Need Money! Affiliate Marketing "How To Products" Do Not Work

So you have signed up for all the big name affiliate marketing email lists, right?

What you thought would be daily tidbits of affiliate marketing wisdom are really this..

Every day, you get these chummy little emails from Eric, Chris and Ben telling you about a great new product. (Funny how these emails become more and more frequent and rarely are nothing more than a pitch for yet ANOTHER GREAT PRODUCT?).

And every product pitched is basically the same?

- Fast way to big sales/traffic!
- Fool proof, step-by-step system!
- Proven way to make xxxx$ in sales/increase traffic in 30 Days or Less!
- Super secret methods! Destroy the competition! Dominate the market!
- Make lots of dough, imagine the good life!

If it were all true, why are more people not making more money (or any money)?

Because most of these affiliate marketing course, e-books and videos are a scam.

Period.

Here are the pitfalls they never seem to mention in the sales pitch letters.

- The product you are purchasing is going to be bought by thousands of others who will also be trying the same techniques/plan you are which means the market will become diluted and the BIG SECRET STRATEGY will no longer be a secret.

- All require an upfront costs besides the e-book, video or course.
All products or plans require customers to have domain names, a web hosting account, an email auto responder product, Internet access, PPC marketing (like AdWords)budget and more software tools.

- All require time devoted to correctly using the product. Not the maintaining, but building. This can be 8, 10 or 12 hours a day. Even the easy stuff, like key word research, PPC ad creation, and building web forms takes time. A lot of time.

- The ability to build a web site. Not a "Site Sell" or "Website Tonight" page, but a real Web 2.0 pitch page, landing page and other sales related pages. No HTML, CSS or PHP skills? Plan on hiring someone if you want to take full advantage of your nifty new, money making e-advice

All of this is left out of the pitch page.

Take building a web site for instance.

What a total pain in the butt. But it is required to have a pitch page and landing page for your affiliate marketing efforts (each one by the way - so one page for Day Job Killer, another for Affiliate Project X, and so on and so on..).

Firing up the JAVA-based web site creation tool won't work and will only serve to frustrate you even further.

So you check with e-lance, rent-a-coder or some other site online and find that the pitch page can be built by an "expert" but it will cost $150.00! And you still have not made a dime online yet.

And even if the site is built, how will you get traffic? If trying to resell a popular product, better be ready to compete against the big boys who already have the higher page rank for natural traffic searches.

How about a PPC campaign (like AdWords) to build traffic?

Don't worry. The big boys have 100,200 and 1000.00 daily AdWords budgets and will force your measly little .05 per click/10.00 a day budget to the ground floor fifteen minutes after you start your big release.

And if your PPC ad does make it through to first page on Google, your competition will click thru your budget limited ads a few hundred times, run out your daily budget and run you off the net faster than you can say John Reese.

Here is my advice for making money online.

- Skip buying the e-products. Most are recycled junk. Focus on the end products you really want to market.

- Don't look for niche products, look for niche markets and potential buyers. Follow the money.

- Use PPC sparingly. Instead go to where your customer is and organically grow your web site and products. Some ideas..

* Join lots of web forums which have your interest and promote products with lots of good content posts featuring your product link in your signature and posts. Consider offering free products to generate click thrus.
* Use Squidoo. Build a lens for the products you are promoting. Include links back to your site. Visit lots of other lenses and leave comments.
* Use StumbleUpon and del.icio.us to generate a few more clicks.
* Use MyBlogLog, visit other sites and promote yours.

All of these tools "could" possibly generate a hundred of so site visits a day or more over time. No, it's not "thousands of clicks a day" but if one or two visitors buy the promoted product, you are making money - maybe for the first time.

- Pay someone to build your site. Use a SEO snob search engine friendly platform like Wordpress. Focus on one product at a time to keep your budget and time constraints at a minimum. Make your site somewhat unique and less "sale focused" and more information intense.

- Speaking of time, set aside a fixed amount of time a day for your efforts. One hour for page building. One hour for keyword and product research. One hour for marketing and traffic building research. One hour for maintaining/updating sites. Don't do all work on one day at one time - just one or two tasks a day with a fixed goal in mind.

- Write. Write good quality content. This is more important than design, platform or product. If you cannot or will not write, get out of the business and take a second job at Walmart.

That's it. That is the real secret to making money online. There are plenty of other things you can do to increase traffic and sales, but start with the basics and make it a goal to get that first order on ClickBank or Commission Junction. Than work on order number two and so on.

Need Money! Great post on shoemoney - uberaffiliate

This is probably one of the best posts I have read on making money online. You have to be really quick and smart to pull one of these deals off, but read the real story.

The person in question used conventional tools, (Firefox) and social networking (both free) to generate some substantial revenue in a short amount of time.

As much as I like e-books, you will not find examples like this in a book. Only by reading and researching online, along with not missing numerous opportunities, will you truly be successful online.

Need Money! Top Affiliate e-products

A number of new e-products have come out in August and September and it is getting to be confusing to me and probably many other people trying to make money online.

I received two emails yesterday and today about new products from big names Mike Filsaime and Chris (DayJobKiller).

I could not tell which product was which and both were forgettable.

Last week, everyone was ranting about ClickBank Affiliate Formula. Today, that product has dropped in Clickbanks's ranking and it is a good time to pick it up.

I think this product was the gem of the month and has been overlooked as the glut of make money online products grows.

Amazingly, Brad Cullen's Keyword Elite is still one of the top products available and one of my favorites.

Which leads us to another make money online post for Need Money coming up shortly.

Need Money! DealDotCom!

EVERYONE is talking about the new place online - DealDotCom.

Every day, DDC features another neat, make money online product for less than the asking price. Sort of like a "fire sale of the day" site.

Worth checking out daily and joining. Joining? Sure, DDC provides links to advertise the latest deal on your blog or web site.

Jump on this one today!

Need Money! Overture disabled

This probably happened some time ago, but Yahoo Overture Keyword Search tool has been disabled.

For years, you could use this tool to search and locate keywords for ad campaigns and niche sites.

Too bad. Overture was a neat tool.

You can still use Google's AdWords keyword tool for your searches and I am sure there are other "for pay" search sites as well.

Need Money! Affiliate Marketing stinks - CB Affiliate Formula

Does it?

Sure. If you consider this scenario.

On September 18th, I received an email from Chris of Day Job Killer fame telling me about the new ClickBank Affiliate Formula product from Andrew Fox.

"Oh boy" I thought. "A new product I need to check out".

The ClickBank Affiliate Formula sales letter looked good so I thought, "This might be fun to resell. I'll bet it will be a big seller!". I imagined moving a hundred copies in the next 30 days. That would be over seven grand at the discounted price!

Next came the hype and hoopla! Everyone was buzzing about this new product. All the big names were flooding their opt in lists with more offers and add-ons.

So I went to get an affiliate link to start promoting this product. Sorry, affiliate sales are not available unless you are a super joint venture partner like Chris or Eric Rockefeller or the Internet Whiz Kid or one of the other super stars whose list I subscribe too.

O.K... then the only was I can get to resell the product is if I buy it and get an affiliate link.

But I can't tell from the sales letter if that is possible or not. Do I gamble the $77.00 and find out? (My dream is to one day pay for the purchase of a product with two sales - just two sales).

Before I do, let's play devil's advocate. Say I do buy ClickBank Affiliate Formula and a run out to promote it. The big dogs have already spammed the internet with CBAF and I might be lucky if I get ten clicks and one sale.

Most of the big affiliate marketing players have huge lists - 1000, 5000, sometimes over 50000 opt in email addresses.

Note: These heavy hitter list holders count themselves lucky if they can pull in 1-2% close rate from their list.

And what's more, these same big time internet marketing affiliates put up their own sales letter page under their own domain name, (cbafilliate-info.com, etc).

Because they often have a "heads up" on you and all of the rest of the competition, they know the product name and build a professional website to sell the product days before you even hear about it.

So you and I, late to the game and with stars in our eyes of making the big splash and receiving the $1000.00 Clickbank check might as well head over to Walmart and see if they have any part-time jobs opening!

Which brings me to my conclusion, Affiliate Marketing stinks.

How can you, me or anyone else become successful at affiliate marketing?

Easy. Do it different.

That is what products like Clickbank Affiliate Formula miss. Even Chris of DayJobKiller fame teach readers to "stick with what works, rinse and repeat", blah blah blah.

These folks should check out Yaro Starak. He writes a blog, builds an audience and then and only then does he hit them up about a product "some" of his readers "may" be interested in.

I'll bet his close rate for some offers is small, but the return rate is 0%.

Affiliate Marketing does suck. To be successful at making money online, you and I have to find a different way and path to make it work.

Until next time, keep on making money online!

(And if you haven't yet, purchase Clickbank Affiliate Formula here ! only two more copies and I pay for mine!

$70,0000 Clickbank Sales

Check out the Clickbank Affiiate Formula. This is the big one from Andrew Fox who booked more than "100K in one day!" with CB.

This launches *today*.

Check it out!

Need Money! Project Pay Day

You have probably been bombarded with the Project Pay Day offer today or yesterday.

Making $40, 50 or 80 dollars a day sounds pretty good for a few hours a day of work. You know, sitting around the house watching TV when you could be making some decent gas and grocery money online?

However, looking at Project Pay Day, I can't see how this would work.

I signed up tonight hoping to figure out how PPD works.

Basically, you sign up and promote a few products online. If you get any sales, you make a one time commission. Okie dokie. But the specifics of "how" you make those sales look pretty vague to me.

Alsoooo, take a look at the sale page. Nearly every testimonial is from a MySpace generation type. That leads me to believe that PPD requires a lot of time online doing busy work (young people living at home have more time than us working folks!) OR requires a large degree of active, Web 2.0 direct marketing.....

"Hi, do you want to add me to your MySpace friend list? Cool! Hey dude, here is a great deal on hoodia! Do you think your mom wants some?"

After spending about 15 minutes on PPD, I dropped the idea for now.

When getting started with making money online, it is *tough* to make decent money up front at first. Not without hard work and an original idea to carry you.

Until the real pay day, keep on making money online!

Need Money! Article writing marketing 101

I have mentioned article marketing as a way to build traffic and make more sales for affiliate products. Does it work? Yes or no, I will find out.

I have been reading a number of tutorials and personal experiences online about article marketing and whether or not it can actually help you make money online. Advocates say it is a proven and low risk method which actually works.

Article marketing experts suggest the following hints to really be successful at article marketing:

- Write several articles daily.
- Post to at least two article directories.
- Make the articles different with each article directory. (Google favors this approach for direct traffic to your article - makes sense).
- Write articles with particular focus on keywords.
- Write articles with subject material based upon keyword searches of same product. Often called the long tail approach.

I think someone could spend an entire day writing articles to build traffic. But one of my questions was, "What quality should you focus on?".

Free article directories provide web sites with free content. Those web sites are generally not the Harvard Business Review or the New York Times. Quality of writing, while useful, is not a requirement.

The author who creates the most articles is a requirement for success however.

So get busy writing and posting those articles, toot sweet!

And then, start making money online!

Need Money! 30 Day Make Money Online Challenge!

The update!

I know, you thought I forgot and wanted to move on to other things. Forget about it! I will have the nightmaremortgage.com web site up by this evening and will start building revenue channels right away.

This reminds me of so many other "make money online" blogs. The authors post a few times, put some gratuitous Clickbank links on their site and hope ("please, please, please..") some clicks (AdSense) or sale will magically come their way.

No sir, it does not work that way!

Blogs work with lots of regular posts, creative entries and hard work.

There once was this idea of building hundreds of blogs, stuffing them with free content, and waiting for AdSense clicks to add up to $1.00 a day (or less!) and getting an aggregate check at the end of the month.

This sort of thing is the stuff of Internet legend these days. It is far better to concentrate on three or four (maximum) sites and optimize and market them to their full potential.

Blogger and web masters who focus on a small number of sites are the ones you read about with revenues in the thousands of dollars. Don't believe me, check out Problogger or Yaro Starak. Both focus on niche markets which net them thousand of dollars in monthly revenue.

Right now, my make money online properties consist of a handful of sites and I look for more every day. But I try and focus on things I actually know something about rather than high-paying keywords and CTR.

So, nightmaremortgage.com should be up shortly. In the meantime, check out this link for the Affiliate Commandments written by Chris of Day Job Killer and AdWords Miracle - two of my favorite e-books I have purchased in the past year.

Then, get back to making money online!

Need Money! Recurring revenue rocks!

Albert Einstein allegedly said that "compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe".

Whether his saying that is true or not, I contend that compound interest is the "co-most powerful force in the universe".

Recurring revenue is just as powerful.

So you have a web site or blog which you need money from. The fast method is stick those AdSense ads on and wait for clicks.

The next step up is an affiliate program which may result in %25-75 of the sale. Good money if you can get it.

But the real make money online Nirvana is the recurring revenue slam.

For years, big money makers have seen the value of recurring revenue to their make money online plans. What they do is find products that result in monthly returns after purchase.

Popular products include web hosting (GoDaddy, Dreamhost) or mailing list software ( AWeber. ).

When a visitor clicks on and signs up for one of these products, the web site publisher generally makes an upfront commission and then receives a MONTHLY COMMISSION for each month the customer continues to subscribe!

So no matter what you do, as long as that buyer remains a customer of the web hosting company or mailing software service, you will still receive a check, every month.

Now that is powerful.

And with each sale, even if it is only one per month, your recurring revenue continues to grow!

So, as well follow the model of build, include revenue, traffic and profit, discover recurring revenue producing products which will make many happy returns for you and your bank balance.

Until then, keep making money online!

Need Money! Stumbling around the 'Net

Okay, so you are still looking for traffic?

(Remember the system?...
Build site
Get traffic
Have revenue opportunities on site
Profit!

Remember, this applies to blogs, affiliate sales sites, adsense sites, etc..)

Getting traffic is still that tricky thing, isn't it?

Yesterday, we talked about article marketing and the effect it can have on traffic to your site.

However.. I cautioned that article marketing may have a loooonnng lag time before traffic shows up on your door.

So what traffic tips are available for the impatient, gotta-have-it-right-now make money online(r) that you are?

Have you seen StumbleUpon, yet? Of course you have, who hasn't?

But go open another window and check out the Stumble Upon website. Scroll way down to the bottom.

Click the link which says 'Advertisers'.

Yep, that's right. You can pay StumbleUpon to put your site up front for traffic.

I have always used the remote control/channel surfing analogy when describing StumbleUpon. It's like you are sitting on the couch clicking through one channel after another trying to find your television genre of choice.

With StumbleUpon advertising, you can capture those Stumbling 'Net site surfers by topic and grab their eyes at once.

How much does it cost? 5 bux to start!

How can I pay? Paypal!

But does it work? I used it on my celebrity blog and scored 100 hits in about an hour. It was great for "raising awareness" (but I did NOT profit or break even on AdSense or other revenue for my site when I ran my one and only campaign for this particular site - my bad not StumbleUpon. NeedMoney is honest if anything!).

But, some of those visitors did return. And if you need a bump to get the traffic flowing, you cannot beat StumbleUpon for generating some quick traffic.

Your call. Gamble a fiver and see if StumbleUpon draws some traffic your way.

Caveats - traffic depends upon your site, naturally. That earwax removal tool you are affiliating may not get some high traffic marks from StumbleUpon readers, but you never know!

Until next time, "Keep making money online!"

PS - update on the 30 Day Challenge later today! Ya'll come back now, y'hear!

Mike Filsaime: Post on money online

Great post by Mike. Please read this one today and this "make money online" thing will start to make sense.

Need Money! Article Marketing

Here is the road map:
- build web site
- get traffic
- earn revenue (ads, sales, subscriptions)
- be happy.

The first part is easy. There are billions of web sites with more added every day.

The second part is hard. Really hard.

Take a look at the sites you have built. How much traffic do you have on a daily basis?

10 visitors? 25? 100?

Most web sites have little (less than 10 visitors a day) if any (whoops! No traffic) traffic.

Getting traffic is the hardest part of building a web site or blog audience.

Forget that stuff about products driving "hundreds of hungry visitors with credit card in hand!" to your site. If all it took were buying an e-book with simple How-To instructions, everyone would be doing it!

There are a number of ways to build traffic to your site, all of which require time and effort.

One of the ways I have been working on building traffic to my sites has been with article marketing. Basically, I write articles (usually past blog posts) and submit them to article web sites.

If you have been under a rock lately, article sites are web site directories with hundreds and thousands of free articles. Web site owners in need of content take these articles and place them on their websites. The author of the article should then receive a link back to the web site listed in their article bio.

Ideally, if one is able to write and submit a large number of articles, then one's web site should see an increase in traffic from article readers.

Further, back links to an article author's site should increase the site's Google Page Rank as a side benefit. (More on what that means in another post!).

About article directories. There are literally hundreds of article directories. Google the term and you will see what I mean.

When I first started, I visited the top ranked directories and started posting one article at a time on each site. Time consuming? You bet!

I received an email from Brad Callen about his Article Submit tool and I downloaded the free version. It works pretty well.

It lists only about 60-80 article directories and allows "nearly" one button article submission to each site. Actually, it takes about two minutes to upload and submit an article to a site using Callen's Article Submit tool.

Some sites take longer than others because they require a user name and password to submit an article. The user name and password have to be set up before using Article Submit which is pain, but once done, it works each time.

The neat thing is the Article Submit tool stores multiple bios for different articles. Last night I submitted four different articles using four different bios (with web site links) using Article Submit. That was cool.

Naturally, Callen has a "Deluxe" version of his Article Submit tool which costs $67.00. I have not sprung for it yet, because I want to see if I really increase my traffic using article marketing.

Have I?

So far I have seen a few hits specifically from articles to two of my sites. But to be fair, most sites will not start publishing your articles for 15-30 days after submission. Which means the articles I submitted last night will probably not see the light of "Internet" day for another two weeks at least.

Giving time for broadcast, I expect I will not see significant traffic for a few months at least.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel! If you publish enough articles (plan on hundreds) and maintain your web sites, there is a very good chance your sites could generate revenue with you doing less work than now. And that is a good thing!

Hang in there! We will "make money online!".

Need Money! 30 Day Challenge - Headaches

As I noted earlier, I had a few technical problems with my website install.

First, I decided to go with a Wordpress blog for my 30 Day Challenge domain, nightmaremortgage.com.

The nightmare turns out to be installing Wordpress.

As you can see here, I have been using Blogger for many years. I have had two Wordpress blogs before, but one was the free option (blog.wordpress.com) and the other was installed with my other hosting provider - Yahoo. (Fast install by the way).

For instructions on installing Wordpress with a hosting provider like GoDaddy, I have been following some great instructions recommended by ProBlogger, Darren Rouse. The link is here - (give credit where credit is due!).

The problem is most Wordpress tutorials are for the default, boring, blue Wordpress install. Naturally, I would like a customized install and therein lies the problem!

So far, I am working on the template install in my templates file. The problem I have run into with Wordpress is the .php file extension. Windows looks at that .php extension like a chicken would at a moon rocket - "What the heck is that?".

MS finds all sorts of ways to make things difficult, but also has some shortcuts (not deserving of the term hack). I changed the wp-config.php file to a .txt extension so it could be edited.

Next, I had to translate what Wordpress referred to as a "username, password and userhost" vs. what GoDaddy named them. As the instructions say, "Your web host provider can give you this information".

Yes they will, after about 24 hours in email to the technical support department.

But let me quit whining. I have figured it out and now have to load this thing up and start posting and customizing (read: add make money widgets).

Hopefully, the next post on the Need Money Blog will have a link to the new website.

See you then!

Need Money! 30 Day Challenge.... pt 2

The plan is simple. The Need Money Blog 30 Day Challenge is for me to:

- Pick a domain name (Done. www.nightmaremortgage.com).
- Set up a hosting account (Done. GoDaddy).
- Set up a website. (In progress. Will have more on that tomorrow!).
- Make money online!

Had a few technical glitches but we are underway! The SS Make Money Online is now boarding!

Need Money! 30 Day Challenge continues....

Yesterday, I announced the domain I plan using for my 30 Day Challenge, nightmaremortgage.com.

The site is still not up so feel free to verify that there is no site under that name. Further, I will do my best to verify that indeed, this site will have been made from scratch per the terms I set last week!

The latest update!

I will be setting up the website on GoDaddy, my hosting and domain company. Now a few have recommended that you keep your hosting and domain companies separate for a number of reasons.

In order to keep this simple, I will use GD for both, but have the option of moving the site if need be.

I have a plan for the website once I have a few questions answered from GD (it is my own doing - I need to setup a SQL database, but have some simple questions - expect a full explanation in tomorrow's post!

Until then, keep trying to make money online and follow the 30 Day Challenge!

Need Money! The Need Money Challenge - Day 1

Okay, so you read my recent post about the Need Money Blog 30 day challenge.

The domain I am going use for my 30 day challenge I registered some time ago - nightmaremortgage.com.

Pretty timely, eh?

Please check out that domain. There is no website up under that name at this time.

So, starting today, I will being work on the website for nightmaremortgage.com.

The challenge of course is to see how much money I can make online in the next 30 days with this domain and website.

Stay tuned until tomorrow!