Lemons or Lemonade?

February 5, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 8 Comments
Filed under: Opinions, Success and Failure 

If you’ve been reading this blog for any time, you know that my attitude changed last year when everything seemed to turn against me.

I bitched and moaned about it for several months and I’m not going to do any of that now.

Last month, I turned the corner and feel like I’ve finished a dark chapter in my life’s story and now I’ve opened a new, brighter chapter filled with hope, opportunity, and challenges I’m looking forward to meeting.

You know the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog and found a very short post that linked to the movie Lemonade.

I took a half-hour and watched that movie and it was inspirational. I want to share it with you, if you haven’t seen it.

Here are several people who were fired or laid off and took the opportunity to do something they really loved, instead of just working to earn a paycheck.

The last year or so has been rough for a lot of people. Maybe you.

Have you considered that maybe this is your opportunity to do something you love?

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , , , ,

iPad is incredible – Apple has done it again!

January 28, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 16 Comments
Filed under: Apple Computer, Opinions 

I’ve been a fan of Apple and the Macintosh for a long, long time.

But, I’m not much of a fan of mobile computers, devices, or phones.

I don’t have a cell phone and don’t want one.

I like listening to music on my Mac using iTunes, but I’ve never wanted an iPod. In fact, when I won an iPod years ago, I gave it to my grandkids.

So, with that in mind, I haven’t been paying much attention to all the hype about the new Apple tablet computer that was going to be introduced.

I didn’t even pay much attention yesterday when it was announced.

Today, however, I had some free time and decided to learn something about the new Apple iPad.

I watched the Keynote Speech where Steve Jobs introduced the iPad and I was hooked.

This is the first time I’ve been excited about a new product in a long, long time.

The last time I felt this way was when I was given a sneak peek at the original Macintosh. This was back when all computers were basically text oriented and I saw how easy it was to create and include graphics in documents.

My first thought was, “I gotta get me one of these!”

So, I ordered my first Macintosh about two weeks before they were introduced and got one of the first ones that was shipped to Arizona, where I was living at the time.

Over the years, I have bought several Macs and I’ve enjoyed every one of them. I know, without a doubt, that I made the right choice when I took the Macintosh route.

I haven’t felt that feeling of excitement and admiration again until a few minutes ago.

After watching the keynote speech and the iPad video, I have that same feeling, “I gotta get me one of these!”

Most of my daily work involves browsing the web and dealing with email. The iPad looks like it will handle both of those tasks with ease and panache.

However, even though the touch-screen keyboard (in horizontal mode) looks like it would be usable, I’m so used to touch typing on a keyboard that I just don’t think I would be interested in doing much typing that way.

When I saw the keyboard dock for the iPad, that made a huge difference.

I’ll still do most of my typing on my desktop Mac, but I think that keyboard dock will make the iPad much more usable for a variety of people.

What clinched the deal was the price.

The base model iPad will be introduced in a couple of months for only $499 and it comes with 16 GB of flash memory. Two other models are available for $599 (32 GB) and $699 (64 GB).

There will be three models that have 3G included, but I’m not interested in those. The base models with WiFi will do all I would be interested in doing.

The iPad will run most of the 140,000 applications that have been developed for the iPhone and IPod Touch, but there are advantages for users that will entice developers to modify their apps or build new ones using the iPad SDK.

Personally, I’m not interested in most of those applications and never will be. I do the majority of my work using a web browser and email client, and the rest is graphics, working with photos, accounting, spreadsheets, and word processing. The new iWork versions of Numbers and Pages look great (especially since they only cost $9.99), so I’m sure I’ll buy and use them.

Many years ago, I decided to quit living on the bleeding edge of technology where you take risks with hardware and software with undiscovered bugs, high introductory prices, and other disadvantages. Since then, I’ve never bought a 1.0 version of any product and my life has been easier.

This time, however, I really want to get my hands on a brand new iPad as soon as I can.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited about a new product, and it has taken me completely by surprise. I did not expect to be interested, at all, in the iPad.

What about you?

Have you watched the video and/or keynote speech? What do you think about the iPad. Is this something you would be interested in owning and using?

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: ,

Broadband makes a huge difference!

January 16, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 22 Comments
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

Tags: ,

Top 15 things I have learned about affiliate marketing

November 25, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 3 Comments
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

Tags: ,

How do the new FTC guidelines affect affiliate marketing?

October 6, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 15 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Opinions 

Yesterday, October 5, 2009, the FTC published their final guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials. This ruling will affect celebrities, bloggers, testimonial advertisements, and probably more.

The press release is here:

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

The actual guidelines are in a pdf file that I have tried to download several times, but, so far, have only been able to get a portion of it.

The actual guidelines are described as:

16 C.F.R. Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising: Notice Announcing Adoption of Revised Guides

They are available as a pdf file:

Text of the Federal Register notice

As I said, previously, I have not been able to read these new rules, yet, so I’m just wondering out loud at the moment.

How does this affect affiliate marketers?

Are blog posts with affiliate links covered under these new guidelines? How?

(Disclaimer: I am not now or ever have been a lawyer. I do not give legal advice. I don’t even play a lawyer on TV or the Internet.)

I can read from the press release that anyone who is posting sponsored articles to their blog will be affected. Since I don’t do that, I haven’t given the ramifications much thought.

I almost never receive a freebie in return for writing a review, but I have no problem disclosing that fact when it happens.

Most of us would never fall under the label of “celebrity” and never get paid huge sums of money to endorse a product on a talk show or in social media, but if you do, now you have to disclose that fact.

Still, how does this affect bloggers who are affiliate marketers?

Does every link have to be disclosed as a possible money-making link?

Will it be enough to add a few lines to our disclosures page?

Are we even covered by the new guidelines?

What about you?

Will these new FTC guidelines affect how you run your business and how you advertise and market products and services?

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , , ,

I no longer open email with subjects that include certain words

August 20, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 14 Comments
Filed under: Musings, Opinions, Writing, email marketing 

I was going through several hundred emails this morning and the more I looked at the subjects, the more I got annoyed by some of them.

Now, this has taken years to start bothering me, but today, I think I reached my limit.

I posted a tweet on Twitter that said, “I no longer open email with subjects that include words like sneaky, exclusive, tricks, secrets, hurry, and so on.”

Others quickly agreed, aj1996 said, “Wish people would do the same with Lens titles & NOT inc words like “secrets” !!!!!!”

I agree with that, too. The same goes for books, ebooks, reports, and everything else.

Brian D. Hawkins said, “Hi John, many email clients spam emails with words like that automatically.”

That’s where I got confused.

I know that some of the emails I receive with those words are spam, but some come from real people.

I’ve read all sorts of books about copywriting and writing headlines, and most of them suggest using “power words” and words that create urgency and excitement.

I think that’s fine and good for headlines in print ads and in real snail mail letters, but it’s overkill when you see dozens of emails in one morning that use those same words.

Folks, there are no secrets to marketing success. It’s a matter of finding the best products and services and promoting them honestly.

Now and then, someone will come up with a new idea that will be popular and soon everyone else (the people I call “me, too” marketers) will run it into the ground and ruin the effectiveness.

For example, a year or two ago, someone started using “The Death of…” to sell an ebook. (My memory is hazy on this, since I wasn’t interested in the product.)

Before you could turn around a couple of times, I started getting emails about the death of this and the death of that and it became pitiful in a week or two.

Today, I really became annoyed when I saw all those email subject lines. I looked at the subject and then at who was sending the email to me. I opened not a single one of them — poof, right into the trash.

So, what do you think about this?

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , ,

Amazon.com vs. States – associates lose

June 29, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 8 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Amazon, Opinions 

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

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

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

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

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

Amazon 1, North Carolina 0

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

So, there it is.

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

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: ,

Sitesell always goes above and beyond

June 28, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 4 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Amazon, Opinions, Sitesell and Site Build It 

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

Amazon.com cancels all North Carolina affiliate accounts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How’s that for treating your affiliates right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , , ,

Amazon.com cancels all North Carolina affiliate accounts

June 26, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 15 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Amazon, Opinions 

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

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

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

That’s a huge difference!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

Now, I’m pissed off

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

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

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

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

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

But, I’m not pissed off at them.

No.

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

This time, they went too far.

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

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

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

Then they try to make nice with us:

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

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

In the second place, no thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Act on your dream!

JD

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

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

Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.

Tags: , , , ,

I will not participate in Google’s interest-based advertising

March 13, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 36 Comments
Filed under: Advertising, Opinions 

I received an email from Google about a change in their Adsense advertising program.

Here is a brief excerpt from it:

We’re writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site’s privacy policies. You’ll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. “sports enthusiast”). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category….

I am totally opposed to this.

In the past, I have really liked Google Adsense, and one of the main reasons is that they analyze the pages with ads and try to serve the most relevant ads that match that content.

I don’t think they put cookies on visitors to those pages, but I’m not certain of this. In fact, I really didn’t think about this until they emailed me about this new interest-based advertising.

Now, however, they will be tracking visitor browsing and I don’t want to be a part of it.

In the past, Google had a mantra of “Do no evil.”

I think they’ve just crossed to the dark side.

I went to my Google Adsense account and opted out of this. I do not want to show any of their ads based on user interest categories.

I don’t care if it means I’ll earn less money from them.

There have been times when I’ve depended upon the money I make from their ads on my sites and I’ve always been happy to deposit their checks.

As long as I have a way to opt out of this new method of advertising they’re going to use, I’ll continue showing Adsense ads on my sites.

If they ever make it mandatory, I’ll close my Adsense account and remove their ads off all my websites, no matter how much money I’ll lose.

I am totally opposed to this and will not participate in their interest-based advertising.

Bad Google!

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , , ,

Next Page »