For those of you who are new to affiliate marketing, I thought I should give you an introduction to the basics of affiliate marketing…

“What is affiliate marketing?”

Affiliate marketing is a method for people who sell things online to share their revenue with people who are willing to promote their products for sale. Affiliates (those willing to promote other businesses products on their website) are paid based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a combination of methods.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. In the future I intend to talk about some of the proven affiliate marketing systems that I have successfully used to make money. For starters, here’s a list of the most common used affiliate marketing methods…

What are the most common affiliate program models?

Based on a survey in 2007 by AffStat 80% of affiliate programs today use revenue sharing or cost per sale (CPS) as compensation method, 19% use cost per action (CPA) and the remaining 1% use other methods, such as cost per click (CPC) (ie. Google Adsense). I will discuss each of these methods in more details in future posts.

The main thing to remember is that affiliate marketing allows you to make money online by sending people to visit other people’s websites and buy their products/services. This means you don’t need to deal with customers, you don’t need to create products, you don’t need to store inventory, and you don’t need to ship products. All you do is refer people to the affiliate site in a buying frame of mind and the affiliate site does the rest of the work. This makes affiliate marketing a very easy business to start. No inventory, no product, no customer service, no problem!

At the end of the post, Shai asked:

“...do you think Kontera is something you’ll be interested in using on your blog or site? Why or why not?”

Here is my answer:

I have played around with Kontera ads on some of our blogs and I know from that experience that some people don’t like to see them on a website, while some people do like to see them on a website. Why is that?

Why are there so many mixed opinions on Kontera In-text Ads?

I can tell you why. In general, I have found that the people who don’t like them are the people who see them on “make money online” blogs and on tech blogs. At first I thought the problem was that tech savvy people don’t like them. While that may be true, I think a bigger reason that they don’t like Kontera ads may come down to the fact that the ads just aren’t targeted well on non-product related blogs.

I put Kontera ads briefly on our Summer Olympics blog and it was horrible. The ads were showing for all sorts of random words and made the blog look ugly.

On the other hand, I have put Kontera ads on product related blogs and most of the ads are relevant and help people find things they are looking for.

So, when should you use Kontera ads on your blog or website?

I don’t recommend using them on blogs or websites where there is a focus on information (news sites, “how to” sites, etc.). I do recommend using them on non-technical product type sites, or on “how to” sites that make mention of a lot of products in the text of the articles (like a recipe site).

What do you think about in-text advertising? Would you ever use in text advertising like Kontera on a site?

Ebay has a pretty good affiliate program (it’s one of my favorites). You should join the Ebay affiliate program if you have websites related to anything sold on eBay. If you want to see an example of the primary way I use Ebay’s affiliate program then check out my dinosaur toy pages.

I goofed.

It’s not that I got the principles wrong, because you can make money from content sites and
blogs. No, it was more a question of a resource mismatch. My manpower consisted entirely of me and any task I happened to outsource as I needed. That isn’t so good when you’re trying to maintain a blog or content sites.

Those types of sites take a lot of work to keep fresh unless you’re a scraper, and you never want to become one of those because some people consider scraper sites to be unethical. You can’t just let them sit, because fresh content is the only way you get repeat traffic and in the case of blogs, syndication. This means you’re always adding or changing content, which adds work you could be spending making money with something else less effort-intensive.

Mini-sites are another matter entirely. For those of you unfamiliar with them, a mini-site
is a tiny site built specifically to do one thing well. This includes such things as:

• Get you to buy something. If you’ve ever landed on a sales letter page, you’ve seen this type of mini-site.


• Get you to opt-in to a list.


• Get you to click and buy through an affiliate link.

In fact, when it comes to making money online, mini-sites are ideal for the single individual entrepreneur. They don’t take much to maintain once they’re optimized and working, don’t require regular content updates, and aren’t megabytes worth of code in size. Once you add the fact they focus the attentions of their visitors on a single thing, you have a good concept for a low-cost, low-maintenance sales tool. In other words, less time in building and maintaining the site, and more time to promote and profit from it.

I grasped this myself, but my other mistake was to make my mini-pages part of my existing web site instead of giving them their own URL’s. This won’t work well because:

• The URL will be unattractive, or at the very least not memorable.


• It gives your visitors too much of an opportunity to be distracted.


• It makes it impossible to brand with a catchy URL of its own and perhaps go viral.

So learn from my goof, and mock not the humble mini-site. You can make money in other ways, but the mini-site is ideal for a single individual to make and then use in list gathering,
affiliate page promotions, or sales of ebooks. It’s the reason I won’t be using anything else in the future.

Until recently, I haven’t clearly defined how far I am willing to go to make money online. Sure, I have had some general guidelines, but over the years I have been asked to do some things that have been on the borderline of what I am personally comfortable doing.

From now on, before starting any online project I will ask myself:

“Is this method of making money something I feel comfortable sharing with my children, my friends, my family, and others?”

If I am embarrassed to tell my kids what I do to make money online, then I am not going to do it. For me that rules out a lot of things (splogs, some affiliate marketing strategies, gambling, prescription drugs, p@rn, etc.). However, there are a lot of ways of making money online that it doesn’t rule out.

How far would you be willing to go to make money online?

If you knew you could make a really good living, by setting up black hat SEO sites, would you?

What about p@rn? If you were guaranteed to make a million dollars, would you set up a p@rn site?

What about “burn” sites? Would you be willing to tell someone they will win a free ipod if they just follow five easy steps… The first four are easy steps that put money in your pocket through CPA (Cost Per Action) affiliate marketing and the last “action” is purchasing a new car through your affiliate link that pays for the ipod and then some?

I have learned a lot of ways to make money online, but a lot of those ways I am not comfortable with. You need to set your limits up front, otherwise you might wind up creating an online business that you regret.

Hmmm… Did I just create a new term?

I will have to go “Yahoo” it… back in a sec.

Nope, Yahoo shows 999 results for Googlesphere, rats!

Anyway, the biggest news of the week across the blogosphere was that Google is lowering the pagerank of sites that sell text link advertising. I don’t know if this includes buying and selling banner links or not, but it should since banner ads normally don’t use the no-follow tag.

I think that those who made this decision at Google don’t understand how powerful the blogosphere really is, or they expect most bloggers to act like sheep and fully support Google.

Here are some of the many posts I have read this week about paid links causing websites to lose Google page rank:

Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google (I read it here first)

Part Three – NoFollow is for Blog Spam…no Paid Text Links, wait…Paid Ads…Aww Heck, Just Stop Linking and Let Calacanis Decide the Rankings

Penalty Confirmed – But I Don’t Sell PageRank

Dancing With The Gevil – Defamed By Google?

Garry Conn and Google

How to Profit from Google’s War on Paid Links

Last, but not least, Aaron Wall pretty much takes the words out of my mouth on this topic:

Google is Becoming Wikipedia Without the Talk Page

So, what am I going to do about this issue?

I haven’t decided yet. On the one hand, I have come up with a plan that could REALLY tick off Google, on the other hand I can be a sheep. Decisions, decisions...

In other news…

Tiny start-up rival to Google?
A new company called Proximic has come up with a very cool new technology. From the sounds of things it might become a great way to monetize your site and be a huge competitor to Google’s Adsense. Microsoft, Yahoo, Google… let the bidding wars begin!

Lastly, I got an email from Google’s Adsense program last night about a new service that lets you make money from YouTube videos. I am very excited about the possibilities for some of my other blogs.

That’s it for now…

The obvious answer is that you put them on your web site, but that’s not the half of it. People who are making good money with affiliate marketing aren’t just posting links willy-nilly on their content sites without any thought. So if you’re looking to make a decent income this way, what do you do with your affiliate links?

• Write entire mini-sites around them: Review pages, landing pages, and pre-sell pages are all examples of this technique. You write a single page centered on the product or service you’re promoting designed to get the reader to click through and then convert.


• Promote them with ezines: You start your own ezine, collect a list of subscribers, and promote your links in content ads or solo advertisements. While running and successfully promoting an email income of this sort requires it’s own set of skills and knowledge, collecting a list only takes a single web page.


• Aim pay-per-click ads directly at the link: This is an older method that’s falling out of favor because companies like Google don’t display multiple pay-per-click ads aimed at the same URL at one time. Nowadays, most marketers aim pay-per-click ads at landing pages (which I mentioned above) to get around this and improve on conversions.


• Write affiliate links into ebooks, free reports, or other ‘.PDF’ products: In this approach, you create your own information product and include affiliate links from related programs. Then you sell the product or give it away as a bonus for doing something else, like an opt-in. Your affiliate links potentially generate back-end commissions, plus you get to add a name to your list for more promotions later.

So if you’re just starting out in affiliate marketing and wondering what exactly you’re supposed to do with your links, you can take some ideas from the methods above. And if any of you more experienced marketers would like to share your ideas for promoting affiliate links, feel free to comment

1. What is a Blog Post Really?
This post was prompted by Jakob Nielsen’s article “Write Articles, Not Blog Postings” that kind of disses blogging. I don’t think that Jakob get’s that blogging isn’t just about the article, it’s about the conversation.

2. Comment Spammers the End of Do-Follow Movement?
Based on the comment I left, I obviously agree with Chris’ final decision on the matter. Whatever he decided, I would still be a reader of his blog, because it is quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs to keep up with.

3. Why Text Link Ads Work For Me!
Amanda has had some really great results with selling text link ads and doing paid reviews to make money on her blogs. If you are interested in blogging for money, I highly suggest you keep an eye on what she is doing with her blogs.

In case you missed it… here is my top 20 list from Daniel’s project.

Here’s the deal. The Affiliate Classroom gives you everything you need to succeed as an affiliate marketer.

They have recently revamped the Affiliate Classroom to make it even better than when I first I checked it out. One of the best new features they have added is a complete step by step online system for creating successful affiliate sites. This brand new system even tracks your progress all the way through and you can use the system for as many projects as you want. In my opinion, it is a perfect way for beginners to start making money online.

My personal favorite part of the Affiliate Classroom is the case studies. The case studies review various affiliate marketing products/techniques and give honest feedback on their results. If you join the Affiliate Classroom, you have to read the case studies. They are VERY helpful.

Another thing I like are the monthly interviews. They provide lots of solid Internet Marketing information in the monthly interviews.

The Affiliate Classroom also has live conference calls, which I found to be very unique and definitely excellent for beginners.

It also provides free ebooks and information that teaches you everything from HTML to Search Engine Optimization. With all the tutorials and books available in the Affiliate Classroom, a beginner really has everything they need to start up a successful affiliate marketing business.

You can ask questions directly to the affiliate classroom coaches or you can ask questions on the private forum and get back answers directly from the owner Anik Signal.

If you are new to affiliate marketing, I suggest that before joining the Affiliate Classroom you read through the free sitesell book The Affiliate Masters Course. Then if you are still interested in affiliate marketing, but you feel like you need more help and/or personal coaching, then you should join the Affiliate Classroom.

While there are some pretty interesting tidbits of information for seasoned affiliate marketers, I think the Affiliate Classroom is best suited for beginners and intermediate level affiliate marketers. However, if you’ve been online for a while making money in other ways, but you’re ready to add affiliate marketing to your arsenal, this product would definitely make it easier to make that transition.

The price is pretty awesome, especially for a program that is loaded with so much information. Right now, you can get a 2 week trial membership for a dollar. That’s a pretty hard deal to pass up…

Click here to learn more about the Affiliate Classroom

Web 2.0 introduced the concept that users can play around with the content, and many seem to love contributing to and consuming that content. Many advertisers started their Web 2.0 campaigns with visions of generating more revenue than before, but the true picture tells a sad story. MarketingSherpa points out the black hole in the concept. According to the research, ads on a Web 2.0 site don’t convert quite as well as ads on traditional “Web 1.0″ sites.

When we talk about traffic, we can bank upon several 2.0 sites (like YouTube, MySpace, etc), but what we are not looking at is the maturity of an audience. The audience of these sites are still very young, so it’s not fair to draw a comparison. In my article SEO – Sandwiched between Conception and Misconception I showed some concern over the many professionals who have started believing that 2.0 sites rank better then non 2.0 sites. For me, this is also not true.

For me, the 2.0 sites have a long way to go compared to sites like Yahoo or CNN or even MSN, which already have established mature user bases and are doing well by changing and playing with various monetization techniques.

So we should give some more time before directly comparing 2.0 and non-2.0 sites.

Introduction: Who Is Garry Conn?

Hello. My name is Garry Conn. I have been following George’s blog for quite some time now. I own and maintain well over 100 various dot Com ventures. However, my heart and soul gets spilled into my personal blog. I enjoy helping people. I hate to see people down on their luck. And when people, especially bloggers, who work so hard to achieve a goal but can’t succeed, I totally feel for them. I want to see people achieve success. I want to see people reach their goals. And I know from experience what it feels like to be down on your luck and I don’t wish that upon anyone.

Agenda: Why Am I Blogging Here?

George and I have known each other for over a year now. We communicate back and forth between our blogs and through email. George and I have a lot in common and I am here to provide some breathing room for him. We all know how busy of a guy he is… and I am too for that matter. However, in May of 2007, I have set a goal to venture out and make guest appearances on other successful blogs. And after talking with George about this, he invited me to come on board and help pull some of the weight here on his wonderful and highly successful site. It is a privilege to be here, and I want more than ever to see George lead the way in teaching thousands if not millions of people about the many different ways you can make money online.

A Modern Day Approach: Finding Success With Google Adsense

I spend quite a bit of time visiting other blogs. Typically these sites are authored by bloggers who share a very similar interest: Making Money Online. However, on so many of these sites, when I contact the authors and get to know them better, they typically say the same thing: “I want to make money online, I have joined and participate in many programs that are supposed to make money, but none of them do!” 

Because I am such a caring person, I really feel their pain and in most cases I spend time with them and show them what they are doing wrong and provide solutions to help them gain success. The most common rant that people talk to me about is their failures with Google Adsense. And with that being said, this is what my first article is about here on Can I Make Big Money Online.

The root of most failures with Google Adsense is caused largely by the fact that most people who participate in the program also roll out and launch the program on their sites that attract readers who already know about the program. Think about it… when was the last time you clicked on a Google Adsense ad? Granted, it happens, and I click on a few here and there as well. But because I know about the program, it is human instinct for me not to click.

...When Was The Last Time You Clicked On An Adsense Ad?

Why Don’t I Click On The Ads? Well, I am not sure what your reasons are, but for me, the main reason why I don’t click very often is because I know that they are advertisements. They are sponsored links that have nothing to do with the owner of the site. Yes, they are relevant… but they are ads that link to pages outside from the site I am visiting. I don’t do this on purpose… it’s just an instinct or habit.

How Do I Find Success With Google Adsense?

I find success with Google Adsense simply for the fact that I author and maintain numerous dot Com websites that attract people who don’t know about the program. The fun part of this is the fact that most of my sites don’t even generate over 100 visits per day. But because of the time I invest into each of my sites by providing creative, unique and strategic writing, I generate extremely relevant ads. Having all this coupled with well thought out and very strategic placement of the ads in addition to highly micro-managing my content and incoming/outgoing links, I produce an unbelievable click through percentage. And to be honest… I have only been doing this for a few months now. On the flip side, it has taken me three years to discover what I have learned. I have participated in many programs on the Internet that make money online. However, Google Adsense has been my golden brick. And three months ago, the blind was removed from eyes and today, I know how to be successful using Google Adsense. I stand by the program 110% and now that I know how to use the program, I am now starting to reap the benefits.

Again, my name is Garry Conn. I write primarily about successful blogging tips. I am a guest writer here for my friend George who runs a very successful, useful and informative blog. If this is your first time visiting the site,  or if you are a regular reader and haven’t already done so; I strongly recommend that you subscribe to his feed. Sit back and join the fun and witness George Manty archive his goal of making big money online. He wants to make $1000 dollars a day! This blog documents his progress and also draws you a map so you too can make money online and follow along the way!

How to Make Money with a Video Blog: An Introduction and Guide
I haven’t read the guide that Maki talks about yet, but I can tell you from experience that this is an excellent way to make money with blogs. Like I said in the comments, “...I have been considering turning some of the blogs that I don’t have time for, into mostly video posts. I also tend to get more links to the posts with videos. I highly recommend testing this out. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.”

Copy Is Not About Selling, It’s About Serving
Excellent post by Michel Fortin on the future of copywriting.

Should You Build a Blog or an EMail Newsletter List?
I totally agree with Chris’ conclusion in this post.

Interview with Search Engine Guide’s Jennifer Laycock
Excellent interview with some solid SEO advice.

Stay Away from In-Text Advertising
I removed Kontera ads from this blog, but I am continuing them on my other blogs for now. I might discuss this more later. Come join in on the argument (errr… discussion).

Clicking Adsense Ads
Interesting discussion on clicking Adsense ads. Do you click on them or ignore them?

Unique Content – Where to Find Topics and Ideas
Good post by Gayla on places to find topics to write about. I currently use all of them.

There were other good articles that I read this week, but between part 1 and 2 you should have plenty to read…

Q. Mama Duck, can you tell my readers a little about your blog http://lilduckduck.com/ and how you got started blogging?

This blog is a repository for all the things that the toddler has done, destroyed & discovered. It’s also a resource for parents of toddlers that will continue to expand and eventually become an entire parenting resource portal, laid out less like a blog and more like an informational site. It actually began as I was looking for legitimate money making opportunities online, where I came across Steve Pavlina’s blog and Problogger. After doing quite a bit of research, I decided to start my own blog with WordPress on my own domain.

Q. In 2006 your blog was nominated for “Best Parenting Blog” in the 2006 weblog awards. If I recall correctly your blog had only been around about 3 months when you were nominated. Not only that, but after being in existence for less than a year, your blog has a Technorati ranking of 1,166 . What do you think are the main keys to your quick success?

Blog carnivals, community events, participating in relevant daily memes such as Works for Me Wednesday which can be adapted to include toddler and household tips that are both relevant to my blog topic and great for search engine traffic. Just getting to know people via e-mail (responding to their comments) & through different blog events (Wendy’s casting call allowed me to meet blogging friends right away that I still keep in touch with all the time). I also link my blog in my signature on all the parenting forums, on our signature making board (http://pixelperfectsignatures.com) and in all my e-mails. When I post stories/photos about the little one, I send the link to all my friends and family, rather than just copying it into an e-mail, then they can share with their friends and so on.

Q. What was the first blog you ever read?

Steve Pavlina, who led me to Problogger.

Q. What blogs do you read on a regular basis?

I just tried to clean out my feed reader, but I still have 130 blogs in there! Some of the ones I try to check every day that haven’t already been mentioned are eMoms at Home – Parent Hacks – Daddy Forever – Trizle & West of Mars. How is that for an eclectic sampling?

Q. How much time per day do you spend on blog related activities (blogging, promotion, design)?

It took a lot of initial time investment – learning WordPress, researching how best to do things, optimizing, tweaking, setting up ads, designing the templates, etc. However, now if I can manage to leave the template alone, it’s just a chunk of time each week to write posts for the next week, then a bit of time each day to check comments, write quick posts, visit others, etc.. During the week I am usually doing well to keep up with orders and the little one, so I don’t have a lot of time to devote to the blog every day. Once the framework is there, it isn’t a ton of work just to write posts & answer e-mails.

Q. If you could only give one piece of advice to someone just starting to blog what would it be?

Research ahead of time. I’ve seen a lot of people who say “I wish I’d known when I started blogging that I need to use search engine friendly permalinks, or that it’s best to be on my own domain rather than Blogger/Typepad, etc” – mostly things that can be learned through just a bit of research, really. It seems overwhelming at first, but it becomes much easier when you just jump into it and try things. I have a local installation of WordPress on my Mac, where I can mess around with templates and coding to my hearts content without breaking the blog (PHP coding was new to me when I started the blog, although I’d done a fair amount of web design in xHtml and CSS), which is a huge help if you want to make your own templates or mess around a lot with pre-made templates.

Q. You use quite a few different methods to monetize your blog. What have you found to be the most successful ways to bring in money to your blog?

Well, the number one money maker for me is obviously my products, which are heavily promoted on my blog. Google AdSense does fairly well, but I’m having more and more trouble filtering out all the competing ads as I branch out into graduation cards, engagement and wedding cards, etc. so I’m looking for another option where I can have more control over the ads that are displayed. Text Link Ads & BlogHer Ads continue to perform well on this blog, Amazon referrals do well around Christmas time or any time I’m writing about toys or other products such as that when I put them in as text links, but not as ad blocks.

Q. What is the best way you have found to bring traffic to your blog?

Good search engine optimization, including creating a sitemap, using custom meta tags & search engine friendly permalinks, using keywords in post titles. Above all, writing good, relevant content to which others link and enjoy reading, which then ranks higher in the search engines. Carnivals & relevant memes are a great way to get started and to meet other people in your blogging niche as well.

Q. Is there any other advice you would like to tell people looking to start a blog?

It’s a commitment, I see a lot of people who slack off and don’t keep up with posting or anything. I try to always have posts written ahead as I do get busy, I don’t have time to write every day. If I can set aside a block of time once a week to write the posts for the next week, it really helps a lot.

Q. One last question, If you weren’t blogging, what would you be doing?

Well, I tend to get a little stir-crazy if I’m not doing ten things at once, so I’d probably be running another type of website, managing a forum, or doing more contract work (which I already do a bit when I’m feeling bored…). It’s very important for me to keep the little one here with me, so I’d definitely be doing something where I can stay at home or bring him along.

On the other hand, Jimi from AGLOCO Cash Machine made some good points in favor of joining:

...
What concerns could anyone have? Spyware? The Google Toolbar is Spyware. The Alexa Toolbar is Spyware. Neither of those places pay you to use it. Your personal information isn’t used for Agloco. Just your viewing habits. You can turn it off or on at any time.

Not getting any money out of it? Didn’t cost you anything anyways.

They are expected to have 10,000,000 users by July. What does that mean? Advertisers may actually be willing to pay for that kind of audience.

Why join now? To build a network. Get a larger share of the pie. Be a part of a start up at the beginning.

In fact, I went ahead and joined through Jim’s affiliate link. I don’t know how much I am going to do to promote AGLOCO, but I do plan on checking it out and seeing if it makes me any money.

You can learn more about AGLOCO on their official website, by clicking here.

Did I make a mistake, is AGLOCO evil?

I was prompted to do this, because of the results my friend Austin had from adding Kontera ads to a few of his sites. The Kontera ads are the links on this blog with double underlines.

Have you tried Kontera ads on your website or blog? What do you think of them?

So here’s the deal. If you like AGLOCO (or if you don’t like it), go to the comments on this post and tell me why I should join AGLOCO . Please include your affiliate link in the comment.

If anyone convinces me to join AGLOCO , then I will use YOUR affiliate link to sign up for it.

Have at it!

I Made $6549.52 From Blogging in March
Great Post by Yaro. As I said in the comments:

Excellent post. I think it is really cool that you have found a good balance between blogging and making money other ways online. I made the mistake of putting too much time into blogging and I am now thinking of ways to change that. I want more freedom with my time then what many of the top bloggers appear to have. I don’t want blogging to become a 9-5 job. More like 9-noon…

eMoms Birthday Party Contest – Grow Your Business with ShoeMoney & eMom!
Great contest idea by Wendy. Count me in. If you have a blog you should enter it as well. The prizes include tons of great free Intenet marketing products and advice.

The One Million Dollar Race
This looks like a fun contest. The rules aren’t complete yet, but the basic idea is you enter the competition to see who can earn a million dollars online the quickest. For those of us who are ultra competitive it may help motivate us to make more money. I will write more about this contest, once the rules are finalized.

My Take on Third Party Advertisement
Good post by Garry. I personally think that third party advertisers offer several advantages over going it on your own, like a bigger audience of potential advertisers, payment processing, etc. That said, I know that many people including my friend Austin, say that once you get enough traffic you should try to find a direct adveriser to sponsor your site.

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Lots of Link Love
An excellent guest post on problogger about getting links to your blog by Wendy.

Questioning the Legitimacy and Authenticity of Internet Marketing Advice & Sources
Great post by Aaron Wall about being careful about who you go to for advice and mentoring.

...
You mentioned promoting niche products and AdSense. What other methods are you using to monetize your blogs? (Perhaps George will be kind enough to refer this question to you.)

Gayla posted the response to Allan’s question on her blog. Since some of you wondered about that as well, I thought you would be interested in checking out Gayla’s response by clicking here. You also might want to bookmark the new page she created to track her blogging income sources.

Thanks Gayla for writing that post!

Allan I am honored to interview you. I have been a regular reader of your newsletter since I signed up for it 2 years ago.

Q. On your site, you say that you’ve been making a good living from affiliate programs since 1998. Did you do anything before that to make money online? What led you to affiliate marketing?

I started online in 1996 with a hobby business website aimed at people like me who have an intolerance to gluten. My wife, Joanna, and I had spent a lot of time experimenting with gluten-free recipes so I wrote and sold a gluten-free recipes ebook – although I’d never heard the word “ebook” in those days. I called it a “digital book”, which probably puzzled most of my visitors!

That old site still exists but I give the recipes away now.

Selling the book wasn’t terribly successful, especially at first, so I spent a lot of time studying how to market on the Internet. One of the books I bought had an affiliate program. I found the book useful, so I started promoting it on a niche website and received a few commission cheques.

I thought “This is great!” and wanted to find more affiliate programs. I searched for an affiliate directory and couldn’t find one, so I started my own. That’s how AssociatePrograms.com was born, early in 1998. Apparently there was already one affiliate directory, but I didn’t find it.

In a fairly similar way, in 1999 I saw people on a discussion list asking for a list of pay-pay-click search engines. I couldn’t find one, so I created PayPerClickSearchEngines.com and handed it over to an employee to manage.

Q. What were you doing before you started your online business?

I was a journalist – reporter, sub-editor, chief of staff – for daily newspapers in New Zealand and Australia.

Q. Who most influenced you when you were starting out?

My boss. I’d grown to hate my job and was striving to escape from a control freak boss. That was mighty powerful motivation.

I was broke when I started and made the time-wasting mistake of trying to do things purely by trial and error. As soon as I could afford to, I started buying marketing manuals and read voraciously. The first marketing book I read was written by Jim Daniels. I learned a lot from Corey Rudl, Ken Evoy, Marlon Sanders… and lots of other people.

Q. What was the best thing you did to increase your online income?

I sat down and analyzed my skills and interests and decided to build a business around them. I’d wasted a couple of years online before doing that.

Now I always advise people to design their own businesses to suit them. For me, starting websites and newsletters in fast-growing niches was a really good decision.

Q. How has affiliate marketing changed in the past ten years, and how do you see it changing in the next five years?

Whew! It would take books to answer that, because there have been so many changes, so many hyped up fads. However, in all those hectic years, one thing has remained constant: If you build a truly USEFUL, interesting website which genuinely helps your visitors, you’ll have a very good chance of success. I don’t see that changing much in the next five years, although things will inevitably get more intensely competitive.

I think it’s inevitable that search engines will get better at sorting out the junk and auto-generated stuff. They’ll have to.

The whole “Internet marketing” scene is crazily competitive now. Wise affiliates are getting themselves established in less competitive niches.

I think affiliate merchants will have to work much harder to reward successful affiliates and encourage them to stay loyal.

We’ll also see a lot more video, more effectively used – I hope.

Q. In your last newsletter you mentioned how video is helping people sell their products. How can affiliate marketers utilize video to improve their conversions promoting other people’s products?

Yes. It’s good to see people pioneering the use of video for affiliates. I really must make the time to get more involved in video. I’ve seen some good videos created by affiliates who use Camtasia to show you how to use software or they take you inside a membership site – with the merchant’s permission, of course.

There’s fantastic potential for affiliates to do more of this.

It’s the old story. The affiliates who do some work instead of just pasting a link into their site, are more likely to get sales.

Q. Are there any questions you ask yourself about a product before promoting it?

I nearly always test a product before I promote it. I’m swamped with offers to promote stuff, so I can choose only those I strongly believe in. As well as being sure that the product is high quality, I like to know as much as I can about the people behind it. That’s really important to me. I like working with merchants I know and trust.

I’m also keen on programs which pay residual revenue, the sort we review at LifetimeCommissions.com. I like doing the work once and being paid over and over again.

Q. What kind of sites does affiliate marketing work best for? Are there any types of sites that should avoid affiliate programs?

They work well on review sites, where someone in a buying frame of mind types “product XYZ 478659” into a search engine and finds a favorable review just when they’re considering buying the product. That’s powerful.

Affiliate programs work well on any sites where the affiliate has gone to the trouble of researching the products thoroughly and writing in-depth case studies describing in specific detail how the product has helped someone.

Here’s a bad use of affiliate programs…

If I’m promoting product A, I hate seeing affiliate links on the sales letter promoting product B, on which I don’t earn a commission. I saw an affiliate merchant site the other day which had a pop-up which not only included an AdSense ad – against the AdSense rules! – but also promoted a third-party product. That sort of behavior isn’t fair to affiliates.

If affiliates spot this sort of thing, I think we should not only avoid the affiliate merchant but also tell them why.

Diverting traffic to non-commissioned sales is a really dumb thing for an affiliate merchant to do because experienced affiliates – the ones most likely to produce good sales – will see what’s happening and not sign up.

Q. What is the most important thing to remember when promoting an affiliate program?

The affiliate’s job is to help someone decide what to buy. You have to make a conscious decision to do this, not merely present a few facts.

Try to see things from your visitor’s point of view. Try to imagine what is going on in your visitor’s mind, and help him or her decide what to buy. This may sound simple, but it’s so easy to forget to do it.

Obviously, it’s really important to promote high quality products so you can enthusiastically endorse them. Enthusiasm sells.

Q. What is the biggest mistake people make when trying to promote an affiliate program?

The most common mistake is for an affiliate newcomer to create a site about how to do Internet marketing – when they know almost nothing about Internet marketing.

There are tens of thousands of affiliate programs and millions of products you can choose from. New affiliates often overlook the fact that it’s easier to succeed if you choose a less competitive niche. I own a bunch of websites in non-Internet marketing niches.

Here’s an article I wrote describing 12 mistakes affiliates make:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/articles/108/1/12-mistakes-affiliates-make

Q. What are your favorite affiliate marketing tools?

My mind and my fingers on the keyboard. Sorry if that sounds flippant, but it’s so true. When I look at how I spend most of my time, that’s what I do – answering questions on our affiliate forum, writing my affiliate newsletter and writing articles.

Of course keyword research is hugely important when you’re researching a new site or writing an article. I have an annual subscription to Wordtracker and dip in there every now and again.

I’ve never really been one for in-depth tracking and analysis, but I know it’s hugely important. That’s why I teamed up with Jay Stockwell, who created KeywordWorkshop.com for us. He loves doing that stuff.

Q You are one of the most recognized names in affiliate marketing. If you were to write a formula for affiliate marketing success, what would it be?

I think far too many new affiliates try to run before they can walk. They should start with something fairly easy and earn while they learn.

That’s why I strongly recommend that every new affiliate should start by creating a useful niche content site, weave in a few affiliate links and AdSense ads, and get good links to it. By doing this, you gradually learn all the main facets of Internet marketing, while generating revenue at the same time.

Who knows? You may do so well with this formula that you never venture beyond it.

My Affiliate Program Tutorial, which I wrote when our bookkeeper started asking questions, explains this in more detail:

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/articles/188/1/Affiliate-Program-Tutorial

Q. One last question. What is the best way I can learn more about affiliate marketing from you?

Thanks for asking! Explore the hundreds of articles on AssociatePrograms.com, explore our affiliate forum, subscribe to my newsletter, and explore the newsletter archives. If it all seems too overwhelming, start with my free Affiliate Program Tutorial. It sums up years of experience – and a lot of hard work.

I decided to ask an expert about website monetization.

I knew that what I needed was to find an affiliate marketing guru to interview.

Yes, I have read tons of stuff on affiliate marketing and I do a decent job with affiliate marketing myself. However, there is always room for learning, especially from an expert!

I decided to ask the first person who came to my mind when I thought of the words “affiliate marketing guru”. I consider this person to be one of the top 10 Internet marketers in the world. He agreed to an interview and I will be posting the interview on Wednesday when I get back from a day of rest tomorrow.

If you are interested in learning affiliate marketing from an expert, then be sure to check out the interview I post on Wednesday.