What do you do when something you love becomes a chore?

September 2, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 19 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Aweber Autoresponders, Musings, Sitesell and Site Build It, email marketing 

For years, I’ve loved affiliate marketing, but lately it has felt more like a chore than a passion and I regret that.

It seems that I find more that I don’t like about it than I love about it, at least lately.

I have been recommending products and services for several years and always felt that I was suggesting something of real value to my readers. Now, I’m not so sure.

Over the last few months, I’ve stopped everything related to “recruitment marketing.” I don’t know if there is a better name for this, but that’s how I’ve come to think about it.

For several years, I was a real fan of SFI Marketing Group and Cognigen Systems. Since both of them are MLM companies, part of the job is to recruit other affiliates and help them. One of my favorite ways to recruit new affiliates was by using the various traffic exchanges and downline builder programs.

Now, after years of this, I no longer do it. I still feel like I was giving my best recommendations and advice based on what I knew at the time, but I’ve learned a lot since then and my interests and circumstances have changed, too.

While I no longer recommend traffic exchanges, I remain a member at several, mainly because I’ve gotten to know the owners over time and I like them. I think they are genuinely doing their best to help their members, but I think that the traffic exchanges themselves are not a good way to introduce yourself and your services to people who really want to work to build their own marketing business.

After having recruited thousands of affiliates, I cannot say that I can name a single success out of the bunch. That doesn’t mean that some of them have not branched out into their own niche and become successful. I don’t know if they have or not, but I know that it was a colossal waste of time for myself and well over 90% of the people who signed up from one of my links.

Instead of trying to help others who are mostly non-responsive, I’m turning my attention to promoting a few services and products that I know are truly helpful for people who are ready to make use of them, and that they are the best of brand in their respective niches.

I’m very happy to continue to recommend Site Build It and Aweber to anyone who is serious about building an online marketing business. I’m a happy customer of both services and expect to be for years to come.

However, I’ve come to realize that both of these services are only going to appeal to a small minority of people who are seriously ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Both take a lot of time and work to understand, and even more to put to their best use.

Work and dedication seem to be anathema to most people who dream of having a home business. Instead, they want something automatic that floods their inboxes with money. I have yet to find such a system and I don’t think one exists, yet there are plenty of people who are willing to lie to you and sell you one, anyway.

Yes, both Site Build It and Aweber are systems, but they are tools and training that you have to put to work, not some kind of “push button success machine.” You have to invest the time in learning how to use what they offer and then follow their systems and adapt them to your own personal interests.

This takes work, money, and time.

Since being dropped by Amazon.com and several others this summer (just because I live in North Carolina), I’ve spent a lot of effort undoing years of work. While doing that, I also stopped promoting a lot of other things I promoted in the past.

I wrote about this here: Making progress by going backwards

Now, I find that I am less motivated to do all the things I used to love about affiliate marketing, such as finding and researching new products and services, reviewing them to see if I thought they had real value, and then building websites and blogs to promote them. These days, I find it increasingly difficult to even write about something I really think is a good value for some people, such as the current Site Build It Back to Work special.

I don’t know if I’ve learned some important lessons or if I’ve become disenchanted with affiliate marketing — something I never expected to happen.

I’m also wondering if I can ever recover my former affiliate marketing income just by promoting two services I really believe in. I don’t think that’s possible, and I think that I’ll lose you as a reader if all you ever hear me talk about is Site Build It and Aweber.

Those are not the only tools I use in my business. I have sites hosted by HostGator and I’m one of their affiliates, but I just don’t want to promote them. They offer a great service and I’m happy with their quality. In fact, this blog is hosted on one of their servers. Still, I just don’t want to promote them, when I compare them to Site Build It, which offers a much different set of tools, but has a system that I believe offers my readers a much higher chance of success than what they can get from traditional hosting services.

The same goes for Aweber. I’m an affiliate for several of their competitors, but after testing all of them, the only one I would use for myself is Aweber and I don’t see any reason to promote anything that isn’t the best.

So, I’m wondering if I still have a future in affiliate marketing, or if this is just some kind of phase I have to work through.

There are some excellent ebooks out there that I can recommend, but now I consider most of them to be overpriced and increasingly out of date. What they taught may have worked several years ago, but I don’t think it will now. So, I don’t promote them.

I’m hoping that I’m just going through a reassessment phase and that I’ll rediscover the love I once had for affiliate marketing. I don’t know if that’s going to happen or not.

What about you?

How do you feel about affiliate marketing these days?

What are your favorite affiliate marketing programs and merchants, and why?

I’m looking forward to reading your comments.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Aweber changes their affiliate program

February 28, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 25 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Aweber Autoresponders, email marketing 

On their blog, Aweber announced Exciting Changes to the AWeber Affiliate Program. You can visit the blog to learn all the details and read comments from other affiliates.

Here are the basic details:

Based on your feedback, we are happy to announce the following changes to the AWeber affiliate program:

1. All commissions will be raised to 30%. This includes existing 1st tier commissions of 20%.

2. Second tier commissions are being phased out to meet Paypal’s terms of service and enable paying of affiliates via Paypal.

3. Your affiliate cookie will be a 1 year, first visit cookie.

4. You will soon have the option of being paid via PayPal or postal check.

5. All affiliates will be paid once a month, on the first of every month.

6. The minimum check payout will be $30.00 for US affiliates and $50.00 for affiliates not based in the US (This applies to both PayPal Payments and postal payments)

All of these changes will be effective on April 8th, 2009. The only exception will be the PayPal payment option, which will be available in the near future.

I have mixed feelings about these changes.

Let’s start with the only real negative I see.

I don’t like that they’re using a first visit cookie. Most of the affiliate programs that pay me the most use a last visit cookie.

What’s the difference?

With a first visit cookie, a purchase will be credited to the first affiliate to introduce you to a business or product. The great majority of people do not purchase on the first visit.

With a last visit cookie, a purchase is credited to the affiliate who convinced the person to buy. Since that affiliate, the last one visited, probably is the one who actually persuaded the prospect to purchase, I believe that is the affiliate who deserves credit, and a commission, for the sales conversion.

Let’s look at an example…

Let’s say that Bob is vaguely interested in autoresponders, email marketing, newsletters, and making it easy for his readers to subscribe to his blog posts via email. He really doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do or which service is best for his needs.

Bob comes across Nancy’s website and she explains some of the benefits of using Aweber’s service, as opposed to other services that are available.

If Bob clicks Nancy’s affiliate link to visit the Aweber site, he will have a one-year cookie set in his browser that identifies Nancy as the affiliate who introduced him to the service.

If he purchases on that visit, or shortly thereafter, Nancy deserves credit for the sale and an ongoing commission.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

However, Bob probably won’t purchase immediately, or even soon. He’ll probably forget about it, get distracted, or something else will stop him from purchasing.

Later, maybe months later, he comes across Steve’s website and is reminded about Aweber.

Not only is he reminded, Steve makes a compelling argument for purchasing the services that Aweber provides. Bob’s mind is made up and he goes and subscribes to the service.

In this case, with a first visit cookie, Nancy will still get the credit and commission for the sale, even though Bob purchased as a result of Steve’s marketing, not Nancy’s.

However, with a last visit cookie, Steve would get the credit and commission for the sale.

I believe that would be appropriate since it was his efforts that finally persuaded Bob to purchase.

I don’t like first visit cookies for affiliate sales.

Regarding the other changes…

I’m always happy to hear that someone is willing to pay me more for my sales efforts. I have no argument with that. ;)

The change from a 10-year cookie to a 1-year cookie is largely irrelevant, because most cookies would not persist for ten years, anyway.

I like the option of being paid by PayPal.

Although I like two-tier affiliate programs, I don’t have any real opinion about Aweber changing to a one-tier program, especially if it makes it easier for some affiliates to be paid via PayPal.

All in all, I like the changes Aweber has made to their affiliate program, but I would really encourage them to change to a last visit cookie for determining who gets the credit for a sale.

In my opinion, Aweber offers the best services related to email marketing and I’m a happy customer and affiliate. I intend to use their services for a long, long time.

Are you an Aweber affiliate?

What do you think about these changes?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Celebrate National DeLurking Week – leave a comment

January 12, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 27 Comments
Filed under: Aweber Autoresponders, Blogging, Marketing 

I have my Macintosh set up with multiple accounts that are optimized for particular tasks. When I sign into one account, it opens with a predetermined set of applications waiting for me to get right to work. My browser’s home page on one account will be different than it is on another account. As I can identify something that I’ll be doing often enough, I’ll set up a new account and optimize it for that task.

Now, I said all of that to give you a bit of background on how I operate. This morning, I signed into my main marketing account and it loaded a text editor with a couple dozen documents open and my iCal calendar application. In this version of my calendar, I’m subscribed to a marketing calendar maintained by Aweber.com. Someone at Aweber regularly updates this calendar with interesting holidays, events, and observances, and some have some good marketing ideas associated with them.

This morning, I saw a band across the entire week, celebrating National DeLurking Week.

Here’s what the calendar says:

It’s time to get active online. You’ve got 51 weeks a year to read webpages without making your presence known, but this week, be sure to comment wherever possible! DeLurk and come out of the shadows!

National DeLurking Week is celebrated the second full week of January, running from Monday through Sunday.

One of the goals of most bloggers is to start a conversation on their blog. Otherwise, it feels like we’re just standing on a mountain and shouting into a fog bank.

I’ve been lucky and have developed some friendships with other bloggers around the world. I am positive this would not have happened if we didn’t comment on each others’ blogs. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree, but we always learn from each other.

In fact, making it easy for someone to comment about what I write about was the major determining factor that finally motivated me to leave my previous primary blog and develop this one. It is set up to encourage your comments and, in return, you get links to your latest blog posts and/or websites. I think that’s only fair.

So, are you planning to celebrate National DeLurking Week?

Leave a comment somewhere. Make a new friend. Learn something or share what you’ve already learned.

Now, don’t just leave a “good post” comment. Leave something substantive, something that will enhance the conversation.

Lurkers, this is the week to come out of the shadows!

Act on your dream!

JD

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Can AWeber and Squidoo Work Together?

November 17, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 7 Comments
Filed under: Aweber Autoresponders, Marketing, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing, Web Services, email marketing 

Why can’t active sign-up forms for AWeber mailing lists be added to Squidoo lenses?

Is there a solution?

Today, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this subject, because the ability to add AWeber subscription forms to my Squidoo lenses is very important to my plans for next year.

I don’t believe there are any unsolvable technical problems stopping these two companies from working together.

It is very easy to add active AWeber subscription forms on other sites. They provide two easy-to-use methods: Javascript and HTML forms. You can see an example of the HTML version of a subscription form on every page of this site, right below my photo in the right column. You can see an example of the javascript version of a sign-up form on the Subscribe page on this site.

In both cases, I accomplished what I wanted in just a few minutes.

Unfortunately, I’ve been looking for a way to do this simple task on my Squidoo lenses for months. I thought I found a solution last week, and it worked very well, but it is being killed by Squidoo.

I just created a new lens with an open letter to Tom Kulzer, CEO and founder of AWeber.com, and Seth Godin, Founder of Squidoo.com, asking if they can find a way to work together to make it possible for us to do something that I believe will have a relatively easy solution. I also emailed each of them and invited them to view the lens.

You are invited to come read the lens and express your opinions:

Can AWeber and Squidoo Work Together?

Perhaps this isn’t a technical problem. Maybe it’s just a lack of motivation on the part of both companies to develop a solution. I don’t know.

Tom and Seth, I hope you’ll find a way to make this happen.

While it may not be important to the vast majority of Squidoo lensmasters, it is important to some of us – possibly many of us. I believe it may be important to many AWeber customers.

I’ve added a couple of polls to the lens and I invite everyone who reads this to come and voice your opinions and help spread the word to others who may want to combine the power of the services AWeber and Squidoo provide.

Act on your dream!

JD

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How to add an Aweber subscribe form to your Squidoo lens

November 13, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 26 Comments
Filed under: Aweber Autoresponders, Squidoo Lenses, Squidoo Marketing, Web Services, email marketing 

In a previous post on another of my blogs, I wrote about adding subscribe forms on our Squidoo lenses:

Squidoo module request – Sign-up forms for Aweber mailing lists

Last week, Lewis Smile added a comment to the post and told me my dream was answered. Today, I finally found enough time to see what he was talking about.

Update: Before you get too excited about this, I’ve learned that the folks at Squidoo are working to defeat this “trick,” as it is being called. This means that any AWeber sign up forms on our lenses will stop working at any moment.

Please see the comments on this post for more information.

I purchased his report for only $7.00 and downloaded it immediately.

Well, that’s not exactly how I started. I read Lewis’ blog post, AT LAST! Aweber Opt In Forms On Your Lenses!, and read in the comments that he had an active form on his Squidoo Traffic Tricks lens.

There it was. Cool!

Being the frugal person that I am, I looked at the source code and saw that the form was actually a javascript widget that was powered by Clearspring.com.

Immediately, I grasped the concept. Lewis was using a widget as an intermediary between the Aweber javascript, which won’t work on a Squidoo lens, and the lens itself.

I joined Clearspring, but after a few minutes of looking around, I decided it would take longer to work out the details for myself than it would to purchase the report, download it, read it, and put what I learned to work.

If the report had been $47, or $27, or some other higher amount, I’d have learned how to do it myself. But, for a report that costs only $7.00, it was a no-brainer to just buy it.

You can find the report at SquidooTricks.com.

As someone who earns his living from affiliate marketing, it pains me to send you to such a valuable site without using an affiliate link, but the information here is too useful not to tell you how to get it for yourself – even if I’m not earning anything from it.

Sigh.

In just a few minutes, I bought the report, downloaded it, and read it.

My initial thoughts were correct. I probably could have worked it out for myself in an hour or two, but Lewis has done an excellent job of telling you just how to make this work for you.

I went to Aweber.com and added a new sign-up form for my 21st Century Affiliate Marketing blog. I use Aweber to manage email subscriptions for what I post to this blog, as well as a growing number of mailing lists I manage for myself and for my clients. I wanted to create a new form that I would use only on Squidoo lenses so I’d be able to track the source of new subscriptions.

That took maybe 10 minutes to do.

Following the instructions in Lewis’ report, I copied the code I’d need and proceeded to the next step – create the new widget on Clearspring.com.

Even though I’d not done anything but look around Clearspring for a few minutes, I found his instructions extremely clear and easy to follow.

It took maybe 20 minutes or so to create the new widget and another couple of minutes to add it to my 21st Century Affiliate Marketing lens on Squidoo.

(If I had broadband, it would have gone much quicker, but slow dial-up is still all that’s available here where I live.)

I didn’t follow all of Lewis’ instructions on creating the widget.

He advised us to hide the “get and share” links at the bottom of the widget. While I can see reasons for doing this, I don’t like to ever use code on a site that hides the text by making it the same color as the background.

Plus, I don’t mind if someone gets that widget and puts it on another site. I’m not sure why anyone would want to do it, but I’ll take all the subscribers I can get.

It took a total of maybe 45 minutes from the time I bought the report until I had an active Aweber sign-up form on my lens, and that includes downloading and reading everything.

Lewis has done a remarkable service for us by providing such clear instructions.

Now, all I have to do is add this Clearspring.com widget to the other lenses where I syndicate this blog.

Then, over the next few weeks, I’ll be doing the same thing for other mailing lists I manage through Aweber.com.

This has come at a particularly fortuitous time, because I am in the planning stages of setting up quite a few new mailing lists and Squidoo lenses. Lewis’ method of adding a subscribe form to a lens will make what I plan to do much easier and probably more effective.

Thanks Lewis. My dream really was answered.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Congratulations to Aweber on their 10th Anniversary

August 27, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 1 Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Aweber Autoresponders, Marketing, Promote Yourself 

This month, Aweber celebrates the 10th anniversary of providing quality autoresponder services to their clients, one of whom is me.

Happy Anniversary, Aweber!

If you don’t already know, Aweber is the industry leader in providing mailing list maintenance and delivery services.

They started out offering autoresponder services, and now they offer that and much more, including helping you manage your newsletters and email syndication of your blog posts.

I use Aweber to handle several mailing lists, with more coming soon, and the subscription form in the top-right column of this page allows you to subscribe to the posts I publish on this blog so you’ll receive them right in your email inbox.

Aweber provides unlimited autoresponders with unlimited messages and you can broadcast to the lists, too, should you want.

Aweber works closely with the largest ISPs to insure that your double-opt-in email messages are delivered and enjoys the highest delivery rates in the industry.

If you want to follow-up with your prospects and customers, I recommend Aweber to you. It’s the service I use.

Here’s to your continued success, Aweber.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Is the Firefox NoScript addon affecting your online marketing?

July 31, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 1 Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Aweber Autoresponders, Blogs, Soaring4Traffic 

If you’re involved in online marketing, you’ve probably seen dozens of promotions for Sunny Sugg’s AllAboutAddons site.

I didn’t think much about it, because I don’t use but two or three addons with Firefox and one I don’t use is NoScript. So, I didn’t bother looking into it.

Then, I was reading Ray White’s Soaring4Traffic blog and his post about NoScript Revisited caught my attention.

I’m doing a lot of work lately building email series with Aweber for promoting the products and services I represent, and I use Aweber to broadcast new posts to this blog to anyone who subscribes using the form on the top-right of most pages, below my photo.

Aweber makes it easy to publish subscribe forms on your sites and you have the choice of using a javascript form (which is easier) or an HTML form (which doesn’t take any more work, but you can’t update what it says from your Aweber account).

I’ve been doing a lot of work with Aweber this week and I really didn’t want to lose that result because millions of people are using Firefox with the NoScript addon installed.

So, I’ve made sure that I’m using the HTML version of the subscription form in most places.

Do I think this is required? I really don’t know. I’m sure many people are using other browsers and many of the people using Firefox don’t have NoScript installed, like me.

Plus, some portion of the people who like NoScript have trained it to see what they want on a site, but I don’t know if they’d want to see my subscription form or not. I would like for them to see it, however.

So, I’m not trying to be alarming, but if you’re involved in affiliate marketing or building websites, you should probably be aware of the situation.

I am not an AllAboutAddons affliate, but Ray White is. You can visit the site by clicking the link in his NoScript Revisited article.

Even if you’re not interested in Sunny’s site, you should read what Ray has to say about his experiences with trying NoScript.

Act on your dream!

JD

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