I also wanted to know if Affiliate Fuel shut down their website. I cannot seem to locate it anywhere.

I’m only on Chapter 4 of your book. I’m assuming the rest of the book has information that will still be applicable to today?

Thanks so much for sharing!

Sorry for the very late response. I have been focused on building a number of new sites these past couple of months. A poor excuse, but there it is.

The short answer to your question is yes, the old technique is no longer accepted by most affiliate programs. The just slightly longer answer is that many of them will not catch you at it until you start making real money… but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to invest your time and money building campaigns that will automatically shut down once they start making steady money.

The technical changes are not on Google’s end, so you can certainly run most ads there. It is the affiliate programs themselves that police this, and can withhold payments if they catch you running ads linking directly to them. There has been some talk about allowing the practice again (CJ is doing a great job of encouraging affiliate programs to reconsider it) but at present most affiliate programs frown on the practice.

The solution is to do what I am only just now starting to do myself (late, like I seem to do everything these days). Start building web sites to promote affiliate programs.

I have partnered with a talented web-designer, whom we will be hearing from soon on this blog and in the newsletter, and we are buying domain names and building sites.

We are currently redesigning this site (you’ll see the difference in a few days), and then we will return to creating and launching others.

I have one pet project, that I have built without my new web designer’s help, in an attempt to prove that you do not have to be a web expert to make money online. It is a citizen journalism news site title the Third Report at http://www.thirdreport.com and in the few short months since I launched it, I have reached a modest couple hundred page views per day. The site is not completely finished, however, and has not been advertised, so I am pleased with its progress. Check it out if you like. It is a revenue sharing site, so you can make money — and you won’t be asked to spend any.

Good luck,

Tony

After some initial success, the casino conversions have been stagnant for me. I’m not losing money yet, but I know of at least 9 others who haven’t made a dime, so I guess your hesitancy has served you well.

I’ve got a better idea for you, with ZERO investment, and ZERO risk, if you are a half decent writer.

The Third Report has a revenue sharing program for folks who post their own news or opinion articles on the site, up to 50%. It can be a simple as writing a review on a movie or book you just saw/read, or reporting on the local high school’s football team.

I developed the site myself, and I hope to turn it into something big.

Let me know what you think;

http://www.thirdreport.com

Thanks,

Tony

If you read my book, you know this isn’t my forte, but I’m giving it a shot. I finished developing a news site just a cuple months ago, and I am in the process of building up traffic.

Check it out and let me know what you think. It’s http://www.thirdreport.com

If you happen to be a writer, by the way, the Third Report has a revenue sharing program for contributors of news and opinions – even local news and opinions.

Tony

It also seems like the casino idea is old now too.

NEXT?

T

As for the long overdue answer to your question, Ty, you might consider setting up a program on Commission Junction, though you will need at least $6000 to get started. If your site isn’t already performing at a level where this makes sense, could design your own tracking system and offer the program independently.

Tony

As for the long overdue answer to your question, you will have t owait until the cj cookie expires to accurately judge your EPC, but most of the commissions – for most programs – do usually come within the first few days. There are some exceptions, like eBay, which take longer because commissns are tied to sales and sales are delayed until the end of a bidding process. My advice is to turn the program off, and wait until the referal period expires on all your traffic to calculate EPC. Remember, the EPC commission Junction reports is an average across a variety of websites, newsletters, and search programs, and your EPC will be a lot higher or lower far more often than it will match that average.

Tony

I’m sorry to have taken so long to answer your question. I’ve been working on a project (I thought would be done over a month ago) and it’s sort of pushed everything else out of my mind. It’s a website, designed myself, on the cheap, that I hope will prove there is still a lot of money to be made online, without spending a lot, and without having an enourmous amount of expertise to start with (though you will have to learn some things as you go). The best part about it is, for those of you who don’t want to develop your own site, there will be plenty of opportunity for you to earn money on MY site. I’ll be letting everyone know about it soon, on this blog, and in the newsletter, by the way.

As for the long overdue answer to your question, yes, the industry has changed. Yes, almost none of the big programs allow direct search now, and precious few of the small to mid ones. And yes, I do recommend aquiring some basic web design skills, and set up a content based site to market various affiliate programs.

Tony

As for the long overdue answer to your question, I only recommend purchasing existing sites with traffic as a means of driving traffic to casino programs cheaply (cheaply is important because the conversion rates are not high). If you think you have the web design skills to create an effective page comparing/pitching multiple casino programs, I say go for it.

As for the keyword links, I am not sure whether CJ still uses those, but I do know that a small number of programs do still allow direct search, but that number is shrinking.

Tony