Affiliate Program Groupies

Here is a good article for you out there who are about to get into building a website and plan to sign up with an affiliate program.

Affiliate Programs are Easy Money!
by Chris McElroy aka NameCritic

Affiliate Marketing is easy! Just ask anyone who runs an affiliate program. They will all tell you right there in the website about how many successful webmasters they have selling their product and how they are making thousands each month! Just sign up right here! Where have you been? You're not signed up with us yet? You're missing the boat! Get on board and sit back and watch all the money roll in!

So you buy a domain name. And of course you can't believe the great domain name you just got was actually still available. All the domain name experts missed that one? Wow!

Next you build a website. And of course you already read enough articles to know that you have to have the right percentage of keywords in your text, metatags need to be just right for the search engines, and it sure is a pretty website. You're gonna be rolling in dough in no time.

Now all I have to do is go find an affiliate, sign up, insert my code and banners, etc. and wooohooo! all done. Now it's miller time. I'll check my stats tomorrow to see how much money I made.

Some of you reading this are laughing, but this is exactly the advice being given to people new to the web and to the business of affiliate marketing.

First of all it is all backwards. First you have to find an affiliate program worth your time and effort. That takes research. If you are not willing to do the research, stop right now. Don't try to do business over the web because all you are gonna do is clog it up for the rest of us.

OK, you find an affiliate that through research you BELIEVE to be a good one. I say believe because even the experts don't know a good one until they have promoted it awhile and they have checks in their hand to prove it.

Next, you get a domain name. Don't get some catchy name you think people will remember because it's soooo cool. Again do research. Find out what keywords are related to the product you plan to promote first. Then use that list to combine keywords together until you find a domain name that not only contains the keywords, but also makes some kind of sense. Don't go register VirtualOnlineWebsiteNetwork.com. First of all, show me a website that is not virtual, one that is not online, and one that isn't part of the network we call the Internet. Ebay is full of the dumbest domain names I have ever seen. Well besides the ones at GreatDomains.com and Afternic. Once in awhile a good one pops up for sale on ebay, but for the most part you are going to have to do research and find one available to register yourself.

The web is full of domain name sellers. They are all experts, just ask one of them. Yet most of these experts are still sitting on hundreds or thousands of totally worthless domain names they are paying to register each year and haven't built one website on them that makes a dime. They will read this and rush to the nearest registrar and see if the domain name I mentioned above is available. Use keyword combinations that are generic in nature. Don't use google.com or yahoo.com as examples of a good domain name. They are 2 of the worst domains ever registered. If you have millions of advertising dollars to spend to make even a bad domain name famous, then ignore my advice and go for it. If not, do what I suggested.

Now you build a website to promote the affiliate you chose right? Wrong. You start building a website to promote the affiliate program you chose EVERY SINGLE DAY! Because if you don't you will not ever make a living at this or even make enough to pay for your hosting and domain name.

A website is not your home on the web. A website is not your store on the web. The website IS virtual, nonexistant, and only resides in a computer somewhere you call a host.

A website is an AD! Get that through your head first or don't even get started. The more ads you put out the more money you make. It IS that simple. It takes work and dedication. Build build build. That is how to make money. The thing that makes a website better than a tv, radio, magazine, or newspaper ad is they don't expire. Build em and forget about them. Leave them in place and they will be advertising your product for years to come. And if you took my advice and kept building, you will have a lot of them out there in no time and you may even get to the point where you can stop building and retire. If you choose the other routes you will end up going into some other type of business and be one of the ones that say you can't make money on the web. it doesn't work.

Which one are you?

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