That was not my last post to 21st Century Affiliate Marketing
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Facebook, John Dilbeck, Musings
Surprise! I’m back. (grin)
Apparently, the reports of my death were greatly exaggerated, and it looks like that applies to this blog, too.
I came close to dying back in March, and things weren’t looking too good in May, either.
I’m happy to tell you that I’m getting better. I have a long way to go before I’m fully recovered, but I’m making substantial progress.
I wrote what I thought would be the last post to this blog in the middle of May, 2010. Since then, there have been some significant events in my life.
On April 1, 2010, my friend and surgeon resected my intestines, removed my gall bladder, and removed an 8-lb colon cancer. He was surprised to find the tumor in one large contained mass, rather than spread throughout my abdomen. That was a very lucky break.
Other, relatively minor surgeries followed.
A PET scan showed that I had suspicious spots in both thyroid glands and in the right lobe of my liver.
A biopsy of each thryoid gland showed that the growths were benign, not cancer. Happy dance!
A biopsy of the tumor in my liver showed it was benign. Happy dance!
However, a radiologist on the oncology team that would be doing the procedure on my liver called me at home from his vacation and said the biopsy report on my liver had to be wrong. He had seen the scans (two of them) and knew from the look and the growth that it was cancer. He didn’t want to rain on my parade, but he said — emphatically — that I should get the biopsy redone, and he would do it himself, if I wanted. I talked it over with my daughter and decided to have the biopsy redone. Dr. Moore did it using a slightly different technique and was right. It was colon cancer that had metastasized to my liver. At least, we knew it was something that had to be dealt with, as soon as possible.
In July, 2010, I went to Mission Hospital in Asheville, NC, and Dr. Moore performed a radio frequency ablation of the tumor in my liver. It is good that I was a good candidate for this, because traditional surgery on the right lobe of the liver is a very serious operation. Basically, what he did was this: insert three needles (that are connected to a radio frequency generator) into my liver so that they surround the tumor. Turn on the generator to cook the tumor (think of this as a microwave oven).
Because of the size of the tumor, he had to use three needles and the results looked good on the ultrasound right after the procedure.
I went for a CT scan and checkup with Dr. Moore earlier this week and got the good news. There is no sign of cancer in my liver, the “cooked” portion completely enveloped the tumor and some surrounding tissue, and there are no signs of bleeding complications. Very good news, indeed.
So, now the surgical interventions are all done and I’m on my second round (of 24 total) of chemotherapy treatments.
Now, instead of expecting to die from this (as it looked back in March), we’re working together to cure it. That’s a huge change in expectations and perspective in only three months.
I’m a long way from being my old self. I’m tired all the time and have trouble thinking straight, but I’m definitely improving.
So, instead of closing this blog, I’ve updated it to the latest version of WordPress, changed the theme, and spruced it up for another few years of talking about affiliate marketing.
I will not be posting as often as I did previously, but this blog is not going to just sit here, either. I will definitely be putting more effort into building evergreen, content-rich, hierarchically-organized websites than I will into blogging, but both have a part to play in my marketing plans.
I want to thank everyone who sent me their encouragement and support in the comments here, on my Facebook profile, and in email and phone calls. It meant a lot, and still does. I think your outpouring of support, encouragement, and prayers is one of the major reasons that I’m looking forward to conquering this cancer, instead of being its victim.
So, that’s enough about me. Let’s get back to talking about affiliate marketing.
(Now, I have to remember how I added that subscribe via email form on this blog. Scratching head…)
Act on your dream!
JD
This is my last post to 21st Century Affiliate Marketing
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, John Dilbeck, Marketing, Success and Failure
Before I say anything else, I want to thank all of you who have been regular readers and who have made this blog better by sharing your thoughts and comments with all of us. You know who you are.
This is the last post to this blog and I will be shutting it down in the next few days or weeks, as I have the time and energy. I’m closing my marketing business and I’m out of affiliate marketing.
It’s amazing how much of a difference two months can make in one’s life.
Two months ago, I went to the emergency room because I could not get out of bed. After 7 units of blood, I felt a bit stronger, but that lead to the discovery of colon cancer, which was followed shortly after with intestinal surgery, gall bladder removal, and today I learned that I need surgery for cancer in my liver and a biopsy for possible cancer in one of my thyroid glands.
For the foreseeable future, I’ll be putting my energy into kicking these cancers’ butts. I don’t intend to let them beat me, but you never know.
I don’t know for sure what will happen to this domain name. If you’re a regular reader and contributor to this blog, I’m willing to listen to your ideas.
It’s been a wild ride for the last several years, and I’m sad to see the ride coming to an end.
I plan to continue posting (now and then) to JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com and to my Facebook account at facebook.com/johndilbeck .
Thanks for reading, contributing, and making affiliate marketing just a bit more interesting as we shared ideas and thoughts about the subject.
Continued success to you.
All the best,
JD
New to Zazzle and liking what I see
Selling my own designs on CafePress
I have been selling products in my CafePress shop for several years and there are many things I like about it.
I enjoy selling my designs and earning commissions on a regular basis, but I’m not much of a graphic designer and there are many things I like that I don’t have either the time or the talent to create and sell.
Promoting designs created by others on CafePress
At one point, I was doing well with earning commissions through the CafePress affiliate program, but that dropped to almost nothing when they went from a private affiliate program to using Commission Junction.
CafePress changed the pricing model for products sold through their marketplace
Last year, CafePress made some changes and when one of my designs sells in their marketplace, I earn a smaller commission than when the same product with the same design sells in my shop.
Most of my sales in November and December were through the CafePress marketplace, so my earnings were smaller than they would have been if they were made through my shop.
On top of that, I didn’t earn any affiliate commissions.
Getting started with Zazzle
So, I decided today to look into Zazzle and see if it was something I wanted to try.
I have a lot of friends who have either moved from CafePress to Zazzle, or they have shops at both of them.
Getting started with Zazzle is very easy
I set up my account and opened my brand new Zazzle shop today.
There’s not much in it, yet.
Basically, I’ve chosen a theme, entered a bit about me on my profile page, uploaded my standard profile photo, and set up some of the optional stuff for promotions.
Adding designs and products to Zazzle
Now, it’s time to modify some of my best-selling designs and add them to products at Zazzle. That’s going to take some time and will be an ongoing process. My goal is to have most of my best selling designs on both CafePress and Zazzle before October, so they’ll be ready to promote in time for the massive November-December buying season.
I’ll start later this week with one of my best selling designs on CafePress and see what it takes to add it to multiple products on Zazzle. I’m sure there will be differences and I may run into obstacles as a result of my experience with CafePress and being so new to Zazzle. We’ll see if these are serious obstacles or just speed bumps.
Zazzle has their own private affiliate program
in addition to selling my own designs, I’m looking forward to trying their affiliate program and selling designs created by other people that I find and like.
For instance, when browsing through their marketplace, this afternoon, I found a design that cleverly combines two things that speak to me, and possibly to you, with a bit of humor.
I’m a huge Star Trek and Star Wars fan and I was really angry last year with the bailout of banks and financial institutions that were considered too big to fail.
That’s why I laughed when I saw this design:
A lot of people use the abbreviation, “lol,” to say that they laughed out loud when seeing something. I don’t make a habit of that, but I really did laugh out loud when I saw that design.
I like it better than my own Too Big To Fail design.
The nice thing is, if someone sees this and buys either a product with my design or the more clever death star product then I’ll earn a commission.
I enjoy earning a commission.
Really.
The more, the better!
Even though I don’t have a single product in my Zazzle shop, yet, I can still earn by promoting other people’s designs, and I like that.
When I have products in my shop, then I can benefit from any other Zazzle shop owners who choose to promote my products.
A sale of one of my designs through someone else’s affiliate link slightly reduces my earnings, but that’s more than made up for by their promotional efforts, so I’m happy to share part of the profits with them.
There are significant differences between CafePress and Zazzle
So, I still have a lot to learn about Zazzle, but I’m liking what I’ve seen and learned up to this point.
Another difference between CafePress and Zazzle is that you have to pay for a premium shop on CafePress in order to have multiple designs in your store, but on Zazzle, it’s totally free.
Even though it only costs about $7 per month for a premium shop on CafePress, this ought to appeal to you if you don’t want to pay anything and still have a way to earn money through online marketing.
Discussing Zazzle on Squidoo Marketing
I’ve started a discussion in the Zazzle Group on my Squidoo Marketing community for discussing opening a Zazzle shop, creating designs, adding them to products, and promoting them.
Since I’m a complete newbie on Zazzle, I’ll use myself as a guinea pig and talk about some of the things I do to create the products and market them.
I’m sure I’ll make some mistakes and I may have some ideas you never thought of, so I’m hoping it will be a useful discussion. You can see it here:
I am a newbie to Zazzle – do you have any advice?
That discussion is primarily for people who enjoy using Squidoo to market their products, but we’ll also be discussing other avenues of promotion and sales. You’re welcome to come and join us there, if you want.
In conclusion…
I like what I see so far at Zazzle and I’m looking forward to exercising what they offer and promoting designs I find that were created by other people, too.
I’m looking forward to seeing if I can develop a new, reliable, and growing income stream with Zazzle.
What about you?
Do you have any thoughts about CafePress, Zazzle, or either of their affiliate programs?
Act on your dream!
JD
Broadband makes a huge difference!
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Broadband, CafePress, Opinions, Sitesell and Site Build It, Squidoo Marketing
If you’ve been reading my blogs or sites for any length of time, you know I live in an area where only dial-up Internet access is currently available, and it’s also an area with old, copper phone lines so that means I’ve been connecting at much slower speeds than my equipment is capable of.
This wasn’t much of a problem a few years ago.
Now, however, it has become a much bigger problem, especially for someone who earns his living from online marketing.
For the last week or so, I’ve had access to high-speed broadband and it has made all the difference in how I perceive what I and some of my friends are doing online.
For example, I’m a huge fan of Mitch Mitchell’s I’m Just Sharing blog and Aussie Sire’s Wassup blog.
As much as I enjoy both of their blogs, sometimes it has been frustrating trying to get them to load. Many times, I would have to load a blog post two or three times before the entire page would load.
This week, however, they load the first time, every time and do it quickly. That has made it much easier and more enjoyable to read what they have to say. The same holds true for quite a few other blogs I read on a regular basis.
The benefit to me is that I’m less frustrated and can read more in much less time. That increases my motivation to participate and also decreases the amount of time I spend waiting — and playing solitaire while the pages load. (In fact, I’ve only played two games of solitaire in the last week, and there were many times in the past few years when I would play several games while waiting on one page to load, so that’s a huge difference.)
Broadband makes it much easier to edit my sites
Truthfully, it hasn’t made much of a difference in editing my own blogs and sites, because I tend to do a lot of low-bandwidth things on them and intend to continue with that approach. Still, high-speed broadband opens the door to working with video in the future, especially when promoting local small businesses on Murphy Gold. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time and I’m looking forward to it.
I can view and edit my Squidoo lenses, now
Where it has made a huge difference is being able to once-again edit my Squidoo lenses reliably and easily.
I was having a problem even seeing my own Squidoo lenses the last year or two. Editing them was even more problematic, especially some of the larger lenses such as my Site Build It lens.
The result of my problem with loading the lenses with slow dial-up was that I became more frustrated and less prone to update the lenses when people added sites to the voting Plexo modules.
The benefit of high-speed broadband is that I find it easy to view the lenses and edit them. Now, instead of being frustrated when I receive an email telling me that someone has added something to a Plexo module, I look forward to seeing what it is.
Usually, unfortunately, it’s some lame-brained spammer trying to spam their totally off-topic link on my site, but there are some nuggets in all the mud where people are suggesting excellent sites and lenses that I’m happy to add.
Publishing the lenses is much faster and much more reliable with a fast Internet connection, too.
The result is, over the last week, I’ve updated more lenses than I did in the last several months combined.
I can see my CafePress store much better now
Over the last couple of years, it seems that it has become harder and harder (and much slower) to edit my CafePress store and do all the things that are necessary to keep it up-to-date and to add new designs. As a result, I just stopped updating it.
We all know that makes a great recipe for stagnation, fewer sales, and loss of income. It’s exactly what happened.
Now, however, I can load the store in seconds, as opposed to sometimes taking ten minutes or more for pages with lots of products.
I’ve only tested editing a couple of pages, but I was able to make changes in five minutes or less that would have taken over an hour with my dial-up connection — if it were possible to successfully complete them at all.
A lot of people don’t care for my designs, and that’s okay. The good news is that I’ve sold a lot of products through my CafePress store and look forward to selling lots more. I have over 100 designs that I’ve never added to my store because it just wasn’t worth the time and effort.
I’ll be adding quite a few of them in the coming days and I’ll be promoting my CafePress store much more actively in the future.
In fact, I’ll probably be opening more stores that are focused entirely on a single niche and I’ll be promoting them heavily on several sites.
Will that increase sales? I’m sure it will. I’ll know for sure a year from now.
One of the things I’m sure will increase sales is lowering the prices.
In the past, I’ve used a premium pricing strategy for my CafePress shop. I expected few sales, so I raised the markup I’d receive on each sale.
Now that I have reliable, fast access to editing my shop, again, I’m changing the strategy.
I just lowered the prices on all the products in my store to reflect a moderate pricing strategy. I’ll earn quite a bit less per sale, but I expect that to increase the number of sales.
So, just a few minutes ago, while writing this post, I lowered the prices of every product in my shop, some of them substantially.
A fast broadband connection even makes Site Build It better
I intentionally design both of my sites that are powered by Site Build It to be low-bandwidth friendly.
I want people with slow connections to be able to read what I write and I want those pages to snap on the screen for people with faster connections.
I’m not going to make many changes in that regard, with the exception of adding a few videos.
I’ve known for some time that the popularity of video on the web has been exploding, but it was a waste of time and effort to even try to view them with my slow connection. This week, however, I’ve found how easy it is to watch video in real time with a fast connection and I know that video is more interesting to lots of people than pure text.
I still remain a text-oriented person, but I recognize an opportunity when I see it.
Another very interesting thing occurred to me this week. For all the years that I’ve been a Site Build It subscriber, I’ve always read the Action Guide and never even tried to view the video version of it.
That changed this week. For the first time ever, I watched the entire video version of the Action Guide and I have to admit that hearing someone speak while watching animation that was used to illustrate some of the processes really did make some of it more understandable. In fact, I’m going to watch the Days 2 and 3 videos again this evening.
Even though I have a good understanding of the three-tier structure of a successful website, the new tier-structure video made it much more understandable and I’ll be implementing some changes to both of my SBI sites over the coming days, as a result.
A fast connection doesn’t lessen the work, but it does make my efforts more efficient
I don’t know of anything that is reliable and honest that reduces the amount of work that it takes to be a successful online marketer, but I do know that a fast broadband connection makes a world of difference in improving efficiency.
Of course, that makes sense, but it has been a real eye-opener for me.
Back when I was a Systems Administrator for a local ISP I had direct access to a fast broadband pipe and it was nice, but that was before so many sites relied upon javascript, java, audio, video, and other things that benefit from high-speed pipes.
So, I was able to do just about anything I needed to do from home on dial-up almost as efficiently as I could do from the office using broadband.
But, that was a decade ago and things have changed drastically.
Now, there is a world of difference between slow dial-up access and high-speed broadband. That difference is much bigger and more important than I realized, and it is a very important difference for anyone aspiring to make money online from affiliate marketing or just about any other form of marketing.
Now, I’m wondering what other things I’m going to discover that will make my online marketing more effective.
What about you?
Do you have any thoughts or opinions about the differences between slow and fast Internet connections and the effectiveness of your online affiliate marketing efforts?
I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts.
Act on your dream!
JD
I will be moving away from blogging in 2010
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Sitesell and Site Build It
I enjoy blogging and I’ve been doing this for a long time, back before the words weblog and blog were even coined.
This is the last year where blogging will be part of my marketing plan, however.
The plain truth is that blogging hasn’t been worth the time and effort in terms of receiving an income from all I’ve done. So, since I’m going to be concentrating on increasing my revenue next year, I’m going to focus almost entirely on what works for me and I’m dropping what hasn’t been fruitful.
There is a good chance that this blog won’t be here a year from now.
I’m turning my attention back to what does work for me – what pays the bills – and another thing I enjoy, which is building static, hierarchical websites focused on particular topics.
I’ve been building websites since shortly after the introduction of the world wide web and I have used lots of different tools to build sites that attract visitors and earn money from sponsorships, advertising, affiliate sales, and in other ways.
One site, that I’ve sadly neglected because of health issues that have interfered, still earns more in one month than all my blogs earn in an entire year — and I haven’t done much to that site at all in the last year.
That should be a lesson to me. Concentrate on what’s working and stop playing with all the shiny red balls that bounce by.
I enjoy blogging
I enjoy blogging and the social aspects of commenting on other blogs. These discussions have been fun and I’ve met some great people around the world as a result.
But, let’s face it. We talk to each other, but we don’t buy from each other. You don’t buy from me and I don’t buy from you. That’s the bottom line when it comes to a marketing business.
I’m still going to follow blogs and bloggers that I like and I’ll still have something to say now and then when Mitch or AussieSire, or several others I enjoy reading, writes something of interest, but I’m not going to spend nearly the time and effort that I have in the past on my own blogs.
I don’t like being poor
My goal in having an online marketing business is to earn a good living at it, not just barely get by.
This has been an unusually hard year for me, but that’s the way life happens. I’m hoping that it was just the bottom of a bad cycle and that things will start moving upwards, soon.
That’s another reason to concentrate on what’s working.
The majority of my income this year has been from a brand new site I started back in July when I had to replace the affiliate income I lost.
I’ve been playing around with promoting my adopted home town and the people and organizations here, but I turned that into a business this year when I launched Murphy Gold and its companion social networking site at Murphy Connections.
This is a more-traditional business structure.
Local business owners pay me to promote them and I write about the products and services they offer and other things they do throughout the year, such as special events.
Over time, even in a small town like Murphy, NC, this can be profitable.
Now that I have all the infrastructure in place, it’s time to hunker down and focus on that.
So, you’ll see less of me here. I’ll still drop in on your blogs now and then and I’m following some of them in email and RSS, but I won’t be saying much, unless you write something that really captures my interest and I think my comment may add value to what you’re saying.
This answers my question: WordPress or SBI?
I can clearly show on my profit and loss statement that SBI delivers much more income and more visitors who actually buy something than all of my blogs put together.
SBI takes less work, doesn’t have to be updated every time I turn around, and now with Content 2 being available to all of us who power our sites with Site Build It, it gives me an easy way to let others write pages for the site and comment on them.
That adds the social aspect to SBI sites that I’ve enjoyed on blogs.
So, there you have it.
I’ve been promoting SBI for years and telling you how much I love it, so I’m going to go back to using it and rebuilding my online marketing business.
Blogging has been a fun experiment.
JD
Will ShopZilla work for me?
If you’ve been reading this blog this year, you know that I was caught by the new tax laws that were passed in North Carolina back in July. As a result, I was dropped by several large merchants as an affiliate, including Amazon.com where I had been an affiliate for over a decade.
That hurt, but it also meant that I had to rebuild several large sites and remove all the links. I still have not finished that process.
It also meant that I lost all the monetization for one of my sites and I’ve been looking for a way to replace the income I lost.
I got some good news this week and think I may see some light at the end of the tunnel.
ShopZilla approved me as an affiliate and I can use it similarly to what I used to do with Amazon.com.
The main difference is that ShopZilla is a shopping comparison site and links, especially search results links, offer a variety of choices where you can buy and at what price.
I won’t have time to work on this until January, but I’m looking forward to giving it a try.
What about you?
Do you have any experience with ShopZilla?
Act on your dream!
JD
Top 15 things I have learned about affiliate marketing
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Network Marketing, Opinions
I originally wrote this in July, 2007 on another of my blogs. That was back when my affiliate marketing business was growing and I was happy with the direction I was going.
Some of these points are just as valid today as they were then.
I have learned several lessons that I think may be valuable to anyone who reads this. You may agree or disagree, but at least give it some thought.
1. Anything that is a good value today will be a good value a year from now.
2. The more the hype, the less the value or longevity.
3. If it has a deadline, run away, don’t walk, run – in a zig-zag pattern.
4. Don’t send your valuable prospect away on first contact. Try to get their contact information so you can follow-up – yes, build your list. (I wish I’d done more of this.)
5. If you can’t understand the compensation plan after reading it twice, you may never understand it, so maybe it is best to avoid it.
6. Always try to get residual income rather than one-off commissions.
7. Try to get life-time customers.
8. If more than five people email you about something the same day, avoid it.
9. Spillover is a myth. It may happen now and then, but don’t depend upon it.
10. Earning money – no matter how you do it – is work. It takes longer than you think and it takes more creativity and effort. Nobody will do your work for you.
11. Don’t spend more than you can afford. Define your budget and stick with it. If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.
12. Don’t go into debt to try to make more money. Pour a percentage of your revenue back into tools and marketing. As a result of this, I’m spending more on marketing every month than I made the first two years of online marketing. But, it’s all a percentage of income. I have no debt and I intend to keep it that way.
13. It takes a long time to start earning money with online marketing (unless you are very lucky or very good at what you do). It took months for me to earn my first commission check, and several more months before I got my second one. Now, I get checks from several companies every month. It did not happen overnight, but it can be done with perseverance, even if you make a lot of mistakes along the way.
14. Don’t pay attention to how much money someone is claiming to earn. There is a huge difference between gross and net.
15. Help others grow and advance, don’t take advantage of them just to get their money.
When I originally wrote this, I was doing a lot of testing with traffic exchanges and downline builders. I was actively promoting two MLM companies. Today, I’m doing none of those things.
So, the comments about spillover really have nothing to do with affiliate marketing, because they’re more appropriate to anyone involved in network marketing. I got so tired of getting emails telling me that some “big-hitter” was going to start promoting to his “massive” list and there was only so much time to get involved in his program if we wanted any spillover. To the best of my recollection, from testing several different programs, I think I received half a dozen people in my downline from spillover and never made a penny from it.
In every case, I lost money in the process. That’s why I no longer do any of that.
In regards to #14, it’s not just a difference between gross and net. Some people will actually lie to you! (Surprise!) Anyone with a graphics program can dummy an income statement.
I’m not saying that all of them are dummies or lies, but I know that some of them are. Don’t believe everything you read or see. Caveat emptor.
What do you think?
Agree? Disagree? Let’s talk.
Act on your dream!
JD
How much is enough?
I hope the subject of this post didn’t mislead you. If it did, I apologize right now.
I just didn’t have room to ask the real question I’m pondering this morning…
How much do you have to earn from something in order for it to be worth the effort?
That’s closer to what I’m thinking about.
My goal for my online marketing has always been to clear $100 per day for my efforts.
Since I don’t use pay per click advertising, and I no longer have upgraded memberships in the traffic exchanges (or even use them anymore), and I don’t use paid classifieds any longer, my only overhead is hosting, domain names, and a few services that are ancillary to what I’m doing.
So, it would seem that being able to clear $100 per day would not be too difficult. All I’d have to earn is about $110 per day and the goal would be met.
Still, it just isn’t working out that way.
I used to think the plan to follow would be to have 100 sites each earning a dollar a day. It sounds simple, but it never worked. Some of those sites were lucky to earn a dollar a month.
As much as I like the concept of having many little revenue streams that add up to one large revenue river, the reality has never lived up to the idea.
A couple of years ago, I thought I was well on the way, but things took a detour, as you already know, and I’m trending downward.
There are some reasons for that, I know.
1. I was earning profits by recommending the traffic exchanges and a couple of MLM programs. However, over time, I realized that this was just a treadmill and I was getting nowhere fast.
2. I was making a profit by recommending books and other products through Amazon.com, but they dropped me when the NC legislature passed the tax law this summer.
3. I was making a profit by recommending some ebooks that I used to think were valuable, but no longer think so, so I stopped recommending them.
4. I was earning money from Squidoo from publishing lenses, but that has been declining and I just earned the lowest amount I’ve ever earned from them for a month – just over $2.00.
5. I was earning nice checks from Cafepress.com for the designs I’ve uploaded, but that has declined since they started setting the prices they’d charge in the marketplace. Now, most of my sales are through the marketplace and, instead of earning $7 or $8 per sale, I’m earning closer to $2.50. I’m making more sales, but earning less money.
6. One thing that is really holding up for me, even though it’s still down from what I saw the last couple of years, is earnings from recommending Site Build It. The residuals for annual renewals are doing very well, but the new sales have declined quite a bit. Lately, I’ve been doing more work on planning what I’m going to do on my SBI-powered sites than I have been in promoting the service. But, I believe that it is a long-term strategy that will lead to increased profits in the long-run.
7. Google Adsense income has continued to do pretty well, even though it, too, is down from what I used to earn. Part of the reason is that I’ve removed it from some of my popular sites. I’m starting to reconsider that move and I may be adding Adsense ads back to some of my sites where I previously removed them.
So, those are some of the things I’ve been thinking about.
Then, over my first cup of coffee, I asked myself, “How much do I have to earn from something in order for it to be worth the effort?”
Now, I’m asking you that question, too.
If you promote something and it earns only a few dollars per month, or per year, is it better to just let it ride, because something is better than nothing?
If you think that is true, would you do the same thing in real life?
In other words, would you take a job that just pays $10 per month, rather than one that pays that much – or more – per hour?
If you would not, why would you settle for earning that much from a program online?
Let’s say that you’re earning $100 per month from a program, but you work 20 hours or more, per month, to keep it going. Is that worth it?
What if it only took a couple of hours to earn that $100? Would that be worth it?
Now, this is where you’d probably expect me to recommend something and pitch you on why you should buy it to help you earn more.
I’m not going to do that.
I’m seriously interested in your opinions and hope you’ll comment with your expectations, observations, and evaluations of what you’re doing and how well it’s going.
If I were still depending upon earning a living from affiliate marketing this year, I’d be nothing but skin and bones and living in a culvert or under a bridge somewhere.
I’m still earning a living from my online marketing efforts, but it’s mostly from helping local business owners in Murphy, NC promote their brick and mortar businesses online. I’m not earning what I want to earn, but at least it seems to be growing a little.
So, what’s your opinion?
How much do you have to earn from something for it to be worth your effort?
Act on your dream!
JD
Art.com and AllPosters.com are great for affiliate marketers
I have been an affiliate with Art.com for several years and it has been a company I have enjoyed working with and earning from.
See their site: ART PRINTS – Art.com!
At one time, when I had a number of special interest “art stores” on JohnDilbeck.com, I was earning some nice commission checks and some were upwards of $200 for a month’s sales.
Right about now is a good time to promote art, posters, photographs, tapestries, and other things that are available at Art.com.
The holiday buying season is upon us and Art.com offers nice commissions on sales, especially for framed prints.
With everyone looking for great gifts, there is a very good chance that you’ll find something that fits your niche in the 100,000 items they sell.
In addition to good commissions on direct sales from your links, Art.com has a two-tier affiliate program and you can earn commissions from websites recruited from your links.
To sign up for their affiliate program, click the following button:
As an affiliate, you will be able to build lots of different links to individual products, live-store windows, virtual stores, banners and logos, search boxes, and text links.
AllPosters.com
Art.com and AllPosters.com are two brands for the same company. Each brand has a separate affiliate program and it may make sense to sign up for either or both brands, depending upon your niche and the market you reach.
As an affiliate, you can link to any page on the AllPosters.com site. For example, the following is a link to their home page:
Of course, I would earn a commission from anyone who clicks on that link and makes a purchase. After all, that’s what affiliate marketing is all about, right?
They have about a half-million products that you can market and they’ve been in operation since 1995.
AllPosters.com, too, has a two-tier affiliate program.
The AllPosters.com Affiliates Program is a great way to make money with your website. Link to AllPosters.com and earn 20% of every purchase made by your site visitors at their website. If the visitor decides to purchase within 10 days of their last visit from your website, you’ll still earn commission on the sale!
You can link to AllPosters.com from a selection of over hundreds of thousands poster and art print images as well as poster stores and mini stores.
They have posters related to just about everything (e.g. movies, music, sports, art, animals) so no matter what the content of your site is, you will find images that are a good fit. It’s easy to sign-up, track your sales, and build links because the site generates all the HTML code for you.
Both of these sites are great sources for revenue, if you reach people who are…
… interested in decorating their homes
… college students and young adults
… looking for great gifts to give.
What about you?
Are you an affiliate with Art.com and/or AllPosters.com? If so, what has been your experience with their products and affiliate programs?
Act on your dream!
JD
Some thoughts about affiliate marketing
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Musings, Sitesell and Site Build It, Success and Failure
I was reading several blogs and forums where people were talking about how much money they earned (or didn’t earn) from affiliate marketing in October.
The more I read, the more I realized that I’m not doing as badly as I have been feeling.
After all, I earned a living from this for quite a few years, and, even if my income has dropped quite a bit over the last year, I’m still earning more than many people are.
Now, I know that sounds selfish and I hope each of you has greater success with your affiliate marketing efforts in 2010 than you’ve had in 2009.
What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been reading about many people who are working hard to earn something and still haven’t made any money at all. I can remember how frustrating that is. When you’re doing everything you know how to do and it isn’t producing any results, it can be a very difficult and disheartening experience.
I remember how happy I was to get that first commission check from Amazon.com quite a few years ago. Over the years, I’ve received checks from a number of companies and I still get a thrill when I endorse and deposit them.
Although they aren’t coming nearly as frequently as they used to, a few are still arriving and I’m thankful for each of them.
I’m wondering now if I’ve lost my way with affiliate marketing. At one time, I worked hard to send people to Amazon.com and looked forward to commissions from them. It was fun finding products and telling my readers about them.
Those were products that real people were interested in.
When I say “real people,” I’m talking about folks who aren’t interested in affiliate marketing. They were people who saw a link to something that interested them and they purchased it. Sometimes they purchased several things totally unrelated to what I was writing about and I earned a commission on each of those sales.
Now that Amazon.com dropped me after NC passed the new tax law this summer, I’m wondering if there is another company that would be a good substitute. I still love recommending books and some other consumer products, but don’t know of a good company with which I can work.
Do you have any suggestions?
As those of us in the United States get closer to our annual Thanksgiving Day holiday, I’ve been looking at things from a different perspective.
I think I’m over being stressed out about all the things that have gone wrong in the last year or so and I’m starting to focus more on what can go right over the coming year. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to hang on this year and now I’m setting my sites once again on prosperity instead of mere survival.
A year from now, I expect to be in much better financial shape than I am today, and to get there I’m going to have to create a new plan and work hard to achieve it.
One of the things I’ve identified is that this blog is not an income producer. Lots of people read it, but few purchase anything. Most of my sales come from sites that have absolutely nothing to do with making money online.
Years ago, I was advised by someone who knows a lot about online marketing and he said then, and it is even more true now, that the world doesn’t need any more websites and blogs about making money online, especially when the people building those sites are not very successful themselves.
I’ve talked about being interested in too many things for my own good, and not being specifically interested in a few things I could build a site around.
My brother, before he became disabled, loved drag racing. It was a life-long love and a few years ago I started building Georgia Drag Racing for him. He was working to write a book about the golden years of drag racing in the Atlanta area and was making great progress before he got to the point where it hurt too much to sit at a computer for very long.
So, that site has seen its best days and will be declining over time as less content is created. Still, surprisingly, it remains one of my best-earning websites, even though it has many links to Amazon.com that aren’t earning me anything and which I haven’t had the time or energy to remove.
It’s not at all about earning money online and I think that’s the key to its success. It attracts people who enjoy drag racing and they’re willing to spend money on their hobby.
I’ve watched as others have done the same thing. I know of people who have built successful, money-earning websites based on such diverse topics as dealing with insurance problems, telling Halloween and ghost stories, juggling, repairing computers, kitchen counter tops, organic gardening, hydroponic gardening, modeling advice, and dozens of other niche subjects that interested them and which they built into sites that produce a substantial annual income.
I have been trying to find a niche for myself in which I could do the same thing, but so far I haven’t found it.
At least, now, I know all the things I will need to do to build and publicize such a site if I can ever identify a topic that I can love and be willing to write about every day.
I’ve come close to such a niche, but it is not really what I’m talking about.
I love living in the mountains of Murphy, NC and I love the people, scenery, and pace of life here. I’ve been promoting the area and a few businesses off and on over the years and this year I’ve been concentrating on building Murphy Connections, a social networking site, and Murphy Gold, a site for promoting a few locally-owned, small businesses that are located in the Murphy NC 28906 ZIP code.
I’m starting to have some success with those sites and look forward to spending a lot of time working on, and improving, them over the coming months.
Another site that I enjoy, but whose earnings have dropped dramatically since I removed all the Amazon links is my Act On Your Dream! site.
Basically, I lost focus on that site, but I’ve been brainstorming a lot of ideas and now have a plan for updating that site on a regular basis. Now that Sitesell has made Content 2.0 free for all SBI sites, I’ll be adding more interactive features to it over time. In fact, I think that I’ll be blogging less as a result.
In fact, I’m going to be taking some of what I’ve written in my blogs and repurposing it on that site to see how it works.
Even though I’ve just gone through the worst 12 months of my life, I still believe that we can achieve what we want if we identify our goals, make good plans to accomplish them, and then put in the required work to make it happen. In as little as a year from now, we can make big changes in our lives.
I’m going to be acting on that belief.
What about you?
What do you think?
Is affiliate marketing working well for you?
Have you identified niches that are good income earners?
What company do you recommend as a substitute for Amazon.com?
I welcome your comments and look forward to discussing them.
Act on your dream!
JD
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John DilbeckBuild your successful online business…
John Dilbeck and Friends- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-29 August 29, 2010
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-22 August 22, 2010
- Is the Web dead? Of course not. August 19, 2010
- I am updating several of my blogs August 18, 2010
- At Sitesell, all employees tweet to the corporate Twitter account August 18, 2010
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-16 August 16, 2010
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-09 August 9, 2010
- I am happy to report that I’m feeling better! August 3, 2010
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-02 August 2, 2010
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-26 July 26, 2010
- Murphy Gold News
- Jul 16, Murphy, NC - Get more for your money at MurphyGold.com
- Jul 16, About Us
- Jun 29, Going to the lake or camping
- Jun 27, S and L Auto and Tractor Parts - Auto parts stores in Murphy, NC.
- Jun 24, Rumors Clothing - Trendy Clothing for Women in Murphy, NC
- Mar 23, YUM! Crab Legs!
- Feb 27, ShoeBooties Cafe Nightly Specials - February 25 through March 3, 2010
- Feb 11, Images By Courtnie - Family Photography in Murphy, NC
- Jan 29, ShoeBooties Cafe Nightly Specials - January 28 through February 3, 2010
- Jan 8, Murphy, NC - A growing community with small town charm
- Jan 8, Poltrock Team - Real Estate in Murphy NC
- Jan 8, Murphy Connections - Social networking for Murphy, NC
- Jan 8, Murphy Gold Special Offers
- Jan 8, Murphy Gold Special Offers - Images By Courtnie Coupon for 2010
- Jan 8, Local Business Directory - Murphy Gold Businesses in Murphy, NC