The Valley Of The Lost Affiliates...Part one. Note: This post was send to another forum more then 3 months ago, by now I have a nice residual incomestream by giving away free ebooks. In the not too distant past I wrote this to my fellow marketers: Let's ask a very important question; Can you make money online? Yes! You can. But if you think that buying an affiliate program and/or ebook, do nothing and expect the commission checks to automatically come to your mailbox, you are in for a big disappointment. Today I received my first commission check from Clickbank, commissions earned last month $160.00. Now this may not look like anything big but it's a beginning and a solid proof that you CAN make money on the Internet. If it were not, Clickbank would be out of business real fast. You see, those commissions come through people I do not know (and never will) and products I did not know existed. I own a Gold membership of CBmall (Jeff Mulligan's version of the Clickbank Marketplace). Now, if I sit on this and do no promotion, how are people going to find me? Jeff sends all Gold members free targeted traffic for 60 days as a bonus but after that you are on your own. So I started out with doing some promotion with Adwords, I will tell you more about this later. First let us look at what a lot of affiliates do, they follow the general herd. They buy a program or book, join affiliate sites, become affiliates of dozens products, join sites, forum boards etc. etc. and then.... do nothing, or very little. How are you going make any money like that? So what to do then? Here are my 5 cents.... 1 You don't need another eBook or program to get started, stick with what you have for now. 2 You don't need to go to an expensive seminar or sign in with a costly training program. You need to fire up your imagination and start planning, you see, a lot of people just lack the imagination of picturing themselves really doing something they have not done before. Then, second, you have to stick with something and choose your guru, my guru's are Jeff Mulligan and Harvey Segal but it does not matter if you have another "big" earner who has made it on the net. Try to follow his advise and reserve time & energy for a step by step route to success. I would not try to sell moneymaking products, there must be a million others doing the same thing and you have to compete with some very, very serious big shots. You will feel "lost and lonely" first but as you roam the World Wide Web for clues, answers and possibilities to make yourself known on the net, you'll pick up speed and experience. Whoa, my first Adwords campaign really sucked big time and of course failed miserable, my second was a little better but still nowhere near a professional campaign. I am now working on a campaign that is targeted and contains many adgroups, tightly fitted together with keywords other advertisers do not have. You can research all this if you take some time. Don't think you can set up an Adword campaign within an hour, it takes me about a week now to build one that is thought through. I learn from Perry Marshall's Book "Definitive Guide To Google Adwords" and I tell you straight away; that is not some easy "walk in the park", "copy my success" thingy. That is a piece of work that needs to be studied, yes, you need to "work" to obtain success. To be continued... Avwaard PS I welcome any suggestion, idea you may have and I will gladly share with you whatever I have learned so far. If your interested, mail me.