A discussion of earning with the Best Affiliate Programs, SEO, Wordpress Blogging and General Motivational Ideas for Internet Publishers and Affiliate Marketers.

Affiliate Marketing has become a buzzword for countless bloggers crowding out the already over-saturated, often regurgitated “Make Money Online” niche. Nothing wrong about making money online with affiliate marketing but there is something wrong with all the self-proclaimed gurus who claim anybody can be successful at affiliate marketing. This simply isn’t true.

Think about this… If somebody said you could become a famous actor/actress by buying an e-book, would you believe it? What if they told you that you could learn brain surgery from an e-book? Would you buy it? Affiliate marketing may not require as much skill as performing a lobotomy but there are fundamental skills required to achieve success in any field. Unlike brain surgery, affiliate marketing is not taught in universities, there is no collective intelligence pool and you are on your own competing against unknown adversaries.

If that’s not enough to scare you away from the challenge, here are 5 more reasons to quit affiliate marketing before you start…

Affiliate Marketing is highly competitive - One thing to remember when venturing into affiliate marketing is that you will be competing against other marketers. This business is about selling and salespeople can be ruthless when gunning for a commission. Every time you tap into a successful niche, be prepared for somebody else to step in and rain on your parade by copying what you are doing. Whatever you do, don’t lose site of your goals over competing with another affiliate for sales. The trick in this industry is to always keep moving while staying one step ahead of the competition.

Affiliate Marketing is hard work - Many times I ask myself why am I doing this when I know I could go back to a comfortable job as a corporate programmer and make $90K per year for writing code. I’ve never had a bad experience at a day job and my position always guaranteed me a modicum of respect, however, I believed I was sacrificing my freedom for a 9-5. Now that I’m past the point of no return with my affiliate marketing career, I find that I’m working longer hours, feeling more frustration and losing a lot of sleep over my choice. Would I turn back? Not me. I have perserverence and a hard work ethic which makes me a sucker to finishing what I started or die trying.

You have to spend money to make money - Despite what you might have heard about “bum marketing”, read in an e-book or on somebody’s blog, you will *never* make money without spending some. If you think you’re going to setup 100 free Blogspot or Blogger blogs, a ton of Squidoo lenses or Hubpages and promote your affiliate offers for free, guess again. Eventually you will have to pony up some cash and buy domains, pay for web-hosting and even purchase some PPC advertising. There’s no getting around it, so I recommend starting out with a budget within your means and building from there. Also, never use credit cards to seed your initial marketing budget. In addition to paying interest on seed money you may never see any profit from, it’s just plain stupid to use credit cards for risky business ventures.

Nobody will teach or guide you - If you think all those “Make Money Online” blog gurus who post articles detailing all the money they’ve made in a month are telling you the truth, guess again. 70% of affiliate marketers who are blogging about it are only a hair’s breath away from losing their shirts, 20% are nothing more than con-artists and the other 10% are just stealing content from the other 90%. Most of them are inflating claims because they assume most people are ignorant sheep who envy shiny happy mistruths. You have to take everything you read with a grain of salt and my greatest recommendation to you, if you’re serious is to learn for yourself the old fashined way, by trial and error.

The industry is flooded with cheats - Unfortunately, where there’s money or potential to earn money, there are cheat, liars, thieves and con-artists. It’s not just black hat marketers you have to worry about, sometiems it’s the affiliate networks and programs themselves. Nothing is more frustrating than finding out that your affiliate network is scrubbing leads or stealing your commissions. This is why it’s important to partner with the most honest networks in the industry from the start, regardless of higher or faster payouts from less established affiliate networks.

If you’re still not ready to think twice about playing the affiliate marketing game, you just might have the right stuff to actually make a go of it. Just remember that you will be struggling to make ends meet until you hit a breakthrough and even after that, success is often difficult to repeat. Affiliate marketing is not for the faint of heart or for quitters.

If you can’t handle pressure and you’re hesitant to take risks, you might be better suited for that 9-5 where you can leave responsibilities behind when you clock out. If you’re a glutton for punishment, bull-headed and can’t back down from a challenge, like constant change and can survive on a steady diet of uncertainty, affiliate marketing just might be for you.

Any comments ??

         

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One thing that is sure to get under the skin of any affiliate marketer is deactivated campaigns. deactivated campaigns are a major nuisance for performance marketers using PPC to drive traffic to their landing pages. As for content publishers monetizing their sites using affiliate networks, deactivated campaigns can be a real nightmare.

In each case, choosing an affiliate network to work with should be based on two questions in relation to deactivated campaigns.

How often do campaigns deactivate within your affiliate network?

If you’re performance marketing using PPC, you’re probably on top of all the offers your affiliate manager has for you to promote. PPC marketing requires constant attention to detail and staying abreast of changes is essential to prevent unnecessary loss of revenue. In this case, using a high performance network such as Market Leverage or Hydra Network where campaigns deactivate quite frequently with advance notice should not impact your marketing efforts.

If you’re a publisher monetizing your content with affiliate programs, you definitely will want to choose a network such as CJ or PepperJam with a lower rate of deactivated campaigns. The reason being that once you’ve found advertisments that match your site’s content, you don’t to have to keep changing your banners and links every time an advertiser deactivates their campaign.

How does your affiliate network handle deactivated campaigns?

Not all affiliate networks handle deactivated campaigns in the same manner. The only thing all affiliate networks do that is the same is they all notify you via email when a campaign is expiring and when it deactivates. However, if you do not change or remove links and banners, every network deals with it in a different manner.

Some networks will redirect traffic to a similar offer, passing you the credit for the commission. Others will just throw up a blank page that says the offer is no longer valid. A third, unscrupulous type will actually throw their own landing pages with their top offers to snag any of your clicks and pay you nothing.

Once again, you can see that how important this question is to both performance marketers and content marketers. If you’re a content publisher, you don’t want your visitor leaving your site for nothing and if they do you would rather it be nothing than the affiliate network snagging credit for the traffic you’re driving to them.

PPC marketers especially need a network that stands behing them because they are paying a premium to drive traffic from search engines or sites like Myspace and Facebook. I’m certain nobody wants to be paying $1 a click to have the affiliate network snake commissions.

You can see why it is so important to choose a Affiliate Network to work with that is solid and reputable, that works to make sure their Affiliate marketers are earning the commissions they deserve.

         

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Posting “Top 10 Lists” is not one of my favorite things to do but once in a while there’s a need to break with convention and create a list that will appeal to my readers. So, here we have my list of “10 Best Affiliate Programs for 2009″ based on my interaction and earnings with them for 2008. As a content publisher looking to monetize my search engine traffic, I would highly recommend any of the programs/networks listed here as “top tier”. I’m sure there are “performance marketing” networks that PPC marketers will say I’ve overlooked, so if you know of a network or program that should receive mention, please leave a comment on this post with the details.

10. Ads4Dough - Why I like this network is because a4D has a very personal feel even though it’s a DirectTrack system. A4D is a startup by experienced performance marketers who wanted to go the next step. So - if you join A4D you get another DT interface, handy if you want to run split testing across multiple ad networks to find out who is scrubbing leads… and …with Ads4Dough you get to jump onboard something new that will be around for a long time to come.

9. Commission Junction - Slap yourself really hard if you call yourself an affiliate or performance marketer and you don’t have a CJ account. Despite CJ’s problems with the *class action suit* and the *cookie stuffing* incedent, CJ is a market leader, innovater and still an industry standard. [low deactivated advertiser rating]

8. LinkConnector - I’ve been with LC for half a year and though my experiences are very limited, bI do knbow that LinkConnetor is rock solid. Their reporting is accurate, the campaigns they offer are above most DirectTrack systems making them closer to Commission Juntion in quality of advertisers. [low deactivated advertiser rating]

7. Amazon Associates - Most all other performance marketing networks leave you crying in your eggnog over the holidays but Amazon is always there to rescue with holiday cheer. I usually make the most money from Amazon during the holidays, especially from about two weeks before Christmas. If there was only a way to tap into that elusive “birthday gift” market ???

6. Hydra Network - I haven’t run very many campaigns through Hydra but from what I’ve seen, this network is about solid performance marketing with a side stream for content based affiliate marketers. Hydra’s affiliate interface is one of the best in the business, only second to PepperJam’s. Hydra also has fast phone support as well as prompt email support. Being that Hydra Network is “performance based”, they provide affiliates with regular email updates of the best performing programs and any other tips to help increase earnings.

5. NeverBlueAds - NBA are up on their game and once you find an offer that converts for you, NBA are rock solid with their statistics. They are also very professional with affiliate support, they answer phone calls and if you leave a message, they will have your issue fixed before they call you back. Yeah, they really return your calls.

4. MarketLeverage - If you’re a PPC marketer and you aren’t using organic SEO as your primary means of delivering traffic, ML is highly recommended because MarketLeverage is all about performance marketing. Content based affiliates can expect to see slightly higher earnings over older, traditional networks such as Commission Junction or Amazon. The affiliate managers for MarketLeverage are the best in the business. These people are on top of things, they’re intelligent and they’re experts at motivating affiliates.

3. Chitika Premium - I find myself more of a content devloper than a PPC Marketer. The reason being, with content, the SEO work is already started and content is there to be linked to, so in the long run, you will get search engine traffic without paying for it. Chitika Premium ads only show when your site is visited from somebody clicking on a search engine result. It’s a good first stream product for maximizing earning potentials from content based networks.

2. PepperJam Network - PJN has grown by leaps and bounds despite this being a recession year, however, the thing about PJN that stands out to mne most is their personal service and support is in my mind. One of the greatest aspects of this performance marketing network.

1. Google Adsense - For somebody who operates content based networks, Google Adsense is the bread and butter. Publishers who have grown with Adsense have grown in ways that are beneficial to the development of the internet as a whole. None of us want internet commercials but in a text based business, Google has managed to contextualize advertising as well as educate publishers to quality guidelines.

If you’re wondering how much money I made in 2008 from these programs and what the breakdowns are, Google Adsense is 40% of my totaly monthly revenue and it earned middle five figures for me in 2008. Amazon, Pepperjam, Chitika and CJ were the next biggest earners. My bread and butter comes from direct ad sales on my forums, paid subscription services and SEO consulting work but affiliate earnings have been on the rise.

What are your favorite networks/programs?

         

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  If you haven’t seen the article at Swollen Pickels blog - 10 tips to becoming a Make Money Online sheep - go read that article first and then come back here to read the rest of today’s post. Pickles took several heartfelt jabs at the ludicrous “Make Money Online” bloggers. You know the type of bloggers I’m talking about. They’re everywhere. The putrid self-proclaimed Super Affiliates who have cartoon character mascots, post pictures of their Adsense checks and generally feed their readers a load of fecal matter every time they post in hopes of making enough affiliate cash to pay for a couple of Pumpkin Spice Crème lattes (with whipped cream, of course) at Starbucks.

Wake up people !! Real affiliate marketers do not drink Frappuccinos or Lattes and real affiliate marketers certainly would never be caught uttering some of the oozing dribble seen emanating from this overpopulated niche where brain cells have taken a back seat to palpable absurdity.

After reading through my fair share of the “Make Money Online” blogs, looking for a sanguine grain of truth but instead only finding a miserable plethora of hustle and jive sandwiched between slices of regurgitated contrivance, I decided it was time to end the silence.

Following the lead set by Swollen Pickels, I offer you 10 Secret Confessions of the Super Affiliates - a no holds barred look at what these narcissistic charlatans try to peddle you as truth and the real truth behind the misinformaton they would like to perpetuate as affiliate gospel. So, with no further brouhaha, here we go…

1. What they say - I make $100K per month in PPC Marketing with Copeac !
   What they really mean - I still live with my mom and dad because I spend all of my money on $350 an ounce hydroponic weed.
2. What they say - Look at this payment proof picture of my earnings check !
   What they really mean - My little sister in middle school is really good at Photoshop and I had here chop this picture for me.
3. What they say - Affiliate marketing pays my bills and then some !
   What they really mean - In reality, I have no bills (see #1) because I live in my parents basement.
4. What they say - I bought a Lexus from PPC marketing and now all the girls at school want to ride to lunch with me !
   What they really mean - I have a small penis but I bought a penis extender kit and a bottle of Viagra from some Russian spam email.
5. What they say - You can get rich like me if you follow my “Super Affiliate” techniques !
   What they really mean - Somebody please buy my e-book on clickbank because I’m running low on hydroponic weed that I need to be stoned to come up with crazy ideas for my new e-book.
6. What they say - I made my first million in PPC/SEM before I was out of college !
   What they really mean - I still haven’t taken my basic math courses because I spent $3 million on Adwords to make $1 million.
7. What they say - I’m so cool, someone made a cartoon character of me !
   What they really mean - I spent the money my parents sent me for Clearasil pimple creme on Adwords so I couldn’t take a real picture.
8. What they say - PPC Marketing is so super easy !
   What they really mean - Ask my parents about the $9000 per month Google Adwords charges on their credit card.
9. What they say - I make so much money online I dropped out of college !
   What they really mean - I couldn’t afford my tuition this semester because I spent my student loan on Adwords and hydroponic weed and my parents cancelled my credit card.
10. What they say - I’m a Super Affiliate !
    What they really mean - I have bondage mask, leather cape, spandex body suit, latex gloves and a can of Crisco in my dorm room closet to prove it.

Well, there you have it folks, the 10 Secret Confessions of the Super Affiliates.

If there are any secret confessions I might have missed, you know how to use a comment form.

If you liked this post, please Digg it, Sphinn it, Stumble it or pass it on !!

Happy Publishing
Dave

         

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