21st Century Affiliate Marketing

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