21st Century Affiliate Marketing

Are you familiar with Site Build It!?

If you’ve visited any of my sites, blogs, forums, and communities, you’ve most likely seen ads and articles about Site Build It! and why I like it so much. Still, you may not have taken the time to really learn about it and why it is like no other online business solution. Site Build It! is much more than just a webhosting company.

It’s an all-in-one hosting, site-building, and online-success-making system that can possibly change a life. SiteSell, the manufacturer, actually guarantees online success if you follow the proven system.

Here’s a short video that explains the product…

Take the video tour, now.

Over 100,000 customers, including me, have already used it to create real online businesses that let us work from home or wherever we want (it’s a Web based system). Sitesell has plenty of testimonials to prove it too. Take a look at their Case Studies page.

Or this page of videos that were actually done by their customers…

I Love SBI

But the best news of all is…

Now is the absolute best time of the year to buy Site Build It!. They have a Holiday Special going on where you can buy-one-site and get-one-free. It ends up being about $150 per site.

(Although Sitesell offers discounts on purchasing two sites at other major holidays, this is the only time of the year where you get the second site free. All the other holiday specials offer the second site for $100 when you purchase the first site at $299. This holiday special is a true buy-one-get-one-free discount. Don’t miss it.)

I know what you’re saying. Why do I need more than one site?

You don’t! You can always give the other one away as a New Year’s gift. Or sell it. Or find a friend who wants a great deal too.

But you might want to keep it. Did you know that the majority of people making a full-time living online have more than one site. You just might double your pleasure… and income.

When you get one site to where it is producing a reliable income stream, you’ll understand why you may want to create other niche-oriented, content-rich sites to increase your revenue with additional income streams. Not everyone wants to manage more than one site, but many Site Build It! subscribers do.

And did I mention that Sitesell guarantees your success. Yep! You can get your money-back if you don’t feel that it will help you build a successful online business. There’s really no risk involved. (If you ask for a refund in the first 30 days, you’ll get 100% of your money back. After that, Sitesell will refund your subscription price on a prorata basis at any time during your one-year subscription period. Their site offers all the details.)

Once you understand the Site Build It! process, you’ll be hooked.

Most people think that all you need is hosting and site-builder software to make a Web site. That’s technically true. But getting people to find that Web site is the key to building a long-term business that actually makes real money. Without traffic your site will be lost in the wilderness.

One reason webhosting is offered so cheaply by so many companies is because of the few resources most websites require. Since most sites get very few visitors, some other webhosting services, not Sitesell, put hundreds of domains on a single server (computer) and rake in the cash from domain owners whose websites sit there waiting for someone to visit.

On the other hand, the Site Build It! system helps you build a site that people are looking for. Their C-T-P-M system teaches you how to create a site that’s in demand. Once you have traffic, then you can choose many ways to turn that traffic into revenue. Here’s a page that explains their proven process…

Site Build It’s C-T-P-M system for online business success.

Doesn’t it just make sense?

But I don’t know anything about the Internet, you say. Or HTML. I’m no computer geek, you’re thinking.

Can you send email? Have you used a word processor? If you can do that, you can build a Site Build It! site. It’s really a simple process that is doable by anyone. All you need is the motivation and commitment to follow the process.

If you can’t do that then Site Build It! is not for you. It’s not “Get Rich Quick.” There’s really no such thing. But if you have the motivation and a little brains you CAN do it.

After all, your success is guaranteed. What have you got to lose.

Here’s where you can go to read about that guarantee…

Site Build It’s order page with a link to the guarantee.

And maybe use that Buy-One, Get-One-Free Special to start a whole new life.

But hurry. This holiday special offer ends at midnight on December 25, 2008.

(If past history is an indicator, there is a good chance that the offer may be extended until just after January 1, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Don’t procrastinate; you don’t want to miss this special.)

Who knows, perhaps you or someone you know will be able to change your, or their, life in 2009. Why give someone a gift that will be a flash-in-the-pan and will be forgotten or ignored in a few days or weeks. Give the gift of Site Build It! and help someone develop one of the most important skills of the 21st Century.

Do it for yourself or someone else you care about.

I’m happy that I am a Site Build It! subscriber and I’ll be adding a lot to my site in the coming months.

I hope you’ll be one of the new SBI success stories in 2009.

Act on your dream!

JD

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2.9

Ken Evoy just released the new, updated, 2008 edition of his highly acclaimed Affiliate Masters Course.

So, what is the Affiliate Masters Course and what is it all about?

From the introduction to the course:

The Affiliate Masters Course is an intensive 10-DAY course on becoming a high-earning affiliate champion.

How? By “building income through content,” the proven, C-T-P-M way!

An affiliate business is one of the easiest ways to get your feet wet in e-business. You send visitors (i.e., potential customers) to a merchant’s Web site that you are representing. If they buy or complete a required action (for example, fill in a form), the merchant pays you a commission. No fuss, no muss!

That, in essence, is the beauty of the affiliate concept. You can be up and building an online business in record time, at minimal risk. Top-notch merchants supply everything (i.e., excellent products, ordering, credit card processing, and delivery). All you need to do is to put yourself in the path between customers and quality merchants… and earn a commission for your efforts.

So what’s the best way to put yourself on that critical pathway?

That’s what the course teaches you, the best way to put yourself in the path between interested customers and quality merchants.

From the introduction to the Affiliate Masters Course:

Upon completion of this course, you will have the power of C-T-P-M working for you, helping you to build a flourishing, profitable and stable online business. With the right process, you get the right results!

Be forewarned about the Affiliate Masters Course, though. The material we cover will be extensive in scope. It will require effort and commitment on your part, as does anything important that yields rewards. Most folks have to train or go to university for years to prepare to earn a substantial income stream. Your mini-university course will accomplish this by the end of this e-book.

I don’t mean to scare you. All of it is manageable. Take your time to digest the information properly before you start to work on the prescribed action steps.

Use the Goals-of-the-DAY and Ongoing Goals as your guideposts, your beacons of light. Understanding the concepts will boost your confidence level in applying them. Even as adults, we never lose our need to know why things work the way they do.

It’s critical that you finish each DAY of this course before you begin the next. The DAYS build on each other. Always keep in mind that you are following a step-bystep process.

Please don’t feel that you have to rush. Work at your own pace, as time allows. This is not a race. Sometimes, you will be able to devote large blocks of time each day to the course. At other times, you may have only 15-30 minutes per day to spend on it. In this situation, it could take you a week or more to complete a “DAY” of the course. And that’s perfectly normal!

It does not matter how long it takes you to complete the course. The key is to set aside a realistic amount of time each day to “do” the course. You’ll find it was time well, no best, spent.

I downloaded a copy of the new edition this morning and I’ve been reading through it with interest.

Here are the 10 days and what you’ll learn:

DAY 1 - Intro To Affiliate Business Basics
DAY 2 - Brainstorm Your Site Concept
DAY 3 - Develop High-Profitability Topics
DAY 4 - Plan Your Monetization Models
DAY 5 - Refine Final Concept And Register Domain Name
DAY 6 - Build A Site That Gets The Click!
DAY 7 - Build Free Traffic
DAY 8 - Build Relationships
DAY 9 - Know Your Visitors
DAY 10 - Monetize!

It’s good to see that the time-tested, proven steps for building your affiliate marketing business are still here (as I knew they would be), but the web has changed since the last version and some of the sites and tools are new.

I don’t remember if I first studied, several years ago, the Affiliate Masters Course or Make Your Site Sell!.

At the time, the Affiliate Masters Course was a free, multi-part, course delivered in email using an autoresponder. Make Your Site Sell! was a huge ebook that cost about $20.

After studying both of them, I rebuilt several of my websites and, over the next few months, I started making affiliate sales and began to earn regular commissions.

Later, when Site Build It! was introduced, I subscribed and studied all the training materials and the step-by-step Action Guide in order to build a profitable site.

Now, I’m applying what I’ve learned over the years to the Squidoo lenses, websites, blogs, forums, and social networking sites that I own and/or manage.

The more I learn, and the more I apply it, the more I earn. You can, too.

The Affiliate Masters Course is one of my very highest recommendations. Download it today and start your journey to becoming an affiliate marketing master.

Act on your dream!

JD

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2.8

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

• Do you earn money - regularly - from an affiliate program?
• Would you recommend it to your closest friends and family?
• Is it fair?

I regularly earn good commission checks from several top affiliate programs and I want to tell you about them.

I created a new page on this blog, Top Affiliate Programs, and I’ll be telling you about the dozen or so affiliate programs I value highly and enjoy promoting.

Now, before you go look at them, you have to remember my niche is earning money while working at home with your own affiliate marketing business.

So, if you’re looking for tools and services to help you in your affiliate marketing, I may have something of value to recommend to you.

Perhaps your niche is something totally different. In that case, my recommendations may not be very helpful.

Affiliate marketing is a wide niche with thousands of merchants and service providers.

But, let’s give this a try, anyway.

What is your top affiliate program?

Please feel free to comment on this post and tell us about your marketing niche, the merchant or service you promote, and why.

Feel free to link back to your own website or blog, but don’t post any affiliate links. Any comments that contain affiliate links will be deleted. Promote your business offerings on your own site, not mine.

But, again, feel free to link back to your site or blog to a page that has more about your top ranked affiliate program.

I think that’s fair. Do you?

Without a doubt, my top affiliate program is SiteSell’s 5 Pillar Affiliates and the primary service is Site Build It!

You can learn more about it on my Top Affiliate Programs page on this site.

So, what’s your opinion?

What’s your top affiliate program. Please limit your comments to one program.

Act on your dream!

JD

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2.5

If you don’t already know it, I’m a huge fan of Site Build It!, Ken Evoy, and their 5 Pillar Affiliate Program.

I’ve joined and tested hundreds of affiliate programs, and the 5 Pillar Affiliate Program remains at the top of the list.

You can earn generous commissions from each sale, and recurring commissions from each annual renewal. This is true lifetime commissions, and the folks at SiteSell go out of their way to make sure you are credited for the sales you make.

It is a two-tier program, so you can earn residual commissions each time someone you refer to the affiliate program makes a sale.

SiteSell offers outstanding training, a regular newsletter for affiliates, great promotional tools, dedicated affiliate managers, and free members-only forums.

The 5 Pillar Program remains one of my highest paying and most reliable income streams.

Have you joined, yet?

It’s free, you know.

Come learn more about the Site Build It! 5 Pillar Affiliate Program.

If I were going to recommend only one affiliate program, this is it.

Act on your dream!

JD

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2.5

I was reading the members-only SiteSell forums and read Ken Evoy’s announcement of a revised results page showing hundreds of websites created with Site Build It!

Not only can SiteSell show hundreds of successful websites, they’re actually finding it more difficult to revise the page.

Why? Because there aren’t enough successful sites?

Hardly!

It’s because there are so many successful sites that they are finding it difficult to pick only the best for the results page.

A few years ago, when there were only about 60,000,000 active websites, an SBI webmaster could make the results page even if their site was only in the top 3% of all sites on the Internet.

Now, with the number of active websites somewhere between 100,000,000 and 160,000,000, you have to rank in the top 1% of all those sites to be listed on the Site Build It! results page.

What other webhosting company do you know of that shows hundreds of websites that rank in the Top 1% of all sites on the entire Internet? The really important thing is that the vast majority of those sites were created by normal, non-technical people who wanted to build a successful online business, and, in many cases, the sites they built are outperforming websites created by experts.

These are normal people, some of them probably a lot like you, who have followed the Site Build It! Action Guide and have built high-traffic websites in only a year or two that have risen to the top of the heap. Most of them knew little or nothing about building an online business before they subscribed to Site Build It.

If they can do it, why can’t you?

Seriously.

Act on your dream!

JD

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2.5

It’s scary trying to build a successful online business when the great majority of websites do not succeed in attracting new visitors and making the sales you need for your business to grow.

Site Build It! offers the tools you need and a proven step-by-step process for building an online business that offers a much better probability of succeeding.

During the special offer, instead of paying $299 to subscribe to Site Build It! for a year, you can choose to pay $399 and get two subscriptions.

Keep one for yourself and give one to a friend, associate, or someone in your family.

(Note: even if you look at this posting after the Halloween special has expired, the above link will still take you to the SBI order page - and - if there is a current special, the image will inform you. How’s that for keeping you informed of any special promotions for Site Build It?)

Give the gift of Site Build It! to someone who is newly retired and wants something new to do or to a college student for building an in-demand skill for the real world.

There are so many possibilities.

Take advantage of this special and it may help you change your world.

Act on your dream!

JD

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2.5

Yesterday, in the 5 Pillar #291 newsletter, Ken Evoy announced the introduction of Snippet Build It! This is a tool that can be used by 5 Pillar affiliates to build links to over 60 landing pages for promoting Site Build It!

Many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the rocks weren’t quite hardened, Sitesell was selling some of the best ebooks ever published. Make Your Site Sell! was the Bible of online marketing that helped me start building my marketing business. Now, it’s a free download and there is a lot of very valuable information in the 1,500 or so pages of this ebook. I still refer to it now and then.

In addition to outstanding ebooks, Ken wrote a number of courses that were delivered via email. I remember taking all of those courses as they were introduced and updated. I still have several of them in a 3-ring binder, and they are covered with notes and bright yellow highlights. Now, these courses are available as free downloadable PDF files. I still highly recommend my favorite, the Affiliate Masters Course, because it offers as much as some courses that cost around $100 and you can download it free. It was always free and still remains free.

Over time, to make it easier for Sitesell’s 5 Pillar Affiliates to market these products, Ken introduced Page Build It! - a tool for building customized gateway pages. Around the same time, give or take, the Build It! tool was introduced to make it easier for affiliates to build web pages (or just snippets of code) that combined text and graphics. This was a cutting-edge marketing tool when it was introduced.

Now, I hope you’ll excuse my memory, but a lot of water has gone under the bridge since these tools were first introduced, so I may not have all of this exactly right, but I believe the gist of it is accurate.

These tools for building pages and code snippets eventually lead to the first, less-than-impressive versions of Site Build It! But, Ken and the folks associated with Sitesell were not content with what SBI was and continued to improve it and add new features.

Now, several years later - a very long time in the online marketing world - Site Build It has become an incredibly effective tool for building online businesses. More tools are added all the time and older features are updated continually.

So, as I said, Ken announced yesterday that Snippet Build It! was available and I just now spent about a half-hour playing with it.

I am impressed!

What used to be the Build It! tool has been streamlined and greatly improved. Now, 5 Pillar affiliates can easily and quickly create links to over 60 different landing pages that tell the story of SBI and why it makes sense to use it rather than traditional webhosting.

It’s easy to go to the page, select either text or image, select the desired landing page, and build a link.

If you select text, and a landing page, you can type the text you want in the link and see the link created as you type. It makes it simple to try several phrases to see which one you like, and then simply copy and paste the HTML code to your websites, blogs, and other places on the web. The text links in this article were created using Snippet Build It! as a test of using the system and it is easier than hand coding the links as I normally do.

Not only is it easier, the landing pages are grouped by their order in the buying cycle, and this is explained in an excellent article that was also released yesterday.

Why is that important?

I’ve gotten into a rut of referring prospects to just a handful of the many pages that are available. Now, by using Snippet Build It!, it will be much easier to choose just the right page to link to, depending upon the point I want to make in an article or advertisement.

This combination of being easy to use and providing a full list of the available landing pages (and this number is growing all the time) helps me provide the information you may need in order to make your final decision to buy, or not to buy, a subscription to the Site Build It! system - or to become one of our affiliates and make money promoting the best way to build an online business.

In addition to text links, Snippet Build It! makes it easy to build graphics links using some new banners, buttons, and logos.

For example, the following is a link to the Site Build It! main page, and was created in less than five seconds:

The new graphics use less text and more people. They use more right-brained emotion and less left-brained logic.

Now, I’m a left-brained logic kind of guy. I rarely make my decisions based on emotion. I spend a long time learning about something before I buy.

Most people, perhaps you, make more decisions based on emotion and then later justify it with logic.

Site Build It! is great for right-brained people. It is an exciting system that has helped many of its subscribers build successful online businesses, and quite a few have left the corporate world and are now living their dreams and working from home. Of course, not everyone is this successful, but SBI offers the tools and training to make it much more likely to succeed.

Many people have said they were exposed to SBI and didn’t believe that it was as good as many of us believe it to be. So, they moved on and built websites using other services. After a year or two of butting their heads against the technical hurdles, they remembered Site Build It! With more experience, they were better able to judge the benefits SBI offered and some bought on the spur of the moment.

Rather than regretting the purchase, most of them regretted wasting a year or two trying to build their online businesses the hard way.

Yes, some people do not do well with SBI, and some people don’t like what they can’t do with SBI - so Sitesell offers a money-back guarantee. You can’t lose by trying it.

Oops, I’m getting off track. Back to Snippet Build It!

The new graphic images are more colorful and appeal more to right-brained people, in my opinion. I think they will be a welcome addition to the marketing tools offered to 5 Pillar affiliates.

But, nothing is perfect.

A few minutes ago, I offered my opinion about the new marketing tool on the members-only SBI forum.

I think it is a huge improvement over the older tools and I welcome the ease-of-use and organized listing of the more than 60 landing pages we can promote.

On the other hand, I believe we need a wider variety of graphics that are specifically targeted to each landing page.

But, you know what? I don’t doubt that Snippet Build It! will be improved over time and that we’ll see more and better-targeted graphics to go with all the other marketing tools that Sitesell provides its 5 Pillar affiliates.

It’s easy to recommend something when I know from first-hand experience how much it has helped me build my online marketing business. I’m working from home 100 miles from the nearest traffic jam and loving it.

I don’t believe I would be where I am today if it weren’t for what I’ve learned from Ken Evoy and all the many Site Build It! webmasters who help each other on the free, members-only SBI forums.

I’m a very satisfied SBI customer and have many plans for expanding my Act On Your Dream! website.

You know what?

At first I balked a bit at spending $300 a year to build a website, but after building dozens of sites and blogs over the last few years, and wasting more than what I would have spent to build several more SBI sites, the only one that has never given me any trouble at all is the one I am building using Site Build It! Over time, that becomes more and more important, because I’m getting tired of wasting my time and efforts on sites that don’t work or get destroyed by hackers.

I’m one of those hard-headed people that just has to do it my way and I don’t regret all the testing I’ve done. I’ve learned and I’ll be turning more to SBI in the future, except for some of my sites that require perl and php programming to make them work.

I just renewed my subscription to SBI for another year, and a long time before my subscription expires I will have earned back my $300 investment several times over. It’s not an expense, it’s an investment.

Just as Site Build It! is the best tool I know of for building a successful online business, the marketing tools that Sitesell offers its 5 Pillar affiliates continue to get better over time, too.

I am very happy that I found Ken Evoy and Sitesell those many years ago. I hope you’ll find it worth the investment of your time and money, too.

Act on your dream!

JD

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2.5

Brainstorm It! is a powerful niche brainstorming and keyword analyzer module that is only one of the tools included in your Site Build It! annual subscription.

Here is some information from a recent announcement from Ken Evoy (Who is Ken Evoy?):

“Yes. Brainstorm It! *V2* is now live!

Both vertical and lateral brainstorming have been greatly improved. Important new concepts like VALUE Demand and Real Supply provide stronger guidance for content development. “Pink messaging” helps get niche selection “just right.”

And there are a whole bunch of other improvements. It all adds up to the best keyword brainstorming and research tool in the world…

We did a ton of research before launching V2. It’s fair to say that it’s the best keyword tool in the world. And it’s included in the $299 price of SBI!, which, of course, delivers many more tools than Brainstorm It!…”

Site Build It! is a powerful system of integrated tools that help you find a niche, identify key concepts and keywords for writing about your chosen niche, build your website and promote it to the world, and interact efficiently with your visitors and customers.

Brainstorm It! is one of the tools that is used extensively in the step by step process for building your online business when you first start using Site Build It!. Later when you have established your online business, you can continue to use Brainstorm It! to help you find subjects you can write about to extend the valuable content you offer on your site.

I’ve used the new version over the last few days and have found lots of new ideas for topics to write about on my SBI site.

The fact that you can pay much more than the cost of an annual Site Build It! subscription just for a keyword analysis and brainstorming tool that doesn’t work as well is just one more reason for using Site Build It! to build your online business.

I am a happy and very satisfied SBI customer and I welcome these improvements to the tools I use to continue to build my business.

Act on your dream!

JD

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2.5

Sitesell, Inc. recently updated the results page for websites built by their customers using Site Build It!

From a recent announcement by Ken Evoy:

“Results.sitesell.com is becoming a mini-directory of some of the most well-done, informative sites in the world. But it sure is getting harder and harder to to update it.

Picking the top SBI! sites for results.sitesell.com can be a real challenge…

It’s become so much work that we seem to have subconsciously put off an update for over a year! SBIers keep doing better and better. More and more of them are entering the Top 1% of all sites in the world.

So this year(!), we shook it up (requiring higher traffic numbers to “make the cut.”) There are a lot of new faces, but some old ones still in the lineup, too!…

We eliminate sites that don’t have the “real” traffic to justify their Alexa scores. We chop sites that are in categories that are overcrowded. We regretfully drop sites that have been in results.sitesell.com “long enough” (and bring in new ones). And we cut so many others for a variety of reasons. So what you see is just the tip of the top.

One way or another, all selected sites must be in the top 1% of all sites on the Internet. And you can imagine that’s a very nice place to be…

Each time we do this, the new sites stagger me. There is no limit to the niches you can conquer.

I think the most important point, though, is that most of these people are non-techs, just “ordinary” people who have been empowered to do EXTRAordinary things online.

They get the kind of numbers that any professional webmaster would drool over. And the more congested the Web gets, the STRONGER SBIers become. “Regular people” are leaving professional non-SBI! Webmasters and SEOers in their dust.

That’s the power of the Site Build It! process… ANYone can find real, verifiable, online success.

For YOU, our partner-in-sales, this is BIG NEWS!

Why!

Because this is all the proof you need to convince your visitors that SBI! is for real. Real traffic! Real success!”

A while back Ken Evoy gave us a challenge to find any other webhosting company (and SBI is much more than that) that can provide better results for their customers. I spent some time searching and never found a site that even came marginally close.

See for yourself, these are the results SBI webmasters are getting by building their online businesses using Site Build It!

Why waste your time and money using anything else?

Act on your dream!

JD

Rate this:

2.5