Newbie Affiliate Marketing

Archive for October, 2008

I would like to update my Bye Bye Survey Explosion post. It seems when I was preparing my review of survey explosion I tried to access the survey explosion site from my place of employment which uses a proxy server that is located in the Netherlands’s. As Dude explained in his comment if you try to access survey explosion from outside of the US you will be brought to a page that requires you pay a fee to join survey explosion.  When you sign up for SE (I will call it that instead of typing out the full survey explosion) you can select which programs and/or surveys to join at that time. That is a good thing since it means you don’t have to go to each individual web site and enter the same information all over again. The only bad thing is all of these programs requires you to be a US resident. So anyone outside the US please do not pay the fee to join SE you cannot benefit from be a member of any of their programs.

One the first page of the sign up you enter your basic information and select which panels and programs you want to join. See screen shot. 

On the second page/step you then can select “bonus” programs to join. You can choose from over a dozen but I only recommend the following: Global Survey Group, Quickrewards.net, Lightspeed, Survey spot, Vindale Research and Greenfield. See the screen shots below.

The 3rd step tries to get you to join a few panels that you did not select on the first 2 screens. I don’t like that. If I didn’t choose them the first time around don’t push it on me again one last time. In addition one of their suggested panels I selected on the first page which shows this 3rd step is random and is just a additional way to try to get you to join more panels under them. Also you cannot select continue on this screen unless you join all their suggested panels. Hitting the continue button does nothing.

One other negative is soon after signing up with SE I started getting spam at most right away. With normal reserach panels you NEVER EVER get spam or any emails unless they are surveys or emails from the panel themselves. They never sell your email address to anyone else. This IMO also shows SE gives other companies access to their email list.

I would not suggest SE to anyone. If you wanted to join whatever panels they are promoting I would go directly to the panel’s website myself instead of going thru SE. To much of a hassle, your email address will get sold and you will

get sent allot of offers to join junk programs. So it is not a scam I stand corrected but most of the stuff they promote IMO is no good but they also have some stand up program’s mixed in like Opinion Outpost and Lightspeed. That is why I suggest seeing what they offer but going directly to the panel your interested in instead and joining with SE. For users outside the US steer clear; I would go to my friend Katie’s Corner to find good survey panels for people living outside the US. I have included the screen shot shows what the landing page looks like if you try to access it from outside the US like I did.

If you are thinking about getting started with affiliate marketing you may find yourself questioning where to start and how to go about it. I know the amount of information that can be found on the internet is overwhelming. When I first started out as an affiliate marketeer I thought I had to buy all kinds of programs to get my ‘online business‘ going. But after spending hundreds of dollars without selling one product I knew I was wrong. By then I had found out about article marketing and I decided not to buy any products anymore until I was making money with this free method of promotion. I followed the bum marketing method from Travis Sago. I was subscribed to his website and he sent me several mails every week and he told me about the Wealthy Affiliate University and how he loved it. I knew Travis wouldn’t be promoting this to me if he wasn’t convinced that this was something great, so I decided to give the Wealthy Affiliates a try.

I joined after paying $39. That gave me access for one month. But all I needed was a couple of hours. Because that is how long it took me to realize that the Wealthy Affiliates were the real deal. For the first time I didn’t feel remorse after buying a product. What the Wealthy Affiliates offer you is a place where you find everything you need to get started or to take your online business to the next level. Below are some of the things you’ll find at the Wealthy Affiliates:

- 8 Week Action Plan: The best place to start for beginners
- (Video)tutorials on every aspect of internet marketing
It will take you more than a week to read everything in the Affiliate Learning Center. The tutorials are divided in three groups: beginner, intermediate and senior! Even the experienced marketeers will find something new to learn!
- Goal and campaign planner
- Keyword Research Tool
- Keyword Generator
- Keyword Lists
- Competition Spy Tool
- Rapid Writer (Article spinner)
- Site Rubix (create professional websites without any knowledge of html, php or CSS)
- Free hosting!
- Link Tracking
- Link Cloaking
- One-on-one support

And that is only part of what you get! The best part of the Wealthy Affiliates has to be the forum. Here, the beginning and experienced marketeers form a community that is dedicated to helping each other out!
Whenever you post a question, it will be answered within the hour. And when I’m having a bad day I go to the ‘general success forum’. This is a place where people post their recent successes. Here you read about people making their first sale or reaching their first $100 day. It’s extremely motivating!
(Follow the link below and you’ll see a screenshot of the success forum)

The Wealthy Affiliates are now offering a very special promo. If you join now, you get ‘Inside the List’ for free. Normally this ebook about email list building sells for $67. The experienced marketeers already know that ‘the money is in the list’ and that you can’t start soon enough with building your list.

Get all the details about the Wealthy Affiliates. There is nothing else like it on the web!

Well week 2 of my affiliate marketing journey was not as memorable as week 1. Zero leads, Zero sign-ups, Zero sales. I have not changed anything or done anything differently than I did my first week but the results were not the same. I spent just as much time marketing.  the one thing I did not do this week I did the first was run a small Adwords campaign but I only got one lead from my first campaign to begin with.

I have been promoting exactly the same. Traffic Exchanges, Safe List, Forums Signuatres, all that stuff. Looking at my stats the numbers seem to say the same things. I am getting roughly the same amount of visitor’s, page views and clicks, but only this week things aren’t converting. Maybe I need to try different programs/offers to see what fits best. Maybe I need to start with the programs that are getting lots of impressions but no clicks and dump them for something new and then take the programs that are getting clicks and see how to tweak them so they convert.

Starting next week I am going to spend that week more on SEO, link building, submitting to directories and such and less on building traffic and promoting; see where that gets me. I know sooner or later and testing and tweaking I will find what works best for this blog and what I should throw away.

Affiliate Marketing offers many benefits that traditional employment does not including the ability to set your own hours, an unlimited stream of income, the flexibility of choosing a niche that you are passionate about, and the opportunity to help others.

By virtue of the fact that a large portion of Affiliate Marketing revolves around the sale of information products, the opportunity to help others is by far the strongest draw that online ventures provide. Not only is the marketing professional able to make hundreds, if not thousands of dollars by pursuing their passion, in the process they are contributing to the education or training of others at the same time.

There are very few careers that afford the instant gratification this arrangement provides. Many traditional jobs provide an education or service, but the end result or the consumer that acquires the benefit is so far removed from the supply chain, that the employee never gets to see first hand the difference they are making in someone else’s life.

On the other hand, Internet Marketing professionals many times will not only see first hand the difference they are making, they are directly involved in the process while it is evolving. This is a very strong draw for those who seek and gain their gratification from helping others.

Because the claims of making an overnight fortune are so plentiful, it is often believed that it is the financial gain that drives online entrepreneurs. And while that is certainly one of the overwhelming benefits to online opportunities, more often than not you will see the people making the most money are the ones that are the most passionate about what they are doing.

This passion is what will stand the test of time. There are plenty of online marketing opportunities that fade into the background as fast as they originally appeared, but someone who puts their heart and soul into every aspect of their product or service almost always backs the ones that have the greatest longevity.

This model is one that does not get a lot of exposure, because too often the headlines we see are designed for shock value and the easiest way to capture the attention of an audience is through the income potential. But looking beyond that, if you see someone with passion, you will most likely see someone who is going to be around for quite a while or has already been around for a long time. It is a common denominator that is shared by many of the top Internet Marketing Gurus today and will remain so for a long while to come.

New entrepreneurs who aspire to reach great heights in the Internet Marketing community will do well to recognize and emulate this business model. There is no limit to the amount of ways that someone can make a living online, but if care is taken to choose a topic that is also part of your passion, then the odds of a long and successful career in this business greatly increase.