I read a lot from the big time money-makers here on DP and the one thing that always comes through is the time and dedication needed to start making even marginal money. A dozen unique articles a day...100's of videos a day...major league SEO work...It's most definitely a full-time job. And that's what some of the new people need to realize. In order to make any real money, you have to make this a full-time endeavor. A lot of us just don't have the time to dedicate to this. In my case, I've pulled many, many all-nighters while trying to get this stuff off the ground. Nothing has ever worked except for PPC. It's not for a lack of dedication and everything else is fine...it's just that it is physically impossible to put the proper time in... IMO, this is something that anyone new to ClickBank needs to consider. You will NOT make money in this if you don't put in some insane hours. And, even then, there's no guarantee (especially with the market saturated with marketers who have far more experience). I know this won't be very popular with vendors here because if a 100 newbie affiliates somehow stumble upon one sale apiece, it's still 100 sales for them...but let's be realistic... Someone could be as sharp as a Ginsu steak knife, but if the time investment isn't there, they won't get anywhere...and if you get to where you want, you better be prepared to keep up that same time investment or someone will push you aside... I'm not trying to rain on anybody's parade, but I think a lot of newbies just don't have a realistic idea of what is needed to succeed...
I agree... to a point... I agree that it takes time and hard work, and time over a longer period, doing things consistently for a long duration. But you make it sound impossible.. I think most people make it sound a lot easier than it really is, but I think youre making it sound harder than it really is. Yes it takes time, but you start small and build up. In an ideal situation you can learn some basics within a month, be earning a small amount of money in month 2, by month 3 you have a much more solid idea of what to do and can start really building something better or beggining to scale up. The next 3 months you do the things that are working and go from making $100, to $300, to $500+ a month - start reinvesting this money, scaling up even more and growing something solid. You CAN do this in your spare time, it just takes dedication, committment. I worked evenings on top of my full time job for 9 months without paying myself to learn this. Just build your business / sites 1 layer at a time and keep working consistently. I haven't responded to this thread because of this... again, it is sort of true, but then again, 1 decent affiliate would make up 100 newbie affiliates, cost me less time in helping them, they would do the work themselves without me having to produce materials, coach them, help them etc - same sales, less effort, it is the big affiliates that I (and anyone) wants really more than 100 newbies.
Understand the concept of leverage, and how to make it beneficial for others to make you money, and all your problems will disappear. It's def. not easy, and yes it's a good move to bowout early if you know you can't hack it. Competitive is an understatement in both vendor and aff's shoes, only the strongest make it anywhere and have to keep hustling to create a sustainable business vs. chasing campaigns for 10 years seeking that one winning ticket. Coming into any business and expecting to be profitable right away or understand every corner is unrealistic in any niche or platform, only problem is working for yourself has much bigger consequences if shit goes bad on you for a long period. If you're still new and getting your feet wet and are already nervous, look at the various other business models and ways to monetize online instead of just keeping yourself locked in a room trying to be THEE BEST 'affiliate marketer' you can be. Think marketing and business on a big picture level there's 1001 ways to make money online and what you're currently trying to do is simply you paying dues and understanding that there is no rock that has been left unturned in this industry. You have to be innovative and diversify what you do, not just be a one man show trying to get clicks on one lander/offer to bank 100K/year..
Agreed about the hard work, but not about the working hours. One of the main reasons why so many people want to do affiliate marketing for a living is because of freedom of when to work and how long to work. Even if you spend 2-3 hours a day working on your campaigns, that's still a progress and you can achieve good results doing so. It all depends on what you determine by "work". Submitting 100's of articles every month doesn't mean you will make a substantial income, because there are lots of factors, which can affect that. It's not about how long you work, it's about WHAT you do during those hours.
I think we can all agree that, as a newbie, you are attacked by a barrage of people trying to sell you the best way to make money online...Everybody's talking you into the biz and most are also trying to sell you into their product or service...Obviously, there has to be a way to weed out the people who are truly trying to help and those who are taking you for a mark. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I don't mind the hard work or the dedication...and I don't mind learning new skills...The hard part is determining who is on the up and up and who is counting on us as fresh meat... I was making about 100-200 bucks a week of profit with my PPC work, but Google kicked me out...So, I'm back to zero and after submitting several youtube videos and 100's of articles with a combined 1 sale, it IS rather frustrating...One cent per hour's work is not a winning proposition...LOL...
Rome hasn't been built in one day .. It's business - Time means money and money means time, whichever you choose. Making a business profitable / Understanding the priorities and crucial factors in your business is a long-term process. I highly doubt and second that - You've either been blind folded while writing those articles / or .. you're just another frustrated newbie that doesn't understand all I've mentioned above. Al.
Yeah, that must be it...just not bright enough to understand you...LOL. I'm a professional writer with experience in marketing and advertising...I fully accept that I haven't learned the nuances needed to dominate this scene, but that hardly means that "I don't understand." Life would be a lot easier if every person looking to extend a helping hand wasn't trying to glad-hand you into buying their ebook, seminar, or represent their product... I know that's the nature of the beast in this biz, but still... Maybe the real money is in becoming a vendor and trying to talk people like me into representing or buying their product... I have no doubt that I'll succeed at this, but it won't be through tilling the same soil that already has 50,000 people working it... After some time reading through here, I'm starting to see a lot of phony-baloney talk from people who are, ultimately, just trying to recruit as many affiliates as possible...Like I said, no problem with that, but newbies need to come into this biz with eyes wide open...
You need to work smarter, instead of harder. I'm working 2-4 hours per day (which gives me time to make fun of many people on this forum) and make a very comfortable income. You need to develop strategies which can be successful with a minimal amount of effort.
It does take a lot of hard work! But like dlm said, you need the smarts too! You have to keep experimenting and keep working hard till you find a technique that's right for you. Analyze your own work from time to time and see where you're doing well and where you're not. Then, work accordingly by developing new strategies. It's definitely not a 'get money fast' scheme. Work hard, find where you're going wrong, improve on it -- and no one can stop you from achieving what you want! I am not all that great at affiliate marketing. Just got into it recently (last year), but there has been a marked difference over the last few months. As long as I am improving, I'm happy. Best of luck.
Everyone is here for a reason, youre right. No one is going to provide you free, high quality info on how to make serious money online for no reason. Also its a paradox, anyone who is making serious money probably doesn't need to post here, or want, or have the time to do so... Having said that though there is a vast amount of info here and on other forums and just on blogs and in videos on youtube etc for free which you can learn from. Also, you say like being a vendor is easier than an affiliate and thats where the money is... true there is money in being a vendor, however if you can't get the basics of being an affiliate, of writing articles that sell, of generating traffic... just of that understanding of affiliate marketing then I doubt you will see much success as a vendor. Imo it is possibly even harder to be a vendor - you can learn to make a few $100 relatively easily as an affiliate and sort of auto pilot it... with being a vendor there is product creation, higher graphics skills needed, more web development skills / technical understanding, and then much more networking, marketing, JVs, not to mention daily CUSTOMER SERVICE... if you don't have the TIME to be an affiliate then being a vendor is "worse". Also arguably the success rate of vendors overall is similar / worse than the success rate of affiliates - look at the Clickbank marketplace - over 12,000 products, 10,000 of them never ever sell, only 1000 of them make decent money, and only 100 of them are making their owners seriously rich.... those are hard odds to operate within if you bet on averages...
Hey Paul, From the heart for you: 1. STOP reading systems/ebooks/curriculum from ANY guru. Feel free to PM me I'll comp you a membership at my forum, bit more fast paced and no signal to noise ratio you'll learn quite fast or you'll learn that this isn't for you even faster. 2. Get on the horn with Google, explain your situation, ask for another chance - trust me it's not that hard to get your stripes back unless you REALLLLLLY fucked up. Get your PPC actions back if thats what you were starting to get good at, or start looking at other PPC providers. 3. It's fucking hard to convert from traditional agency/advertising to the online AM world. The AM world is filled with the brightest and most complex (and shady!) minds on the planet, so don't beat yourself up over it so bad - that same drive and confusion you have right now can be applied to great campaigns. Your english rocks, your writing style is clear/concise, but I think you're easily influenced and now you're let down because you're not achieving what all the guru's said you would if you just follow their guide/ebook.... Becoming a vendor is actually MUCH harder and there are more cracks/corners to understand than with being an affiliate, so no it's definitely not a shortcut, just look at all the daily new products that launch here that are garbage and go nowhere, or that are made by people with your thinking of 'become a vendor = I'm rich'. IF you do become a vendor, you just opened up another pandora's box and you don't even understand the first box yet (the aff pandoras box). It comes with cusomter support, building out profitable campaigns for aff's, technical support, dealing with competitors/their antics, supporting affiliates (while you haven't had any success as one) will be difficult and they will see through you most times.. . . I can go on, but will say YES, once you are confident with your marketing, sure release a product or 10. I'll say this again, you'll never make huge bank from one campaign all year long/round. You need to diversify and adding a few products to your portfolio of marketing efforts will increase your chances of success. So will building a list, filtering that list to a buyer list, JV'ing with others when you do build your products, outside efforts (non clickbank), servicing clients 1-to-1 (like you writing their copy/articles/whatever). Good luck and yeah don't be so hard on yourself mate, there's people at DP that have 10,000+ posts (NO JOKE!) and are still chasing quarters. N.
It should be obvious that making serious money requires serious investment. IMHO: Money = Effort * Skill * Risk. If making lots of money would have been easy (in affiliate marketing or elsewhere) these money wouldn't be worth much because everyone would be making "lots of money". When I was working on cb-analytics.com while still at my day job I worked until 3-4AM so that literally my nose bled on the next day. I spent as much effort on several prior projects that didn't yield any return and I have such projects now even after AM/IM was my full-time job for several years already. You are working and competing with live people who are often quite smart so I don't think you can succeed every time around. So effort and trial and error will help you. And then again you may be extremely unlucky and not succeed at all just like anywhere else. As far a eBooks, programs and such go. I can guarantee you that 99% of the info there is either useless or is public knowledge. That being said it may still make sense to spend money on some of them because I doubt that you know everything that there is to know even in affiliate marketing basics. If you don't want to buy a ebook though your own hoplink so it effectively costs you less than 20 bucks to save you day of going through blogs and forums to figure out the same concept, then you have just spent a day less efficiently than flipping burgers at McDonalds. Nobody would had you a working method for making lots of money because if they know such a method - they would be busy making lots of money, not stalking newbies on forums. And they definitely wouldn't want other people to learn that method, because once something becomes public knowledge in AM/IM it immediately looses it's effectiveness or stops working altogether. While it's true that after you figure out a method either by luck or long trial and error, you may work a few hours a day (or even a week) and the money would be making itself on autopilot... for some time. In some martial arts class I saw a slogan on the wall: "While you are resting, someone else is training"... So if you find success in some field and then kick back you may stay on top for a while. But eventually there will come someone who is just as skilled and put more effort in the same field and will take your place. It may not happen if you are lucky but my personal policy is not to count on luck. As far as I've seen there is no easy money in this world other than luck (and then why not accelerate the process and take all your savings to a casino). Other than that there is only effort and skill (which is the result of well directed effort).
Thanks for the pep talk and thanks to those who weren't quick to insult my intelligence... Just venting a little burn-out and frustration...And some WERE complaining that this forum was getting boring...LOL. I know a lot of people think that making money online is as easy as writing some articles and waiting for the money to come rolling in...It's not like that at all and newbies need to realize that.
As precious said Rome wasn't built in a day.I have seen newbies getting thrilled by rich affiliates and they start aiming high.One of them i knew said that he wanted a jabulani ball from his earnings from clickbank till the end of the month. If you are a newbie or not you should work with patience and focus.That's the key.Even if in your debut you don't do much great analyse what you have learnt.Scale up your expenditure slowly and when you have the perfect know-how grip you would have the chance to scale your earnings exponentially. The first step is something poeple miss.They tend to get impatient or frustrated at what's going wrong and they don't take the right steps to make things right.This is the only step which makes the difference between a failed newbie and a succesful affiliate.When i was a newbie i never got distracted to 30$ ebook claiming 10000$ a month from clickbank.I browsed this forum even when i was not a member for hours daily gaining the most of information.Wrote articles daily,promoted them and regularly checked some flaws if any to scale my earnings.Now it looks i have a tight grip and i can maybe have the freedom to expand exponentially
Full time job that requires hours of work no end? Yes, its very easy to end up like this if you do everything yourself. But the key is to outsource everything that can be outsourced and do only the parts that: can only be done by you OR wish to keep them reserved. If you are a newbie, its not easy to learn what is required - one needs to invest enough quality time to learn the ins and outs (like anything in this world) and a pinch of determination + maybe some luck wownt hurt But if you are successful and built your business properly, you can have more spare time and work a few hours a day if you wish. Many people think that Internet Marketing is easy, but Thers no EASY MONEY in the world because if so everyone would get a piece of the cake and it will not be EASY anymore - its just the balance of things.
I agree here and here is why? I am in the IT field and start many years ago as a programmer. Writing programs is a lot like marketing. Sometimes you try something and it does not work as expected so you figure out another way to do it. You continue this process until your programming project is complete and you have a working product. Say it takes you 6 week to complete something. Knowing all the things that do not work would enable you to do the exact same project in 1/5 the time. You see once you find something that works you can repeating the process without repeating the mistakes. The key is finding that something that works.