My Story
This is the first in a number of posts where i will try and explain how I got into affiliate marketing and perhaps shed some light on this strange business that many many people are turning to, to try and forge a career online wth the hope to make money. Some may win and some may fail, but all are after that ever elusive million-pound system that provides them with the kind of lifestyle people can only dream about.
So what is affiliate marketing?
It is really rather easy to define. a simple search on Wikipedia produces a pretty good result but put simply, you are promoting other people’s products online for a percentage of commission if you make a sale.
Why is affiliate marketing so appealing?
The thing about affiliate marketing is that anyone can do it. You don’t have much of a start up cost and it is something that can be done from home…so what follows is how I got into it….I am not going to explain the ins, and outs of how you do each thing..this is my story and is just a window into some of the things I have done along the way into my affiliate career…So did I succeed in owning a massive house?, driving a sports car and earning thousands of dollars a week?..you will have to wait and see!
Let’s Get Rich Quick!
It’s the one thing that everyone wants to do and dreams of. Getting rich quick is probably the number one search phrase on google and something which so-called self-proclaimed gurus tell you is possible if you simply follow their formula and system to success….so is this how I started?…ABSOLUTELY!
I mean, come on, they said it would work and that I wouldn’t have to do too much work..all I had to do was buy this piece of software and install a WordPress site and off you go..sit back and wait for the dollars to come in.
Ya see the problem was that the video sales page was sooo convincing..the guy seemed to know what he was talking about and if he could do it then surely I could…and then there were the testimonials..how could it NOT be true if all these other people were saying it was possible to earn $10,000 per month with this system. Did I mention that if I bought it then and there it was only going to cost me $29.99….only for a limited time though and then the price would go up!..oh and there was the 30 day money back guarantee so it was no risk…so what did I do?… I bought the software….yippee…oh and then I realised I would need the next bit of software they didn’t tell me about in the sales page, they would tell me about that after I bought the software…so I bought the extra software…yipeee…oh but then I also needed the next bit of software that they didn’t tell me about in the first or second sales page…so I bought that extra software…yipee! now I was ready to go…for just $29.99…oh wait hang on I’ve just spent just over $100..but I was going to make $10,000 per month, so that was ok I guess!
So after 4 weeks of setting this thing up and following the tutorials, I was rich right?……hhhhmmmm not exactly…I was actually down $100 and id spent so long trying to get everything to work that I had forgotten that the money back guarantee had expired, so far I had made nothing as was coming to the conclusion that perhaps, just perhaps I may have just purchased something which might not work…..and I was right, it didn’t work. But it had taught me three important things
1: You can’t trust any get rich quick scheme
2: watch out for those damn convincing sales videos.
3: it was going to take a lot longer than I thought to succeed.
Affiliate marketing training
After my brush with what could be termed a scam i decided that I should really take a look at some kind of training for affiliate marketing. At this point in time I was really new to the whole process and only just new what I had picked up from the Scam I fell for before. So I decided to turn to good old youtube for some research. At this point in time remember I still thought that you could just find a system and do very little work to become an affiliate marketer….and it was here i find a video tutorial on google adwords campaigns…..YES i thought this makes pefect sense…
Easy Google Adwords for Affiliate marketing
This time I was sure that I had hit a winner….the tutorial I had watched had spoken about the fact that all you had to do was create a sales page or web page and then send traffic to it through google Adwords…this seemed to make a lot of sense to me and so i thought i would give it a whirl!…the trouble was that I had no idea what google Adwords were or how to use them and this was going to take time to learn..dont ask me how,but at this point I stumbled across a site called lynda.com..you can see my review on it here…and this was how I went about learning about google Adwords..only the basics mind you but it was good enough for me to start an account and get this affiliate marketing thing going…..I went ahead created a page and have since learnt these two valuable lessons..
1: Google AdWords can become costly if you don’t really know what you are doing
2: You can send all the traffic you like to a site but if the page is full of crap no-one is going to buy anything from you.
So I am now starting to think that this affiliate marketing thing is really not a very good idea at all and im also slightly lighter in the wallet department..oh well if you dont try these things you will never succeed right? and I always believe that even if you fail you will have learned some valuable lessons along the way so everything happens for a reason and all that!
Im going to leave it there for the moment because one thing i have learned is people do not like to read really, really long posts. I hope you enjoyed this so far and please look out for part 2 coming soon…please leave any comments below and thanks for reading….here’s to you and your successes and failures!….in part 2 we actually find something that may just work!
Pete.
Pete,
Thanks for publishing your Journey into Network Marketing, Looking forward to Part and taking the time to read all the other posts yo have written here.
Like you I traveled down the road of believing all the hype about how easy it was to make money through Internet Marketing and finding nothing but false hoods and scams.
Joe
Thanks for the comment Joe…it’s really easy to get taken in at first as there is soo much rubbish out there..i hope you didn’t get too badly burned!
Hi Pete,
I loved reading about your journey into affiliate marketing. Look forward to Part 2.
Man do you got it right on. So many people want to get rich quick online. That’s how so many scams are successful.
It seems human nature to want the quick fix. I too have been swayed by some of these fancy landing pages that preach all the things we want to hear, but it’s 99% of the time all a bunch of BS.
Making money in affiliate marketing takes some time and real effort, but it’s a real business that can grow and eventually provide us with a solid income and even better, a passive income.
Great post and thanks, I enjoyed reading it.
Cheers,
Todd
It’s so true you can never trust any site that says you can get rich quick.
I see so many scams about getting rich and just the other day a mate of mine, showed me a guy copyed and pasted this person’scontent and made a book out of it.
To make dishonest money…
Hi nicholas..wow thats terrible…did the guy actually make any money or did he get found out?
It’s so easy for so many people to fall into those get rich quick schemes. Everyone wants to live a luxurious lifestyle and be financially free. Who doesn’t want to earn $10,000 per month?
To be successful with any type of business, whether it is online or brick and mortar, people need to work hard! Thanks for sharing your journey!
thanks for the comment. you are absolutely right….if you don’t work hard you will not succeed. unfortunately we live in a world where people don’t want to work hard.
Like to see that I was not alone out there. Pretty sure I wasn’t. I too have been through the ringer with programs like Empower Network and others. Lots of money and no support. Guru’s suck! I have found Wealthy Affiliate is really great and great support.
thanks for the comment william…I will be talking more about Wealthy affiliate in my next post…cheers!
Hello Pete! This is a great post! Thank you for sharing your journey into affiliate marketing. Good to know other people’s experience with it. I was looking for a way to start making money online too and I have been scummed multiple times. I came to understand that you can’t get rich quick. Just like any type of business you have to invest time and money to it before it starts paying off. It will take some time but it will certainly pay off as long as you are persistent.
Thank you for sharing Pete!
You are right everybody is looking for the rich quick scheme but it never comes unless you win a lottery, I loved reading your posting on your journey. I loved the way you put humor into your post. Don’t feel bad because I got scammed about 3 or 4 times before I hit Wealthy Affiliate and that is a place where you get help or answers to all your questions when you need them. Can’t wait for Part 2 to come out.
thanks
Willie