Does Rosalind Gardner REALLY earn $436,797 per year?

[juliep]

I'm so stoked!

I purchased Rosalind Gardner's The Super Affiliate's Handbook and stayed up almost all night reading it. This is from someone who, with no previous experience, has managed to attain an income of over $400,000 per year by selling other people's products.

Can this be for real? It seems incredible. Her e-book is filled with valuable, step by step guidelines for anyone wishing to attempt affiliate selling. I'm thinking that maybe I'm wasting my time trying to manufacture and market our home based product and that perhaps I should try her approach.

Her 'secret', by the way, is to find areas that you're interested in (can be practically anything) and then do an exhaustive analysis of search terms related to that subject. Then check out how much competition there is for the terms on pay per click sites, such as google and overture. When you've found one that gets enough traffic and that doesn't have a lot of competition from other marketers, you've found a winner. Then you build a webpage that's essentially a portal to merchants who offer the product and who have affiliate programs, so that you get paid everytime someone clicks on the link from your site to theirs and buys their product.

Her other 'secret' is to become familiar with their products so that you can give honest recommendations. While many affiliate marketers consider themselves lucky if one out of a hundred people who click actually make a purchase, Rosalind consistently realizes a 3-4% click to sales ratio.

Does anyone have experience doing this?

At any rate, now that I'm so pumped, I want to keep reading. But there is so much garbage out there, it's really hard to know what's good and what's not. You can't believe the hype ...which all seems to be written by the same marketer, who believes that he has to hit you over the head with a 2x4 to get your attention. Does anyone have any recommendations on similar books that they have actually read? For example, James Martell has one called Affiliate Marketer's Handbook. Phil Wiley has another called Niche Site Confessions Revealed. Another name that keeps popping up is Corey Rudl.

Thanks for your help. If anyone wants to have a look at Rosalind's book, let me know and I'll send you the url.

[Lynn Terry]

The Super Affiliate Handbook is excellent - I agree. Many of us here have read it over the past year (or at some time prior). Her methods are solid regarding affiliate promotions via PPC. She doesnt go into SEO (or Search Engine Optimization - free listings) and she's stated on Teleseminars before that she doesnt even pursue that method of promotion herself.

Personally, I like both - and promote affiliate programs both via PPC (pay-per-click, like Adwords) and also SEO (optimizing for free search engine listings). James Martell is the one who covers the SEO/Affiliate aspect, so the two guides are both good in my opinion. They even compliment each other in any serious Affiliate Marketer's virtual library.

I would stick with those two for now while you are learning & implementing. Much more would be distracting, and possibly "info overload". Too, I'm not a big fan of Corey Rudl (I do have "the course", but there is much better "current" information out now)... and I havent personally read Phil Whiley's material (though I have heard positive reviews).

[Lynn Terry]

[Jeff Casmer]

Hi,

As a top affiliate myself Ms. Garnder's ebook is outstanding. I recommend it for anyone getting started in the affiliate world.

Good luck!
Jeff Casmer

[Hock Ng]

I've read Rosalind's ebook but not James Martell's. Rosalind's book provides a general guideline to get you started. But don't expect to make 6 figures in a short time. It does take a lot of hard work and effort to build the sites. But once the sites are up, that's when the fun begins. You start testing, tweaking and tracking to see if you can improve your sales conversions.

is another good read. If you read the section that was contributed by Phil Wiley, you'll see that a BIG part of his strategy involves Adsense revenue. Personally, I like that model a lot. It takes a lot less for a visitor to your site to click through an Adsense ad that is of interest than for them to purchase something.

If you choose to go this route, try to pick up some website building skills. Graphics skills are helpful as well though not necessary. The key is to know which 'groups' of keywords have a high bid price and to target those markets. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you can also target lower priced keywords and make up for it with high traffic.

If you look around, you'll see that there are a lot of people now selling keyword lists of high paying keywords. Some of them are really overpriced. Recently, I found a decent list for $11. Some people are charging $200 for similar lists. So the bottom line is shop around before you buy.

Hock

[Phil Tanny]

[Teena]

Phil, thanks for that excellent link!

I have just spent an hour reading Alan Gardyne's site - fabulous stuff - he's so down to earth, and an Aussie like me!

Cheers
Teena

[sirxl]

yes. I've been reading Allan's postings since 1997. He's the BEST !

[Phil Tanny]

Yes, Allan has a big fan club, most of you probably already read him.

I was particularly interested in the tutorial I linked to above, because it boils all the main points down to one page.

I find that very useful. I've bought as many ebooks as anybody, but I find that they are as much an obstacle as asset at this point. Just too many different options, ideas, plans etc.

The beauty of an article like Allan's is that putting all the basics on one page focuses us on one simple question.

Are we going to do it or not?

Pretend there were no ebooks or web sites and all you had was that one page (or one like it by someone else). Are you going to do it, or not?

It can be hard question, but it's at least a simple uncomplicated question.

Yes? Or No?

To each their own of course, but it seems to me that in an environment where we are being flooded with info, filters become quite important.

Sometime less is more etc....