where to go from here
So far, my experiance in affliate marketing has been less than I had hoped for when I enthusiasticly signed up for a year of premium membership and tried to dedicate and hour a day to doing it.
Don't get me wrong, the training has been great, except for placing great value on programs that don't exist anymore, (google authorship) and having gotten stuck in the social media part of the entrepernuer training. I do not like Twitter, I've become stuck on that part of the course. Mastering Social Engagment, course 4, has been the hardest part of the training. Pintrest and Facebook and Google+
I like making new content, but find a lot of the social media endlessly creepy and weird. This is not a success post. Amazon has cut me off from lack of activity. Two of my main content topics in my niches, that I write about all the time, have cancelled their affiliate programs, and "going mobile" by mobilgeddon day turned my beautiful artistic Homegrown Adventure blog into a lesser version of itself due to themes and graphics not being supported by mobile devices. So it seems I need to do some reinventing. Its hard to keep up the momentum when the money isn't there, and hasn't been yet. Maybe I need a new niche, I definiatly need some new affiliate programs. Trouble is, if Amazon has cut me off due to lack of activity and some of the products I want to reccomened are mainly sold through this corperate giant online store with its time limit and its policy of not paying you commisions if you sell to your social media contacts, and social media being the main way you get the word out about your posts, what are you supposed to do?
Its kind of ironic, because I write about a simple, self sufficiant lifestyle, where you need to buy less stuff, and my knowledge is in doing things for yourself. I have a radio show promoting local indpendant musicians, many of whom were distributed by cd baby, I made a complemetry website to my show, (which brought me to WA in the first place) trying to promote the music of the people I play. Then CD baby cancelled its affiliate program after I spent countless hours building my music site, promoting it, updating it and writing about it.
I also made a site promoting a healing technique that has helped me a great deal, it too had an affiliate program that it has now cancelled. There goes another countless hours of creating content, keyword research ect... oh well, its all a learning experiance I guess. My year membership goes until October. Hopefully I will be able to roll with it and come up with a sucess post before then.
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Oh dear, you sound on a downer, in a rut. I feel I am too new to help in any practical way but I am sure someone here will be able to offer some concrete ways forward for you. Keep the faith.x
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Hi Rena..
I just checked out all of your sites and I'd like to make some suggestions.
First of all let me say that I love what you have to say. You're hopeful and inspiring, which makes it very interesting to read.
I think the main problem is just lack of affiliate links. You should aim for finding one product or service to promote or just casually mention (with an affiliate link) in each article. Like when you're talking about the local artists you're promoting, you could add similar types of music on sale at Amazon. For the getting rid of rodents article, you could add a quick link to rat traps on amazon. Even if you're condemning rat traps, you could still make a sale if they click on that link and purchase something else.
And I wouldn’t worry too much about amazon. They cut me off too for not making any sales at first. After about 2 months I started to get more daily visitors and reapplied and they let me right in. They said they were going to give me a trial, and after the first sale I made, they said I was accepted.
And there are so many others you could sign up with.. easy ones. You can literally browse and pick products or services to promote from sites like Linkshare, Commission Junction, and Clickbank.
I would also consider combining all of your sites down to one or two. This could be time consuming, but all of your content combined would really pull in a lot of keywords and readers. I’d pick the one site that does the best right now, and copy and paste all of the other posts from the other sites onto that main one. I don’t know how that would work with duplicate content, though. Or if that’s not possible, maybe you should just focus on one or two sites to really make them thrive. Just add content (with affiliate links) like crazy!
I’ve got three measly sites, but I cannot keep up with those. Two of them are almost completely neglected, while I focus on getting as much content on the one that actually brings in some money.
I found it really cool that you have your own radio show and you promote local bands. I would have liked to read a personal story all about that. And you know, if you promote those bands more on your sites and on your social media accounts, the bands and their fans/friends/family will probably link to you and share your content, which is the first hard step.
I hated social media too, but it doesn’t take long before it’s easy. I started out just a couple of months ago on most of my accounts—pinterest, google plus, facebook. I just forced myself to post my articles every few days, and like or comment on other people’s posts. And in a very short time I had interaction on my accounts, which really has helped with my website traffic.
If you’re having trouble, let me follow you on your social media accounts. I will comment on your posts (so you can reply), and I will share. I don’t have much of a following at all, but I really think that interaction helps get Google’s attention, and other people’s too. I still avoid Twitter as much as possible, it’s intimidating to me too. But maybe we could get in there and tackle it together—be each other’s wingman.
Sorry for this novel, I got really into this one. Hope you don’t mind.
Angie.
thanks for your lengthy, detailed, thoughtful answer. I am Hurricane Rena on Pintrest and Google+. One of the problems I am having with Facebook is that it would not allow me to start an account as Hurricane Rena, which is what I go by through out my blogs and in my show, and as my domain name, which is how I would like to link it all up together (including FaceBook and seperate from the personal facebook use I do with my family and friends, I don't want to include everyone who's interested in my blogs in every social online interaction I have) I have not tried Twitter yet... part of course 4 that I am kind of stuck on.
Rena, what about a Facebook business page? It's completely separate from your regular family facebook page. The few facebook friends I have can't tell that I have a business page unless I invite them to see it.