www.affiliateconfession.com

Yea, I know, I haven’t written a post in too long to even count, and I’ll probably write a post on why that has been sometime, but for now something has been bugging me about this affiliate marketing industry for the last several months and I just have to get it off my chest. If you haven’t guessed by the title, it has to do with what passes for training in affiliate marketing and some of the most well known bloggers in this industry turning into product launch pimps.

Most of us scraping through this industry have at one time or another purchased some sort of ebook, ecourse sort of thingy that we though was the sure path to internet riches only to find out that most of the info therein was absolutely worthless. Back in the day I was getting my feet wet, most of these ebooks were somewhere between $37 and $67 with a few of the more outrageously priced ones coming in at $167.

There are a plethora of products that offer little more than false hope to wanna be affiliate marketers looking for their first few sales to generate enough revenue to create that initial $100 check. The first one I purchased was James Martell’s Affiliate Marketing Handbook 5 or 6 years ago at the OUTRAGEOUS price of $167. I soon found out that there was about $1.21 worth of useful information in the book, regretted my decision to buy it and went back to reading blogs and forums to try and figure out this business.

As this business has matured (I use that term lightly, meaning aged only) the number of video courses and ebook programs that have been published promising us all vast wealth is truly staggering. As we moved into a new decade it seems as though the publishing pace has only quickened, especially through long time bloggers that I have followed getting into the business of cross promoting every other guru’s product so they can make even more money. It’s called the JV, or joint venture model of internet marketing and honestly, it’s the most annoying thing I have ever experienced in this industry.

The lowly ebook that used to be priced around $47, is now a full blown video course including several ebooks with more information and special bonuses (and very cool promotional graphics, wow) than one could possibly absorb and they now sell in the range of $500 to $2,000 and some cost even more. The disturbing thing is that much of the information contained in these courses is nothing new. It’s just the same old “how to set up your blog” and “10 tips to blogging success” rubbish that can be found repeated ad infinitum on blogs such as Problogger.net.

What prompted this somewhat long winded rant was the launch about a week ago of Product Launch Formula when I received some 40 to 50 emails about this product over the course of 5 or so days. It seems that every guru make money blogger that I have ever read and given my email to sent me multiple emails touting the benefits of said course desperately urging me to separate myself from nearly $2,000 of my hard earned money.

The worst offenders of the email bludgeoning marketing model have to be Steven Clayton and Tim Godfrey of Blueprint-Forum-MMO-thingy-whatever. I’m on Steve’s list, Tim’s list and apparently the Blueprint Forum’s list. Since these guys like to get noticed I would literally get 6 emails (2 from each list) within just a couple of minutes of each other spamming up my inbox. This happened 4 or 5 times and I began to think I had gotten caught up in some sort of auto-responder feedback loop that would never end.

Actually, some of the stuff that Steve and Tim put out is quality material, but you hardly have time to get through it before the next email hits your inbox giving you the urge that you need this latest course more than you need to buy your mom flowers on Mother’s Day.

This nonsense disturbs me for several reasons:

This is spam - call it what you want, but when you send 24 emails to the same people within a few days time, that’s excessive. I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it. One or two emails is fine, but I’d rather not be hit in the head with a hammer telling me this is the greatest product in the world (at least since the last product we promoted, and yes, the one before that as well).

Most of this stuff is free -  Yea, you’ve heard this one before and sometimes it’s great to have all the info you need consolidated into one nice package, but for $2,000 I can stand to do a lot of the research myself. A $2,000 course in affiliate marketing better wash the dishes and do the laundry for that matter.

You have to be  a big time affiliate for the JV model to work - A lot of money is made in internet marketing by promoting products that teach you how to make money with internet marketing products, and much of this is done through the JV model. The only problem with this is that there are so many gurus promoting this crap that the little guy has about zero chance of making it work. Of course it works for the gurus, they all have lists with 100,000 people on them (and I guess I’m on 90% of them apparently).

If you’ve ever seen a list of the top 10 or 20 affiliates promoting a Michael-Cheney-watch-me-drive-my-Lamborghini-Gallardo-product you’ll know exactly what I mean. The list reads like a who’s who of IM. There is rarely a name gracing the list that you don’t recognize.

You don’t really get the inside info -  Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey are famous for putting out products where they promise to let you in on everything, I mean everything they are doing. They’re going to sell you the entire shop, that is until the next product comes out just a few months (seems like weeks in some cases) later with even more inside info they happened to locate next to the previously unreleased Beatles recordings.

The bottom line with much of this stuff is that it is old information - I could sell you the greatest technique in the world for making $10,000 a week on Clickbank because I have done that, really. The only issue with that is it only lasted for 1 week and it can’t be done any longer.

Many of the gurus have hit on a few techniques that made them some pretty big bank and may have lasted for weeks to several months, but then as usual the way this happens, someone doesn’t like what you are doing, or Matt Cutts inserts a line of code in the Google algo, or the trend you were riding fizzles out and so do your profits. End of story. But wait, think the gurus, I can write an ebook and sell you on how I did it, never mind the secret technique is now a dead, rotting fish. That’s just the nature of this game, sometimes your sneaky little technique lasts for 18 months, sometimes just a week, you’ll get used to it, but then if you want to make the real big bucks, sell your now worthless technique for $500.

Which brings me to Blog Profit Camp. Do you think you really need to spend $400, $500 or $600 to join yet another, yes, unbelievably, another how to make money blogging course? Apparently Yaro and ProBlogger Mr Rowse haven’t produced enough mastermind, ebooks, courses and endless posts that include tips ranging in count from 5 to 65 ways to be a BETTER FRICKIN’ BLOGGER. Arrgh! x 7!!! I need blogging Prozac already, not another course that will tell me nothing I can’t find on the very blog who’s writer is putting out this latest course and charging you $500 to $600 for information he and 50 other MMO bloggers have already given you for FREE.

Here’s how to make money blogging:

1. Forget about the money, get a passion.

2. Install Wordpress.

3. Don’t write about anything John Chow writes about.

4. Find some sneaky blackhat way to get 17 front page Diggs in a month or film your 3 legged dog doing the Evolution of Dance and hope it goes viral.

5. Don’t try to sell your readers anything, let them buy.

6. Sell advertising.

I just saved you $600, now get to work.

This is a guest post by Brandon Hopkins.

If you know me, you definitely know one thing. I’m a link building junkie. I love building links, good links, bad links, no follow links, I love them all. My favorite links are the ones that nobody else is getting. However, the easiest links are the ones that everyone is getting.

A few years ago when I started building links, most people cared only about the biggest links like DMOZ. After DMOZ slowed their approval process many companies like Best of the Web Directory (Established 1996) and Ezilon Web Directory (Established 1996) started offering paid directory submission. I was all over those links, and I still am.

Since there are so few quality directories left, I spend a much larger percentage of my time building links that the best link builders are using. Who are the best link builders? You probably first think of the greats that you might know by name. For me, those people are Jim Boykin and Aaron Wall. However, those are the people that you know of because they have a public presence. In my opinion, the world’s best link builders will never be known by name, and here’s why.

World class link builders know what they’re doing. I don’t just mean they know how to build links, they know how to build massive links while staying under the radar. They can build 10,000 links per day and get top rankings for a lot of good keywords, not just long tail stuff.

When I realized that, my first question was, “How do I find these people, and how can I build those links?” The answer is simple, study the best to learn from the best. So where do you find the world’s best link builders? Follow the money.

If you could rank for just about any keyword, what would you focus on? You would most likely focus on the highest paying keyword right? That’s where the best link builders work. They rank for “cheap Viagra”, “Mesothelioma lawyers”, “data recovery”, “secured loans”, etc. If you know where someone is working to build links, you can easily find those links and duplicate them.

That’s the key here. If they are ranking for top terms, their links are obviously working, and you can do the same. Find their links, and you’ll find the secret to making more affiliate sales!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Bio: Brandon Hopkins blogs, tweets and love building links. Brandon is a freelance link builder who would love to work for you!

We’re off today, Friday 10-9-09 flying to Bangor Maine for a week’s vacation. We will be in Bangor for 3 days to visit my wife’s family and then it’s off to Camden, Rockport and Rockland, all picturesque towns on the rocky coast of Maine. We’ll be there for 4 nights staying at The Ledges By The Bay in Rockport. The picture above is the view we will have for those 4 nights and days.

The weather has been a bit rainy, but we think we’ll get a few days of sunshine while we’re there. We are also getting there in time to see the height of the changing fall colors. I’ll be blogging about o the adventure on my vacation rentals travel blog if you’d like to follow along.

Okay, what’s the big mystery training course I’ve been using for the last two or three weeks in my affiliate marketing business? It’s known as Commission Blueprint 2.0 and it’s pretty massive in its scope as it will take you a good couple of weeks to watch all the videos, read all the manuals and test out or at least look at all the tools you get with the course.

This is not a scammy make money ebook that tells you just a couple of techniques and charges you $97 for very little info, it is a complete training course with 10 modules that covers the gamut from ppc, to joint ventures, to building websites, to keyword research in affiliate marketing and on and on. The course designed by Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey and comes with 50 videos, 20 ebooks, 8 or 10 different tools and a forum that the developers personally answer questions in on a regular basis. Now for the cost. It isn’t cheap at $497 but, it is about as comprehensive of a course as I have seen in a long time. I purchased version 1 of this training and although it was great, this is much bigger.

The course is great for newbies to intermediate affiliate marketers, but for the more advanced, you may find it lacking. However, there are some jewels that I have gleaned from the course and are already starting to work on. One of the those jewels is they show you how to build a link juice machine that will send quality links, the lifeblood of your rankings, to your site.

There are lots of ways to build a blog or site hub like this, but this one is based on buying domains with PR already established so you get a quick benefit instead of having to wait months while your new domains mature and get some good PR. And the great thing is that you can get these domains for cheap. I’ve alread picked up 2 PR 3 domains for $25 each and I’m watching a PR 4 domain that nobody has even noticed yet. It’s just sitting there waiting to come to papa for next to nothing. You can’t buy permanent links for this cheap, so this is a great technique.

I also tried out their strategy for joint venture product launches and could see some immediate results in ranking a few blogs and Squidoo pages I started. I didn’t continue with that because it took too much work and was taking me away from things I’m trying to focus on, but it is definitely a workable business model for someone to do just that one thing. Another reason I dediced not to continue with that technique is because I don’t like trying to sell products I don’t own or don’t have a lot of knowledge about. Just not my thing, but anyone could make it work.

The Commission Blueprint 2 course comes in 10 modules listed below with comments on each:

Module 1 - Welcome & Introduction - Pretty much sums it up.

Module 2 - Keyword Research - This is where you use their proprietary KW research tool. It’s pretty good, but could use a few improvements like being able to copy individual keywords into your clipboard.

Module 3 - Finding Products To Promote - Where you will get to use their Offer Evaluator tool that will tell you immediately based on traffic, ppc prices and offer payout whether or not you should even try to promote something. I learned something here - some offers are pure junk and will never convert at a profitable rate. You could probably save the price of the course in shying away from junk offers in yor ppc efforts by using the Offer Evaluator. This is one of the tools you get in the 7 Day Free Trial.

Module 4 - Building Converting Sites - Haven’t spent much time here, but besides the obvious, this module contains the developer’s templates they’ve used to build out their sites and have helped them earn their big bucks. They’re supposed to be proven converters.

Module 5 - Sales & Conversion Strategies - This is one of my favorite modules and where they teach you how to do the joint ventures mentioned earlier.

Module 6 - Search Engine Optimization - This module is massive. It contains 20 videos, 4 small ebooks and 2 tools and probably will take a couple days just to get through it. One of the tools here I have an issue with. It’s called Article Blueprint and it sends out your spun articles to several article directories and the developer’s network of sites. My issue is that some of the directories aren’t worth even having your article in and it seems to take a long time for your articles to show up in them. Hopefully though, the bonus coming out will make this a moot point.

Module 7 - Adwords & Paid Advertising - Another huge module with 22 videos, 3 ebooks and 3 tools. One of the tools is a tracking system and Adwords campaign building system that looks a bit complex, but overall it should really help you with tracking your ppc campaigns to the minutest detail. This one looks like it works somewhat like Speed PPC. I’m not a huge fan of tracking systems because they tend to be overly complex, besides, I just do something very simple that works fairly well.

Module 8 - Social Media & Article Marketing - Not a lot here, but does have some good suggestions on getting more out of your article marketing efforts.

Module 9 - List Building & Email Marketing - Honestly, this one is just another reminder on why I ought to be creating an email list.

Module 10 - Conclusion - Offers a blueprint on what to do after absorbing all the material. There are a couple of great, easy to follow one page plans that got me motivated until I tried to print out the PDF’s and they came out black on my HP Color Laser printer. I wish they would have tested that, but I just used the FinePrint free utility and it printed them out fine. 

The Bottom Line - Commission Blueprint 2.0 is worth it to me and may be for you, even at a cost of $497 because it really is a one stop shop for just about all the training your will need in this business. Besides that, the forums are pretty amazing and are frequented by some of the nicest people you will ever meet online. No really, my first post at the forums stirred things up quite a bit and almost everyone was exceptionally nice, in kind of a cult sort of way. (Just kidding on the cult thing)

I’d rate it at about an 8 for newbies and about a 6.5 for experienced affiliate marketers. Right now you can get the Keyword Blueprint tools and the Offer Evaluator tool as well as a 50 page PDF manual to try for 7 days, so it’s at least worth it to check it out. Even if you don’t get the training, I’m sure you can keep the 50 page manual.

Check out Commission BP 2 here.

Yesterday it hit me like a bad Purple Haze trip, it was the Dreaded Adsense Login Loop (cue dramatic music). If you’ve never experienced it, count yourself lucky because it is one of the most frustrating, nonsensical, dealing with Google experiences you can have. Here’s how it unfolds:

You login to your Google Account where you have all of your Google stuff, Google Groups, Blogger blogs, Adwords, Gmail, Adsense and other things. You click on your various tools and you are automatically logged in but then you click on Adsense and this is what you get:

What? I thought I was logged in. Okay, so now you log in through this screen and here’s what you get:

What? I merged my accounts about 3 or 4 years ago, why do I have to do this again? On, I see it says, “Are you one of the following people? email @ email.com” That’s me. “If so , then you’ve alread updated your login to a Google Account. Return To Adsense and use your Google Account to sign in.” Follow those instructions and you go back to the previous screen above in a never ending loop.

Okay, I’m thinking, I’ll just contact Adsense Help and they’ll fix the problem? After spending 15 minutes going through the help files (why is it that they never really answer your question) and not finding any contact info you’ll finally run across a link to contact Help, but click it and it sends you to the Adsense Login screen because you have to be in Adsense to contact Adsense Help. Brilliant!

Right now I have confusion “all in my brain” and all I can hear is that Fender Strat Hendrix chord ringing in my head.

Adsense Login Loop Solution

Fortunately after spending about 4 hours perusing forums last night and about 15 minutes this morning I found out there is a solution to this dreaded issue for some. It worked for me, but I can’t guarantee it will work for you. Here’s an alternate Adsense login url that doesn’t go through the normal login path:

https://www.google.com/adsense/login2

You have to be logged into your Google Account first and then all you do is paste the link into your browser and you get in through the back door. It appears the you have to paste the url into the exact same window or browser in a new tab in the same browser. It won’t work if you click on the link or open another window. But then like magic you are now in your Adsense account and the Purple Haze music slowly starts to fade away and life makes sense again.

I think this had something to do with a change Google made to there home page. If you watch when you first go to Google there’s only a search box and the Google logo and in about 5 seconds the text and links start to fade in. I’m guessing this is just a way to get people to actually search more because all you see for a few seconds is a search box. Really, it’s just very frustrating because I thought there was something wrong with my browser or computer. But, then there is something wrong with the Adsense Login page through your Google Account.

Hopefully the solution url will work for you. Don’t you just love Google?

Update 10-8 - Thanks to Curtis1 for leaving a solution in the comments. Just go to the Google Adsense Forum to find the permanent answer.