So you’ve gotten a successful campaign, but what now?  What are the pitfalls you should now be keeping your eyes open for?  Hopefully, by sharing some of my past hiccups, I can help you avoid the same costly mistakes!

Avoid Becoming Lazy!

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I first started becoming successful online was becoming lazy.  It’s very easy once you start making some decent money online to become lazy which is why I think so many people fall prey to laziness!  It always starts off so innocently with something simple like just skipping a blog post here, or not tuning your keywords just this one night, etc… but very quickly it becomes a nasty habit that you don’t even realize you’ve developed until it’s too late!

Laziness is by far the single most often culprit to online marketers failing and losing their business after working so hard to grow it.  Once you start making some decent money from your online endevours it’s time to start putting in double the effort to make sure it continues growing!

Don’t Quit Your Day Job!

The second biggest mistake I see from time to time is new web entrepreneurs that start making some money and they decide that it’s time to quit their day job and work full time for themselves.  While this is the ultimate goal, it’s very possible and again, easier than you think, to do this too soon!  Quitting your job and working for yourself is something to be very proud of, but you need to make sure it’s the right time.  I don’t believe there’s any magic number of how much you should be making before you quit your job, but I’d personally say you should at least be making double what you are from your day job.

Quit Your Day Job Already!

On the flip side of the last statement, I also see online business owners businesses start to take off and do well and instead of quitting their day job they continue to try to work both which only holds them back from growing their online business and thus stops growth dead in its tracks, whereas, if they’d just quit their day job they could easily triple or even quadruple their income almost overnight!

Again, this isn’t something that is necessarily an easy decision to make, but you need to quit sometime and you better start thinking if now is the time or not!  I’m not encouraging anyone to quit their job if they’re not making enough to support themselves, but if you are and you are just holding onto your day job for security, you could really be hurting your business and yourself!

Don’t Buy a Crap Load of….well CRAP!

Making money is great, however, if you’re not careful you’ll quickly start spending all your hard earned money on senseless stuff that you don’t need to be spending it on when you’re first getting started.  A new car, going out to dinner three times a week, or even that new computer that caught your eye at your local electronics store.

The bottom line is that while it’s great you’re making money and eventually you’ll be able to spend it, in the beginning, you need to reinvest that money back into your business.  While it is possible to build a steady, long term business online, it doesn’t happen immediately, in fact, most often new online businesses are very up and down in terms of how much they are making a month.  One month you may make 5k but the next you may only make 2k.  You need to realize this and not increase your monthly spend and bills only to find out that your income has dropped a few months later and you can no longer afford the stuff or keep your business going.

Conclusion:

While all of the above may seem like stupid simple things that any moron could figure out, 50% of affiliates that start making a little money will lose it all because of one of those reasons!  So instead of saying you would do any of the above, count on doing ALL of the above and start watching for it now that way when you don’t fall victim to these things you can come back to me and tell me how wrong I was and how you did it!  I’ll be happy to hear it!

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Hey guys, I just wanted to make a quick post.  It’s not gonna be long or include a ton of information or anything, however, what I’m about to say is extremely important!

Affiliate marketing is great!  I love this business, I love talking about it, and I enjoy helping others with it!  I don’t believe in black hat or white hat techniques.  I believe that as long as you don’t rip off, lie to, or cheat people than it’s a technique you should go ahead and use!  However, affiliate marketing and morals is a topic that is discussed frequently on affiliate marketing blogs and basically it comes down to what you are comfortable in doing, however, there is one other thing that you need to realize…

You can get in trouble with the LAW if you are deceiving or ripping off customers.  We have seen the government, attorney generals, etc go after people in the past with ringtones and we are going to see this again with Acai, in fact, the BBB just released a statement about Acai (warning consumers to be careful) on January 6th of 2009.

It’s not okay to lie to customers or deceive them in order to get a sale, you can get in trouble legally, and since I said this isn’t going to be a long post, I’m going to leave it at that!

PS: I’d love to hear what you guys think about people promoting acai, grants, etc with personal blogs acting like people they aren’t and whether or not you feel this is wrong and even more so, something that the government will eventually start bringing charges up against people for?  Leave a comment and let me know your take!

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The next CC Radio Show will be Thursday Evening 10PM EST on November 6th.  Make sure to head over to our CC Radio Show Page and Subscribe to our feed or setup a reminder so you don’t miss it!  Also, we are still trying some different days and times as not everyone liked Saturday, so if Thursday is the day you’d like to see make sure you’re there so we know!  We need to find out which day allows for the most of our readers to join in and listen live!

Sometimes being a follower may seem like it’s the right thing to do, however, most of the times when listening to what everyone else is saying instead of actually trying things out for yourself is a good way to fail in your business.

I get a little excited in this video and I wasn’t going to post it, but I was told that I should, so bear with me!

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Hey guys, today is an important today here in the United States.  It’s time for us to go out and vote for our president.  However, what amazes me is there are still alot of people out there that will not vote today.  In my opinion this is one of the most important elections we’ve had here in the states and you need to get out and vote.

You Suck if you Don’t Vote!!!  Enough said…

Vote McCain!  (Sorry I had add that plug…didn’t want to…)

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Now, before anyone runs in fear of what this post may contain, I promise it will be Safe for Work (at least I think so) and it won’t go into any detail about my sex life!

Think back to the first time you had sex, that moment in your life when you lost your virginity… Do you remember it?  Remember how it went, how well did you do?  On a scale of 1 – 10 with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best, how would you rate your performance?

If you’re like most humans, the first time you had sex, while emotionally might of been frickin awesome, physically it probably wasn’t your best performance.  You most likely stumbled some, maybe cummed to quickly?  Maybe it all happened within 2 minutes leaving your partner feeling less than satisfied???  Women, maybe it didn’t turn out like you expected it to be thus you feel regret over losing it to the “wrong” guy!

Whatever the case, if you’re like most of us, it wasn’t the best.  In fact, you’ve probably had tons of better performances where you’ve felt like you did really swell!  (Yep, I said swell)

To me, this is how it works with Affiliate Marketing, it’s what I see when I do consultations with new affiliates.  Many new affiliates start off not knowing what they are doing, they fail miserably their first couple attempts at launching a successful campaign.  The crazy part is, what do you think they do after they fail?  They run with their tails tucked behind their legs!

When you first started sleeping with members of the opposite sex, you weren’t perfect, you made mistakes, didn’t do things right, yet…YET….YET…..you didn’t stop having sex did you?  Of course not, it was too frickin important to stop doing, not to mention it feels really great!

Then why do you stop trying to go forward when it comes to creating a business that will provide you with financial freedom, freedom from set hours, etc…  It too frickin important to stop doing, not to mention it feels great when you succeed!

Just like you made mistakes when you first started having sex, you MUST (in my opinion) make mistakes in affiliate marketing in order to actually learn and progress.  It’s one of the reasons why affiliate marketing is such a complicated business to get into and why most people fail at it.  They are afraid of making mistakes instead of accepting and learning from them!!!

The first time you had sex you were probably nervous, scared, and unsure of yourself, but once you actually did it, your confidence increased and each time thereafter that you continued to have sex.

This again is the same thing with affiliate marketing, instead of looking at each failed campaign as a mistake, try thinking of it as a learning experience, an experience that will make your next campaign a hundred times better and stronger!

How bad do you want to be financially free?  How bad do you want to be your own boss?  Do you want it as much as you want sex?  Probably not (especially if you’re a guy) but it better be close if you want to succeed in this field!

I know this is a crazy post, but seriously…look at the similarities of sex and affilaite marketing and tell me you don’t think it worked well for this post!

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