Affiliate Millions – Book Report
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I’m always on the lookout for new books on affiliate marketing, and I recently came across “Affiliate Millions: Make a Fortune Using Search Marketing on Google and Beyond,” published April 13, 2007.
The book is geared towards affiliates, and I was anxious to read it, as there are few books about the industry, and a lack of resources to provide quality training for affiliates.
To be honest, I was disappointed in the book. While the book promises the reader they can “Make a Fortune Using Search Marketing on Google and Beyond,” the approach was elementary. Not the sort of level that’s going to bring somebody their affiliate millions.
The book kicks off with explanations of affiliate and search marketing and then follows with individual chapters dedicated to somewhat intuitive processes like joining an affiliate network, applying to an affiliate program, and setting up a ppc search campaign.
Each step in excruciating detail. It seems like they were trying to reach a word minimum, rather than write a helpful guide for affiliates.
If you’re brand new to affiliate marketing, this book could be helpful in pointing you in the right direction. But if you’ve been working as an affiliate for a couple minutes, you’ll have a hard time reading beyond the first chapter.
Also, being that it’s a print book, some of the key information is already out of date.
The central theme of Affiliate Millions is that affiliate should buy traffic from the pay per click search engines and send that traffic straight to the advertiser’s site.
One of the affiliate programs prominently cited in the book is eBay. The problem with this example is that the strategy endorsed by the book (sending traffic straight from ppc search engines to advertisers) is something the eBay affiliate program no longer permits.
You will not be compensated for paid search traffic purchased from Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, nor from any of their content networks, such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and MSN ContentAds, if it is linked directly to the eBay.com, eBay Express, or eBay Store domains.
Also, I noticed a screenshot in Chapter 2 (Learning About Affiliate Advertising) where a search on MSN is shown with “iPod Nano” as the keyword being targeted. The Apple affiliate program forbids buying keywords with any of their trademarked names.
Affiliate Publisher may bid on search terms from website search engines or other directory or referral services (e.g. Yahoo Search Marketing, Google, etc. collectively “Search Enginesâ€), provided that (i)Publisher Affiliate’s search terms, listing titles and descriptions, and the content of their websites do not violate the copyright or any other rights of Apple or third party, as determined by Apple at its sole discretion; and (ii)Publisher Affiliate complies with the following guidelines, as determined by Apple and its sole discretion: Affiliate Publisher Ads shall not be displayed in response to a keyword query containing Apple or any other Apple trademark, not any confusingly similar term, and Affiliate Publisher will not be paid for any transactions resulting from any keyword or phrase containing search keyword (including but not limited to Apple, Apple Store, Mac, MacBook, iPod and iPhone.
So if you get Affiliate Millions, take the advice with a grain of salt. It’s a decent introductory book for the newest of new newbies.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend the book for affiliate marketers with any degree of experience under their belts.
- Posted in Affiliate Opinions
9 Comments
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I’ve always been rather sceptical about OFFLINE books on ONLINE marketing – the whole concept looks somehow illegitimate to me, like someone trying to milk offline what they can’t milk online any more…
reply to this commentI don’t agree at all about books on Internet related topics being illegitimate in any way.
In general, I’d say they are good resources, as they’ve been (rather should have been) checked for accuracy and edited for clarity.
reply to this commentHow much did you read? I stopped reading it after chapter 1. You were pretty nice in your review.
Rather than recommending that book to “affiliate marketing virgins”, would I recommend the book “Street Smart Internet Marketing” by Justin Michie instead. It’s also basic, but covers a lot more ground and does not include as much “inaccurate” examples.
I was contacted by the AM for the affiliate program (he is selling it outside the official channels as well) and asked for a review on Amazon. I did that, but they were not too happy about it. hehe.
Hey, if you ask for it, then you have to live with the results. My review wasn’t bad, but they did not like my opinion that the book is “novice” or entry level and not an expert book.
It’s $9.00 at Amazon, but if you ask me for my honest opinion, I would recommend to not start saving money at the from end and invest $40 more and get Jeremy Palmer’s ebook instead.
reply to this commentfrom = wrong
reply to this commentI read the first several chapters completely, but skimmed the remaining chapters.
reply to this commentThanks for your honest review, instead of just all positive comment to sell it. You are branding yourself great!
reply to this commentYour Message@Shawn Collins:
I agree that there is value in offline books about online topics. I happen to like books I can hold and highlight and mark up. I also find that online books — which I have to print out — often use huge white spaces to seem bigger by stretching the page count and frequently use large fonts for the same reason. Contrary to what I assume was Affiliate Money Marketer’s point, ebooks are frequently out of date too. In my experience, once published, rarely do people go back and update them to keep up with changes.
By the way, I got a lot of background and understanding of the dimensions of Internet marketing from Mitch Meyerson’s compilation, Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, copywrite 2005. Even though some things were out of date, the marketing messages were not.
reply to this comment@John Aberle:
reply to this commentGiven that there isn’t really a barrier to entry for creating an ebook, there is a wide range of quality. Over the years, most ebooks I’ve read have been complete garbage.