The Getting Started Post

It was actually a recent email from the WordPress Affiliate Guide notifying me about an update that got my attention. That email, though rather unremarkable, was like a wake-up call. I’d spent money all those years ago, but never took action.

So I downloaded the updated ebook, dug out my copy of the Super Affiliate Handbook, and read them both from cover to cover.

Now I will go through them again, this time taking action at each stage in the lessons. Since I’m in the early stages I’ll be relying on the Super Affiliate Handbook to get the ball rolling since it goes into topics like market research, keyword selection, and planning.

This is also where I admit to having a tiny advantage–and I do mean tiny. I intend to use a domain name that I’ve had for 5-ish years. It’s not in a researched niche, though, so tiny. I also have a hosting account through HostGator, so I’ll just be adding on the domain there rather than incur an additional monthly expense.

And that’s where I’m at.

Tomorrow I’ll start tackling the market research and keyword selection so I start planning the site.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes…

Goodness gracious, it’s been a dog’s age since I’ve updated this site. I don’t know what happened there, but what I do know is what I plan to do in the here and now.

Build my affiliate business up properly.

Years ago, I invested in two products designed to help me build a proper affiliate business. The books were the WordPress Affiliate Guide and the Super Affiliate Handbook.

Both of these books are fantastic in my opinion, but the proof is in the pudding, as the euphemism goes. Unfortunately, I got all my ingredients to make one helluva pudding, but never mixed them up. They sat on the counter and spoiled.

It’s time to try again.

For the next several months, I will write about my experiences as an affiliate marketer starting with a super-strict budget. This case study will ultimately double as a review for the products I mentioned earlier, too.

I plan to disclose everything–except maybe my niches and my websites–as I go along. I’ll disclose the methods I use, my web stats, my income and expenses, all of it. Consider it a crash course in affiliate marketing.

This time around, I can’t afford to let my ingredients spoil.

WP Affiliate Guide Review

Last week, I came across a new product. New to me, at least. It’s called WordPress Affiliate Guide (also called WP Affiliate Guide or WPAG for short — and no, that’s not an affiliate link).

The product claims to help someone build an affiliate website using WordPress and does it ever deliver. I had no problems buying this product because I’ve purchased products from Teli in the past and never had a problem. In fact, it’s always been a pleasure. My questions get answered, even the stupid ones.

Since I’ve been using WordPress for a while, some of the beginning information was basic to me. (It goes over how to install WordPress and some basic locations for settings and stuff, which I already knew.) But where it shined for me was the little nuggets like how to remove the word ‘category’ from the links when someone’s viewing a product category. Yea, you can find that kind of info online for free, but for someone who doesn’t even know to look for it, that’s a damn good tip.

It also had a nice step by step blueprint to follow from start to finish. A complete checklist that you can print off and follow as you go along. I didn’t even need to watch the videos (I’m not a big fan of videos personally) to understand what she was saying. I just printed the ebook and had it next to me while I worked.

And since it’s now officially been 31 days, I happily downloaded all the bonus items she has up and some of them are kickass. Not too long ago, the Simple Link Manager plugin (it’s a light version, but it still more than gets the job done) and the WordPress Datafeed Import script (again, a light version, but still great) were both uploaded.

Another great thing about the WordPress Affiliate Guide is that it’s flexible. It doesn’t lock you into one click here, click there formula. When you feel comfortable enough, it teaches you enough to start experimenting and playing around with different styles of affiliate sites.

For only $35, it’s definitely worth the money. You get a lot more information than some of these reports selling for $97.

Now I gotta get on my review of the Simple Link Manager plugin, which I’m totally in love with, too. I already have the full script that I use for my static sites, but the plugin is awesome for my WordPress powered sites.

Sick and Tired of So-Called Internet Marketing Gurus

I do a lot of reading, especially a lot of internet marketing blogs and articles. After reading about four blog articles on how their PR is up and how many people they have linking back to them, I finally decided to stop reading.

While I understand the importance of link exchanges and PR and all that other wonderful stuff, there is already plenty of people writing about it and how they already have it. What I want to hear more about are the results. Cold hard figures. Describe to me how your going from PR0 to PR4 in a month has impacted your online revenue.

In that month timeframe, how much more money did you earn as a result? In that month timeframe, how many listings has your blog or website or whatever jumped in the SERPs? Those are the things the internet marketing gurus need to be talking about.

You can have all the PR in the world and you can talk about it, and to some internet marketers who are still wet behind the ears will start thinking you’re some amazing SEM God, but the fact remains, unless you have cold hard figures to back up the announcements of the ever increasing PR, it means diddly to me.

It is definitely time for me to go through my bookmarks, newsletter subscription lists, and RSS feeds and decide which of these gurus is worth the 5-15 minutes of my life that I waste reading their BS. I’ll post my results at a later date.