The Affiliate Marketer

It’s been such a long time since I was last able to find time to write here! I apologise to my regular readers, some of whom have probably lost interest in this site by now.

Today I just wanted to briefly talk about motivation and how it affects the achievement of success in your endeavours. I’m going to be talking about my experiences. The experiences seem to have something in common with writings from some entrepreneurs that I have seen.

Well, it’s fairly obvious that you need motivation to succeed in any business endeavour, whether it be online or offline. If you are not motivated, you will run up against problems.

When I started getting into running my own business, it was some years ago, and it was a purely offline pursuit (except that the internet was used for communication purposes such as email). I was already a software engineer and had built up a base of contacts through working as an employee in various places. I did not stop being an employee; I simply completed some projects for people who needed software or embedded firmware written, and the income raised was treated as an adjunct to my regular income.

I accepted voluntary redundancy from my position as an employee in April 2005. Towards the end of my employment, I was given tasks to complete to which I was unsuited and lacking in the required skills, and training opportunities were not provided to me for these specific tasks. This situation had gone on for some months, and I had had enough, so when the opportunity to accept voluntary redundancy came up, I decided to go for it. I did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to try next, but I thought I wanted a break from engineering.

Later last year, I tried various different ways of making money on the net. I came across the idea of affiliate marketing and buying traffic through AdSense, and it seemed like an easy way to raise money, until I tried it! I did achieve a small amount of success, but in the end I decided that that particular venture was not what I wanted to do. I know some people make a great deal of money with this approach, but there was not enough in it to interest me; I found it quite boring.

Along the way, I did find out about other ways of making money on the net. I started web publishing, using Google AdSense to make money. I achieved modest success with this approach, and I still do make money from it. I enjoy some aspects of web publishing, but not all of it. In particular, I don’t enjoy link building, which is a required step for anybody who wants to achieve high rankings for popular phrases in the search engines.

The next thing I tried came about through pure chance. Somebody made a throwaway comment about a possible Windows application that would benefit people using Google AdWords. I thought that it would be quite easy for me to design the application, and I realised that I could sell copies of it! I designed Keyword Transformer from that, and I started making money as a trader. It was a welcome opportunity to get back into the kind of software engineering that I do enjoy!

I knew that others could easily sell the product for me, so I spent some time setting up a third-party affiliate tracking system, and in that way I was able to make far more money than I could have done alone. It meant that I was making money for other people as well as myself, so I was not just helping myself; I was helping others to make money as well. Part of motivation is seeing that your endeavours are producing fruit, and I made more money in a short space of time with that product than I ever did with AdWords and AdSense.

I then went on to design another product, a limited time offer script, which was a development of a system that I put in place to help market Keyword Transformer. This went on to produce sales and money as well, and being somewhat of a unique niche, I have generated more interest with that product through affiliate marketing than Keyword Transformer.

There are certain things that I am better at, and as I become more successful, I can see that I will be outsourcing some things that I really do not enjoy, such as book-keeping. By setting up an affiliate marketing system, I have already begun to outsource sales. I really like the affiliate marketing model; the amount of money you make is directly proportional to your level of success, and I have even had people that I do not know, and did not contact beforehand, achieve success marketing the limited-time offer script.

If I become a successful entrepreneur, I can see that I will end up just doing the things that I enjoy, and putting out everything else. I will be more motivated because I will be doing what I want to do, and that will lead to greater success.

I certainly get a buzz from days that I make more than I ever would making money as an employee! I haven’t had many of those at this stage, but the feeling is great, and it helps a lot with motivation. At present I have a number of subcontract jobs on the go, but I do have plans to design and sell more products; I can make a lot of money doing that, and also increase the prosperity of others.

My advice boils down to the following two things:

1. Once you have achieved a small amount of success in a field that you enjoy, you have probably found a field that you would be well advised to concentrate on, whether it be affiliate marketing, web publishing and advertising, product design, or any other field of endeavour.

2. You can’t do it while you are starting out because you don’t have the capital or turnover necessary, but once you have started getting a reasonable amount of money through the door, start outsourcing everything that you don’t enjoy and/or you’re not good at.

David Thomas, The Affiliate Marketer