 Jeremy Palmer is one of the about 100 true super affiliates in the country. He was recently interviewed in Revenue Magazine's "The Million Dollar Man". What most impresses me about Jeremy is his professionalism and credentials. He won Commission Junction's (CJ) Horizon Award for Innovation last year and is a CJ Performer.
Here's what he has to say about the journey so far.
August 5, 2006
When did you start out as an affiliate marketer?
I started out in 2003. I did it on the side at first but quickly made more than I made at my day job. After six months I quit my day job to be a full-time affiliate marketer.
What kind of affiliate are you?
A search affiliate.
What was the most unexpected roadblock you faced as a beginner?
It was the cash flow. I needed a few thousand dollars to start. I sold my road bike and some of my other belongings. You may also need to purchase domain names, a hosting account, basic graphics software, and HTML or web site editing software.
Paid search costs can be expensive depending on how fast you want to grow. You don't see a return for at least 30 days and most of it goes right back into the next month's campaign.
It may take a long time to get paid. Commission Junction (CJ) pays on a net 20 or net 30 but not everyone does. Linkshare takes you out 60--90 days. They bill the merchant, the merchant pays them, then you get paid last. You need to have enough to live on until those checks come in.
What is your biggest roadblock today. What are you doing to overcome it?
Now it's my time. I can't scale. So I've tried to automate repetitive tasks with software.
Should new affiliates to read a lot about affiliate marketing or should they just start?
Just read enough to understand affiliate and then start. That is how I did it. I learned the most about Pay-Per-Click by doing it. After I got it down I read more to fine tune my approach. You can learn the most from your own statistics. A lot of people on my forum ask questions they would answer for themselves if they simply started.
Choose something you know about and are passionate about at first. Make sure there is a market (not too obscure) but it will help you stay motivated in the beginning. Later when you know more what you're doing you can choose things based on potential revenue. If you start with the most competitive markets at first there will be too many other people who know more than you do.
What is your biggest advice for newbies?
Track everything and constantly improve based on what you learn. I use Excel spreadsheets to track my results. I enter the reports I get from CJ to see my daily sales. Then I get my report from Google. I see which keywords are responsible for which sales. Then I figure out how much it costs for those keywords and see which ones give me the best ROI.
What books or conferences have had the biggest impact on your business?
Commission Junction University (CJU). I was just promoting my dating sites and making about $20K a month before CJU. It really motivated me to step it up. Just 6 months after I got back I was consistently making 6 figures every month.
What was it about CJU that helped you improve your business, the sessions?
It wasn't so much the sessions as it was the motivation and the networking. Just being around and talking with people motivated me to try do more.
I also attended a session by Catherine Seda. I won a copy of her book Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales. I devoured it on the airplane on the way home. Her book is probably the book that has most influenced my business.
Tell us about your Ebook, "High Performance Affiliate Marketing. Who is it geared towards? What are the strongest sections?
It's for the late beginner to intermediate affiliate. The keyword research is probably the most valuable and with the update the part about how to run a paid search campaign.
It was released in April 2006. I updated it in July. It took me so long to write it because I wanted it to be quality. There are a lot of bad ebooks out there. And many don't update the content for years.
High Performance Affiliate Marketing is one of the few ebooks with its own support forum. About 10% of the people who read my book are on the forum. Of the 5000 people who've purchased the book, about 10% participate in the forum. I post frequently on it and answer people's questions.
Who Gets the Updates?
Everyone who buys my ebook before September 2006 gets unlimited updates. After that they get updates for a year. The fundamentals of affiliate marketing won't change, even though some of the details will. The business is much more competitive now than it was when I started. New affiliates need to know what they're doing. I build web pages around a product or service rather than start a web site and throw up links.
What Does the Most Recent Update Contain?
It has more detail keyword research and how to implement your keyword campaign. I also added information on MSN which wasn't in the first edition. I cover Google's new day parting feature (I use on some of my campaigns) and their bid to position feature (which hasn't bee really effective for me so far). I also added information based on what people have asked in my forum. In all I probably added 25 pages worth of new content.
What is your biggest pet peeve with affiliate managers?
They assume any affiliate can make money off any program. Get to know my business, understand my strengths. Every affiliate is different and while some can make money off your site, not all can. There is one program that I have tried to promote for months and I can barely break even on it. I know other affiliates are doing well on it.
What do you look for in a merchant and how do you find them?
I research programs in Commission Junction. Of the 1.1 million in commissions I made last year, a million of that was from CJ.
They have most of the brand names and merchants with quality products and services.
I look for the top performers and then read their terms. For example, Zonealarm, a company that sells anti virus software. The terms of their program are ridiculous. They restrict trademarks. They say you can't optimize your site for natural search optimization purposes on their keywords, meta tags, or in the title tags. You can't use any SEO techniques or they may sue you. Their keyword restrictions are about 500 words long. They have NO recommendations for suggested keywords. They threaten to sue you, kick you out of their program, and withhold payment from you. How does anyone make any money on them?
This is a program that really shouldn't exist, they obviously don't want affiliates.
What would you like to accomplish next?
I want to make enough money so I can do other things. I'd like to do stock investing, not day trading but longer term investing. I'll always be involved in affiliate marketing in some way, but I want to do other things too.
What is the best way for people to reach you?
Go to my web site www.quityourdayjob.com and fill out my contact form.
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