So, I watched the second episode of Top Affiliate Challenge today and I thought I’d give my opinion on what I think thus far after watching both episodes.

Let’s start at the beginning shall we?  I loaded up the site the day the first episode was released, about 8 hours after it was released, and found what most of you probably experienced… A buffer screen…  After about 10 minutes the show started only to start buffering again after a couple minutes.  I then paused the show and decided to let it fully load before trying to watch it.  I absolutely hate buffer screens!

After 2 hours, yep I said that correct, the episode finally loaded completely.  Also, before you ask, it wasn’t because of my internet!  The site was really that slow!  Again, I know most of you delt with this same problem and know exactly what I’m talking about.

Now, let me talk about the quality of the show.  It is aweful and that’s being polite about it!  I know many of you probably watched Next Internet Millionaire by Joel Comm and while I didn’t think it was the greatest show either, compared to Top Affiliate Challenge it ran circles around it!

Several times during the episode you constantly see the host of the show staring down at her feet, shortly you realize that’s because she is mostly reading from a script that is on the ground.  How can you tell for certain?  Because the frickin’ camera man shows you! LMAO!

The scene to scene transitions are horrid!  There isn’t a smooth transition within the entire show, it’s constantly jagged and uneven.  The text and effects that are used in the show are the same as what you would see from a video production team of high school students from your local school district…Scratch that, middle school students.

They do some of the stupidest things in the show that makes me wonder if they’ve even thought out how each of these things should work…  In episode two, Jason Henderson wins the immunity ring and while the losing team is in the room voting a person off he walks in and says that he has special powers because of the ring and he wants to give it away…The funny thing is, the team has already voted and the person Jason gives the ring to wasn’t even in any danger of being voted off and basically the host tells him what he just did didn’t matter in the least, yet for some reason they still decided to edit it into the episode???  Can you say LAME!

This show promised that it would be better than Next Internet Millionair, that they would actually be showing you how these teams are making money, etc… I’ve yet to see anything remotely helpful in either episodes…and to make things worse, the show is in no way entertaining…

Top Affiliate Challenge is pitiful, boring, mind-numbing, stupid, pathetic, useless, and a downright sad attempt at an internet reality show…  I’m seriously surprised that they haven’t had any of their gurus or contestants walk off the show yet…  Now that would be entertaining!

Thor Shrock…horrible idea!  Thanks for wasting an hour of my life!

This show sucks so bad, I’m not even going to link to the site so if you haven’t seen it and for some reason you really want to, search for it on Google or take a guess at the URL…

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So, every couple of days I receive an email from someone whining (oops just pissed someone off) that they are employing all my tactics, read every big blog out there, etc, etc yet they still can’t make any money online using affiliate marketing!

Now, while half of you out there are already getting super pissed at me, I ask that you please hear me out! By doing so, you may just realize why you’re not making a killing in this field!

Naturally, there are tons of reasons why you may not be making money using affiliate marketing but I’m only going to touch on the most basic reasons that could be holding you back. So, don’t take offense to this post, instead try to allow it to open your eyes and think of other reasons you may not be successful!

Lacking Time Management Skills

Time management is one of the hardest things for most of us to grasp in my opinion. We only have so many hours in a day, yet without even realizing it, we waste most of those doing stuff like sleeping or eating! Haha, just kidding, although we do waste a ton of time during our days without realizing it!

How many of you have AIM, Yahoo Messenger, G-Talk, MSN Messenger, etc? I’m guessing 99% of you do! Now I’m also going to assume that 90% of you keep your instant message programs open 100% of the time you’re at your computer! Ouch! Do you realize how much time in a day you are wasting by doing this?

You don’t? Well, thats not a problem because I went on a journey and asked approx. 20 people how much time they spent instant messaging online. I asked them actual typing time and not just how long they had it up and running. The average response I got was 2-3 hours! That means if you have your IM program up all day you’re going to spend that much time talking to people…and most likely….about nothing!

So while you may be working a normal 8-5 job then coming home and working another 6 hours trying to get out of the rat race, you may actually only be working 3-4 hours per day on your stuff!!! My advice is turn off the IM programs. There is nothing wrong with IM, however, you shouldn’t have it on running all day long!

Time management can also include email, family, etc. None of this stuff is bad, you just need to manage when each thing should take place and do it during those times. I realize there are exceptions, but you need to have a schedule and stick to it the best you can!

Don’t take my word on it though…Instead there are free time management software that will let you know exactly where all your time is going! You may wish to check out RescueTime or do a search for others!

Give up on a Niche

Another thing I see a ton of affiliates do is start a niche, let’s say dating, then quit the niche right when their getting ready to blow up in it.

Most affiliates learn pretty quickly that when they gather all their keywords, only a select few are going to bring in most of their profits. So, they start running their campaign, delete keywords that aren’t converting, raise bids on keywords that are. They start split testing ads, split testing landing pages, etc, etc yet they are still losing money in the niche. So naturally, they quit…

However, if they would of just stuck it out for another week or so, they would of finally gotten the campaign profitable by continuing to do the things mentioned above and would be on their way to creating a dynamite campaign!

Of course, there are times when you just aren’t able to get a niche profitable and you should abandon it. Here is how I normally decide. After I’ve done all the above stuff am I losing less money per day? If so, then that means I should be able to keep doing those things and make it profitable. However, if I’m doing all the above things and I’m still losing the same amount each day after a while I should realize it’s probably not going to change!

Don’t track Keywords!

I receive email’s all the time with people complaining (oops, I’m in trouble again) that they just can’t get a niche profitable. I ask them which types of keywords are converting for them and I receive this answer…Ummm, well I’m not currently tracking keywords. I wanted to get it profitable first and then I’ll track keywords…

Are you retarded? This game can already be a challenge and you’re going to make it that much difficult for yourself? I mean, I can’t even comprehend it, yet there are all kinds of people that say that to me! This one is very simple to fix…Track your keywords so you know which ones are converting and which ones aren’t! No more excuses, just do it!

Bottom Line

I could easily go on and on with reasons I hear from people or things I see them do, yet, it won’t much matter. The bottom line is you need to take a moment, sit back, and think. No distractions… If your business isn’t where you want it to be ask yourself why? 99% of the time you’ll find the answer is that it’s something you’re doing wrong!

Wait, don’t stop reading quite yet! There is some great news! 99% of the time when you finally realize that it’s you, you can easily change it if you’re willing! So while this is a subject most bloggers hate to write about, mostly because I love you all as my readers and don’t want you all to disappear :P, I think it’s very important to talk about!

So for one week, instead of blaming things on all the other bloggers out there not providing you with enough information, the world is out to get you, God is out to get you, etc, etc, take a little time out and think what am I doing that is holding me back from being where I want to be in life…

The answer may very well surprise you!

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I get tons of questions about affiliate marketing and I hear a lot of affiliates say something along these lines…

“I want to read up on as much as I can about affiliate marketing before I jump into it!”

My question is simply this….. Why???

I understand that people don’t like jumping into stuff that they know nothing about and guess what? I don’t blame you guys! I was the same exact way when I first started! However, when I finally went ahead and ran my first campaign I learned things that you just don’t learn by reading blog post after blog post.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be reading affiliate blogs. I’m not saying that you should be visiting affiliate forums. In fact once in a while you find out information that you just never would of come across if you didn’t read about it! For example, once in a thread at the DigitalPoint Affiliate Forum someone was stupid enough to brag about a niche they were in and how there wasn’t any competition. Now I didn’t even know about this niche or anything about it, but this guy gave details, even the place where he was running the offer. So I setup a campaign real quick and realized that he was right and I’ve been banking on his discovery ever since!

I’ve learned a lot about affiliate marketing over the last two years that I’ve been doing it full-time and I can honestly say I’ve learned more just by losing some money than by reading an affiliate blog or visiting some forum. The thing you have to remember is that there is a time for all of that, however, it shouldn’t be ALL your time!!!

Most people look at losing money as a bad thing. In fact its how you were probably taught growing up. The problem is this…

The Internet has opened up a whole new world of businesses. Businesses that change constantly and quickly. Most of the information you read on blogs or forums could very well already be outdated! Now this is especially true with Affiliate Marketing. While your reading blogs and forums trying to learn affiliate marketing its changing while your reading!

However, if you are willing to lose a little money in the beginning the experience you’ll gain from that lose is irreplaceable. In fact, you may even get lucky and break even or if your really lucky make a profit on your first campaign. If your afraid to lose a little money to gain a ton of experience then affiliate marketing is probably not for you and you should probably quit now! I hate to say that but its the truth!

So I challenge you, if you haven’t dived into affiliate marketing yet just do it! Quit reading and do it! If thats the only thing you take from this blog I’ll be thrilled. I would love to see each and everyone of you succeed in affiliate marketing but its never going to happen until you setup your first campaign.

Also, in all reality there are tons of coupons out there for free money for both Yahoo Search Marketing and Google Adwords. So using the excuse that you can’t afford to lose money isn’t a very good excuse. I started with a 100 dollar voucher for Yahoo Search Marketing and 5 dollars of my own money.

Don’t allow fear to control you and tell you the kind of life to lead. Let curiosity get the best of you and cause you to see what kind of money could be made in affiliate marketing!

“Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.” - Patricia Alexander

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Okay, so as most of you know, Yahoo is well a little different when it comes to how they run things. Okay, you got me… A Hell of a lot different! Some of the things they do really makes my mind spin.

If you are an ad network like adsense or ypn and you had your ads on a site about dog training and for one of the ads it was displaying an advertiser for voip phone service would you think this is going to convert well? Well, apparently Yahoo does! This isn’t a one time thing, it has happened to alot of people, some banned, some warned but the bottom line is, Yahoo serves sucky ads and they then blame their publishers for the traffic not converting. So that kind of gives you an idea of how Yahoo thinks…Or doesn’t think… So moving on to what I really want to discuss.

If you use Yahoo Search Marketing then you most likely realize by now that you have a keyword limit of 50,000 keywords that you can upload into your account. Now in order to place more keywords in your account you must spend a certain amount per month in order to get upgraded to a Gold Account which will then increase your keywords by 50,000 giving you a grand total of 100,000 keywords that you may upload into your account.

Oh but wait, it doesn’t stop there, if you want more than 100,000 you must spend so much per month with Yahoo to get your account upgraded to a Platinum Account which allows you to upload 1,000,000 keywords into your account. Okay, so there’s a limit big deal…Adwords has a keyword limit as well and so does MSN. Okay just keep going with me on this one!

So you reach your 50,000 keyword limit and you beg and beg and beg Yahoo to increase your keyword limit so you can naturally put in more keywords. However, if your not doing the minimum required ad spend a month they won’t do it! You can beg, get angry, call again to try and get someone else, it doesn’t matter! No matter what you do, they won’t budge an inch! (99.9% of the time)

However, You may have Yahoo create another account under your main account, a sub account, which will use the same CC#, address, phone number, etc and you can once again upload 50,000 keywords under that account which can easily be accessed from your main account using a drop down box.

WTF Yahoo! Why would you have your users create more accounts under the main account when you could simply increase their keyword limit??? I mean do you guys see what I mean when I say that Yahoo has a brain the size of an ant!

//rant

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