Though at least it gave me a laugh and I didn’t have to do anything new to earn it because it was from a 2-tier program for Profits Theme, which I promoted in my newsletter a couple of weeks ago in issue 390

And while I’m at it here’s my biggest ever nonexistent affiliate commission

 

Nonexistent affiliate commission?

Yep, the email (along with another for $142.49) was sent to me by mistake when they were working on the affiliate system. Seeing I get regular payments from Nicheology I didn’t query until a few weeks later when I noticed the money hadn’t been paid into my Paypal account.

Mark from Nicheology quickly got back to me with an apology and explanation:

“We were having some work done on the system we use for our sales and affiliate platform. Someone went in and checked and clicked something they shouldn’t have. Consequently, an email (sometimes 2) was sent out to every affiliate saying they were paid in full.”

Ok, fair enough. Mistakes happen. Though if I’d been desperate for the money I’m sure I’d have been mightily upset.

And my biggest ever affiliate commission? A real one this time

Well my biggest back in the days when I had a job was just over $13,000 earned with one email. At the time I was making under $1k a week in my day job. So I was kind of chuffed.

And my biggest ever affiliate commission? $63,000 which made its way into my Paypal account over 3 days, most of it in the first few hours of sending out a promo email which took maybe an hour to write.

No doubt I could have made even more if I was the kind of affiliate who promotes over-hyped product launches by sending out a string of over hyped emails. But sadly I’m not.

BTW after making that $63k Paypal froze my account for making too many transactions in such a short period of time. I’d probably have made lots more if people had been able to keep buying via my link.

Oh, one more thing. If you’re interested in Nicheology (and you should be because over the years it’s been directly responsible for me making a fortune – not from affiliate sales of Nicheology – but by modifying and selling the high quality niche PLR material I get from the site as a member, which is something you could do too) here’s a ‘backdoor’ into the Nicheology member site which is usually cheaper than the price you see on the frontpage.

Even though I’ve been earning my income from affiliate marketing for many years, I’m impressed with many of the ideas and tips in it and had a few of those “A-ah, why didn’t I think of that” moments.

27 Ways is simple, straightforward and to-the-point, but it’s packed with tips that will help you earn more. Here are a few of the big ones that you should be taking action on so that you can add to your commissions:

Pages 6 and 7: “A ridiculously easy way to make backend sales”

(Note: this is one tip I already follow as often as I can. Do it too and it will make life a lot easier for you because money will just flow in)

Pages 8 and 9: The info on these 2 pages is (in my opinion) the most valuable in the report. I do it sometimes but not as often as I should. And it’s silly of me because I KNOW it works, and it works amazingly well. In fact I was one of the first affiliates to ever do this, maybe 8 or 9 years back. It worked like crazy then and it works like crazy now. If you only take this one piece of advice, and put it into action, then you’ll see your affiliate commissions go through the roof.

Page 10: Very important. If you don’t do this it’s a constant battle.

Page 17: I’ve never really done this, but I know I should because I’ve seen it work many times. It takes work, but who said making lots of affiliate sales was going to be easy? Not me.

Pages 19 and 20: Again this is something I’ve never done, but should be doing. Are you doing it?

Pages 24 and 25: I’ve done this sometimes and it always works well. Note to myself: must do this more often. People really value it – it helps them feel a personal connection and it really boosts affiliate commissions.

And that’s only taking a look at the ideas in the first half of the report

In a nutshell, it’s an idea packed report which is certain to boost your affiliate commissions, even if you only implement one or two of the ideas inside it. And seeing it also shows you how to put those ideas into action you’ll have no excuses

So assuming you to make more affiliate sales (and who doesn’t?) the answer is simple. Read this short ebook and take action on what you learn. It’s nothing complicated. No rocket science involved.

Even though I’ve done hardly been able to do anything since April my earnings have hardly faltered. This is because:

a) many of the affiliate programs I concentrate on promoting are those which offer recurring income. Membership sites are probably the first thing that popped into your head, but there are many other affiliate programs which offer recurring payouts.

Getting people to sign up for web hosting, where they might stay for many years and you get a monthly or annual cut, is an obvious one. Paid newsletter subscriptions is another. Less obvious are products like food supplements, eczema treatments, genital wart or hemorrhoid creams where people keep buying the product month after month.

——– side note ———–

An offline idea that might work is to cut a deal with a local gymnasium or health club that doesn’t have a site and ‘sell’ monthly or annual memberships on their behalf by creating a locally oriented fitness site that heavily promotes their services. Or by developing a web presence promoting the gym where people are made an introductory offer via a discount
coupon which is tagged to you. If the gym later reneges on the deal you simply cut a similar deal with one of their competitors and switch your traffic over to your new partner.

In fact, if you put some thought into this you can probably do a similar thing for lots of different businesses.

——————————-

To get back to what I was saying about recurring, or residual, earnings, when I quit my job years ago, to work online full-time, I took out medical insurance which would pay me around $1k a week if I got sick. But I’ve never been able to make a claim on it because of all the residual earnings pouring in from my web sites.

A couple of days ago I took some time out to look back through years of banking and accounting records. And I can plainly see shifts in where the earnings come from. In the first few years they came from a mix of mini sites and this ezine. Apart from recommending useful books and software here, I also sold advertising, running as many as a dozen ads in each issue.

Later I expanded a few of my most successful mini sites, and later still got into the Adsense site building craze and devoted most of my time to churning out sites. This worked spectacularly for a couple of years before Google turned the screws.

And now, over the past few years, the bulk of my earnings come from a select number of high quality sites that mainly use a blend of rewritten private label articles (PLR) and rewritten press releases.