Affiliate Marketing 101: The Work At Home Dad Story

All I wanted to do was get rich and retire early so I could be the dad that went to all of the kids events. I wanted to be available for my kids in a way that my father was not there for me. That was my dream.

Unfortunately, reality set in when I was about 30 and I was the primary breadwinner in my home. Two years later when our first daughter was born. I took paternity leave and lived my dream of being a stay at home dad for 3 weeks. Then I shipped her off to day care like every other father and hopped on planes everyday covering my sales territory.

Thats right Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.

So I decided I had to do something different before I showed up one day and my daughters asked me for ID to prove who I was.

I was going to find a way to Work At Home.

I started doing research on the internet and found lots of ways to make money online but none of them sounded quite as appealing as Affiliate Marketing.

Let's see, sell other peoples stuff and get paid? This should be easy. I can do that! I thought.

So I set out to make it happen. I bought an eBook called the Affiliate Marketing Handbook. I picked out some products, built some sites with links and set up my Google Adwords account.

I was about to be rich! WRONG

I made all the mistakes newbies make in Pay Per Click Advertising:

- Bid too much for keywords
- Bid on broad keywords
- Didn't use the match types in Google
- Had no idea what long tail was.
- Set up my ad groups incorrectly
- Didn't optimize my landing pages to my ads
- Sent everyone to my home page. (which was titled Home Page)
- Didn't build a list

So I bought an Adwords eBook, then multiple keyword ebooks and tools, bought courses from infomercials, subscribed to every mailing list I could find about internet marketing.

You know where this is going right? I spent THOUSANDS of dollars and made $856. In two years! My accountant told me "It was a great write off."

Why is it that we will go to school for 12 years, college for 4 years in order to begin a career but we think reading one eBook will make us a billionaire?

Each of the eBooks I purchased were very good at one specific topic. None of them however brought all of the intracacies of Internet Marketing together. In addition I was alone with no way of bouncing my ideas off like minded people.

I was alone in a sea of Internet Marketing Guru's. The sharks were all around me. I just wanted was to find that one eBook or Guru that I could follow all the way to the bank.

So with my credit cards at the ready!!! I kept buying and buying and buying looking for the silver bullet.

While doing some online research I came across an article on Wealthy Affiliate .

The article explained this community of people learning, teaching and working together to make money doing Affiliate Marketing.

The light bulb went off. I needed a more formal Affiliate Marketing Course. In addition I needed to stop going it alone. I needed a community of like minded people all working together to reach their individual goals.

I went to the site and signed up for the Free Wealthy Affiliate Guide. Read it and signed up that day.

I joined Wealthy Affiliate because of how complete the program was.

1. 8 Week Action Plan: Holds your hand from beginner to advanced Affiliate Marketing techniques.

2. Clickbank Research Tool: Learn how to pick the right Clickbank products to sell and how to avoid high return rates which can kill your profit.

3. Learning Center: Affiliate Marketing from A - Z. It is set up in three sections depending on your skill level. Junior, Intermediate, Advanced.

4. Research Center: Free Keyword Research tools, Clickbank Research tools, Competitive Research tools so you can keep an eye on your competition.

5. Marketing Materials: Pay Per Click Network training broken out by network, Affiliate Networks and Keyword lists.

6. The Forum: A community of like minded people learning, training and working together to make money with Affiliate Marketing. People share their campaigns, and step by step process so others can learn from their success. This community alone is worth the $39 per month.

I used the Penny Pincher Internet Marketing Methods taught in week one of the 8 Week Action Plan to make my first sale. The methods are easy to do and best of all FREE.

My wife would have left me if I ran another Adwords campaign.

Many of the Wealthy Affiliate members have created full-time income streams by writing free articles and posting them on the Internet.

My first sale was for $30.99 and came from an article I wrote and posted to the web for free. By the end of that week I got my second sale.

The Wealthy Affiliate Techniques had worked.

Lots of other people are experiencing success as well.

Posts from the Wealthy Affiliate Forum:
"First $1000 month - No Adspend"
"$500 in 15 days"
"My First Clickbank check is in the mail"
"May 2008: $9,551.54 in commissions"

I'm now going into my 3rd week into my Wealthy Affiliate membership and something interesting is happening. I'm making sales!

Week One two sales: $61.98
Week Two nine sales so far: $278.91
Week Three: $185.95

I'm not getting rich quick but I am clearly on the right track. My goal of being a Work At Home Dad is becoming more clear every day.

Thank you Wealthy Affiliate!!!

I've even been working on my Ponytail skills!