I didn’t quite reach the $4,000 level this month but I was well over $3,000 which is a first for me.

Note: I count the paypal payment received during the month and affiliate commissions generated during that month (but usually paid out later) when I calculate my squidoo earnings for you guys. I realize this is terrible accounting and I do it different for my internal bookkeeping, but it allows me to give you guys a quick and dirty number of what I made.

My Top Programs in approximate order:

Pepperjam
eBay
Squidoo Revenue Share
CJ

The Payouts from Squidoo for June hit this week as well, and I got crushed. I was out of town getting married and didn’t have the time to pay to lenses for about the last half of the month. No big deal, it was well worth paying that price . I expect my numbers from adsense to jump back up next month.

I’ve updated the adsense payout tiers for squidoo as well … I really need to make a graph to show the payout changes over time… maybe I’ll do that today along with the other bajillion things that I have to do… hrmmm….

Anyway, I hope your month was excellent also and August is even better for you!

As my earnings numbers get bigger, I’m going to necessarily have to get slightly more vague as to the exact dollar amount I made but I can say that in June I was well into the $2,000s with my total earnings.

The programs I made the most money from (in order of earnings) are:

Pepperjam ($10 Sign up Bonus right now, btw)
Ebay
Squidoo
Commission Junction

The Squidoo earnings tiers went up this month after dropping slightly last month. This was the first month that the ‘Glam’ ads where supposed to be a part of the payout. Since each of the top 2 payout tiers did go up by 10% or more this month in what is usually a slower time of year, I’m not complaining.

All and all, it was definitely another successful month, now to try and beat it again this month!

How were your Squidoo earnings this month?

How does PepperJam stack up?

All of the graphics and interface on the entire program continually blow me away. It’s fast, easy to use, and well presented. The black background takes some people a while to get used to, but I actually enjoy a darker background color in many cases.

Grade: A

I notice that clicks and impressions are reported within 2-3 hours very consistently. This is faster than the likes of CJ, but not quite real time. However, I have not had any stats changed or revised either, meaning the reporting is pretty spot on. Real time reporting would be really cool, but this is hard to pull off with product based advertisers I think.

Grade: B+

Pepperjam opened with something around 100 offers (someone correct me if I’m way off here) and I think they’ve added something like 150 new advertisers since they opened. While not adding advertisers at a rate of 3-5 a day like CJ is, Pepperjam is coming close. There is a very high percentage of exclusive offers, with everything from the Star Wars store to Jelly Belly. They’ve got some very niche products which are cool.

One big drawback is that they have a ton of product based affiliates yet their product feeds leave a little to be desired (get to that in a second). Some affiliates do allow deep linking (where you link to any page on the advertiser’s site) which allows for some cool ideas when building lenses to promote things…

Grade: B

I’d say less than 20% of the product based affiliates (those that payout as a % of sale) have product feeds on PepperJam. The feed can only be downloaded as a gigantic CSV file instead of by individual advertiser. Many of the product feeds have broken image links. This is probably the weakest part of Pepperjam’s platform and I know it’s something they are planning on improving. Right now, however, it’s hard to use because the data is spotty at best and from limited affiliates.

Grade:C

PepperJam has a little talk bubble next to each advertiser that lights up whenever the affiliate manager for that program is online. I’ve used this several times to ask questions about payouts, ideas, and lots of other things. It’s absolutely fantastic! I’ve also had nearly all of my direct e-mails returned promptly with personal responses from people that can actually answer my question. This actually let me to come back to PepperJam a bit after not doing much with it the first month.

Grade: A

Every program I’ve seen migrate over from Commission Junction to PepperJam has increased their payout by close to 50% or more. In general, their payouts are pretty high, and if you talk to the affiliate managers and tell them about your marketing plans for the advertiser, you may be able to get a little bump. They’ve been very generous so far with increasing payouts on may account for advertisers I do well with.

I haven’t received a bank transfer from PepperJam yet so I can’t comment on that area of the payout cycle.

Grade: A-

Depending on a few different things, PepperJam could very well evolve to be a bigger part of my affiliate program strategy than Commission Junction currently is. If you haven’t signed up for them yet, they are worth giving a try.

Here is my super sneaky PepperJam sign-up link.

If you have already signed up, what have your experiences been so far? I’m interested to hear from others who have been using PepperJam the last few months.

For the month of April, all the links for both Commission Junction and eBay will be live. All the links you have switched over to the new ebay program will earn an extra 5%! At the end of the month, your CJ links all walk the plank.

I’m working on modifying my current Ebay RSS Feed Generator. I will have it fully updated to the new eBay RSS feeds hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Ebay has now included the ability to add SID codes to RSS feeds which is a huge step forward. Due to this development, I’m considering releasing my feed generator as just an easier and faster way to generate eBay Links.

Go apply for the new program at ebaypartnernetwork.com

If I release the feed generator for free would people use it?

-The Captain

1) The Squidoo eBay module will be fine. Gil stated in the forums today that Squidoo has been working with eBay to make transition as painless as possible. Yay Gil!

2) Your RSS Feeds may need updating. If you are using a version of my Ebay RSS Feed Generator, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered and will be able to automatically update your feeds from my end. If you create your own CJ/eBay RSS feeds, you will need to go back and change each one according to the new links that eBay releases.

The Moral of the story? Use Squidoo’s Ebay feed generator…. or mine .

-The Captain

February was a really good month for me, especially the last two weeks. Starting off with Mardi Gras and Valentines Day, my sales were very flat for the first 15 days or so of the month. After that, they really started to take off.

Here’s the recap:

Squidoo Payout ($$ Earned in Jan. and Paid in March):$204.00
CJ (Earned in Feb. – Paid in March) : $480.18

Total: $684.18

Lenses Built : 32 (Weird..this is the same as the number of lenses I built Last Month….)

Total Lenses (as of 3/11/08) : 331

Where the lenses fall: (These numbers should be read as �the number of lenses in the top X,XXX on my dashboard�)
Top 1,000 : 9
Top 5,000 : 30
Top 10,000 : 62
Top 20,000 : 137

Reflections:

The LR numbers above are probably a little low as the LR on some of my top lenses dropped in the last few days through a delayed LR update from Squidoo as well as a number of other factors. Not a big deal as I expect my ‘top-line’ growth to pick back up as we head towards the end of the month.

‘Bottom-line’ growth of my lenses was quite good. the number I have in the top 20,000 increased by 6.2% to 137 from 129. I would really like to see bottom line growth of 10% a month but that is getting harder to do as the sheer number of lenses I have in the top 20k and in my account increases.

Note: I still make sales and significant money from lenses with LR below 20,000. I look at the lenses in my account with an LR of under 20k as having a reasonable shot at hitting one of the top two pay tiers (I know I haven’t updated the Squidconomy lens yet, it’s coming!) and so I measure them accordingly.

For a short month, CJ really pulled through. I had almost zero sales going into Valentines Day. Coming out of Valentines day, CJ really took off and I was able to beat my best month ever (last month) by 20% .

My Squidoo earnings dropped a bit as there was no big commission boost from Christmas sitting on my dashboard. Sales in Jan were absolutely pathetic (I think my dash made like $6) but they picked up a bit in February and March is looking even better.

So far this month, it’s looking like I have a good shot at breaking the $1,000 mark for the first time, which is very exciting.

How was your Payday this month?

Here’s the Breakdown:

Squidoo Payout: $247.98
CJ: $401.69

Total: $649.67

Lenses Built : 32 (woefully short of the number I need to get to 1,000 lenses)

Total Lenses (as of 2/7/08) : 283

Where the lenses fall: (These numbers should be read as ‘the number of lenses in the top X,XXX on my dashboard’)
Top 1,000 : 9
Top 5,000 : 36
Top 10,000 : 69
Top 20,000 : 129

Reflections:

A massive month for the dashboard for me (relatively) and a record breaking month on CJ set for an awesome payday this month. The trek onwards and upwards to $1k a month is continuing. It really can be done folks, I firmly believe it.

I updated the Squidoo Payout Tiers breakdown to show what LRs paid out what this month for those interested.

I grew my number of lenses by 12% or so in January, which isn’t bad. However, my number of top lenses stayed reasonably static. This isn’t because my lenses are getting the same amount of traffic, in fact my traffic did awesome in January. The competition to get into the top 2,000 is getting pretty tough and the top 10k is no slouch either.

How’d you make out this payday?

I’ve finally found a way to convert my training videos to a format that would upload on YouTube. If anyone is interested in seeing them again, or putting them on your lenses (hint, hint )� They can be found under Captain Squidoo.

The Next series of videos will be on using CJ to maximize your Squidoo Earnings. From the feedback I’ve gotten, this seems to be a subject area that many people wish to know more about.

The Newsletter Subscribers will get the first crack at the first video ‘Commission Junction Orientation’ , so make sure you’ve signed up. (psst.. the form is at the top of the left sidebar)

-The Captain

Today’s Lens Breakdown: Nov 8, 2007

# lenses in:

Top 100: 0

Top 1,000: 7

Top 10,000: 72

Top 20,000: 128

Total Lenses: 178

Iif you want to learn to make $300/mo. or more from Squidoo as well, make sure and subscribe to my RSS feed and stop by to check us out in the Chat Room. There’s always something new to learn about and we keep on top of it like no-one else.

-The Captain

1. Every Month your lens earns money from Adsense and SquidOffers. This money is distributed on a three-tiered system to all of the lensmasters.
2. When you put a ‘money maker’ module on your lenses and someone buys something from it, you earn a commission. This is the basic concept of being an affiliate for a product you support. You promote the product, if it sells, you get a part of the proceeds.

However, what do you do when the modules aren’t enough?

Often times when I make a lens, I like to change the look and appearance as much as possible. Additionally, I create a lot of finance related lenses as a result of my blog The Grumpstump. There are virtually zero financial products to be found on eBay, Amazon, or the Superstore outside of books. While promoting books are good, when I discuss Stock Trading or Budgeting I like to recommend a product that I use.

This is where Affiliate Programs come in.

There are several affiliate programs out there – some are very good and some are very bad.

I personally use Commission Junction (Squidoo affiliate sales from modules all run through Commission Junction as well) and have had excellent results the past few months.

Many people use Clickbank. Clickbank’s products are mostly software tools and e-books. I have not used them but some Lensmasters swear by it.

Linkshare is a third network and is similar to Commission Junction (CJ) in type of products offered. It is a smaller network than CJ� but has a different mix of advertisers. I haven’t actively promoted Linkshare to date either.

If you take a look and don’t like any of them, you can always head over to the Digital Point Forums and see all the other ones out there.

What do you Do with these?

For now, just take a look around and sign up for an affiliate program that suits you. Personal Affiliates are an overall part of The Captain’s Strategy along with the affiliates offered through Squidoo. In the future when CJ or Commission Junction is referenced in regards to lens design, now you know that this means ‘affiliate program’.

-The Captain