One cool thing about internet marketing and advertising is that it is always growing, changing, and adapting based off advertisers needs and the latest technology.  If you follow new technology pretty closely, you might have noticed a new type of advertising which was specifically designed to attract your readers attention.   I, of course, am talking about non other than Peel Away Ads.   Though Peel Away Ads is not designed specifically for WordPress blogs, it works great on WordPress and you’ve probably seen many of the top bloggers using it on their blogs with great success.

Basically what Peel Away Ads is designed to do is draw a readers attention to the top right corner of your blog, then when someone clicks on it, they are shown your advertisement.   I’m sure you can imagine the possibilities for this, ranging from promoting your affiliates to actually promoting internal pages of your website.   If you are an affiliate marketer and want to use this as a strategy on your landing pages, you could do that as well, even if you aren’t using WordPress!

Obviously there are a lot of reasons to love Peel Away Ads, but probably the best is the price!   Right now it only costs $37.00 and comes with a money back guarantee, making it a no-risk purchase.

Since I can’t really share my niche sites with my readers, and I’ve covered most of the basic affiliate marketing strategies that I wanted to talk about, I figured instead why don’t I provide you with an actual example of a site I’ve been working on.  This of course is not a niche site, but instead an actual website I’ve developed.

While finishing my WordPress eBook over the past few weeks, I’ve also been throwing together a new informational/reference website named Iowa Guide, which is in the process of being monetized with affiliate marketing.

Probably the first thing you’ll notice when visiting the website is the incredible logo (courtesy of Mark) and the beautiful theme it uses (at least in my opinion).  Recently Brian Gardner released a new City Revolution theme which was designed specifically for these types of portal websites.   One of my favorite things about this theme is that it contains a drop-down menu for both the pages and the categories, which isn’t something you see very often.  It also does a great job of maximizing screen real estate, which is something I really appreciate.

Why I picked this domain? I am fortunate to own a number of GEO domain names in both the dot com and dot org extension.   As someone that is located in Iowa, I felt why not start with developing one from Iowa?  I already know my way around pretty well, and live near most of the states attractions and other things I’d want to write about.  Besides, now if I were to visit a restaurant, hotel, or other landmark and then write a review of it, that is a business expense!! 

For this particular domain, I was unable to obtain the dot com extension, but I’ve found that with Geography-based domain names, sometimes you have an advantage with dot org.   Dot org has developed a strong trust with internet users because it is traditionally used to house non-profit organizations.  With dot org, readers feel more trustful because org domains are typically informational and usually aren’t trying to sell you something.

In my next post, I’ll be talking about how I’m monetizing this domain name with affiliate marketing.

Last month I published the second of my monthly Affiliate Income Report series with my June Affiliate Income Report, which is basically a report of how much income is being generated by me via affiliate marketing.  As is the case on most blogs that do similar reports each month, this has grown to be one of my most popular posts, so I figured I would continue it again this month.

July Affiliate Marketing Income Report

So, how’d I do?

• E-Junkie - $1916.60 ($1279.10)
• Clickbank - $181.90 ($159.64)
• Commission Junction - $0.00 ($4.79)
• Amazon Associates - $10.50 ($0.54)
• eBay Partner Network - $122.88 ($195.31)
• Other Miscellaneous Affiliates - $776.00 ($398.35)

• Gross Income: $3,007.88 ($2,037.73)
• Advertising Costs/Banners Purchased: $680.20 ($108.00)
• Total Net Income: $2,327.68 ($1,929.73)

**All numbers in quotes represent the previous months income figures**

July was a very interesting month for me personally.   I dropped promoting some of my BANS sites to see what would happen and it definitely made a difference in a bad way.  BANS is still generating great income though without purchasing PPC income and everything after the first three months has all been pure profit.   I always said that my goal with BANS was to get domains to pay for their own renewals so I can grow my domain portfolio (sitting at about 250 right now).   Going forward, my plan is to take my BANS income and start renewing the domains I want to keep now so that I won’t have so many come up for renewal all at once.  Google also trusts domains renewed out more than a year or two so this may have a positive influence on my site rankings as well.

The other thing you’ll probably notice right away is that both my E-Junkie income and my miscellaneous affiliate accounts both went up quite a bit.   My hope is that this is a trend that will continue, though I haven’t been able to pinpoint which changes made the big difference.   If I figure that out, I will share my findings in a future post!

You’ll also notice the expenses went up quite a bit.   For one, I had a number of domains come up for renewal.  Also, due to my lack of design abilities, I have been purchasing some new logos a few of my sites, and I also managed to make a couple significant domain name purchases that I am REALLY excited about.  I won’t be releasing any details at this time, but I have possession of the domains and will let you know when there are details to announce.

Expectations for August’s Online Income

I mentioned last month that I had a big project I was working on through July, and a couple of days ago you probably saw my announcement of that project, which was the Success with WordPress eBook.  Sales have been good so far and those that have read the eBook have given it some great reviews, so I hope this trend will continue (this income wasn’t disclosed above because it isn’t affiliate generated income).   Remember, even if you don’t want to purchase the book, you can make some extra income by promoting Success with WordPress.  See the affiliate page for additional information.

For the month of August, my hope is simply to get these two new domains developed and started generating some income.  In the meantime, I’m hoping my existing affiliate sites and blogs will continue to generate a similar income to July’s income.