You are being lied to...and it's costing you a fortune. Receiving all the traffic in the world isn't going to help you if you don't make sales when the traffic gets to your page.
A mistake that I see people make over and over again is to believe the hype that it is easy to make money online...sign up for several affiliate programs...put up a page...and then place free classified ads. This strategy will not work. It does not work today. It will not work tomorrow. You cannot just join affiliate programs and try to generate free traffic to them (not in the normal ways at least).
I have been interviewing some successful affiliates lately and have found out an interesting secret... Not a single one of them (not even one that I have found) just joins an affiliate program and puts up links or banners on their web page. Every one of them does something a little unique. One is a search engine master and spends well over 40 hours a week learning all the intricacies of the search engines. Another is a master publisher who publishes a quality ezine every single day. Still another model of success is becoming an expert at sending out articles to ezines. You could also create a community atmosphere where people keep coming back to visit through chats, forums, etc. Then, make referrals of affiliate programs.
These types of affiliate techniques work, but what people have been publishing as the easy affiliate opportunity just isn't true. All of the top affiliates come up with some of their own ideas and lead generation methods...and none of them rely on just placing a few ads here and there. Nor do they just put up another banner on their web page that nobody visits anyway.
If you want to be successful, find someone who is already successful and model them. Don't necessarily always do what they say. Find out what they are doing and do that! What are the successful Internet entrepreneurs doing? They are doing one of two things:
1. Some of the successful entrepreneurs are creating products or finding unique products to sell.
2. The rest of the successful entrepreneurs are building an audience.
Those are the only two ways to be successful on the net. Either sell a product you control (and don't try to sell something people can find at the local Wal-Mart store) or build an audience that you can contact over and over again. If you want success, you will fit into one of those two classes.
If you created an information, you are one of the unique product sellers. If you publish a growing ezine, you have the audience. If you got an exclusive on a new golf club, you are a unique product seller. If you run a discussion board that has hundreds of thousands of visits a month, you have an audience.
If you have a product, you just need to find people who have an audience and convince them to become affiliates with you or buy advertising from them. If you have an audience, you just need to become an affiliate with someone and endorse their products to your audience. These are the two hands of Internet success...
Please Note: Some people do quite well at both having ezines, forums, etc. and also having their own products. They fit in both classes.
Is this article going to make some people angry? It sure is, but I want you to stop and think for a moment. Can you find successful people who don't fit in one of those classes? You may say, "What about the search engine expert?" The answer is he has an audience. He can generate free leads for ANY product anytime he wants. Which class are you in? Do you have a product, an audience, or both?
If you don't fit into one these groups of online businesses, then you don't have the right vehicle for online success. It would be like trying to compete in a Nascar stock car race with a bicycle. You might be the strongest and fastest bicyclist that has ever walked the planet, but no matter how hard you work you don't stand a chance in the Nascar race!
Many of the Internet marketers I meet are just like that bicyclist. They know they can do it if they just work hard enough, but they aren't using the right vehicle for the Internet race. Are you using the right vehicle?
