I’m still waiting for Google to verify my billing information.  I figured being such a big, well functioning company this would be done the same day, but that didn’t happen at all.  So another reminder to everyone just starting out - make sure you have your billing information settled before trying to launch a campaign.

The key to this post is that I have been extremely motivated and excited over the last week or two and now I have to wait.  I have lost a little of that motivation as I was expecting to launch Tuesday and hopefully see some encouraging results to keep me going.  Instead I have put almost everything on hold until I can get my Adwords account working.  I should be building more on the campaign I am trying to launch, but I just haven’t been into it.  I’m positive the motivation will return once I get things rolling!  It’s more being anxious than losing motivation anyways.

The waiting and putting the campaign I was working on - on hold has been somewhat beneficial.  Yesterday and part of the day before I had time to do some research on my next campaign.  I have decided on a niche for a review site which will hopefully become an authority site.  The niche I’ve decided on has lots of traffic, forums and other sites about it, but surprisingly few review/product sites.  I will be using WordPress and a plug-in to review, promote and sell these products.  It’s a niche that I’ve always been interested in, but never really took part in learning.  I see this as an opportunity to jump in, learn more and get free stuff from the companies that would want to be seen on the site for advertising purposes.  I win on both ends - free stuff and selling their products to make money.

Update: Yesterday was Veterans Day!  Does Google work on Veterans Day?  I know transfers still show up in the online system for my bank on holidays.

Good Luck.  Make Money.

Keith

As I said in my last post, my affiliate marketing efforts have really started heating up!  I finally have direction, created my landing pages and constructed my first campaign.  Last night I worked quite a bit finishing up a few final tasks and thought I would be ready to go today.  It was actually beneficial as I found a few linking mistakes I had that would have wasted clicks due to it not going through the tracking system and ultimately screwing up the affiliate link.  So if you use a tracking system double check ALL your links (even connecting pages) so that you track everything and don’t waste clicks on a dead landing page.

I finished that work and set the campaign to launch tomorrow (today) and went to bed excited that things would take off tomorrow.  I wake up this morning, get ready for work, get to work and hop on Adwords, my tracking system and the affiliate network to see if things had begun working.  Checking one system after another I realized something obviously wasn’t set up correctly.  When I logged into Adwords and it had a message that my campaign wasn’t active and I needed to verify payment information.  I don’t know why I overlooked this, but I figured I’d have set it up by now or I’d just be billed to my account and I could pay.  Ahhh.  So now I have to wait 1-3 days for Google to make a deposit into my banking account so I can verify it.  Hopefully they do this sooner than later because I’m past being ready to get this campaign started.

Another mistake or maybe a tip is not utilizing Microsoft Excel!  I know the program very well,  but nearly disregarded it due to all the specialty tools I had downloaded from various PPC sources.  Even with the other programs though, I found myself copy/pasting back into Excel to arrange and format which made things much faster.  So I strongly suggest you don’t buy into all the programs out there and do keep a spreadsheet open at all time when building campaigns.

Good Luck.  Make Money.

Keith

I have been extremely busy with work and … well work.  My day job is getting extremely stressful and my affiliate marketing work is finally getting off the ground.  It’s been hard to do much of anything in my personal life or work on other projects outside affiliate marketing, but I’m loving every second of it.

First off my day job is becoming extremely stressful and honestly, I don’t make nearly enough to put up with the bullshit.  Apparently where I work everyone knows best about business and web design than myself - but they really have no clue. The frustration is really starting to build up and I nearly went off last Friday.

My job includes constantly building, tweaking and polishing sites that are way better than most in our market.  When I present a great looking website that is laid out and functions well, what do I get?  “Oh, have a look at this website…I wanted it like that…”  What?  So, you want me to copy another site, going as far as stealing graphics instead of having something that is original?   “Yes.”  I honestly can’t stand people who think they know best about everything and try to micro-manage everyone else around them.

I have my degree in Business Administration and have been developing websites for 8+ years.  They all have “degrees” in Communications.  Who are they to tell me how to do my job and try and teach me about marketing an branding?  I got hired for a reason.  Who would you trust?

On a more stress free and exciting note I am about to launch my first OFFICIAL affiliate marketing campaign.  I spent most of last week designing the page and planning my strategy.  This past weekend I managed to get about half of my campaign built and ready to launch.  I plan to get the last few ad groups together tonight and launch tomorrow morning.  I have learned so much the last few days by simply getting into the tools, programs and resource sites and going at it.  I suggest you take your time planning, but as I said in my previous post don’t wait too long after educating yourself.  Get to work!

I hope to be back with another post in a few days on the status of my first affiliate campaign.  A few days after that I’ll hopefully be back with profit news!

Keith

I am currently starting the keyword/niche research and development process of my affiliate marketing career.  I have been learning about Affiliate Marketing for a long time, because I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do it, plus it was a LOT to take in at once.  I feel I have waited too long to actually do it and get some real experience, but I also think my delayed start might be helpful.

Right now I have an extremely good base of how it’s done, the process and other tips and tricks for Affiliate Marketing.  The only step left for me to do now is to actually create and launch.  I’m extremely confident moving on from here and wanted to post some resources that got me to this point for anyone else who is just starting out.

www.theblackinkproject.com
This is by far the most comprehensive  free information for affiliate marketing on the web.  Not only does it give you strategy and tools, but it gives you theory behind marketing.  This information will take a while to go through properly, but the information is invaluable if you want to do affiliate marketing.

www.superaffiliatemindset.com
Amit Mehta catches a lot of flack for bragging on his lifestyle, but I feel a lot of it is unwarranted.  He does let you know how well he’s doing, but it’s also inspiration and he does offer good information so you can succeed too.   One thing that sets Amit apart from other Affiliate Marketing blogs is that he gives you statistically data to calculate and determine your success.  Either a lot of marketers don’t get this advanced or simply don’t talk about it.

www.johnhasson.com
John doesn’t post as much as he used to unfortunately do to his business.  if you go through the pages of his blog there is a lot of useful information.  He has videos explaining how the process of sending traffic to your page, to the offer page and even how it’s tracked that are great for learning how everything works.  He also has an open line to him with an AIM widget where you can ask questions nearly anytime.

I would really like to find a good affiliate marketing forums to join yes, so let me know if you do.

There are man resources out now that you can find your own and see what connects with you the most.  In my opinion if you focus on these sites you will gain the knowledge and pick up plenty of tips to set you on your way.

Keith

When we hear about a new trend or something that interests us it is very common for humans to jump in head first.  Growing up the “in thing” at my school was having the best tennis shoes.  One kid would get the new Air Jordans and all of a sudden other people had to have them - completely disregarding if they were comfortable or if they were worth the price.  The important thing at the time was that someone else had them and it was the popular thing to do.

The same thing goes for making money online.  We hear of big bloggers or super affiliates making thousands and in some cases millions of dollars from simply the Internet and a laptop.  This is all well and good, but most people push aside that these people have been at it for years and gradually built up their skills and success.  When you don’t go through this learning process people rarely succeed and eventually get bored with not making what they had hoped and quit.  I personally attribute a big part of this towards the phrase that became popular a few months ago “Fake it til you make it”.  People believed they could be Jimmy living in his parents basement and make people believe they were Donald Trump.

The point of this post is to simply put things into prospective.  It is important to go through a scaling process of your online business and will ultimately benefit you in the long run.  Set your goals high, but don’t be a week in and faking that you’re already making thousands of dollars a month or know everything.  It’s fine to stretch the truth, but completely blowing the truth to pieces is simply deceitful.  There is no shame in being a smaller guy in any niche and growing to reach your goal of being a key player.