Hi, my name is Ed, and I am only 4 months old in affiliate marketing.
I have been doing affiliate marketing since mid June 2007 and have not been able to make one sale from my websites.
I have only created a couple ezines and a couple articles to advertise my website. And out of a few million results in google one of my websites was number 10 (on the first page) in google search results when using the words - Earning Money On the Web - in the search engine. My other site once was once number 30 (page 3) out of 5 million. Yet not one person has ever entered my websites through google. Not one person has ever entered my websites through my ezines or articles. As far as google you can even be number 1 on page one out of 20,000,000 pages when you type certain key word phrases in the search engine. But even then your site may never be discovered if no one ever types in the exact keyword phrase you use to find your site in a number 1 position in google.
Having no luck with google or with the few articles I have written so far I decided to spend about $110 signing up for websites that advertise your website through linking your website to traffic that still visits domains that are recently expired. Yet even there the statistics show that most people are on my site very briefly and only a dozen have ever stayed on my web site for more than one minute and went to other pages on my site other than my home page. And not one person (out of 20,000) has ever made a second visit to my websites unless they are merchants I am an affiliate for. According to all the advertising I purchased with expired domains I have had close to 20,000 visitors but not one of those visitors has ever purchased a thing from my website or affiliate links.
I have however made $130 (took 4 months) in sales via a viral ebook, and on usfreeads. But one was refunded already which dropped my all time affiliate marketing total down to $100. If more stuff is refunded then my total will keep dropping.
As far as getting paid I have never been paid anything yet - not even a penny - even though I am due to get paid (by Clickbank) since my balance is above $10 (it is very difficult to even make $10 with affiliate marketing and takes a month or more). But I was told by Clickbank that I can't get paid anything until 5 different credit cards are used to buy products from my affiliate links, and if the people use paypal or e checks it does not count. So in other words if the day comes when I finally earn $1000 through my Clickbank links (probably after a few years) I still won't get paid any of that money if every person who purchases from me keeps using pay pal or e check etc. That is, I will get paid that $1000 eventually. They will keep it on hold until 5 different credit card numbers are found in nonpaypal purchases.
I am under the impression that affiliate marketing works well only for very few people. The more people hear about affiliate marketing and figure out how to delete cookies out of their browser and instead visit merchants websites directly (bypassing all affiliate links) the less will affiliate marketing work.
I don't even think it is worth writing and submitting 100's of genuine articles because more than likely no one will ever even finish reading any of the articles and will never click on the web address in the article. Or, if they do and then go to the website and click on an affiliate link, then they will go to their browsers option button and find where it says delete all temporary files and cookies and visited sites etc., then they don't have to worry about anyone else (other than the merchant) getting paid some of their money if they make a purchase.
If affiliate marketing does some how work for some people then I think it only works for people who have money to invest in something like google adwords. But that is a dangerous path for those of us who mainly have enough money to survive with, and a lifetime savings so far of under $1000. For example if you pay $1.00 per click on google adwords to get your ad listed on top where people will see it, and then say 50,000 people click on your attractively worded ad and go to your website, and stay there for 30 seconds, and then leave never giving a thought to making a purchase, that will cost you $50,000 anyway which, for someone like me, would take about 20 years to pay off. I have never even seen my bank account above $3,000 and I am almost 42. So the thought of paying a multi-million dollar organization like google thousands of dollars is sickening to think about. I would rather go homeless and choose not to work just so I could never pay them anything, and if I did make a little money it would go to charity instead - to people who really need it.
Anyway I still have hope that affiliate marketing will work for me. I will keep trying for now. If I ever do make my thousands (even $20,000+ a year is considered very rich in my book) with affiliate marketing then I can even afford to do a little adwords and will be able to pay google if I need to, but will also have enough to help others who are in worse circumstances. Maybe I will be one of the lucky few some day who affiliate marketing works for just like the lucky few who have won big in the lottery. Then again, maybe not. It's nice to think about though. It just may not be the reality of the matter.
I have been doing affiliate marketing since mid June 2007 and have not been able to make one sale from my websites.
I have only created a couple ezines and a couple articles to advertise my website. And out of a few million results in google one of my websites was number 10 (on the first page) in google search results when using the words - Earning Money On the Web - in the search engine. My other site once was once number 30 (page 3) out of 5 million. Yet not one person has ever entered my websites through google. Not one person has ever entered my websites through my ezines or articles. As far as google you can even be number 1 on page one out of 20,000,000 pages when you type certain key word phrases in the search engine. But even then your site may never be discovered if no one ever types in the exact keyword phrase you use to find your site in a number 1 position in google.
Having no luck with google or with the few articles I have written so far I decided to spend about $110 signing up for websites that advertise your website through linking your website to traffic that still visits domains that are recently expired. Yet even there the statistics show that most people are on my site very briefly and only a dozen have ever stayed on my web site for more than one minute and went to other pages on my site other than my home page. And not one person (out of 20,000) has ever made a second visit to my websites unless they are merchants I am an affiliate for. According to all the advertising I purchased with expired domains I have had close to 20,000 visitors but not one of those visitors has ever purchased a thing from my website or affiliate links.
I have however made $130 (took 4 months) in sales via a viral ebook, and on usfreeads. But one was refunded already which dropped my all time affiliate marketing total down to $100. If more stuff is refunded then my total will keep dropping.
As far as getting paid I have never been paid anything yet - not even a penny - even though I am due to get paid (by Clickbank) since my balance is above $10 (it is very difficult to even make $10 with affiliate marketing and takes a month or more). But I was told by Clickbank that I can't get paid anything until 5 different credit cards are used to buy products from my affiliate links, and if the people use paypal or e checks it does not count. So in other words if the day comes when I finally earn $1000 through my Clickbank links (probably after a few years) I still won't get paid any of that money if every person who purchases from me keeps using pay pal or e check etc. That is, I will get paid that $1000 eventually. They will keep it on hold until 5 different credit card numbers are found in nonpaypal purchases.
I am under the impression that affiliate marketing works well only for very few people. The more people hear about affiliate marketing and figure out how to delete cookies out of their browser and instead visit merchants websites directly (bypassing all affiliate links) the less will affiliate marketing work.
I don't even think it is worth writing and submitting 100's of genuine articles because more than likely no one will ever even finish reading any of the articles and will never click on the web address in the article. Or, if they do and then go to the website and click on an affiliate link, then they will go to their browsers option button and find where it says delete all temporary files and cookies and visited sites etc., then they don't have to worry about anyone else (other than the merchant) getting paid some of their money if they make a purchase.
If affiliate marketing does some how work for some people then I think it only works for people who have money to invest in something like google adwords. But that is a dangerous path for those of us who mainly have enough money to survive with, and a lifetime savings so far of under $1000. For example if you pay $1.00 per click on google adwords to get your ad listed on top where people will see it, and then say 50,000 people click on your attractively worded ad and go to your website, and stay there for 30 seconds, and then leave never giving a thought to making a purchase, that will cost you $50,000 anyway which, for someone like me, would take about 20 years to pay off. I have never even seen my bank account above $3,000 and I am almost 42. So the thought of paying a multi-million dollar organization like google thousands of dollars is sickening to think about. I would rather go homeless and choose not to work just so I could never pay them anything, and if I did make a little money it would go to charity instead - to people who really need it.
Anyway I still have hope that affiliate marketing will work for me. I will keep trying for now. If I ever do make my thousands (even $20,000+ a year is considered very rich in my book) with affiliate marketing then I can even afford to do a little adwords and will be able to pay google if I need to, but will also have enough to help others who are in worse circumstances. Maybe I will be one of the lucky few some day who affiliate marketing works for just like the lucky few who have won big in the lottery. Then again, maybe not. It's nice to think about though. It just may not be the reality of the matter.
