I had just finished Valve’s “Portal” and I came to realize that the submissive psychological messages directly relate to affiliate marketing. Yea, I know what you’re thinking, so hear me out here.

Many people jump on the affiliate marketing bandwagon because they assume that they’re going to get a free ride. Money, women, cars, and more money- in actuality, they find themselves working 10 hours a day for a while and constantly tweaking PPC campaigns and learning the ropes of SEO and SEM. Ahh yes, welcome to the affiliate marketing reality that we all know and love. It’s not all puppy-dogs and lolly pops, that’s for darn sure, and if you aren’t careful you’re going to get eaten alive.

At the same time, that’s why we all love affiliate marketing, right? This is truly an industry where those that can do, and those that can’t fail and move on back to their real-world jobs. I’ve seen it happen a million times and I don’t doubt that I’ll see it happen a million more.
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So here’s something for you: have you ever wondered how the advertisers make any money when they are essentially handing you X.XX for a zip/e-mail submit? I mean, it’s not as if they’re directly selling the sign-ups anything, so how can they afford to pay an affiliate to send them little more than a zip/e-mail lead? From someone who isn’t familiar with the industry it likely makes little to no sense, but once you dig deeper you begin to realize how it works.

To make it short and sweet (for those who don’t want to read the entire article), the answer is “mailers”. Think of it like this: if I am running a campaign for a free iPhone, for example, that requires a two field sign up (name and e-mail address) I’m likely going to pay somewhere between $1.00 and $2.50 per lead. Thousands of affiliates are going to promote that lead somehow (via PPC, e-mail, co-reg, SEM, etc.) and pump that offer out. That offer might generate 50,000+ names and e-mail addresses, and while I’ve paid $50,000 or more for them, I’m laughing.

Laughing hard.

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Many people enter affiliate marketing thinking that they’re unlocking some secret to a massive income magnet. In reality, online affiliate marketing is as much as a business as anything else. You will need to work to keep your affiliate business generating money, remaining profitable, and staying ahead of your competition. Whether you like it or not, online affiliate marketing requires as much work as any other business.

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Landing pages is a term that gets thrown around a lot. If you’re getting started online as an affiliate marketer, I’m willing to bet that you probably aren’t quite sure about what a landing page is or what it needs to be. I thought that a quick information article would suit the task of answering the question just fine.

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Alright, so here’s a little something that I wrote about the age old mystery: how the heck do you generate traffic for your affiliate marketing websites? To answer this question, I’ve written a poem: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a quick question: would you buy from or commit to an action from a website that looked as if it had been put together by a three year old? Probably not, so why do you expect your visitors to do the same?
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It seems as if it’s been a while since I talked about the wonder of zip submits, and after a couple of e-mails from people wanting a bit of clarification on the subject I’ve decided to post a quick guide to making around $120 a day with a popular zip-submit campaign (most zip submits pay between $1/lead and $1.20/lead). This guide isn’t a bible, so don’t e-mail me saying that you couldn’t make it work- as with anything, you need to bit of your own time and effort into it.
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Ahh yes, e-mail marketing. If there is one marketing method that new affiliates are probably afraid of, I would say that e-mail marketing is second only to PPC (hey, PPC even scares me sometimes). With all of the laws and regulatory legislation that is now in place regarding “spam”, an e-mail marketer needs to be careful about who they send mail to and when they send it- there’s nothing worse than receiving a phone call from someone in the government letting you know that you’re being shut down for violation of CAN-SPAM laws.
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I have deep roots with 1and1.com. I launched my first several websites on 1and1.com because of their ridiculously low price ($1.99 a month at the time). I went from $1.99 a month in expenses and no income to $1.99 a month in expenses and over $3,000 in income. That’s a mighty profit, and for me, it was a great start. Alas, things would not remain beneficial, and unfortunately our relationship was a self destructive one.
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How do you respond to stress?

Do you freak out, or do you find ways to break it down into manageable chunks?