Comments on: Ask Shawn Collins: Advice for New Affiliates

By: Max

Max — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:32:41 +0000

Another very important thing is support and encouragement from others just like yourself along with stories of success and more tips like Shawn’s. I can’t count the times I’ve run out of inspiration to keep going toward my dreams only to be picked back up again from the great people in the Affiliate community I hang with. In less than a year I’m up to $1000/month. Haven’t quit the day job yet but every success gets me that much closer. Don’t give up! There’s plenty of room for you to succeed too!

By: andrew wee

andrew wee — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:18:57 +0000

Regarding the email issue, I’d suggest using emails sent from your domain (eg. adam@affblog.com) rather than adam@gmail.com.

1) You create better branding for your business
2) You get some traffic from people who might otherwise see the domain name in your email address and decide to visit your website.

—
ditto on the aweber autoresponder recommendation.
the power is very much in the list.

By: Shawn Collins

Shawn Collins — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:41:36 +0000

> I totally disagree with having to pay for email.

I’m talking about a service to manage a mail list, send newsletters, handle unsubscribes, provide reporting, etc.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:19:51 +0000

I totally disagree with having to pay for email. The free solution: gmail. Most hosts allow you to create email accounts and forward the email to another email address. Setup your domain email (like me@smydomain.com) to forward to your gmail account (like me@gmail.com).

Then, you setup gmail to allow you to send email as me@mydomain.com. Now you get the benefit of the excellent spam prevention in gmail, it’s huge storage space, and it’s great interface without paying any more $$ per month.

Brian
http://candyaddict.com

By: Hakukoneoptimointia

Hakukoneoptimointia — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:07:25 +0000

If your topic is specific enough I would also try adwords marketing together with affiliate offers related to your topic.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:17:34 +0000

What a great, “down-to-earth” video. I found the advise valuable, did not detect any sort of snake oil there, just a concern that folks follow the basic steps.

I would love to hear more comments about how to promote your site without using AdWords type services, so that you begin to have the traffic to send your Aweber newsletters to. How do you promote your RSS feeds, etc?

Thank you for taking the time to put that together Shawn.

By: 45n5

45n5 — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 02:31:10 +0000

Thanks Shawn! Personally I’m most passionate about making money online/building websites/etc so I think I already have a blog for that, or maybe not, or I may see what else i could start, or who I can help start around me.

aweber, openads are both new to me. i’ll be signing up with aweber in a bit, I think it’s exciting just to offer 45n5 as emails so everything else they do is gravy on top.

thanks again,
mark

By: Shawn Collins

Shawn Collins — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:51:50 +0000

Agreed, Martin. I mentioned being persistent towards the end initially, but I had to edit the video down to fit on YouTube.

By: Martin Edic

Martin Edic — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:21:59 +0000

I’d add another essential aspect: persistence. You are going to need a fairly large amount of content on your blog before you see a lot of traffic and the content must appear on a regular basis, at least daily. If you don’t have time during the week, ‘save up’ ideas and do a bunch on the weekend. Then either post one each morning or tell your blog software when to post it (Typepad can do this- I assume WordPress has something similar).
Oh, and pick a subject that involves buying stuff: My kitchen design blog gets a lot more clicks than my climate change blog- kitchens are full of stuff that people buy all the time. I haven’t found any affiliate programs for electric cars!