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As an affiliate it’s great to dream a little and think about those what if I had more money scenarios. Well I came across one of those what if moments a couple of days ago with a hefty price tag of $8,000, but it is actually a pretty good deal. Here’s what I’d do if I had a quick $8,000 windfall.

Since I’m a drummer I’m always perusing the percussion category on eBay for deals or just to see what people are selling. I’m especially fond of drum sets with very exotic woods and finishes and I found the DW drum set below just a couple of days ago and I’ve fallen in love with it. 

The set is made by Drum Workshop, DW for short, and it is one of the most incredible looking  set of drums I think I’ve ever seen for sale on eBay. They are truly a thing of beauty. If you aren’t a drummer it would help to know that DW drums are some of the highest quality and most expensive drums in the world. At full retail price you may be able to find a set like this, drums only with no hardware, for around $12,000 however, this looks to be an exotic wood and paint fade that may have been a custom order so it could possibly be retailed for somewhat more.

The auction ends 4 days from this post and the price is up to a little over $4,000 right now and there is a Buy It Now price of $7,999. And let me tell you what, if the cash were available, I wouldn’t even hesitate to pay the asking price and be done with it. Even though the person doing the auction has a 100% positive feedback rating, I might send the guy an email just to make sure the whole thing is legit before spending $8,000, but that’s about it. You can see more pictures of this once in a lifetime find and check out the drum set auction here.

Now I just need to find the affiliate offer or product that can make $8,000 in the next 3 or 4 days. Any suggestions?

Terri from By America For America posted a very good comment yesterday asking about, or rather, being confused about whether she should start a blog or build a web site.

What is best?

A blog and the individual posts get indexed much faster than a web site, but in many situations a web site is much better. So what should you do, build a blog or website? The answer of course is yes, you should.

What?

Both blogs and web sites both have their place and many times you will want to have a blog to highlight and feature things you have on your web site. The criteria I use to start a blog rather than a web site is to think about what I’m trying to accomplish. The most basic question is, do you want to carry on a conversation with your visitors or do you want to show products and explain what they do in the hope that your visitor will trust you enough to make a purchase or click through to your affiliate offer.

If your main objective is to sell or represent products through an affiliate program, then a web site is probably the way you want to go. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it is much easier to organize and navigate through a web site than it is through a blog. Many news and magazine type WordPress themes are changing this somewhat, but I wouldn’t want to try to organize my discount computers web site into a WordPress blog. There are just too many pages and I want visitors to the site to be able to go to the main page to see nearly everything featured on the site.

However, if you were trying to feature something like interesting and unique eBay auctions or keep a group of visitors informed of the latest deals in a particular niche, then a blog would be a great tool for that. In fact Buy.com has a great affiliate program that can help you do that very thing. Plus they send out weekly or every other week emails announcing the very latest deals. Those are perfect to blog about because you can explain the features of the product and mention how long the deal is for, be it a week, 2 weeks, a month or whatever. If your visitor found your blog via an expired deal, they are more likely to vist your home page and see what other deals you have going. This is perfect for a blog, not so perfect for a site when you have to update it constantly.

Many times a blog can complement a web site as well. We don’t do our healthy diet podcast very often any longer, but we do use the blog it originates from to update readers to new recipes and info on our healthy diet website. Terri could do the same by building a web site that features only American made products and then blog about each product page she features on her web site.

That’s what I do, but Terri also asked in her comments if other readers have a solution to the blog or web site issue, so please comment on your criteria for using either and let’s help Terri, and the rest of us, figure this out.

Alan