photo credit: Marco Raaphorst
It seems like everyone is an expert these days about Blogging, Social Media and Affiliate Marketing. The word “Expert” and “Guru” is been tossed around a lot and since everyone is an expert they must be making a lot of money.
Some do, but the majority don’t.
I’m not making thousands of dollars (I will tell you when I do) but I am making money online, and I tell you it is very addictive once you start making some money.
I started about a year ago and really I did not know a lot about this whole affiliate marketing and blogging game. Honestly I thought the majority were scammers and the other half were people making money by telling other people how to make money.
After a few months I stumbled across a few good quality websites such as;
- Problogger.com - By Darren Rowse
- Viperchill.com - By Glen Alsopp
- Smartpassiveincome.com - Pat Flynn
- Copyblogger.com - Brian Clark
These websites shouldn’t be new to people who have been online for a while as these are high quality websites and have thousands of subscribers and with that generate a lot of traffic. They have been in the blogging game for a while and have made thousands of dollars from their blogs and products.
My story started about 2 years ago when I changed jobs and now working for a large online company. This really rattled my interest in affiliate marketing and I was seeing how OUR affiliates were generating thousands of euro’s (its an European company) each month without breaking a sweat… They got my attention….
So I started reading a lot (and I mean a lot) on a daily basis by subscribing to the websites RSS feed if it had some good content. Within a week I was reading / scanning about 300 articles a day. A great free tool is Google Reader as you get the latest posts delivered to your reader (also works on an iPhone) so you don’t have to go back to each website and checking if they posted something new.
If you don’t know what RSS Feeds are or how to use Google Reader then these two video’s can help you out.
What are RSS Feeds
How to use Google Reader
Learn to fly
Just like with every other business or course, you need to learn how to walk before you can fly. It takes a lot of time to learn the basics of this online game as the information overload is huge. It takes at least 6 months to get yourself up to date with all the different names and players. After six months there are new players popping up which have a different thing to sell or tell how they made their fortune. Just remember that you have to keep learning (which is fun 
)
Don’t get sucked in..
You can really spend thousands of dollars on stuff you probably don’t need when you start. I would recommend staring with the 4 websites I posted earlier (and obviously this one) as that will get you going and up to speed.
I started by reading online but also bought 2 ebooks which helped me set up my first website. I did a few websites earlier but after reading those ebooks I came to the conclusion that I overpaid and got taken advantage by my lack of knowledge.
Lesson learned and paid… like I did with many.
So what books brought you this infinite wisdome I hear you pondering… well these were Cloud Living from Viperchill.com and 31 Days to Build a Better Blog from Problogger.com
Cloud Living is written by Glen Allsop who owns the website Viperchill.com and is known for his insanely long posts. These posts are loaded with information so this will keep you busy for a while. The Cloud Living book is really the first book that I read and started to make sense of this affiliate marketing game.
The book goes from how to pick your domain, hosting and how to install WordPress or an HTLM template to your website. It then goes to explain what tools there are to make your first (of many) dollar. The book is easy to read and doesn’t contain loads of jargon so everyone can read it.
Click here if you want to know more about Cloud Living
My second book (in that order too) was 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Darren Browse is the guy behind Problogger.com which is one of the biggest blogs in the world today. The book is for people who really just started a blog or have a blog but lack the direction of where they want to go.
The book goes through different pages which you can re-write to make your audience better aware of what you actually want to achieve with your website. This may sound a bit of a “D-uh” moment but one of the most read pages on websites is the “About” page… just so you know.
Click here if you want to know more about 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.
Just to let you know, I do get a commission if you purchase one of these books but I can guarantee you that these are worth having in your digital library. If the books didn’t teach you anything or you think the book is just shit, send me an email on ralph at hothitmedia.com and tell me why you think the books are worthless and I will give you the commission that I earned on your purchase.
Since everyone is an expert but not everyone is making money I would recommend becoming knowledgeable yourself. Don’t just listen, but learn. It is your website so you need to know what you want. This does not mean you can’t or shouldn’t ask for advice but in the end you can decide if that advice is actually good for you.
This can save you a lot of money…
Stay hungry,
Ralph
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Nobody can know everything, there are so much things coming up each day. Nobody can keep track of all things happening no matter how much of a “guru” or “expert” people claim they are.
Nobody can know everything, there are so much things coming up each day.
No one can keep track of all things happening no matter how much of a “guru” or “expert” people claim they are.
That is very true! But the more you know yourself, the less dependent you are and the less you can be influenced for things you don’t need.
Yes you can learn a hell of a lot from these experts. I’m sure those books can save you a lot of time.
However there do seem to be an awful lot of blogs out there that have a very similar look and feel to Problogger and others like it. I’m sure a lot of them are making money but the market must be getting very close to being saturated. In the end I do think you’ve got to just be true to yourself, and cobble together your own methods of building a money making blog or site.
Matt recently posted..ArticlesBase gets indexed very quickly by Google
Very true indeed. A lot of people make money by telling others how to make money.
Some of the people I follow are Viperchill.com, Smartpassiveincome.com, Lewishowes.com and Seanmalarkey.com these guys seem to be very genuine in their way of doing things.