Just Another Writer

I need to come up with a new category name, perhaps one like, Ways I Am Stupid. This little story would definitely make the cut. Hang in there though, because what I’ve learned can make you some real money, meaning this is not about Adsense. People who claim they make thousands with Adsense, please do us a favor and tell us how you actually do it! I recently read a post by a guy who claimed to be making thousands from Adsense, but who charges $10 for a link on his sidebar, which has one link. Something about that seems a bit fishy to me, and not the yummy farm-raised salmon kind of fish, but more like the sushi on the buffet that made my son throw up for three days after he ate it on a dare from me. Yes, I feel guilty.

First of all, I have to express my bewilderment at having read blogs about making money online for months now without ever having seen an article detailing precisely how it is done. There are all sorts of tips, lists and bits of helpful advice, but I never got the big picture until now. Perhaps that is because those articles all assumed prior knowledge, which I did not have, because there are certainly excellent resources out there. So for those of you who are in the same boat as I am, I’m going to lay this out plainly. Old hands at this are going to be bored, and the greedy may even be pissed off that I am giving the secret away, because the majority of people I see doing this are not telling you that they are doing it.

For this example, I am going to go with Dreamhost. That is because this is the company whose affiliate program I have failed to understand to an alarming degree. Actually, let me back up for a sec. I did not even know what an affiliate program was until about a month ago. Let me explain.

An affiliate program a company or network who pays you, the website (or blog) owner, whenever someone purchases a product through your site.

Of course you may be thinking that you don’t often see products for sale on other people’s blogs. That is absolutely correct. Check this out:

I’ve found Dreamhost to be very easy to work with, blah blah blah.

Okay, now let’s pretend that is part of a post, just like it was in two others that I have put on this site. Mouse over the word Dreamhost. Notice how in the gray bar under the screen it shows the r.cgi?328715 gibberish after the dreamhost.com part. This is the affiliate code.

Why is this important?

Here’s why.

They pay you $97 dollars for ONE referral. You can also choose to take a long-term view of things, and get paid 10 percent of subsequent payments by the people you have referred. Here is where the me being stupid part of the story comes into play. Remember when I said I have a blog hosted with Dreamhost? Well, I paid full price for it. This, apparently, is something that no one else does. The reason is because affiliates can choose to create their own promo codes and give people discounts, which probably everyone in the universe has taken advantage of except me.

My promo code is: ILOVEBLOGGRRL

This promo code gives anyone who purchases a Dreamhost plan $97 dollars off of the purchase price, which brings it down to $2 a month for the person buying it. Of course, this is the best promo code on the net, because I will not get $97 per referral, since I gave the entire amount away in my discount when I created the promo code. I will get $0 dollar per referral at this point. Oooh baby, I’m gonna be rich!

So why bother? Well, I still have the opportunity to make 10 percent off of people’s Dreamhost renewals, which means I will begin to see money a year from now. The other thing is that since I figured out how the promo code works, I just don’t have the heart to try to get people to pay full price for a service that they can get cheaper from another site. It makes me feel sleazy. In other words, I don’t want people to feel as dumb as I did for paying full price, and chances are, they will find out! I also do not want to have to start wearing blue polyester suits and loud ties, so I will have to stay on the up and up.

Of course, Dreamhost is just an example. The thing I have learned is that this same model is applied to clothing, shoes, surveys, anything you can buy from Amazon, and just about anything you can buy from anyone, anywhere. It even applies to sex. Next time you click on one of those dating sites, look for the referral code! And, next time you are shopping online, look at the very bottom of the home page and look for the word “affiliate” or “associate”. Click on it, and you will enter the matrix known as affiliate marketing. And it is a matrix–it is everywhere behind what you read. Chances are you run into it several times a day.

Take a look at this post from Tim Ferris’s Four Hour Work Week blog. Oh my. The boy is already swimming in book sales, but I’m sure he is making even more bling from this post. Mouse over the links, and you’ll see what I mean. The laptop is over $2000 dollars, so he will make a good $200 or so if anyone bites the bait on that one. Notice how it is all carefully crafted into a “how-to” post. By the way, his book will give you insight into the marketing and sales world like you have never imagined, unless you are a marketing/sales person. (Notice how the clickable link “his book” has an affiliate code–mine! Here is the link to sign up, and I do not make money if you do, although there are many other programs where that is possible.)

It’s kinda nice for those of us who don’t want to bother with inventory and all that. Find a nice affiliate program and promote it. However, this is when you need to start thinking about that “niche” that everyone is talking about…

Did I make any money off the 155 clickthroughs I have gotten so far from my Dreamhost links? No. One reason is that I did not have the promo code. I got in a hurry when I signed up and didn’t even check that part out, after which I realized how stupid I had been to pay full price! Lesson: Read the fine print! Another reason is that too many other people are doing it, and people have had ample opportunity to get it elsewhere. Yet another reason is that many people who have blogs, unlike my former self, are hip to affiliate marketing codes and avoid them. This is why SEO (search engine optimization) is important. People who arrive at your page looking for the product in the first place are more likely to buy it.

What I will be doing during the next month is showing you two niche blogs that I have created, and how much money they make using some tricks that I know now that I understand how much potential affiliate marketing really has. It could be a real disaster. Stay tuned.