The 7 Truths of Being An Affiliate

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The 7 Truths Of Being An Affiliate

- by Niall Roche

(c) Niall Roche - All Rights Reserved
http://www.affiliate-advocate.com
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The 7 truths of being an affiliate

In November 2002 I found myself bored and online one night. I decided to have a look on the web for a way of making some extra cash. I found something called an E-book (no idea what that meant back then) called "1000 Ways to Make Money". I devoured this book. I found myself more and more excited from the ideas I was reading. The final money making idea in that book was "Start a website to promote this
book and make 40% commission for doing so". Great!
A business for me to start doing something I enjoy -
tinkering with websites. I was a happy man.

I bought myself a domain name and some hosting. I took out all my old books on HTML and got to work. "I can easily earn a couple of thousand in the next 2 or 3 months doing this", I thought. "Setup a website, link it to the authors website and make money. Easy. The search engines will love my new website and the sales will come rolling in. I can quit my job!"


BOOM. 6 months or so later the dream was over. Day dawned and my eyes opened up a bit. The only money that had changed hands was money going from my pocket into someone elses. SEO, PPC, Ebook, Guru, Ezine, auction, advertise, link, reciprocal, monetize blah blah blah. These terms swam around in my head day and night. I stopped and realized it was time
to re-evaluate my new "business". I jotted down some of the lessons I've learned. I hope you can benefit from my hard earned experience.



Truth 1
There is no easy way to get rich. It takes work. A lot of
work but it is SO rewarding when you make your first
affiliate sale and see a commission check arrive in the
post.



Truth 2
There are no Gurus. Gurus are the guys who have made their money and are now going to get even even richer flogging us the next "quick fix". Somebody calling themselves a guru is like me walking around my home town shouting "behold I am your Messiah". Yes that would be utterly ridiculous. So is calling yourself a guru. The best guru you can have is commonsense.



Truth 3
There are no quick fixes. I would suggest that you ignore anybody offering you a quick fix to making money online - it's a scam whatever they're offering.



Truth 4
If it makes you uneasy then don't get involved with it.
If it looks like a dog, smells like a dog and walks like a
dog.... well...... it's a dog.



Truth 5
There are no quick and permanent fixes to good search engine rankings. It takes work, good content and common sense. With the right tools (some of these are free) and information anybody can increase their search engine rankings - believe me I'm living proof.



Truth 6
Don't believe the hype. If you read a sales letter on a website remember that its job is to convince you to buy the product. As my mother would say "Believe half of what you hear and none of what you read".



Truth 7
Content is king. Interesting, involving content is what keeps people coming back to your site. There are gimmicks that can "generate" content for you but they have a limited lifespan. Even if you feel you're not a writer try it. Practice thisby writing a short article on something you enjoy doing e.g. a hobby. Revise what you're written and get the opinions of other people on it. Writing content is really not that hard. Honest.




Are you scared now? Yes? Good! At least now you might
realize the simple truth. Affiliate selling isn't easy.
It's a whole heap of fun when it's going well and totally
disheartening when it's not. Just like a normal, real,
honest-to-God business. That's the hardest lesson to learn folks. Doing business online is just like doing business offline - ye gotta work at it.


If you want more information on being involved in
affiliate selling online then drop by my site - you can
find it at http://www.affiliate-advocate.com. The site
has tons of reviews of different affiliate products.
Please also feel free to email me directly with any
questions you might have.


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Niall Roche is the content author and owner of
http://www.affiliate-advocate.com
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