If you’ve been in the affiliate space for awhile you know that these ads have been all over the place, I’ve seen them mostly connected with Acai & resveratrol type offers.

From the articles … “The products at the center of the lawsuit are said to include cosmetics, such as anti-wrinkle creams, diet supplements, and tooth-whitening kits.” Colon cleansing also seems to be targeted.

I’m curious if they are going after just the companies that make these products or the affiliates as well?? Either way, with Google cracking down on people selling google kits, and now this, as an affiliate you should stay away from beefing up your landing page with questionable endorsements & false claims.

So, what do you guys think about this, as an affiliate you are definitely not out of reach of being sued, if not directly, then the company itself being sued may turn on its affiliates for false advertisement.

Lots of sources, here are 3:
Wall Street Journal Article
Yahoo News
TMZ

How easy it would be if I could say, a doctor, lawyer, engineer, IT consultant, architect, etc … but working as an affiliate is kind of vague isn’t it? When explaining it, I usually refer to amazon, as they were one of the pioneers of affiliate programs. I explain to them when they are surfing the web and they see an amazon book on a website, well if they click on that book it leads them to amazon, and if they buy, the website owner gets a commission etc… If that doesn’t work, then I will talk about one of the myriad of offline referral type companies and referral commissions, refer a friend to your bank = get $25, car insurance referral = get a free gas card, etc…

That being said, I still have to answer the question, What I do for a living. I’ve used the following in describing my profession:

• I’m an affiliate marketer
• I sell things online
• I manage websites
• I own an online media company
• I own a home business
• I’m an entrepreneur
• I own an internet business

I’m ready for a new one now, so if you have any ideas, share.
(and no not a spammer )

In relation to the last post, google credited my account, THANK YOU!

I guess having a big tax bill is a good problem, but what is the government going to do with my money but throw it away after some failing company or how about into the black hole of social security. That is one good thing though, about having your own entity as a business instead of self-employed. You can save a lot on social security taxes. (Here are some standard deductions for small businesses)

I have an S Corp., and the way it works is, say you drew a $50k salary throughout the year from your company while your business made $200k in profits. That 200k flows through to you ultimately but is not taxed on social security which is about 15%+. So you just saved about 30 grand on taxes because you had a business entity setup. Same with the LLC I believe.

If you are heading into the realm of doing this full time or are starting to make decent money with affiliate marketing, it can only help to setup a business entity. Choosing an LLC or S Corp. is up to you, but the benefits are mostly equal.

(Disclaimer: I am not an accountant and know nothing about taxes so do your own due diligence)

1. Content, Copy, and Blog Posting

This is the easy one. Writing copy and content for your affiliate sites and blogs is something you should not be doing. (Except for your personal blogs of course ). Hire someone, at $5 – $10 a post or article, this is money well spent. Try elance, getafreelancer, or guru.

2. Graphics, Images, and, Design

Setting up your site or landing page is another good task to pass along. Let someone else fool with the CSS formatting, and finding the perfect image for your header. Apart from the previous 3 sites I mentioned, 99designs is another good resource.

3. Programming or Anything Excel/Data Related

Extracting keywords over the web, formatting them nice and pretty, or other excel macros or tools can save you boatloads of time. I have this one little tool built for me that takes all my keywords, ads, and text, and with the push of a button, makes them ‘upload ready’ for Adwords editor with split test ads and all.

4. Bookkeeping

Yes, this is sensitive data, but keeping track of your daily costs, revenues, profits, etc … can take up a lot of time. Choose a more reputable firm for this, I’ve heard good things about brickwork, personal friday, and tasks everyday. Or you can just hire your wife

5. Accountant/CPA

This is probably the most important hire you can make. Having a CPA to do your taxes is a huge load off your shoulders. Not to mention how much money they can save you. You will probably want to go local for this so you can visit and talk in person. Also, if they can help you setup your business entity, it makes it much easier for you come tax time.

Yes, with all outsourcing there is a learning curve, and you will probably hit and miss a few times. But taking this step can really cause your business to grow! Be interested to know what other crucial tasks you guys outsource …

Here is something I read from the 4-hour Workweek, excellent book by Tim Ferris, you guys should check it out. He also has a blog, which is a pretty interesting read.
The question is are you more efficient or more effective?

Efficient

Being efficient just means that any task you do regardless of importance you do in the best and most economical possible manner. You can spend countless hours optimizing outlook to get all your emails to go directly to their assigned folder, reading and checking your emails, RSS feed, and twitter.

Just because you do something extremely well and efficient does not make it important

Effective

What matters most is effectiveness. As an affiliate marketer, all things being equal, building and testing campaigns is probably the most effective thing you can do. It’s funny though that sometimes we got bogged down by all these little unimportant tasks that get in the way of what really matters.
(Kind of the reason why I put this blog on pause for awhile)

Is there something in your life that needs to be paused and pushed aside? Something to think about, because this hit home with me…

I apologize for just disappearing, I got a handful of emails asking where did I go. Nothing special, just that I really wanted to focus on my affiliate business. Back when I was writing, I was spending a lot of time trying to make my site look pretty, checking my RSS stats, optimize my site for SEO, etc… In terms of ROI, that really amounted to nothing, compared to time invested in building campaigns, testing new offers, and the like. Lesson learned.

Anyways, giving the blog another shot.

So what have I been up to?

After Affiliate Summit in Boston in August, I hunkered down and started to build some big campaigns. Before that I had plateaued for awhile. But since then, I have been able to more than double my net income, which was a huge milestone for me Looking to do even more than that in 2009.

Been working on acquiring premium domains/websites to supplement my affiliate business. I’ll try to talk more about this in a future post.

My wife and I just got back from a 10 day adventure trip to Costa Rica … Amazing experience! We went with GAP adventures, which was nice because with them you can pick and choose which activities you would like to do, and it is not a set schedule throughout the whole trip. We got to go rafting, kayaking, canyoneering, zipline and canopy tour, nature and wildlife hikes, etc …

Here I am rappelling down a 200ft waterfall

Ok, I trust everyone is working hard, especially in this economy!

Good to be back

The Summit

To be honest the exhibition and seminars were mediocre. It seemed the conference was more designed for the networks and the merchants. Maybe it was just me, I don’t know. I was able to speak to some of my affiliate managers which is great to put a face to the name. If I hadn’t already joined with a dozen or so networks, the exhibition floor would have been useful. I just didn’t want to sign up with anyone.

The Networking

This is what made the whole experience worth it. I’m not the most outgoing guy there is, but just to be able to talk to other affiliates was great. Here are just some of the people I got to talk, meet, and shake hands with:

• John Hasson
• Benny from GeekBlogger
• Zac Johnson
• The guys from Prosper 202
• Ian Fernando
• Eric Nagel
• Fellow Dallasite, Andrew Payne
• Wes from Masterless Samurai
• Charles from Art of Leads
• Jimmy Ramos from Somar Consulting
• and Paul from Uber Affiliate

I was looking for Jonathan Volk, but he seemed to be elusive. Anyways, being able to shoot the breeze and talk affiliate marketing was fantastic, can’t do that back home as I don’t know anyone who does this. Such a young and new industry. One thing I recognized is that most of the affiliates I met were either my age or younger. What does that mean? Cool though to see some very young and very successful guys.

Credit Card Roulette

On the last night at dinner, I introduced a game that I use to play when I was working (back in the day). Basically you just order whatever you want, and when it is time for the bill, everyone at the table takes out their credit card. Fan them like a deck of cards and then have the waitress pick one. The lucky card gets the bill. By the way … thanks for dinner Andrew Luckily there was only 4 of us…

All in all it was fun, good to be back though recharged to launch some new campaigns.

My first campaign

Anyways, so I went over to clickbank to find a good product. (That was the only place I knew at the time, or so those ebooks told me). The first product I chose was Auto Lawn Sprinklers. Since it was the summer, I thought it was a good idea. (You can still promote this by the way, owner is a decent guy from what I remember).

After reading Perry Marshall’s adwords book, I gathered about 100 keywords, stuck them into some adgroups and turned it on. The impressions were coming but the CTR was abysmal, I think around 1%. I remember I thought I was a genius when I started placing question marks in my ad titles. This boosted my CTR to around 3-4% … I considered writing an ebook on that 1 trick alone but said “nah I’ll wait till I get some sales under my belt”

Not much luck

I made a handful of sales, but it was a slow bleed. I didn’t know about tracking or managing bids so I just stopped the campaign, one of my top 5 affiliate mistakes – not tracking. Anyways the rest of 2005 and 2006 I dabbled off and on promoting random clickbank products. Nothing really successful, but didn’t lose too much either. I couldn’t devote much time to affiliate marketing during these 2 years because I was finishing grad school, living in China, and preparing for my wedding in the fall of 2006.

My first Profitable campaign

In late 2006, I was now married, graduated, and living back in the good ole’ USA. I held off finding a job for the sole purpose of trying to earn a living from home. Affiliate marketing was actually a side project of mine, I was really wanting to trade the markets for a living.

How I got my first profits was really an epiphany. I had moved away from clickbank and was promoting more retail type products. This was new for me, so instead of bidding on the obvious core keywords I was bidding on their typos and phonetic misspellings. These clicks were extremely cheap .07-.08 a click. You can check out my keyword typo tool under the toolbox tab.

Paydirt!

1 keyword in particular was getting a nice return. I remember logging into my account 1 day, seeing $320 in commissions having only spent about $15! How’s that for a nice ROI?! This opened my eyes and I have been now doing it full-time for over 1 year. BTW, I still have that 1 keyword running, it’s not as cheap anymore because competitors have moved in, but it is still profitable.

It wasn’t until I moved away from clickbank and started developing my own landing pages that I began to see a good return in my pay per click campaigns.

After this, I began to join more affiliate programs, and test more offers. I currently have around 15 campaigns running, and now it seems it’s only a matter of testing around until you find something that works. You will lose money though, as risk is part of the game. Take it slow in the beginning, if you’re just starting out, don’t try to upload 10k keywords and let it loose in one shot, you’ll most likely quit in frustration. Build your campaigns out over time …

I hope this encourages you guys, just wanted to share my little story with you

They were also kind enough to send me a sports bag, 1 pullover shirt, 1 golf shirt, and a 2GB USB pen.

The Networks

Hmmm, I guess I should go and check them out, as I’ve yet to sign up for them. There is definitely no shortage of networks, offers, and affiliate programs that any person wanting to jump into ppc marketing can join. Some of the other networks that I’ve signed up with:

• Copeac
• NeverBlueads
• AzoogleAds
• Revenue Loop
• Xy7
• ModernClick
• Flux Ads

There are also a handful of smaller private networks as well as individual affiliate programs that I’ve joined with. I don’t recommend signing up for any and every network you see. That will add to the mass information overload, as everyday you will get new programs emailed to you, and the affiliate managers hounding you to promote their offers.

Start slow and start small, join 2-3 and check out their offers and pick 1-2 you like and go with it.

Incentives

I just got an email recently from FluxAds offering a $10,000 bonus if you can meet their criteria for 100 days. You might want to check that out. Also Zac Johnson, posted Market Leverage’s incentive this month as well, their double and triple play payout bonus.

So the networks are there, the incentives there, what else do you need?
Have a great weekend guys!!!

Not looking forward to the plane ride, about 15 hours total. The jet lag is even worse. If you’ve ever flown to Asia you know what I’m talking about. It takes a couple of days to adjust to the time change. They are completely opposite the US, about 14 hours difference.

We’re going to spend most of the time with her family, and then travel some and see her friends.
We’re looking forward to it, it will be a good break for me as well, although I am taking my laptop

I’ll try to keep up with this blog while I’m gone, but I know I won’t get much work done. Being able to work anywhere and take off when you want, is one good reason to do affiliate marketing. I can’t complain!