The Affiliate Lifestyle Blog

1) Success in affiliate marketing is the result of persistence, a great team (copywriter, web designer, programmer, keyword researcher), and a solid system that you can duplicate for different markets, and understanding how to optimize and scale a campaign.

2) You have to push yourself outside your comfort zone.

I have a good friend who is from Slovenia. English is not his native language and he’s not that great with computers. However, in just 2 short months he’s already learned how to choose offers, built a team, and has launched 4 websites, AND has learned how to write good copy!

3) You can’t get depressed if things don’t work out.

If something isn’t working, you must think about these important questions:

- “What are the other guys in my niche doing, that I’m not?”

- “What can I learn from this experience?”

Next, write down the “problem” on a piece of paper. Write down the variables involved. Write down possible solutions to the problem. Then write down actionable items. Rank the actionable items by importance, then get started on the most important item.

This process will help clarify your thoughts and help you become more objective (AND NOT EMOTIONAL) when launching and optimizing affiliate campaigns.

4) Learning from your mistakes is fundamental to success. If you keep getting the same results, then you need to change your process, or figure out what’s going wrong.

5) It’s ALL ABOUT SYSTEMS! Don’t reinvent the wheel every time you build a new website. Figure out a system to stamp out and optimize sites!

6) Work ON your business, not IN your business! Once you understand this concept, it will set you free, you will be happier and enjoy working more. This is especially important for the little stuff.. it’s always the little stuff that you think won’t take any time but then consumes an hour..

7) FOCUS on ONE thing at a time! Look, I’m not perfect. I check my email while checking my stats while chatting with my affiliate managers on AIM. .I’ve realized that this SUCKS! When I start the day by creating an action list, then diligently work on the list ONE thing at a time, I’m more focused and I get more things done!

8) LEARN from the BEST, SET ACHIEVABLE & MEASURABLE GOALS, THINK POSITIVE &

9) HAVE FUN! We are in the best business in the world.. Let’s remind ourselves how blessed we are and enjoy each moment, working diligently toward our goals for the new year!

Ok so there you have it! Now get back to work!

Good luck in 09!

If anyone is interested in meeting up in Vegas for Affiliate Summit, shoot me an email.. I’m arriving Saturday afternoon.

Affiliate Summit is a conference held bi-yearly that brings together affiliates, merchants and everyone in between.

Basically, it’s a chance to listen to some newbie related topics, visit booth babes, meet your affiliate managers and ‘gangsta’ affiliate friends, etc. It’s going on in just a few days: January 11th-14th, 2009.

I’ll write some blog posts to keep you guys in the loop.

It’s going to be a fun world in 2009, fellow affiliates. Prepare yourselves to fight ’till death!

I mean, let the games begin :)

As many of you know, I’m a competitive research junky. I think the best way to get into a new niche is to deconstruct the top competition: figure out what they are doing, what keywords and landing pages they are using, etc– then build a site using the same formula but better.

The beauty of spying on the competition is they’ve done all the hard work for you. If you see an affiliate advertising on the same keyword for a few weeks in a competitive niche with the same landing page, ya think he’s making a profit? Most likely.

Here’s an inside look at iSpionage:

Okay- now onto the fun stuff…

With the help of Leon and friends from iSpionage, we created an experiment to monitor some of the most expensive Adwords keywords.

The logic behind the experiment was that if someone is paying upwards of $5 to $15+ dollars per click, there is something that we can learn from them.

After a few weeks of gathering data, I downloaded the iSpionage report containing 51,996 ads from Google, Yahoo & MSN from 885 keywords.

If you are curious, here’s the list of high paying adwords keywords.

One of the first things I did was check out the most popular types of words these advertisers are using in their PPC ads…

Here’s the most common words found in description 1 among advertisers. Here’s the description 2 word frequency.

The average length of the Display URL is 23 characters.

18% of advertisers are showing a sub-page like www.mydomain.com/subpage.

65% of advertisers are using www. in their display URL.

8% are using a subdomain.

83% are using a .com domain

Only 40% are using landing pages.

Okay that’s all the analysis I have time for today.

Also check out my interview with the lead developers of iSpionage.

Cash4Gold is a company featured on many affiliate networks including NeverBlue, CX Media and Affiliate.com.

The company allows jewelry owners to send in their jewelry by mail in exchange for fast cash.

For each lead generated through their website, Cash4Gold pays affiliates $12-$13.

While doing some research, I noticed a post by a former employee of Cash4Gold. This post is found here and duplicated below:

I am a former employee of Cash 4 Gold. I did not know much about the company before being hired. On my first day of being hired, I was taught the “Cash 4 Gold Scam” from beginning to end.

1. The “refiner’s pack” that is used for you to put your jewelry is “insured for UP TO 100 dollars, ” according to how much they feel your items are worth, NOT appraised at

2. We receive your “Refiner’s Pack” within 3-4 days, but we are instructed to tell you that it takes “7-10 business days, for us to receive your pack, ALTHOUGH your package has already arrived.
3.Your jewlery gets appraised by hand/magnifying glasses/

a small weight pad, and a bottle of mystery fluid, which your items are then give a value for. Not million dollar equipment or specially trained jewelry experts.

4. Although the payment (check) for your item is dated within 24 hrs of testing your jewelry, we sometimes DO NOT actually send out the check until up to 3-4 days later.

5. We claim a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee or your jewelry returned, BUT THE CATCH IS, that the guarantee is contacting us within 10 DAYS from when your check is DATED. (This begins with the time it takes for the accounts payables dept. to issue the check and also including the transit time for you to receive your check in the mail. **** NOTATE THE COMMERCIALS THAT STATE U GET YOUR CHECK IN 24 HRS.***

5. IF you are lucky you will receive your check around the “7th-10th” bus iness day, AND more then 97% of the time Customers are outraged when they lay eyes on the amount of the check. Some Customer’s even receive a check for 0.01 cents. (TRUTH) Thats including items of great value (Diamonds, Platinum/ Gold and Sterling)

6. They sometimes even receive your valuables and like them so much THAT we CLAIM to not have received the items just so the “TOP” people or even “FAVORED” people can get first dibs on your items. From which point we issued an INSURANCE CLAIM for UP TO 100 dollars. GOD FORBID your items are worth more then a 100 dollars, and when you call in to check on the status of your items, we tell you ” YOU SHOULD”VE ADDED EXTRA INSURANCE ON YOUR ITEMS.” We do not have an actual Insurance company, they use customer service reps as the claim department agents.

7. For those who receive there check within the 10 day frame, GOOD LUCK with trying to get in touch with a cust. srvc. rep before your 10 days are up. Which after your 10 days, your items are “ALREADY MELTED” or NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR RETURN.”

8. For the “LUCKY” people who do get in touch with us within the alloted time frame, we already know what you are calling about. Customers want their items returned, because there
check amount is so insultingly LOW. The first thing a Rep will ask you is “HOW MUCH WERE YOU EXPECTING TO GET BACK?” This way we can know how much to “BONUS” you.

Definition of a BONUS: We issue low checks just to have you call us back if you are smart enough to realized that you just got scammed. For the smart one’s we are paid to offer u a bonus up to 3x the original amount of your check and you accept. For ex: Sally Smith receives a check for $27.86 for a rolex watch(which we dont issue value for), a class ring, a ring with diamond chips, a pair of earrings with emeralds, as well as a few sterling silver pieces, and maybe a few items that were really of no value. Now Sally Smith calls the cust srvc dept, where she speaks to a rep who seems so concerned and will see if she can do better with the amount by speaking to a “SUPERVISOR”. We then place the caller on Mute, and speak to our neighbors or doodle on a sheet, or twiddle with our hair for about 45 seconds, while we are supposedly speaking to our supervisor about Ms. Smith’s complaint. We then come back with an offer to “BUMP UP YOUR MELT DATE or any other lies the cust srvc reps can think of, and offer you a total amount of $53.20 which is a little under double the amount of your original check. In which case if you accept, the cust srvc rep makes a 15.00 bonus off of your transaction. If the cust srvc rep offers you under triple the amount of your orig check, she makes 10.oo in bonuses.

9. If you accept the offer, the deal is done, and you are told that the call is recorded(which most of the time, the record button does not work.)Just a way to make your feel binded by a verbal contract. IF you do not accept the deal, you have to return your check, and it takes sometimes up to a month to receive your items back after we receive the check.

10. If you only want the items that we do not find of any value back, you have to pay a 10.00 shipping and handling fee to have your own items returned, which varies depending on sales for that week. IF sales are good, there is no fee, when we are slow, you must pay.

Cash 4 Gold is definitely not a trustworthy or credible company to do business with. You are almost better off taking your items to a local pawn shop or shopping around for other companies. With the economony the way it is, Cash 4 Gold seems to be a way out of financial stress for some, but in actuality becomes a stress of its own. I would advice you to think twice before sending in valuables or items inherited and of sentimental value. Its not worth it. I am not doing this as a way of Bashing their money making process :) but more so to warn everyone.

Are affiliates becoming pawns to shady companies?

I’m all for making fast, short-term, easy cash.

However, there are some serious down-side’s to affiliate marketing.

I subscribe to Uber Affiliate’s blog. He just made a very humbling post titled “I made $182.64 Profit Last Month.”

Now, if you know anything about Paul, you know that he made $200,000 in revenue with Azoogle in 1 month last year.

So how does someone go from bank to broke in 1 month?

Pretty easily, actually:

Affiliate offers get canceled or expire - This just happened to me today. I have a campaign making $500 in profit/day and I just received notice it’s closing in a week. Gee, thanks for the heads up.

Affiliates steal your ads and landing pages - Yep, with no competitive barriers, affiliates swipe ads and landing pages, leaving you and your once profitable gold mine looking more like a gold pond.

You get CANNED - Networks have all sorts of “Terms And Conditions” - If you accidentally or willingly violate these terms, you will get banned from running the offer.

Without a list, you have no real asset - If you aren’t building a list of opt-in’s, your “business” is more like a sophisticated arbitrage operation.

Networks reduce your payout - Yeah, this happens ALL the time. Let’s say you are making $3.00 on a nice dating offer, then they decide to give you $2.00. Well, there goes your profit margin.. you can kiss that campaign good bye.

You Get SLAPPED by Google - You call your landing page a work of art, Google calls it a poor attempt at adding value. They slap the daylights out of you, and tell you to insert more money and try again.

Your girlfriend dumps you - Okay, this is what happened to Paul :) I feel for you buddy.

So the moral of the story is to become a merchant by creating your own products and getting hoards of affiliates promoting your super duper product. Then you can meditate in a Vipassana Ashram in India while your affiliates are making you piles of cash.

AFA - An average frustrated affiliate who has no game and rarely manages to convert offers profitably. Also an affiliate who tends to look to “gurus” for validation, buys a lot of ebooks, but never takes action.

Yes, we’ve all been there. I was there for a long time. Here’s the game plan:

1) Write your financial goals for the year. If you want to make $100,000, then fine. Divide that by 365 to give you $275/day in profit. Now, how do you get to $275?

2) Come up with a GAME PLAN. If you know nothing about affiliate marketing, then pick a traffic strategy, like PPC or SEO. If you know something about affiliate marketing, focus on what you are currently making money with. If that means PPC, then dedicate nearly ALL your time to this 1 THING.

3) Now, time to figure out what your core competency is. First, what do you enjoy doing? PPC? Do you like managing sites? DO you like managing a team? Pick the top 3 things you like to do, then find someone to do the rest of the crap. You can find someone on rentacoder.com easily enough.. Try a few people to see who’s good, look at their feedback, if they complete the project and are good, then hire them by sending them an email and asking them if they want to work for you.

4) You should know what projects you have lined up. If you are doing affiliate marketing, look at what you are already profitable doing, and then just expand by 1 degree of separation. For example, I’m in the computer help niche, so I want to sell affiliate products like antivirus software, registry cleaners, etc. Don’t go hoping around from one niche to another.

5) So now you should have a traffic strategy, someone from rentacoder who is working for you, and a few offers selected that you KNOW are profitable because you see them all the time. Don’t make the AFA mistake of choosing an offer which you don’t see any other affiliates running.

6) Now get your butt to work. Your time is the most important thing you’ve got, so manage it successfully. Don’t do the AFA “browsing forums” , “checking email”, “blah blah”… You need to be focused! That means keeping track of your time PER project. Keep track of how many ACTUAL hours of REAL WORK (profit producing) you are doing.

7) Now, you should have proper TIME MANAGEMENT skills, you should have a team consisting of at least a designer (don’t ever design your own sites, waste of time- focus on the marketing or copy).. And you should have your PROFITABLE niche selected, and a few offers lined up.

8) Start a… review site, start a direct linking campaign, do SEO, I don’t really care what you do. BUT DO IT. And FAIL. And I mean FAIL HARD and I mean FAIL FAST. You are new to this industry you are going to fail, so give it the best shot you got, learn from it, then move on. Don’t spend 4 weeks building an affiliate site.

9) TAKE ACTION NOW. AND THEN TOMORROW TAKE MORE ACTION. KEEP TRACK OF YOUR PROFIT. Set goals + deadline. IE. I’m making $100 by January 1st. Then tie an incentive to it So you are motivated.

10) OPTIMIZE LIKE CRAZY. TRACK EVERYTHING. LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES. Each campaign you build should be more sophisticated than the last. Sorry, my time ain’t free guys.. I charge $500/hour- feel free to schedule a consultation.. But perhaps other affiliates will help you along..

11) NEVER STOP LEARNING OR GROWING.. ITS YOUR MINDSET.If you are determined, nothing will stop you. Otherwise, you are just another AFA.

Peace.