www.affiliateconfession.com

Just a short post today to let you know that tomorrow I’ll be starting a 6 part (maybe more) series on the harsh realities of affiliate marketing. While you can make a living online and you can even become what one would consider rich, affiliate marketing can be cold, cruel and difficult to make a buck with for those that either don’t get it or and trying too hard to become rich.

The series is mainly for newer affiliates just getting started and trying to figure out the whole game and may be a good reminder for those who have been at it awhile. If you’ve read any ebooks by gurus (most are garbage) or enrolled in courses that you purchased after reading a quarter-mile-long sales page, you may have found out that the reality of affiliate marketing is very different than the make money, get rich fantasy. There’s no doubt that this business is hard work. Some people however, just need a 2 by 4 upside the head because they just don’t get it.

My goal is to make this series that 2 by 4, with a soft cushion on the end you get hit with. Some people may be offended by something in the series because it resembles them too closely. I won’t be refering to anyone in particular in my posts, but you just may be the latest one to ask the question or leave a comment the post is addressing. Don’t worry, there’s a long line of people behind you who have asked the very same question, but sorry you had to be the most recent.

For now, here’s what the series will cover:

1. Why ranking even number 1 for some keywords is no big deal.

2. Prepare to lose money on PPC.

3. Banner ads don’t really cut it.

4. You will have a major setback.

5. Be too careful and you will fail.

6. Analysis will cause paralysis, and eventually death.

In writing this post I just thought of another topic, so now it’s a 7 part series before it’s even started.

7. Don’t count on your blog to make any money.

The post isn’t quite as short as I expected, but that’s the scoop on the upcoming series staring tomorrow. Stay tuned…

You may have noticed another link at the top of the page leading to the Affiliate Confession FAQ. I put this up because of the increasing amount of questions I’m getting for information that’s already on this blog.

I started writing Affiliate Confession to chronicle what I’ve been doing in affiliate marketing for the last 4 years or so, what’s happening in the world of making money on the internet, what Google’s up to (someone needs to keep an eye on them) and occasionally what Jean and I had for lunch or dinner or some other off topic rant. But the main purpose of this blog is to teach people how to make money online based on how I’ve done that.

Even though the main purpose is to explain how you can make around $3,000 to $3,500 per month in affiliate marketing and show people how I’ve done what I do, I still get tons of questions wanting me to explain how I do what I do. It’s kind of a vicious cycle in that the more posts that go up explaining what I do and the more traffic that comes to the blog, the more question come in asking about the same things I just wrote about.

I’m trying to keep this at one level below a rant because I really don’t want it to come off that way, but this is a little symptomatic of why people don’t make money in affiliate marketing. Sometimes the information is right in front of you, but we fail to act on it or dig for it a little and see that the secrets are right there in the previous post or in the archives section or just below the surface.

I certainly don’t mind answering questions that are well though out and cover topics or information not covered in the blog or that can’t be found by plugging in a search in the box between the most popular section at the top and where the posts start. And if you have a burning question that you can’t find the answer to by looking around or checking the FAQ, please feel free to contact me and ask it.

And if I haven’t answered your question you may have sent in some time ago, it doesn’t mean it has been ignored, it may simply be because I can’t answer every question personally. Sometimes though, your questions have been used as material for a post because I realize that topic hasn’t been covered adequately.

All that to say, don’t stop sending in questions, just check the FAQ first, or look around the blog, because there’s a good chance your question may have already been answered.

I’ve been doing a lot of advertising through Entrecard lately and have had some pretty good results. As you can see in the image above at the height of my advertising spree after accumulating 30,000 credits, I had 48 ads running at one time. I have also increased my traffic by 200 to 250 visitors a day via ads.

I still think it takes way too much time to find good places to advertise coupled with the fact that your ads only run for 24 hours. It is quite time consuming to maintain a level of running more than 30 ads a day. However, Entrecard has made it easier to visit the blog you are interested in advertising on by being able to go directly to that blog from the category rather than the individual users profile. This saves you a click for each blog you are interested in placing ads with.

Entrecard has also made it easier to get credits because you can now buy them on the site and they are priced at $9.50 per 1,000 credits and sold in bundles of 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 credits each. So, 10,000 credits will end up costing you $95. It would take you over a month to earn that many credits by dropping the limit of 300 per day. So, in some ways, that is a fairly decent way to spend a little of your advertising dollars.

But it gets even better when you find out you can get Entrecard credits on eBay for less than half of what Entrecard sell them for. I purchased 5,000 for $22 and 10,000 credits for only $40 recently and as I write this post there’s a Buy It Now offer for 10,000 credits for only $30 and there are usually 10 to 12 auctions or sales of Entrecard credits going on at any one time.

Pretty simple math, if you want to do massive advertising with Entrecard and save a bunch of money on the deal, buy Entrecard credits on eBay.

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