How many times have you heard someone echoing this doomsday sentiment lately? People act as if this has never happened before. I can hear them now… “But Facebook ads are way harder to get approved now! Plenty of Fish doesn’t have enough traffic! Nobody believes offers anymore, they are getting too smart! There are too many competitors on PPV!”
Oh noes! Aff mktg is dead!
Maybe you got into affiliate marketing by accident. Maybe you fell into your first profitable campaign and haven’t been able to duplicate it. Maybe you’ve been sitting on autopilot spending all of your Acai money. Whatever the case, these next few months are what separate the men from the boys.
This entire industry goes in cycles. Much like the stock market. There are bear markets and there are bull markets. Can people make money in both? Absolutely. But not by doing the same thing. Take a look around. What are people talking about? What are the fads now that you can make money off of? What are the new traffic sources or affiliate offers that are popping up?
There is opportunity everywhere, but it is going to take some work to monetize it. Let’s face it, the “work” that we have to do in this industry is not that bad. We are not grabbing our shovels and pickaxes and going back into the coal mine. We sit here in front of our computers every single day and make a lot of money for it. The only thing that changes is you are actually doing work instead of screwing around on forums and wasting time all day.
To all the whiners out there, I hate to be harsh, but shut up and get back to work.
Would you consider being the first comment ALWAYS hard work?
"The only thing that changes is you are actually doing work instead of screwing around on forums and wasting time all day."
It can be hard to manage your time when NOBODY is telling you what you have to get done that day/week, etc. I found that when I actually 'schedule' tasks to get done, I work much more efficiently throughout the day – Lists are my friend.
In with Profit Addiction
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Nice post
what goes around comes around.
Fill us in on the offers that are working now. Or gives us some insights to find those niches.
You are so right in this post!
Great blog as well by the way, just plugged it into my RSS.
Mark
Everywhere I look I see mention of the Affiliate world and it’s traffic sources moving in cycles. If it’s not PPC, then it’s PPV, if it’s not PPV, then it’s SEO. However does anybody really think that SEO will also one day sink to the bottom of the pile?
SEO is basically exempt from the popularity cycle because it will always be there. As long as there are search engines, there will be SEO.
The reason other traffic sources fall in and out of vogue is that they are paid methods and they become more or less profitable over time due to policy changes, competition, etc.
You're all wrong and here's the proof that affiliate marketing is dying. More and more anti-virus softwares are removing cookies. All of them. Recently I ran a test on two computers. One running AVG and the other running PC Tools Spyware Doctor. I cleared all my cookies and clicked on one of my affiliate links. The cookie gets placed and then I run the scan on both machines. Both anti-virus apps found and removed the cookie that got placed. I tested this on 30 different affiliate accounts that I have and 29 of the 30 cookies that got placed were found and removed.
I've read that more and more anti-virus apps are picking up on all cookies. If you're an affiliate marketing person then you know that cookies are what makes your commissions. No cookie on the visitors computer when the eventually sign up on the site means you sent FREE traffic to the site and you get paid NOTHING!
Thoughts?
With CPA affiliate offers, which is what I promote, the conversion either happens instantly on the same initial visit, or it doesn\’t happen at all. So having cookies sitting on your computer for 30 days that get wiped out by virus software don\’t affect my commissions at all. This may affect people that promote Amazon or eBay\’s affiliate programs more, but even those guys are lowering the amount of days a cookie stays valid.
Furthermore, the industry is already moving towards server-response tracking and other cookie-less methods. The threat from the Do Not Track movement is making this a priority for online merchants. I don\’t think virus software or cookies are going to play a significant role in the future of online marketing.
Your right on awesome post. There seems to be not much money in the market… Two thumbs up Josh if only people knew…