Twitter has revolutionized the way people communicate on the internet.  In just 140 characters or less, you can really pass along a lot of information.  People Tweeters are finding better ways to pack more information in those 140 characters than ever before.

In short order, companies can send new coupon codes, product specials and new products becoming available and hundreds, even thousands of potential customers flock to the company’s website for a look and to possible purchase something.

With affiliate marketing becoming a largely common thing online, Twitter just opened a new avenue for marketers to reach their audience faster and in a more popular way.  Like the same companies sending out coupon codes, affiliates get to use short url services to hide affiliate links in their tweets in hopes of making a quick buck, or two.

Sending a tweet is not only seen by your followers, Twitter search has made it possible to find tweets about specific things.  Maybe you want to see a review for a new digital camera or ebook, you can easily go to Twitter and search there.  Links, comments and tweets are all available in this way and make it easier to find information you might have not seen.

The other side of Twitter is simple.  You just want to keep up with friends, meet up somewhere for dinner or just send a quick note to your sister.  In the same ways that texting from your cell phone has “quickened” communication, Twitter has become a common form of communication via cell phones.  Being able to update Facebook and Myspace from your Twitter account has basically tied all the large social networks together.

If you use your Twitter account to keep tabs on your friends, that is one thing and you most likely do NOT have a website attached to said account.  On the other hand you could be using Twitter to post your latest thoughts from your blog in hopes that “followers” come to read it.

In my niche I post to my followers in hopes they will read my post, find something to comment on while hear or sign up for my newsletter.  I do run niche sites that have Twitter accounts that I hope to make money with selling products related to that niche.

So, what is the reason you use Twitter that is NOT about making money?

How Does it Work?

Basically the idea behind their offers is that someone will have to complete one in order to get access to privileged information on your site.  That is why this works great for TV/movie sites.  You can have access to a full episode blocked by your gateway and when the user completes the offer, they get access.  They are happy to watch an episode and you are happy to collect money for the completed offer.

If you are not sure how CPALead.com works, let me give you the rundown.  The first thing you do is setup a “gateway” on the site.  That is like creating an Adsense channel for a separate website.  This is the gateway that will show the offers your readers can choose from (if they want to view the content that is currently blocked by the gateway) and if they complete the offer, they will get access to whatever you have blocked.

Can I See Some Samples?

Websites like SimpsonsEpisodes.com, WatchScrubsNow.com and DeadliestCatchEpisodes.com are just some examples that use the CPALead.com Gateway feature.  When a user goes to watch an episode they are presented with a lightbox (that blocks out website content) that offers them offers to complete.  In return for valuable information that advertisers want, the user will get access to all the episodes on the site, for life.

But How Do I Make Money?

Each of the said offers (which CPALead tries to match with your site) has a payout associated with it.  If the user completes the task, you will see that amount in your account.  Now, picture this happening a hundred times per week, or even, per day!  You could see anywhere from $.40 to $14.40 per offer credited to your account!

As you can see, the potential to make the money is astonishing.  All you need is a well developed TV/Movie site you can update quickly and traffic.  As you can see by the image below, this month I have made $6.11 with VERY LITTLE traffic.  Basically the more your site is in demand, the more money you can make.  I NEVER market this site and Google just keeps sending traffic.

Now, the question is, can you get the same return with your own site?  The process is simple, which I will outline in another post, so stay tuned if you don’t know how to start your own TV/Movie site.

If you haven’t joined CPALead.com already, you can do so here.  I would be happy to point new users in the right direction, so if you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments section or send me a message.  It’s very easy to earn extra money without very much work.

So now, I attempted my 3rd go around with Myspace Advertising and again, I chose the niche site as the landing page.  This site is making me about $200 a month now, I thought I would see if I could increase that with Myspace.

Ad Information

Since I am promoting Iron Man Collectibles, I knew I had to target an audience that was into things like the movie, action figures and comic, for sure.  These types of people love to shop, collect and spend big $$$ on ebay.  Below I listed who I targeted for this campaign.

Demographics

• Males only
• 18-30
• Education – all
• Relationship – all
• Perental Status – no preference

Geographics

• National – US

Interests

• Comics, Batman, X-men, Iron Man

I thought about it for only 10 minutes or so before I started the campaign and Myspace only gives you a few options when it comes to targeting interests.  I really like Facebook better for this, but I felt that promoting this site would be better on Myspace.

My PPC was set at .50 (about half way between recommended), I set my budget to $25 per day for a total campaign budget of $75.  That means I will spend $25 per day, but never more than $75 total.  In this case, it only took 3 days to reach my maximum.

As you can see, my CTR was .20% which I guess isn’t all that bad.  I did like to see the 74,432 ad views though.  I targeted a larger group than I thought and maybe could have narrowed that down a bit, on the other hand, I did go through all my clicks in under 3 days!  That is nice to see as well.  If my clicks would have taken 2 weeks, I would have had to look at who I was targeting and maybe clean that up a bit.  It looks like I targeted the right group fo clickers, that’s a plus!

Where Did All The Clickers Go?

Since we know that I am promoting a niche site hooked up through ebay, I also checked the stats available from the EPN.  Right now, it is showing about 49 clicks through to ebay on these 3 days.  I checked my EPN stats and I can see the clicks through to ebay.  Since the cookies are good for 7 days, I will have to update you on the actual amount of $$$ the clicks made.

Stay tuned!

When I first started blogging for the sole purpose to make some “extra” money, I was trying to learn everything possible.  I was reading shoemoney, problogger and a couple of the other top blogs, staying up all night and trying to setup up blogs that “make sense” to readers.  Trying different tactics to get the Google to see me in the sea of millions of blogs.  And all of a sudden, it clicked and although I didn’t realize it until it was almost too late, I did take advantage in one major way.

I thought about giving the ebook away as a prize to a subscription contest, but I have also been talking about creating a newsletter for 2009.  I don’t really think that I have enough information to spread around the net every month or even bi-monthly.  Without that constant information, I really am not sure that I can keep the newsletter going.  I will try and plan a series of longer posts that I can just stick in the newsletter, but for now, I am going to just stick to posting on the blog.

You can download the PDF file through a link in my email feed.  Subscribe today and the link will be sent to you.  If you download it, please consider reviewing it by commenting on this post.  Thanks for the feedback!

My friend Matt at BlogAboutYourBlog, wrote up a little post about the deal at Kontera.  It’s pretty straight forward, see below.

How to do it?
1. Join Kontera by Jan 15th.
2. Sit back and relax.
3. Reach $75 in your account, and we’ll send you a check for $100!

Seems very easy.  Take a look on the website and see what kinds of benefits the publishers get with Kontera!  Happy New Year!!

Today, I got an email telling me of the newest features they offer their affiliates.  Neverblueads seems to be ahead of the game when it comes to affiliate networks that I am a member of.  Besides an interface that is easy to use, the affiliate managers are real easy to contact and with the features I read about today, is top of the line in my book.

Tools included before the update:

• Global Postback URL
• Global Tracking Code Placement
• Referral Program (% and lead-based)

With the normal reporting features and email updates the new features include:

• RSS Feed – now you can subscribe and get the top ten newest offers, as well as, the daily pay bumps updates.
• XML Feed Improvements – the feed allows you to download banners for several offer at one time.  Besides getting banners by country, offer and size, you can grab them by category or banner ID.

These two features are a pretty good addition to the tools they already offer and it looks like there are a couple up and coming.  Those include a banner rotator optimizer and additional improvements to the API.  With that said, I think Neverblueads knows exactly where the money is; in the members and by providing the tools you need to optimize your offers, you will make more money.

If you would like to take advantage of these types of tools, you can sign up with Neverblueads.com here.

DealDotCom places ONE product online for sale at midnight, every night.  The products include digital downloads, ebooks and things like that.  You can get things from Wordpress plugins and web site builders and scripts.  The thing is that you will be getting them at a deal, sometimes over 60% off retail price!

What’s In It For Me?

The DealDotCom affiliate program is like any other, with a couple key exceptions the work for the affiliate.  First off, the program is two-tier.  What does that mean?  Well, you get a percentage (35%) for everyone you refer to the web site AND you get a percentage (15%) for  everyone THEY refer.  This is the good part.  The commission is paid for the life of their account! 

That is right, you can be making money the whole time they are ordering items from DealDotCom.  The more they are interested in the more money you make from your referrals.  You can get paid by Paypal, which is nice and easy, anytime that you get over $20 in commissions.  Payments are sent out the first day of the following month.  Everyday the web site gives away ONE Deal-of-the-Day and every registered user is included.  To claim a prize you just have to login.

Promotion

Another excellent thing about their program is that you can promote the web site any way that you want to, except for ONE.  NO SPAM!  You cannot spam IM’s, forums, etc.  So, as long as you can keep from spamming your entire family and group of Myspace friends, everything should be ok.  Oh yea, and did I mention they have a Facebook app?  Check it out here.

So far my sites haven’t made all that much, but I am sticking with the “100 sites that make $1/day” goal, I guess.  I will replicate these as niche domains popup and as long as I can manage them.  For the most part they are automatic, so I should be ok for at least 20 of these types of sites.

The main issue I am having right now is whether or not to pay for promotion, if so, how much and where do I do it?  I am really struggling with the fact of using adwords to get traffic to these sites.  The search traffic is excellent, so maybe I should focus more on direct linking campaigns.  I will make a note of that and move on.

I have a couple more ideas for niches to get into, but I always want to make sure that I have a nice domain for these things.  I guess it’s a thing that I have a domain name I am happy to associate a website with.  In case it takes off you want to make sure the name is somewhat brandable and that sort of thing.  You don’t want to be stuck explaining to people what Sukosaki.info has to do with affiliate marketing

So What?

That is kind of where I wanted to be with this blog when I saw myself posting about the topic more and more over the last 6-8 months.  Quickly, my blog became a journal of all my experiences, thoughts and ideas for new projects.  Since I thought I might be taken more seriously if I put all those topics in one blog, that is how AffiliateObsession.com was started.

The mass of people that are interested in affiliate networks generally don’t even jot down (for public viewing) what they know or the strategies they use.  Although the bloggers know the value of posting results, bloggers like ShoeMoney really don’t go into a great detail about how they work every little offer until the cows come home.  We all know that he does, based on various hints. and Q&A sessions, throughout his blog, but none of us will know the details exaclty.

The Big Names Create Waves

Bloggers like ShoeMoney, ZacJohnson and others have created an “obsession” over making money promoting affiliate offers.  The thing is that most new bloggers don’t know, or care, about the amount research and work put into a campaign, therefore, they will likely never see the same results.  You can read about some stories that make it “sound” easy, but there is plenty of work involved, all you have to do is ask the right people.

What About Me?

I have promoted my share of offers, some through PPC, some on landing pages, even some just redirected from a simple domain name.  I have also monetized social media traffic and promoted offers through my feed.  I feel like I have been able to learn enough to keep it going and maybe one day make it even easier to call myself an internet entrepreneur (if that’s what I would be considered).

You read in forums and on other blogs about how important it is to hit up the holiday offers throughout the year.  Well, yes it is a nice time to take advatage of the over-spending done online these days, but how do you do it?

First you get a cool domain name with keywords in it, who cares how long it is, just get one.  Then you have to connect it to an offer with a 301 redirect and BAM!!  Money pours into your account daily!  Now just do that with every holiday and you are set for life man.

As you can see, my sarcasm shows that some bloggers or interweb users think it’s really that easy.  They tell you they did all that, ask them what they made and if that offer is STILL making them money.  My guess is they are not and most likely have no clue how to take advantage of that offer any longer.

My first attempt at PPC marketing and a 301 redirect was with www.mothers-day-specials.com.  I was new to both PPC and affiliate marketing.  I paid nothing for keywords and as a result I had an offer with ZERO conversions.  In my defense, this is something that I set up within a day and activated only one week before the holiday.  What I taught myself will certainly help in my next project.

I think that if you take your time and plan things better, you can be ready for the next holiday or big spending season that’s coming next.  Do not rush yourself through any sort of project.  The time will come when you finally finished it and if you did the planning correctly, it will make you money long term.

Do you have an Obsession with Affiliate marketing, networks, promotions, etc?

The first thing that I wanted to do was actually visit some of the websites in the ads.  Websites with names like “MakeAMillionDollarsPerDayForFree.com” really sound like a site that will redirect me to an offer for an ebook or something similar.  I didn’t want to judge, so I just chose a couple of them and went to them.

The first one I visited was GetWebHits.com.  They advertise that you can get your ad on 42,000 websites in 87 seconds!  Well, I was not redirected at this site, but I did see a “landing page” with a bunch of information claiming excellent results.  5,000 targeted visitors for only $149!  They also offer a reseller program so that you can maybe recoup some of the cost.

Summary:  Seems like a legit ad, but I am not going to try the service at this time.  I get most of my visits from search engine traffic and so far that has been free

The next ad was for ThousandDollarProfits.com/60602.  This address had affiliate written all over it.  Well, it didn’t redirect me at all, instead, I found myself at another landing page.  The “60602″ at the end of the address was most likely an affiliate code.  I was basically being referred to this landing page by member 60602.  On the page they are pushing the reverse funnel system which we have all heard so much about.

Summary:  Catchy domain name and easy affiliate or referral code that was added, but it’s still a landing page that’s normal like the rest.  Still no redirects and NO I will not be joining that email list

I was thinking about putting an ad up for some affiliate product that I have.  I can simply get a domain on Godaddy or redirect them through this blog.  I am not sure what I am going to do, but I would bet that it would work better if I bought my own domain and redirected (301 permanent) the readers to my affiliate product.

The classified ads in the magazine are expensive, about $11 per word, but I am sure they results are targeted and the reach (over 2.4 million per issue) is insane.  In the meantime, I am going to work on getting an ad setup and I will post about my progress as it comes.

Have you placed any ads like this to promote an affiliate product?  What website do you use, if any and how much money have you made?