Jetlite Affiliate program launched

JetLite , a subsidiary of Jet Airways has launched an affiliate program with  Shoogloo.com. It will offer commission on every sale made. Those who want to participate can join shoogloo and then choose Jetlite among many other offers like Cleartrip and Yatra to promote. This is a CPA affiliate system where an affiliate gets paid for every Action  performed. Shoogloo which is a pretty new affiliate network is offering help in all respects like learning about affiliate model, landing page, campaigns etc.

Best Indian Affiliate Programs

Making money Online is a new subject for India and we are only getting started. As people get more comfortable spending online with stricter norms on who can trade and who does not, things will get more lucrative. Affiliate programs make huge money in the USA/ Eurozone Markets for their affliates but in India things are more calm right now. I hope more serious people will come to this industry who have a longer term business view on this market and not a 'Get Rich Quick' thinking.While a google search on Indian Affiliate Programs will throw up thousands of results, I would stick with a few well known Affiliate programs in India.


Here is a list of Best Indian Affiliate Programs/ Indian Affiliate Networks.

Shoogloo.com - Launched by Indiatimes.com in collaboration with Online Media Group OMG of UK. Its an online shopping site which will provide banners/links to display on your site. Every sale you generate will get you commission.

Making someone buy something online is not an easy job.If all you are planning to do is place a banner on top of your website and wait for the cheques in the mail, I'm afraid they will never come. To succeed here you need a website based on the products you are planning to sell. If you plan to sell online cameras, Post something about cameras. Compare a few products and give your judgement. Posting a TEXT LINK works better than banners. So you can have 20 posts about 20 different products with 20 TEXT links to the specific products you reviewed or wrote about. Join Shoogloo HERE

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Matrimonial Affiliates - All major players in this market have their own affiliate programs. All of them pay for every free profile created and also offer revenue sharing when a free member becomes a paid/premium member. However to make money with these affiliate , go read this earlier post of mine where I've described the strategy.

• Shaadi.com - 25 Rs for Free Profile. 40% Revenue sharing
• Jeevansaathi.com - 10Rs for Free profile and upto 40% revenue sharing
• Bharat Matrimony - Check with the site.

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HY Affiliates - Join this program if you want to promote financial products like Forex trading software. Basically you have to make people join their Forex trading programs like Etoro.com ( much like our Sharekhan.com ). You get paid every time they make their first deposit. They offer both CPA and Revenue sharing model. CPA is cost per acquisition, where you get paid for very member who deposits and there is no revenue sharing. In the other model, you get only the share of the revenue.

I think people are making decent money from these forex based affiliates ( not necessarily HY-Affiliates). Only thing is that you have to research things like current Brokerage rates, joining fees and other charges and explain to your readers why they should start trading in Forex and join the program you are telling them to join is their best option because of its low brokerage/ no start up costs etc. Having a smart, business type site with lots of financial posts will help. Join here

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Clix galore - While this site has a lots of products you can sell, It is the only site I have come across wanting a deposit from you ($75 ). I don't feel all that great when a affiliate program asks for money. So If you are willing to risk your money , go ahead and give them a try . Also I encountered a expired site certificate while surfing their site. Not a great way to develop trust. Join here

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Makemytrip & Yatra.com Affiliates.

These TRAVEL Affiliates are also a nice way to make a regular income.They will convert well for you If you have a travel dedicated site. Commission structure for the two are as follows

Makemytrip.com

# Domestic Flights : For LCCs, 3% on Base Fare per Booking; For FSCs, 5% on Base Fare per Booking
# International Flights: Rs 500 per Booking
# Domestic and International Hotels: 8% on Published Fare
# Domestic Packages: 8% on Published Fare
JOIN HERE

YATRA.com
They are a major player in this segment and so you should have no trouble converting if you get serious visitors on your site. They pay for every flight and hotel booking ,National or

• International. Flights : National -Rs 275. International - Rs500
• Hotel Bookings : National -Rs200 International - Rs200.

Join here

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International Affiliates - This could take up another post as things are very serious here. I mean serious money can be made here.Millions literally , To get approval is quite an issue because they only want serious bloggers who have high traffic and preferably USA/Canada/ Euro Zone/UK traffic. Asian traffic is not that important to them. Some of the International Affiliates worth mentioning here are

• Azoogle
• Neverblueads
• Affiliates.com
• Cj.com
• Shoemoney Affiliates
• Amazon affiliate program.
• COPEAC

CPC PPC CPA CPM Affiliate Explained

A newbie to the whole affiliate programs and marketing thing would be confused by jargon like
CPC , PPC , CPA and what not. Let me define in very simpler words what these terms mean.

Affiliate Marketing - When one website uses its traffic to sell a product which belongs to a second website or sends its traffic to the second website so that the owner of the second website uses the traffic as he wishes, this process is called Affiliate Marketing.
Now that the second website has profited by selling or gathering any data, he needs to pay the first website which was helping it out. There are Four ways of paying the first site.

By the way the first website and its owner of course will be called a Affiliate and the second website will be called the Affiliate Network/Program

Affiliate Advertising - Same as Affiliate Marketing ( above )

So the four ways of paying for Affiliate Marketing are:

CPC - Cost per Click. The Affiliate gets paid by the network for the clicks made on the networks' site ( by the affiliates' traffic) . Here even if there was no sale made or no other action followed , payment is made on the basis of number of clicks. CPC is used sparingly in Affiliate marketing.

CPS - Cost per Sale. The Affiliate gets paid a share of the revenue generated on the network's site. Nothing more. Almost 80% of all the Affiliate marketing gets done in the CPS way. Its a win win for Affiliate as the revenue share is often higher than what he gets in CPC model. For the Network it gets to pay when a sale is made and money is in the bank.

CPM - Cost per Mile. The Affiliate gets paid for every 1000 visitors ( just an example) who visit the Network's site. No other action like clicks or sale is required for payment. This model is not widely followed in affiliate marketing

CPA - Cost per Action. The Affiliate gets paid for every action performed on the network's site. The action could be a click made or a sale made or a form filled etc. Both parties, the Affiliate and the Network agree before hand what that action would be. This model is considered to be the future of Affiliate marketing.

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Some other jargons are

PPC marketing or PPC Advertising - PPC stands for Pay Per Click. Its model used in Internet Advertising where a publisher pays a search engine or any traffic source for every click made on the latter's website. There is usually a bidding for the search results site where the publisher can bid for keywords being searched by people. On the content network ( non search sites) there is fixed amount that is paid as PPC.

SEO Affiliate - SEO is Search Engine Optimization. Basically it consists of many tips and tweaks you can do to make your site more search engine friendly. A Website which has gone through SEO can expect higher position in rankings given by search engines which means more visitors. There are many firms which sell this SEO technique to people who want to implement it on their site. These firms uses Affiliate marketing as one of the ways to sell thier product. Those publishers who sign up with them are known as SEO Affiliates.

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Below data source : Affstat 2010 Report.

Affiliate Agreement : terms between a merchant and an affiliate that govern the relationship.

Affiliate Information Page : a page or pages on your Web site that explains clearly and concisely what your affiliate program is all about.

Affiliate Link : a piece of code residing in a graphic image or piece of text placed on an affiliate's Web page that notifies the merchant that an affiliate should be credited for the customer or visitor sent to their Web site.

Affiliate Manager: the manager of an Affiliate Program who is responsible for creating a newsletter, establishing incentive programs, forecasting and budgeting, overseeing front-end marketing of the program, and monitoring the industry for news and trends.

Affiliate Program (also an Associate, Partner, Referral, or Revenue Sharing Program): a merchant pays a commission to an affiliate for generating clicks, leads, or sales from a graphic or text link located on the affiliate's site.

Affiliate Program Directory: directory of affiliate programs, featuring information such as the commission rate, number of affiliates, and affiliate solution provider. Associate-It, AssociatePrograms.com and Refer-it are among the largest Affiliate Program Directories.

Affiliate Solution Provider: company that provides the network, software, and services needed to create and track an affiliate program.

Auto-Approve: affiliate application approval process where all applicants are automatically approved for an affiliate program.

Commission: income an affiliate receives for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a merchant's Web site. Sometimes called a referral fee, a finder's fee or a bounty.

Cookies: small files stored on the visitor's computer, which record information that is of interest to the merchant site. With affiliate programs, cookies have two primary functions: to keep track of what a customer purchases, and to track which affiliate was responsible for generating the sale (and is due a commission).

Contextual Link: integration of affiliate links with related text.

Conversion Rate: percentage of clicks that result in a commissionable activity (sale or lead).

eCPC: stands for 'effective Cost Per Click’. Affiliates that earn on a CPA or CPO will back their numbers into an eCPC. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by their number of clicks. For example, if an affiliate earned $1500 from 3000 clicks, the CPC would equal $1500/3000, or $0.50.

eCPM: stands for 'effective Cost Per Thousand impressions'. Affiliates that earn on a CPA or CPO will back their numbers into an eCPM. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by their number of impressions in thousands. For example, if an affiliate earned $1500 from 75,000 impressions, the CPM would equal $1500/75, or $20.00.

Hybrid Model: affiliate commission model that combines payment options (i.e. CPC & CPA).
In-house: alternative to using an affiliate solution provider; building affiliate program architecture within a company.

Lifetime Value of a Customer (LVC): the amount of sales in dollars that a customer in his lifetime will spend with a particular company.

Manual Approval: affiliate application approval process where all applicants are manually approved for an affiliate program.

Merchant: an online business that markets and sells goods or services. Merchants establish affiliate programs as a cost effective method to get consumers to purchase a product, register for a service, fill out a form, or visit a Web site.

Pay-Per-Sale: program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sale of a product or service that they refer to a merchant's Web site. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the highest commissions and the lowest conversion ratio.

Pay-Per-Lead: program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sales lead that they generate for a merchant Web site. Examples would include completed surveys, contest or sweepstakes entries, downloaded software demos, or free trials. Pay-per-lead generally offers midrange commissions and midrange to high conversion ratios.

Pay-Per-Click: program where an affiliate receives receive a commission for each click (visitor) they refer to a merchant's Web site. Pay-per-click programs generally offer some of the lowest commissions (from $0.01 to $0.25 per click), and a very high conversion ratio since visitors need only click on a link to earn the affiliate a commission.

Predatory Advertising: method that creates or overlays links or banners on Web sites, spawns browser windows, or any method invented to overwrite or redirect affiliate links.

Residual Earnings: programs that pay affiliates not just for the first sale a shopper from their sites makes, but all additional sales made at the merchant's site over the life of the customer.

ROAS: stands for 'Return on Advertising Spending'. This is the amount of revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. For instance, a ROAS of $1 means you're generating $1 in sales for every $1 in advertising spend, and a ROAS of $5 means you generate $5 in sales for every $1 in spending.
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Spotlight : Shaadi.com Affiliate program.

In this post I will show how you can join Shaadi.com affiliate program and rake in quite a bit of moolah promoting their site. We will use Facebook.com as our traffic source. I would like to say that this is genuine model of promoting products online and there is no mal-intention of cheating or scamming our Affiliate partner. I’m sure if we will be making money, Shaadi.com would be too. So its quid-pro-quo.

A look at their affiliate terms and conditions tells us that

- Shaadi.com pays Rs. 25 for every Free Profile created.

- Shaadi.com pays up to 40% of revenues generated by the users who signed through us. (Which means if a user buys the minimum 3 month membership of Rs. 2401, 40% of that Rs. 960 is ours


People in India like arranged marriages and since there are more than a billion of us, potential of the matrimonial business model is beyond any doubt. Millions get married every year and the number is only increasing.

Shaadi.com Affiliate Program Review

Shaadi.com is the leading player in the category. Millions of people have used it because it has most likable profiles and it is has a pleasing interface.
I am selecting Shaadi.com among other matrimonial websites because IT WILL CONVERT BETTER. People won’t mind signing up with the market leader, which has word of mouth publicity backing it.
Many of you want statistical proof of Shaadi.com’s numero uno position. They can go through the achievements of the portal listed below.

Ranked # 8 by Alexa among top 10 most visited sites in India

Ranked # 4 by Ranking.com among top matrimonial sites globally. Also ranked most visited matrimonial site in India

Ranked # 1 by JuxtConsultants among 121 sites as the most user-friendly site.


So, Now that we know which site we will be promoting, let’s get down to how. We would need a domain (website). Free domain (blogspot.com, wordpress.com) addresses are a no-no as it does not look official. I‘d buy an .in domain something like OnlineShaadiGuide.in. You can choose your name. Buy it from Godaddy provided you have a credit card. Host it with Blogger.com (see this). No need to pay for hosting.

Before we go any further, do you think anyone would just sign up with a portal because we are asking them to? Anybody could sign up for Shaadi.com from their parent site, why go through our affiliate link. Only if we provide extra motivation/reward to do so. In this case we would show them that Shaadi.com is the leader in its category and they have a better chance of finding that special someone on Shaadi.com rather than any place else. We will compare other matrimonial sites with Shaadi.com and make them see that we are providing the best option. We would also be providing a Free E-book to them which we will discuss later.

Now that we have a website, we will make a landing page (the page which our viewers will see). To know how to create a landing page perfectly, visit this resource. One thing to remember about landing pages is to provide information in shortest way possible. No clutters and essays should be written. Information should come across from a mere glance. Remember that if the visitor finds too much to read and digest, he could just close our site.

On the landing page we would do 4 things:

1. Tell them main features of Shaadi.com ( no comparison here)

2. Compare three matrimonial sites (Shaadi, Bharatmatrimony, Jeevansaathi) on 3 diff parameters like membership fees etc.

3. Tell them they would get a free E-book if they signed up through our affiliate link and tell them a bit about the E-book contents.

4. Remind them this E-book is available only through our link and no where else.


1. Main Features of Shaadi.com

o Number #1 position among all matrimonial websites
o User friendly Interface and No hassle in searching for profiles
o Easy Membership plans of 3 types
o Free Horoscope based matching.


2. Comparison on 3 parameters

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* Compete.com Data
** Juxt Consultant Report

3. E-book

This will be your killer tactic for making the sale, meaning getting the user to sign up. An E-book is a simple file in a .PDF format and its main feature is that it cannot be edited. You can create your own E-book very easily by writing whatever you have to, in Word and then converting the .doc file into a pdf format. Simple isn’t it. Since we are giving it away for FREE, user is under no pressure to refuse us; he has nothing to lose if he signs up for FREE and gets an E-book for FREE.

Since we are promoting Shaadi.com, our E-book should contain material relevant to our user. It should be very specifically focused on the product we are selling endorsing. It could contain tips to use the product in a better way. On the landing page, we will just highlight the contents of our E-book and not get into details because we want to take as little time as possible. So here is what I think our E-book, which we will give away free to our visitors who sign up with Shaadi.com, should contain:

- Tips to build a smart and Attractive Profile. Precious tips on making an attractive profile which would capture your potential partners’ interest.

- Profile Photo. How many photographs should you include and tips to show yourself in the Correct Spotlight.

- How to Search for your partner. Factors to keep in mind while searching for your partners. What should you include in your search and what should be given a miss.

- Contacting. How to make your first contact and how to stay in touch after that.

- Membership plans. How to choose the right plan for you so that you don’t spend more than required.

- Do not list. Very important. List of things you should Not Do while on Shaadi.com

Now that we have our highlights, you can do a bit of homework on those points and write up nice details for every point into a word file and go convert it into a PDF file. Find a free converter HERE .Meanwhile put only the highlights into the landing page neatly.

Next tell the users that to get their free E-book they have to mail their Shaadi.com Profile ID
Which they will get after signing up, to you so that you can send them the download link to their Free E-book. Remind them that this Free E-book is available ONLY through your link and they won’t find it anywhere else. Lastly remind them that they don’t have to pay anything at all and it is completely free. Provide a big text link and a banner to Shaadi.com after that and also provide your email address (get a new one for this). Remember to send them the download link after they have signed up. Good Karma is very important. Don’t Promise stuff you will not do.

Now that you have done your landing page, you can choose to add a few more pages of stuff related to matrimony , married life , financial considerations of a marriage etc., so that your website is not a mere one page site. Now APPLY for Shaadi.com Affiliate program HERE.
We are doing it now because it’s safer to have a website with some content before applying.



Get Traffic for your landing page via Facebook.com

We are choosing Facebook.com instead of Adwords because it is more forgiving if you have a crappy landing page. Facebook.com is also a place where lots of young and ready for marriage people meet and discuss things. It also lets us filter our viewer audience by age so that we could show our ads to people in the 20 – 35 age bracket since most unmarried people fall under this bracket. This would keep our campaign costs down. Interestingly, recent data showed me that Facebook is already one of the major referring sites to Shaadi.com. So Sign up on Facebook and find the ‘Advertising’ on the bottom of the Facebook page and click on it. Under advertising, click on ‘Create an Ad’ on the top right. On this page we will be writing our ad. There are three boxes on this page. Whatever you write gets displayed on the Ad square next to the boxes letting you preview the ad.

- First box Destination URL. Fill in the URL of your landing page. Something like www.domain.in/landingpage.html

- Second box Title. Fill in the Title or the caption. Something like ‘Looking for someone special’ or ‘Thinking of Shaadi’

- Third box Body Text. Fill in the Body of the ad, not more than two sentences. This part should tell them what your Offer is! How about ‘Get your free E-book with every free signup’

- Next box is the image box where you can fill in the address of the image which you want in your ad. Choose small passport size images if you wish.

Next, hit on the continue button which will open up more forms below. Fill them as necessary

- Location - where do you want to show people your ad

- Demographics - Age group and relationship status. Talk about target audience, they can show your ad to people who have single as their relationship status.

- Likes & Interests - Enter your Keywords here like shaadi, marriage, Hindu marriage love, romance etc For a very detailed suggestion of keywords Visit here

- Education & Work - Select all.

Click on continue after that, where you would be asked to enter currency options. Select USD. For Campaign name use Shaadi. Daily budget is the amount you are willing to spend everyday in USD. I think $10 (Rs. 500 approx) is good for starters. Schedule it as you like.

Next, click on the Set a different bid (advanced mode). You can choose to pay per click CPC or pay for impressions CPM (meaning they charge you for every 1000 people who see your ad even if nobody clicked). I suggest using CPC strongly. Next you have to enter the maximum amount you are willing to pay per click. I suggest $.05, you can always change your bids later if .05 is not getting you enough traffic but I will suggest sticking with lower bids and experimenting with cheaper keywords.

Next you are asked to enter your Credit Card Details, I’m afraid you have to get one to work with Facebook advertising. There is no getting around that. One thing I would suggest is to apply for more than one credit card and use the one which is having a Cash Back offer at that moment. I suppose every other bank is running such an offer every now and then. Currently SBI cards are offering 2% cash back.

You can create multiple Ads for the same landing page with different titles, body text, keywords, bid amount etc. Run these ads for a few days each and see which ones are cheaper and convert better. There is no other way of finding out. Stick with those which are converting better and costing you less. Sign up with Google Analytics to find out other relevant data like visitor behaviour on your site, like where are they clicking. This will help you improve your landing page

Don’t hesitate to ask you affiliate manager (Shaadi.com Contact) for any details that you might require, like the Profile IDs of people who have signed up through you. If you are getting good number of people signing up and becoming paid members, ask for a better rate, both for every free profile and revenue sharing. I am sure they will be willing to negotiate.


Happy Money Making

5 Reasons why Affiliate Networks reject applications.

Joining an affiliate network , Affiliate program is the first step to make some serious money online. I'm sure there are people who have complained and filled up affiliate forums with their stories of an 'unfair rejection' by Affiliate managers around the globe. If only people who want to join affiliate networks do a bit of home work and play by the rules , they will find that most of the affiliate managers would love to have them as affiliates.


Reasons why people get rejected by an Affiliate Network


1. No Website - If all you want to do is sell clickbank ebooks and other junk products from every other affiliate, having a website should not be your priority.
On the the other hand, if you want to join reputed and high paying affiliate networks, START A WEBSITE NOW. Most managers have confessed that applications without a site to review are rarely if ever approved. Which means - DENIED. From their point of view ,if you are not serious enough to have a proper website with decent traffic, you are probably not worth having on their team.So my advice would be to have a proper website with a custom domain ( not blogspot.com) because it shows that you are serious. Write a few posts/ buy from free lancers but get off your lazy bottom and build a site decent enough to look at.



2. False Details - In your application , you have to provide a lot of information from your website details, traffic statistics, current income from affiliate programs, experience with affiliate marketing, current Networks you have joined, ways to get traffic, usage of spam to get traffic/ make sale, etc. Though you can lie about some parts and exaggerate about others, I suggest you come clean. Fill in your application with sincerity and true details. Mostof the managers would appreciate a honest application.

3. Fear of talking on phone - Most applications are denied because the applicants could not be reached on phone. I suppose there are people who do not want to be associated with an address or phone number which will expose them, to them i suggest - do not bother to apply.To others I would say that get over that fear of talking and when a affiliate manager calls, answer like a human being and if you are asked something reply with a satisfactory answer. Do not reply with "I will mail you with this answer or that detail". They want to make sure you are not a cheat/scammer who would normally hesitate to talk on phone.


4. Plan ? what plan ?? - An affiliate manager would often ask an applicant his/her plan to promote their products and sell them online. That's a fair question and should be answered fairly by the applicant. If you don't have a plan , you will be rejected. So go do your homework on what are you trying to sell and how will you sell it. If you don't have an answer, just wait till you have one and then Apply- not before.

5. Yaw Man- Last fukin reason. - Language could kill your application before it began. NEVER use slang or other forms of in appropriate language which could spell disaster for your application. Also on your website English and only the correct version of it will do, nothing less. Even an average online person hates to see language-garbage on a website, much less an Affiliate Manager. So as per the saying goes " Choose your words wisely."

Google Adsense Faqs & Facts

Google AdSense is a advertising platform for publishers. If you own any kind of website ( blog or an independent website) you can join Adsense for Free. If your site is approved, They will start showing Ads on your site (remember those 'Ads by Google' things you see all over the Internet).

There are two ways in which Adsense can display ads

1. When you search for Something on Google.com and along withe the results, the page displays Ads on the right hand side and often on the top of the results
2. Ads are shown on websites who have signed up with Google Adsense. Below is an example of Ads being shown on a website.




Whenever a visitor clicks on the ads , the site owner (who signed up for Adsense) makes some money. Google has another program called Adwords where people who want to sell their products signup so that their ads get displayed on Google network.

Imagine Mr. X who wants to sell his toy. and Mr Y who has a website about Toys. Both have signed up with Google. X has signed up with Adwords and Y with Adsense. Google charges X Rs 5 whenever someone clicks on ads about toys and gives a Rs 3 to Y, keeping Rs 2 for itself. Ofcourse these figures could be different, as this is just to simplify things.


Adsense Signup - Its a fairly simple process , requiring you to fill up a form with your Full Name, Website Address, your physical address etc. Try to be as honest as possible because your primary goal is to get approved. You dont have to worry about your website for the moment, even if you have just one post, you will get approved. Dont start a website dealing in pornography or Illegal stuff because these kind of sites are often rejected.

It usually takes about three days to get approved. Once approved you are free to add the adsense codes to as many sites as you want.You dont require an approval for every site of yours.

Ad Formats - Once approved you have to decide which formats you want to use on your site. You can have three ad units and one text link unit for one page. Not more. Although people find different results, according to me


# 300*250 small rectangle works like magic
# Never use Image ads, Text ads are the real money makers.
# Place one 300*250 above your post and one just before the comment section.
# Link unit can be used below the text ads.


How much money can you make from AdSense. - As much as you can. there is no limit. while 90% of Adsense users make below 1 $ a day, there are people who make significant amount from it.

Plentyoffish.com owner Markus Frind Makes around $ 4 million a year from Adsense

Shoemoney.com owner Jeremy Shoemaker made $ 132,995 in a single month

AmitBhawani.com claims to have exceeded $60,000 in Adsense earnings in 2009.

There are thousands of other bloggers making $million+ every year from Adsense but they havent disclosed their income. So the opportunity is there and everybody is invited to TRY. So ARE YOU GAME ?