Some hard facts about affiliate marketing

Sphunn that! I like your approach considering the downside here, whereas most people only talk about the pluses. Your points on diversifying and being prepared with alternatives seem particularly pertinent to me, not just for the reasons you mentioned, but because it’ll help diversify your skill set.

Another thing you might mention is that your aff mgr might be an incompetent or lazy person, like mine was at Azoogle. Despite repeated requests to install tracking on the thankyou page - which my AM claimed to have done - I never saw the results in my analytics. Had to login to Azoogle to see my sales. That, and them paying me 2-3 months late (plus I had to call to explain that I wasn’t filling in US tax forms, being a Canuck - which they knew at my signup!) totally turned me off.

At the end of the day, I rather control my own income stream than rely on the good humour of merchants, AMs, networks and a dozen others up/down the line that can screw it up for you. I still do aff when it’s worth it, but it takes a lot more to get me interested.

Ya, the one about clicks not matching is really driving me insane!

Competition will move into your space.

A merchant, network will not pay you for your leads.

The laws regarding how internet advertising is done, being so new, will change.

Yes, you are building other people’s businesses NOT yours. Affiliate marketers are nothing but online sales force.

Gab - Excellent point about AM. There are some bad ones out there.

Andy - Great points all around. Luckily I have never NOT been paid yet.

Marc - True, but aff. marketing is its own business model. I think of it as a service business.

My $100 dollar / day profit adwords campaign just stopped one day. Still don’t know why it stopped. I’ve double ad prices and it never picked up. Odd.

Adwords seems like a mysterious blackbox With time and putting in quarter after quarter it seems to tell you what it likes and doesn’t like.

My biggest suggestion is to read, read, read! For example, don’t hit the ground running until you’ve learned adwords learning center ( http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/ ). It may seem like a lot of time, but it saves you hours in the end.

“The wise man built his house upon the rock.”

People may lose interest in your niche in a day. One day you are picking out what car you are going to buy with your earnings, the next you think you may have to get a day job.

Don’t let a down turn stop you. If you have made one campaign profit nicely you can do it to another one… and don’t believe all the 400% return affiliate stories while it does happen it isn’t that all campaigns get this return.

I have to agree with the sales force point. Service model or product model, you’re building someone else’s bank account mostly. You may as well do something original and have your own affiliates. You’ll struggle at first anyways but long term you’re doing better.