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…

There’s another huge secret in affiliate marketing I don’t see many people talking about although it is probably one of the more obvious ones. The title already gave it away, but it’s worth saying it again because it is one of those things you really need to think about if you aren’t making any money from your web marketing efforts.

I had a reader leave a comment yesterday asking me to look at her blog because she’s wondering why there isn’t much revenue coming in and the question just has to be asked, and it’s a great one for all affiliates to consider:

If you were shopping on the net for the product or service you are offering, now really, really think about this, would you buy from your own web site?

No I’m not kidding, that’s probably one of the biggest considerations new and even seasoned affiliates miss (I’m speaking to myself trying to make a quick buck at times). When you shop online, you probably like to do business with the sites that are generally the most visually appealing, have a professional feel about them, give you a feeling of all important trust and are focused on what you as the customer are looking for. All those things are important to you before you want to spend your money, or in the case of an affiliate site, trust the site enough to take their recommendations and maybe click on an ad or go somewhere else to buy a product.

Now that we’ve established how important those things are to you, why wouldn’t you provide exactly the same experience for your visitors and customers?

Look at your own sites…no, I mean really look at them, are they focused, trustworthy and appealing, or are they cluttered, scattered in their content and focused on the sale instead of the experience. If your customer has a great experience on your site, you stand a much better chance of having the experience of earning revenue.

Come one now, really, would you buy from your own web site?

I got an email on Tuesday from Debby Phillips over at Market Leverage letting me know that they featured AffiliateConfession.com on the latest episode of Market Leverage TV or better known as MLTV.

MLTV features the top 5 best performing offers of the week on the Market Leverage network and one of the offers they’re featuring this week is Vegas Baby where anyone interested can get free Las Vegas accommodations for 2 nights at the Summer Bay Resort just by filling in their first name, last and an email address. I’m making a little with this offer through search and was pretty surprised to find out you actually can make money with an offer that only pays $1.65. Little did I know how well some of these email and zip submit offers convert.

Vegas Baby converts between 20 and 30% and if you think I’m completely giving away a little niche here, think again. There is a trick to getting this to work on search that I learned from a friend and it definitely works. Just use your imagination, that’s all I can tell you.

Anyway, watch below and check out some of Market Leverage’s offers during the video and think about how you might put them into your traffic stream. The Affiliate Confession spot is towards the end.

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.

Sunday’s thought today is going to be a little different. Instead of a quote, how about a question? Since we all love to make money on the web, how about thinking a little in the opposite direction and putting some thought into how to make money outside of the web. No I don’t mean at a job, if you have one, I mean a different discipline altogether such as real estate (is anyone making money at this now?), manufacturing, franchising, consulting services, sales, being in a rock and roll band, whatever.

Think of something you are doing right now or have thought about that doesn’t involve making money from the closed system of the web. What I mean by that is, you can still make money using the web to advertise or get leads, but you can’t make money on the web by using only the web. Have you thought about what you would do?

Okay, I’ll start. My wife and I checked into owning a rental cabin some time ago and looked into buying a cabin in the Gatlinburg area, only problem was, with the price of cabins in that area, you would nearly have to have 100% occupancy to stand any chance of making money. Gatlinburg does have a high occupancy rate, but unless you can make enough of a down payment (50 to 60%) to offset your mortgage payment, it’s still very hard to make money.

We then looked in northern Georgia 2 to 3 years ago and the real estate prices were very good, but the occupancy rate was much lower. Same problem here, hard to make a profit. However, 3 years later with what I know about marketing through the web, I think I could make a pretty good go at a cabin or 2 or 3 in northern Georgia and exceed the occupancy rate in that area. That’s one of those things on the back burner I keep thinking about and would like to try when the Internet income goes up a bit.

So what are you thinking about? Outside the web, what’s on your back burner?