101Phones Not Paying Me My Commission
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Feb 19, 2010
Once again, I have to “out” one of my affiliate programs for not processing my commission on a product I’ve marketed for them.
At the end of my post about the Six-Figure Blueprint book, I posted an affiliate product from 101Phones, a 2-line phone with two portable extensions, which in essence gives you 3 phones to put in different rooms. About two weeks ago I had someone purchase that phone; I know that because I was informed of the purchase. I got the numbers I needed to verify it, just in case I never got credit for it.
This is another company through Commission Junction, so I went to the CJ site and found the affiliate information for these people and sent them an email with all the information. By the way, I waited a week to see if my commission was going to show. I waited 3 days, and didn’t hear a thing. I then sent a second follow up email, and I included another email address I found for the company, as well as an email address I had for CJ, which I’d had to use at one point last year when I initially had problems getting credit for another sale. Here it is, 4 days after that one, and once again I’ve not heard anything.
In the second email, I told them if I didn’t hear from them I was going public with my complaint; this is it. Now, why am I doing this? One, I think two weeks is long enough to wait for notification of my commission, especially since CJ says it should only take a week at best. Two, I don’t want anyone else getting cheated if these folks are scam artists. Three, I know they’re on Twitter, and since my posts show up on Twitter when they see the headline, if they care about their business, they’ll head over here and see what I’ve written and I’ll get some kind of action. It worked that way when I had issues with both Panda and Football Fanatics in the past.
It’s hard enough to make money online without feeling as though you’re being cheated. This time around, though, I have to admit that I’m surprised I haven’t heard from Commission Junction either. After all, they’re the initial folks helping to support these companies, and it has to make them look bad when they’re affiliates aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.
If it takes another 4 or 5 days to get some action, I’ll be removing any advertisements for their products, sending them an even sterner email, then probably dropping them forever. I kind of like their stuff, and the product was delivered very fast, but if this is how they treat their affiliates I don’t want to have anything to do with them.
Yeah, this is how I take a stand; I hope y’all don’t just sit by and let someone treat you badly, especially when it’s money that’s concerned.
January Income Report – Changing For 2010
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Feb 1, 2010
I want to preface this report by saying that, for now, it’s going to be my last report. I have to admit that the numbers are disappointing to me these days, and they don’t seem worth reporting until they start getting much better. So, after this report, you won’t see this type of thing again until I have my first $500 month. And since I don’t see anything to indicate that could be coming up any time soon, it could be awhile before we get another one of these.
So, without further ado, here’s how things looked this month:
Adsense – $64.75
Infolinks – $22.50
Commission Junction – $20.50
Google Affiliate Network – $.90
Grand Total – $108.65
Once again, most of my money was earned via my medical billing site, but the money has gone down, somewhat being replaced by Infolinks. The CJ sale was another one time fluke, and the GAN sale was someone buying a DVD from Barnes & Noble through one of my links, that’s a pretty low percentage, isn’t it?
Here’s the thing. I’ve been giving more and more thought to income lately. Though I’ve said I don’t expect to make a lot of income from this blog because of its nature, it wouldn’t depress me to make something more than once a millenia. The same goes for my other sites as well. The basic ideas are twofold; one, you work on selling your own product, where you get to retain all proceeds from the sale, or two, you work on selling the products of others and accept your percentage from that.
Those are really the only two ways of making any real money online, though some folks will make big money off Adsense by having multiple websites. Frankly, I don’t see myself as a guy who will ever own more than 10 to 15 websites, period, and that could be pushing it. Hundreds of websites; no way! So, since I don’t see myself as a web mogul in that fashion, trying to earn more money through Adsense seems to be illogical. I’ll be happy with what I’m getting now and try to move onto other things.
For instance, the CJ products. That money above was for one lousy sale; if I could get more of those, life wouldn’t be all that depressing. Some of my advertisers market some fairly technical and pricey stuff. For instance, imaging the commission I would earn if someone decided to buy this HJ Namdar Diamond Ring; I’d be living large for a month. I’d be a happy camper if someone decided to purchase one of these World Imports chandeliers
also; stunning stuff.
But to get people to buy things like that, I really have to push the sale, market it well, and say some pretty good stuff about it. I’d also have to know it, and truthfully, I only know what I like to look at when it comes to jewelry, and my tastes in chandeliers only goes so far since many times I don’t even notice them (though I’d notice that one for sure). At least I’d feel like I’d have to know them if I were going to talk about them on a blog; if I set up product pages, I might not have to know as much.
Kind of like my sales page over there; I don’t have tons of products on it, as most of the deals are via banner links, but I easily could select products to push and, if there’s a code, indicate that there’s a timed sale of some sort. By the way, I’ve never gotten any feedback really on what people think of that type of sales page, the one next to me holding the parrot, which is always changing because the sales end and new sales come up. What do you think of something like that in general?
Anyway, onward and upward, as the saying goes. Let’s see what the financial future holds in store for me.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Why I Show Products At The End Of Posts
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jan 20, 2010
Here’s the questions. How often do you go to the store and end up buying things you didn’t initially go there for? How many times have you been looking through a catalog or advertisement, saw something that interested you, then decided to check it out and saw something else you liked instead?
I belong to a lot of affiliate marketing programs and advertisers. Most of you know that I’m a member of Commission Junction. They have almost 3,000 different advertisers that you can choose from, some big names, some not so big. Every time you see an individual post on this blog, at the top you see a Commission Junction banner, via one of their rotating banners programs. I’m also running one of their little applets on the left side.
Many of the advertisers allow you to post their products on your websites as well. The template you see below is their template, which I kind of use for other things, such as my book and webinar there at the top left. That’s just standard HTML, which I already knew, but their version was just so clean I’ve co-opted it. Some of the advertisers don’t have specific products you can purchase, but have services instead. So, when you see a banner, those are usually companies that offer services.
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But not always. I also participate in the Linkshare affiliate program, which also has some advertisers like Commission Junction, just not as many. The same goes for ShareASale, but I’ve only hooked up with a couple of those. Most of the pictures you see on this site in a post are actually images you can purchase in some form from them. I also always have at least one image to the left side. I could do it more often, but I don’t always think images fit my posts, though some people swear by them.
And many other affiliate programs I’m associated with also don’t have products I can specifically hawk, but I still want you to know about them. So, I’ll throw those banners on here every once in awhile as well. Just so you know, I didn’t join all those programs because of this blog, but since I still belong to them, it makes sense for me to cycle them in here from time to time.
Here’s the thing. If I highlight something like the rowing machine below, what I’m showing is a sample of the types of things you can find at that particular site, which in this case is called BigFitness. Now, you can go directly to the site and purchase it and cut out the middleman, but if you’re nice ( 
) and want to help a brotha out, you’ll buy it from me. But maybe you’ll go to the site and see something else you like instead. No matter what you buy, if you buy something from the site, I’ll get credit for it. And suddenly it’s just like the flat screen TV you saw in the Sunday flyer that got you to the store, and instead you walked out with a GPS unit. The store only hopes you bought something; kind of what I’m hoping as well.
There you go. And sometimes, if you find something on another site that you want, if you come back and ask me about it I might have a coupon that will get you a discount of some kind, even if it’s only free shipping. Hey, saving money never hurts either, right? If that’s what happens, just go to my contact link above, see my email address there and write me.
It’s a very passive form of marketing, I know. Does it work? Well, in two years I think I’ve made two sales for CJ stuff and a couple for other products. So yes, I’ve made some sales. Not a lot, but that’s okay. You make no sales for any products you don’t try to market, right? 
I’ve been asked often over the years why I have any products on my site that aren’t just making money things; that’s why. And that’s why I never beat up on anyone who’s marketing anything on their site. Sometimes I even take a quick look at it. Never hurts to look.
December Income Report – Something To Build On For 2010
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jan 1, 2010
At least I can say that December was better than November. Actually, my December income was higher than October also, so maybe I should just shut up. But I really have to drastically increase these numbers in 2010, and I need to get it done quickly, though not necessarily through this blog. But this blog should be generating something, I figure, so some changes will be made.
First, the income numbers:
Adsense – $60.04
Commission Junction – $5.17
Infolinks – $14.84
Firetrust – $14.97
Voxant – $.01
Grand Total – $95.03
So, I made just under $100, which means I was under average for the year. This doesn’t bode well for my 2010 goals, but so be it; we all have to start somewhere, right?
First, you’re probably wondering where the income is from the book I helped promote, Beyond Blogging. I got one person who signed up under me as an affiliate, but that’s as far as it went. I don’t even know if anyone clicked on any of the links, to tell you the truth. All I know is that I didn’t make any sales, though I said I’d consider my part as being successful if there were even 3 sales. No problem; I’m still going to list the book over there on the side for awhile.
Second, I think it’s time for some physical changes to this blog on how I’m advertising things. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do, but I do know that some of the affiliate ads you see now will be removed. There will still be a product or link of some kind at the end of each post, with more products than in the past, and more links to products within a post if something fits. Unfortunately, products don’t always have anything to do with the post, and I’m not going to try to be conscious enough to do that because, well, that just ain’t me. I also want to concentrate on finding more ways of driving traffic to my products, which you see here, but I know that I’m going to have to change up those sales pages to draw more visitors from search engines as well.
Third, I know I’m going to do something with both my Reviews of Everything and Services & Stuff sites, where I’m going to create more sales pages within both of those. My Reviews site will have reviews of some of the affiliate programs I have, since I know something about many of them, and when I review a product, I’m going to make sure to only advertise that product on a page. That will make a lot more sense than what I’ve previously done.
Fourth, my medical billing site is still my biggest Adsense producer, while my anti-smoking site has generated almost nothing, but my medical billing site used to generate way more money than it is now. I’m not sure if Infolinks has taken away from that, but one would hope that the two together would at least equal what I was making before.
No matter. I have big financial goals for my online activities this year, and I figure that my January report has to show at least an increase of 50% over this month to even make me think I have a chance on increasing finances. What you can still believe in, though, is that I still won’t be writing any paid posts, that I won’t be recommending anything I haven’t checked out first, and that I’ll be telling y’all what the heck I’m doing while trying to move forward.
And with that, onward and upward!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Google Affiliate Network
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 8, 2009
I just realized that, though I’ve mentioned them, I’ve never talked about the Google Affiliate Network, though I’ve used them for years. I guess it’s about time; what a bad internet marketer I am!
They started out as Connect Commerce, and I joined them initially so I could market books from them through my newsletters, and example of which, titled Sports And Leadership Lessons, can be seen here. I didn’t want to go through Amazon, like everyone else does, mainly because everyone else does. I wanted to go through Barnes And Noble, because I love B&N stores, especially my favorite cookie; by now, y’all know I love cookies (no wonder I’m a “bad” diabetic).
Anyway, when I first signed up, B&N was one of only 5 companies they were promoting; since that time, they’ve grown a lot, to the point where Google decided to buy them out and change the name; just how it goes, right? And they promote some big names and some names that aren’t as big, but still fairly prominent, such as AllState Motor Club, Under Armour, and Motorola.
In a way, they’re a lot like Commission Junction, only CJ has way more advertisers. Also, CJ automatically creates the template for buying, like you see on the left with the books, while GAN (yeah, I’m calling it that for now) doesn’t; those books, by the way, come through either my own creation or through GAN; I just borrowed the template. Most of the advertises don’t have as many choices of banners as CJ has, which can be daunting when you’re looking for a specific size and they didn’t create one. One final thing is that fewer GAN advertisers actually let you search for products to market for yourself; they’d rather you drive people to their site via text or banner links, which works fine for the most part.
Unlike CJ, I’ve yet to earn enough to receive a check from them, but it’s not because I haven’t made any sales. The books sell the most, but, like Amazon, the commission on books and movies and CDs isn’t all that high, unless I get lucky one day and have someone buy one of those big compendium collections of TV shows or movies; we can all dream, right? Still, I think it’s worth your while to at least take a look at Google Affiliate Networks, because you might find some things you believe in to market; kind of like the banner ad below:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010-2012 Mitch Mitchell
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