My First Affiliate ‘Campaign’

This is a follow-up from my last post:  How I got into Affiliate Marketing

After reading the affiliate merchants page and signing up to the program I was eager to start making money.
Now was the time to start my first affiliate campaign. 
I say ‘campaign’; but at the time I didn’t really care to think about it, I just wanted to get on and make some money.
Looking back, it may have helped me to take the time to look it up in the dictionary or something lol
 
Definition quoted from dictionary.com
“campaign = a systematic course of aggressive activities for some specific purpose: a sales campaign.”  

In fact it wasn’t a campaign at all, just one big disaster!
You see I had one important thing missing, I wasn’t at all ’systematic’ in my approach ( ticked the other boxes though;) )
I just fell into the trap that most other new affiliates do.

 I got myself a domain name from somewhere like this: poker–table.co.uk ( needless to say Its not around anymore )
Quickly figured out how to create cells on dreamweaver – Slapped a few banners in them from various poker rooms – uploaded it – and thought I had myself a nice little poker site.

I’m not too ashamed to admit all this as I know I’m not alone here. I’ve found a million and one sites that looked just like mine.

I must have kept this site for about a year and I had spent alot of hours on messing about with it.
Swapping banners around, getting ones that looked better, signing up to new programs that paid higher commissions, writing a few reviews on each site etc.

Sure I got something out of doing the website
I learnt had to use dreamweaver, a bit of html coding and stuff + where to get all the best poker bonuses:)
But I never made one naffing Sale out of the damn thing!

I’m writing this post in the hope that someone new to affiliate marketing may read this – take a step back from what they are doing and realise AM is not all about pretty banners and the hope that some punter is going to click one of your links.
I wish it was that simple because I would definately have made that first million by now I can assure you.

Please don’t make the mistakes have made, you will just waste alot of time and get nowhere fast

Take a step back and use your time to do some good research first
The best thing of all about affiliate marketing and your greatest allies believe or not is the other affiliates themselves ( well not all of them of course as some are trying to pitch your campaigns and get your leads lol )
But on the whole you may be very suprised just how forthcoming and helpful most of these guys are.
My No1 tip is to join some affiliate forums and read plenty of good affiliate blogs ( oh and mine ;) )
Do alot of reading and ask alot of questions and I’m sure you will go along way

One of the best forums I use and inspired me to start this blog is A4u  -  Alot of the guys there really know their stuff
I’ll post some of the affiliate blogs that I read another time.

Thanks for reading
Mike

 My next series of Posts : In my next few posts I’ll be outlining the way I would have done it ( the way I do it know ) if I had the time again.