Comments on: Firing your Boss for Affiliate Marketing

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 01 May 2007 01:05:58 +0000

Love to hear your ebay secrets as well as setting up an autoresponse system. How do you set up autoresponse if you are selling 100 different ebooks?

By: JK

JK — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 02:03:14 +0000

are you there stuart? Help? please…don’t let me again without an answer

By: JK

JK — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 03:58:59 +0000

ah, that makes sense. But why was that flagged has spam? Is that what i don’t understand. My comments are valid (I think!), and in the comments field, i only puted the address of my site, wich is nothing to do with spam.
Can you deflag it, or i must comment for the rest of my life without putting my site?

Thanks for all the help stuart.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 03:07:04 +0000

I may have flagged one of your comments previously as spam buddy hence when you post using the same domain it gets automatically put into the filter

Glad you enjoy the blog.

By: Stuart Read This Please

Stuart Read This Please — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:52:17 +0000

great article stuart. you allways give us almost a “step by step” guide, is because of that i love your blog
Let’s see if this comment is not rated spam again by your blog (i continue without knowing why that happens, it’s jonix again, please contact me when you can, i would like to comment in your blog but i can’t, i’m allways flagged without reason).

By: Tom Ferris

Tom Ferris — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 16:35:20 +0000

I am kind of tired of hearing about the “Create a PDF ebook, and make tons of cash”. I think the people who are doing this are ripping off allot of people. I have never learned anything from these ebooks. They are more or less a waste of time for anyone.

By: brad

brad — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:16:16 +0000

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Ebay is still a huge online player. And for a few cents you can test out an ad (auction)instead of PPC. I often test sales copy first on ebay. Where else can you get a bunch of targeted traffic for a few measly cents!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:41:20 +0000

Great post, man. I’m impressed with your array of ideas for making money online. Keep up the good work!

-Ryan

By: Mark Barrera

Mark Barrera — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:49:14 +0000

Great post Stuart. I have been doing online and affiliate marketing for some time now, but haven’t really gotten in to Ebay too deep. After reading this though, I am going to dedicate more time to Ebay.

By: JT

JT — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:49:44 +0000

Hey Stuart:

Thanks for the clarification. I did think after I posted that, that realistically there would be a small field of books that you could sell at the $20 level. However something like a cat book, I imagine you could sell for $2-$4 (?), and so long as a) you were grabbing emails for future monetization and b) getting some affiliate sales from within the book, it might be worth pursuing.

But here’s a question, and maybe the answer is obvious: if you create it for eBay, why not sell it elsewhere? Clickbank, etc.? And I’ll wager the answer is you might as well go and do so. Sure, w/ Clickbank you’re giving up 1/2 the commissions, but that’s not a bad thing if you make it on the other two aspects.

And I ask about income because I (and other readers I’m sure) are also wondering about return-on-investment. It seems to me that this would have a potentially shorter shelf life than putting this content on a website (diversification issues aside.)

So if you’re making $2,000 a month (as your example), is that for 5 months? 10 months? 3 years? How often would you have to create new products or revise the content? It’s good to know, because even if someone does decide to diverisfy this way, they should be able to plan out how much time should be spent on this, compared to other projects.

For example: If I have $4k to spend on content creation, and I know that I can make $2k a month for 10 months on this, vs. $500 a month for 4 years on a website… then I can decide I’ll spend $1k on this project and the rest on more profitable stuff. I’m still diversified, but I’m balancing my portfolio to maximize gains.

Last thought: I’ve read several blogs online dealing with ways to make money. Yours is one of a small handful I read regularly. So keep the good stuff coming!

By: Runa

Runa — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:23:15 +0000

Anyway the main problem is you need to have time to spend in writing on some argument. And you also have to know something to write about it. In that case, you could also earn in other ways then ebay, for example the traditional way of publishing a paper-book with a traditional editor and earn from the sales. Or you could write about that argument for magazines, newspaper, websites, blogs and so on being payed for it.

So the first problem remains to know well an argument and to have time to spend for writing about it.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 04:43:36 +0000

Lets get real here JT, you’re not going to be able to sell a book on caring for you cat for $20.

The purpose of this is to brainstorm ideas & books that you could write that you could sell for that value. It doesn’t have to be $20, it could be $9.99.

Books on “how to make money” always sell like hotcakes. Books on gambling techniques sell well, books on adsense & adwords sell.

Chances are you will ALWAYS be able to find an affiliate program to suit your book, if not write the article to suit the affiliate program, not the other way around. Secondary commissions are a big consideration on ebay.

If you want an idea on how a book should be written then buy one from ebay, they’re all over the place & that’s the best way to get ideas. See what others are doing & better it.

I did mention that using these techniques got me into affiliate marketing & that I’m still doing them today so that nullifies any “short term” longevitity.

Range of income isn’t important, I strive on providing solid techniques & good advice, not waving my affiliate cheques around & then writing crap content like everyone else.

Cheers
Stu

By: JT

JT — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 04:08:57 +0000

By info product, do you mean an ebook on caring for your cat, or something? You’re selling the books for $20 each? Then getting additional sales based on products mentioned in the book.

So to start, do you check the various affiliate offers first, pick some, and design the content around that? Do you write the books yourself or hire that out? How many pages should they be?

And if you do so – how do you approach the affiliate people about this, and get into their program? When they want to see your material first, or your website…?

Also: Can you give us at least a range of income you make monthly on your projects? You having a career… I don’t know, it undercuts your advice a bit. If these are all just short term, fast money things… well, it would be good to know before getting into it.