5 Things Every Internet Marketer Should Know

1) Offers come, and offers go.

You can spend a load of time on a campaign and get it profiting great, only to have it die the next day. The advertiser can pull the offer, your payout can get cut, you can be completely cut from the offer, etc. Don’t flip out, realize that this is a part of the industry and move on. Search for a similar offer to promote. If you can’t find anything, quit struggling and just call it a day and start on something else. Trust me I know how great it can be to have an offer running well, and I know the feelings I get when something bad happens to it. I still get pissed off and want to save it, but now I just accept it and move on to the next thing.

Most of the big money making offers are come and go, accept it, and rape it while you can.

2) Expect PPC traffic to be extremely stressful.

Getting traffic really isn’t all that easy as it sounds. I know firsthand especially with Google. I had an offer running great for like a month, and then it got slapped. I recreated the campaign…got slapped in a week. Recreated…slapped in 3 days. It’s a major pain, but Google slaps are something all affiliates deal with. No matter how legitimate you think your site is, it can be slapped.

Same thing goes with Facebook and Myspace. Well with Facebook good luck getting anything even approved, and then with Myspace good luck getting volume with your approved ads. Back when Facebook was approving all my ads I would have to make 50 ads a day just to keep volume levels sufficient. Thank goodness for my slave worker.

What I’m basically trying to say here is: just because you’re having trouble getting traffic from Google, YSM, Facebook, etc., don’t give up on it. It just takes a lot of work and figuring out the best way to get the traffic.

3) Affiliate networks are greedy.

Sure every network will tell you that they don’t shave, it’s a shame it happens. Don’t pick an offer from Network A and then run it exclusively there without ever trying the same offer anywhere else. Test out the same offer on EVERY network you can and compare conversion rates. Sometimes you’ll find the results to be very surprising. Greed doesn’t have to mean they’re purposely shaving, greed can also mean a network doesn’t want to take the time to either a) set up their own tracking system and getting off DT or b) pull the resources to fix the issues in their current tracking system. Networks are greedy with payouts as well, so never settle without negotiating with all networks.

Business is business, and I’ve found that most networks/affiliate managers take things way too personally. Don’t let this affect you, just do your job and make as much money as you can.

4) Don’t believe all the crap you read, and don’t read too much of it.

I’ve been victim to this myself a number of times. I’ve read something where people are talking about something that works awesome. Either on a blog, forum, or someone personally tells me. I’ve then gone and tried to do the exact thing I read…and failed. Different marketers have different strengths, and it’s up to you to find what niche you’re best at driving traffic to.

I know a bunch of people that couldn’t get traffic for weight loss/acai stuff when about a million people were raping it. But they did just fine in other verticals, because they were better at getting traffic to their own stuff.

So just don’t believe everything you read. Because if something was that good, why would people be talking about it?

5) Harden up.

This ties in with some of the previous points, but is a good general statement. Expect to feel absolutely HORRIBLE some days in this business. I’ve had days where I would run $10k profit per day for over a week. The very next week, I’d be grumpy and totally pissed off…even after all the money I made the week before! This kind of stuff just happens, and you have to learn to accept it. Once you do, you’ll get mad less and less, and your productivity won’t dip down during those stressful periods.

Seriously, if you’re not ready to feel like you’re going to lose everything and everything will fall from under your feet, apply at your local Radio Shack. Affiliate marketing will bring the highest highs and the lowest lows, expect them.

Off to bed for me.