www.affiliateconfession.com

No matter what kind of business you’re in, sometimes you must deal with people that just don’t get it. Yes, we all have those moments when we, you mean little old me, miss the most obvious. You know, it’s the looking for the ketchup in the fridge and not being able to find it, even when it’s right in front of your face and you have to look around it, to see where it’s not.

But then there’s another level that’s like those funny calls Dell tech support gets when someone mistakens their CD burner for a cup holder and calls Dell for help fixing it. I had one of those this week and you can’t do anything but just put it behind you and move on.

We sell a vegan meal planner on our healthy diet website that costs a mere $17.97 and is available as a, what else, digital download. You know, an ebook. Apparently there are some that don’t understand what an ebook is or either they don’t read the painfully obvious sales page that explains exactly what it is. And just in case you don’t understand what we’re selling on that page or would like to know more about what’s in the ebook, you can download a free sample copy that has the table of contents, introduction and table of more than 40 recipes.

Of the 3 people still left in the world that don’t know what an ebook is, I came across one a few days ago. They found the sales page, they downloaded the free sample ebook, they ordered the ebook and then they asked for a refund because they thought they were getting a book. They said they don’t like to read on the computer. I don’t like to read long documents on the computer either. I explained this to the customer in an email and said that they could do like I always do and print out the document for further reading. Then they wrote back and said they would just rather have their money back because they really wanted something they could write in.

Okay, at this point I am going to cheerfully refund the customer their $17.97 because it’s not worth it to explain that the whole concept of a meal planner that you can write in, as it states on the website by the way, is that you can print out the grocery lists, weekly planned meals and menus as many times as you wish. Last time I checked, that was what an ebook was all about.

Thus is another day in the life of an internet marketer. This is why affiliate programs are so appealing so many people, because you don’t have to deal with issues such as this. You refer traffic and get your commissions and someone else gets to explain what an ebook is.

See, blogging is easy, there’s always something to write about.

Alan

Tags: dell tech support, vegan, meal planner, affiliate programs, commissions

I was participating in the discussion over at John Chow’s blog about his incredible income report for the month of November and one of the comments really made me think about why people don’t make money on the web.

After Chow released his income statement to the tune of $27,000+ for November, Michael A commented “$20k over for practically doing “nothing”? Nice one” and I had to think about that for a moment because it is a huge misconception that people like Chow do nothing in their blogging or online endeavors to make money on the internet.

I looked through Chow’s archives and could see that he started his blog in December of 2005 and has made a post or two or three nearly every single day for two years straight. That’s a pretty serious commitment for anyone and that’s exactly why people like him succeed and others don’t. Most people don’t have enough gusto and self discipline in them to do that kind of work. That’s why we’re not all rich.

If you go and read John’s ebook he tells his story about how hard he worked on various projects and theTechZone.com through the dot com bust and how there are now more than 10,000 pages on the site. You don’t end up with a hugely popular blog and a highly rated tech site with more than 10,000 page by “doing nothing” as Michael A suggests.

Many people look at rock stars, celebrities, rich people and supposed overnight sensations in the same way. Many even look at the Cinderella stories of American Idol and think how lucky the winners are. The winners in life finally get their big breaks because they have had hundreds or thousands of failures.

Most of the American Idol winners and even the contestants that end up in the top 10 every year have been singing nearly their whole lives. They didn’t just walk on stage one day and have 50 million people vote for them. And John Chow didn’t just start getting 6,000 people to his blog one day because the Search Engine gods decided to send a bunch of traffic his way all of a sudden. It began 2 years ago and happened some 2,300 blog posts (according to Google) later, post by post, day by day, month by month, year by year.

I know the same will be said of me when the seams bust wide open and I start making $10 or $20,000 per month. There will be those that believe I just got lucky…as I hammer out one more post and one more web page…on and on.

Making money online doesn’t happen by doing nothing.

Alan

Tags: john chow, american idol, blogging, making money

When I told my friend Lonny (he likes to be called Lawrence) that I had finally started this blog after reading John Chow’s October income report he first congratulated me and then made this statement via email, “I keep having trouble wrapping my head around the idea of guys like him who make tons of money off a blog whose only purpose is to tell others how to do it.”

I’m going to attempt to explain why this happens.

First of all, if you’ve ever been over to ClickBank you know the number one selling type of ebook has to do with making money online or how to get into Google’s supposed super secret back door or whatever so you can, what else, make more money online. Then there are the groups or more like cliques of Internet gurus who’s individual members come out with an ebook every week it seems like, telling you how to, you guessed it, make money online. The way they make money is by promoting each other’s books.

And I’m sure in your online trekking you’ve come across those 10,000 foot long web pages that attempt to tell you how everybody else is doing it all wrong and you absolutely must listen to them about how to…make money online.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

The trouble with these supposed secrets is that they cost a bunch of money and while some are good, some are really bad and very costly. They are filled with stuff that you could probably get from reading forums and the top bloggers on the net. So here’s your answer:

When someone Like John Chow or Jeremy Shoemaker shows up on the scene and tells you how they make a killing on the net and they give that information away for free, people are naturally going to gobble it up. Even when they tell you their failures as in Shoemoney’s 10 Worst Ideas To Make Money it’s worth listening to because it just shows they are not really superstars, they’re just trying to make a buck like the rest of us.

Secondly, there are tons of blogs that tell you how to make money, but they are nothing but affiliate spammers that haven’t made a dime themselves. All they do is refer you out of their blogs or sites to those expensive ebooks found on ClickBank. Jeremy, John, Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak, all of these guys have made money outside of their primary blogs and they write a lot about how they have done that.

I recently read an ebook found on ClickBank that was going to tell you how to make thousands from blogging. It turned out to be nothing more than a formula to set up a huge spam blog network and make money from scraped content by putting Adsense on all your spammy sites. No thanks, not interested. I’d rather learn how to make a living from someone who’s actually done it in a legit way that’s going to last longer than the next Google update.

I don’t know about you, but I want an honest representation of what people really do to make money on the web instead of getting a bunch of hype about how the next ebook someone comes out with will contain even bigger secrets.

The next time you ponder how someone like Shoemoney or John Chow are making a killing from their blogs just think of them as constantly updated free ebooks. Those spammy affiliate blogs telling you how to make money, guess what? They don’t make money!

If you must read an ebook to learn how to make money on the net, go read John Chow’s ebook on how he did it. Scroll down to the bottom of the post and you’ll find a direct link to his ebook. Oh, by the way, it’s free.

Shoemoney is also coming out with an ebook that is scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2008. I’m sure he will be charging for it, but there are definitely some things worth paying for so I will be reading it when it comes out.

Alan

Tags: blogging, make money online, shoemoney, john chow, clickbank