- Don’t stick with one affiliate marketing strategy for very long. Once you’ve tried something for a month with no results try something else. Keep jumping around constantly : SEO, PPC, facebook, article marketing, etc.
- Check your sales stats every 5 minutes, and be sure to agonize about it. If this doesn’t COMPLETELY distract you and suck up all your emotional energy, then get one of those tool bars or alert programs that shows you or beeps every time you have a sale.
- Bid on the most obvious and competitive keywords in your market, then spend 75% of your day checking your ad position for your main one or two keywords vs your competitors.
- Take that last tip to the next level – constantly check if someone is ripping of your website by continually checking the Google search results for those one or 2 keywords your making sales on. If you find someone copying your site, make a federal case out of it, contact Google, your affiliate manager, and everyone you know to complain about it. Be sure to get REALLY emotional about it.
- Here’s a big one : spend 80% of your time bitching and complaining on affiliate forums. If you’re at a loss for ideas, here some popular things to bitch about : Google slaps, why your stats are not showing a sale for the last 2 hours, my favorite : how you think the affiliate network your working with is secretly stealing sales from you. Recommend forum : WickedFire.com
- When you’re REALLY out of things to bitch about on forums start making personal attacks against big name affiliates in the industry. If you’re not sure which affiliates to shamelessly attack, here’s some popular targets : myself, Shoemoney, John Chow.
- Do ZERO market research before launching an affiliate offer, just pick out something that looks good and start promoting it.
- Spend all your time buying expensive information products and ebooks on how to do affiliate marketing. Go through these products and learn everything you can, then sit on your butt. Whatever you do DON’T take immediate action on what you’ve learned. Keep waiting for the right time to get started.
- Have the firm belief that they only reason super affiliates are making big money is because they have some special backdoor deal with merchants, or because they have AMAZING account history so they can buy keywords for 0.20/click that would cost you $1/click.
- Anytime there’s a slight discrepancy between your Google conversion tracking and your actually affiliate sales – let’s say conversion tracking show more sales – make a federal case out of it. Contact your affiliate manager and Google, absolutely demand you get credit for those 2 sales you “lost”. Make sure to spend several hours (minimum) REALLY agonizing about this, and how the world just isn’t fair.
Apr 7 2008
Top 10 Ways to Be a Dead Broke Affiliate
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douches all of you!
@amitfan…yes. I told the guy what happened. I deserve to have my backside spanked thoroughly for doing such a thing. Giving out information…what was I thinking.
SlightlyShadySEO,
I have about 10 comments on wickedfire and none of those had anything to do with commenting on anyone personally or indirectly. I was able to get on the site a few minutes today, but it did not last. Sometimes I can’t get on not matter what computer I use (home, work, library, etc…)I guess I was banned because I did not have enough comments. Maybe I should have had more comments. Comments like…
…yeah dude uhh…
…those newbs..yeah…
…We rock yeahhhh…
And what other mindless gibberish those WF guys call conversation. So if I am banned then so be it. I’ve got better things to do. I am guilty of #1, #5 and #7. Today is the last day #5 will be a problem.
Yeah that’s fine. Whatever. I don’t know of your account, and I couldn’t ban you if I wanted to. Just don’t take it out on everyone.
amit!!
LOL
amit!
LOL SHIT
Hate to admit it but I’ve done a few of those things myself.
Thanks for the setting me straight.
WickedFire Members!
I’m a lurker, I get a lot out of the forums. Hopefully i’ll have something not already repeated a thousand times to contribute to the forums.
Amit!
Your blog’s one of my favorites, but I was a little surprised you took a swipe at wickedfire. A lot of what’s on that forum is crap n00bs complaining, but it’s probably the most resourceful website for affiliate and internet marketing that there is. Just gotta sift through the garbage…
I also think wickedfire members are over reacting. The overlying theme here is ‘if you could be doing something productive, don’t waste your time on the easy to lounge around places’
NickyCakes can spend 80% of his time on wickedfire, because he has successful campaigns that are already on autopilot for 80% of the time.
I think NickyCakes would admit that he didn’t start out spending 80% of his time on wickedfire.
Amit,
You don’t truly believe that WickedFire is so worthless. You endorsed Audrey’s recommendation of WickedFire here, buddy:
http://www.superaffiliatemindset.com/so-how-does-a-newbie-affiliate-get-started/
You have a possibly valid reason for bashing WF. But those readers who remember this post, are definitely going to be confused.
Hi Impartial Observer,
huuum… I would hardly call that an endorsement, only in directly. My point was not to say that wickedfire is total garbage, you can get useful info there as on other forums.
Its just that on MOST affiliate forums, including wickedfire, a lot of people spends ridiculous amounts of time complaining and whining when they could be focused on productive income producing activities.
That’s why I personally completely cut off forums. Although I still recommend a good quality paid forum for newbies. You can learn a lot from them.