The Super Affiliate Journal

A No-Bullshit Approach to Internet Marketing

Hi Folks,

It has been over a year since I posted to this site…actually, I forgot about it while learning my hard knocks in the affiliate marketing world.  Boy, I have learned so much and evolved my tactics for creating a super affiliate empire.  Now, it is time to start delivering the goods to you, my reader.

I am going to begin revealing the TRUE facts about how to make money on the Internet as a mass affiliate marketer in a series of upcoming posts – NO BULL ALLOWED.  The good news is that I am not really selling anything on this site and plan to give you the real skinny on what works and what doesn’t in affiliate marketing.  I will provide some affiliate links to excellent products that I truly believe in and have tested out; however, I will always tell you in advance.

Finding the Hidden Gems in Affiliate Marketing

It seems like I spend half my time wading through the bullshit promotions for rags-to-riches schemes, secrets and exclusive programs that are designed to remove money from your pocket, instead of really putting money into your pocket from successful affiliate marketing.

There are hidden gems in the hype out there that can help you (and me) achieve our dream of Internet Marketing success.  We just have to find them and put them to work correctly.  I will give you plenty of tips.

My goal with this site is to do a “brain dump” of my knowledge to date after several years of learning the real facts about how to make money on the Web as an affiliate marketer.  I am not going to create the next latest and greatest program with a snazzy (cheesy) sales page to lure your wallet to my my bank account.  I am just going to lay out the real deal for everyone to use.  Why not?

So Why Should I Reveal my Hard-Earned Knowledge?

Good question.  I suppose I could spend a month packaging up my vast knowledge and understanding of what works and what doesn’t and slap a high price tag on it…hopefully luring a few desperate folks who need to make money to feed the family.  But that is just not me.

I think you get what you give…so I would rather be on the “good guys” side of the coin on this site.  Besides, I should be able to make a tidy living as a super affiliate, right?  If not, why would you listen to me?

It is really funny to hear all the hype about how someone makes a zillion dollars in one week…but they still have to lure you in to buy their product.  If I made that kind of cash overnight, I would be long gone!  Something is not right here!

My intention for this site is to create a “real” resource for people who are serious about incubating and growing a sustainable Internet marketing business for real…not a fly-by-night quick sale junker business (which is what most people are trying to do these days).  Hopefully, this site will evolve into a real forum for real valuable and FREE information.

Finally, the biggest reason I want to build a FREE site for real information on affiliate marketing is because I have really appreciated people I have found on the Web who provide genuine, non-biased reviews of products and approaches.  These rare sources of information amidst the flood of bullshit on Internet are priceless and hard to find (trust me on that one .

Where to We Go From Here?

I am going to begin documenting all that I have learned (well, most of it anyway), and you can decide what is useful.  Go ahead…comment, subscribe, share, etc. these posts for others to see….No charge!

Talk with you soon!

~Brad

Does this sound familiar?

“I have been planning and working on these damn sites for what seems like years, but it is just so hard to maintain them.“

This has been the story of my life for the past two years! Well, this weekend marked the beginning of simplicity and the end of complexity in my affiliate marketing business. I want to share my vision with you, so you can find an easier way to do affiliate marketing.

What has changed…you ask? Well, a couple of weeks ago, I made a mental jump and finally understood that it is much easier to blog from the heart, than design and assemble complex content articles. This has proven to be a huge shift towards natural simplicity and away from unwanted complexity.

Be Careful What You Scoff At…You May Embrace It Eventually

I used to scoff at blogs…saying is was just junk content and not very useful (or profitable). Well, I have “come to Jesus”…so to speak, and have found blogging to be pure delight in comparison to dry article writing. To top that, my posts are much more interesting and the search engines seem to love the Wordpress sites that I have put up.

In an industry where content is king, blogging about our areas of interest (for profit, of course) is the new and improved method of creating value and equity in our sites for the long haul. I still plan to submit free articles based on composites of my blog posts, but I have found my readers like the easily readable blog posts hands-down over stuffy factual articles.

Blogging Software is Easier to Maintain and Run

The other great fact that I have come to realize is that blogging softwares (like Wordpress) is much easier to use and maintain than content management software (like Joomla). Nothing against Joomla…it is a great product (I use it still for other sites) and I love it. The problem is that it can be a bit overkill for a basic site.

Having just migrated most of my sites off of Joomla to Wordpress Blogs, I can say that it is a relief to move to a simpler model. By the way, as usual, I want to plug Site5 Hosting, as they are the BEST! They have been of great help in moving all of my sites to the new server. For $5/month, the service is unbeatable.

The moral of the story is Keep it Simple and focus on building content equity in your sites with blogging. I think you will find it very enjoyable, which means it will be more profitable in the long run. See you out there!

In the last couple of weeks, I have spent a lot of time listening to audio MP3’s of super affiliate secrets from various authors. Where did I get this precious information? Well, we will get to that in another post. (By the way, they were either free or VERY cheap – Don’t go out and spend the big bucks for affiliate marketing packages yet!).

My journey into studying the affiliate marketing masters’ wisdom started when I ran into roadblocks during the initial phases of starting my own affiliate business. What better time to take in new affiliate marketing ideas and learn from the pros.

Professional Affiliate Marketers are Always Studying Other’s Materials

In almost every video or audio that I have watched or listened to, the very successful affiliate marketers are constantly reading and studying the materials of other successful marketers to learn new techniques and to keep abreast of the latest tools and techniques.

Many of them like to brag and show you the huge bookshelf stuffed with courses, manuals and secret reports. You may think this is a little corny, but they are the people making the big bucks, so it might be a good idea to learn from their successes and most importantly – their FAILURES!

The Great Affiliate Marketers Have Failed Many Times Before Succeeding

I absolutely love hearing about the failures of the great marketers. Why? Because it gives me hope that I am allowed to make mistakes, try new things, and hopefully avoid many years of mistakes by learning from their experiences.

Unless you are a masochist (some of you might be…so apologies), you would be crazy not to pay attention and avoid the potholes on the road to success. The way to do this is to make it a life-long practice to study the greats and to implement their good ideas and avoid their bad experiences.

As I learn from the affiliate marketing greats going forward, I will be writing about the secrets, techniques, and lessons-learned…so stay tuned! We can take the best of what they have to teach TO THE BANK together!

Shopzilla Stomps on My Affiliate Plans – So What!

After looking at many affiliate programs over the last couple of years, I decided to try to sign up one of my new top-level buyers guides sites for the Shopzilla affiliate program. Since eBay Partners and Amazon Affiliate programs approved me instantly, I thought this was a no-brainer for them.

Then, I received a slightly crushing email from Shopzilla saying that my site did not fit their profile in terms of traffic and content. Well, duh! There IS no traffic yet for this site. I don’t even have a Google PageRank for the site yet. In fact, Google doesn’t even know this site exists. Oh well.

I am sure this won’t be the last rejection that I experience in life – this is similar to asking a girl to a dance in Jr. High and being rejected It is actually a good thing, as I see I have a long way to go in regards to building traffic and content. Sometimes it takes a slap to let you know you are on this great process to becoming a super affiliates. If it happened overnight, it wouldn’t be super, now would it? They would have to call it “Instant Affiliate” instead.

In your face rejection can be a great wake-up call to show you that you are on the great path to Super Affiliateness – and that this path takes a long while and tons of work. I have been reminded to settle in and enjoy the journey!

So what has this taught me? First thing is to stick to the easy affiliate programs like Amazon, Google, and eBay (and whatever else is easy to set up) when getting started with a new Web site. Take the time to build the content, SEO optimization and inbound links before approaching the larger, more important affiliates.

Second, savor the fact that as one little person in a huge world, we get to directly play ball with huge companies like eBay, Amazon, and even Shopzilla. Without the Internet and our power to leverage technology, these companies would not even take our phone call. This is true power to the people on a vast scale. Exciting!

Site5 Web Hosting Has Been Fantastic!

I wanted to make a whole-hearted recommendation for Site5 Hosting if you want to host Joomla sites or any other site for that matter. I have been using them for about two years to host my Joomla and Wordpress sites with absolute success.

These guys actually make customer service a priority in deed, as opposed to just claiming to have excellent customer service. I have dealt with their representatives via email and over the phone for a couple of issues in the past and have always felt that warm fuzzy feeling…knowing my precious websites are being taken care of very well.

Another thing I like about them is that they keep promoting new ridiculous hosting deals on a regular basis on their site (Click here for Site5.com).

What is cool is they allow you to migrate easily to the next deal and will refund you the difference at any point in you contract. I have upgraded twice now and pay essentially nothing for huge bandwidth (something like 15 Terabytes per month) and 1TB of storage. I wish I needed so much bandwidth…hopefully in the future!

Choosing your Web hosting is critical, as this is the foundation of performance and reliability for your entire affiliate marketing business! Take care here.

They are big on replacing their servers on a regular basis to make sure we have the latest processors and disk drives for performance and reliability. I have heard that some companies use old junker servers for as long as they can – which probably causes more outages and interruptions to your service.

I also like the Fantastico script installer that makes my installations quite easy…not to mention keeping track of all of them and the software versions for me.

As an affiliate marketer, I think where you host your money machines is vital to your success. I signed up for Site5 Hosting based on the recommendations of the Joomla community forums and am happy to recommend them to you. Check out their site and features…I think you will like them!

~Brad

This is my first post for this new Blog site and I am jazzed to chronicle my experience on the road to becoming a Super Affiliate Internet Marketer. I want to bring you along, because you can learn from my detailed experiences. Perhaps we will be reading about your successes (and failures) in the near future. So, stay tuned and enjoy the unfolding of this process.

A little background

In 2006, I was sitting in my programming job wondering how I could create an income engine to allow me to be sitting in the mountains by a stream instead of my little office cube. Nothing against programming as a living – it is “good” money and pleasant work. Actually, I like going into the office and working on new projects. Where I get into trouble is after the daily “thrill” wears off at about 1PM and I want to go home…or go to a movie…or go somewhere else than where I am supposed to be (work).

So I searched the Web (like we all do when goofing off at work) and found a bunch of “pushy” sales sites telling me I could make thousands by sitting on my ass eating bon bons watching Oprah. Naturally, I had to investigate these claims and did so.

Making Technology Work Hard For Me

Being a programmer, engineer, former Coast Guard Officer, and a few other things, I have this “inspiration” to put technology to work to make my life easier and more profitable. I am getting fed up with exchanging my precious time for dollars, and looking for a better way to make a living.

My fantasy is to have this vast network of Web sites, churning and burning 24×7 to make cash for me – all the while I see myself doing what I want to on a daily basis. How does that sound?

This is the desire that started it all. This Blog will chronicle the entire process that I went through (and am currently experiencing) for your benefit. Enjoy!