What is so different about this contest? As many probably know, John Chow is one of the top well know internet marketers and his money making blog gets thousands of visitors daily. According to his own words monthly revenues he generates from the blog are ranging from 25 to 40+ thousands dollars. And here is an example why…

Checking out his blog today I came across the announcement about John Chow Market Leverage Affiliate Challenge. The rules are simple – you have to sign up as a new affiliate with Market Leverage through the link provided and make as much money as you can from this program in the month of August. Top earner will get sparkling new iPod Touch and a $200 ML American Express Reward Card. In addition first 10 new affiliates who generates $10 in commissions will get a bonus – 2GB USB flash pen.

Lets analyze for a second what is so interesting about this contest and why John Chow is a very smart marketer and his blog is making so much money…

First of all to participate in the contest you have to be NEW affiliate of Market Leverage and sign up through provided link. John explains that as necessary step to track standings of contest participants… In reality – Market Leverage is a two-tier affiliate network and for every referral John will get paid life-time 5% commission of those new publishers earnings.

Now John is awarding his prise to the affiliate who actually makes most money for HIM. With his popularity I have no doubts there will be at least few hundreds new sign ups with Market Leverage network. Yes, he may have to spend little bit money on the prise (that I seriously doubt) but in the long run even if small part of those new affiliates will continue earn money – they will be earning for him…

John also didn’t forget to capitalize on the existing affiliates. This time is not for share of earnings but for advertising and traffic… Who is not qualified to participate in the main challenge have a chance to win Flip camera ruffle. For single entry – just comment on the affiliate challenge post and get 5 bonus entries if write an article about his contest (of course with a back link to JohnChow.com and Market Leverage). Do you think few hundreds (if not thousands) related content links and returning visitors commenting on the blog worth the price of Flip Mino? And I am not even talking about all those new RSS subscribers who will want to follow the progress of both challenges just in case they win…

I am 99% sure for running this huge promotional campaign which for sure will bring huge amount of new affiliates, Market Leverage will reward John in some way in addition to the potential life-time share of earnings from subaffiliates.

What conclusion can we make from the John Chow Market Leverage Affiliate Challenge?

The biggest money are made NOT by promoting individual products, but by recruiting an army of other affiliate marketers to do promotion and than share theirs profits with you. The hardest part is motivating people to earn more money (for you)…

If you are good on what you doing, your website has quality unique content and you are generating good amount of traffic – most likely you will not have problems finding advertiser to pay you directly for ad space.
For majority of new websites it’s not the case and the most common website monetization tactic is inserting Pay-Per-Click advertisement feeds (like Adsense, YPN, Kontera) or banners from affiliate networks. Now your earnings will be determined by how many people click on your ads.

Can you make money with PayPerClick ads? Lets take a deeper look…

It will depend a lot on the theme (or niche) of your website. For popular competitive niche there will be a lot of advertisers bidding for the keywords and paying higher price per click to be in the top spot. In this case every click may earn you few dollars. For less popular subjects competition will be much lower and earnings per click could be just a few cents.

Second determining factor for making money from PayPerClick ads would be placement those ads in high visible spots but in the same time not affecting visitors browsing experience. If it’s a text links – ALWAYS adjust colors to match main theme of the website.
I am not going to go into details about proper ad placements – there are tons of tips and recommendations on each and every ad network.

Let’s get back to the main subject – how theme of the website affects amount of money you may potentially earn… For you to get paid people have to click on your ads. Who is most likely to click on those ads or content links? People who doesn’t know that it is an ad or not aware (or don’t care) that you are getting paid for those clicks. The worst possible category of visitors in the view of bringing you any kind of commissions are WEBMASTERS! No matter how perfect you place ads on the website and blend it in with the rest of the content – they will see them and will go extra mile not to click on it (even if they are very interested in this advertisement).
In other words less tech savvy is the visitor – more likely he will click on the banner or text link.

Next time you get an idea for a new website keep in mind these little tips:

- make sure there is a large potential market in this niche. Do some Google search for related keywords and see how many results there are.

- check few search results pages deep and pay attention how many different advertisers you see in the sponsored boxes: more often you see the same ads – less advertisers are bidding for these search terms and less money you will get paid per click…

- try to target less tech savvy people (kids, women…) and STAY AWAY from anything webmaster related!