AssociatePrograms.com

John Reese · Guest

I notice more and more Internet entrepreneurs (I see many on this site) spending a lot of their time "worrying" about bad cookie tracking, or being ripped off by a merchant, or being consumed by bad things that "might" happen in the future, etc.

I would just like to take a moment and say something about this...

GIVE IT A REST AND GET BACK TO WORK.

I mean that in the most polite way possible. (I'm trying to help people make money -- not sound like a jerk.)

I have been at this "game" a very long time. Since 1990. And I have been one of the top super affiliates in the world for many years now and I expect this to continue for the next 10 years and beyond.

WANT TO KNOW MY "SECRET"?

I don't waste my time bitching and moaning about who is ripping off who or what programs I don't like based on changes to their rules or how I think I "might" have my business affected in over a year from now.

It's a fact... For every moment of your day you spend consumed by the negatives of this business is a moment you could have used being productive -- doing keyword research, setting up some new sites and pages, testing additional programs to maximize your income, work on strategies to build your opt-in list, think of additional ways to provide more value to your visitors to keep them coming back, etc.

You can make all the money you want online but it takes WORK. This game changes and changes quickly. But the only way to continue making money (and to even grow your income) is to PUSH AHEAD. Keep working and don't get caught up with the negatives. If there's something you don't like, try something else. Keep trying things until you achieve the results you desire. You CAN do it. But only if you WORK at it.

So take this advice... STOP WORRYING ABOUT THINGS BEYOND YOUR CONTROL.

There's nothing you can really do about the "negative" things that arise that you don't like. But what you can do is "adjust" your business and move forward. If you plan to make a living online you better get used to the rapid changes in the marketplace. This isn't necessarily a "bad" thing. In fact, I see it as a POSITIVE thing. Because if anything is true, it's this... the people that are willing to do just a little bit more work than the majority will make most of the profits.

I challenge you to try something for just the next 3 months...

Everytime you start dwelling on something negative or something you don't like about this business, hop on your computer and add some new pages to your existing site or add an additional site. The "momentum" you will build for yourself with your positive productivity will increase your income. I guarantee it.

Best of luck to all the aspiring affiliates. You CAN make all the money you want if you're willing to work for it.

-John Reese
MarketingSecrets.com

sellportal · Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2004 8:20 am Post subject: How true!

Hi John,

Your post "kills" a whole nich in online marketing/selling!

The "how to prevent stealing of products, text, ad copy, links, customers and other" niche.

But I agree 100%. And what you say is even more true for people not achiving tens or hundreds of sales per day.

Assume that I make 4 sales per month of a $9 product. And I get robbed once each month (a 1/4 loss due to stealth).

This looks like a big loss for the 4 sales per month guy but buying one or a couple of scripts, spending hours checking flash, cgi, perl and asp scripts, encoding every webpage, redirecting, cloaking and hiding.

This takes a lot of time and it might be good knowledge, but as you say, invest this time in finding better ways of selling, improving ad copy, finding new a better products to sell will most likely be more rewarding (in terms of selling).

Of course would one have to keep an eye on things, or suddenly you sell one copy and loose 10 due to stealing and there is a limit.

I always come back to one of my first tries to create and sell an invoce software. I really tried to make it as good as possible. I read up on indexing, sorting, special techniques to find and store data in the database. I did test runs for hours with hundreds of thousands of products, clients and transactions, always seeking to improve it.

One day did I stop up and think. The clients using it seldom had more then 50 clients, 1-200 products and had 10-20 transactions per day.

I could have done the program completely without all of the bells and whistles and it would have worked very well (saving me mucho time).

I still get trapped almost daily in the "doing it as good a possible" trap. I also get stuck in the "testing to be sure and what if" pond all the time.

I for one need the "go go go" daily.

Kenth
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Guest · Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2004 8:44 am Post subject: Re: How true!

thepoolroom · Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2004 10:54 am Post subject:

petertdavis · Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2004 2:34 pm Post subject:

Actually, it's a good reason to diversify your sources of revenue. If you bring in the majority of your revenue from affiliate programs, maybe you should worry about the future of affiate marketing. Not that I suggest people follow the Chicken Little approach, but a bit of diversification won't hurt.
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Bobby · **Joined**: 12 Jul 2003 **Posts**: 764

I had recently come to the same conclusions as John Reece, but then I read a discussion concerning http://www.1st-in-net-shopping.com

That site (or sites) seems to be filled with links "protected" by this linkshield product.

I thought maybe someone knew something I didn't and that's why I started the thread about changing/altering links.

It looks like my conclusion was accurate after all.

Bobby

Debs · **Joined**: 16 Aug 2003 **Posts**: 4296 **Location**: NY

I don't think John is saying ignore the theft, so much as he is saying don't obsess over it.

If you keep your head in the sand, you don't know what is happening, or how to fix it.

I wondered for a long time, just how serious parasiteware was in redirecting commissions. So I took the time to build a page, and set up a script to test it. What I thought was a small problem, turned out to be a real concern. 3/4 of my visitors are infected with spyware! My commissions through the various networks dropped dramatically the last 3 months too, but the traffic didn't drop with it.

Now, I had to decide what to do about it. For now, I offer a link at the bottom of my pages, saying my site has a "No Popup" policy (since parasiteware commonly uses popups to divert visitors), and if they are seeing popups to click the link to find out why. I also added some tags that prevent Microsoft smarttag parsing.

Time will only tell whether this is enough, but for now it's enough for my peace of mind. Total time spent on this was less than 2 days over a period of a week, well spent considering the peace of mind I received.

While all this was going on, I also researched more site topics, wrote a few more articles for my site, and read a couple ebooks Wink

As with anything you do, moderation is key. Don't ignore, be aware, but don't obsess. Kind of like what you have to do with SE rankings too Wink

Debs
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Bobby · **Joined**: 12 Jul 2003 **Posts**: 764

Guest · Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2004 9:53 pm Post subject:

profitpuppy · **Joined**: 09 Feb 2004 **Posts**: 5

I agree with the sentiment of your post. You will not get anywhere if you spend your time complaining or worring about how much commission is taken. The question is what percentage of sales is taken by scumware. I am guessing 20-50% for some areas and 0% for others. 20% is a significant amount. But I don't think there is anything much affiliates can do about it, so we just have to grin and bear it, and where possible go for scumware free merchants.
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robertb · Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2004 3:41 am Post subject:

onlineleben · Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2004 8:18 am Post subject:

Debs · **Joined**: 16 Aug 2003 **Posts**: 4296 **Location**: NY

It's a simple one line tag you add to your <head> section, I also added a one liner for the image toolbar:

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

Debs
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