This is important. This is vital. Not taking this seriously is the exact same reason why people may gripe about the time it takes getting accepted to programs or not getting accepted at all. Time is money in this business. Treat network applications as if you were applying for another job. Does half-assing your resume increase your chances of banging out that new office with a view? No it dont. The same applies online. Take your business seriously so others will as well.

Personally being a Co-Network owner and not even launching live to public publishers I have deleted over 400 fraudulent applications in the last 24 hours. That’s just one day on a network that is nothing yet. I wonder how people like Market Leverage and Hydra feel? I can only imagine.

The theory that networks only glance at your applications is partly correct. How would you feel looking over 410 applications only to find out that 400 of them were not legitimate? That cuts your production time down and does not allow you to focus more time, energy and dedication to the people who are legitimate.

Here are some tips on getting accepted to Affiliate Networks:

1. Dont have a website, build one. It’s an instant red flag. Another red flag is if you dont have a website then using something like Google or Yahoo will get you denied pretty quick. Fact of the matter is that silly things like that are seen hundreds of times daily. Your best bet is to ALWAYS utilize the comment box located in applications. You better be telling why you dont have a site and what your intentions are.

Just another shout out to Market Leverage. If you’re wondering why I keep pimping them, it’s because of the way they treat people, affiliates, bloggers and whoever they generally meet. A perfect example of what a good company is all about.

I realize it is a little soon but we are just over a month away from another great conference. Ad Tech Miami runs June 3rd-4th at the Miami Beach Convention Center. I will be in attendance as well as the rest of the Convert2Media Team. Unfortunately we will not have a booth at this event but you should be able to recognize us pretty easily. :)

You can register for the Exhibit Hall and Keynotes for free. It doesn’t cost you a dime unless you wait to buy registration onsite.  If you are planning on attending this event and would like to meet up and talk shop, feel free to shoot me over an email and we will work out the details throughout May.

The age old question of being new to Affiliate Marketing, what should I set my goal at? The answer is usually around the $50-$100 a day range. That is conservative and generally speaking though. Affiliate Marketing is no different than anything else you may encounter in life. If you still working a job then just consider it a new one. There are going to be things that you have to learn and experience before you become a top dog around the work place. The same applies to sitting in your cozy little office with the coffee pot brewing, it is going to take some adapting and adjusting before you get comfortable.

Aside from the fact that there are a lot of things you will have to go thru and learn from, you also have to deal with learning pace. Everyone is different. Some people will go out and earn $500 in their first month. I’ve personally helped and seen it done. Others may take at least 6 months before making their first dollar. Uhh umm, Hello? That would be me. Some may even take more than a year.

In my opinion you need to start with something you know. I love gaming. More importantly I love gaming on the Xbox 360. Some of the first offers I ever ran were for Xbox 360′s and Xbox 360 games. On top of running CPA offers, I also sold xbox 360′s and equipment thru Amazon. Hell, I did not sell a lot but at least I was selling something. I knew enough about the niche that I could write about it without it being a strain. As a matter of fact, I knew the niche so well and being a member of the Halo Forums, General Gaming Forums and MLG PRO, I could relate and interpret the lingo used among gamers. Knowing this I could adjust my writing style to something that was actually INTERESTING to read for gamers. Knowing what you’re doing is a crucial component in Affiliate Marketing. Without knowing the ins and outs of your market, do you think shooting from the hip is going to be enough in that market to make a comfortable living? Maybe after a year or so when you have printed so much shit that you have so many rankings or ads running that people cant help but to come to your site. Now you have to deal with will they return or not?

Well the wait is over. Today I get the opportunity to introduce Eric’s (from The $1000 Affiliate Experiment) groovy new tool Poll Factory. Poll Factory is the newly created system that allows you to construct CPA voting polls at lightening speed. As a matter of fact it takes an average of 5-6 minutes per poll! If anyone has followed the CPA Marketing Series then they already know that polls covering celebrities, movies and sports can be some quick profit earners.

So a little math here shows that working hard for two hours a day would yield at least 15 polls a day. Seriously, with all the information that has been covered and the release of this tool, if you cannot make money with this simple tactic, you’re in real bad shape. Eric is an active PPC Marketer so he didnt spend his time and resources creating a tool that he himself would never use. He built it for himself! As a matter of fact you can check out his case study of the easiest $650 he’s ever made online. If that wasn’t enough, he gives you his topic for the poll! You can see the poll that generated the income here.

Here’s where I tell you the price and all that jazz. Luckily it’s not an ebook..Hooray! (Like you would see one here anyway). This is a real tool created by a PPC to CPA Marketer that I am using myself. As a matter of fact, I really dont know if I would still be doing polls if it wasn’t for the ease of use Poll Factory provides. On average my polls will make $30-$50 profit a day with my good ones in the $100 a day range. So with that mindset how much you think Poll Factory is worth? You will have to cruise on over and check it out for yourself at how ridiculously Eric has priced it during his launch. As for support, Eric has setup a forum specifically for Poll Factory.

I really dont link out to many bloggers anymore. The amount of disinformation on the net is rising at a sickening level but I wanted to take the time to let everyone here know about a cool little gig going on right now. First off, I have never met Chad from CDF Networks. I visit his blog EVERYDAY and even though I am subscribed, I much rather spend some time on the blogs and people I trust reading their material. I make it a point to visit him whenever he writes a new post because the fact of the matter is, is that he has given out and still continues to give out information that is VERY valuable in regards to my own PPC Business and PPC in general. A couple of quick examples of pure gold include Day Parting Pay Per Click For Higher Profits and Parked Domain Traffic From Google.

With that said Chad is doing something pretty incredible for his readers. He’s running a Mentor For A Week Contest right now. He’s agreed to help the winner for a week for free to get started in PPC and Affiliate Marketing. This is the single most valuable thing you can get from someone like Chad. The contest is simple too:

1. Contest is open to subscribers only, so if you haven’t already – subscribe to the CDF Network feed.

2.  Reply to this post with a comment of 2-3 sentences about why you would like some help getting started in PPC-affiliate marketing. Please don’t write a book, just 2-3 sentences.

Highly recommended to spend a few minutes snagging his feed and giving yourself the opportunity to winning the contest and learning from a Marketer like Chad. You can check out the whole post here.

There’s a large misconception online that only very few people are making money online. This cannot be further from the truth. There are a TON of people making money online but you may only know about a handful of them. Two of the largest net profit producing affiliate marketers that I know are virtually undetectable online. They just assume to keep it that way so we wont go into details but the first with CJ and the other with Linkshare are doing incredible numbers as affiliates. It amazes me that so many people procrastinate and verbally cut down others who are making money online. I really dont know why this is. Jealousy perhaps? Maybe the ebook selling and ripping off? Who knows and who cares. The ones that procrastinate are the ones likely to reach the pot of gold later than most.

With that said there is an important piece of the marketing online puzzle that I feel is very important to marketers. It’s called risk taking. Now if you have ever got scammed in the past then your mind presets itself to calculate risks. In my opinion this is a good and bad thing. While it’s a good thing to calculate risks, it’s a bad thing to over analyze them to a point that you talk yourself out of taking one.

One of the hardest questions I get is “how do I make money without any money to invest”? This question is so hard to answer because while you CAN make money without investing any it takes a tremendous amount of willpower and work ethic. It takes so much, that I normally ignore this question altogether because I will tell you right now that I normally will not waste my time replying to a stranger of whom I know nothing about. If I had an idea of what you have accomplished so far and what your plans are going forward then I might be inclined to reply.

If there is one thing that is important about a competitive niche it’s that it HAS GOT TO BE profitable. Now you’re probably saying well if it’s competitive then it’s profitable right? Not necessarily. A lot can go on in a niche, especially with large companies coming to play for branding purposes. Sure in the end it’s probably profitable for them but if you’re at the top of the chain promoting with/against them then you could stand to lose a substantial amount of capital. The reason is because a lot of these companies have millions to spend to brand themselves and we as affiliate marketers do not or will not engage in spending that much of our capital.

It comes down to two things ultimately here folks. There is no need to over-analyze things because you can sit around and think about this for years and you’re still going to come out with the exact same equations.

1. Lots of competition most likely means profitable markets
2. Low competition means it’s 50/50 with no guarantee

Simple as that.

The more competition you’re facing, the harder you have to work. I really hate hearing about PPC Marketers who tell people they spend 1-2 hours monitoring their campaigns and the rest of the day stroking their meat. Honestly, I’ve met markets where I could do this and while it is nice, that’s a surefire way of getting a big case of the lazy ass. It’s not real hard with someone who is NOT dominating the market to come along and knock you off your high horse. The reason it’s so easy for them is because you have more motivation when your NOT making money than you do when you ARE making money. I know this first hand and that’s why it’s important to always be moving forward. Stationary and reverse are two speeds in which you basically just give your place up for grabs. It’s not their fault for whooping your ass, it’s yours.