Widely regarded as the best way to begin your online empire, Affiliate Marketing is simple, fun and a great way to suppliment or even replace your salary. Do it in your time, how you want, when you want. Now that's a great career.....

Wednesday, 13 June 2007

Save Time - Avoid My Mistakes!

Stupidly I jumped into the Online Industry with no research, no preparation and no idea of what to do. Invited to a “presentation” I was sucked in and I signed up to a MLM program. Pumped up, I intended to “put the “Net back into Network Marketing”. I was ready to make a fortune. With a cheesy approach like that is it any wonder I lost money?

I got over it and started what I should have done first time round. I decided to research and instead of listening to some hyped up sales man with no credentials I decided to listen to those with proven backgrounds, proven success and a system I could follow.

There was one promise I made. That was to spend nothing. I was not going to lose another penny to some dodgy scheme where 95% fail. With the power of hindsight there were both pros and cons to this approach. Let me share them...

The Positives:
I researched more, signed up for free newsletters from credible people and downloaded their free reports. After a couple of months I started to know which resources were worthwhile and which resources simply churned out information I could find for free elsewhere.

I also stumbled across Article Marketing. Chances are you have found my blog from one of my articles. I write articles with good keywords and repeat the keywords several times throughout the article. This gets me higher rankings on search engines so I have more readers. It does not matter if you write articles or web pages, the principles are the exact same. It is something I learnt from Ken Evoy and is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). I recently read about someone who earnt $9000 from one article. That's an extreme example but shows the potential.

The Negatives:
Human nature is bizarre. If someone gives you a gem of information for free you overlook it. Spend $50 on it and you start to pay attention. With lots of free guidance online I had no focus. I jumped from one idea to another, from article writing to pay per click. The same goes for Affiliate Programs, you can join one for free, so you jump from one to the other without any focus or idea where you are going. No focus = No profits.

Looking back on my experiences I now spend more money but I only buy the products I feel sure about, the products I believe will earn me more than they cost me.

There is a wealth of free information out there, however there is a point where the free information stops and you see some gaps. Lets face it, every Affiliate Marketer is out to make money. They will share the commonly known knowledge and some gems in their newsletters and free guides. They're clever enough to hold the rest of the information back and sell it, it makes sense.

I am not long out of my spending no money phase. I have reached a point where I need to write more articles, improve my copy writing and start up a website if I am truly serious about making the most of this online opportunity.

My first purchase has been the Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner. I bought this on a recommendation. If she can earn over $435000+ per year then she qualifies as someone worth listening to. Aside from her massive pay cheques, Rosalind just comes across as genuine and credible. Remember the saying "you buy from people you know and trust".

My second purchase
has been Ken Evoy’s Site Sell. I needed to move on from Article Marketing and every successful high earning affiliate marketer has a web site for their niche. I spent hours working on a website. I’m quite fussy and got fed up. With limited technical knowledge on finding a profitable niche, choosing keywords and limited HTML skills it was taking too much time. Site Sell is not as easy as its sales pitch makes out however the simple CTPM process that Ken has developed is simply amazing. Other people know about it, but no individual or site I have visited has explained it quite so well.

Affiliate Marketing is great and I love it but it is not without its risks. You can quite easily end up spending more and more on "the next secret" or "the truth" ..... Ultimately it will be your ACTION that creates your success. Your future is determined by what you do in the present. To get started, visit the weblinks above, digest the information and get going.

Remember: Massive Action = Massive Results!

Good luck!
Aaron

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