Internet Gangsters

My previous record for a single day was back in February and it was around $185 or so over 2-3 sites (I can’t remember for sure). I was extremely happy when this happened, I’ve only been doing this stuff since last Fall and to hit almost $200 in one day already I was amazed.  This was achieved through a combination of affiliate programs over a few sites. I can’t give away all of my secrets/niches so I won’t tell you which ones, but most of the programs came from Commission Junction, Linkshare and one other affiliate network.

So after that day I figured I would drop back down to my normal daily range which is usually between $10-50 per day, but I was pleasantly surprised when the next couple days all averaged over $100 per day. So things were going well for a while and then, as I knew they would, things dropped back down to around the normal range.

So fast forward to last week while I’m on vacation. I had internet access and was updating my other sites while I was gone and it turns out one of those updates hit big! I made over $200 in one day, a new record for me! The actual number was around $203.xx and it was all from 1 of my sites!  I was ecstatic, especially since I wasn’t even doing “full”updates since I was on vacation, but either way it paid off. So now I had a new goal to reach, breaking $203 in a day, and it only took a week to do.

Yesterday currently stands as my most profitable day yet. I pulled in $215.xx in a single day on a single site! And it could even be more since Commission Junctions reporting is a little delayed I still don’t have the numbers from them. So overall, yesterday was a good day and when I have a good day it always makes me wonder how much I could be making if I spent more than an hour or so every morning updating the sites.

So with that in mind, I plan to try to update this site a lot more in the future and hopefully the things we write here will help you make some money on the internet as well. It’s not as hard as everyone thinks, but it’s also not a get rich quick scheme. It takes time to start building up money and figuring out what is working and what isn’t, which is why we’re here. We’ll try things out and let you know how they work so you don’t have to waste the time.

So in my random forum searching today I came across a few people asking about a site called PopShops. I had never heard of it before, which doesn’t mean a whole lot since I just recently got into the affiliate programs, but it sounded interesting. It’s a site that links up to your Commission Junction, LinkShare.com and a few other affiliate websites and it allows you to create “stores” using the products that you can promote through the affiliate programs.

So recently I started a site using a method that pulls auctions from eBay and displays them on a page and when people click the eBay auctions you will get a commission based on the final eBay costs of a winning bid. I will write a more in depth post about this method and what software/scripts I’ve been using soon, but I just wanted to give you an idea of what the site currently does. So this site that I decided to experiment with PopShops on has recently been getting a lot more hits than last month but not many conversions with eBay. So I felt like it needed a little change so that it didn’t just look like I was pushing eBay ads since obviously people weren’t buying this product from eBay.

So that is the basic background of the site and what I’ve started adding to it to make it seem more like an actual store rather than a blog with eBay auctions. Pop Shops offers 3 different packages that give you different options. First there is a free option, which allows you to setup 10 “stores” and gives you javascript as a way to implement the code on your page, which isn’t very SEO friendly, but if you have good content outside of the products it could work for you and not cost anything up front. The 2nd option is $5/mo which is the one I opted for. This one gives you an unlimited amount of stores you can setup and gives you more options for the code, like PHP, HTML, and ASP. These methods will help with SEO since the actual text from the product descriptions will be visible to the search engine crawlers. This option also removes the “Powered by PopShops” link that will appear at the bottom of your “store” module on your page. This and the SEO friendly code were the 2 big reasons I opted to pay for the software rather than use the free one. If people know the products are strictly affiliate links they are less likely to click them, so let them find out after they have already clicked the link. There is also the Autofeed option which allows you to create a ton of pages automatically based on similar products you’ve already chosen. I haven’t really played around with this aspect of it yet, but I’m sure I will soon. The third option gives you XML feeds as well as another SEO tool that you can read about on the site and it costs $30/mo.

I don’t have too much to report yet as far as how click throughs have done since implementing the new software, but I will keep everyone updated on what happens with this. I’m really impressed with the whole setup they have going on and would highly recommend you at least try out the free version if you want to run some sort of affiliate store.