James Martell has done it again. The newly revised 2006 edition of his Affiliate Marketing Handbook takes what can be a complex, intriguing and often frustrating business and makes it seem like child’s play with his simple, solid advice and 8 Step Process.
This is a man who makes thousands of dollars every month with his own affiliate websites, yet he is willing to share his success secrets with the world.
His methods are simple and straight-forward and he takes you through his process one step at a time, leading you forward with the possibility that you too can share the same sort of success he has achieved.
What’s new in the 2006 edition?
In this edition James creates a new website as he goes, so you can follow a real-life example of what it takes to build a successful affiliate website from scratch and get it ranked well in the search engines.
And therein lies the one flaw in this book.
In earlier editions, James favored the use of Microsoft Front Page with purchased templates.
However, with James’s easy to follow instructions, no matter what web-building package you used, it was easy to follow his tutorials. In this latest edition, he recommends ez-webbuilder, a Web-based site building program that from the screenshots and tutorials presented looks simple but very effective.
That’s fine for those webmasters willing to fork out the $29.95 each month it costs to subscribe to ez-webbuilder, but I would suggest that at those prices, even when it includes web hosting and the website builder, it’s out of the question for most newbies.
I’d go so far as to say it’s out of the question for many established affiliate webmasters as well.
So if you were looking to follow the step-by step tutorials to help you build your own web pages that James has used so successfully in the past, you won’t find it in this new edition (of course, unless you subscribe to ez-webbuilder!)
But that small criticism aside, the revised Affiliate Marketing Handbook 2006 is an amalgamation of the very successful 2002 edition, the additional information added in the 2005 edition, plus all the updates from January 2005 to March 2006.
The third edition also boasts a comprehensive index, to allow you to cross-reference and research all the topics covered.
James’s reasons for publishing this latest edition are two-fold. As he says, “Essentially I see two main changes with regard to natural search and they are the level of sophistication at Google in their ability to recognize ‘quality’ content and natural inbound linking partners.
“As for gathering inbound links to our sites, only employing one technique such as ‘link partnering’ is no longer effective. It’s for these reasons I decided it was time to do a thorough refresh of the training so I could really dig in and show the readers the finer points of what’s necessary to obtain top rankings at Google.”
It seems an odd point that James should mention only employing one technique to attract targeted traffic when virtually no mention is made of pay per click advertising or alternative advertising methods in this manual.
With the Web becoming more competitive and the chance of getting ranked #1 at Google or other search engines becoming more difficult to achieve, pay per click advertising is an integral part of many webmasters’ advertising arsenal.
So if you were expecting to find James’s tips and techniques for pay per click advertising you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Otherwise, the Affiliate Marketing Handbook 2006 is essential reading for anyone new to the affiliate marketing industry as well as a great refresher course for those already familiar with it. In fact, it is the benchmark on which many of the rehashed “affiliate manuals” are based, so it’s well worth your investment.
I recommend you read James Martell’s Affiliate Marketing Handbook– the sooner, the better!
UPDATE – Now a Complete Bootcamp
James has greatly expanded his Affiliate Marketing Handbook, turning it into the Affiliate Marketers SUPER BootCamp, with coaching, training and support for affiliate marketers.
Continually updated, the Super Bootcamp is a blend of recorded and live online events with weekly video lessons, expert audio interviews, interactive 24/7 member community, twice a month live Q&A and personal coaching sessions. It’s step-by-step e-learning, concentrating on the important basics of affiliate marketing.
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