21st Century Affiliate Marketing

It’s been a busy week around here.

In addition to working to bring a new site online (that won’t have any affiliate ads and very few Adsense ads), I’ve been busy rebuilding one of my oldest websites, JohnDilbeck.com.

That’s the site where I really started to learn affiliate marketing and online marketing, in general. It’s where I sold my steel roses and started making real money with Amazon.com.

Sadly, however, it had suffered years of neglect and looked like an abandoned flower garden that once was beautiful, but eventually became clogged with weeds and overgrown bushes.

I’ve been intending to rebuild JohnDilbeck.com for some time, but — at over 1,500 pages — the task was daunting and I never seemed to find the time to tackle it.

Over the years, I’ve tested lots of things on that site, and some of the pages looked horrible, when I looked at them with fresh eyes.

Mitch and I talked about that on a previous post where we were talking about Site Build It and I mentioned JohnDilbeck.com as an example of a site that more than earned its way. He mistakenly thought it was powered by SBI, but it isn’t. It’s just a standard Linux-hosted static website. Most pages are plain HTML, but a few are PHP so I can do some things that could not be done on a standard HTML page.

Well over 600 pages of the site were built specifically to bring in Amazon.com commissions. Now that Amazon has terminated my association because I live in North Carolina, I didn’t want to be sending anyone their way at my expense with no hope of generating any revenue from it.

That was the incentive to tackle the project.

Fortunately, I build my large static sites using a programmable database, and each major section has a template through which I process each page. That means that it’s probably easier than it sounds at first. Still it was a big task.

Part of the task was made easier when I would look at a major section and decide that it just wasn’t worth updating everything. As a result, instead of rebuilding hundreds of pages, I deleted them.

This will probably play havoc with my rankings in the search engines, but it will probably be easier on anyone who happens to visit the site.

I had Amazon.com ads on just about every page on the site, and now I think there are none, or only a few. There may still be pages where I recommended a specific book using a text link.

Eventually, I want to get back to that site and try to build it back to its former place of importance in my marketing efforts.

At least, now, it’s prettier and maybe easier to use.

I’m prejudiced, because I love that site. I don’t think I can really see it with fresh eyes after editing it for about 10 years.

I lost a lot of good information in the process, and killed what was one of my longest-running blogs. I did save lots of information in the database, so some of the information I didn’t have time to update now may make its way back onto the site in the future.

We’ll see.

So, that’s one site (mostly) cleaned up, and many more to go.

Sigh.

Act on your dream!

JD

This is only tangentially about affiliate marketing, so you may or may not be interested in reading it.

I know of quite a few people who regularly post about how much, or how little, they earn from affiliate marketing, Google Adsense, and other related advertising and marketing methods.

I’m not going to name any names and I’m not trying to embarrass or put anyone down. That’s not at all the point of this post.

What I want to do is to offer an alternative viewpoint, for a change. Maybe you’ll agree, maybe you won’t, but I welcome your comments.

I am not loving affiliate marketing right now.

I’ve stated previously that I live in North Carolina and that Amazon.com dropped me as an affiliate a couple of weeks ago. I’m not going to talk about that here - see my recent posts if you’re interested.

What I am going to talk about is how many people are putting in a lot of work for dismal returns. I’ve done it myself, in some cases.

Yes, the opportunity to earn an excellent income from affiliate marketing exists, but most people do not achieve it. Some people earn tens of thousands of dollars per year, and others earn pocket change.

I’ve been fortunate to do okay with affiliate marketing over the years. I never got rich, but I could pay the bills and afford to stay home and take care of Mom when she needed it.

After she died last November, I’ve been re-evaluating my affiliate marketing business.

For the last six months, I’ve been brainstorming and planning a new set of websites for promoting select local brick and mortar businesses in Murphy, NC.

The cornerstone site will go live this week, but it will take several months of hard work to reach its potential.

I have to thank affiliate marketing for the skills that I’ve learned over the years that will make this new site successful. In some respects I won’t be doing much different than I’ve been doing over the last decade.

However, in one particular respect, it will be very different.

I’m getting paid up front.

For years, I built websites, communities, forums, and blogs to talk about a variety of things, with the goal of monetizing them through potential affiliate marketing commissions.

I did all the work, posted the links, and paid for everything - all for free.

Then, I hoped someone would find the sites, be persuaded that something was what they were looking for, and then purchase through one of my links.

As a result of all this work, I would receive a commission on the sale of the product.

Maybe.

Sometimes.

Not always.

Still, I earned enough to keep going - but I’m a frugal kind of guy.

Earlier this year, I realized that my circumstances had changed. Expenses were going up, income was coming down and that’s never a good pair of trends.

When your outgo exceeds your income,
your upkeep will be your downfall.

I cut my expenses to the bone and started looking for a new business model.

Now, I’m almost ready to go live with the new site.

What is significant is that in the month of June 2009, alone, I earned more from the new site than I did from affiliate marketing for the past several months combined. In fact, if I leave out commission checks from Sitesell for commissions on sales and renewals of Site Build It!, I earned more last month from this new site than I did from affiliate marketing all year.

(Google Adsense ads also played a significant part in my revenue this year, but that’s not affiliate marketing.)

Based on some testing I’ve been doing, I know that I can help these local brick and mortar businesses attract more customers and I’m going to help one of them in each business category. I’m not going to work with national chains or franchises, only with locally owned small businesses.

One of the things that drives our local economy is real estate sales and it is by far the most hotly contested and competitive environment in online marketing for our town.

Last week, I agreed to work with one local real estate agent and I won’t work with any more. Remember, only one business per category.

Some people think I’m cutting my own throat, but I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing.

Several other business owners signed up, too.

So, with no live site, and working with only a mockup, my new sales rep generated more income in one month than I have from all my other sites combined, some of which have been online for over a decade.

That’s the beauty of getting paid up front.

I don’t know if I’ll abandon affiliate marketing

I haven’t made this decision. I know that I’m dropping underperforming merchants and Amazon.com dropped me. I expect others to drop me because I live in NC.

Depending upon how things go over the next several months, I may decide to concentrate entirely on promoting local businesses in the small mountain town that is near where I live.

There are two thoughts on this.

One: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify your income streams.

Two: put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket! I believe it was Thomas Edison or Andrew Carnegie who gave this advice.

I’m not entirely sure which direction I’ll be going on this.

I’m tired of working for free or nearly nothing

I do know that I’m tired of spending all my time and creative energy working for companies that don’t pay me for the work I’ve done.

Most limit the length of the cookie, the size of the commission, and have all kinds of loopholes to make sure I don’t get paid - and that’s if other affiliates aren’t stealing the commissions that are rightfully mine.

I’m tired of it.

With the single exception of Sitesell. They go out of their way to make sure that anyone who purchases from me remains a lifetime customer and I get paid in the future for every renewal and additional purchase they make.

It is the only affiliate marketing relationship I have that has increased in revenue over the last several years, including this year when I saw dramatic drops in my income since September 2008.

There’s a reason. Whether you like to hear me say it or not, Site Build It! works, when we follow the guidelines and take the time to build our sites properly.

Some say that it’s crazy to pay $300 per year for all that SBI offers when I can put up a WordPress blog for practically nothing. But, I’m disagreeing more and more with this.

That’s why I’m powering this new site with Site Build It!

It offers everything I need at a very reasonable price of less than a dollar per day.

You see, I intend to build a real business, not a hobby.

And, to do that, I’m going to help other real businesses attract new customers, bring back existing customers, and earn more money.

In the long-run, what they pay me will be a bargain.

And, to top it off, without even having a website yet, while working from a mockup I created, my new sales rep was able to generate more than enough income in June, alone, to pay for a subscription to Site Build It! several times over.

I don’t give actual numbers for my traffic or income, so don’t bother to ask. That’s between nobody but me and the IRS.

Will it work?

Only time will tell.

I’ll go live with the site this week, but it will take several months of hard work to make it - and the offline marketing that will go along with it - as successful as I’m hoping it will become.

I’m confident, however, that this is going to be effective and that we’ll have local business owners happy to renew over and over again. I’m looking for long-term relationships with them that build over the years, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make it happen.

I’ve learned something very important from Ken Evoy. Plan your business and then implement it over time. Always under-promise and over-deliver.

This is the very opposite of all the breathless, excited hype that is all-too-prevalent in many areas of Internet marketing.

What’s the future of this blog?

I don’t know.

It’s not looking very bright, though. And neither is the future of several other blogs and websites that are devoted to my affiliate marketing business. I already know that several will be shut down as soon as I can get to it, because it isn’t worth the time and effort to repurpose them.

This blog may survive, but only time will tell.

What do you think?

Is affiliate marketing going to play a big part in your business plans for the rest of this year and into 2010?

Do you feel like you’re getting adequate compensation for the work you put into it?

Act on your dream!

JD

What next?

The NYAffiliateVoice blog has an article about several companies terminating affiliates in Hawaii and Rhode Island.

Termination of Hawaii Affiliates Continue

I wonder how many hundreds of affiliate marketing businesses - both full-time and part-time - are being destroyed by these tax law changes.

(Sigh.)

Act on your dream!

JD

Previously, I linked to an article that Lynn Terry wrote about this subject. Today, I found an article on The Washington Post…

FTC plans to monitor blogs for claims, payments

I’m all for this monitoring and oversight by the FTC. I think it’s time that bloggers and others be held accountable for the veracity of their claims. We need more truth in advertising - especially as it relates to the GRQ (”get rich quick”) crowd.

But, what worries me about this, is how will the FTC go about doing this? What will trigger warnings and what will trigger lawsuits.

Done right, it can help clean up the blogosphere. Done wrong, it can hurt innocent people who haven’t done anything wrong.

I’d love to see the FTC jump all over the websites, and their owners, who knowingly make claims that are not true. We don’t need that trash confusing people.

On the other hand, I’d hate to see someone who earns a few dollars by linking to an affiliated merchant be hurt because they didn’t adequately disclose that they earn an income from someone who purchases from one of their affiliate links - or when someone clicks on their Adsense ads.

What will the FTC require?

Right now, I don’t know. If you find something about this from an official source, please share it with us.

Will a single page on a site that discloses how we earn income from the site be sufficient (probably not), or will we need to post a notice on every page or near every link from which we may earn income?

For those of you who are receiving coupons, special offers, and/or payment from advertisers, how will you be required to disclose that when you post your review and/or talk about your experiences with a particular company or product?

Dammit Jim, I’m a marketer - not a journalist!

I try to make it clear that I am not a journalist. I don’t pretend to write objective news articles.

I’m a marketer. I earn my living from affiliate marketing, and a smaller amount from Google Adsense Ads (although I’ve removed them from this blog).

Some links are direct links to companies and/or products and I don’t earn anything if you follow those links and purchase something.

Most, however, are affiliate links and I’ll earn a few dollars (or a few cents) if you purchase as a direct result of following my link.

Do I have to disclose that for every single link?

Will I be grandfathered in, or will I have to go back and find every affiliate link on all of my sites and inform readers that I may (but probably won’t) earn something if they click the link and then purchase?

Will affiliate links be considered advertising or endorsements?

Many blogs receive compensation for advertising, either through Adsense ads, something similar, or privately-sold advertising. How will these be seen by the FTC review.

If I tell you that you should purchase something, will that be considered a personal endorsement? What are the differences in responsibility between paid ads and personal endorsements?

I think these are important questions, and I’ll be following this issue closely.

In the meantime, I want to make it clear to you that I earn my living by selling products and services to you, if you click on my affiliate links and purchase.

Does that mean that I’ll promote everything that earns me a buck? No, it doesn’t. The longer I work in affiliate marketing - and marketing, in general - the pickier I become concerning the products and services I recommend.

What do you think?

Are these legitimate concerns, or not?

Act on your dream!

JD

I’ve already made my decision about being dropped as an Amazon associate (along with all the others in North Carolina). I don’t care what happens. I’m done with Amazon.com.

Others, especially those who earn a lot more from Amazon.com than I do, disagree. They’re still trying to fight the NC proposed tax legislation, and/or they’re moving out of NC to continue their business in a different state.

I don’t intend to keep posting about this topic, but I just learned that Amazon.com associates in Rhode Island are facing what I just went through, and other states are considering something similar.

I’m not going to do the research to write a comprehensive article about this, so let me link to three stories that you may want to read if you’re an associate with Amazon.

What Makes Affiliate Tax (aka “Amazon Tax”) Unconstitutional

Amazon 1, North Carolina 0

Amazon terminates North Carolina affiliates - be sure to read the comments, too.

So, there it is.

Don’t be surprised if affiliate marketing continues to get more difficult in the near future.

Act on your dream!

JD

I’m tired of dealing with the whole Amazon.com debacle…

Amazon.com cancels all North Carolina affiliate accounts

In yesterday’s mail, I got something that was a breath of fresh air and reminded me of the difference between a so-so affiliate program (Amazon) and an outstanding affiliate program (Sitesell’s 5 Pillar Program).

You see, companies like Amazon.com go out of their way to reduce our affiliate commissions to the absolute minimum. Their one-day cookie, alone, is almost reason enough to not promote them.

Their strong-arm tactics, like canceling all the affiliates in an entire state has proven to be enough for me to never promote them, again.

So, I was very pleasantly surprised to open a letter from Daniel Kornitzer, the CEO of Sitesell, yesterday.

In it was a short letter that talked about the new monthly renewal option for SBI owners that was introduced in November, 2008.

He explained that affiliates would still receive the standard renewal commission of 20% (based on TVI), except that it would be paid monthly on the monthly renewal amount rather than annually.

However, he went on to say, these amounts have not been paid to affiiates since January 1, 2009.

Then, he did something that made me feel very good. He apologized.

We are VERY sorry for this. We’ve worked like crazy to fix it and it is now fixed.

To me, this shows respect for the affiliates who are helping to build the business.

Then, he went above and beyond and sent me a check for all the monthly renewal commissions I had earned, regardless of my TVI during this period. He actually sent me a check for a bit more than I was actually due.

How’s that for treating your affiliates right?

While Amazon went out of its way to reduce my commissions, Sitesell went out of its way to increase my commissions - even going so far to apologize and pay me more than I was actually due.

That’s the kind of respect and service I have come to expect from anyone associated with Sitesell. Ken Evoy started this company years ago and I have always had lots of respect for him and the way he ran the business when he was both founder and CEO. Daniel Kornitzer is following in Ken’s footsteps now that he is the CEO.

Now, this check isn’t huge, but it is more than I earned from Amazon this year. The nice thing, is that it is in addition to the commission checks I’ve already received from Sitesell this year.

I’ve told you repeatedly that the Sitesell 5 Pillar Program is the best affiliate marketing program on this quaint little planet, and it is actions like this that make me believe that even more.

On this blog, we’ve been debating whether using WordPress or Site Build It! is the best way to build an online business…

Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

At one point, I would have leaned a bit more towards WordPress, but now, to me, the clear winner is Site Build It!.

That’s why I’ll be introducing a new website this week that will be powered by SBI.

But, it’s not just about the webhosting, although that is very important to me.

It’s the complete set of tools, a time-tested approach, the Action Guide, continual improvements and additions, the lack of having to deal with technical issues and updating the software, the help-and-be-helped members-only forum, and the results I get that put me more firmly than ever in the Site Build It! camp.

They say that when a fish stinks it starts at the head, and this has been used as an analogy for companies getting into trouble because of actions taken by top management.

In the case of Sitesell, however, just the opposite is true. This company shines because of the top-quality management that does everything within their power to help both subscribers and affiliates do well.

I know of no other affiliate marketing program that even comes close to the Sitesell 5 Pillar Program. I urge you to see for yourself.

Act on your dream!

JD

Yep. You read that right. Amazon.com has terminated the account for all of their affiliates who live in North Carolina.

Previously, they said they would do this if the NC General Assembly passed the tax law that is under consideration.

Now, however, even though the law has not been passed, Amazon terminated all their NC affiliates on the anticipation that it may be passed.

That’s a huge difference!

Here’s the email I received from Amazon.com this morning:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date.

Please be assured that all qualifying referral fees earned prior to June 26, 2009 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with our regular referral fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 26, 2009, any final payments will be paid by September 1, 2009.

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

We have enjoyed working with you and other North Carolina-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

Now, I’m pissed off

Before, when I first heard that this might happen, I was mainly disappointed in the NC General Assembly for considering passing a tax law that redefined how companies were considered to have a presence in the state.

North Carolina is in the midst of a budgetary crisis, and they’re looking for ways to increase their revenue. This is understandable. Since last September, or so, we’ve all been scrambling to cut expenses and increase revenue until we can weather this economic crisis.

I don’t think most of the legislators have a clue about how this proposed tax law may affect many of us who have been earning our living from affiliate marketing, and I’m not sure how many of them care. After all, when you compare all the businesses in the state, affiliate marketing businesses are at the very small end of the small potatoes bin.

The fact that some of us have been earning all our income from affiliate marketing for years doesn’t seem all that important to them, from what I’ve been able to learn.

Let me say, once again, that I’m no expert when it comes to legislation and tax laws, but neither are our elected representatives - and they’re the ones who are making these laws.

But, I’m not pissed off at them.

No.

I’m pissed off at Amazon.com and their entire Amazon Associates Team.

This time, they went too far.

I know they have the right to terminate any affiliate they want, but to terminate all affiliates in an entire state with no changes to the laws is just wrong.

They didn’t do it in response to new tax laws that would affect their business; they did it in anticipation that the law may be passed.

That’s a huge difference, and I find it to be unconscionable.

Then they try to make nice with us:

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.

Well, Amazon, in the first place, the law has not been passed, nor has it gone into effect.

In the second place, no thank you.

I have been an Amazon.com affiliate since shortly after it was first introduced. Before any of us knew what we were doing, I created my Hyperdimensional Book Nook on my first domain at need-sleep.com.

(I let that domain lapse many years ago and I am not associated in any way with the current version of that domain.)

On a whim, I searched the Way Back Machine and actually found a copy of the site from January, 1997 showing pages I last updated in the fall of 1996. That means that I’ve been marketing for Amazon.com for almost 13 years.

(If you’re interested, here’s a glimpse of my very first website and you can see the obvious influences of Star Trek and A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Need-Sleep.com from January, 1997 and my HyperDimensional BookNook at the Edge of the Universe.)

It was mostly a learning exercise, but it was my first foray into affiliate marketing - and I earned a little money from it. Later, I built some real websites where I promoted a variety of products through Amazon.com.

Now, I have thousands of pages with links to Amazon.com and I have to find and remove them - as many as I can - when I’m very busy doing something more important to me.

Yes, I’ll remove them, and I’ll never put them back. I’m not sending any more visitors to Amazon.com, nor will I ever recommend them, again.

It’s over Amazon. No matter what happens in the future, don’t bother inviting me back to your party.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. I should have mentioned that it will take weeks to find and delete all those links to Amazon, assuming I’m able to do so. In the meantime, there’s no telling how many visitors will go and purchase something and I won’t earn a penny from it.

This is another example of the affiliate taking all the risk and incurring all the expense of advertising and hoping we’ll earn something in the future.

Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.

I don’t even know how to start writing about this. Sigh.

I’ve been a busy boy this week working on developing a new website (fortunately not related to affiliate marketing) and have been slow to read my emails.

This morning, I opened one from Amazon.com with a subject of: Important Notice from the Amazon Associates Program

Normally, I read these when I’ve finished more pressing matters, but I didn’t realize that this really was an important notice until I read the following paragraphs…

We regret to inform you that the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) appears ready to enact an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with North Carolina-based Associates. You are receiving this e-mail because our records indicate that you are an Amazon Associate and resident of North Carolina.

Please note that this is not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Associates Program. All referral fees earned on qualified traffic will continue to be paid as planned.

But because the new law is drafted to go into effect once enacted – which could happen in the next two weeks – we will have to terminate the participation of all North Carolina residents in the Amazon Associates program on or before that same day. After the termination day, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com nor will we accept new applications for the Associates program from North Carolina residents.

That’s just the first three paragraphs and I won’t bother quoting the rest, because this basically tells the story from Amazon.com’s point of view.

I didn’t even know anything like this was in the works and now I find that it is scheduled to be passed into law and take effect in less than two weeks, on July 1, 2009.

(It doesn’t make it any more pleasant that July 1 happens to be my birthday! What a nice birthday surprise.)

So, this morning, I’ve been scrambling and found someone who is leading the fight in NC on Twitter: Rich Owings.

They’re tracking the issue with the #ncaffiliatetax hash tag on Twitter. (You’ll need to go to Twitter.com and search for that hash tag. I’ve tried to link to it in several different ways, but - for some reason - none of them are working properly today.)

I found a couple of newspaper articles on Rich’s Twitter stream…

From the Asheville Citizen-Times: Proposed Web tax rankles local businessman.

From the Greensboro News & Record: Amazon warns N.C. affiliates about tax issue.

Now, I know that North Carolina is facing budgetary problems, but I think this is a misguided move by our politicians. Of course, I’m biased.

For the last six years (or more), I’ve earned 100% of my income from affiliate marketing. This new law will decimate my remaining business revenue, most likely.

I used to earn more with Amazon.com than I have in the last couple of years, but this step by Amazon may be the first bad news I’ll hear from other affiliate programs.

I’ve been an Amazon.com affiliate since shortly after they started it over 10 years ago and I’ve depended upon commissions I received from affiliate marketing as my sole source of income for over six years as I was my mother’s full-time caretaker and could not leave the house.

Unfortunately, she died last November, and I’ve been planning ways to diversify my income. Some of those plans are starting to produce results, fortunately.

My friend, Mitch Mitchell, who lives in New York, went through this months ago when the NY legislature passed a similar law and Amazon.com canceled all affiliates in his state.

As of today, it appears that Amazon.com is no longer accepting new affiliates in North Carolina.

Last September, my business took a real hit with the sudden downturn in the world economy. I lost between two-thirds and three-fourths of my income at that time, and it has only now showed any signs of recovering from that drastic slump.

If other affiliate programs, in addition to Amazon.com, cancel my participation, there goes my affiliate marketing business.

As much as I would like to sit here and whine, I’m not going to do it. If this happens, I’ll face it and make new plans that don’t involve affiliate marketing - even though it will mean a huge shift in my business plans.

I hate to think about the thousands of pages I have on my various blogs and websites that will need to be updated to remove links to Amazon.com.

I don’t know what other surprises my birthday will bring this year. This will probably be the biggest one.

It appears that this new law is on the fast track to passage and many of the legislators that Rich Owings has contacted don’t even understand how it will affect very small businesses like mine across the entire state.

I won’t have to wait too long to see what happens.

Act on your dream!

JD

I know this is not breaking news for many of the readers of this blog, because you already got the username you wanted on Facebook today.

Still, for others who aren’t up on the latest developments, I thought it would be worth a short post about the subject.

This morning, Facebook made it possible for us to set our preferred username (if it is available) to make it easy to link to our profile there.

I was lucky and now you can reach my profile at facebook.com/johndilbeck.

Have you claimed your username at Facebook, yet?

You can do it here: facebook.com/username.

Act on your dream!

JD

I just read an interesting story in the New York Times…

Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest

This is another article that shows how easy it is to start a blog, but how hard it is to continue it over time. Things change. We lose interest. We become too busy with other things.

In many cases, we become disillusioned by the lack of success we had originally imagined.

Although the same can be true for a traditional website, the difference lies in the amount of traffic that continues when we are busy doing something else.

I have static websites that continue to bring in thousands of readers every month, even when I do nothing to them for extended periods.

The same just is not true for my blogs.

If I go any length of time without posting something new to a blog, regular readers notice and new readers may perceive it as just another abandoned blog.

I know I feel that way when I visit a blog that hasn’t been updated recently. Do you?

But, and I think this is important, I just don’t feel that way when I go to a traditional website. While on one of them, I’m looking for information, not necessarily the latest thing written.

As you know, I’ve been debating the issue of blogging or building traditional multi-tier websites for some time…

Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

I think both have promise and I can argue both in favor and against both of them.

It is much more difficult to design and build a multi-tier website that presents information in a way that is easy to navigate and update. I know, because I’ve been spending much of my time every day for the last few weeks designing a new website.

On the other hand, I can throw up a blog in a couple of hours. All I need is an inspiration, a topic, and a little free time. I know this, because I’ve started several dozen blogs, but now I’m maintaining only three of them on a semi-regular basis, and updating a few others sporadically.

When looking at the traffic stats for all my sites, I see a definite correlation between frequency of posting on a blog that just does not exist on my traditional websites. Just as in academia, with blogs you have to think publish or perish.

Easy to start - easy to abandon

The longer I do all of this, the more I realize that blogs are easy to start. There’s very little barrier to entry. Start one free on Blogger in ten minutes. Host one on your own domain using WordPress in a couple of hours (plus whatever time it takes the domain to propagate, if it’s newly registered). Cost, little to nothing.

On the other hand, when I start a new website, it’s not so easy to start. There’s planning time that nobody but me sees. I may spend months working on the design, researching keywords, researching the competition, deciding on how much information is needed to make the site viable, and designing a three- or four-tier site structure. All of this is done before I do anything else.

I may register the domain in advance, just to make sure it will be available when I want it, or I may decide upon the domain name after I know what’s going to be on the site.

How much does it cost to host one of these websites?

If I go with traditional hosting on a Linux server, my cost is nothing. I’m already paying that cost for my other sites and have both the bandwidth and storage available to host several more domains.

If I go with Site Build It!, the up-front cost will be $300 and that pays for the first year of hosting. More and more, I’m finding that I’m not interested in building a site that isn’t powered by SBI, but I’m going to leave that for another discussion.

Getting back to the main point…

With the new site I’ll be introducing in a few more weeks, I’ve already put months into getting ready for it. I paid $10 to reserve the domain name, and I’ll be paying another $300 to host it. That’s a pretty large barrier to entry from my point of view.

It’s also one thing that will keep me motivated to continue developing the site. After all that time, work, and money, I’m not going to stop working on it until it is profitable and I’m getting income on a regular basis from it.

With a new blog, I find that I’m more of the opinion of easy come, easy go. When I abandon a blog, it’s no great loss.

But, there really is a loss. I’ll lose the time I put into building it, and in the long run that’s more valuable than any money I may have invested or not. I can recover money or earn more. I can never get back the time I lost.

When I first started debating this with myself, I was clearly in favor of blogging with WordPress over building a multi-tier website. I just seemed to make more sense.

Now, however, as I spend more time doing both and look back on the results of what I’ve gotten from each, I’m leaning much farther away from blogging and towards a content-rich, structured website.

I almost hate to admit it, because I disagreed with him when he originally wrote it, but I am more and more coming to agree with Ken Evoy and what he wrote about this subject: Blog or Build?

Finally, I’m going to disagree with some of my good friends, including Mitch Mitchell and Aussie Sire. I respect their opinions and truly enjoy interacting with them on our blogs.

What do I disagree with?

I’m finding that the number of comments or the length of the discussion on a blog post has almost no correlation with income.

Yet, it takes time to monitor the comments and respond to them, so there is a cost involved without a commensurate income to offset the effort.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll discontinue comments or discussions here. I won’t. But, I’m realizing that I’m doing it more for the enjoyment, debate, and socializing, rather than for generating income.

I earn far more from my traditional sites, and after their original design and building, I spend much less time maintaining them.

The choice is becoming more clear all the time.

I’m not trying to change your mind, I’m just passing along what I’m learning on this topic.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

I am not one of those people who is obsessed with privacy. In fact, my life is pretty much an open book since I started building websites and blogging.

Still, I was annoyed when I discovered some time back that Google was tracking my browsing on any site that had Adsense ads. That’s one reason I removed those ads from this blog, although not from all of my sites.

We talked about it here: I will not participate in Google’s interest-based advertising.

At the time, I didn’t want to be part of the problem. Later, I learned that Google Adsense ads would still leave cookies and maybe web beacons from any of their ads, whether or not I opted out of interest-based advertising.

Today, I read an interesting article on the New York Times…

Google Is Top Tracker of Surfers in Study

It seems that my decision to opt out of interest-based advertising on Adsense ads is more like tilting at windmills. It makes almost no difference in the grand scheme.

Sigh.

Act on your dream!

JD

This is difficult for me to write. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it for over a week and didn’t really know how to approach it, so I decided to just start writing about it and hope that I can sort out my feelings with the help of some of my friends.

I am really conflicted about SFI Marketing Group.

I’ve been an affiliate with SFI since late 2002. I’ve put a lot of work into promoting the company and products, despite all the changes - some of which made months of work obsolete.

That’s one of the downsides. They’ve changed direction several times over the years, but - for the most part - I think they made the right decisions, even though some of them were particularly bothersome for me.

For example, I spent months promoting NiceOffers and had a pretty good thing going. But, when the program was put on hold, I was stuck with a complex blog, about 50 Squidoo lenses, and I don’t know how many promotions that were suddenly obsolete.

What could I do?

I took down the blog, deleted or converted the Squidoo lenses, and moved on - though not with the same enthusiasm I had before this happened.

This was about the time that the CEO of SFI, Gery Carson, announced that they would be opening the TripleClicks store to sell their products and to make it easy for people around the world to sell their own products.

The store was months away, but it did open and, despite some early flaws, has improved over time. Now, there are thousands of items on sale there.

In some ways, I think of the store as a different kind of eBay. There are lots of people promoting the store, so that means a lot of traffic. The current Alexa ranking is just under 34,000, so that’s a pretty good indication that they are receiving lots of people on the site.

I don’t have any information about how well the products are selling, however.

Still, even though it is taking a long time, the store is progressing and seems to be living up to the promises of several months ago.

Most of the products in the store are either SFI’s own products or products being sold by private sellers. There are quite a few other items in the store and I don’t really know how they fit this picture.

Eventually, the TripleClicks store will have more retailers offering their products, but I don’t have a timetable for that.

You see, this is part of the problem. There is so much uncertainty around everything that it is hard to know what to do to generate sales.

I like some of SFI’s products, but I’m not too wild about others.

I was a member of the International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs (IAHBE) since it opened, but I canceled my membership last month. I realized that I wasn’t spending nearly as much time on the site as I used to and I haven’t been taking advantage of their free books and free magazine subscriptions as I used to. (The books and magazines are free, but you do have to pay a small processing fee.)

So, without this subscription to IAHBE (called a standing order), I may, or may not, remain an EA (executive affiliate) with SFI in the future. This is a major change for me.

For years I was MIQ (multi-income qualified) before they changed that to EA. I’ve been either a team leader or EA ever since, until this month.

Why did I make this change?

Primarily it was because my income from affiliate marketing has plunged since last September, although it is showing signs of starting to grow again. I went from earning a pretty good income from all the businesses I promoted to earning between 25% - 35% of that amount, practically overnight.

After having that kind of revenue decline, I had to make some hard choices to protect my cash flow. So, I canceled everything that wasn’t critical to my marketing. Hopefully, my cashflow will rise again and I’ll be able to restart some of the things I dropped over the last couple of months.

On the other hand, I’m using this as an opportunity to re-examine what I’ve been doing and I’m making some big changes to my business plan.

I am not a fan of MLM (network marketing).

While I like the theory of multi-level marketing, the reality does not match the promise.

Over the years, I’ve introduced hundreds of people to SFI, but the great majority of them never did anything that I could see. There were a few who worked hard for awhile, but eventually they all slowed and stopped.

Some joined and were never communicative.

Now, I’m not going to blame all of them. It’s not that simple.

People sign up for affiliate and network marketing opportunities because it looks like easy money. It’s not. It takes a lot of work and creativity to earn decent income through online marketing.

Some people find it much easier than others. Some find it so confusing that they never really get started.

I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m too stubborn to give up, but I find a lot of inconsistencies and some things still confuse me.

I also find that I’m getting much “pickier” when it comes to what I’ll promote. I promoted lots of things a few years ago - when I was first learning - that I would not promote now.

This year, I’m pruning back even more. If I am not a happy customer of the products and services a company provides, I’m not marketing for them.

So, what do I buy from SFI?

I really like IAHBE, but it doesn’t offer the value for me that it once did. I like their non-toxic cleaning products, especially the orange cleaner and all-purpose cleaner. They are inexpensive and work very well.

Some of their other products are over priced, in my opinion. Even though I could earn a good commission when someone purchases them, I’m not comfortable with promoting them.

This brings us back to an earlier discussion on this site that related to reviews and personal recommendations.

I’m looking at my marketing efforts less as advertising and more as personal recommendations these days.

That’s a big change in how I see all of this and it’s the main reason I’m re-examining all I’ve been doing.

(I’m so far behind on getting things done that I have several websites that are sadly neglected, out of date, and need to be revised. Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day or enough energy to do all that needs doing.)

I’m rambling. Let’s get back on topic…

I’m not a fan of network marketing. The idea of leverage sounds really good, but the idea of easy duplication by hundreds or thousands of people in your downline rarely ever develops.

In my experience, there is a lot of churn. People sign up, people quit. It’s an endless cycle.

I’m going to accept my part of the responsibility for this.

I am not a social person. I’m not a team builder. I’ve tried, but it just isn’t part of my personality.

I’m a loner who prefers to work by himself and get paid for his own efforts. That’s why I like affiliate marketing better than network marketing. I can accomplish much more in the same amount of time by talking directly to prospective buyers than I can trying to build a network.

So, MLM just isn’t for me.

Now that I’ve realized that, is it worth my time to promote SFI and TripleClicks.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ve been getting checks from SFI just about every month for years. Some have been large and some have been small. I made a profit most months, broke about even some, and lost a small amount a few times. Overall, it has been a profitable venture.

But, profitable and worth doing are two different things.

I’m getting tired of working hard for meager pay from some companies. With SFI, the pay I receive from my downline’s efforts has been meager. On the other hand, the commissions I receive from sales to non-affiliates have been excellent.

Therein lies the dilemma.

So, now I’ll respond to people in my downline who contact me and I’ll give them my best advice, but I’m not going to tell anyone that it’s easy to earn a full-time income from online marketing.

Some people do very well, some never earn anything.

I’ve been lucky in that I have earned enough to meet my needs and to have some additional spending money left over. So, I consider that a successful venture. On the other hand, I could earn a lot more if I went back to full-time consulting or got a good job.

So, this year, I’m combining the two. I’ll continue affiliate marketing, but I’m also doing consulting in the real face-to-face 3D world. I’m hoping the combination will be more successful, and I’ll still be able to do most of my work from home.

So, I’m going to continue doing limited promotions for SFI and some of their products, but not to the extent I did in the past.

I’m not going to quit, because I really think Gery Carson is doing all he can to make the company more successful for its affiliates, but it’s an uphill climb.

I also don’t believe in quitting. Once I start something, I’m stubborn enough that I’ll face the difficulties, weather the storms, and find a way to solve any problems I encounter.

Whether that’s a good thing or not is debatable.

So that’s a long overview of some of my thinking on this topic.

I’m planning to revisit this topic later this week and address specific things rather than repeating this rambling monologue.

I would love to hear your opinions on affiliate marketing, network marketing, SFI Marketing Group, and similar topics.

Share your experiences and thoughts and maybe this will develop into a good discussion.

Act on your dream!

JD

Over the years, I’ve shown many thousands of banner ads on a variety of sites, including traffic exchanges.

Now, I know some of you aren’t fans of traffic exchanges and even I don’t use them as much as I used to.

When I first started marketing online, I could depend on good banners getting a pretty good click-through rate, on the order of 1% or so. That has changed over the years and now the click-through rate I’m seeing is much lower than that, even for well-designed banners.

I still use them now and then, but not to the extent I did a few years ago. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up on them until this morning.

What changed?

I was reading an article by Seth Godin that he posted on his blog a couple of days ago: On becoming a household name

Part of what he said in that blog post jumped right out and grabbed me…

Being a familiar name takes you miles closer to closing a sale. People like to buy from companies they’ve heard of.

It turns out that this is an overlooked benefit of banner ads….

On some level, I’ve felt that it was unfair to me - the affiliate - to use some banner ads, because they promoted the merchant and didn’t really help me make the sale.

When I read what Seth wrote, I realized that this may have been the purpose of the banner in the first place - to build name recognition for the merchant while I paid for the advertising.

So, how can we turn that around? How can we use banner and other graphic ads to build our own brand and name recognition?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that for a new site I’ll be unveiling soon and I can see several ways that good graphics shown on similar sites can help build awareness of my new site and hopefully bring more visitors.

Even if I never get a single click-through from those graphics, they may do their work well if they help build name awareness of the brand.

It’s not a complicated concept, just one that I hadn’t thought of since I was so focused on getting clicks that lead to sales.

Have you ever thought of banner ads from this perspective?

Act on your dream!

JD

For the first time in several weeks, I fired up my newsreader and started catching up on what my friends have been blogging about recently.

One of the first things that caught my eye was Lynn Terry’s post, FTC to Regulate Social Media Marketing.

She did a good job linking to information about this, so I won’t repeat what she said. Click the link, above, to read her post; it will open in a new window.

I think it’s about time that the FTC started to crack down on deceptive advertising and claims, and the new emphasis on “atypical results” is a good thing, too.

Although I can’t show you specific statistics to back up what I’m about to say, it’s common knowledge that over 90% of affiliate marketers never earn anything, or at least earn very little.

Yet, there are people and websites out there that claim that it’s the easiest thing in the world to join a few affiliate programs, set up a blog, and start earning thousands of dollars.

This claim is simply not true.

Yes, there are a few people who earn thousands of dollars every month through affiliate marketing, but they are the exceptions - they are the people who enjoy “atypical results.”

Perhaps it was a matter of timing. Maybe they got in at the right time.

Maybe they had more experience in marketing and advertising than most of us.

Who knows why they were successful.

Online marketing is still not as easy as some would paint it.

So, I’m hoping that the FTC does crack down on all the hype and scams that are floating around.

On the other hand, it worries me a bit that they may go too far.

Some of us try very hard to have a good knowledge of what we recommend. I am a satisfied customer of the products and services I recommend the most, but I can’t be 100% sure that I haven’t said something, somewhere, sometime, that may come back to bite me.

What about you?

Have you ever taken someone else’s word about a product and recommended it with little or no personal experience?

I don’t think you want to open yourself up to all the problems that will arise when the FTC cracks down on blogs and social networking sites.

I am far from getting rich, and my affiliate marketing income has dropped dramatically since last September, but I’m in this for the long haul and look forward to the months ahead when my revenue will rise, again.

I feel that I’ve been ethical and honest about the things I promote, but I look back and see that some things I liked a few years ago no longer look as good as they did then.

Does this mean that I have to find all my websites and everything I’ve ever published and see if they need to be modified and/or deleted?

I really don’t know.

Lynn’s post has given me something to seriously think about now that I’m getting back to work.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

For the first time in about a month, I’m feeling better.

This has been the worst spring allergy season I’ve experienced in years. I don’t really know why. Maybe it was just the combined effects of the allergies and the other things I’ve been going through.

This morning, I woke up (late) and realized I could think clearly, again. For the last several weeks, most of what I’ve managed to do was manage my essential email, watch some TV, and take naps.

I don’t know about you, but I find it exceedingly difficult to be creative and to write well when my head hurts and my mind feels like it’s smothered in cobwebs.

So, I’m back and I’m ready to get back to work.

Act on your dream!

JD