May 20th, 2008 
How many times have you read an article or blog post about something in this niche, only to test it yourself and have completely different results? If you have, congratulations! That means you’ll probably end up making a decent penny in this field. However, there are so many affiliates out there, new and old alike, that simply take anything they read or hear and actually listen to it without doing any testing of their own!
I was reading over some blogs today when I came across a post that Chad over at CDFnetworks wrote called Mini Sites for PPC are Dead. Now, normally I love the advice that Chad gives out, in fact, I visit his blog almost daily to see if he’s released anything good. However, this particular post made me upset at first. I thought to myself, how dare this guy give his users bad information.
I cooled down very quickly and thought to myself, “Is he really giving his users bad information? He isn’t having success with mini sites so he says that mini-sites are dead. Is it really the fault of the blogger or does the fault come down to the fact that readers aren’t testing stuff themselves?”
I very quickly decided that it was the latter of the two and it was the fault of the readers. Now personally I still have very good luck with “Mini Sites” and in fact I still believe they strive. I’m not saying they will for years to come, but the way he worded his post, he made it sound like they were dead as of the time he wrote that post. I don’t agree with this, but again I don’t feel Chad gave bad advice.
There are so many blogs out there about making money online and affiliate marketing that offer advice to their readers. However, I feel that a lot of time as readers, including myself, we take what we read on each blog as a golden rule and we must believe it and follow it. This simply isn’t true! How many times have you heard an affiliate marketer say that there are many ways to succeed in affiliate marketing? If this is the case, why do you only take the advice of one blogger?
I know affiliate marketers that are still direct linking and make $50,000+ a month! So you’re telling me that mini sites are dead but direct linking isn’t? Of course not, both are still very much alive at this point. So why did Chad say what he said?
Well, as I said above, we (affiliate marketers) have many different ways of succeeding in this field. I’ve seen people do one thing and they are completely successful with it, however, I see another person do the same exact thing and they can’t make it work. We each have our own set of knowledge and ideas. We all think differently! So while, direct linking may not work for me, I suck at direct linking, there are plenty of people out there that are making a killing by simply direct linking!
Again, this isn’t an attack against Chad and hopefully he doesn’t read this and get upset at me! My point, is that we run blogs that provide information on how to get started in affiliate marketing, news about affiliate marketing, etc, yet, we are only providing our opinions. Don’t be stupid! Take our advice and then try it out for yourself. Just because something doesn’t work for us doesn’t mean it won’t work for you!
There is one thing you can learn from every blogger in this field that will always remain true! TEST EVERYTHING!
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Good post, Derek.
I don’t think you are bashing Chad at all. As a new affiliate I think some (not all) of the big affiliate bloggers give out info based on their being on the top of the heap. Not a criticism of those who do that, but the reality is that most of us new affiliates will waste time trying to build huge sites in the beginning. Personally, It would stop me in my tracks.
Regarding testing things for yourself, I agree 100%. I’m doing ok in a niche that many said to stay away from. Once I smooth things out with that campaign I think I can build out a long term deal with it.
BTW, I’m following you @ Twitter. http://www.twitter.com/workplusfaith
I understand your point. Maybe I should have said mini-sites are dying rather than dead. I did make the point like you did, that I still have mini sites making a ton of money. Personally, if I was starting a new campaign today, I would not build a mini site. And going forward, I think a much better strategy is to build bigger content sites for PPC. That is what I have been doing for the last 6 months and its been killing. So I think it was great advice for my readers and anyone building new stuff right now to head in that direction. I can only advise people on what is working for me and where I see the industry heading. Like you say though, testing is key.
Hey Chad, I’m glad you didn’t take it the wrong way. Again, I wasn’t specifically talking about you, I just used you because I had read your post.
Although mini-sites may be dying, I still believe new affiliates would be wise to start doing mini-sites as they can be built into full blown sites once they get the hang of how affiliate marketing works.
And I do agree that full blown content sites are the way its going to end up being, although, I don’t feel new affiliates should try and start with full blown sites.
I understand you can only advise people on what’s working for you. In fact, that was my whole point of the post really. Readers need to realize that we as bloggers are going to write about what works for us and what doesn’t, however, this doesn’t mean that readers should hang on our every word. If they don’t learn to test stuff on their own, they’ll never make it in this field.
That’s funny. I was reading the same article not more than 5 minutes ago & was scratching my head. Of course Chad knows his stuff so sure - personal experience. Probably depends on the market as well.
I swear I thought I commented on this article. I guess not. This is a good article and holds true to anything. If someone can’t do a specific task, they want to tell you that you can’t either. Will Smith in Pursuit of Happyness had a nice quote about this. I have it posted on my blog somewhere its a video. Anyways, nice article :-p