My Journey Through Affiliate Marketing

Today's date is May 17th, 2009 and after about a year of being in limbo and wondering which direction I should be moving in, I have finally started to make forward progress. As long as you keep reading you will discover how I got here, but I joined the Wealthy Affiliate program about 6 months ago through a recommendation made by Pot Pie Girl on her blog, which I highly recommend subscribing to.

From where I had been, WA was a breath of fresh air. While there is almost always a ton of drama and flaming occurring on many forums, it is kept to a low rumble at Wealthy Affiliate. Everyone I have met there has been extremely encouraging and helpful and no one laughs and calls you "stupid" when you don't know something or if you are working through a fear. I finally feel like I'm spending my hard earned money on something worthwhile and where I am around like-minded people that truly care.



For example, the other day I was posting on the forum where we were talking about backlinks and stated that I absolutely don't like to write because of an old HS English teacher that I had. Nothing was ever good enough for him and this was giving me a mental block when it came to writing for Ezinearticles. A veteran forum member posted right after me almost like a teacher telling me that I had to do something and turn it in for a grade the next day. For whatever reason, this worked for me and I sucked it up, wrote an article and submitted it. The first article I wrote was very salesy so it was rejected by EZA, but I went back, fixed it, and resubmitted it; a day later the article was accepted.

At almost any other forum I belonged to, I would have been afraid to admit my fear of writing for fear of being flamed or laughed at; I didn't think twice about posting about this mental block at WA and since then I have submitted one more article. I'll be working on a couple more to submit today as well.

I lived in a little 600 sq ft apartment in Sheboygan, WI. I had just bought my first computer about a year earlier; I was in a mountain of debt, hated my job and wanted more free time to myself. I guess some things still haven't changed. I don't really hate my job anymore, but I do not like the idea of going to work knowing that my efforts are mainly working towards making the owner more money. Once your eyes are opened, it's very difficult to close them again.

Anyways, I had signed up for this site that promised to make you rich. Sound familiar? I know many people have fallen for these. In fact, the site turned out to be a mini pyramid scheme. A person would by access to the site for the low price of $200 and they would supposedly teach you how to sell the site to others for $200 earning you a commission of $100. The only thing I got out of what they taught me was an inbox full of emails from opt-in lists that I signed up for to advertise on. Remember opt-in email lists?

After nearly a month of checking my stats on the scam site and receiving only one click through I had become discouraged, but I didn't quit just yet. I decided that I was going to teach myself HTML and build my own site. I registered a domain for the low price of $50 (remember those days) and signed up for web hosting. The site was meant to teach people how they can make money online and steer people away from the many scams floating around on the web. Some things never change and there are still scams and winners to be found online.

After trying many things which were popular at the time, I gave up for the time being. I moved to Green Bay, lost my job, and concentrated on finishing up my Bachelor's degree for the time being. Shortly after landing in Green Bay, I landed at a job that I absolutely loved so my desire to make money online had waned for the time being. I think I started one of those "free lotto" sites during this time, but it didn't last long because the market was extremely saturated at the time.

Since I was just feeling nostalgic, I went and registered the domain again. One of my blogs where I was trying to mix niches, just isn't working the way it needs to so I think I'll start another blog on the new domain and move my MMO posts to the new blog from the old one. Once the blog is up and running, I will post the feed here.

By 2004, I was forced to move on to another job which is where I am currently working now. It's an OK place to work, but I still had the desire to work from home and not be tied to a schedule all day. This is when I bought a website for selling video games and built a business around selling from the website, on eBay, and later on Amazon. Sales were growing, but margins were thin so it seemed I was working more and more and not seeming to make any headway.

eBay is a great way to make money online, but be prepared to work. You have to find products to sell, take pictures, write an accurate description, list the item, collect the money, and then ship your product. Then there is the back end of taking care of the customer if they are not happy as well. I'm willing to work hard, but I get distracted by shiny things real easy; there are so many facets of affiliate marking that I can take care of my distractions and not get bored with doing the same thing over and over.

In 2006, I discovered Big Crumbs and found a great way to make a little extra money related to eBay without putting in a ton of work. Shortly after I just so happened to have found Squidoo through a Google search that I had done; I loved the idea and signed up almost immediately. I had no clue what the heck I was doing, but immediately I had built a lens about myself and Big Crumbs. The Big Crumbs lens was horrible and spammy, but it was a start and that's all that matters.

2007 was my best year for sales because my employer allowed me to flex my time to give me one day off a week. This allowed me the extra time to grow my video game business and list more games. Sales were great, but I was working my butt off, so I began looking for something more to supplement my income. I started a blog on Blogger.com, but that lasted only for a couple of posts. Then I found Problogger and signed up for his RSS feed.

Late in 2007, I started my first blog at Down On Our Luck with the hopes of making people feel sorry for me so they would sign up for Big Crumbs. I thought this would work because I wasn't Cyberbegging like Save Karyn; I was offering people useful information.

It was right around this time when I found Entrecard.com. I became addicted to dropping 300 cards a day and didn't do anything with any part of my business which was totally the wrong direction for me to go in. I started One Million Pet Pics around this same time. As a shameless plug, we really need a lot more pet pics to post; please stop by and submit your favorite pet picture. Both of these blogs are still around on life support, but I intend to revive them soon.

I really don't think Entrecard is worth anyone's time anymore because the traffic is mostly useless. Needless to say, while card dropping I did find a lot of blogs that I still read today. Many of them were MMO blogs which I will list later if I feel they are worthwhile, but I am also going to take the time to give a shout out to my favorite cat blog, Daisy the Curly Cat. Life can't be all work and no play and Daisy's blog gives me a smile almost every morning.

I began to realize the power behind Squidoo and affiliate marketing and found Vic at Bloggerunleashed. I learned a ton from his blog and membership site at The Affiliate Academy, but after a while I found out that Vic's style of teaching just isn't right for me.

I was also a member of PPC-Coach for 6 months, but I never did anything with it so I just cancelled my membership there last month. If you are motivated to try PPC, I really do recommended checking out PPC-Coach it truly is a great membership site. I will be signing up there again when the time is right for me again.

So I have now come full circle in my journey on affiliate marketing and landed back where I am now. The one thing I would like you to learn from my journey is to make sure that any program or site you pay for is truly worth your hard earned money. Every penny is precious to a family living paycheck to paycheck and I don't want to see you waste any of the money that is earmarked to feed your family. If you are truly interested in learning about how to make money online and give you family a better future, then I recommended checking out Wealthy Affiliate for at least one month to see if it is right for you.

Have I made it yet, no, but I feel that I am finally going down the right path.

Click here to go back to the top of this page to remember where I am currently at.