The problem was partly my own and partly the affiliate’s.

I had most of my income coming from one source which is never a good idea, spread your eggs and diversify.

The program was always going to end, the fact is the product had already been sold for the most part, I just negotiated my offer with the affiliate and it got me a small cut of the sales. My ability to send them genuine referrals with this method was limited and they were always going to realise that at some point.

Oddly enough though that was not what killed the program, it was the affiliate undercutting their own partners. If there is an unwritten etiquette of affiliate programs they surely broke it. Even if I send them genuine referrals now there is a good chance the customer will search for and find their offer undercutting me,which means they actually steal back the commission I would otherwise have been paid. They are completely within their rights to do what they have done but it is really really poor form for a company that otherwise seems to do a good job of building community and managing the social media side.

All they have really done is piss off their partners and their program still has the same flaw.

Further, I’ve not received a single payment from them, I don’t expect they will try to avoid paying me as they are well known and respected company but the total owing is quite considerable and I have been waiting months now for payment. Regardless April was a record month thanks to some link sales, May is nowhere near April but still enough to keep me confident.

So I’m back to the drawing board and will start developing some new sites, I’ve got to get this moving if it is to become my main income source.

Re-purposing

Never Ever get rid of anything you publish online, ever. If you decide to shut down a site, fine but take everything you’ve put on it and store it somewhere else, you’ve spent precious time or money on that content, do not throw it away. You may not be able to re-purpose everything but you will come across something eventually and if you’ve let the content go you will really regret it. Even crappy old articles you have no idea what to do with can be used to chuck a link in and submit to an article directory.

Back Up!

You’ll make a stupid mistake or just get unlucky eventually. I accidentally deleted a database for a site that was growing rather quickly, everything was gone. We managed to get some of the content back from Google’s cache but we lost most of it, it took the wind out the project and we ended up letting it go. Back up your sites and everything on your own PC as well. Sadly most of us learn this lesson the hard way.

SEO

When it comes to making money and you’ve chosen an affiliate program/product, after creating the content for your site to help sell it the most important thing you can do is SEO. Your SEO ability is the deciding factor in if you will be successful as an internet marketer, the value of a number one position can’t be underestimated. SEO will promote your website and promotion will improve your SEO, build links. It is boring for most, including me but it works. You should understand what is important in SEO, I think this article does the best job at illustrating that, however if you target long tail keywords the on site stuff can have a bigger effect on your rankings.

The Hump

If you are not one of those lucky few who throw up a site and are off like a rocket when you earn your first Adsense dollar you will like most Internet marketers spend at least a few months, possibly even a year or more struggling and wondering if it is even worth it. If you keep persisting, keep learning and most importantly keep practicing what you learn eventually it will begin to pay off. The hump is the tipping point, you struggle up the hill and eventually you start seeing the gains and income that indicated this is going to work. You’ve reached the hump, making money just becomes a process, it’s no longer such a struggle, the anguish about reaching your goals disappears, now you know what works and what you have to do.

It Takes Money

Yes you can do it for nothing, the question is how long do you want it to take to reach the hump described above. If you join a program that has a formula to follow and at least a support forum. I joined The Keyword Academy and retrospectively it is at that point that things started to move for me. Another I would consider is Wealthy Affiliate. Programs like these have a proven formula and include some of the tools you will need.

Other tools like UAW for article marketing are usually recommended, I don’t have a UAW subscription, for the number of submissions I do the cost is not worth it. Don’t feel like you have to subscribe to these tools, there is a market out there for people like me and you, many people let you send them your submission and they will submit it using their account for a small fee. When this becomes more expensive than the subscription cost sign up and start doing it yourself.

A world of warning, ebook programs suck, I lost count of how many I went through. Real programs offer support in one form or another, IM ebooks are just other IMs trying to make a quick and easy buck off newbies. If it’s free, take it and learn what you can, if you want to buy an ebook that is fine, you’ll probably learn from it, but don’t expect it to fully equip you.

So there are the 5 hardest lessons I’ve learned in IM but it is not all, there is at least one more major thing you need to to learn… next post, Self Responsibility.

About Me

I’m 25 and from Australia, last year I took a 3 month sabbatical from my job to travel in Southeast Asia. The day I returned I bought and started reading a book I spotted in the airport the day I left, yes it was the famous 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. I’d just had the best experience of my life and I come home and read a book telling me I can live that lifestyle full time. It was a recipe that completely changed how I wanted to live my life.

I don’t remember how but I guess while doing some research I came across some sites like Digital Nomads and NuNomad. I knew this would be my future.

My Sites

I’ve been blogging off and on for a few years now. My main site is Voyagner.com, it’s my travel and lifestyle design blog. For now I’m keeping my other sites to myself but it’s no huge secret, they are generally travel related. I’ll likely reveal some later, if you really want to know, well, there are ways.

My Goals

• To be earning $1000 a month by the end of September 2010.
• Move to somewhere in Southeast Asia to start with, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and Philippines are top of the list.
• Utilize systems and outsourcing to ensure this requires as little time to maintain as possible.

The ultimate goal is freedom, to travel and live abroad and to get involved in something bigger than just making money and sipping cocktails on the beach, not that I won’t be doing plenty of that too.

My Plan

I’m working on 10 initial sites, some extremely niche, some that can start small but have room for a lot of expansion. Generally initial monetization will be with Adsense but Links and Affiliates will be used in some instances as well. The basics of IM are, well, very basic. To start with…

• 10 Sites with 5 keyword targeted posts on each.
• 5 Articles with backlinks submitted to article directories.
• 1 UAW submission for each site.

I’m a member of TKA and these tasks are the basics of building sites using the method laid out there, once that is done we’ll look at how they perform and do some more advanced monetization and development.

That’s it for now, there will be no posting schedule on this blog, maybe I will start one later on. For now I just hope that those people who know my goals will follow and those who are interested in this concept will as well.