Networks On A Vetting Spree...

There have been many posts on the A4U forum recently about affiliates being declined on programs and then being vetted on various networks, with threats of being kicked off the program should they not respond.

I personally find this really offensive. I think merchants and networks should have a good long think before they go irritating affiliates. Affiliates get hundreds of emails per day with new offers and voucher codes and various other site changes. So the chances of them reading an email where they have to ake time to fill in a form to prove they are working for you, plain ridiculous!

Don't get me wrong, i understand these audits, but if the affiliate isnt working for you, it doesnt cost you money to keep them on the program. 'Look To The Longtail' - One day they might just suprise you and have a customer who drops £20k of business.

Affiliates on the whole are very receptive to help with their sites, especially when it could make them money, and takes a little bit of the pressure off them. Being told you do not meet criteria and will be suspended or being told to fill in forms to show your interested still by a certain date or you will be suspended is not the polite way of doing business!

When Is Too Much Enough?

There are a few within the affiliate marketing industry who appear to have their hands in many pies. They turn up to every event and seem to have jobs, be affiliates and be advisors to others. This made me ponder when does a lifestyle like this become too much? You will eventually wear yourself out, and get a name for yourself as the affiliate bike. Going to everything and getting involved with everything cannot be healthy by any means.
Some people say affiliate marketing is like 'a family' and certain people who have been in the industry a while seem very close knit. There are indeed affiliate families. But is this too much. Is it healthy to be so involved with your work that it takes over your life? You work affiliate marketing, breathe affiliate marketing, and if you ever leave the house to see friends or family, they too are involved in affiliate marketing.
Without external interests and friends and hobbies do you feel consumed by affiliate marketing? Do you feel like it has become everything you are about? Yes, you make your money this way... But is money everything. So when is the point when too much affiliate marketing is enough?

I Never Have The Time = I'm Not Making Any Money And Don't Know How

This is just a follow up to the last post by Affiliate Bitch. It's funny because I was actually thinking to myself 'I dont really have enough time to write any posts for this bloody blog' before I saw the post itself.

The truth is, I DO have time to provide material for this site. However, being the selfish git I am, because I am just a contributing author to this site, and not being paid anything or making money from this blog, I find myself making excuses and telling myself I don't have time.

The fact is, if I WAS making money from this blog, then you can bet your ass that suddenly I would find plently of free time to devote to this blog

The point I'm trying to make, is that affiliate marketers who make excuses about not having time, are usually the ones who are not making any money, and dont know how. If you knew that by performing certain tasks each day, you would be guaranteed a certain amount of profit each month - would you find time to do it? Course you would.

To say you don't have time for affiliate marketing is admitting you don't know how to do it.

The fact is, there is a large percentage of people who are struggling to make money from affiliate marketing and will continue to do so. Forever. They just dont get it and probably never will.

You've all probably heard the statistic that something like 90% of people who try their hand at AM never make any money, and end up giving up. Thats because the 90% don't get it. The 10% do.

There is a lot to understand and learn about affiliate marketing and there are many facets involved. Unfortunately, a large percentage of people will fail to understand how to utilise these skills to make money. As well as learning techincal skills such as website design, PPC, SEO, copy writing, etc, you also need to have a business like and entrepreneurial brain to scale up your buisiness. Not every one is cut out for affiliate marketing - depsite what the MMO websites and gurus tell you.

Apologies if you're reading this and not making any money. Its nothing personal. It's just a fact of life. I know that I will never become a doctor, a professional footballer, a hollywood film star, professor of molecular physics, or the president of America. Why? Because I dont have it in me and I don't know how. Sure, I might be able to learn and try to become the above. But in the end I'll never make it because I dont' have what it takes.

If you're not making any money online, then get off your arse and prove me wrong - but I'm 90% confident that you wont.

I Never Have The Time!!!

Moan about this, moan about that, that is all the people in this industry seem to do. The most frequently moaned about thing is 'time' and the lack of it. We are all have a life, we have friends, family and most of us have full time jobs alongside our affiliate careers.
Some of the biggest players in the industry who are making the big bucks have jobs too - need i mention Frostie, Ray, Purple, Max etc etc etc... So if these guys can work (or go to uni) full time and still have incredibly profitable affiliate careers, why can't the rest of us?
Why not get home from work, chill for an hour and instead of draining brain cells watching soaps, use the hour or two to write some more content, email merchants and networks. You can't write one blog post a month and wonder why you haven't made any money, then moan about lack of time being the cause. We all know you go home and sit.
You get out what you put in, so find the time, put it into your website and watch the money flow.

Sorry, Who Are You?

I get really frustrated when using the A4U Forum, which give it its dues is really handy for snooping at rivals and just have a nose around for gossip. What frustrates me is when I'm looking at a new potential partner. I go to the trouble, in my hectic day of searching someone out only to find they haven’t bothered to take 5 minutes out of their day to fill in the contact details.

A large proportion of Affiliate Marketing is done on personality, if I like you – I’ll work for you. So if you can’t be arsed to fill in some info which could potentially bring you a lot of business, to be honest, I can’t be bothered to find any more of your details. Your loss!

All I'm saying is that it is nice to know a little about the people I work with, and asking for your biography isn’t usually something I would ask for when discussing commissions. So come on people, don’t be shy!

Affiliate Inbreeding

Two people fall in lust with each other, seems normal day to day behaviour. If those two people are in affiliate marketing it seems the world is about to end. We have all had our fair share of office romances, usually after the works Christmas party.

Why do people get so upset when an affiliate dates a merchant, a merchant dates a network, someone from an agency goes out with an affiliate? Does it really matter? We are all adults (well most of us) if you can’t deal with a relationship and a job, should you really be in a job/said relationship.

Relationships begin, relationships end… That’s life. If you are both mature adults, it shouldn’t cause too many issues, unless you caught an STD or he/she cheated on you with your best friend.

Life is too short for all this should we, shouldn’t we. If you fancy someone, go out there, tell them, have ‘some fun’ with them and take it from there. Its only a job at the end of the day… loosen up people (and I don’t mean that in a rude way)

Cookie Stuffing Voucher Code Sites - Genius!

One of the latest debates on the Affiliates4U forum is to do with the number of Voucher Code sites and their 'questionable' methods in generating commissions.

It seems that an increasing number of these sites are adopting the practice of hiding the actual voucher code and forcing the user to click on a button in order to reveal the code. The clicking of the button drops a cookie onto the users computer, and this ensures that the site owner gets paid a commission regardless of whether the user make a purchases through the links provided.

In my opinion, this is a pure genius idea!

As affiliate marketers there is just so much information online about the best way to make money from affiliate marketing. You're told to find a niche, build a user friendly website, create back links, distribute articles, reguarly update your site with fresh content, take part in PPC, participate in forums, blah blah blah.

But, what seems to escape people's mind is the simple fact that affiliate marketing is about one thing -

Refering people to click on your affiliate links.

It's really quite simple.

More clicks = more cookies dropped. More cookies dropped = more money.

So if some folk have come up with an idea on how to get more cookies on a users computer, then fair play to them I say.

There is of course a question of ethics in this type of practice. But then the question of ethics is nothing new in the affiliate industry.

In my opinion the people who are moaning about this sort of cookie stuffing, force clicking or whatever you want to call it are just jealous....and probably not making as much money in AM as they would want to be.

If you want to make decent amounts of money in affiliate marketing, then you need to think outside the box in your promotion methods. Cookie stuffing on voucher codes is one of many examples.

The Moaner Lisa has a number of sites and webpages floating online. They all vary in the amounts of income they bring in each month, but the best performing ones by far are the ones which are not necessarily 'white hat' and above board.

I dont know about you, but I'm in this game to make money.

So if you are reading this and you think that the methods used by voucher code sites are unethical, then let me ask you a question - do you mask your affiliate links?

If you do, then you are just as bad, and you have nothing to complain about. Hiding your affiliate links is just another example of unethical practice yes?

If you don't, then you are making less money than you would if you did.

Oh by the way, many thanks for reading this post. When you clicked on this site, I made sure that cookies were dropped onto your computer from about a million different merchants. So anytime you make a purchase online, The Moaner Lisa is gonna be quids in...

EDIT:
Here's a quote I just found from someone bitching on the A4U forum:

"The upshot of this is that I am planning to launch a proper user focused discount voucher site as I could not find a single one that wasn't just a very thinley disguised affiliate shopping site."

So is this guy saying that he is going to heavily disguise the fact that he is building an affiliate site? Hardly ethical is it?