1. Too Many Campaigns

It’s natural, especially when you’re new to the game, to want to move on and multiply. If things aren’t working out, you’ll want to try a different offer, a different niche. If things are going great, you’ll want to expand and build campaign after campaign.

The problem here is that most campaigns aren’t successful from the get-go. It usually takes quite a while to perfect a campaign and really make it work for you. While it’s important to fail fast to succeed fast, you want to make sure you’re not in too much of a rush. Like all things in life, it’s about balance.

2. Too Few Campaigns

Of course, there’s the opposite approach. That is, sticking to one or two campaigns for too long. Whether or not they’re profitable for you is irrelevant. Putting all of your eggs in one basket, regardless of the industry, is not a good idea. What if one of those campaigns takes a nosedive?

Remember, affiliate marketing is not a perfect science. It’s true that most affiliates have seen the majority of their success from approximately 10% of their campaigns, but that other 90% is important. You have to try new things and experiment if you want to reap the rewards.

Plus, this is not a predictable industry (for the most part). There are ups and downs, ups and downs, ups and downs. What happens if you’re only running two campaigns and they’re both going down at once?

The moral here is to find a happy medium between too many campaigns and too few campaigns. Leaning too far in one direction could mean the difference between affiliate success and affiliate failure. Often, it is hard for new affiliates to master this delicate balancing act, which is the real barrier to entry in Internet marketing.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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When you first started out in affiliate marketing, it’s likely that you turned to a popular niche. Ringtones, dating and dieting all spring to mind. As the affiliate lifecycle progresses, we gravitate towards the less popular niches. Why? Maybe because popular niches are overcrowded and there are smaller payouts.

Does this philosophy really make sense?

Does popularity define difficulty? Not at all. Just because there is less competition and the initial payout is a little higher, doesn’t mean the niche is going to be easier to scale.

Then & Now

Think about it this way. Ten years ago, running a mildly successful dieting campaign would bring in a sweet chunk of change. Why? Barely anyone was interested in affiliate marketing. The competition was low and the payouts were high. Why wouldn’t you be paid more?

Now, there are niches that are known for success – the popular niches. The customer demand for these campaigns is high, so they remain fairly consistently successful. Of course, as more people flood to these markets, there is no need to offer the same high initial payouts offered in 2001. That just wouldn’t make sense, right?

Great for Beginners

That system has made the popular niches a great place to start for new affiliates who are looking for the easy route into the Internet marketing world. They would rather stick with the tried and true to make an ok amount of cash each month. So, they push their dating, ringtone, dieting and debt offers as hard as they can.

Everything has made perfect sense up to this point, right? It’s all fairly common sense. Here’s where everything takes a turn for the worse.

Once these new affiliates have their feet wet and are making a steady income, they want to get out of the popular niches and try their luck. It’s as if popular literally means impossible to earn big money from. So, of course, the affiliates pack their bags and head for greener grasses in less established niches.

Why Leave?

This is the big question. Why is everyone so convinced that popular means impossible? I can say with certainty that it doesn’t.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not 2001 anymore. You can’t jump three tax brackets just for trying out an offer. If you are creative and iterate your campaign frequently, you will rock your niche, regardless of its popularity.

If you branch out to a less popular niche, you’re going to have to get creative. There is no “proven path to success” and your water is uncharted. If you stick with a popular niche, you’re going to have to innovate and find a way to break away from the pack. Either way, affiliate marketing isn’t as easy as it once was.

What’s wrong with less popular niches?

Absolutely nothing. You shouldn’t avoid new, undiscovered niches like the plague. But, you also shouldn’t discount the popular niches just because they’re popular.

What do you think the best way to go is? Are you rocking the popular niches or are they just for beginners?

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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That’s why I was so interested when Afftime approached me to do a review. They allow members to check the uptime of their links! Sounds simple, right? It is, but it can also save you valuable time and money.

Let’s say you are running a dating offer. Afftime will help you monitor your links to ensure they are always available, that they redirect to the correct page and that the cookie returned contains your affiliate ID. This means you’ll never waste time or lose money from bad links.

Here are the top three reasons I will continue to use Afftime!

1. 100% Coverage

When you use a monitoring system provided by your website host, you’re opening yourself up to disaster. The hosting could go down and many hosts do not regularly update link monitoring systems. If you want around the clock coverage, a third party monitoring system is the way to go! The cool thing about Afftime is that they refresh data every 15 minutes, so you know you have the latest information.

2. Affiliate Focus

Unlike a lot of link monitoring systems, Afftime is focused on the affiliate marketing demographic. With plenty of special features, an easy to navigate interface and our specific needs in mind, Afftime really delivers. They ensure that none of their work interferes with affiliate analytics and they literally support links from all major affiliate networks. For once, affiliate needs aren’t an afterthought… they’re a focus!

3. Awesome Price

You really cannot beat their price. If you are only concerned about one webpage, you can monitor its links for an unlimited time for free! Otherwise, you can monitor 50 webpages for 40 cents USD per webpage. If you’re looking to monitor 500 webpages, each one will only cost you 10 cents USD. Like I said, you can’t beat these prices.

What do you think of Afftime and other link monitoring services? How important are they to your campaigns?

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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If you have been an affiliate for any length of time, it is highly likely that you have made one of these five mistakes in the past. Maybe you’ve made more than one. Maybe you’re making one right now! Whatever your case may be, check out the five common affiliate mistakes below.

1. Staying Home

Affiliate marketing means working from home for most people. Most of the time, working from home is a huge luxury of working online. Sometimes, however, it can be a huge problem for your business. Working at home is nice, but it’s important that you get out of the house and meet people.

Start by networking on Twitter and Facebook. Look for people you think are killing it at Internet marketing and start chatting with them. Work your way up to offline meetings. Go for lunch, go for coffee. Next? Get passes to the big conferences like Affiliate Summit.

Remember, a big part of Internet marketing success is who you know.

2. Thinking “Extra Money”

Thinking about affiliate marketing as a way to earn “extra money” every month won’t get you very far. Even if it’s not your full-time job, don’t think of affiliate marketing as “extra money”. At the very least, think of it as a part-time job. You can’t show up for a couple hours every other week and expect success.

Affiliate marketing needs daily attention to work, especially when you’re starting out. Make time for it as often as possible. You might have to work all day at your full-time job only to come home and work all night at affiliate marketing. Thinking in terms of “extra money” won’t get you to where you want to be.

3. Not Iterating

Don’t throw something up on AdWords and expect it to make you thousands overnight. Your first couple of campaigns might suck. Actually, your first dozen campaigns might suck. For the best results, make changes and iterate. Your first attempt should never be your last. Keep tweaking and altering until you find the combination of tactics that work! You should always be learning and trying new things.

4. Going Alone

Delegating is important in business. The same is true for online entrepreneurs. If you’re not particularly good at something or don’t have time for something that must be done regularly, outsource the work. There are talented freelancers out there who specialize in what you hate or don’t have time for.

Put all of your focus into what you’re best at. Do what you do best and find other people to do the rest. Hiring freelancers your friends recommend is a great way to get more done!

5. Being Afraid

Most people are afraid of losing money. It’s natural, especially in this economy, to be afraid that you’ll be risking money with affiliate marketing. Don’t let this fear hold you back. Put some money aside every week and save up. Find ways to spare expense, but don’t expect to make money from nothing. That doesn’t happen very often.

Another big fear for most is the fear of failing. The good news is that failing is awesome. Affiliates fail all the time. Only a small percent of the campaigns affiliates try actually turn out to be successful, so don’t sweat it. Keep failing and learn to fail faster so that you can find the perfect formula.

What do you think? Have you made one of these mistakes before? Are you making any right now?

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
I live in Buffalo, NY with my wife & 3 kids. I’ve been here all 32 years of my life. I’ve been working on websites since 1999, but really got into affiliate marketing in 2005 when I worked as a programmer for an affiliate based out of London. By 2009 my affiliate sites were earning me a full-time income.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
My coupon site, ClubCouponCode.com, and all of the scripts that run it. Coupons, new merchants and stats are automatically pulled into the system.

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career?
I first found affiliate marketing back in 1998 or ’99. I dabbled a little, but never stuck with it (dumb move!). When I had the chance to work from home after my youngest daughter was born, I took it. Now that they’re all in school, I’m reviewing my options.

When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I don’t think I have, yet.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Patience. Tons of patience. You also need to know when to walk away from something, or when to push it further.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
AdWords ban has been my biggest frustration. Users were looking for something, I gave it to them, but Google saw it as a thin site & first banned the site, then my account.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Taxes. Personal, corporate, federal, New York State – I hate them all. Sure, paying them sucks, but the paperwork is far worse.

What is the future of marketing?
I think mobile is going to be big. A lot’s going to depend on the nexus taxes, too.

If it’s possible for you to share, are there any particular niches that you currently favor? Or that you aren’t necessarily in right now but that you would recommend?
It’s no secret I’m into coupons. The intent to buy is huge, and your conversions can be through the roof. It’s also highly controversial, whether there’s any value to the merchant or not. Generic coupon sites are difficult to maintain and you don’t see much loyalty in them. Go niche.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
SEO. It’s a fine balance between art & science, but once you get it, the traffic is free and everlasting.

How have you made those promotion methods successful?
Build the right content, focused on the right keywords, and get your backlinks.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
I just finished automating over 600 adGroups for my coupon site using the Microsoft adCenter API. Now when there are coupons, the adGroup turns on. When the coupons expire, the adGroup turns off. I had the same system in place for adWords, too, but that didn’t last long.

Along with developing some new niche sites, I’m thinking of ways to improve loyalty to the coupons site.

What problems have you had with those new projects?
AdCenter’s API documentation is the most complete yet completely incomprehensible document I’ve ever gone through. Luckily, now I understand it & future scripts aren’t that difficult.

With niche sites, I enjoy researching the niche & deciding if the opportunity is there, but I hate building out the sites. Outsourcing content creation makes it bearable.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
Yeah, definitely my education & my previous jobs. I have a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and MBA with a focus on eBusiness. My Computer Science degree allows me to quickly pick up on new languages and write efficient scripts to drive the sites I build. My Masters degree helps me run my business properly & identify opportunities and avoid risks.

I’ve also done web design & PHP programming in my past few jobs, so with 12 years experience there, it helps.

What are your greatest strengths?
I see problems differently than others, and come up with solutions to automate the task at hand or make the system more efficient. It’s the programmer in me, and it drives some people crazy.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
Too many projects on my mind, a messy desk & self-doubt.

What motivates you?
Providing for my family. I don’t care if I make millions per year – I just want to work when my kids are in school, but be able to enjoy time off with them. I’m also on a weekly call with two affiliates, and we keep each other accountable for our actions (or inactions).

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Take care of #1 (that’s YOU!) first.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
Paul Wheatley from ShopperUK.com taught me so much about CPS affiliate marketing & getting the cookie set. Jeremy Palmer is also one of my mentors who took me from a part-time affiliate to full-time today.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
Great question, and I have no clue. I’m definitely not at “enough” in terms of wealth. But I’m also not sure how much longer I’ll be in affiliate marketing. There’s other industries that interest me.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
My wife and I have been talking about buying a second house in Florida. We love it down there, but with the kids in school, can’t flip back & forth as easily as we’d like. But, in 10 years, they’ll be wrapping up high school, giving us some freedom to travel.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
I spend a lot of time with the Boy Scouts. I’m a Cubmaster with a Pack of 30 kids, and a Merit Badge counselor (Geocaching, American Business, Entrepreneurship) for the Buffalo, NY area. Also, with three kids, their activities keep both my wife and I pretty busy.

Also, in the fall and early winter, I put way too many Christmas lights on my house & synchronize them all to music (https://www.facebook.com/KnowltonLights)

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
1997: I would have stuck with affiliate marketing! And bought up lots of domains. There are some niches that are saturated by just one affiliate, who got in very early. The niches are untouchable, and that affiliate is living on royalties.

What is your favorite quote?
“Cutting down your neighbors crop won’t make yours grow any better” African Proverb(?)

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
twitter.com/esnagel. I keep Facebook for personal friends / family, not industry contacts.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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During this time, I have learned a TON about making money online and have made money from so many methods – as an affiliate, an etailer, a coach, etc. Thankfully, I have been pretty successful at all of them. Each one has it’s upside and it’s downside.

I wanted to take a minute to write about the pros and cons of being a full time affiliate as it compares to the other avenues of making money online.

Pro Affiliate Pros

1. Huge Revenue Potential With Little Infrastructure
Seriously, there probably is no easier way to make as much as you can as an affiliate with almost no infrastructure. Imagine being a 19-20-something year old kid making $3,000-$5,000 bucks per day with no staff… Oh and I was living in my parents house. Later on, I went on to make up to $25,000 revenue per day on my best days. Just about any other business, making this kind of cash is going to be tough to do as a one man show. Later I went on to hire Jacob, who helped me maintain a nice level of revenue.

Now as I scale the ecommerce side of my business, I am having to learn all about having warehouse, importing product, hiring and training staff, taking phone calls, merchant processing, returns, etc. Sure, there is a TON of money to be made in ecommerce, but it takes a lot more work to produce similar revenue results. Could you imagine trying to fulfill $20,000 worth of physical products each day by yourself? Impossible.

2. Quick, Low Risk Tests
I can’t even imagine or count how many campaigns I have tried over the last four years. It’s probably pretty hilarious to hear that probably 10-15 of those are what made the majority of my income. I bet my success rate was less than 5%. The great thing about affiliate marketing is, you don’t need to have a huge success rate. The tests are quick, inexpensive (relatively) and easy. Spend an entire day making a campaign that fails? Spend an entire week optimizing a campaign that gets pulled? Big deal. Move on and profit somewhere else.

Building my ecommerce sites to a sustainable, moderate level of profit has taken 6-7 months and took tens of thousands of investment capital. So if it didn’t work? I walk away with 6 months gone and a lot less money in my pocket. Much more risk. The upside here is that ecommerce is going to last longer if it ends up working. Every affiliate campaign has a shelf life that expires. If you don’t keep pumping them out, you’ll end up at ground zero again.

3. Freedom
Seriously… all you need is a laptop and a net connection. Legit. This ties in with the whole one man show ish. Sit on the beach and make money? Few can claim that… (unless you’re trying to sell a clickbank product in which case everybody claims it)

Compare this with running an ecommerce store. Sure you could drop-ship from virtually anywhere in the world but when you’re shipping like we are, you need a warehouse and to import product. To send the product out you need staff.

So… there are a lot of pros to being a full time affiliate if you’re considering it.

It probably sounds like I hate ecommerce, but the truth is, ecommerce gave me a new found love and appreciate for internet marketing. It’s way more work, but it’s fun to me.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
I’m married with two kids, currently 36 years old, and I hail from the New England area originally. I first discovered affiliate marketing back around 1999 or 2000, but didn’t actually try it out for real until 2005.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
Survival. The way the economy has been over the past decade or so, to be able to survive & thrive is an accomplishment. Also, although I’d been on panels twice before, moderating my own session at Affiliate Summit West 2011 in front of a large crowd was fantastic. That was a turning point in my own sense of confidence.

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career?
I first learned about it back in the early days when Amazon and CDNow were getting going, but I didn’t give it much thought. I wasn’t working online back then, and the internet was strictly entertainment for me. I built a few sites on some free hosts, but didn’t really try anything substantial until 2004 when I began working with CafePress.com. I was re-introduced to affiliate marketing in 2005. I chose this as a career for one very simple reason: it allowed me to work at home and be at home with my kids.

When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
Oh, I haven’t hit the big time yet. I realized the potential of it almost immediately, and I’m on the right track now after dabbling with many, many methods and models.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Perseverance, creativity, forward-thought, diversification, and a high tolerance for risk – not in the sense that one must invest a lot of money (though that’s an option) but that for every success one has, there will be ten failures.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Pretty much things that came about because I either didn’t know or ignored the very things I just mentioned. The work I did with the print-on-demand industry came to a halt because I was too short-sighted. The book I wrote in 2007 failed because I didn’t give it enough time. My failures have been small, fortunately. Nothing spectacular – but all learning experiences.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Programming and site maintenance. I’ve got decent skills, but I’m not a pro, so I know just enough that I’m constantly fighting with myself between fixing something (or solving something) on my own versus hiring someone to do it for me. But I don’t enjoy it like I used to.

What is the future of marketing?
Saying “mobile” is the easy way out of this question because it’s the common wisdom. I don’t often like common wisdom. I see mobile as something that is a little overrated, frankly, but that’s a whole ‘nother answer to a different question. I’m going to say the blending of social (or new) media and traditional media. I think we sometimes tend to see television, radio and even billboards as things separate from the internet and online marketing. I think the future is in a blending – billboards with technology to display live data from a website. Interactive television. Radio you can interact with via an in-dash screen in your car. We’ve just seen the very beginning of things like electronic ink and screens you can roll up and take with you. All these things are new marketing opportunities. So to me, saying “mobile” is both too vague and not not broad enough, if that makes sense.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
I’m a big fan of personal recommendations and the power they have. I tend to favor social media as a result. More than anything though, I like to integrate affiliate marketing into a bigger picture. Making it a part of my overall podcasting and consulting efforts makes more sense to me than setting up dozens unconnected mini-sites and hoping Google doesn’t slap me down. I’ve tried running multiple sites like that with limited success. Nothing wrong with doing it that way; it works for a lot of other marketers, but it’s no longer a way I prefer to go about it.

Have you made those promotion methods successful?
Not extremely, but the risk is that the level of success I have is directly tied to the popularity of my shows and how much consulting work I get.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
My passion since 2008 has been podcasting. In the past six months I’ve launched three new shows and will soon – in the next week as I write this – be launching a podcast consulting service. I love to teach, and I love podcasting, so it’s a great fit for me. It’s all happening at QAQN.com.

What problems have you had with those new projects?
Time, time, time. Being a work-at-home dad with a wife that works full-time out of the house, finding time is the most problematic thing in my life. I record at least 3-4 hours of content per week, and for every hour there’s another hour of production required (clean-up, editing, uploading, posting). Those are just the shows… site maintenance, research, guest scheduling and re-scheduling, working with merchants and advertisers… it all comes down to the number of hours I’ve got available.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
Nothing at all, which is why it has taken me a few years of trial and error to get on the right track.

What are your greatest strengths?
I have a lot of ideas. My mind is almost always churning.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
I have a lot of ideas. Couple that with enthusiasm and I tend to drop current projects that haven’t paid off yet in favor of whatever I’ve just thought of. It’s a problem I’ve had over the years, but I’ve started to get a handle on it.

What motivates you?
How much fun something is. If something isn’t fun, even if I think there’s going to be a decent payoff, I won’t get involved. Life is too short and there are lots of ways to get ahead in life that include having fun.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
I had a supervisor once when I was running a warehouse who said, “only touch something once”. He was trying to teach me about efficiency. If you’ve got something in your hand, it takes less time overall to deal with it right then and there than to put it aside and go back to it later. I strive for efficiency in almost everything I do – sometimes to my own detriment as I spend too much time figuring out ways to shortcut an unfamiliar process.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
Deborah Carney impacted me the most because without her introducing me to affiliate marketing and pushing me to learn more about it, none of what I’m doing now would have been possible.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
Egomaniacs. They know who they are. If they’re reading this… they know I’m talking about them. I’m not going to name names. There are a couple of stories, but none that haven’t been put to rest where they belong.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
My goals are modest, and most of them have already been realized – nice house, great family, time spent loving what I do. How much is enough? Enough to be comfortable. If money was no object, I’d be playing poker.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
In my nice house with my great family, comfortable. And maybe playing some poker.

How do you like to spend your free time? What does work-life balance mean to you?
Working at home, I have to walk a very fine line to balance work and family. It doesn’t necessarily help that one of my podcasts, Geek Dads Weekly, blends the two. I find balance by not keeping set hours, by allowing my kids to interrupt me when I’m working (unless I’m recording with a guest) and by making sure that when they’re awake, I don’t over-schedule myself. Work/family balance means working when everyone’s asleep most nights.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I was 18 in 1993, right about the time that the World Wide Web came into being (not the internet, the World Wide Web). I didn’t really get hardcore into computers until six or seven years later. If I could go back to 18, I would get involved with that. I was there on the ground floor but didn’t realize what was going on.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
It may sound trite, but my kids. I know, I know, every parent says that, right? As far as unfulfilled dreams… I’d like to visit Europe and Australia.

What is your favorite quote?
“Don’t quote me on that” – multiple sources.

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
On Twitter I’m @QAQN and on Facebook it’s danielmclark and talkqaqn.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
Originally from Pittsburgh, I live in Indianapolis with my husband and two young daughters. I started my first website in 1996 but took a detour to become a lawyer before eventually ending up in affiliate marketing in 2004.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
I was most excited when my company Sunshine Rewards celebrated its 5th anniversary because I had always heard that most small businesses fail in their first 5 years. I was also incredibly honored to be nominated as an Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award finalist for Affiliate of the Year this year.

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career?
I literally followed the URL trail. I saw that other sites were advertising major brands and I wanted to know how. I used a tracker to follow the affiliate links and stumbled into a few affiliate networks. I don’t think that I chose affiliate marketing really. It just evolved over time.

When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I realized the full potential of affiliate marketing when I attended my first Affiliate Summit in Orlando. Within a month of attending, I was able to more than replace my income as an attorney as a result of all of the connections and education I acquired while there.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Networking. In one way or another, you need to make and cultivate relationships with others.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
My biggest failures have come from comparing myself to others in the industry. The reality is that every site is different and every affiliate marketer does things a different away. It can often be hard to get the attention of big brands or boutique sites when you don’t have a website with incredibly high traffic. Your traffic might be of a great quality, but it is frustrating the degree to which quantity matters so much.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
About a year into launching my loyalty site, there was a major backlash against such sites because a new program was being sold that literally allowed anyone to start their own loyalty sites. People with no business being in affiliate marketing started up sites and defrauded a lot of merchants as well as customers. Not only did revenue take a hit because competition increased greatly overnight, but the reputation for being a “rewards” site became a black mark. I had to continue to reassure my merchants and my customers that I was the real deal and in affiliate marketing for the long haul and not the quick money.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
I don’t like dealing with customer disputes as a result of tracking. The more that I see things not track properly, the more frustrated I become.

What niche has worked best for you?
My loyalty site has definitely worked best for me not only in terms of revenue but also in helping me learn more about the industry as a whole. There are not many sites where you need to know everything from text links and banner links to coupon feeds, product feeds, API reporting postbacks, and widgets.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
I’ve been working on expanding my personal brand more. While a part of my day is still spent on the day-to-day affiliate work, most of it is spent networking, guest blogging, speaking at conferences, and writing articles for various sites and publications. I also did my first technical edit of a book that is due to be released this Spring.

What problems have you had with those new projects?
The only problem is that I could spend 24 hours a day doing it and sometimes that sense of “marking off a list” or completing a project is lost when you just continuously keep moving through networks.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
My job at LexisNexis definitely prepared me for spending all of my time alone in my office all day! I worked for years as a remote employee and my main contact with others was via conference call, email, and instant message. It’s definitely different than working in a traditional office environment.

What are your greatest strengths?
Persistence.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
Being too persistent!

What motivates you?
I’m constantly motivated by seeing all of the creativity around me. I love attending seminars and webinars and reading industry blogs. When I see others being successful, I know that I can be, too.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
I do not like to work with people who are only concerned about what is in it for them. I’ve had a number of conversations with people who wanted me to teach them everything that I know but when I asked them for a favor down the road, they acted like they scarcely knew who I was.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
In 10 years I would like for the day-to-day tasks of all of my sites to be done by other people so that I can spend my “work” time only writing and consulting. And by “work” time, I mean less than what I spend now.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
I spend my free time hanging out with my family, running, Zumba, and having lunch with my friends. I never thought that I would be one of those “ladies who lunch” but I find that it really helps keep me balanced in a lot ways. I get new ideas for my sites but also get to completely escape my work. Work-life balance to me is working until I don’t enjoy it anymore and then playing until I miss the work.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I don’t think I would change anything at all. The route through being attorney taught me a lot about life, hard work, and people in general. It helped pave the way for me to be open to other non-traditional careers.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
I guess I’m supposed to say my kids, but I’m not sure that I can count them because they shape me as much as I shape them. My only unfulfilled dream would be to have as much money as I want so that I could do absolutely anything. But I have a feeling that achieving that kind of dream would bring with it a whole host of down-sides that I can’t even imagine!

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
My Twitter is @sunshinetricia.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
I’m 36 years old, was born in Sydney, Australia and have been living in Brisbane for past 9 years. In 2008 I became a full-time internet marketer.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
When I first came across affiliate marketing, it made sense to me so I gave it a go and within a couple of days made my first sale. The profit was only about $1 but I was ecstatic… it really worked!

I was sick of my job so I made a goal to build up my affiliate marketing business to a point that I could quit my job by my next birthday (which was about 5 months away). After working hard for 8 months I was finally able to realize my goal and quit my job forever! What a beautiful day that was. It was my most satisfying accomplishment. Every day after that has been great.

Another significant accomplishment was becoming one of the top 100 Clickbank affiliates. I was quite surprised when that happened.

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career?
By accident I learned about affiliate marketing. It was while I was trying to build up my network marketing business online and using traffic exchanges that I kept on coming across affiliate marketing guides. Eventually I bought one called “Two Minute Profits” by Alok Jain.

The reason why I’ve stuck with internet marketing, despite all the challenges I’ve had along the way (it hasn’t been smooth sailing!) is that I love the idea of being able to work anywhere in the world and at whatever times and whatever pace I choose.

Some days I’m motivated and work really hard. Other days I just couldn’t be bothered so I do something else. I spend a lot more time with my family. It’s great!

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
To be a successful affiliate, you need to know and do the following things:

- Never give up. So many times I see people try something once, or maybe even a few times, and when it doesn’t work out they just give up. Nothing worthwhile is easy. My advice is to find someone that is having the success you want to have and follow their strategy completely until you have the same success
- Stay focused. Many budding affiliates make the mistake of buying every single new affiliate strategy that’s released. You’ll never have success this way. There are a kazillion different ways to make money online but if you spread yourself thin you won’t make a cent.
- Provide quality information. Whatever type of affiliate strategy you use, if you want to be successful, you need to give people what they want. Like Zig Ziglar says, “you can have everything in life that you want if you help enough people get what they want”.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
The internet marketing world is constantly changing. When I first started out, Google Adwords was the big thing, i.e. setting up profitable PPC campaigns. That’s how I made my big break and a lot of money.

2 years later my Adwords account was permanently suspended (along with thousands of other affiliate marketer’s accounts). My income dropped by more than 50% overnight (literally).

Fortunately, I saw the change coming and had other strategies in place.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
One of the strategies I already had in place before my Google Adwords account was suspended was building a list in the internet marketing niche. A big part of that list building strategy was to do adswaps with other list owners.

My biggest frustration has been the amount of scammers that are out there, that will not reciprocate a mailout or send you junk traffic. It happens too much and other list owners need to be aware. If you’re going to do an adswap (and I highly recommend that you do) make sure you get references first.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Writing articles about things that I’m not passionate about. If you’re going to get into a niche, make sure you either really enjoy it, or outsource the content creation. If you don’t, you’ll go crazy or just give up on it.

What is the future of marketing?
I really don’t know. I won’t pretend to be a marketing expert. At the moment, social media and video are super popular (e.g. Facebook and Youtube).

If it’s possible for you to share, are there any particular niches that you currently favor? Or that you aren’t necessarily in right now but that you would recommend?
I like the internet marketing/make money online niche and that’s where I’m focusing most of my attention at this stage. I also like to go into any hot niche that has recurring billing products. I love the idea of making a sale once and being paid over and over again.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
I used to specialize in PPC but now email marketing is my main promotion method. Other methods I use are video and article marketing, Facebook and Twitter.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
Right now I’m working on creating more online content to get more subscribers. I offer a quality free video ecourse that teaches others the methods that I currently use to make money online. This free video ecourse is available at http://makemoneyonlinewithjohn.com.

I want to get as much publicity as I can for my free video ecourse so I’m working on writing more articles for my blog and more videos to share online at Youtube, etc.

What motivates you?
My main motivation is my wife and three children. Internet marketing allows me to spend more time with them and a means to give them the things they need and want in life.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
My long-term goal is to have my internet marketing business set up in such a way that I can easily outsource the tasks. Eventually I do not want to be doing any of the ‘grunt’ work myself. I’d like to be simply overseeing the work and enjoying the financial rewards.

Internet marketing is ideal for this. It’s very easy to outsource. My main challenge is to get a system into place that I can easily hand off to others.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
Traveling the world with my family.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I wouldn’t change anything. I like where I am right now in my life and believe that everything I’ve been through has led me here, good and bad.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
I strongly believe that no other success can compensate for failure in the home. I hope that my greatest accomplishment will be the heritage I leave to my family.

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
Twitter page.
Facebook page.
YouTube page.
My blog.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How long have you been working in this industry?
I’m from Washington, DC and I’ve been in Online Marketing for around a decade.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
One of my biggest success stories was when I helped grow a 10 million dollar company into a $100 million dollar company in a year and a half. Another success that I am proud of is that I have been able to go in and help many companies learn about adware and help to remove it from their own Marketing as well as take proactive stances at getting their competitors to stop using it as well.

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career?
It came naturally to me. I had already been doing online marketing, I just didn’t know it had a name. When I had my first real job, I learned that there was a lot more to what I had already figured out and it had a name.

When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I don’t think anyone has ever hit the big time yet. There is always room to grow and are always new things to know. I don’t think I’ll ever retire and wouldn’t say I am one of the biggest guys out there, in fact I know I am nowhere near where some of my peers are. I am however able to provide myself with a nice life and love what I do.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Some people get lucky. For the rest of us it takes time and dedication. The more I put into my sites the more I make and the more I learn when I fail. It’s important to know when you should call it quits on a site or leave it alone for a year or two before you pick it back up and try it again. Sometimes the time away will give you new ideas and it allows the site time to age.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
My biggest frustration is watching sales get stolen by adware or poached from a shopping cart. That is money I earned or a Merchant earned or a legit Affiliate earned. For my biggest failure, it has to be a few years ago when I thought I was the best, smartest and brightest and never wanted to listen to anyone else. Once I learned to get over myself I learned how to learn and that there are a million people out there better than me that I can learn from. And in return I can help them with things that they don’t know. Learning that my failure was my ego was hard to overcome, but I’m glad I did.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
My own paranoia. Everyone gets scared when something is happening with their sites. When people poach clients and the clients may leave. The toughest problem is reminding myself that I am good at what I do and looking at the success I have achieved and helped my clients to achieve. Once I can get my self-esteem and confidence back I feel unstoppable. The problem is that sometimes it is hard to pull back out of it.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
I absolutely hate editing comment spam. Bastard bots!

What is the future of marketing?
The future of Marketing is customer service. Make your customers happy and they treat you well. They give you good reviews, they refer their friends to you and that rewards you. You get better rankings in the SERPs, you get more customers and you get the trust of your followers. If you ever get bad PR, they come to your rescue if you treat them well. Marketing may take a few turns or add in things like Social Media or ReMarketing, but the main thing is to keep your customers happy and it pays off in the end. SEO on the other hand could take a very strong turn because with Google partnering with Twitter they get real time brand and search term queries and can show results based on how people are currently feeling in a live environment. Bing on the other hand has Facebook and can gain access to a ton of other data and user generated content. They have also recently partnered with Kayak and another company I believe so they are becoming a social search challenger to really keep an eye on.

If it’s possible for you to share, are there any particular niches that you currently favor? Or that you aren’t necessarily in right now but that you would recommend?
I could share them, but then I’d have to sell you each an eBook and all it would say is to do what you’re passionate about. I have done a ton of posts about choosing a niche site and how to start them. Niche checklists, etc… read my blog at AdamRiemer.me or my posts on revenews.com or searchenginepeople.com and you’ll see what I’m working on and where I see niches going. Just remember to look for a group that is not being serviced in that niche and then fill that hole.

What niche has worked best for you?
The ones I love the most.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
Guest blogging, SEO and Word of Mouth have been my focuses a lot lately.

How have you made those promotion methods successful?
By knowing what I am doing, creating a plan, executing it, measuring it and documenting everything. Then you replicate and try it again or try it a different way.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
I recently went to visit with a company as a potential client and instead fell in love with them and came on board. I am currently the new Head of Online Marketing for Jobfox.com.

I’ve also begun guest blogging on a lot of news and industry sites as well as speaking. I’m actually writing this from Pubcon South where I had two sessions and live blogged a few more.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
Nope, not really. My take on a job is that you should only stay there if you can learn something and you are happy. If you are happy but not learning anything, you are not advancing yourself. The reason I went in house is that I had felt I could learn a lot from three people in particular. If I ever find myself not learning and not happy, I would probably move on. Luckily that is not the case right now.

What are your greatest strengths?
It’s my biggest weakness, but I say what is on my mind regardless of who it is to and what it is about. Being an open book is great because everyone knows where they stand and how I feel. The problem is that most people don’t want to know the truth. They want someone who will kiss their ass and tell them they are amazing. That is something I don’t do unless it is being sarcastic.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
See above.

What motivates you?
Knowing that I am doing things that help people. With Jobfox I help people find jobs and get out from unemployment. With my sites I help entertain people and make their days better. I even sing on some of them, then again that probably isn’t making their days better. Lol.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Who cares what they think. Do what you know is right. Even if it isn’t or doesn’t turn out to be, you followed your heart. (This doesn’t mean break the law, but it does mean to do what your heart tells you to.)

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
My communications teach in college Carolyn Kerr. She taught me to get in front of a crowd and get their attention. Without learning how to speak confidently and have faith in yourself, you will not get ahead and in my opinion, you shouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

The other person was Dr. Bresloth. He pulled me aside after class one day and asked, what the hell are you doing here? I said trying to have a cocktail but you’re in the way. He asked again, What the hell are you doing here? What he meant was why was I bothering with the school I was at. He told me I was better than it and I need to realize that before it was too late. I quit theatre (which I still regret) and went to a much better business school and because of those words I became a marketer instead of a Broadway Star. I did land a show though.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
My long term goals are to be able to own my own home in DC (They cost upwards of 1.5 to 2 Million for a small one) and be able to focus on helping bring the arts back into schools and kids lives. Everything from theatre to painting and even playing an instrument. I think that the arts are what can shape someone’s life and it is important to show them what is out there and get them to be creative and hard-working when they are young.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
I’m not sure. Probably move to England, Boston or San Francisco if I don’t have my house in DC. Career wise, I would love to have amazing clients, great sites and lots of friends who love me.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
I go to the theatre a lot. I love wine and cooking. I’m tired of traveling but still love it when I get to go a city I haven’t been to before. Having drinks with friends and watching tv is always a great night as well.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
None. My career path has been a hard one but I learned a lot and from a lot of amazing people.

What is your favorite quote?
I can’t put this here, lol. Ask me at a show.

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
You can follow me on twitter @rollerblader and I have a Facebook page but I haven’t ever built it out. AdamRiemer.me is the best way to find me.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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