Useless Affiliate

I get this a lot from people and we get into a conversation that leads no where. There are some things that I always get confronted with

Affiliate Marketing is Illegal!

Hold on for a second.  First of all I dont’ want to repeat the question again asking you how you found out its illegal. Let me explain the legal issues. There is a catergory called, BlackHatSEO. This one is the illegal way to earn revenue. Most of it is bending the rules and hiding it and some are just wrong. There are some affiliate that do this but not a lot. There is whitehatseo which is purely legal. The way you are suppose to. Is adding a link with a banner and your affiliate link illegal? There are millions of sites that do this and no it is NOT illegal.

I just realized that setting up a blog, setting up a web site, iframing a site, signing up for affiliate networks, and desinging a web page isn’t too easy. In the beginning I was just like everyone else. I always refer back to a point where I was so frustrated at dreamweaver when I still new. I downloaded dreamweaver and then I bought my first domain which was commonsickness.com. My goal was to make a medical site and throw some adsense in it to make some revenue. So when I got to dreamweaver, I tested it out. First I wanted to post a picture in the body of the web site. Easy right? NOO!! It was so hard just to post it the way I wanted it. Believe it or not it took me 3-4hours to figure it out. That was how much I was a newbie back then. I also had a problem of getting the web site from my computer to the internet. That took another hour or so! But now I can do it very quickly since I learned from pure experience.

As an affiliate marketer you need to learn this skill. There is no way you can go far without learning how to make a landing page. Sure people can buy landing pages and premade web sites. A nice way to cheat your way up to professional web design but after a while you start to get problems along the way. Maybe something happened and an image won’t load. Maybe the whole .index won’t load at all. Or maybe you want a new color or theme. You can either buy a landing page for another $20-$100. (jeez..) Seriously people do pay that much for a landing page and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone paid for $150+ for one. Show me the page you want and I can make it without breaking a sweat. I’m still noob at web design but I can probably get the same conversion rate with a $50+ landing page

Just like everything in life, we make bad choices while we think it is better. Earlier today I had a collection of about 2,000+ keywords that I have been waiting to test out. So I was being aggressive because if I wanted to meet my goal this week I have no choice to to let it go. New landing page, new links, new beginnings was what I was thinking. As the day goes by I’m like getting confused. I set out 2,000+ keywords and I was actually thinking, “well if i let about 2,000 keywords go I should have a minimum of 3-5 leads today. My bids were just average and I was going to bid higher tomorrow when QUALITY SCORE kicks in. Remember that if I’m bidding at .50 and I have a higher quality score then you, I’m paying for clicks CHEAPER. So it was average because I’m on a budget. Just about 12 hours pass and I spent a lot of money on clicks already and I was thinking..what!? No leads. I was aware of the # of impressions and which keywords were being clicked. Hmm.. still no leads. Now I see it!! Quickly! Pause all campaigns! . I repeat Pause all campaigns!!

In the past month I have made a few hundred USD. I tell people everyone who I talk to, if they are interested. I filter out people who wants to do it and who doesn’t. Believe me , I can tell who wants to start and who just wants to do it. There are two different types of people. One person jumps on it and read everything I posted and wants to get started. I will be impressed if someone IMs asking me “how do I start PPC?”. If I have to push someone then its a burden on them to get started. Basically its two groups of people. One is someone who wants to start and another who wants to earn a few bucks and handle it like a job. Here we go again with Employer vs. Employee. I am an Employer while someone who isn’t as motivated is an employee waiting for me to give them a job. When my business flys (yes it will i believe in me) then I can give you a job to do while I spend my vacation in cancun. I just don’t want to waste my time on someone who is interested and who just wants to jump with me and other affiliates in deep cold water not knowning what happens when you surface.

In the beginning I had a hard time figuring out what stuff meant. It seems that once people start making money and blog like me, they neglect to know the vocabulary. Everybody just assumes that everyone who is reading their blog knows what CTR means. Well I’m sorry but not everyone knows the meaning. Don’t feel like such a newbie because we all started out like that. Sometimes I read a blog and I still need to google what the term they are using is. This post might be one of my “Useless Posts” but I made it specially for newbies. Well here we go. And if you still don’t understand, feel free to drop a comment or send me an email and I will further explain it. Its all self-explanatory but everyone learns in different ways. Maybe you learn by definition and somebody else learns by demonstration. Either way I hope this post helps at least one person.
 
Advertiser - The person who is trying to make a few bucks by driving traffic through a web site through promotion. You are promoting an offer and you will get $$ if a customer buys it.
 
Advertisement – This is seen all around you. It is an attractive picture/video that helps lures the customer so they will buy the product.
 
Affiliate – This is YOU. Someone who is the middle man. You help get the merchant some customers and you will get a certain amount of commission depending on the product/ offer.
 
Affiliate Link - This is the link that is specially made for you so if a customer buys the product you will get credit from their sale or lead. There are ways to cloak your affiliate link from the customer and from the publisher so only you know the information.
 
Affiliate Manger - Once you sign up with a network, you will be assigned an affiliate manager. Somebody who will give you advice and tips on which offers to run. Word of caution, they can even steal all your traffic and commission if they know your keywords and referrer links. Don’t worry there are ways to hide the referrer links.
 
Affiliate Fraud - The amount of revenue that was obtained illegally under the TOS of the affiliate program.
 
Affiliate Tracking - These track your keywords so you know which keyword is converting to make you money. There are many keyword tracking software. Some are free and some cost money. I would recommend