Those of you who have done any advertising on Facebook Ads know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. Sometimes it just seems like the Facebook Ads review team is smokin some kind of funky dope or tossing back the hooch while clicking through ad submissions. For those of you who are unaware of what I’m talking about, let me give you some quick background. Then I’m going to reveal the ONE THING you need to be successful making money online no matter what the method you choose.

Facebook is a monster traffic source. They have taken over the #1 spot for most trafficked site on the Internet. Hitwise.com has shown Facebook at the top spot for several months now…even over Google. Google themselves are reporting over 550,000,000 unique visitors a month for Facebook. That represents a heck of a lot of traffic for whatever offer, business or service you want to promote. It’s an affiliate marketer’s dream come true.

PLUS, Facebook Ads is drop dead simple to use. You can use your existing Facebook account, fill out a few fields, write some short copy, upload an image and you’re set. Targeting is reasonable and stats are pretty decent. There are plenty of people killing it with Facebook ads to affiliate offers alone.

BUUUTTTT…there’s one massive pain in the butt thing about the whole process. The review/approval process. This is where I’m convinced Facebook has a hooch n’ hash provider plan for it’s review team. There’s just no rhyme or reason to the process. You attempt to follow the guidelines Facebook has published by writing compliant ads, yet you still get bitch slapped.

Case in point is a campaign I built on Monday around a credit card offer. I targeted females in the US in 5 different age ranges. I had 2 versions of ad copy and about 15 images. When all was said and done, I had submitted about 160 ads total. Keep in mind though, that it was just split testing those items. The copy was more than compliant as were the images. No question there. YET…initially about half of the ads were disapproved. Then, over time, another half of those were disapproved.

The strange thing is, I still have about 30 to 40 of the ads running in the Facebook campaign. Some of the ads that were disapproved were done so AFTER the ads had already been served up and even generated some clicks. It seems to me that a non-compliant ad worthy of disapproval would be the same across the board. Yet the exact same ad was sometimes approved and other times disapproved.

Unfortunately, this is just the haphazard nature of Facebook and their ad review team. Everyone has experienced it. Part of the Facebook Advertising gig I suppose.

A valuable lesson can be found in all of this though. In fact, it’s so important, it could easily be deemed the MOST important lesson you can learn in your journey to making money online success. It’s one single word: PERSISTENCE!

Yep, persistence. That’s the single thing that separates the online successes from the failures. Sure experience can make your efforts more effective and your life a little easier. Vats full of extra cash sitting around the house also helps. But at the end of the day, if you’re persistent, you will be successful. It’s near impossible to not be. Now I’m certainly not advocating you willy nilly piss money away, but do it persistently. But I AM saying you need to buckle down and keep trying.

If you’re a seasoned veteran, keep at it. You’ve likely already learned the persistence lesson and it’s paying off for you.

If you’re relatively new to affiliate marketing or making money online, you need to heed my advice. Just because something isn’t going the way you want it to, don’t give up. If you’ve tried Facebook and it’s “just too hard”, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t give up. Keep trying. You will find success. Test everything. Try thinking about things in a new light, Take different approaches, but keep trying.

The word of the day…say it with me…persistence!

Curious about how much money I make from Blueverse.com and from what sources? Here’s where I make money online from blogging at Blueverse.com alone. These earnings are for June 2010:

Banners – $80

Adsense – $19.39

LinkXL – $??? (locked out of my account for some reason)

Total: $99.39

Top Commenters

1. Harshit Singhal
2. Charms
3. locke
4. Costumes
5. Get Backlinks
6. Laptop Briefcase
7. textbooks
8. Neus_Gator
9. PS3
10. Aer conditionat

Want a permanent link on Blueverse.com? It’s easier than you think. Just post some comments and shoot for the Top Commentators list. The top 10 Commenters for the month get mentioned along with a link to their site.

Thoughts and what I’m working on

It’s crazy how fast the time goes sometimes. One day you’re starting the month, the next day the month is gone. Too many good things in the hopper for me these days.

I’ve still been pounding away on a couple of projects and working hard to learn some new things over the last month. That has severely eaten into my time to update Blueverse and quite honestly some of my desire to do so. When you’re in learning mode, it’s sometimes tough to get motivated to write something.

One thing I did manage to do in June was take a hard look at Blueverse, from design to content. I made a list of a number of things I plan on updating and changing. I’ve already started on those, but it will be a pretty big relaunch of the site.

If you’re interested in some exposure, shoot me a guest post and, if the content is decent and relevant, we’ll get it posted up here for you with a link to your site. I’ve done a number of guest posts on other blogs and it always helps with traffic. Both short and long term.

Here’s the monthly blog earnings for May 2010:

Banners – $30

Adsense – $36.98

LinkXL – $15.00

Total: $81.98

Top Commenters

1. Inner Game
2. Andrew@BloggingGuide
3. Anna
4. Sally
5. Laptop Briefcase
6. Online Printer
7. pandora beads
8. ??????????? ??????
9. Matthew Proman
10. mikeroosa

Want a permanent link on Blueverse.com? It’s easier than you think. Just post some comments and shoot for the Top Commentators list. The top 10 Commenters for the month get mentioned along with a link to their site.

Thoughts and what I’m working on

Been a whirlwind of a month. I’ve put a bunch of projects online that I’ve been working on or thinking about over the last 6 months. Trying to be more action oriented rather than just an info collector.

One of the projects I focused on for Blueverse.com was my Shoemoney System Review. I spent 30 days working on the system and writing up a daily review. It was a big waste of time and was downright boring. I haven’t been back into the system in probably 3 weeks. I need to jump back in, watch the new videos available and give a little update. Honestly, I’m just having a hard time finding the motivation since the 30 day project was such a bust.

I have a few things on tap to cover this month and hope to do some more reviews as well as a couple of how to guides. As always, let me know if there’s something you’d like me to cover. Also, if anyone would like to gain some exposure for themselves, feel free to send in a guest post.

I’ve been following John Chow at JohnChow.com for a couple of years now. I remember back in the early days of his Make Money Online blog experiment when he was only pulling in a couple grand a month (yeah, I know only a couple grand!). I got to the point where every month I started looking forward to his Monthly Income Report. I found it both inspiring and motivating.

I’ll admit, I was a bit skeptical about the Make Money Online book he and Michael Kwan wrote together. Quite honestly, I find most of these books by authors with another outlet for their content, such as a blog, simply a regurgitation of the same content you can find on their blog. I thought the same thing about Darren Rowse’s Problogger book. That’s both the beauty and curse of books like this.

Make Money Online is not going to revolutionize your life. It IS in fact much of what you can find on JohnChow.com, HOWEVER, I would still recommend it and think it’s worth reading. This applies to newbies and seasoned online money makers alike. Books like this provide great reminders, pointers and if nothing else, renewed inspiration to get off your butt and make something happen.

This is what Make Money Online did for me. If you’re a newbie, you’ll want to read it cover to cover. If you’ve been in the game for a bit, you may want to skip portions. I particularly enjoyed the tips found in chapters 4, 5 and 6, although again, they were more reminders than anything. No matter who you are, you’ll find a gem or two that will make it worth your time.

My favorite chapter was probably chapter 10 that talked about optimizing for Google Adsense. I’ve been a big Adsense poo poo’er for about 2 years, but now I’m starting to change my tune. I’m actually seeing a trend back towards Adsense and seeing it as a solid way to earn money from the content you create, especially for sites and blogs with smaller numbers of visitors. Make Money Online provided some good things to try.

Overall, as I mentioned earlier, I’d recommend Make Money Online to everyone. It’s inexpensive. Only $10.85 on Amazon here: Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul. It reads quick and is well worth your time. Check it out today!

Tonight the kids and I decided to swing through McDonalds for a CDC (chocolate dipped cone) after dinner. That’s what happens when we’re on our own for dinner while mom is out with the gals.

As we were pulling out of the parking lot, I saw a couple of homeless looking guys, with a dog (why is it that about 50% of homeless people have dogs?), standing on the sidewalk. They’d staked out a little high traffic spot and had the usual homeless person sign. Instead of the standard “Will work for food” or “Hungry, anything will help”, theirs read “McHungry”.

I have no idea why, but after a good chuckle, all I could think about was how creative that was both in the sign verbiage as well as their location. Didn’t make me want to give them money, but it did get me to thinking about my affiliate marketing efforts.

In an effort to turn the thoughts into useful action, I tried to summarize things into several takeaway points.

1. Don’t use canned creatives, create your own. Any time you start promoting a new product, especially if you’re on the newer side to affiliate marketing, it’s very VERY tempting to just use the creatives provided. In my opinion, that’s one of the worst things you can do. The reason being it’s likely every body and their dog (yes, even the homeless people with dogs) will have tried to use the same banners. Affiliate marketing is all about standing out. Differentiating yourself from everyone else. Breaking through the noise. So why in the world would you start things off with the same old stuff everyone else is using. I’ll admit, I’m guilty of this same thing.

You need to make your own creatives. You may not have any skills. You may not have any confidence. But even if you think what you’ve done sucks, it’ll give you a shot at being different.

2. Take the creative approach with where you display your ads. I love that these 2 guys were standing out in front of McDonald’s tonight. We’ve become accustomed to seeing people on freeway exit ramps and busy intersections. This caused me to notice them. For us, where can we pitch our offers that would be outside the norm? Nursing home services on a mommy blog? Baby goods on men’s site? Gourmet food on a diet blog? Try something different. Step outside the norm and take a chance.

Lots of affiliates already do this, but if you haven’t tried it, it can be tough to get your brain to think that way. Our natural tendency is again to go with the norms on where we promote offers. The problem is you have to work all that much harder to differentiate yourself, just like with your creatives. When you go against the flow, it’s easier to get noticed. Sure it may be tougher to sell to particular audiences, but you also may be pleasantly surprised at what people respond to.

3. Step outside your offer promotion comfort zone. We get used to promoting certain types of offers or promoting to particular demographics and it’s healthy to get challenged once in a while. Mix things up a bit. Try an over saturated market like dating or ring tones. Challenge yourself a bit and see what you can do with it. The two homeless guys weren’t breaking the bank, at least when we saw them, but they were trying a new tactic to raise some capital. A different place and message.

I’m sure there’s more you could pull from this, but that’s just what came to mind while driving home tonight after seeing those guys. I almost went back to take a picture for this post, but the kids were ready to get home. It’s funny what little moments in life can teach you sometimes.

First of all, let me apologize for such a boring 30 days of posts. I never would have undertaken this project on the blog had I known it wasn’t going to provide for good content. That said, here’s my wrap-up of my 30 day experiment.

It’s kind of funny because just yesterday I got an email from Shoemoney asking for my experiences so far. I thought I’d post here what I sent them since it summarizes my thoughts. Before we get to that though, here are my official stats:

Total Time Spent: 15 hours, 15 minutes

Total $ Made: $0

Overall Value (1 to 10): 1

One of the questions that I’ve been asked quite a bit the last week is whether or not I’ll continue. I will be continuing on for another 30 days and plan to post weekly if there is enough content for the week. I’ll keep you up to date. Maybe month 2 is the one where everything breaks loose.

My Shoemoney Story response:

City, State
Portland, Oregon

Income before ShoeMoney System and where you are at now. (roughly)
Income Before SMS:  $0
Income Now from SMS:  $0
This is a new, segregated project for me, so I’m not including any of my current online income.  I’ve kept all of my efforts to make money from the techniques taught over the last 30 days separate.

Date you started with the ShoeMoney System
4/14/10

The part in the SMS that really was a turning point for you.
Unfortunately there hasn’t been one. I was really hoping it would come, but there haven’t even been any “aha” moments. I had one “hmmm” moment with the eBay arbitrage videos, but that’s it.

4.  What you would say to your friends about the ShoeMoney System.
If I was basing my thoughts purely on the last 30 days, I’d tell them to not waste their time or money. The videos have come in at a VERY painfully slow pace. I logged into the system every single day since signing up and have watched every video I could get my hands on including all the tutorial videos (all of which I already knew how to do, but I was hoping for a nugget here or there). About a week and a half into it, I asked if I could get videos at a faster pace or get jumped ahead, but was only given the option to pay more money. It’s been a very disappointing experience for me and I would have just given up after about 2 weeks had I not committed to a 30 Day review on my blog.

I paid in advance, so I’ll continue on with the system, but I definitely couldn’t recommend it, even for newbies, unless they’re ready to pay for a snail’s pace of content. It’s also pretty eye opening to now realize that many of the gurus pimping the Shoemoney System seem to be making blind recommendations in the interest of just collecting some commissions. I’m a Shoemoney fan as much as anyone else, but I wouldn’t blindly recommend this system at this point without some disclosure.

Time Spent: 5 minutes

$ Made: $0

Main Focus: eBay Arbitrage

Today’s Value (1 to 10): 1

Overall Value (1 to 10): 1

My Thoughts: Today is the final day of my 30 Day experiment. Only new video today was again one I’d already seen. It was an interview with a guy who built a business selling stuff on eBay. His unique situation is that he’s got exclusive rights for selling several products on eBay. He’s got the arbitrage system down and has found a great niche. Unfortunately nothing practical to apply.

I officially made $0 during the 30 days. I’m figuring the people who made money from the system either did it after the first 30 days or made it in referral fees for the system. Is it possible to make money from the Shoemoney System? Sure. Do you need to spend $200 to get some secret tips to make it happen? Not even close in my opinion.

If you want to check out the Shoemoney System, you can see it here: Shoemoney System. They’ve got a 60 day Money Back Guarantee, so it’s literally no risk.

30 Day Project Disclosure: I’m a paying member of the Shoemoney System, just like everyone else. I’m not being compensated in any way for my review, nor do I have access to any special resources or techniques on the Shoemoney System. I am an affiliate of the Shoemoney System and make a commission if anyone clicks the links on Blueverse.com to sign up. The thoughts, results and reviews are my own.