Affiliate Marketing Blog | How to Earn Money Online - Earners Blog » Wealth Creation

The US Dollar is Hurting Affiliates, But Which Ones?

Stuart — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:45:12 +0000

If you’re like me then I’m sure you’ve been feeling the pain of the falling Dollar over the past few years. Affiliates that participate in programs that pay in American Dollars are now having to work up to 20% harder to make as much money in their home currency as they were just 2 years ago. Even worse, if you’ve been in this game for anywhere up to 5 years, you will have seen close to a 50% drop in the exchange rate.

If the drop continues, more & more affiliates will either start to look for homegrown affiliate programs, or programs paying in more stable currencies (like the CAD, AUD or EUR).

I did a slight bit of analysis to see which Affiliates have been hit hardest by the falling Dollar:

Australians

Now: 1USD = 1.07663AUD
1 year ago: 1USD = 1.30112AUD
2 years ago: 1USD = 1.3641AUD
5 years ago: 1USD = 2.8139AUD

Percentage Profit Drop:

2 years: 21.07%
5 years: 61.73%

Canadians

Now: 1USD = 0.92967CAD
1 year ago: 1USD = 1.12928CAD
2 years ago: 1USD = 1.18547CAD
5 years ago: 1USD = 1.56520CAD

For some reason the charting tool wouldn’t allow me to inverse the USD/CAD graph, either way it still looks fairly grim.

Percentage Profit Drop:

2 years: 21.57%
5 years: 40.6%

Euro

Now: 1USD = 0.67971EUR
1 year ago: 1USD = 0.77911EUR
2 years ago: 1USD = 0.8514EUR
5 years ago: 1USD = 0.9870EUR

Percentage Profit Drop:

2 years: 20.16%
5 years: 31.13%

UK

Now: 1USD = 0.47350GBP
1 year ago: 1USD = 0.52450GBP
2 years ago: 1USD = 0.57455GBP
5 years ago: 1USD = 0.62908GBP

Percentage Profit Drop:

2 years: 17.58%
5 years: 24.73%

Canadian Affiliates have been worst hit over the past 2 years with a 21.57% drop in earnings. Which means that for every $100,000 USD they earn, they are earning $21,570 USD less than 2 years ago. Quite a significant drop.

Australian Affiliates have seen the largest long term drop of a huge 61.73% over the past 5 years (Here’s hoping that this doesn’t continue).

India

India is one of the few countries that Affiliate Marketers are profiting from the falling US Dollar, however this in turn means that the cost of outsourcing to India is also increasing.

Now: 1USD = 0.02555INR
1 year ago: 1USD = 0.02245INR
2 years ago: 1USD = 0.02186INR
5 years ago: 1USD = 0.02072INR

Percentage Profit Increase:

2 years: 16.88%
5 years: 23.31%

I’d like to know how you are coping with the falling dollar & what should affiliate marketing companies that pay in USD be doing to keep affiliates on board (pay in Gold? )?

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5 Tips to Make your Online Money Work Harder

Stuart — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 04:07:17 +0000

Whilst I mostly talk about the art of Earning Money Online, what actually happens once we earn it?

Do we throw it into a savings account? Does it help to pay your bills? Or do you spend it all?

Making Money Online is just like real life. There’s those that make a boatload of it but are used to a high standard of living & there’s those that don’t earn as much but are smart with it.

The more money you have the easier it it to accumulate even more. For example check out this incredible article over at Fool. If you save $1,291.66 per month at an 8% return it’ll roughly take you 22.8 years to save 1 Million Dollars. However, due to compound interest the next million will only take 7.6 years, provided you still save the same $1,291.66. So you can see yourself that saving your first million is by far the hardest thing you’ll have to do. Beyond that, things get much much easier.

Articles like this provide me with a lot of inspiration to save as much money as I can afford to whilst not comprimising my quality of life.

So here’s my top 5 tips for making the money you earn online work better offline:

Don’t Spend Your Money, Spend Someone Else’s: Initially this may sound a bit cheap but it’s not. When I say spend someone else’s money I don’t mean spending your Girlfriend’s (that’s a disaster waiting to happen), spend the Banks. Get a credit card with a decent limit, they usually give you around 55 days interest free on purchases. I put everything on this, PPC, Mortgage, Bills, Clothes. Everything. In the meantime my money is sat accumulating that 55 days of interest in my savings account.

Get a Cashback Credit Card: I use a credit card that gives me a 1% return on everything I spend. If I spend 15k a month on PPC that’s $1,800 cashback at the end of the year. You may need to get more than one card depending on what your credit limit is, as long as you can manage it. Remember, these cards aren’t supposed to supplement the income; they merely allow us to spend someone else’s money for those 55 days instead of our own (which we keep in the bank). If you have no capital to start with then I don’t suggest doing this.

Put all of your money in a High Interest Savings Account: I have an online saver account with ANZ which pays 7.75% interest on all balances over $2,000. If you’re spending 15k a month on PPC not only are you getting your nice $150 back from the credit card but you’re also earning 7.75% interest on your own 15k that’s sitting in the bank (which works out around $100). So there’s $250 for doing nothing more than you normally would.

Claim as much back on tax as you can: If you’re a blogger or an internet marketer you would be surprised at the amount of stuff you can claim back as tax:

Domains
Hosting Costs
Heating, Internet, Electricity & Phone
Outsourcing Design Work & Website Construction
Computer Software & Hardware
Office Supplies
Conference Fees & Hotel Costs (whilst away for business)

The list goes on. Always get yourself a good accountant to sort all this out for you. I get my tax done at the end of the year for a mere $80, which is an absolute steal.

Spread out your investments: It’s always important to spread out your investment portfolio beyond that of a high interest bank account (once you reach that stage). Often Stocks & Property can yield higher returns aswell as provide that additional security. Negative Gearing is very popular in Australia (whereby you can borrow a larger amount on a property then offset the interest against your taxable income).

*note: I’m not a tax or financial expert so please consult a professional before acting on anything you’ve read here.

Be smart with your money & you’ll soon find that it’ll be much easier to make.

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Affiliate Marketing as a Passive Income

Stuart — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 01:21:53 +0000

The title of this post says it all really. That is the sole number 1 reason I got into Affiliate Marketing. Not to quit my job, but instead to create an entirely separate stream of passive income that I could rely upon in many different circumstances.

Many Affiliate Marketers decide to leave their boss behind relatively early on in the game, perhaps when they’re making $150/day, or $200/day. I read a lot of these types of posts on forums. I have also (unfortunately) see a lot of horror stories. Like Adsense smart pricing for example. I knew a guy who easily was making $1,000/day consistently for about 6 months with Adsense. Life for him was good, that was until Google introduced their Smart Pricing algorithm & his earnings took a nosedive. Now he was left with little more than $100/day & all his eggs in one basket. He now runs a much more diverse range of Affiliate Programs like Textlinkads, Auctionads & Private Advertising.

For me, the thought of doing this was always too risky for me, I like the idea of having security at work yet still having the additional security that I’m making just as much online too. I also find that I work better in the evenings after work than if I was left to my own devices during the day.

It wasn’t easy though, from both angles. I worked hard to build up a stable online income & I also worked hard to get a solid SEO related job that would continually push me & help me learn in parallel with my own projects.

Ask yourself this question. If you’ve given up your Job for Affiliate marketing, start making some good money & then for one reason or another it all goes belly up. Where does that leave you?

Whilst a good Affiliate Marketer will learn to evolve with the times, not everyone is going to find the going that easy.

This is why I think that Affiliate Marketing is the perfect compliment to anyones normal income stream, allowing you to save more money & increase your wealth through various savings schemes, budgeting & smart investing. You could invest your Passive Income in savings accounts, or perhaps even shares or property. In Australia, if you have roughly around $50,000 saved in a normal savings account you’ll pocket $300/month alone in interest. Which is yet another income stream you can rely on.

So next time you think you earn enough to kick your boss out of his own office, step back & think about whether you’re really in the right job first. Secondly, take some time to evaluate how rock solid your affiliate programs are. If most of your income comes from Textlinkads think to yourself:

If textlinkads went out of business tomorrow, could I still make enough money to survive?

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How are your Goals Going?

Stuart — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:20:13 +0000

At the start of the year I set myself some goals for this blog. At the time they seemed quite far away, but I thought I’d give you guys an update of where I am with them.

For the new readers, the goals for Earners Blog were as follows:

Rank #1 in Google for earn money online (Current Rank #22)
Reach at least 300 Feed Subscribers
Average 1000 Unique Visitors per day
Remove all Ads & Sign up Direct Advertisers
Get my readers more Involved
Innovate other Webmasters

Here’s how things are shaping up:

Rank #1 in Google for earn money online (Current Rank #5)
Reach at least 300 Feed Subscribers (Current Subscribers 948)
Average 1000 Unique Visitors per day (Averaging about 700 Currently)
Remove all Ads & Sign up Direct Advertisers (Had enquiries but still looking for Direct Advertisers)
Get my readers more Involved
Innovate other Webmasters (I hope so :p)

I think I’ve almost completed all of them, maybe I should have been a bit more optimistic at the start of the year but I guess I can’t complain. Soooo I guess I’d like to up the stakes a bit now:

Rank #1 in Google for earn money online & affiliate marketing blog (Current Rank #5 & #15)
Reach at least 1,500 Feed Subscribers (Current Subscribers 948)
Average 1,500 Unique Visitors per day (Averaging about 700 Currently)
Remove all Ads & Sign up Direct Advertisers
Expand Earners Blog into an Affiliate Marketing Resource aswell as just the Blog
Review Ad Networks & allow readers to leave comments on them

So thanks to everyone that’s been linking to me with the anchor text earn money online, I’ll crack the #1 spot yet & thanks to everyone that’s been reading & commenting over these past 6 month. You rock.

Oh & before I forget, how are your goals going?

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How much do you earn?

Stuart — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:35:29 +0000

This is the question I probably get asked or emailed the most. Whilst it might be good for a blogger to post or publish their stats online I don’t really feel like it’s necessary. I prefer to write about techniques that can help increase earnings or new ideas that can be implemented & improved, I’m not here to prove anything. It’s also not my full time gig anymore.

So instead of revealing my earnings I thought I’d post a list of which networks I earn a monthly revenue from, this ranges from $20/month upwards to 4k/month & they are in no particular order, some networks may also be affiliate links as SH-Autolink auto fills in the names.

I’ve always preached that you should never be relying on just one revenue source. What happens if you rely solidly on Adsense then one day get banned? Or you rely solidly on a Casino Affiliate then they pass more Anti-Gambling laws (this has happened to me)?

The way I look at things, I’d rather make $200 a month over 40 networks than $8,000 over just one.

Hopefully this list will help some of you get ideas on how to diversify your Affiliate Marketing portfolio, I’ve also added a list at the bottom that includes networks/programs that I’m currently testing for performance:

Adult Friend Finder
Adbrite
Adsense
Amazon (UK, US & Canada)
Auctionads
Aweber
Casinoblasters
Chitika
Commission Junction
Clickbank
Dreamhost
Ebay (UK, US & Australia)
Paydotcom
Textlinkads
USFreeads

Current Affiliate but just actively promoting referrals:

Agloco
Azoogleads
More Niche
Reviewme

Current Networks I’m testing:

Right Media (CPM Advertising)
Kontera

Networks on the List to try:

Copeac
World Niche

I personally wish there were more lists about this about. I LOVE seeing what networks people are using to make their money. Being an affiliate & findings the right programs that work with your sites can be a tough job. I’m currently in the process of putting together a review site for all affiliate programs out there that will hopefully allow people to communicate about positives & negatives with a particular program, I’ll announce it on the blog here when it’s complete

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Set yourself goals for 2007

Stuart — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 11:35:48 +0000

First of all I’d like to wish all of you a very merry christmas & a happy new year. I had a great christmas this year, it’s been my second away from my family & I must say it’s a strange feeling not being with your loved ones at christmas.

That aside I’m sure we all have plenty to look forward to in 2007. So I’m taking this opportunity to talk quickly about setting yourself goals for the new year.

This involves writing down things you’d like to achieve, try or change in your everyday life.

While it’s important to be realistic it also doesn’t hurt to try & be unrealistic too. Sometimes you need a kick in the ass to make the unrealistic possible.

Goals could be anything in your life such as:

Work
Your Websites
Your Family Life
Personal Goals
Lifestyle Goals
Hobbies
Sporting Goals

If you write something down it’s much easier to achieve than if you simply have something in your head. I really don’t know why this is but it’s true, but I’ve set myself goals for Earners Blog & for other websites, I’ve also set myself goals for my day job & then at the end of the year I can see how well I’ve done. I guess I’ll share with you what I’d like to achieve with Earners Blog over the next year:

Rank #1 in Google for Earn Money Online (Current Rank #22)
Reach at least 300 Feed Subscribers
Average 1000 Unique Visitors per day
Remove all Ads & Sign up Direct Advertisers
Get my readers more Involved
Innovate other Webmasters

Number 1 isn’t really to achieve anything other than show it’s possible to rank for anything you want within a short space of time (and perhaps to outsource some of my SEO skillz beyond my day job).
This may not be the most exciting tip I’ve written in the past few months, but trust me. If you just write some things down you may just find them a lot easier to achieve

So here’s to another year. I hope you all have as much success with your websites & blogs as I hope to have.

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