21st Century Affiliate Marketing

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

I’ve done my share of whining about how hard 2009 has been, and frankly I’m done with that and I’m looking for this year to come to a close in a few days.

I wrote about it on my Act On Your Dream! site:

I survived 2009 and I think that was a success!

(If you have any interest in doing so, you’re welcome to comment on that page. Although you can’t use HTML in your comments, if I recognize you as a regular commenter here on this blog, I’ll be happy to make an active link back to you in your comment. Just post the full URL you want me to link to and I’ll take care of it. Of course, it has to be a link to one of your sites, not an affiliate link or anything inappropriate.)

So, as I said, I’m done with whining and I’m done with 2009. I still have a few more days to generate a little more income before the year is over and then I’m turning all my attention towards the future.

I expect 2010 to be a much better year.

I’m doing things differently next year.

For the last few years, I’ve tested a lot of things and most of them didn’t work at all, or had limited success. I don’t know if all of that was wasted time and effort, or if it was just a necessary part of testing the options and learning what works best for me.

Since I depend upon the revenue I earn from my online marketing, that’s what I use to evaluate if something has been valuable and successful for me. However, even the things that did not produce any appreciable income had other aspects that were very successful.

For instance, I’ve met lots of great people that I may never have met otherwise and I value that.

But that doesn’t pay the bills!

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time blogging and I’ve learned a lot. Even though it has not been successful as a way of generating income, I believe it has been a valuable learning experience and it has helped me spread my brand to a much wider audience.

I’ll be doing much less blogging in 2010, but I’m not going to abandon it entirely.

I built a number of portals over the last few years using Mamba and PHP-Nuke. Every single one of them was hacked and I finally got tired of rebuilding them. All of them are closed.

The only thing I learned from that experience is that it was wasted effort and there are serious security holes in open source scripts. I won’t be going that route again.

I’ve had good and bad experiences with forums (fora?) over the years.

I’ve met lots of great people and I would be worse off if I had not participated in them.

I have had better results from participating in forums than I have in building my own. That’s a lesson I’ll remember.

I have two forums that are still open at AYearFromNowForum.com and WesternNorthCarolinaForum.com, but I’ll be shutting them down in January, after I’ve had the time to find any content that can be repurposed on my static sites. Then, they’ll be gone forever.

Social networking has been a lot of work, but it has been satisfying in several respects. Although I can’t attribute any specific revenue to social networking, I do believe it has contributed by widening my readership to people who may not have found me otherwise.

It’s also been a great way to interact with lots of different people. That’s very important to me, because I live alone and work at home. There are times when I go several days without seeing another person in real life, and the interaction on the social networks has been very important to me.

I’ll be narrowing my social networking to just a few sites and don’t feel the need to be on nearly as many as I’ve tried over the last few years.

Things have changed and my focus in social networking has changed, too.

For example, I used to be very active on Ryze.com, but I hardly ever go there anymore. They fell behind the times when they didn’t implement RSS and they missed the boat when they required their community leaders to be upgraded members.

I was enjoying MySpace.com for awhile, but they jumped the shark when they started redirecting external links from our profiles to their own home page. As soon as they did that, I jumped ship.

I’m still enjoying Facebook.com, but I don’t spend a lot of time there. One of the most annoying things about Facebook, for me, is the plethora of applications and the ease with which my “friends” can spam me with them. I don’t know how many of those applications I’ve blocked, but I still block several more every time I go there.

My two favorite social networking sites are communities I’ve built on the Ning.com platform. I created and manage Squidoo Marketing and Murphy Connections, and I intend to do much more with each of them in the coming year.

I’m not earning any money (well, not much money) from either of them, but now that I have sponsors for each community at least they’re not expenses out of my own pocket. I’ll be working hard to make sure the sponsors get their money’s worth, too.

I have mixed feelings about Squidoo.com and HubPages.com. I’ve earned some money from Squidoo every month for the last several years, but that income continues to decrease. If the lenses I have there weren’t already built and attracting some readership, I probably would not make the effort to build them, now.

On the other hand, sometimes building a lens at Squidoo.com about one of my other sites is a good way to get the free traffic started both through referrals from the lens as well as free traffic from the search engines.

When I started Murphy Gold this year, I built several lenses for the site and for my first several clients. By syndicating the RSS feed from Murphy Gold through the Squidoo lenses, it attracted more visitors initially and continues to bring new people to the site.

However, now I’m getting many more visitors from Google, Yahoo, and Bing than from Squidoo, so it isn’t as important to me now as it was initially.

I have never really understood article marketing and I don’t think I have given it a fair trial, yet. To learn more about it, I opened and managed 21st Century Articles for over a year. I put a lot of work into that site and met a few good authors, but most of what was contributed was drivel and I deleted at least 95% of all the contributions.

It was built using a popular article directory script and was hacked several times. Eventually, it was no longer worth recovering the site and continuing.

I learned that there are some good authors writing quality content, but they are in the minority. I also learned that it takes a lot of time to manage an article directory, if you’re interested in quality. Since I moderated every submission, I believe I had a high-quality directory, but it would never have been a top-tier article directory, so closing it down was not a hard decision, in the end. Also, even with thousands of pages of content — all with Adsense ads on them — it generated only a few dollars a month and that certainly was not enough to pay me for my time and effort.

So, what have I learned about online marketing over these last few years?

I’ve learned that you can invest a lot of time and effort into something that never produces the results you want. It is very easy to do.

I’ve learned that every time you try something new, it takes you away from other things that are working for you, so you need to be careful and keep your focus. I believe that it’s always good to learn something new, but not to the point where it impacts your business negatively.

So, I’m happy that I learned how to use lots of different scripts for building portals, my article directory, and blogs, but I’m not happy that they did not produce any significant revenue.

What has worked for me?

Now, I know that what works for me, may not work for you, and vice versa. So, just as successful bloggers recommend blogging, I’m going to recommend building static niche-oriented websites.

I have a couple of large websites that I built over the last few years, and even though they are pretty much running on automatic now, with just the occasional addition or modification, they consistently produce revenue from several sources. Over time, their popularity rises and falls, but they are getting more readers and page views now than they were when I was actively building them.

The problem with them is that they don’t provide a way of getting easy feedback from their readers or to engage in any online conversations. I’ve tried using blogs and forums for each of these sites, but that really didn’t produce the results I wanted.

So, now, they just sit there and serve pages to people who are interested in the subjects, with very little input from me.

Most of my effort in 2010 will be building my two static sites that are powered by Site Build It!

Now, up until this year, it was appropriate to consider them static sites, but that has changed with the introduction of SBI version 2.

With the introduction of Content 2.0 as a standard part of SBI sites, now we can take advantage of some of the web 2.0 features that allow interaction with the readers without having to deal with all the insecurities of open source software.

So, I’ve been working hard over the last couple of weeks to update and revise my Act On Your Dream! site and to get it ready for lots more work in 2010.

I’ve added several pages that invite readers to submit their stories or articles and once they are accepted and published on the site, we can comment and/or rank them.

In some ways, this is similar to blogging, because we can carry on conversations in the comments. It is different from blogging, because it doesn’t just make it easy for the webmaster to add content, it also invites the readers to add content.

Yes, it’s similar to blogging, but different. Only time and experience will tell if it is better or worse, for me, than blogging has been.

Many people consider all the plug-ins that are available for WordPress to be one of its primary benefits. I’ve come to consider them to be drawbacks that waste my time at least as much as they help me.

With SBI version 2, there are no plug-ins. I don’t have to do anything to deal with security updates, plug-in updates, or anything else. I just use it and let the propeller-heads at Sitesell manage all the technical stuff for me. I like that. It allows me to concentrate on producing more content and not on just keeping the sites running.

From a blogger’s point of view, especially those who believe that commenters and do-follow links are important, there may be some drawbacks.

For example, this blog, and many others, use the CommentLuv plug-in which makes it easy to link back to a commenter’s blog via their RSS feed. That’s a nice feature, but I’m not personally convinced that it is valuable economically.

Contrary to what some bloggers believe, I have not seen any correlation between the number of comments on a blog and the income it generates, but I’m not even nearly an A-list blogger, so what do I know?

Yes, leaving comments on others’ blogs brings more readers to my own blog, but I believe that most of those readers, especially the ones who leave comments, are primarily motivated to bring other readers to their sites. This isn’t a particularly bad thing to do, but I do believe that it is unproductive in terms of generating revenue, if that is your primary motivation.

Having said that, I value a number of people who read this blog and some of my others and regularly comment on what I have to say, no matter how bone-headed I might be now and then.

I enjoy the conversations and I’m happy to link back to their blog posts. I don’t see anything wrong with it.

But, it doesn’t help me pay the bills, and until I get that firmly under control, that’s going to be my primary motivation.

It is my belief, in most instances, that bloggers are sellers, not buyers. We’re interested in promoting products and making sales through affiliate links. Or, we’re interested in selling advertising to generate revenue. Perhaps we have sponsors who cover the costs. For most of us, we want to either supplement our income or generate all of it from our online marketing.

So, increased readership from other bloggers may be satisfying on several levels, but I have no statistics that show that it adds to my bottom line. Some bloggers are generating six and seven figures a year in income, but they are rare, and they don’t include me.

So, as I’ve said previously, I’m going back to what has worked for me for about a decade.

In 2009, my income, such as it was, was generated primarily from three sites. Two of them produced affiliate income and Adsense ads revenue, primarily. One of them generated direct advertising revenue from paid clients. The latter one produced several times the revenue the two others did.

But, all three of them consistently bring in money and are easy to maintain and expand, so I’m going to focus on them primarily in the first six months of 2010.

To put other things in perspective, any one of those three sites brought in more revenue than all my other websites, blogs, forums, and social networks — combined!

But, I don’t think they would do as well in total isolation. So, I believe that blogging and social networking has brought more readers to those sites and helped them. The syndication of their RSS feeds on a variety of sites brings in readers, because I can see the referral numbers in my statistics.

So, I’ll continue to maintain quite a few sites that will not be my primary focus, but which add to the funnel that brings readers to the sites that I will be focusing on. Fortunately, most of the work in building that infrastructure is completed and just needs a little maintenance work now and then.

Even though I totally lost focus on my Act On Your Dream! site over the last three years, now that I’ve almost completed rebuilding the site, updating all the pages, and adding some pages that hopefully will lead to more interaction with the readers, I’m once-again looking forward to helping others identify their dream(s), setting goals, and working to achieve them. I enjoy helping others get what they want. I may not be able to do a lot to help, but I’m happy to do what I can.

Perhaps you would like to be a part of that process.

To get started, I have a couple of pages that I’d like to invite you to visit. Each of them has a form where you can contribute a story or article, and all submissions are moderated. Even though the form says otherwise (which is something I can’t change, yet), you must use your name and location when submitting something, or I won’t accept it.

To put it bluntly, submissions from anonymous people or from anyone who uses keywords as their name will be summarily rejected and trashed.

On the other hand, quality submissions from real people are welcome and I look forward to publishing them on the site and maybe in my ezine.

You are invited to visit and submit your entries to the following list of pages. They are new and may not have any, or many, submissions yet, so you can be a trend-setter!

Reader submitted entries are listed below the forms, so even if you don’t want to submit anything, you can scroll down below the form and see what has been published already.

Your comments and ratings on the items are welcome, but please use your real name. As with the submissions themselves, I don’t accept anonymous comments.

Do you have a dream? (I’m talking about something you aspire to achieve or acquire, not a sleeping dream.) You’re invited to share it with us at Your Dream.

Do you have a success story you’d like to share? Successes come in all sizes, so it doesn’t have to be a blockbuster, runaway success to be valuable to our readers. Share Your Success Story.

How do you Define Success?

Do you have an original article that you’ve written about success, failure, time management, goal setting, making your dream come true, the law of attraction, or similar topics? If you do, you’re invited to Submit Your Article.

(I turned off article submissions in early November, because I was being bombarded by off-topic, spammy submissions every day. Now, I’m trying a different approach and look forward to publishing your quality original articles on topics related to the Act On Your Dream! site.)

I’ll be adding more pages to the site and asking for your participation. In the next couple of days, I’ll add a new page that lists all these pages where you are invited to submit your thoughts, opinions, stories, and articles. I’m not sure what I’ll call it, however. I’m leaning towards “Your Thoughts,” but I’d welcome any suggestions for a better title.

So, those are my plans for the first half of 2010 and I’m looking forward to working on them.

What about you?

What are you going to be focusing on in 2010?

Act on your dream!

JD

BTW, while I’m thinking about it, the SBI version 2 two-for-one holiday special has been extended until Monday, January 4, 2010. This will be your last chance until next Christmas to get two SBI subscriptions for the price of one.

Of course, you don’t have to buy two, even if the second one is free, if you don’t want to. The choice is yours.

As long as we’re thinking about our futures, I think SBI, and all it includes, is an excellent investment, and, yes, I get a commission if you buy from my link. More importantly, however, I know from experience that my investments in SBI have produced very good returns. It’s not magic, but it is a time-tested process and set of tools that has produced great results for a lot of others, too.

As with all things of any value, it takes work, effort, time, and money to succeed. If you want overnight success without working for it, don’t bother trying anything. It won’t work for you. Go play another video game or watch some more TV.

On the other hand, if you’re willing to devote some time to building your online business, and you’re willing to follow a guide that has helped thousands succeed, then maybe SBI is right for you. If you try it and don’t like it, you can get a full refund in the first 30 days and a prorated refund after that, so there’s very little risk in trying SBI to see for yourself what you think of it.

I was reading several blogs and forums where people were talking about how much money they earned (or didn’t earn) from affiliate marketing in October.

The more I read, the more I realized that I’m not doing as badly as I have been feeling.

After all, I earned a living from this for quite a few years, and, even if my income has dropped quite a bit over the last year, I’m still earning more than many people are.

Now, I know that sounds selfish and I hope each of you has greater success with your affiliate marketing efforts in 2010 than you’ve had in 2009.

What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been reading about many people who are working hard to earn something and still haven’t made any money at all. I can remember how frustrating that is. When you’re doing everything you know how to do and it isn’t producing any results, it can be a very difficult and disheartening experience.

I remember how happy I was to get that first commission check from Amazon.com quite a few years ago. Over the years, I’ve received checks from a number of companies and I still get a thrill when I endorse and deposit them.

Although they aren’t coming nearly as frequently as they used to, a few are still arriving and I’m thankful for each of them.

I’m wondering now if I’ve lost my way with affiliate marketing. At one time, I worked hard to send people to Amazon.com and looked forward to commissions from them. It was fun finding products and telling my readers about them.

Those were products that real people were interested in.

When I say “real people,” I’m talking about folks who aren’t interested in affiliate marketing. They were people who saw a link to something that interested them and they purchased it. Sometimes they purchased several things totally unrelated to what I was writing about and I earned a commission on each of those sales.

Now that Amazon.com dropped me after NC passed the new tax law this summer, I’m wondering if there is another company that would be a good substitute. I still love recommending books and some other consumer products, but don’t know of a good company with which I can work.

Do you have any suggestions?

As those of us in the United States get closer to our annual Thanksgiving Day holiday, I’ve been looking at things from a different perspective.

I think I’m over being stressed out about all the things that have gone wrong in the last year or so and I’m starting to focus more on what can go right over the coming year. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to hang on this year and now I’m setting my sites once again on prosperity instead of mere survival.

A year from now, I expect to be in much better financial shape than I am today, and to get there I’m going to have to create a new plan and work hard to achieve it.

One of the things I’ve identified is that this blog is not an income producer. Lots of people read it, but few purchase anything. Most of my sales come from sites that have absolutely nothing to do with making money online.

Years ago, I was advised by someone who knows a lot about online marketing and he said then, and it is even more true now, that the world doesn’t need any more websites and blogs about making money online, especially when the people building those sites are not very successful themselves.

I’ve talked about being interested in too many things for my own good, and not being specifically interested in a few things I could build a site around.

My brother, before he became disabled, loved drag racing. It was a life-long love and a few years ago I started building Georgia Drag Racing for him. He was working to write a book about the golden years of drag racing in the Atlanta area and was making great progress before he got to the point where it hurt too much to sit at a computer for very long.

So, that site has seen its best days and will be declining over time as less content is created. Still, surprisingly, it remains one of my best-earning websites, even though it has many links to Amazon.com that aren’t earning me anything and which I haven’t had the time or energy to remove.

It’s not at all about earning money online and I think that’s the key to its success. It attracts people who enjoy drag racing and they’re willing to spend money on their hobby.

I’ve watched as others have done the same thing. I know of people who have built successful, money-earning websites based on such diverse topics as dealing with insurance problems, telling Halloween and ghost stories, juggling, repairing computers, kitchen counter tops, organic gardening, hydroponic gardening, modeling advice, and dozens of other niche subjects that interested them and which they built into sites that produce a substantial annual income.

I have been trying to find a niche for myself in which I could do the same thing, but so far I haven’t found it.

At least, now, I know all the things I will need to do to build and publicize such a site if I can ever identify a topic that I can love and be willing to write about every day.

I’ve come close to such a niche, but it is not really what I’m talking about.

I love living in the mountains of Murphy, NC and I love the people, scenery, and pace of life here. I’ve been promoting the area and a few businesses off and on over the years and this year I’ve been concentrating on building Murphy Connections, a social networking site, and Murphy Gold, a site for promoting a few locally-owned, small businesses that are located in the Murphy NC 28906 ZIP code.

I’m starting to have some success with those sites and look forward to spending a lot of time working on, and improving, them over the coming months.

Another site that I enjoy, but whose earnings have dropped dramatically since I removed all the Amazon links is my Act On Your Dream! site.

Basically, I lost focus on that site, but I’ve been brainstorming a lot of ideas and now have a plan for updating that site on a regular basis. Now that Sitesell has made Content 2.0 free for all SBI sites, I’ll be adding more interactive features to it over time. In fact, I think that I’ll be blogging less as a result.

In fact, I’m going to be taking some of what I’ve written in my blogs and repurposing it on that site to see how it works.

Even though I’ve just gone through the worst 12 months of my life, I still believe that we can achieve what we want if we identify our goals, make good plans to accomplish them, and then put in the required work to make it happen. In as little as a year from now, we can make big changes in our lives.

I’m going to be acting on that belief.

What about you?

What do you think?

Is affiliate marketing working well for you?

Have you identified niches that are good income earners?

What company do you recommend as a substitute for Amazon.com?

I welcome your comments and look forward to discussing them.

Act on your dream!

JD

I haven’t been doing much writing this month, but I have been doing a lot of thinking, reading, and planning.

As much as I love writing, it’s almost impossible for me to string two sentences together when I’m running a fever and feeling terrible. So, a whole month of fall allergies combined with some gut bug I can’t seem to kick have kept me off the computer for most of the month.

There is an upside to this, however.

Since I no longer get TV since the switchover from analog to digital, I don’t waste a lot of time watching TV.

I am a happy NetFlix member, however, so I’ve been rewatching the entire StarGate SG-1 series and the StarTrek Next Generation series. The beauty of this is that I can pick the time I want to watch, instead of being forced to watch on someone else’s schedule.

So, when I was feeling bad and could manage to stay awake for awhile, I’ve been watching a couple of my favorite science fiction series.

When I was feeling good enough to concentrate on something more serious, I’ve been re-reading three books that have made an incredible difference in my life over the years.

So, since I really don’t know where I’m going with my affiliate marketing business right now, I decided it was time to get back to the basics and rethink my goals and strategies to achieve them.

I’m not giving up on affiliate marketing. I enjoy getting paid to recommend quality products to people and I’ve earned thousands of dollars over the years as a result.

Even though I’m going through a slump, I won’t let it continue indefinitely.

So, what am I reading, and why?

Napoleon Hill

When I was a teenager, a friend at church gave me his personal copy of Think and Grow Rich. He was employed at IBM and knew that I was interested in computers. This was way back in the 1960s. He told me that what he learned in this book was one of the major reasons he was enjoying his career at IBM.

The book was full of underlines and margin notes. He had questions about certain paragraphs and notes about how important some of the main points were in his success and for others he knew who worked through this book.

Now, since I am a good affiliate marketer, here’s a link to MindPerk, where you can purchase several items authored by Napoleon Hill, including Think and Grow Rich.

I am happy, also, to link to a page on my Act On Your Dream! website that offers some quality quotations from Napoleon Hill and his best-selling books.

It’s easy enough to find. You can borrow it at just about any bookstore. I’m pretty sure there are free versions available online.

Or be nice to a struggling business in your town. Go to your local bookseller and buy a copy. If they don’t have it, they can order it for you.

When my friend gave me his copy of the book, he said there were two conditions. I had to actually read the book, work through the exercises, and apply what I learned to my own life. And, when I met someone at a crossroads in their life, that I would give them my own copy of the book, with the same conditions.

Over the decades, I’ve given away several dozen copies of that book and I’ll continue to do it as long as I’m able.

As much as I love what’s in Think and Grow Rich, however, I’m currently re-reading Napoleon Hill’s much larger book, Law of Success.

Earlier today, I was reminded of the self-assessment test in Think and Grow Rich, and it sparked an idea I’m going to put into action on my John Dilbeck And Friends blog.

There are fifty-four questions in that test, and I’m going to be giving my answers and thoughts on one or two of them as close to daily as I can manage. I may miss a day here or there, but I’m going to follow through until I reach the end of the test.

I’ve started the series of posts on John Dilbeck and Friends with:

Think and Grow Rich self-assessment test

I could do this just as well in private, but I’m going to answer the questions publicly. I may reveal more than I want about myself in a few of them, but that’s okay.

Even more importantly than giving my answers, I hope the series of posts will spark some intelligent discussions and maybe lots of people will benefit, instead of just me. We’ll see how it goes.

I plan to answer the first question or two this evening.

There are many, many good pieces of advice in Think and Grow Rich and Law of Success and I’ll be blogging about them, too. Even though some may be related to affiliate marketing, I think they’re better suited for my John Dilbeck and Friends blog than they are for here.

One reason I’m mentioning it here, though, is that Law of Success has been called a master course in salesmanship and I think there is a lot of truth in that.

So, who else am I re-reading?

Ken Evoy

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I am a huge fan of Ken’s Site Build It! service.

Currently, I’m using SBI to manage a couple of my static websites and I’m getting good results from both of them.

A Year From Now is a site where I talk about setting goals, and then acting on achieving your dream.

I haven’t done as much with that site over the last couple of years as I would like, but I’ll be adding more to it in the coming months.

One of the things I’ve discovered about myself while reading Law of Success is that my Definite Chief Aim is no longer what I thought it was a few years ago, and I’m going to be revising that.

I truly believe, if you are honest with yourself, assess your skills and limitations accurately, set goals you really believe in and want to achieve, plan how to approach all of it, and then act on your dream, that you can be substantially more successful a year from now.

So, I’m going to do that and apply it to my major websites and blogs, in the process.

My other SBI-powered site is MurphyGold.com and it is all about promoting some of the best small business owners in Murphy, NC and the goods and services they provide to our friends and neighbors in our small mountain community.

Even though the site is barely more than two months old, it’s already doing well and I have several more business owners I’ll be adding to the site in the next few days.

I liked the product so much I bought the company

I’m sure you’ve seen that commercial. It made a big impact on me the first time I saw it.

Victor Kiam was the man who coined the slogan, “I liked the shaver so much, I bought the company.” The company was Remington Products, a maker of razors and similar appliances.

I like Site Build It! so much that I’d love to buy the company, but that hasn’t been possible. So, since I can’t buy the company, at least I can help recommend the service and earn a commission in the process.

So can you.

But, first, I want to talk about a couple of ebooks that Ken Evoy wrote a few years ago that changed my life almost as much as Think and Grow Rich did.

A few years ago, I quit working as a computer consultant and systems analyst and intended to take life easy as an artist blacksmith. I started smithing Steel Roses That Never Wilt and wanted to sell them to as wide an audience as possible.

I added a section about blacksmithing to JohnDilbeck.com, but was getting practically no responses.

I don’t remember exactly what year it was, but it was about ten years ago when I stumbled across an ebook called Make Your Site Sell!.

It was written by Dr. Ken Evoy and sold for $17.

I didn’t expect much for that much money, but I bought the ebook, downloaded it, and started studying it.

I rebuilt my website, following his advice, and before I knew it I was getting requests for more information about my Steel Roses from around the world and I was selling as many as I could make to people across the USA and Canada.

That little investment brought in thousands of dollars of revenue. The ebook didn’t do it, however. I did.

I had to study it, learn the principles involved, and put them to work for me. So, in a way, it was a partnership between myself and Dr. Evoy.

I learned a lot from that book and it changed my life for the better.

Later, in 2002, the book was revised and the price was raised a bit. I bought the new book and put into practice what I learned from it, too.

So, how much does it cost now?

Not a single penny.

In fact, you can download Make Your Site Sell! at no cost, and you don’t even have to give your email address to join a mailing list.

The book was recently revised and now it tells how Site Build It makes much of the old tedious handwork obsolete.

In fact, that’s how Site Build It came about: to help people put into practice what Dr. Evoy covered in the book.

No matter how you build your website, or even if you prefer a blog, you can learn something of value from Make Your Site Sell!

But, don’t expect to discover the secrets of making a gazillion dollars with no work.

This ebook weighs in at about 1,500 pages over several PDF files. If you want to learn what it offers, you’d better set aside some time and be prepared to spend some effort.

Otherwise, don’t bother. It won’t do you a bit of good sitting on your harddrive.

I didn’t buy the business, but I did become an affiliate

If you know anything about me, you may know that I had to close my blacksmithing business in 2002 when I became the full-time caretaker for my mother, following her cancer surgery.

I cared for her 24/7 for over six years and I was as much of a shut-in as she was the last two or three years.

I had to find a way to make a living while not being able to leave the house, and affiliate marketing became the vehicle to make this possible.

Again, it was an ebook written by Ken Evoy that made the difference in my life.

Many people, including me, think that the Sitesell 5 Pillar Affiliate Program is the best on the planet. I’m happy to be one of their affiliates and recommend them to you.

Over the years, I’ve received thousands of dollars in commissions and I’m still earning for residual sales of annual resubscriptions from happy SBI webmasters.

I was a happy Sitesell affiliate long before Site Build It became available and I’ve earned a lot from Dr. Evoy about affiliate marketing from his weekly newsletter for affiliates, his frequent postings in the Sitesell forums and from his ebook, the Affiliate Masters Course.

This free ebook, which was originally available as a multi-email course, offers valuable advice for anyone who wants to be a successful affiliate marketer.

I’m re-reading it as part of my efforts to get back to the basics and redefining my marketing company and the goals I want to achieve.

I’ve read over a dozen books and ebooks about affiliate marketing, some of which cost over $100, and, to me, this continues to be the very best.

I can’t say that will hold true for you, but it seems that Dr. Evoy and I think quite a bit alike, even though he is a far better business owner, team builder, and marketer than I ever expect to be.

I don’t try to model myself on him and what he does, but I do try to learn from him and adapt what I can to my own business.

Over the years, Dr. Evoy has never lead me astray. He offers solid advice for building a real business and shares what he has learned about websites, blogs, and selling.

How much are you willing to invest in your future?

You can get Think and Grow Rich from your library, and you can freely download Make Your Site Sell! and the Affiliate Masters Course.

You don’t have to invest a single dime in a quality education, great advice, and information about the necessary skills you’ll need to become successful with affiliate marketing and selling from your own websites.

But, even though you won’t have to invest any money, you will have to invest time and effort and a lot of study if you want to learn all that is offered in these books.

Nothing works for everyone

Now, no matter how much I have learned from these books and how much my life has been made better because of them, the same may not hold true for you.

Each of us has our own skills and limitations. Things that work well for me may not work for you, and vice versa.

But, I believe it is true to say that nothing will ever work for you if you don’t learn how to focus on your goals and the plans you have made to achieve them.

If you flit from one thing to another, you’ll never become successful.

It takes a commitment and lots of work to achieve what you want.

Even though I’m not a glowing advertisement for affiliate marketing right now, I’ve been successful with it for years, and I fully intend to reinvent myself and become successful, again.

Getting back to the basics, redefining my goals, making new plans, and getting back on track to achieve those goals is what I’m working on right now.

What do you think?

I’m always interested in hearing your opinions and experiences related to what I write about.

Are you an affiliate marketer? How are you doing?

Are you involved in sales in other areas? How is it working out for you?

Do you have any advice you’d care to offer on affiliate marketing in the 21st century?

When you have to get back to the basics, what books do you read that inspire you to dig deep, reinvent yourself, and start working again?

I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Act on your dream!

JD

I just read an interesting story in the New York Times…

Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest

This is another article that shows how easy it is to start a blog, but how hard it is to continue it over time. Things change. We lose interest. We become too busy with other things.

In many cases, we become disillusioned by the lack of success we had originally imagined.

Although the same can be true for a traditional website, the difference lies in the amount of traffic that continues when we are busy doing something else.

I have static websites that continue to bring in thousands of readers every month, even when I do nothing to them for extended periods.

The same just is not true for my blogs.

If I go any length of time without posting something new to a blog, regular readers notice and new readers may perceive it as just another abandoned blog.

I know I feel that way when I visit a blog that hasn’t been updated recently. Do you?

But, and I think this is important, I just don’t feel that way when I go to a traditional website. While on one of them, I’m looking for information, not necessarily the latest thing written.

As you know, I’ve been debating the issue of blogging or building traditional multi-tier websites for some time…

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

I think both have promise and I can argue both in favor and against both of them.

It is much more difficult to design and build a multi-tier website that presents information in a way that is easy to navigate and update. I know, because I’ve been spending much of my time every day for the last few weeks designing a new website.

On the other hand, I can throw up a blog in a couple of hours. All I need is an inspiration, a topic, and a little free time. I know this, because I’ve started several dozen blogs, but now I’m maintaining only three of them on a semi-regular basis, and updating a few others sporadically.

When looking at the traffic stats for all my sites, I see a definite correlation between frequency of posting on a blog that just does not exist on my traditional websites. Just as in academia, with blogs you have to think publish or perish.

Easy to start - easy to abandon

The longer I do all of this, the more I realize that blogs are easy to start. There’s very little barrier to entry. Start one free on Blogger in ten minutes. Host one on your own domain using WordPress in a couple of hours (plus whatever time it takes the domain to propagate, if it’s newly registered). Cost, little to nothing.

On the other hand, when I start a new website, it’s not so easy to start. There’s planning time that nobody but me sees. I may spend months working on the design, researching keywords, researching the competition, deciding on how much information is needed to make the site viable, and designing a three- or four-tier site structure. All of this is done before I do anything else.

I may register the domain in advance, just to make sure it will be available when I want it, or I may decide upon the domain name after I know what’s going to be on the site.

How much does it cost to host one of these websites?

If I go with traditional hosting on a Linux server, my cost is nothing. I’m already paying that cost for my other sites and have both the bandwidth and storage available to host several more domains.

If I go with Site Build It!, the up-front cost will be $300 and that pays for the first year of hosting. More and more, I’m finding that I’m not interested in building a site that isn’t powered by SBI, but I’m going to leave that for another discussion.

Getting back to the main point…

With the new site I’ll be introducing in a few more weeks, I’ve already put months into getting ready for it. I paid $10 to reserve the domain name, and I’ll be paying another $300 to host it. That’s a pretty large barrier to entry from my point of view.

It’s also one thing that will keep me motivated to continue developing the site. After all that time, work, and money, I’m not going to stop working on it until it is profitable and I’m getting income on a regular basis from it.

With a new blog, I find that I’m more of the opinion of easy come, easy go. When I abandon a blog, it’s no great loss.

But, there really is a loss. I’ll lose the time I put into building it, and in the long run that’s more valuable than any money I may have invested or not. I can recover money or earn more. I can never get back the time I lost.

When I first started debating this with myself, I was clearly in favor of blogging with WordPress over building a multi-tier website. I just seemed to make more sense.

Now, however, as I spend more time doing both and look back on the results of what I’ve gotten from each, I’m leaning much farther away from blogging and towards a content-rich, structured website.

I almost hate to admit it, because I disagreed with him when he originally wrote it, but I am more and more coming to agree with Ken Evoy and what he wrote about this subject: Blog or Build?

Finally, I’m going to disagree with some of my good friends, including Mitch Mitchell and Aussie Sire. I respect their opinions and truly enjoy interacting with them on our blogs.

What do I disagree with?

I’m finding that the number of comments or the length of the discussion on a blog post has almost no correlation with income.

Yet, it takes time to monitor the comments and respond to them, so there is a cost involved without a commensurate income to offset the effort.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll discontinue comments or discussions here. I won’t. But, I’m realizing that I’m doing it more for the enjoyment, debate, and socializing, rather than for generating income.

I earn far more from my traditional sites, and after their original design and building, I spend much less time maintaining them.

The choice is becoming more clear all the time.

I’m not trying to change your mind, I’m just passing along what I’m learning on this topic.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

Introduction: The purpose of this post is to get all of us thinking about what we’re doing to build our businesses and what we’re doing that is just a complete waste of time. Caution, this post rambles even more than most of the other things I write. I want to solicit your opinions and hear about your experiences. I’ll ask more questions than I’ll answer. I hope you’ll think seriously about the questions I raise and join the conversation.

Now, on to the questions of the day…

If you look back on the last year - assuming you’ve been building your online business that long - have you been making progress or just chasing your tail?

You know what I mean.

We all love to watch a kitten or puppy chase its tail and run in circles until it falls over. It’s entertaining. It’s amusing. To us.

To the kitten or puppy, it’s frustrating.

If they don’t catch their tail, they get tired and quit. If they do catch it, they learn not to bite so hard the next time.

You’ve seen this and laughed. If not, do a search on YouTube. I’m sure you’ll find many hours of interesting pet videos that illustrate the point I’m making.

In fact, the very act of searching on YouTube and watching these videos is a good example of chasing your own tail. After spending minutes, or hours, doing this, what do you have to show for your time and effort? Not much.

The same principle applies to building your home business.

Are you making progress, or are you simply chasing your tail?

Are you running off, hither and yon, looking for the secret to Internet marketing success? How many websites have you visited? How many newsletters have you subscribed to? How many gurus have you followed? How many ebooks have you bought and downloaded? How many of those ebooks have you read? How many affiliate marketing programs have you joined? How many social networks have you joined? How often do you tweet on Twitter? How many friends are you trying to keep up with? How much email have you read?

Or, are you spending your time developing and promoting your marketing business?

If you’ve done your basic homework, you probably already know all you need to know to begin building your online business. There are no secrets. Much of what you need to know is available to you for free. For example, read Ken Evoy’s free ebooks, the Affiliate Masters Course or his best selling Make Your Site Sell!, which is now free to download.

But, if you don’t plan to study those books - or whatever guides you prefer - and put into action what you learn, what’s the point? If you don’t learn and act on what you learn, you’ll never build a business, no matter how busy you are.

Are you building your business or are you simply chasing your tail?

If you intend to earn a living from marketing, don’t you think it is time to learn how to build a marketing system that will work for you? A system that will help you focus on what works best and do more of it?

There are so many distractions and so many things are promoted as the best way to become successful with your online business, but most of them don’t work for most of us.

How do we stop chasing our tail and focus on what works best when we don’t yet know what works best for us?

It is especially frustrating when what works well for me may not work well for you, and vice versa.

Still, there have to be some basic marketing fundamentals that will apply to all of us, don’t you think?

Which is better? (A) Posting free classified ads on a dozen sites or (B) building your own focused marketing blog or website?

Which is better? (A) making 100 Squidoo lenses on assorted topics or (B) making 100 Squidoo lenses on different topics related to your marketing niche?

Which is better? (A) promoting a hundred different products and services or (B) promoting the top ten products for your particular niche?

Which is better? (A) talking about everything you think about or (B) focusing on your particular niche and branding yourself so others will think of you when that topic comes to mind?

Which is better? (A) promoting hither and yon hoping for one-time sales or (B) building a marketing funnel (or funnels) for your business and each of the products and services you recommend to your readers?

Which is better? (A) spending hours a day clicking on a traffic exchange or (B) spending a few days creating a new marketing funnel for a particular product, including writing a benefits-laden report about the product, creating an autoresponder series for it, writing a page about it on your website, blogging about it, creating a Squidoo lens about it, tweeting about it, and promoting everywhere that is appropriate, with the goal to get your readers to join your list and download the report you wrote.

I’m asking these questions just to get you to think about this. There are no right or wrong answers. Well, maybe some choices are more right than others, especially if you’re serious about building your online affiliate marketing business.

What do you want to accomplish at the end of the day, week, month, or next year? Do you want lots of visitors to your sites? Do you want good ratings on your lenses? Do you want lots of comments on your blog posts? Do you want lots of people to subscribe to your list(s) and download your report(s)? Do you want larger commission checks every month? What do you want to accomplish with the time, effort, and money you invest into your business?

Are you just chasing your own tail?

I’ve done a lot of that and I’m starting to realize how much time I’ve wasted, and time is much more valuable than money.

What do you want to earn as payment for the effort you put into your marketing efforts? Enough for a movie and dinner? Maybe make a car payment? Pay your rent or mortgage every month? Earn enough to quit your job? Build a business that enables you to thrive and not just survive? What is your time and effort worth?

I hope this post sparks a good conversation. What are we doing that gets us nowhere and how can we substitute better methods to build our businesses?

I know which way I’ll be going in 2009. Have you thought about what you are going to do?

What do you think will work best - for you - in 2009 as you work hard to define your niche, target your best customers, promote the best products and services they need, and increase your revenue?

I’m all ears.

Act on your dream!

JD

Rate this:

2.9

I’ve been missing in action the last couple of weeks.

After Mom’s funeral and burial, I thought I was doing okay. For about a week, I was surrounded by family and some of my closest friends and everything was going well.

Then, last week and this week, I have been alone in this house with so many memories of my Mom and Dad, and I just haven’t felt like doing anything. So, I took some time off. Mostly, I’ve been watching movies and TV shows I’ve rented from NetFlix and sleeping.

I’ve downloaded a couple of thousand emails and responded to the most important. The others will be skimmed or just deleted. If you sent me an important email and I haven’t responded in the next week, please resend it. I’ll try to keep up from here onward.

This week has been rather miserable. I woke up from a nap and thought I was getting a kidney infection or worse. The pain was sharp and intense. I couldn’t get comfortable sitting, standing, or lying down.

Fortunately, after a few days, I was sure it was a pinched nerve instead of a kidney infection or stone, so I started doing some easy stretches several times a day. Yesterday, I felt a pop when I moved just right and the pain is now much less and seems to be going away. That’s a very welcome relief.

If you’ve ever been in constant pain, you know how hard it is to concentrate on doing anything while you’re hurting.

I didn’t expect Mom’s death to take all the wind out of my sails, but it did. So much of my life has been focused on caring for her that I just didn’t know what to do. So, I gave myself permission to do nothing, for awhile.

This morning, I woke up for the first time feeling like I wanted to get back to work.

I tried making myself get back to work last week, but it wasn’t working. Today, however, I feel very different. I’m looking forward to getting my business back on track and writing about the things that have been working for me.

Fortunately, even though I haven’t felt like doing anything for the last three weeks, my websites have been working night and day for me. I’ve continued to make affiliate commissions for sales of Site Build It! and other products I’m proud to use and promote.

Even though I haven’t done much of anything with my Squidoo lenses for the last couple of months, I still received a payment from Squidoo this week and that doesn’t take into account the sign-ups to various offers and affiliate commissions I’ve made on those lenses.

Lots of you have been purchasing t-shirts, calendars, mugs, shopping bags, and other products from my Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com shop, powered by CafePress. While sales are lower than last year, it’s always nice to see lots of “You made a sale at CafePress” subject lines in my incoming email. Thanks to all of you who have purchased this year!

And, of course, there are quite a few other, smaller, income streams that add up to enough to make working at home profitable and worthwhile for me.

I have plans for more systematization of my marketing efforts in 2009 and I’m going to share what I’ve been learning with you in the coming months.

To be sure you don’t miss anything, you may want to subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed (see the large RSS icon at the top-right of every page) or subscribe to the postings via email by filling in the form at the top of the right column of every page, right below my photo.

I’ll do my best to make it worth your while.

Despite the world-wide economic problems, it is still worth promoting quality products - whether they are your own or via affiliate links - and earning from every sale.

Everything moves in cycles. The economic situation will improve in time, and those who put in the work now will be in a good place when confidence rises and people start spending more in the future.

It’s okay to take some time off, now and then, but it’s not okay to quit.

I’ve just been taking some time off, and now it’s time to go back to work.

Act on your dream!

JD

Rate this:

2.9

I believe that Seth Godin is a marketing genius and has as good an idea as anyone about how marketing and making money are evolving.

I’ve been paying attention to most of what he has been saying for a few years and I’ve learned a lot in the process.

Today, on his blog, he writes:

Make money: not by building an internet company, but by using the net as a tool to create value and get paid. Use the internet as a tool, not as an end. Do it when you are part of a big organization or do it as a soloist. The dramatic leverage of the net more than overcomes the downs of the current economy.

The essence is this: connect.

Then he goes on to explain 10 ways to connect the disconnected.

Obviously, it’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good springboard for thinking about how you can add value by helping people make connections.

You can read the entire article on Seth’s blog: How to make money using the Internet

So, how can you help connect people and make money doing it?

Act on your dream!

JD

Rate this:

2.9

Chris Knight announced a few minutes ago that EzineArticles is Nine Today.

Congratulations to him and the entire team at EzineArticles.

Over the years they have risen to the top of the article directories through hard work and innovation. They have earned the right to celebrate this milestone.

Best wishes for nine more years - at least.

Act on your dream!

JD

Rate this:

2.9

I was so busy the last couple of weeks that I didn’t even have time to promote the Site Build It! Halloween special, which ended yesterday at midnight.

I know you may be interested in building a successful online business using SBI, and I’m sorry I didn’t let you know about the special offer.

But, even if you missed the Halloween special, Sitesell is offering the $100 Harvest Special from now until midnight on November 9, 2008.

Yep, that’s right. For a little more than a week, you have the opportunity to purchase one SBI site for about $300 and you can get a second Site Build It! subscription for only $100 more.

Buy both for yourself, go in with a friend and each of you can get a subscription for $200 each, or buy one and give the other to a friend, relative, or colleague.

I’m not going to even address all the misconceptions about SBI this morning. I’ve had those conversations until I’m blue in the face.

Site Build It! may not be for everyone - I don’t use it for quite a few of my sites - but I know it is the absolute best way for someone to identify a niche for your online business, brainstorm topics, design the structure of your site, build it, host it, and promote it. SBI offers a variety of tools that cannot be found elsewhere - especially with the level of integration between the tools that SBI offers.

Then, you also get the step-by-step Action Guide, unlimited support, and a members-only forum that is extremely helpful and supportive.

Site Build It offers more than just a place to put up a website. There are many thousands of places and ways you can do that. SBI offers what I have come to think of as a success cooperative where people like Ken Evoy, founder of Sitesell, really believes in your capacity for success and helps you achieve it.

Don’t listen to the naysayers and the uninformed. Site Build It! offers a comprehensive set of tools, procedures, tutorials, and support that you won’t find anywhere else.

I am a very satisfied Site Build It! customer and I invite you to visit my Act On Your Dream! site, hosted by SBI. I’m working on a plan right now where I’ll be greatly expanding that site over the coming year.

Whether you take advantage of the $100 Harvest Special, or not, do yourself a favor and learn about what you can do with Site Build It!

Why just put up a website when you can build a successful online business?

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. You don’t have to take advantage of this special offer to buy two SBI sites. You can always choose to purchase just one SBI subscription, even when the specials are offered. If you don’t need two sites, there’s no reason to buy more than one.

Rate this:

2.9

Last month, Joel Comm’s newest book, Click Here to Order - Stories of the World’s Most Successful Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs, was released and currently ranks #2230 in sales out of all books sold by Amazon.com.

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

Rate this:

2.9

I’ve been a member of SFI Marketing Group for over five years and, in general, I have very positive thoughts about, and experiences with, this company.

I believe it is one of the very best companies for people who are brand new to affiliate marketing to learn how to promote online. They offer lots of training and good support. There is an active forum for members.

I am not a fan of multi-level marketing

One thing I don’t like about SFI is that it is a multi-level marketing (also known as mlm or networking marketing) company. I am not a fan of mlm, even though I’ve had good results with SFI.

Why?

Because, I’m tired of sponsoring people into the company who then do nothing, including replying to a simple email welcoming them to the company.

On the other hand, I’m happy to meet new people who have joined in my downline and I’m always happy to answer questions and offer advice based on my experience. That’s more than I can say for my sponsor, who has never replied to any emails I’ve sent him.

In theory, multi-level marketing makes a lot of sense. The opportunity to leverage income and efforts by enlisting others into your marketing team is very attractive. Some people seem to do well with this, but, in actual practice, most do not.

You can learn more by downloading Ann Sieg’s free ebook: The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing.

What I like about SFI

What I like about SFI is the ability to earn commissions for selling their products and services at retail. I think their line of non-toxic, natural cleaners are the best I’ve used and I’m happy to have alternatives to the chemical-soup cleaners available elsewhere.

I enjoy getting that email that tells me I’ve made a sale. SFI is generous in their commissions, and I’m happy to get my monthly commission check.

I also like the fact that Gery Carson, president of SFI, is always working to find new ways for us to earn money by promoting an array of products and services. He’s a very innovative person and regularly responds to questions on the company forum.

What I don’t like about SFI

Unfortunately, the list of things I dislike about SFI is growing faster and longer than the list of things I do like.

For example, I really like the non-toxic, natural cleaners, as I mentioned above. What I don’t like is that there is no way to market them right now, and it’s been several months since I was able to do so.

Well, that’s not exactly true, but the explanation is rather confusing.

I can still offer you the opportunity to buy the non-toxic all natural cleaner by linking to the old Veriuni store. I still have links to this store on a number of my sites.

(Update August 2009: Affiliate link removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

However, new affiliates don’t learn about this, because the training - as far as I can tell - no longer informs them about the Veriuni store.

There used to be a simple gateway page that affiliates could direct you to if you wanted to purchase the natural cleaners, but it no longer is available.

Here’s an example of a simple gateway page that links to the Veriuni Liquid Nutrition product and another one that links to the International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs.

(Update August 2009: Affiliate links removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

Why is this important?

The great majority of new affiliates joining SFI have no experience in marketing online. Therefore, it makes it much easier to promote something if they can send visitors to well-written, easy-to-understand gateway pages and make some sales as a result.

The whole point in joining SFI is to make more money than you spend. Right?

We’re here to earn a profit.

Now, I want to emphasize that you can remain an affiliate of SFI as long as you want and never spend a dime. A lot of people don’t understand that. As a free affiliate, you can still earn a very nice commission for any sales you make, and these commissions are several times as much as you would earn if you sold something through your Amazon.com store, for instance.

As a free affiliate at SFI, if you sell any consumer goods to someone who is not an SFI affiliate and doesn’t live at the same address as an SFI affiliate, you’ll earn 30% of the commission volume (CV). Let’s use the All-Purpose Cleaner as an example…

All-Purpose Cleaner costs $9.85 per quart with a CV of $2.21.

A free affiliate would earn 30% of this $2.21 for each sale, which amounts to $0.66. Now, I know that’s not a lot of income, but it grows as you sell more product.

An Executive Affiliate (EA) would earn 60% of the CV, or $1.32. To become an EA, you either need to sell retail products that add up to 10 SVP or more. (I won’t go into SVP at this time.) The other way is to purchase products with 10 SVP or more every month.

A Team Leader would earn 80% of the CV, or $1.77 per sale.

It’s not much earning less than a dollar or two, but this amount can grow rapidly as you do a better job of making retail sales.

As with every other sales and marketing job where you’re working on commission, the more you sell the more you earn.

The main point I’m trying to make is that SFI isn’t making it easy for us to sell things. While many gateway pages remain, some of the products I want to sell no longer have an easy way to link to a sales page, especially if I don’t know how to link to the Veriuni store.

A marketing organization lives and dies based on selling things. We earn our commissions based on how much we sell every month.

Let me give you another example.

I am a happy member of the International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs and SFI offers a good gateway page for recommending it to you and others. Even if I weren’t an SFI affiliate, I would continue my IAHBE membership because I get more from it most months than I pay to be a member.

Now, let’s look at IAHBE from the perspective of an SFI affiliate…

As a free member, I would earn 30% of the Commission Volume (CV) of $19.00, which equals $5.70.

An EA earns 60% of the CV, or $11.40.

A TL earns 80% of the CV, or $15.20.

These amounts are for selling an IAHBE membership to someone who is not an SFI affiliate. The amounts you earn if someone in your downline joins IAHBE are less than these numbers.

Now, what gets interesting is that these are not one-time commissions. They are recurring commissions that you’ll earn every month that someone remains a member.

So, as a Bronze Team Leader, I’ll earn $15.20 every month that someone who is not an SFI affiliate remains a member, if they originally joined from one of my links.

It doesn’t take many of these to start earning some decent commissions.

At least, in theory.

In practice, I haven’t sold any IAHBE memberships to someone who is not an SFI affiliate. Several of the people in my downline have joined IAHBE and I earn some from that, as well as advancing in the leadership ranks, but it’s not as much as I would earn if I were selling these memberships to non-affiliates.

I think IAHBE is a good deal, but apparently the hundreds of people who have followed my links to the gateway page don’t agree.

SFI has been inconsistent

Lately, SFI has been advancing and retreating in about equal amounts.

Nice Offers discount coupon program suspended

A few months ago, SFI suspended the NiceOffers program and I had been working on promoting that with some diligence. I had created three blogs and almost 50 Squidoo lenses to help promote the NiceOffers program and the merchants who were offering discount coupons through the service.

I was syndicating my blog feeds on a variety of websites and I probably haven’t found and deleted all of them, even after a few months.

OK. I recognize that everything we try doesn’t succeed. So, suspending something that wasn’t working as expected makes good business sense, even though it impacted my efforts negatively.

Still, to do so suddenly after making it one of the primary marketing efforts of SFI came as a jar and I was very disappointed as a result.

Closing the Merchant Service program

This morning, I found this on the SFI forum:

Effective 8/28/08, the Merchant Services program has been discontinued due to continuing issues with the third-party company on which the program was based and over which we have no control. We apologize for any inconvenience the termination of this program may cause.

I have been watching this program for some time, and while it was very attractive, I was aware that there were problems with it, so I wasn’t actively promoting it, even though the commissions could have been very lucrative.

Now, I’m sure that a lot of affiliates are very disappointed about this.

It takes money, effort, and time to market something, especially when there are so many competitors. After spending months trying to build this part of your business, you have to be disheartened to hear that your efforts have been wasted.

The worst part of this is that we, the affiliates, are taking the risk in advertising and promoting these other companies. It costs money and time to promote through affiliate marketing, and we only realize an income when we make sales. If the merchants, both SFI and the third-party company they mention, fail in their part of closing the sale, then we are very negatively impacted.

New products that I don’t plan to promote

Recently, SFI introduced IAB Benefits which apparently offers health, dental, medical, and other services.

Even after reading all I could find about it, several times, I still don’t understand this company and what it offers. I’m a fairly bright person, but I’m still confused.

Before SFI affiliates began promoting it, when I searched for “IAB Benefits” on Google, I found more complaints than good reports about it. Are the complaints valid? I don’t know, but I don’t like promoting anything when complaints are so visible.

IAB may be a very good company that offers great products, but if I don’t understand it, I’m not going to promote it - no matter how lucrative the compensation plan may be.

I don’t want to mislead someone who is looking for medical insurance and who may sign up for IAB Benefits by mistake. Some of us just don’t have any money to waste, and from what I was able to learn, IAB Benefits doesn’t do what I would expect if I wanted medical insurance.

The SFIMG website logs me out while I am working on it

I was just reminded how much I dislike it when I’m researching something on the SFIMG.com website and it logs me out. I just had five pages open on the site and now I get a session expired message on each of them. When I log back in, does it take me to the page I was on? No. Now, I have to waste the next few minutes navigating back to where I was.

Sigh…

The not-quite-ready ecommerce store

We’ve been hearing since early spring that SFI will be introducing a new ecommerce store that will make it easy for us to earn higher commissions. A few months ago, I was excited about this, but I’m starting to lose interest.

Will this store do everything that is projected?

I hope so, but with a schedule that keeps slipping, I’m inclined to believe that it is more difficult to create than was originally projected or that there are problems with the programming and implementation.

I don’t know either way, but my gut is telling me to be careful about this one.

Here’s the latest update, posted by Gery Carson on August 29, 2008:

More new store features revealed:

For our many affiliates anxiously awaiting the unveiling of the new SFI store (and for brand new affiliates who may not have heard about the coming new store), here’s an update of some of the exciting features everyone will be enjoying soon:

• ONE store for everything. The new store will service both SFI affiliates and retail customers alike. Everything from nutritional products to Internet services to SFI promotional materials.

• Thousands (soon tens of thousands) of new products in dozens of new categories, plus closeouts, collectables and hard-to-find items available nowhere else.

• Earn instant SVP on EVERY product in the store…including all SFI promotional materials like X-Cards, postcards, business cards, etc.

• Exclusive, money-saving daily deals (”Deal Of The Day”).

• Special weekly/monthly sales with special discount prices.

• New products added daily.

• You can promote the store as a whole, or any individual product in the store, or any department, or any selection of products of your choosing.

• No longer do high shipping costs need to get in the way of becoming EA or making sales internationally. This is because the new SFI store will be utilizing new partner companies who will be shipping to you directly from outlets around the world. Additionally, through the store’s Private Seller program, you can locate sellers and products located in your same country—even the same city!

• Because of how it’s being built, virtually anything can be added and sold in the store. Goods, services, downloadable software and media, you name it! The sky’s the limit!

• The new SFI store also allows you to sell YOUR stuff. Through the new store’s Private Seller program you can quickly, easily, and cheaply convert stuff you no longer want or need…into stuff you do! List your stuff at the new store, and sell for cash….or for any product in the store. You can even earn EA status each month selling unwanted items around your house! Use the new SFI store as your online garage sale to clean out your closets, attics and garages! List and sell dozens or even hundreds of miscellaneous items easily.

• Hot, new marketing program will allow you to easily generate lifetime retail customers by the hundreds! And earning EA status though retail sales will have never been simpler or easier!

• Standing Orders, on thousands of products, will be available both to affiliates AND retail customers. When an affiliate or customer places an order containing any Standing Order-Eligible product, they’ll automatically be alerted how to set up a Standing Order for that item in seconds.

• More payment options.

• Product shipment tracking.

• Express Checkout feature allows you to make purchases in seconds.

• Wishlists

• Store multiple shipping addresses and multiple payment methods –which can be instantly accessed via pulldown menus during checkout.

• Seamless integration with VeryVIP. If you are a VeryVIP subscriber, you’ll have powerful additional tools to promote the new store and generate customers.

• One-click sitewide currency conversions for 17 major world currencies.

These are just SOME of the amazing features the new SFI store will come with. And there are many, many, many more. Not only that, the new store is also going to usher in some powerful new enhancements to the overall SFI program including substantial simplification, bigger bonuses, and more incentives to become and remain an EA.

Stay tuned for further details!

Several people posted some replies to the announcement, and Gery responded with the following post this morning, August 30, 2008:

Good morning,

I’d like to address some of the comments in this thread:

1. My apologies if you’ve perceived our launch date estimates published to date to have been “evasive.” This was certainly not our intent. These are the facts: Since beginning this project several months ago, the scope has grown enormously. What started as “just a new e-commerce store” has become something that will be seamlessly integrated directly or indirectly into every aspect of SFI. And what’s key here is that doing so closes a number of “holes” in the overall SFI program.

That is to say that we expect this project to have potentially explosive positive impacts on registrations, opt-in rates, shipping costs, EA upgrades, and much more. All those things you’ve been wanting to see out of SFI…we believe are now within our reach…thanks to this project.

Of course, making all this goodness happen has added some time to the project. And, yes, we definitely want to have everything significantly tested before we launch so that the growth explosion we anticipate can begin immediately upon the launch. We sincerely appreciate everyone’s patience; when we launch I am 1000% certain you will agree that it was worth the wait.

2. So when WILL the new store launch? There is still MUCH to do and it’s impossible to foresee every potential “speedbump” that could come up between now and the launch date as it’s not only our editors, designers and programmers involved, but also other software companies, banks, payment processors, shipping companies, etc. Therefore, it would not be wise for me to give out an exact date. There are just simply too many things that COULD cause us to miss the date. My hope is that we can unveil everything on November 1st, but that is only an estimate and could change. I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do at this time.

3. At least one person in this thread has envisioned a “sky is falling” scenario based on some recent SFI events. What I will say to this is that there are many pieces to the puzzle of what we are putting together. What may look like negatives now aren’t necessarily so, but rather moves and pieces of the bigger puzzle that will be come clear to you after the launch.

Also, for the record, companywide, SFI continues to steadily grow. We have now seen nearly two years of continual monthly growth. Total EAs have nearly doubled in the last two years and we are up, up, up in virtually every key category. So you can imagine why I can hardly sleep at night thinking about what we’re going to see in these numbers later this year after the new store has arrived!!

So, have faith, the future for SFI affiliates is brighter than it’s ever been.

Thanks, everyone! I hope I’ve helped with your concerns.

Gery Carson
SFI President & Founder

Benefit of the doubt

I’ve been reading what Gery Carson has to say for the last five years and I’ve never known him to mislead his affiliates. I’ve watched him introduce innovative products, marketing methods, and compensation plans to adapt to a changing world.

So, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt in regards to the new ecommerce store.

I certainly don’t have any secret information or behind-the-scenes insight into all that is being done to make this a reality.

Part of me want to just throw my hands up and quit.

This has been a very rough month for me personally and I’m not feeling very enthusiastic about anything at the moment, so I’m not going to make any big decisions until I’m feeling better.

I recognize the part of me that wants to quit, and I tend not to pay very much attention to him. He’s a whiner and can always find the gray cloud behind every silver lining. He’s a manifestation of all the naysayers and doubters I’ve encountered who tell me things won’t work and who think I’m crazy for even trying.

I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of people who quit just before they would have succeeded.

Napoleon Hill, in his best-selling book, Think and Grow Rich, tells a story about R. U. Darby, who quit three feet from finding his fortune. He quit mining for gold when the vein ran out and he sold everything to the junk man, who hired a mining engineer to study the mine. He predicted that the vein had shifted just three feet because of a fault. The new owner ordered his employees to dig to where the engineer predicted the vein would be, and that’s where they found the gold. The junk man continued to mine gold from that vein for years and earned millions of dollars because he sought expert advice before quitting.

Russell Conwell, the founder of Temple University, tells the story in his Acres of Diamonds lecture, “about a man who wanted to find diamonds so badly that he sold his property and went off in futile search for them; the new owner of his home discovered that a rich diamond mine was located right there on the property.”

While that tells the basics of the lecture, I urge you to click the link and read the entire Acres of Diamonds lecture for yourself.

Sometimes we’d do much better by doing a little more digging, learning a bit more, and digging in our own back yard before quitting and moving on to something new.

I’ll wait and see

As I have said before, I earn a commission from SFI every month and it’s usually profitable for me to promote SFI, so I don’t want to cut off an income stream unless it becomes necessary.

But, I don’t want to just keep on going indefinitely as I wait for a higher income from SFI, as I should be receiving after 5 years of effort.

Most months, I spend about the same time, effort, and money promoting Gery Carson’s SFI Marketing Group as I do Ken Evoy’s Site Build It!

I earn higher commissions and true, recurring, residual income from promoting Site Build It! and I’m seeing a nice upwards trend in my income from them. On top of that, I’m a happy SBI customer and, a couple of days ago, I renewed my subscription for my SBI-powered Act On Your Dream! site. I never once questioned my decision to renew that subscription and I did it about six weeks before it was due.

So, it’s interesting to compare my relatively-flat income from SFI to my growing income from SBI.

I’m going to give SFI almost one more year. If the new store is released and performs as Gery hopes, and if my commissions from SFI grow faster than they have in the past, I’ll remain an affiliate and continue promoting the company and its products.

On my birthday, July 1, 2009, I’m going to decide one way or the other. I’ll continue to do my part, but SFI is going to have to improve substantially for me to continue promoting it.

I only have a limited amount of time, effort, and money and I intend to refocus on the very best affiliate programs. I hope SFI makes the cut.

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback about SFI Marketing Group.

Act on your dream!

JD

(Update August 2009: Affiliate links removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

Rate this:

2.8

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, recently delivered her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

I was told about this speech by one of my friends on the members-only SiteSell forums for Site Build It! subscribers. Thanks, Colin.

If I hadn’t heard about her speech there, I might have missed it and that would have been a real shame.

In reading her speech, I was surprised by how little she referred to Harry Potter, even though writing her novels took her to dizzying heights of success.

Instead, she talks about the liberation of total failure and the importance of imagining new futures and different pasts.

In talking about failure, part of what she emphasized was:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I have experienced this level of failure a couple of times in my life. It isn’t fun, but it can be educational and liberating. Depending upon how you react to it, these experiences can put steel in your resolve and be a foundation upon which you can build your future success.

It reminds me of the lines Kris Kristofferson wrote in “Bobby McGee” when he said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Once you’ve lost everything - materially, that is - you aren’t encumbered by the things you want to believe about yourself, because many of them fall away as you lose houses, cars, credit ratings, and other things we associate with material affluence.

Other parts of the experience can be harder, or they can be liberating. For example, to one person, losing a spouse can be something that will hurt for decades. To another, it can be a difficult, but liberating, experience that will make it easier to build a better life, move in a different direction, and grow more as a person.

This level of failure is truly difficult and poverty is not something I would wish on anyone.

However, it can be life-changing, if you take the steps to do what you truly want to do. Like a phoenix rising from its own ashes, you can rise to new levels of success, understanding, and personal fulfillment that you would never have achieved, otherwise.

Is it easy?

No.

Can you do it?

Yes.

As she progressed with her speech, Ms. Rowling says this about imagination:

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

Here is where the speech took a turn that really surprised me.

I was sure she was going to emphasize the imagination that enabled her to write all the Harry Potter stories, but she went in a very different direction.

Instead, she talked about her earliest exeriences when working with Amnesty International and all the suffering that had been experienced by people who had been tortured and killed and the uncertainty, pain, and worry experienced by their family and friends.

I have to tell you, this is totally outside my own experiences, but after reading what she wrote, I have found more empathy for the people who have experienced these horrors.

Compared to them, even in my deepest failures and during the darkest days of my life, I have had it easy and safe.

Ms. Rowling continued and said:

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Imagination is a powerful thing.

It is the basis for all future inventions.

By imagining, we can achieve things undreamed of by others.

Napoleon Hill said, in Think and Grow Rich:

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

This is the power that we have to create new worlds and change the horrors we have inherited from those who preceded us.

We can write novels that inspire millions to read more.

We can develop better products and services to solve problems and offer opportunities to people around the world.

Or, when used negatively, we can imagine worse things that we can do to make the lives of our fellow earthlings even more miserable.

The choice is up to us.

The choice is up to you.

Or, if you prefer, you can choose not to use your power of imagination. You can continue to lead the life you’re living and not imagine the great future you can live if you pursue your dreams and follow your passions.

Again, the choice is yours.

Ms. Rowling closes her speech by talking about her friends. These are the people that offer support and help in times of need and share joy in times of abundance.

Even when I lost everything, I still had my friends and family.

True friends can be even more important than your family, because you may have closer bonds and more in common with them.

You don’t need a lot of friends, but I hope you have a few really close friends with whom you share your life. These friends are treasures worth far more than the rarest metals or the prettiest sparkly rocks.

Share your life with your friends and family. Help each other live to your fullest potential.

Thank you, Ms. Rowling, for an outstanding speech and I’m happy I was able to read it. (If you have broadband, you can watch the video.)

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

Now, it’s up to you.

You have the power to change the world.

Act on your dream!

JD

Rate this:

2.5