Most of these people have illusions of grandeur and easy cash. They have no idea what they are going to do, what offers they are looking for or even the marketing method.

So what is it really, that people should know before considering a career in affiliate marketing? I came up with these 5 basic areas.

If you are thinking about getting started in affiliate marketing, ask yourself these questions:

1.) Do I know basic HTML?

Over the years, I have never talked to an affiliate who said, “Yea, I made all this money knowing NOTHING. Isn’t that amazing!!!”

Do I think you can get started knowing basic html? Yes.
Do I think you can get started not knowing any? No, not really. Plus if you want to do this full time, know your craft. You need to know how to optimize your campaigns or you will end up losing money.

For the more complex stuff, hire someone. But you have to have a general idea of what you will be asking the programmer for.

Before you even get started, know HTML.

2.) Do you have a basic understanding of the Internet?

So what is a basic understanding of the Internet? Well, can you use a browser (yea, you’d be surprised.)

Please know that you have to use an affiliate link to track your leads. You’d be surprised how often people forget to do this.

3.) Do you have Realistic Expectations?

Our favorite phone call was from a gal who read about George on a blog. She called in and asked if she only works 10 hours a week, can she make a million dollars in the first year.

I am not making this up. She called for two weeks straight asking how she can make that working just a few hours a week.

For those of you successful in affiliate marketing – how much time did you put in at the beginning? Even now? I guarantee it’s way more than 10 hours a week. Possibly more than 10 hours a day.

Online marketing takes both time and money. If you don’t have enough money to pay your bills – work a job and do affiliate marketing at night, on the weekends or whatever.

I have people that call in and tell me they can’t pay their mortgage, so they need an offer to just blow up for them. I tell them, get a part time job even to pay your mortgage. And let’s get some money coming on the side with affiliate marketing. Honestly, you need to reinvest what you make to build up your earnings to where you can do this full time.

4.) Are you Dedicated?
This one is an understatement. One word – and it means so much.

You need to be dedicated to succeeding in affiliate marketing. You need to want it so bad that it’s all you can see. Because honestly, that is what it’s going to take. You will lose money, offers will go down, and you will get discouraged. There is only thing that will keep you going: dedication to the goal.

5.) Do you LOVE this?
Affiliate marketing is tedious! It’s scraping keywords and urls, it’s setting up campaigns, it’s split testing pages and optimizing everything you can. It’s analyzing data and testing offers. It is tedious work – but inside you still have to love it.

You have to get a bit of a rush when you get that java script working. You can feel your heart beating a little faster once leads start pouring in. A high, so to speak, after you optimized a landing page and your CTR rises 150%. Wow.

If you envision nothing but sipping martinis on the beach after you did absolutely nothing but put a link up on Google – then keep dreaming. You would be better buying a lottery ticket.

I don’t want to discourage Newbies from getting involved in the industry. I just want to offer some help. If you answered YES to all 5 questions, I’d say jump on in and make some money. If you answered NO – then go back to the drawing board. It will save you both time and money.

What do you think? Is there any other must-haves that we should put on the list?

First Place: IPad – Aff ID 119963

Second Place: Ipod Touch – Aff ID 121740

Third Place: $100 gift card – Aff ID 140846

Fourth Place: $50 gift card – Aff ID 142173

Congratulations!!!!

In checking out stats from day to day, I started to notice something. There was a staggering income difference between those affiliates who used Prosper 202 and those who did not.

In any given week, Group A (those who DO use prosper) made an average of 10 times (yes that’s TEN TIMES!!!) more than Group B (those who DO NOT use prosper).

So this post is for those of you who are not using Prosper 202 with your PPV campaigns.

I want to keep it simple and to the point. Here are some bullet points as to why you should give it a go:

• Tracks ROI on a keyword level
• Protects your keywords from the network
• Keeps your data safe on your own web server
• Allows you to rotate and split test offers
• Aggregates all your stats in one location
• Can setup direct link campaigns or landing pages (with single or multiple offers)
• Is open source software supported by the community of users
• Did I mention it’s totally free?

Next week, I’ll be showing how to use Prosper with your affiliate campaigns. But for now, they have excellent directions on how to set it up yourself.

If you want to take your affiliate campaigns to the next level, based on what I’ve seen, you’ll need Prosper202 in your box of online marketing tools.

Despite the numerous ways to make money online, we can also get a case of tunnel vision. When campaigns stop working, or when traffic sources start to dry up. Panic mode can easily kick in.

I thought I’d put together a few ideas on how to recharge your battery, so to speak. To keep our direction forward while still handling all this industry throws our way.

1.) Take a breather: This industry isn’t going anywhere. Sometimes you just need to step back, relax and gather yourself together. Take some time to learn something new and act on it. Do something that is just for you.

2.) Reprioritize: When we are constantly in motion, it’s hard to always see where our paths are leading. After taking that breather, it’s important to reassess if we are heading in the direction we planned. Write down those goals and a clear plan on how to attain them. What are your priorities? And are they in the right order. How do you correct that if they aren’t?

3.) Remember why you love what you do: Ok, its list making time. Get out a pen and paper (or your ipad) and write down why you love this biz. What excites you about it? What drew you to it?
When you start to get bogged down again – refer back to this list. Remember, it beats working at McDonalds any day.

4.) Get Back at It: Pump yourself up and get back to it. Get out there and make that mad cash. Only you will do it for you. You know how – now go do it. Get motivated and blow it up.

What are your industry recharge tips?

Topics include:

* Facebook Advertising Techniques
* B2B Advertising: Business Networks
* Social Gaming and Advertising in Apps
* Location-based Networks & Advertising
* Mobile Social Advertising
* Blog Advertising and Sponsored Posts

Speakers include Matt Atkinson (Group CEO, EHS Brann), Peter Crosby (CSO,
Viadeo), Carl Uminski (COO, Somo), Sarah Wood (Unruly Media), E.J Garcia
(Purple, Rock, Scissors), Chase McMichal (CEO, InfiniGraph) and more, plus
case studies from leading brands.

Early Bird tickets cost as little as £120 ($185 US) – which we think is incredible
value for a one day conference, lunch and a networking drinks reception.

** You can also get an extra 10% off using our unique discount code: getads10

Click here to buy your ticket
http://www.socialmediamarketing.co.uk/socialadvertisinglondon

And all through the land our Hero proclaimed these words:

“He’s climbing in your windows
He’s snatchin your people up
. Tryna rape em so y’all need to
Hide your kids, hide your wife hid your husband. Cuz they’re rapin errbody out there
You don’t have to come and confess
. We’re lookin for you. 
We gon find you. Run and tell that, homeboy”

And it was a joyous day.

The end.

Thanks to the GetAds office love of everything Auto Tuned, we’ve been listening to the “Bed Intruder Song” created by the Gregory Brothers. If you somehow haven’t heard it yet, hop on to YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw. I was surprised when I saw how big of a following Antoine Dobson has amassed. Hey, he has his own Wikipedia page, that’s something.

Yet out of this tragic situation, a magical thing happened. Take one part interesting character, two parts auto tuning and mix together with YouTube and over 14 million views. What do you get – a social media fairy tale.

Thanks to the song being an iTunes download, t-shirts (http://www.antoine-dodson.com/official-merchandise/) and other products, Antoine Dobson is getting closer to move his family out of the projects and into the suburbs.

Depending on how this fairy tale ends, I think we can all take something from Antoine’s words from his blog, “You have given me this opportunity to shine so dammit, I’m going to shine.”

Shine on Bright star – shine on.

If you haven’t seen it yet (don’t worry I’m not going to spoil it for you), it’s basically about creating a dream world so the dreamer trusts it as their own. The whole movie is about the creator of the dream trying to install a thought into the dreamers mind so they believe it to be their own though. Hence the term Inception.

Usually with anything, it gets me thinking about this industry we all work in.

The idea of creating the comfortable environment transfers online.  You need to create trust with the end user and your site/blog/ad to get the conversion.

How do you do that in an online environment?

Here are some ideas:

Simple way, but if you are doing PPV, mimic the site you are targeting. Yes, I know you can scrape a 1000 sites. But if you had 10 top target ones, mimic the site you are popping off of with your banner. Test it out. Mimic site banners and general ones.

List building. This is a huge relational marketing method. What is of value to them in your message when you send it out? What keeps them opening your list, and what’s most important, what makes them convert.

Your blog. Yes, you knew this one was coming. What are you saying on continual bases that bring people back. And how can you monetize that return traffic. Do they trust you enough to try out what you mention? Does your audience believe you when you do a review?

The whole point is to create the conversation you want to lead the end user to convert. You need to create the environment in which the end users trusts enough to part with the information to complete the lead.

If you can comfort them into the sale with logic and then confirm the sale with emotion, they will do anything you want them to do.  It’s all about getting into the mindset of the consumer.  We may not be able to do it physically (or meta-physically) like in the movie, but we can certainly do it mentally each time we create a new campaign.  Make sure you are asking yourself the question, “Will the consumer believe this as truth or see it as a threatening sales message?”

Of course, a huge question people always ask is “Where is internet marketing headed?” This trip, before you could think, the answer was Mobile. While I do believe that point to quite valid – I see mobile marketing as an extension of our traffic pool, not the replacement of.

This doesn’t answer the question, where is the industry headed.

I think we need to calm the hell down and realize that traffic is still there and always will be. I think we will see rise of other social sites come into play. Perhaps born off of games from facebook and so on. Consider first there was MySpace. Then Facebook took over the social scene. There will be more to come.

Most of the new traffic and opportunities will come from people in this industry now. They are either in the works or haven’t acted on it yet.

The most amazing thing about this industry is the support roles. Such as, the coders who come up with the software to allow for more automated campaign building. Those who offer more detailed tracking capabilities. Don’t forget the people who host the learning forums, courses and webinars. Consider the people who put on the industry events.

These are all people who are in “affiliate marketing” without being in the actual field. Affiliates see a need, act on it and create a whole new level of income for themselves.

It’s what drives this industry, creating a way to monetize online traffic. Even if that way is monetizing the industry itself.

I think what this industry is waiting for is the traffic sources to be created and the processes that will allow many to benefit which in turn makes money for the creator.

You could be the next answer. What ideas do you need to act on that will create not only income for others, but unlimited income for yourself as well?

Remember our promotion for the summit, get signed up and get registered:

If you’re not already, you can sign up here: GetAds.com

Before I left for the Affiliate Summit on Saturday I was looking through iphone apps to help me during the trip. Here are the ones I found:

Tweet Deck (free): TweetDeck is your mobile browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now on Twitter and Facebook from your iPhone or iPod Touch. Remember use #ASE10 for this trip.

Urban Spoon (free): Can’t decide where to eat? Urbanspoon can help. Shake your iPhone and the Urbanspoon slot machine will pick a good restaurant for you to try.

Biz Expense ($2.99): If you have trouble tracking and reporting your business expenses, this handy app can help.

Mobile Studio ($1.99): This file manager lets you share files with your computer, then view and edit them (or create new ones) on the go.

Readdle Docs ($9.99): Load documents from computers, Web sites, e-mail, and even other iPhones.

WiFi Finder ($1.99): Wifi sites are grouped to display free locations and subscription hotspots like AT&T.

Taxi Magic (Free): Taxi Magic connects the iPhone’s GPS with local dispatch systems to send a taxi to your exact location at the tap of a button.

Flight Tracker ($4.99): Get real-time status information for flights around the world. Know your gate number and any delays before leaving home.

Angry Birds ($0.99): You need some fun on the plane!

What did I miss?