Beware of Public Affiliate Marketing Forums
April 27th, 2007 by 
Amit
When I was a “wet behind the ears” brand new affiliate I thought public affiliate marketing forums were AWESOME.
Wow! All these affiliates willing to share their experiences, failures, and successes so we can all benefit. Sounds almost too good to be true? We’ll it should be no surprise to you that it is.
Now in the beginning I happened to stumble upon some really quality forums and learned a LOT from them. And for someone who knew next to nothing when I got started, the affiliate marketing forums were really beneficial.
However, public forums are a double-edged sword.
The more successful I became in affiliate marketing,the more and more I realized that most of the advice on affiliate forums was TOTAL BS. Let’s face it… 95% of affiliates on online forums, have no idea what they’re talking about. Most of these affiliates are making a few sales a day. What’s worst is that some of these affiliates think they’ve struck gold and are anxious to share there “breakthrough” with everyone else.
Taking advice from an affiliate who’s making a 3-5 sales a day can be dangerous, since they’re either newbies or have no idea what they’re doing. And if that offends some of you, then sorry, but that’s the truth. If you’ve been doing this business for 3 years and are still at 5 sales a day…then your doing something wrong and have no right to give advice on public forums.
I have completely stopped going to public affiliate marketing forums.
Not only is most of the advice on these forums DEAD wrong, the attitude of many affiliates can also be a hindrance to someone who’s trying to become a super affiliate.
What do I mean by attitude?
Well it’s no secret that a lot of affiliates use public forums to bitch about how badly their business is going, and how it’s Google’s fault, Clickbank’s fault, their spouses fault (for not supporting them), and any number of reason. But of course they never want to fess up and admit that they’re doing something wrong.
This is what I call a victim mindset. It’s really easy blaming something or someone else for all your problems, instead of taking personal responsibility. With this type of thinking, you’ll NEVER become a super affiliate.
It’s just amazing how much time some affiliates waste venting and theorizing about why their sales have gone down. If they spend half as much time bitching as they did working on their campaigns, they would be super affiliates.
One simple fact that some people never seem to get it that : SALES GO UP AND DOWN ALL THE TIME! And they go up and down for a million different reasons, just like the stock market. They’re no grand conspiracy about it, they’re no mysterious program deleting all your cookies or stealing all your sales.
So if you think you’re a victim of Google, Clickbank, CJ, or whatever, GET OVER IT. STOP spending so much time bitching on forums and start building your affiliate marketing business.
affiliate advice affiliate marketing forums
Posted in General Internet Marketing | 
Amit the truth teller!
I can’t agree more. I learned a lot from a few paid forums I belonged to when I got started, but many public forums have become the bathroom walls of the Internet. I remember reading one conspiracy thread about how CB was stealing sales to pay for there company expenses. Half way through I was like - why am I reading the nonsense!? What a waste of time!
Perhaps you can give us a list of forums/blogs that you recommend we read…besides yours of course.
Sounds like great advice! I am starting out (just a newbie) and realized very quickly that people on these forums are just bitching. If they can’t get their campaigns to be profitable, how can they offer advice? I actually took some of that advice in the beginning and all I did was “bang my head against the wall” trying to understand why that great advice isn’t working. Well nothing is working yet so I guess I would try anything. One of these days I hope to figure it out.
Hi Bhavesh,
Keep studying and learning everything you can about adwords, and pay-per-click marketing. You will succeed!
Amit, I enjoy reading your blog. You and your content are a prime example of “sowing seeds of purpose”. I just found you, but will spend some time getting caught up. Keep up the good work!
I couldn’t agree more with this post! I decided to join a paid forum (Wealthy Affiliate) after I grew tired of reading all the BS on the free forums (DP, Sitepoint)… it’s really improved how I approach affiliate marketing.
What paid forums do you recommend?
Another great post Amit, I enjoy reading your blog every day!
I do agree that some of the big forums just have such a high signal to noise ratio that it’s difficult to get any good info.
I’m not sure you can paint a broad brush and say ALL forums are a waste of time, because there are always exceptions to any rule.
Over at the FREE 5 Star Affiliate Forum, there are Super Affiliates and Pros like James Martell, Jeremy Palmer, The X Director of Amazon’s affiliate program, the Affiliate Manager of SiteSell and many others that post good FREE advice. The forum also offers TONS of free valuable tools and tips - for instance check out the new Niche Marketing forum.
I personally answer most questions on the forum and have 4 years of affiliate management consulting experience. Many other strong affiliate managers and even guru types offer advice there too.
I may be biased but I have to say it’s generalizing to say ALL forums are useless. I think there are some that provide value you just need to know where to look.
I do have to agree that it gets old in some forums hearing affiliates complain about everything under the sun being the cause of their lack of success. I really don’t hear that very often at 5 Star though. Not sure why, maybe just the type of people we attract.
Hi Linda,
I absolutely agree there are some REALLY great public forums out there, 5 star affiliate forum is definitely one of them.
It’s just unfortunate that a many of them don’t provide significant value.
Hi Jeff & Cottongear,
Wealthy Affiliate is definitely a great membership site and forum, I was member with them for a while. When I first started I benefited greatly from adwordmentor.com, another great paid forum. However, it’s not as good as it used to be, still a great resource for beginners.
Interesting post, however I think the value of being able to do a few searches and find that someone experienced a similar problem to you and found a solution outweighs many of the negatives of public forums.
And being able to contribute and help people (there’s always someone newer to the game than you) is invaluable in my opinion.
Unfortunately some forums seem to exist solely for people to promote junk - which if anything is dangerous for a newbie as they get sucked into buying killer product after killer product without actually making any money.
One forum I have found to be both very informative and helpful in WickedFire. There’s some excellent tutorials and friendly, helpful, experienced members. (They don’t tolerate annoying sig spam either!)
Overall, I think public forums are certainly more useful to people new to the game but still valuable to more experienced marketers as there will always be someone who knows more than you do about a certain area of affiliate marketing.
Also, if you are promoting marketing related products by being involved in a public forum you can get to understand your target audience.
As a newbie I find your blog interesting and informative.
As said by Linda Buquet in her comment regarding 5 Star Affiliate Forum, it does provide some relative information for new affiliates and internet marketers.
With the amount of irresponsible people making a presence on the internet it is difficult for one to find what is worthwhile and what is not, let along what is legitimate and what is not.
On the other hand some of these new people need to off load their anger and frustrations at not making it into the big time so my guess is they need the blogs and forums that you are referring to. Let them be.
i’m eric. joining a couple boards and looking
forward to participating. hehe unless i get
too distracted!
eric
Hey,
I’m Gerry.
Just saying hello - I’m new.
the other hand some of these new people need to off load their anger and frustrations at not making it into the big time
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anna
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The sales of products does definately go up and down. I have one product that normally sells about 20+ a month. This month I got 5 sales. That is less than 25% of the average. I really don’t know what is happening but I’ll stick with it and see what happens next month.