Using Affiliate Skills to Pay The Bills!

Affiliate Marketing Tips: Spending Money to Make Money

Posted by Kyle Eslick on May 26th, 2008 | Category and Tags

If you are planning to become an affiliate marketer, it can sometimes be difficult for someone starting out from stratch. That is why I shared my story and suggested people go through their existing content and add affiliate links to it. As a side note, if you are looking for an easy way to do this (which I hadn’t discovered until after I did mine manually, but now use on it on some of my websites), you can use the WP-Affiliate Pro WordPress plugin to search for keywords and replace them with designated affiliate links. It also does a variety of other things to manage your affiliate links from within your dashboard. You can see my recent review of this plugin here.

Anyway, I digress. The one area I’ve found that new affiliate marketers seem to either fail to learn or have a misconception of is that you become an affiliate marketer and suddenly you are rich. That is why in my previous post, I recommended people start by adding affiliate links to their existing content they’ve already written. This way you get some seed money to start out with.

The main thing people have a hard time grasping is that you need to spend money to make money. Without advertising, link building, and networking in general, you can still make a little income. With the proper advertising, you can truly make a fortune.

The problem is you can’t make money without people visiting your website, so you have to find ways to get people there. Google AdWords is a great and cost effective way to do this and probably my main advertising expense next to purchasing private advertising. I actually re-invest a large portion of my income into these areas to continue to grow and expand my websites/blogs.

Blog and website directories are also a great way to do link building and to get traffic. This has SEO benefits and will often give you a little bonus traffic as well. Unfortunately most quality directories also have a cost associated with them, so that is another area where spending that money can help you make money.

If you find that you are making money online, what are you doing to grow your business? How are you expanding your advertising reach?

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There Are 5 Responses So Far. »

Comment by shitu on May 26th, 2008:

Thanks Kyle for creating awareness of Affiliate Marketing.

I want to know whether these Affiliate Marketers put their adds on blog like mine(allin123.blogspot.com).

I have applied to many marketers(in cj.con as told by you in previous post) but none accepted it.Is individual website necessary?
Comment by James Mann on May 26th, 2008:

Great post Kyle

I really like the WP Affiliate Pro plugin. It just makes it so easy to add links for your affiliate programs and it’s just as easy to replace them if they aren’t working out.

I used to hate the time it would take to setup affiliate links and it would be so annoying to go back and change them on various pages.

WP Affiliate Pro WP Plugin is well worth having.
Comment by Kyle Eslick on May 26th, 2008:

@ Shitu – They are declining your blogspot blog? I guess I’ve never known anyone to be declined, but I also know that blogspot blogs are typically considered to be spammy by many advertisers.

That is interesting. Have you given any thought to switching to WordPress?

@ James – Yeah, absolutely. I wish I had discovered it six months ago before I went through all my blogs manually to add affiliate links.
Comment by Biodun on May 26th, 2008:

WP Affiliate Pro plugin is great! nice post, you really needs to spend money to make money even through quality directories, also eEducation is an immensely important part of affiliate marketing.
Comment by Kyle Eslick on May 27th, 2008:

@ Biodun – Exactly. I’m trying to get more people to jump into affiliate marketing, but I want to make sure they understand that they won’t be rich overnight (usually!).

There are PPC advertising expenses, direct advertising expenses sometimes, paying directories to list you, and sometimes buying/trying new software.

I’ve been fortunate to find a lot of profit already through affiliate marketing, but I reinvest a large sum of it into trying new products and the other expenses listed above. You gotta spend money to grow your business.