www.affiliateconfession.com

Life is getting crazy around the LeStourgeon household. We’re moving into a time of the year when it seems like every week we have something additional to do beyond what’s already going on in life. Jean and I are both in the Christmas musical we’re doing at our church and need to spend time practicing that, I’m playing in the band at our church’s Harvest Party this week, we’re progressing on our addition to our home and on, and on, and on.

All that to say I’m going to be taking a break here from blogging on a regular basis at Affiliate Confession until the first of the year. I’m not going away and will still be posting at the very least once a week, and even as much as 4 times a week if there is pertinent news and affiliate marketing info to publish.

One of the other things I need to be spending time on are to find additional successful PPC campaigns because some of my highest traffic generating campaigns will be going away after the upcoming election. You can generate a bunch of traffic on the Adwords content network by capitalizing on current events, but unfortunately current events only have a life cycle that lasts for so long and then you need to find additional events to take advantage of. Some things, personalities, events or political figures can generate enormous amounts, but the majority of things you think would be great for traffic, usually aren’t. So, it takes a bit of trial and error to find the ones that work well.

Anyway, If you don’t see as many postings from here until the end of the year, don’t be alarmed, I’m still here, I’ll just be working on other things and still posting occasionally.

The following is a guest post by Jim from theNetFool.com. He writes a popular blog that is all about how to make money online, especially in a down economy. So check it out if you are interested!

Affiliate businesses are all over the internet.  Lots and lots of people are now profiting from doing business across the internet… whether as wholesalers, retailers, or affiliate marketers. Unlimited income can be earned from affiliate marketing. As an affiliate marketer, you and the product or service merchant share in the revenues from any sale or visit that you originate. There are several ways by which an affiliate marketer can earn from his business:  pay per click, pay per sale, and pay per lead. An affiliate marketer can do any one or all of these types of affiliate marketing to earn loads of money.

Not all affiliate marketing programs are guaranteed to be successful… and affiliate marketing is not all about the numbers. Oftentimes, affiliate marketing is advertised as an easy way to make profits. Being “easy” does not mean that you just let things be, and just do the minimum that is required of you. An easy and, more importantly, efficient way to earn from affiliate marketing is to do it strategically. Give your affiliate marketing business the Net Fool “High Five” with these strategic marketing tips on making money on your online business:

1. Choose your affiliate partner carefully. 
   There is a huge amount of money to be earned in the internet – both legitimate and illegitimate.  You would not want to besmirch your site’s reputation by affiliating your site with a merchant that is bogus. Make sure that the affiliate program you are joining is reputable. Go for those programs that have customer service centers or affiliate support programs. It would also be good to be able to actually talk to a representative from the company offering the program to ensure that you are dealing with a real company and with real employees.
2. Review your 3 Ps.
   There are 3 Ps in marketing namely:  product, price, and promotions. Your affiliate program should be for a great product that is reliable. It should be a product that is actually proven to deliver what it claims it can do or result in. The price range should be reasonable, although not necessarily cheap since large ticket items would most definitely have expensive price tags. There has to be an incentive for your site visitors to click on a merchant’s link. A promotional link versus a static link would enjoy more clicks.
3. Write relevant articles.
   This works like public relations. Articles that do not directly sell the products that you are advertising but tell readers about the advantages of purchasing such products in general terms will tweak the readers’ fancy and would most likely prompt them to click on the links. And, since your article was able to convince the reader of the benefits of the product you are selling, the chances of that particular reader buying are higher.
4. Choose a tiered affiliate program.
   Tiered affiliate programs give you more earnings in pretty much every circumstance. Aside from earning from the products sold from those linking from your site, you also earn from the earnings of the recruits of your recruits and so forth.
5. Opt for higher commissions.
   Commissions from affiliate marketing programs differ depending on the type of program you choose. Revenue sharing can be anywhere from 10% to 75%. That’s a lot of in-betweens. To maximize your income earning potential, choose marketable products that have higher commissions.

When looking to affiliate yourself with any of the programs in the internet, keep in mind your High Five. Instead of wasting your time joining all affiliate programs that come your way, rationalize your affiliate marketing activities. These strategic marketing tips can help focus you on programs that really deliver and give your affiliate marketing business’ earning potential a boost.

-The Net Fool

A huge thanks goes out to every one today who is a subscriber to Affiliate Confession. After almost a year of writing, this blog has reach the 500 RSS subscriber milestone. The counter at the top may show an amount below 500 depending on when you read this (it fluctuates a bit at times), but the first time the 500 reader level was reached was on Saturday Oct. 11th.

I initially started the blog back on November 1, 2007 after several months of thinking about it and having my wife tell me that I need to write about what I do. In fact, the name Affiliate Confession was actually my wife’s idea. We we’re sitting around one day brainstorming domain names for the blog and it just suddenly popped out of her brain. I didn’t really do much writing the first month and started blogging consistently on Nov 22, 2007.

One of the catalysts for starting the blog was probably for the wrong reason when I read one of John Chow’s ridiculous income statements. I believe it was around the $23,000 per month mark at the time and I thought why not get in with the crowd and get out there and make some money. That’s not a good reason to start a blog! It has since evolved into something I enjoy doing while I chronicle and hopefully give some advice on what it takes to build a successful affiliate marketing business.

Some of the more memorable posts over the last year include:

Why I don’t Do Network Marketing Or MLM- The first and longest post here at AffiliateConfession.com going into why MLM is mostly a waste of time.

Taking The 30 Day Blogging Challenge - The most commented post here.

Build A Niche Store Review - A review of the product that maximizes earnings from the eBay Affiliate program. It is currently one of my top money makers.

Lessons In Perseverence - A 4 part series on just working through the hard times despite what may come your way.

Build A Niche Store Tutorials - A 7 part series on how to set up your BANS affiliate store and get into profitability with the eBay Partner Network.

Explaining Twitter Is Like Explainig Sex to A Virgin - The day I saw the light and became a Twitter fan. You can follow me on Twitter here.

How I won A MacBook Air- Yes, I actually won $5,000 worth of prizes in an online contest and one of those prizes was a MacBook Air. This post explains how I did it.

The Harsh Realities Of Affiliate Marketing - A 7 part series on what affiliate marketing is really like. It’s not all fun and games, it takes lots of work.

Joined PPC Coach - I’ve finally started making some money with paid search marketing and this post explains how that happened.

If you are new here at AffiliateConfession.com please subscribe to my RSS feed and if you are already a reader of this blog, I appreciate the time you take to read through my ramblings. It’s been great getting to know a lot of you and respond to your questions and comments and I’m looking forward to the continued journey.

PS - As of this writing the count at the top is showing 486 readers and my Feedburner control paned is showing zero subscribers, so I’m not sure where it will end up today.

Very shortly, probably within the next few days, our home will be turned into a construction zone. We’re having our back porch enclosed and the bedroom across from the home office redone. Once the porch is enclosed and a new window put in the bedroom, our sliding glass doors leading to the porch will be removed, half the wall knocked out, the kitchen extended a couple of feet and all new flooring will be put in the porch, bedroom and a third of the kitchen.

While my wife has been wanting to do this project for years because we don’t really have a proper dining area in our small 1,300 sq ft home, the next couple of months (at least) will be rather stressful around the LeStourgeon home. It will be great when the project is finished, but in the mean time it will be nearly impossible to get any work done with the demolition, hammering, sawing, dust and general noise that goes along with an undertaking such as this.

I’m looking forward to having all the work done as well, but in the mean time, I’m going to have to have some place to carry on my blogging and affiliate marketing duties for several hours a day where interruptions will be kept to a minimum. There are a few places around the Palm Bay, Melbourne FL area that have “free” WiFi, but at many of them you should buy at least a cup of coffee or something every hour or two so as not to be a complete bum. That can add up when you end up spending $4 to $6 a day, plus gas, just to work away from home, plus I don’t really need to be drinking coffee and rotting out my gut every day.

As I’m writing this I’m thinking of at least two places where you don’t need to buy anything and can work as long as you need. One is the local library, but the connection there slow and you keep having to log in every 20 to 30 minutes. The other is the Calvary Chapel of Melbourne cafe, but they keep it so cold in the cafe you need to buy coffee every 30 minutes to keep warm or go outside to thaw out.

It will take some adjustments and planning to work away from home for an extended period of time. I do occasionally go to one of my favorite spots 3 or 4 times a month just for a change of pace, but this is going to have to probably be at least 3 times a week for a month or longer, so that makes it a different matter.

Maybe I could just rent a corner of an office or a cubicle somewhere for a couple of months. If I could find a nice space for $100 a month or so it might be worth it. I wouldn’t save any money over the cost of coffee and those tempting macadamia nut, chocolate chip cookies at Calvary Chapel Cafe, but I’m sure the office space and my water bottle would be much healthier.

I’m open to suggestions.

We’re living through tough economic times as we watch financial markets meltdown all over the world and people lose trillions in life savings they have invested in stocks and other securities (that aren’t too secure at the moment). Gas is still outrageously expensive and it seems like every time you go to the store, something is more expensive.

Don’t despair because there is something you can do about it and it fits right in with being an affiliate marketer, but not in the traditional sense. It may take a little more physical work that building a web site but there is a big payoff. I’m talking about growing your own food and working towards self-sufficiency. Below is what our back yard looks like and where we spend most of our Saturday mornings:

Buying edible plants, digging small garden plots and putting seeds into the ground is sowing a benefit that you will reap in a few weeks for plants and a few years for something like fruit trees. Just like affiliate marketing, you hope for a payoff a bit larger than your time and sweat investment.

The benefits of gardening go far beyond just putting some grub on your table. It does take time, but you can get to the point that you are saving gas by making less trips to the store and buying vegetables that have to be shipped from California by large truck or other far away locations such as Costa Rica by ship. You can also supply your body with healthy, life giving fruits and vegetables and that can help cut your medical expenses because you are living a healthier lifestyle. It’s a much less expensive alternative to the medical model of stuffing a patient full of expensive drugs for every ailment or the much more expensive route of radical, invasive surgery. Good heavens wouldn’t that help the economy if practiced on a large scale?

Right now in our yard we are growing pineapples, lettuce, various tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, strawberries, blackberries, lemons, eggplant, onions, and various herbs. We also have banana, guava, mango and avacado trees that will take a few years to mature. We have had gardens throughout the years, but only started expanding last year and plan to continue with our expansion until the back yard is completely filled in.

Were inspired the Dervaes family in Pasedena California who grow an amazing 6,000 pounds of food a year on a scant one tenth of an acre. Depending on the season they supply from 50% to 80% of their own food, sell produce to restaurants, produce their own biodiesel fuel, use solar energy and are close to living “off grid” or in total self-sufficiency.

Wouldn’t it be great, as the rest of the world and the politicians try to figure out how to spend even more money that they don’t have, to be less dependent on that system. Honestly, the less the government does for me the better. The more they give you, the more they can take away. No thanks, I’ll take care of myself.

Gardening is just like affiliate marketing. Put in the initial work and enjoy the benefits of truly sowing good seed. At least you’ll always have plenty to eat.