Ahhh… The sweet relief I feel today at finally making some sales! I’ve had about $250 in profits today which I know isn’t a whole lot to a lot of people (and it wouldn’t have been that much to me awhile back) but at the moment I’m very pleased with it. I’ve had a real tough time lately and it’s nice to see some sales from OA Internet & Leading Edge Cash today after having really struggled with both of them recently.

I’m also seeing some nice positive results from my BANS powered stores lately. While most of the commissions from them aren’t real big, I am seeing nice conversion rates.

It’s been a good day. And it’s only 7 PM! Maybe I’ll have some more sales before the day is through.

I made another Market Health commission yesterday and I’m starting to get a bit excited about the possibilities with these guys. They have a lot of different products in different niches, many of them niches I already have sites devoted to. So I think I’m just scratching the surface of the potential of what I could do with them. Hopefully it won’t be another thing that looks great at first and then sizzles out - I’ve had that happen on many occasions previously.

In continuing bad news I still cannot make a  conversion with OAInternet which is killing my profit numbers right now. I’m trying not to let it get to me and just concentrate on other things for now. Hopefully it’s just an unlucky stretch and not a long term problem but right now it’s hard to believe that. Today is my 8th straight day without a single sale from them. That is very unusual. I cannot remember the last time I had a stretch that long without a sale with them. And I just don’t get it because I’m sending the same quality traffic as always. The same traffic that was getting me an average of a sale a day just a couple of months ago (March.)

I found out about an hour ago that I made my first commission with Market Health. It wasn’t a huge one (just $20) but it’s always a nice thing to make a commission with a new program. It gets me a bit excited as they have a lot of products available to promote that I think I can fit into my existing sites very well.

Yes, it’s nice to have a little bit of good news. I’m really trying to work through the frustration I’ve been feeling about what’s not working. I have to let it be. I don’t mean by that that I don’t want to keep trying, but just that I want to change my focus from the negative frustration of what’s not working - to the positive ideas of what could work and what I’m working on now.

Nothing seems to be working anymore. As bad as April was, as of right now it looks like May will be even worse. I just cannot seem to catch a break lately which makes it very hard for me to stick with my plans. I honestly am starting to feel like Google is “out to get me.” I mean they have just punished one of my longest running sites and I don’t know why. It went from ranking very well to not at all for all of it’s keywords. The only Google traffic I get for that site anymore is from Google images. It’s just extremely frustrating. It wasn’t a big money maker, that site, but it’s still a bit like… What’s the point of doing all of this work if Google is just going to arbitrarily drop your rankings at any moment? This site is over a year and a half old so it shouldn’t be getting these sorts of penalties as far as I can tell. I just don’t get it. What do you want from me evil Google? And I really think their search results are getting worse and worse. While they are targeting people like me they are letting absolute spam fill their search results now. Yeah… I don’t have anything positive to say right now. I’m trying to stay focused but it’s awfully difficult at the moment.

As I wrote on April 19 I was not looking forward to writing this post, and unfortunately things have not turned around in the last couple of weeks, actually if anything they’ve got a bit worse. I made significantly less in April than I did in the first three months of the year. I made it over the $4000 mark for January, February, and March but this month I couldn’t even make it to $3000.

I made $2924 profit in April. A very disappointing number as I seem to be falling way short of my goals. I’m not really sure why I made so much less money in April, was it tax season? I don’t know. I actually had about the same amount of clicks to my biggest money maker OAInternet in April as I did in the month before but earnings from them were down over 50%! In fact you can pretty much account for my drop in earnings from my dropping conversions with them. I’m hopeful that the drop in conversions is seasonal or random or anything other than a real trend.

Is there any good news? A little. I’ve been seeing some nice returns from my BANS eBAY stores & from Adult Friend Finder ($90 payouts!)

Moving forward I’m trying to be more focused and less scattered. Scatterbrain doesn’t work real well for making money I’ve found. I’m trying to concentrate on a few major projects over the next few months as hard as it is for me to basically ignore some of my websites/projects - I think I have to do it. It’s impossible for me to move everything forward at once. I think it’s fine to own all of these domains, I just can’t feel like I have to work on all of them all at once. I need to just set some aside and let them age.

I’m still working with my fiancee on a ClickBank product as a vendor. It will be my first product of my own and we are taking it very seriously. I want it to be a high quality product and I think it will be. Of course I know that the product is only part of it. You have to sell the product. So I will be researching landing page/marketing techniques a lot in the coming months. I do hope to have it online and ready for sale by June 15. I then plan on testing & tweaking until I get conversions high and then really promoting it to affiliates. I think it’s important to get conversions high before I tell affiliates about it because I don’t want them to be turned off from the promoting the product.

As part of my new focus I may not be writing in this blog until my next monthly report. This site is not included in my focus group! I hope to have an increase in profits to report next month.

It looks like there was a big PageRank update today as I saw movement on almost all of my domains (some up, some down.)

For the most part I don’t pay much attention to PageRank, more and more it tells you less and less about a page’s value. Unless you plan on making your income from selling links (which I don’t advise doing) I would pretty much forget that PageRank even exists.

That being said, I do still notice when it goes up and down, don’t get me wrong. Higher is nice, it gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling when I see one of my sites rise in PR and likewise it annoys me when one drops. But that being said, I know it has little to do with the amount of money I’m going to be making with any of my sites.

And yes this blog is a PR 1 as of now, I can’t remember if it was higher than that before or not, it may have been. I do very very little to promote this blog. I like to think of it as more of a “diary” than any sort of money making venture. As I’ve mentioned before I don’t tend to think much of internet marketing gurus so I don’t really want to be one myself! Always be wary of people who make all of their money by telling other people how they make money. Any knowledge they may have usually pertains to doing just that and little else. Plus they probably won’t really tell you anything of much value anyways.

Clickbank is driving me insane again. Over the last 4 days I’ve had 738 hops with just one sale. It’s particularly frustrating because I’m working on focusing more energy on promoting some Clickbank products and it’s hard to do that when you are getting these kind of results. It really seems sometimes like they just don’t track all sales properly. I know it’s possible it’s just chance, but it doesn’t seem right.

As I’ve written about a bit this month, I’ve been struggling recently. A lot of my main income streams appear to be drying up somewhat lately. I’m trying not to freak out about it and I’m hoping it’s mostly seasonal, but yeah it sucks.

But I do have had something which has helped me remain positive. What is it? Success with the Adult Friend Finder Affiliate Program. I’ve just started promoting it this month and so far the conversion rates are very good. Each order is a commission of $90 so it adds up pretty fast!

There are a lot of people promoting this already so I won’t say the competition is slim but with good conversions and payouts that high it may be worth getting involved with anyway. I definitely plan on promoting it more with the success I’ve had so far. CLICK HERE to sign up for the Adult Friend Finder affiliate program.

The health market is one of the best markets you can get into as an affiliate marketer. Why? Because it’s a huge market (tons of buyers out there) and the commissions tend to be quite high.

Market Health is one of the best affiliate programs to join for getting into the health market and it has been one of the best programs for some time although it used to be known by a different name (Joe Bucks.)

Not only are there a huge amount of products to promote at Market Health, but they are always coming out with new products to promote.

Most Market Health products pay out a 50% commission. And that’s a 50% commission on some rather high priced products, so the commissions add up fast.

If you are just getting started with affiliate marketing and don’t know where to start, they even have a reasonably priced “take you by the hand” deal called HerbalBiz.

Unless things seriously turn around soon, I will finish this month with profits significantly below those I earned in the first 3 months of the year. It’s pretty annoying to take a step back when you are trying to move forward.

But certainly it doesn’t help much to become irritated and annoyed. It doesn’t help me any to beat my head against the wall about why my conversions have dropped for OAInternet or come to a stand still with Leading Edge Cash (not a single sale this whole month.) And yes, if there are any other LEC affiliates out there can you tell me if things are as bad for you as they are for me with them lately? I used to do quite well with them so that’s up there on the frustration meter as well.

Letting these things get me down is very counter productive. Yes things are slow right now, but I am still doing well enough to get by (without a “real job”) and that means I’ve got time to turn things around. And how will I turn things around? With focus! I must continue moving forward. Doing one thing at a time and doing it until completion.