In their rush to make ‘millions' online, WAY too many folks fall into a completely avoidable trap — and end up making no money at all.
What do they do wrong?
They try to do everything all at once, and start multiple sites in different channels — an affiliate marketing blog, selling their own product, auction selling, etc.
By result, they don't learn how to do anything well and don't manage to make even one site profitable.
You can imagine where that willy-nilly path leads — to feelings of frustration and eventually, defeat.
If you're on that path or feel confused by all the different ways you can earn online… SLOW DOWN!
I've had an online presence since 1996, and nothing happened over night.
- In 1996 I built a 3-page flower seed exchange website from which I traded seeds with gardeners from around the world Experience with that site made me realize the web's potential as a marketplace – so I started looking for online bizops at that point.
- In late 1997, I discovered affiliate marketing and started a site to review online dating services – a topic to which I could relate and had the strong desire to share with others. By the end of 1999, the site was generating $10,000 per month in pure profit – and I kept putting in the hours to make it even more profitable!
- While working on my affiliate site, I also dabbled in online auction selling and soon discovered that online auctions were not my ‘thing'. I was too lazy for the hassle of packing and shipping. Furthermore, high postal rates from Canada made the opportunity less than lucrative.
- During that time, I also picked up a drop-shipping arrangement with watchmaker, Eduardo Milieris, a scenario which suited me much better than auction selling as all I had to do was sell the watches and his company shipped them out. I've sold his beautiful watches at WindingWay.com for years now.
- By 2002, my affiliate dating site had become so successful (generating $650K Canadian/437K U.S.) that I wrote the “Super Affiliate Handbook to share what I had learned about the business with aspiring affiliate marketers. That then qualifed me as an infoproduct merchant.
- The Super Affiliate Handbook's popularity amongst readers and industry leaders led to speaking engagements around the world (something I NEVER thought I could do), my own ‘Affiliate's Corner' column in Revenue Magazine and a book contract with McGraw Hill to write Make a Fortune Promoting Other People's Stuff Online: How Affiliate Marketing Can Make You Rich.
- Each of those opportunities opened doors to joint venture with other experts and participate in the creation of more infoproducts and teleseminars.
- In 2010, I opened Affiliate Blogger PRO (now known as Affiliate Blogger PRO) – a membership site built on a WordPress blog platform with Wishlist member software.
My story is similar to so many others who have become successful online entrepreneurs.
Basically, you pick a channel and work at it until it becomes profitable OR you decide that you don't enjoy what you are doing and then choose a new channel.
Furthermore, as each venture becomes profitable, new opportunities present themselves. (Amazing how that works…).
You too can build a diversified and successful online business — but you have to CHOOSE just ONE channel and concentrate on that one first.
So, CHOOSE whether you want to start with affiliate marketing or creating your own infoproduct, learn what you need to do and then WORK your venture to success.
Once your first site is successful, then go find a new project.
With one successful site under your belt, you'll have the knowledge and experience to get your second and subsequent sites launched and profitable much faster than you did the first.
Did you find this post about how to avoid falling into the newbie trap informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
Hi Rosalind,
Thanks for this article and to be honest your book inspired or rather pushed me to take this journey and see if I can be successful online. I recently started a blog, and although early days, hardly any search traffic ..I will still push on…
Thanks again for sharing your experience and knowledge
Hi Rosalind,
Yes you offer great advice and few others can claim to have such impressive affiliate marketing credentials.
However, you have to admit that at least part of your success was in timing. In fact timing was everything. It would be well nigh impossible to duplicate your success with an online dating review service in 2013 for example. Whereas in 1997 it was the right time for such a service to take off and become a huge success.
Of course success is never guaranteed and you also had the ability to convert the right opportunity at the right time to a huge success. Others had the same opportunity and were not so successful.
I guess what I’m getting at is that the dating affiliate business and the affiliate business in general IS pretty crowded now and it’s gonna take an extraordinary amount of effort to make a living at it if starting up from scratch these days.
Cheers, Stephen
Hi Stephen,
I would never deny that timing was a great part of my success. But it was also my choice of niche. Online dating may be done to death as a general niche, but there are still hundreds of niches from which to choose… even today… that have not been fully examined.
I’ve never advocated any niche above any other… just used dating as the example from which I was successful.
Everyone should choose their own niche wisely and in step with the times.
Cheers,
Ros
Hi Rosalind,
I see you have been giving good advice for years based on the time of the previous comments. I agree with you totally. I have only been doing this since 2012 and I have to force myself to stay focused with one task at a time. As they say “Rome wasn’t built in a day”.
Thanks
I’ve tried for years but nothing ever works. Nobody ever comes to my sites even with all the advice of the best teachers out there. Articles seo backlinks and everything like that for years. Now doing “pain” site on anxiety and hired someone to do backlinks but they never show up. Wish I could just write stories or something and let someone else do this stuff.
Hi Walter,
I understand what you mean. However, DO NOT lose hope. You’ve got to keep at it.
There is a REASON why we are visiting one of Rosalind Gardner’s websites – to find out how to do Internet Marketing the RIGHT way.
My suggestion is to go to ==> https://rosalindgardner.com/blog/sah/ <== and join Rosalind's Academy Training.
I will be shortly myself. Rosalind, as you can tell, knows her stuff. She is definitely not some dingbat broad trying to sell you snake oil.
With all her knowledge and time tested experience, it behooves us to learn as much as we can from someone so willing to help all of us.
I am still struggling myself for the last 3 years. Have 3 websites I built from scratch on WordPress. Yet income is not quite coming in yet.
Take courage, be insistant and persistant and get the RIGHT tools to help you succeed with Rosalind.
Much success to you my friend.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of starting my blog but I would like to learn how to start a newsletter that visitors to my site can opt-in. Any help would be much appreciated. Tim
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