Along the way, a lot has been written about the company (Sitesell), the product (SBI), and the founder (Ken Evoy).

Some of it has been accurate and truthful.

Some of it has been inaccurate and misleading.

Some of it has been a scam to promote something else that doesn’t work.

So, if you’re like most of us, you’ve learned about affiliate marketing and how to approach it from different people here and there and, most likely, you have learned a lot of conflicting information and advice from a lot of different people.

I’ve been there.

Really.

I mean, I’ve really been there.

I’ve read thousands of websites and blogs, have joined and tested hundreds of marketing systems, have bought and read dozens of books and ebooks (really studied them), and have subscribed to hundreds of mailing lists and newsletters.

I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve read one person recommend something as the very best approach, only to have that contradicted by someone else who says it’s the absolute worst approach and doesn’t work.

The truth is, that there are many different approaches to building websites, blogs, and an online presence and what works well for one person may be entirely ineffective for another.

We all have our own personal approaches, preferences, filters, and blinders, and I guarantee that you and I can look at the exact same thing and have different opinions about it. That’s basic human nature.

But, through research and testing, we can try various approaches and find what works best for us. Right?

Or, we can just try the “flavor of the day” approach and never really know what works and what doesn’t. Right?

It’s okay to do something on a whim or as a hobby. We all do them.

It’s a different thing if you want to build a business that can provide for you and your family.

I have a couple of websites that I’ve built just for the fun of it. I like to write about different things and I’d rather do it on my own sites than on a bunch of free sites where my writing is lost in mix of stuff from thousands of others.

So, I really do know, and appreciate, the difference between doing something for the fun of it, versus building a business with the intent to earn a profit.

I’ve tried and tested hundreds of approaches and have settled on a very few that I know work for me. Whether they’ll work for you, I can’t guarantee.

What doesn’t work for me?

MLMs and Network Marketing. I’ve spent thousands of dollars and hours trying to build a team and offer support and training in order to leverage their efforts into a profitable business. Huge.waste.of.time — at least for me. Maybe I don’t have the right personality. Maybe I chose the wrong merchants. Maybe I attracted the wrong people. Maybe I just suck at multi-level marketing.

I’ve watched others and some of them seem to be successful. I know a few, personally, who are successful with MLM — very few — count em on my fingers and have fingers left over.

I think, for many people, it can be a way to earn some extra money. For a few, it can be a really good business. For most of us, nope.

I could go on and on with many other examples.

Build a hundred sites and earn a buck a day from each of them. Nope. Doesn’t work. Lot’s of effort for no return.

Downline builders and traffic exchanges. I had some good results with some of them. But, I got tired of the whole “work at home” and “make money online” niche. For me, semi-successful. Don’t like the feeling of running on a treadmill to nowhere.

Yes, SBI is a system that’s designed to help folks make money by building an online business, but the focus is definitely not on the get rich quick schemes that are so prevalent in the “work at home” niche.

Over the years, I’ve heard lots of things about SBI and Ken Evoy that just aren’t true. Some of them are even malicious.

Yes, we can all have different opinions, but I just don’t see a reason to lie about something.

When I want to know about something, I want to know as much as I can learn about it. I buy the product or service. I read all the instructions and participate in the forums. I write support to see how they solve problems. I follow the steps and do my best to make it work. I join the affiliate program (if it has one) and try it out. In short, I do all I can think of to see if this is something for me, or not.

Many things, even those that look attractive, just don’t work. Maybe they once did. Maybe they never did.

A few things that I’ve tested really do work. And they work for lots of different people in a lot of different industries and niches. Those are the gems that make it worth sifting through all the duds.

SBI is one of the gems.

Mailing list services like Aweber and MailChimp are gems. I’ve used Aweber successfully in the past and intend to use both services effectively in the future.

Last week, I identified a new gem that is going to help me with SMS text message marketing to opt-in lists. EzTexting looks like a very good system and has passed my initial tests with flying colors. So, now it’s time to invest some money in it and put it to work in a real-world environment.

Other gems include WordPress and Hostgator for my traditional websites. I’ve used the combination of a WordPress blog on a domain hosted by HostGator for years. That’s how this blog works.

But, I’m moving away from that particular combination. I’m also moving away from Hostgator and that style of hosting using cPanel and all the other traditional Linux/Unix hosting. I want to concentrate less on tech stuff and more on business and marketing.

For my small websites and simple blogs, I’ve started using Weebly. I have several sites that I’m transitioning to their service and my Dilbeck Marketing site/blog will be hosted there.

I’ve been testing Weebly for the better part of a year (mostly with one of my client’s sites) and I am very happy with their service. I like how they combine a tier-structured website with blogging and e-commerce features. I also like that they automatically serve a site using mobile formatting when it is appropriate. I’ve tested it with feature cell phones, smartphones, iPods, and other similar mobile devices and it works very well — and I didn’t have to do anything extra.

So, I test a number of different approaches, including many I haven’t mentioned. I’ve been doing this for a long time.

I won’t say bad things about the ones that don’t work for me. I generally don’t mention those companies, systems, or individuals. I believe this, “if you can’t say something good about someone, keep your big trap shut.”

My approach is to identify the gems and then discuss why they are gems.

Others, however, take a different approach, and that brings me back to my original topic: SBI urban myths.

(About time, JD!)

Yes, I tend to write long posts and go in multiple directions. If you can hang on, it can be a fun ride. (grin)

Some people write about Sitesell, SBI, and Ken Evoy and give a totally different view from what I’ve observed over the last decade+.

If I had to name one person that had the most to do with my online marketing success, it would be Ken Evoy. He has never lied nor mislead me in over 10 years. He has never tried to sell me something I don’t need just so he can make a profit. He has never given me bad advice. I like and trust him.

Ken Evoy was already successful before he founded Sitesell and wrote his first ebook, Make Your Site Sell!

He was an emergency physician. Later he became a very successful developer of toys. He developed a product for a very narrow niche that was successful. From that experience, he wrote MYSS to help others learn how to build websites and make profits.

That’s how I got my start in online marketing. I am forever grateful that I bought that book and met Ken (online). One of these days, I hope to meet him in person and shake his hand.

He learned from the experience of writing that book and helping the people who bought it, that there is a minority of people who really want to succeed in an online business, but most of us don’t have all the skills to make it work. So, he started developing Site Build It! which is now generally known as SBI.

I don’t remember exactly when I first subscribed to SBI to start building my Act On Your Dream! site. I started that site because it involves something that is important to me. I truly believe that anyone who is willing to set a goal and work to achieve it can become a very different person in as little as a year from now. It may happen sooner, or it may take longer, depending upon the goal, but I have seen many people do just that.

Act On Your Dream! is more of a philosophy and hobby than a part of my business. I’ve worked on it here and there and it’s been earning a profit for years, month in and month out, with very little attention from me.

Now that I’m no longer caring for Mom and I’ve kicked cancer’s butt, I’ll be putting more attention and effort into that site. I have a lot I want to add to it.

People ask me why I spend $300 per year on that site when I can host it free on my HostGator account (I have a reseller account). That’s simple. It earns a profit every year and I have never had one single technical issue with it. Not once. I can’t say that for any of the sites I have hosted by HostGator, and I know they are a quality service.

Act On Your Dream! just works. Now and then I add to it, but mostly I just ignore it for weeks or months at a time.

It used to be even more successful when I advertised products sold through the Amazon.com affiliate program. But (you’ve probably heard this already) all the Amazon affiliates in North Carolina (including me) were dropped when our politicians passed the ill-advised nexus tax law in 2009.

The important point is that I earn a profit from that site. It’s not an expense, it’s a reliable, sustainable profit center even though there is much I can do to expand and increase that profit.

I earn more from that site in a year than I have from all my blogs (except this one) and all my forums ever did. And I’m not even really trying.

My other SBI-powered site, Murphy Gold, will be my primary revenue producer and focus for the coming years. Even in it’s present form (just a tiny part of what it will be), it has been profitable from the very first month I started it and that was back when I was so sick I could barely do anything. Now that I’m feeling better, it’s going to start shining!

This month, I’ll send out invoices to my clients on Murphy Gold and will earn more than I will from all my other sites combined for an entire year. I don’t give out my income figures to anyone but the IRS, but I’m talking a few thousand dollars — and that’s just the start.

In the process, I’m helping real people in the real world. It’s going to be even more exciting as it picks up speed.

That is the central hub of the biggest project I’m working on in my marketing business. I’ll be earning a full-time income from that site within another year.

Am I unhappy that I have to pay $300 per year for a site that earns many multiples of that investment? Not a bit.

The best part is that Sitesell continues to add new and better features to SBI that I can use in my sites and they haven’t raised the price in years. SBI is a much better deal now than it was when I first subscribed.

I can’t say that about any other business that I’ve worked with in my online marketing career. None of them.

Am I a raving fan of SBI? You bet I am.

Am I tired of all the misinformation about Sitesell and SBI. You bet I am.

That’s why I write about them now and then on this blog.

I know it looks like that’s all I write about, and that’s true for the last year or so while I was so sick, but it won’t be true over the coming months. I’ve joined and am in the process of learning and testing a variety of other affiliate programs that I’ll tell you more about as soon as I know more facts.

Hey, JD!

What?

You said you were going to talk about SBI urban myths.

Yes I did. And I’ve been addressing several of them already. Here’s the link to more information about some of the SBI! Urban Myths as presented by Sitesell.

I’m going to stop here. I have a lot more I could say, but I’ll leave it for another day and maybe another site.

So, what do you think? Questions? Comments?

I always enjoy hearing from you.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. You do realize that this is about affiliate marketing, too, don’t you? I am an affiliate for Sitesell and I believe they have the best affiliate program on the planet. I haven’t tested all of them, of course, but of the several hundred I have tested, Sitesell’s 5 Pillar Affiliate Program is the best. I’m not surprised. They are very good at what they do.

Part of this was not part of my ongoing plan — getting canceled by Amazon.com, for instance.

Part of it was finally having time to update some websites that had been neglected for most of the last two years as more and more of my time was devoted to caring for Mom and then working on settling her estate.

Part of it was reevaluating products and services that I’ve recommended over the last few years and deleting links to many of them. While I still feel that almost all of them were good products and worth what they cost, I’m no longer comfortable recommending them.

And, if I’m no longer comfortable doing it, why should I continue?

So, I spent a lot of time this morning removing and redirecting affiliate links for a variety of products.

I’ve been working day and night undoing what I spent years doing — finding and linking to affiliated products on a variety of websites, blogs, Squidoo lenses, and other places on the web. I don’t know how long it will take to find and delete all of them, or if that’s even possible, but I’m working on it diligently.

So far, I’ve deleted nearly a thousand pages on my various sites and at least that part is done.

Progress is not a continuous upwards curve

No matter how much we would like to have continuous, unbroken progress in our businesses, it just doesn’t happen that way.

There are always downturns, obstacles that must be overcome, and changes that must be dealt with.

Yes, it feels like that takes us away from getting our work done, but the truth is that it IS our work.

So, even though I’ve been undoing a lot lately, I feel like I’m finally making some progress by clearing out the old chaff so I can concentrate on growing new wheat.

(No, I’m not a farmer. That’s a metaphor.)

It’s a strange idea, possibly, but I really feel like I’m making progress even though most of what I’ve been doing has been going backwards.

On the positive side, my new website for promoting select locally-owned brick and mortar businesses in Murphy, NC is doing well and I’ll be devoting more and more time to building and promoting Murphy Gold over the coming months.

What part will affiliate marketing play in my future?

More and more, I’m asking myself that question, and I’m unsure of the answer.

As I get pickier about what I recommend to you and have to deal with unexpected things like changes in the NC tax code that got me dropped from several affiliate programs, I find it harder and harder to recommend products and services to you.

Of course, I’ll continue to recommend Site Build It! and I’ll continue using it for my new static sites. At this time, I don’t have any plans to create any new sites and may still decide to delete a few more, but the new sites I build will be powered by SBI.

What do you think?

Those are some of my thoughts about online marketing on a hot summer afternoon.

What do you think? How’s your affiliate marketing business progressing — or not?

Act on your dream!

JD

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

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

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

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

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’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

This is not a step-by-step how-to book for new Internet marketers. If that’s what you are looking for, you should probably look elsewhere.

Click Here To Order tells the stories of some of the earliest Internet marketing entrepreneurs who succeeded beyond their dreams. You may know some of their names, already.

In fact, if affiliate marketing is part of your business revenue model, you may even promote products that some of the people in this book created.

From the product description:

While the general public is familiar with the larger Internet companies such as Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Amazon, very few are aware that small business is thriving online like never before, especially in the realm of information products. Click Here creates an entertaining and instructive narrative that provides an in-depth look at the unintentionally underground movement known as Infoproduct marketing, and the people who have profited and succeeded in the industry.

This edition of Click Here to Order is a 300-page paperback book. The list price is $17.95 and, as you probably know, is offered at a significant discount by Amazon.com.

Marketing on the Internet can be a very lonely business since we spend lots of hours in front of our keyboards and sometimes lose sight of what we want to accomplish because we get so bogged down in the details of what we’re doing.

Sometimes, it’s good to get away from the details and learn about the pioneers in this business. Who are they? What did they do? How did they do it? Why did they become so successful?

You’ll find some of these answers in Joel’s new book.

If you are interested in the history of the Internet marketing pioneers, and you want to learn more about how some of the best copywriters made their first dollars with online marketing, you’ll probably enjoy this book.

This is just one of the books about Internet marketing that I recommend in my Amazon.com bookstore.

Do you want to learn about Infoproducts and how to create them?

You can download, for free, Monique Harris and Ken Evoy’s excellent ebook, Make Your Knowledge Sell!.

While it won’t do the work for you, you’ll learn how to create an infoproduct of your own.

They provide great information about picking good ideas, writing to persuade, packaging your infoproduct, marketing it, and making sales.

Make Your Knowledge Sell! sold thousands of copies over the last few years, and now you can get it free. What are you waiting for?

Who knows, maybe you’ll be one of the people who’ll be featured in some future book about successful Internet marketers!

Read Click Here to Order for background knowledge of the business and how it has developed. Get inspired to do more by reading about the people who blazed the trails some of us are following.

Study Make Your Knowledge Sell! to learn many of the details and skills you’ll have to master to create your own infoproducts.

You can get started by learning affiliate marketing before you create your own products

Perhaps you’re not yet ready to create and sell your own infoproduct or service.

One of the best ways to get started in online marketing is to become an affiliate for a company with top-selling, high-quality products and services and then earn commissions by recommending them.

That’s my preferred business model, as you can tell from the name of this site.

I highly recommend Ken Evoy’s Affiliate Masters Course, and you can download a free copy here from my site.

Even if you choose to create your own products and sell them, you’ll want to know more about affiliate marketing. After all, you may create a great product and want to have affiliates helping you sell it.

Act on your dream!

JD

Now, you can instantly watch movies and television shows commercial-free on Macs or PCs.

You can enjoy instant playback of hit Hollywood movies and the latest TV shows.

This new movie and TV streaming service offers a wide range of movies, TV seasons, and individual TV episodes.

Of course, to take full advantage of this service, you’ll need a broadband connection to the Internet.

To make it even easier for you to decide to rent or purchase a movie or TV show, the first two minutes of videos automatically play at no charge when you visit the detail page for that video. At any time during this 2-minute viewing period, you can choose to purchase or rent the video to watch it in its entirety.

If you are an Amazon.com affiliate, you can earn up to 10% referral fees on movie and television show purchases. Amazon makes it easy to link to the Video On Demand section of their massive store and you can link to individual videos using standard product links or the versatile movie and TV show preview widget.

NetFlix – an alternative to Amazon

I live in an area where high-speed broadband access to the Internet is not available. So, video on demand, no matter how reasonably priced and convenient, is simply not an option.

I have been a very satisfied NetFlix customer for several years and enjoy watching movies and TV shows by selecting them on the NetFlix website and then receiving the DVDs in the mail. After I’m done watching the video, and re-watching the best, it’s a simple matter of inserting the DVD in the postage-paid envelope and dropping it into the mailbox. A few days later, the next video in the list of shows I have selected is automatically sent to me. There are no late fees and you can keep a DVD until you have the time to watch it and are ready to return it.

Lately, I’ve been watching entire TV shows in order, episode by episode, year by year.

Currently, I’m on season 3 of Star Trek Enterprise, and last month I watched season 3 of Stargate Atlantis and the Stargate Continuum movie.

I’m getting a chance to watch shows I never had time to watch, before.

Netflix lets you rent, watch and return DVDs from home – Try free for 2 weeks

In addition to renting videos on DVD, some are available for instant viewing, so NetFlix may be a convenient alternative to Amazon.

One advantage that NetFlix has is a fixed price. I subscribe to the plan where I can have up to 3 DVDs out at any one time and pay less than $20 per month. Most months, I can watch about 15 DVDs, and some have four to six TV episodes on them.

Today, for instance, I’m supposed to receive the next two DVDs of Star Trek Enterprise season 3, and that will include four episodes per disc, for a total of eight episodes.

I live on a strange schedule and work whenever I feel like it – an advantage of working at home – so I may watch a video during the day, evening, or even the middle of the night. It’s completely up to me. I can watch the good shows more than once, if I want.

Last month, when I rented Stargate Continuum from NetFlix, I watched it three times before returning it.

I mainly watch science fiction, but over the last few months, I rented the first three seasons of Little House on the Prairie, and Mom loved watching shows that she understood and enjoyed much better than the sci-fi flicks I love.

Currently, I have over 100 DVDs in my NetFlix queue, including the first two seasons of Boston Legal, and I’m considering watching the entire production of The West Wing.

It is convenient and cost-effective to watch videos in your own home. For the price of one or two movies at the theater, you can watch a dozen or more in your home. And, both Amazon and Netflix have many thousands of videos from which to choose.

Plus, for people like me – and possibly you – they both have an affiliate program and you can earn nice commissions for referring people to their services.

All work and no play…

I enjoy working, but there is also a lot to say for entertainment.

I am 100% satisfied with my multi-year experiences with Amazon and NetFlix. I am happy to recommend them to you.

Take a break. Watch a video today. Enjoy yourself.

Act on your dream!

JD