Friday, November 16, 2007

The odds of success in online business - affiliate marketing

Given the number of sites out there it's an interesting subject to talk about the success rate of online business ventures. Of course we know success is defined in different ways and a degree of personal satisfaction can be a measure of success. So for the sake of the discussion we are looking at only sites that set out to generate an income that can replace a wage and everything above that level.How many sites do you think come online every day? Thousands ? Millions? It's
a massive number, they are all trying to get search space and all trying to get traffic. The odds of making a dollar for Joe average are extremely low at best,I've am asked almost daily how is it done and the answer is there is no easy answer.It takes skill, a good idea and a good execution of that idea to even get you started. Once you have a formula that is working you should try to replicate that over and over if possible. This can be a a key factor in being good and being great. Start small, find a plan and then scale up, if your plan does not lend itself to easy replication then your behind before you start. There are a lot of good affiliate programs out there the hard part is deciding which one is worth pursuit and which ones are genuine and not scams. You need to stay ahead of the curve and that is not always easy online. One of the big hurdles is traffic, many new sites get little or no traffic - ever. I often tell web hopefuls to investigate Ebay because the traffic is already in play, all you need to do it tap into the Ebay site and your on your way, although I don't operate an eBay business it's pretty clear going this way will increase your
odds of success. If I had to make 1 dollar tomorrow I would choose YPN or Google adsense - But if you want to make more than a few bucks then your going to need serious traffic and page views and be prepared to align your self with one of the search companies. Lets face facts here, when you align with adsense they don't disclose the % they pay to you and they will "adjust" your % based on some mysterious quality score? and the benefit of the lower quality score only equals a larger slice to google not a better deal for the advertiser. Who wants to do business this way? I've seen some big adwords cheques published online so there is clearly money to be made here, the point is you need a good site with traffic volumes to make money.So it can be done and it is being done, to make an income online to replace your wage is very possible you just need to understand it is not going to fall out of the sky and land in your lap. Be prepared to have your site scraped,content stolen, your site dropped from search engines, server downtime and your
inbox loaded with all sorts of get rich yesterday schemes! If you want to stack the odds in your favor get a good website and some good SEO, look at PPC and other paid traffic options
and try to be fresh and original.



http://www.articleson.com/Article/The-odds-of-success-in-online-business----affiliate-marketing/17643