 10 clicks for the price of one (compared to a cheap PPC campaign)

Using CPM banners I’ve run campaigns that have a 5,000% ROI! How’s that for a return?

If you’re doing any kind of affiliate marketing, you should always consider running CPM banners and content network campaigns. I can almost guarantee that your earnings will increase!

Try Market Leverage I’ve Made Over $3,000 profit this month!

Why have I not made a post in the last month? Because I have been making serious money with Market Leverage(affiliate link.)

As you know, I usually post my blog earnings. In May this blog generating a whopping $37.72. That’s not horrible, but it won’t buy much more than a nice dinner.

In the last 30 days with Market Leverage I’ve generated $2,182.10!

That’s nearly a full time income in my first full month of affiliate marketing!

Needless to say, I highly recommend Market Leverage! I dare you to sign up and see the kind of money you can make.

Sign Up Now!

Meet some of the contestants:

Some additional posts ’bout it:

• Top Affiliate Challenge – Who Will Step Up? [Shoemoney]
• Heading Off To The Top Affiliate Challenge [John Chow]
• The Top Affiliate Challenge [Joel Comm]

I’ve recently delved into the world of affiliate marketing. I’ve seen the stuff for years, but never really gotten into it. The idea is simple enough, you get paid a “commission” for selling someone else’s “product.” These products can be anything from ring tones to dating sites to tuna fish. The key to all of this is getting traffic to the offer for less of a cost than what you are being paid – easier said than done.

I’ve studied this for some time now, but am far from educated on it. You could say I’m very low on the affiliate-marketing-street-smarts scale. However, here’s a few of my very simple observations on the methods people use to get the traffic and make the moolah.

The Brute Force Method

Send as many people to your landing page as possible (even if it sucks) and a few are bound to complete the offer and earn you some coin. This is by far the easiest method. You don’t have to have a good offer. You don’t have to have a good sales/landing page. You don’t have to have a good domain. You just have to have traffic.

This problem is, how do you get that traffic? One of the primary ways of generating traffic in affiliate marketing is through PPC advertising. Well, if your offer or your landing page stinks, you’re going to be paying out the you-know-what for junk traffic. Operating at a loss isn’t the most profitable position is it?

The only way this works is if you can drive hoards of traffic without paying for it – usually not an easy task. I read the blogs of many who have run this route. Their final conclusion is usually that affiliate marketing is a scam, no one makes money in it and Santa Clause is a lie.

The Look-At-Me-I’m-a-Fricken-Genious Method

Sending a few interested people to a targeted offer with a well done landing page is a much better way to go. This keeps your costs much lower as you’re not paying for hundreds or thousands of clicks and your conversion rate higher as the people comming to your sales page are actually interested in what you have to offer. Lower advertising costs plus higher conversions equal higher profits.

But, if it were only so easy. This method requires two very important things (and two of the closest guarded secrets of affiliate marketers) – great keywords and a great landing page. Both of which take a lot of research and experimenting to get. That’s more work than most people are willing to put into it and come to many of the same conclusions that the ‘Brute Force’ people come to.

Are you and idiot?

Obviously one of the two methods above isn’t going to win American Idol (or County Star Idol or Canadian Mountie Idol.) The thing is, most people try to succeed in affiliate marketing by using Method A. Sure, they’ll tell you that their keywords are targeted and they’ve spent hours stealing other people’s landing pages. But, their stats say otherwise.

Which category do you fit into? Honestly, most of us are fooling ourselves. We have to look at this stuff objectively. Affiliate marketing is a tough business, but if you’re really willing to put the work into it, it can pay off in big ways.

I’m spreadin’ some link lovin’ to my twitter followers. Props to Kate Brodock and Internet Marketing – Best Web Ezy. Want some linkage for yourself? Follow me on twitter!