Hi, my name is Ed, and I am only 4 months old in affiliate marketing.
I have been doing affiliate marketing since mid June 2007 and have not been able to make one sale from my websites.
I have only created a couple ezines and a couple articles to advertise my website. And out of a few million results in google one of my websites was number 10 (on the first page) in google search results when using the words - Earning Money On the Web - in the search engine. My other site once was once number 30 (page 3) out of 5 million. Yet not one person has ever entered my websites through google. Not one person has ever entered my websites through my ezines or articles. As far as google you can even be number 1 on page one out of 20,000,000 pages when you type certain key word phrases in the search engine. But even then your site may never be discovered if no one ever types in the exact keyword phrase you use to find your site in a number 1 position in google.
Having no luck with google or with the few articles I have written so far I decided to spend about $110 signing up for websites that advertise your website through linking your website to traffic that still visits domains that are recently expired. Yet even there the statistics show that most people are on my site very briefly and only a dozen have ever stayed on my web site for more than one minute and went to other pages on my site other than my home page. And not one person (out of 20,000) has ever made a second visit to my websites unless they are merchants I am an affiliate for. According to all the advertising I purchased with expired domains I have had close to 20,000 visitors but not one of those visitors has ever purchased a thing from my website or affiliate links.
I have however made $130 (took 4 months) in sales via a viral ebook, and on usfreeads. But one was refunded already which dropped my all time affiliate marketing total down to $100. If more stuff is refunded then my total will keep dropping.
As far as getting paid I have never been paid anything yet - not even a penny - even though I am due to get paid (by Clickbank) since my balance is above $10 (it is very difficult to even make $10 with affiliate marketing and takes a month or more). But I was told by Clickbank that I can't get paid anything until 5 different credit cards are used to buy products from my affiliate links, and if the people use paypal or e checks it does not count. So in other words if the day comes when I finally earn $1000 through my Clickbank links (probably after a few years) I still won't get paid any of that money if every person who purchases from me keeps using pay pal or e check etc. That is, I will get paid that $1000 eventually. They will keep it on hold until 5 different credit card numbers are found in nonpaypal purchases.
I am under the impression that affiliate marketing works well only for very few people. The more people hear about affiliate marketing and figure out how to delete cookies out of their browser and instead visit merchants websites directly (bypassing all affiliate links) the less will affiliate marketing work.
I don't even think it is worth writing and submitting 100's of genuine articles because more than likely no one will ever even finish reading any of the articles and will never click on the web address in the article. Or, if they do and then go to the website and click on an affiliate link, then they will go to their browsers option button and find where it says delete all temporary files and cookies and visited sites etc., then they don't have to worry about anyone else (other than the merchant) getting paid some of their money if they make a purchase.
If affiliate marketing does some how work for some people then I think it only works for people who have money to invest in something like google adwords. But that is a dangerous path for those of us who mainly have enough money to survive with, and a lifetime savings so far of under $1000. For example if you pay $1.00 per click on google adwords to get your ad listed on top where people will see it, and then say 50,000 people click on your attractively worded ad and go to your website, and stay there for 30 seconds, and then leave never giving a thought to making a purchase, that will cost you $50,000 anyway which, for someone like me, would take about 20 years to pay off. I have never even seen my bank account above $3,000 and I am almost 42. So the thought of paying a multi-million dollar organization like google thousands of dollars is sickening to think about. I would rather go homeless and choose not to work just so I could never pay them anything, and if I did make a little money it would go to charity instead - to people who really need it.
Anyway I still have hope that affiliate marketing will work for me. I will keep trying for now. If I ever do make my thousands (even $20,000+ a year is considered very rich in my book) with affiliate marketing then I can even afford to do a little adwords and will be able to pay google if I need to, but will also have enough to help others who are in worse circumstances. Maybe I will be one of the lucky few some day who affiliate marketing works for just like the lucky few who have won big in the lottery. Then again, maybe not. It's nice to think about though. It just may not be the reality of the matter.
your reality is what you make it on the net. The articles you dread so much, it the very tool that could make you 20 k a month in a year if you apply it correctly.
Affiliate marketing is not for everyone, but for people willing to learn and work. the internet is one of the only places where thae average person can make it big.
Before trying for phrases, you need to use keyword tools to make sure people are searching that phrase, and then the top 5 positions are the best. 2nd or 3rd page is worthless. and you are not going to do well as a beginner with CB.
you have to use long tail keywords for CB and this takes a lot of time to find the buying keywords and rank for them
SEO is easy, I even made my Myspace page rank for New York SEO Expert in yahoo at the top and page 2 on google. Myspace Profiles Beating out the Guru's?
You don't mention what type of products, but it sounds like you are making the classic mistakes most newbies make. I feel your pain and would like to help.
1st the type of traffic you bought never converts, don't waste your money on it.
Are you promoting any type of get rich quick, how to make money online, webmaster secrets or ANY other type of Internet Marketing stuff? Thats where all the newbies start and that market is filled with slick pros, gurus and scammers all preying off newbies like you. You CAN'T COMPETE!
It sounds like that's the area you are focused on if you rank for "Earning Money On the Web."
Don't waste your time going down a path THOUSANDS of newbies have gone before with the same result. Most DO end up with no money and ready to give up. I don't know what makes newbies think they know enough about how to make money online to sell other newbies products about how to make money online.
Also Clickbank IMHO is the hardest place to start. Too competitive and too many of the type of programs I mention above.
Find a small niche to start. Find one you are interested in and know about.
Read all the stickies in the Newbie forum and all the posts in the niche forum for ideas.
Don't give up - just SWITCH GEARS!
__________________
Your Partner in Success,
Linda Buquet :: Affiliate Program Advertising, Affiliate Recruiting & PR (Publisher Relations) 5 Star Affiliate Programs :: 50+ High Paying, Honest Affiliate Programs 5 Star Affiliate Blogs :: Visit the 5 Star TOP 50 Affiliate Directory
You are right Affiliate marketing isn't really for everyone..
But the beauty of this is that you can learn how to use the traffic to geenerate income..
People who have allot of traffic but no sales have to do something on they're content..
Maybe promote an other product one that really catches everybody's attention.
__________________
ROBOTTRADER
Master the financial markets without investing.
Thank you for all the advice. I posted my website links in a different section of this forum and am waiting for replies so I can figure out what I am doing wrong - maybe my websites are too junky, load too slow, not popular subjects etc. In my main website I am promoting health and wellness products which includes diet and weight loss, fitness and bodybuilding, yoga and meditation, self improvement, womens healtyh and beauty, vitamins, herbs and sumpplements etc. And I also include a section on financial freedom which links to my other website which focuses on earning money online. But I have not been a success in any of it yet and as I already mentioned my affiliate marketing total for 4 months is about $100 if I don't include the refund for $33.
Anyway my sites can be viewed and are awaiting reviews at this section of the forum:
Hi,
Shame you are having a rough time of it
The sad fact is a lot of people do not make a profit in affiliate marketing but for others affiliate marketing is a source of some serious revenue.
If you browse the forums you will find people who claim to be making $1000 to $2000 a month.
The important thing is you have to choose a niche that is profitable and be very careful about the keywords you optimize your site for.
Also a couple of articles just is not nearly enough.
If you look at ezine articles author list you will find the names of the really successful affiliates with 100, 200 articles attached to there names.
Also you really have to be focused to make this work.
The advantage of your few months in the business is that you have learned some things do work, viral marketing and some things that don't.
Like you, I have an affiliate site on fitness and it does pretty well for such a competitive niche. One of the things I always try to provide on my sites is brutal honesty and as I just told someone else, that is missing out here. Especially with affiliate sites.
Rather than focusing so much on the sale and promoting the products, start by providing unique information in your niche that none of your competitors are offering.
I learned that people buy from people they trust. So in order to get your audience to buy these things you are promoting you have to build up that credibility and one way is through your helpful content.
Do you use these products you promote and can you give an unbiased review? These are things people want to know. If they feel pitched then they aren't as eager to buy.
On the other hand if you say "Hey, my name is xyz.... and I've struggled with my weight for years. Here are some things that have worked for me...."
Right away, you've become a human being who is interested in helping someone with weight loss rather than someone just trying to sell products. Again, people want to be helped. They don't want to be sold to. So if you provide good, free information FIRST and then subtly recommend products here and there that's a much better way than to just build a site promoting a bunch of products from an affiliate program.
I haven't seen your site so I don't know if that's what you're doing but from your description I gather you have a site mainly focused on promoting the products without the useful info to accompany the products.
An affiliate site should appear as if the main goal is to inform, educate, entertain, etc. not sell products. I know that may seem like the obvious way to go because you want to make money. But you'll actually make more if you come across as a human being interested in helping someone solve a problem.
I ended up writing a couple of articles for new folks after reading basically what your saying in another forum from other members
It basically boils down to this. This about what you would do offline to start your business and do the equivalent online.
What's the first thing you do before starting a business- research
Before investing money in advertising offline what do you do - get your demographics find out where your prospects go to get the information you have. Then go there and let them know why it's to their advantage to get the information from you
Can you give us more details
What are you marketing?
Do you have a website?
Where are you marketing?
Anyway the more details you can give us the better
Do to the fact that I have very little extra money to spare I have not been able to buy most of the the products I promote and therefore can't write my own reviews. Where I do write my own articles I am honest in what I write. But I don't write any reviews about products I have never used. I just include info about the product and then a link leading to the particular website where the product is being sold.
One of my webistes, by the way, is currently number 6 on the first page of google out of a competition of 17 million when you type in the keywords: earning money on the web
Sometimes it disappears and is no where to be found. But then it reappears again in the top 10. My health and wellness website has never gotten better than about the top 20 in google but it often disappears.
Unfortunately I am figuring out that even if a website is in the top 5 on google it is rare to even get one visitor. My one website only appears in that numer 6 position if those exact keywords are typed in. So for someone to find it they need to type those exact words in. And few probably ever use those exact keywords. So basically I have never received any purchases yet through either of my websites even if they make it almost to the top of google.
But I have received a few purchases on usfreeads and on Ebay. My total to date is about $100 after almost 5 months. Maybe I already mentioned that.
Anyway I will digest some of the advice everyone is sharing. For those of you who asked about my website the address to both my websites is in the section of this forum called "review my websites".
In the meantime. For those products you rep. Email the merchant and say this
Aloha, howdy, Ola blah
I'm your new affiliate. After I make three sales do you think that will earn me your product so I can do a review, get the word out to more people and make us both even more money?
Often when I do this the merchant sends me his/her product immediately, sometimes I've already sold a bunch, and on rare occassions I don't hear from the merchant at all.
One trick I learned is to join the merchants newsletter. They usually respond to that since I may be a prospect
Affiliate Marketing works only for the lucky few?
Linear Mode
