Internet Marketer, Graduate Student, Radical Dude.
One of Those Days – Screw Affiliate Marketing
Do you ever have those days when you ask yourself, “why the hell am I promoting some idiot’s products?” I’m having one right now.
After 509 views to my latest review site, no affiliate sales. Before you jump on me to keep trying, here’s what’s up:
- Reviews of three products I am an affiliate for
- 509 visitors from various sources (Google PPC, social bookmarking, Twitter, YouTube, and others)
- Most, almost all of my visitors click my affiliate links – after all, they are searching for a solution to their problem. It’s very much a how to, DIY niche.
- I checked the links and checkout process to make sure my commission wasn’t lost somewhere in a sketchy website
- ZERO sales made according to Clickbank
Now, I know I’m new to affiliate marketing. Up until this year I have made every dollar from my own products, my own sales copy, my own crappy html sites, and affiliates on only 1 or 2 of my products. Why have I been doing things this way? Because in my 23 years of life I have only learned one hard and fast rule to live by: you can’t trust anybody to do anything.
Despite this fact, I decided to dabble in promoting other people’s products. I found a niche that paid out fairly well and had a lot of interest/not too many affiliates promoting products. Instead of wasting time creating my own product, I thought I would promote 3 of the seemingly better products available in this niche. Believe me, there isn’t any better product out there for these people.
What has all this effort earned me? $0.00 and a crappy attitude. So now I think it’s time to make my move – I’ll just create my own product, with better copy and a better salespage. No more promoting people who can’t create a single sale from nearly 500 visitors. You have to do everything yourself these days.
Anyone else have similar experiences?
| Print article | This entry was posted by Reuben Rock on January 21, 2009 at 3:21 pm, and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, My Business, internet marketing. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |


about 1 year ago
Oh, and btw… my product is already nearly finished. So none of that “taking action” advice.
Maybe some of you affiliate marketers will be interested in promoting it when it’s finished. I’ll post a link later =)
-Reuben
about 1 year ago
1. 500 views is not an adquate sampling.
2. Looks like your traffic isn’t really targetted
3. if your not converting, your not preselling correctly
4. Too many times do I see peeps say it doesn’t sell, so I’m going to sell my own stuff … why don’t you actually learn to sell – it will only help you and your “future affiliates” – if your doesn’t have any gas, why are you going to build a new car?
5. There are many other networks and products to sell, maybe you should pick something that you have a passion for.
about 1 year ago
Very true, I appreciate the thoughts. 500 views is not a ton of traffic, but considering the CTR on my affiliate links I was expecting some sales.
To be honest, I’m not much of an affiliate marketer. My own products have always done well enough to pay my way through school and buy a house. But I thought it was a skill worth picking up this year. Perhaps I’ll leave the review sites and preselling to the real affiliates, and I’ll focus on creating quality products for them to sell. If the system works, why fix it?
Thanks for offering your advice on the subject, Haikob! Hope to hear more from you in the future.
-Reuben
about 1 year ago
Nice work, keep it up. Cheers.