Category: Business | Jean Galea

Why Publishers Prefer to Work with Affiliate Networks

Published: September 23, 2022Leave a Comment

affiliate marketing networks

Web publishers such as news media outlets, bloggers and affiliate marketers, all need a way of partnering up with advertisers and track commissions due to them.

As a publisher, you are usually working with either of the following:

Affiliate networks
In-house affiliate programs

In this article, I will list several reasons why you should always try to partner up with advertisers through an affiliate network and not through in-house affiliate programs.

Before we start, to make sure everyone is on the same page, let’s define what’s an affiliate network and what’s an in-house affiliate program.

Let’s start with a diagram of how affiliate marketing works.

how affiliate marketing works

The diagram should be pretty self-explanatory. Note that publishers are also referred to as partners or affiliates. Advertisers are also known as merchants.

Here’s an even simpler way of looking at it.

steps in affiliate marketing

Or perhaps you can relate more to this next diagram which lists the typical personas involved in an affiliate marketing transaction.

What is an affiliate network?

Affiliate networks congregate many advertisers under one platform and simplify things for both the advertisers and the publishers. They use their reach to link the two parties and propose partnerships both ways. They also handle all transaction tracking and billing, as well as other essentials such as reporting.

As a publisher, you have one platform that you can login at any time, and you will see all the commissions generated from all the advertisers you have partnered with.

Which are some of the most popular affiliate networks?

Here’s a list of the best ones I’ve used over the years:

Circlewise
Shareasale
Impact
Partnerize

And what about in-house software solutions?

AffiliateWP
Affiliates Pro

Alright, so let’s get into the reasons why I prefer working with big affiliate networks rather than in-house programs.

Trust

It is much easier to trust an affiliate network than to trust tens or hundreds of advertisers to manage their affiliate system effectively.

When working with in-house affiliate systems, I’ve had several advertisers fail to make the monthly payouts or change affiliate links without properly notifying publishers or redirecting previous links. This all leads to missed revenue for publishers and time spent chasing down the problems.

With big affiliate networks, the trust factor doesn’t even come into play.

Invoicing and billing

A big problem when working with many advertisers is invoicing and billing. As an advertiser, you are responsible for invoicing each advertiser every time they send you commissions. If you are working with hundreds of them, the task becomes impossible, effectively leading to having to shut down the business. The solution is to work with an affiliate network, as they will automatically generate the invoices based on the company details you provide, thus you are always covered and you have zero work to do.

I can’t overstate the importance of this benefit as a publisher.

Standardization

Instead of learning how to use a ton of different affiliate marketing software programs, you instead need to learn how to use a handful of affiliate network platforms that you are signed up with. Again, this saves time and hassle, and it is easier to train other people you might have on your team.

Better software

It is usually the case that an affiliate network will have a better technical solution than an in-house software system. Affiliate networks are experts at what they do, so you can bet they will have taken care of multiple currency handling, reporting facilities, deep-link builders, self-billing, and a host of other features you will need as a publisher.

In-house affiliate software will typically be sorely lacking in such features.

Less work

Do you want to end up using an excel sheet to keep track of your 200+ affiliate agreements, how to login to each in-house affiliate system, login details, and make sure they all keep working month after month? This can easily take 2 or 3 full days of work every month to manage. If you want to spend your time more productively, use an affiliate network.

Wrapping up

So there you have it. My experience over more than ten years of working with affiliate systems has taught me to always prefer working with affiliate networks than in-house affiliate programs. It’s not the first time I have outright refused to work with an advertiser due to them insisting that they do not want to join an affiliate network. Others thankfully see why it’s beneficial for both the advertiser and the publisher, and have no problems moving to an affiliate network once I recommend that they do so.

What’s your take on the subject? Let me know in the comments section.

Blogging VS Affiliate Marketing

Last updated: September 21, 2022Leave a Comment

blogging vs affiliate marketing

When bloggers succeed in making money, or just happen to generate enough traffic that income becomes inevitable, there usually comes a point where the urge to make more and more money gets quite strong.

Let’s face it, making money online is one of the best feelings. It still feels hard to believe that it is possible, and when you actually achieve it you feel great and want more of it.

Where some bloggers go wrong is that they get greedy and start looking for higher ticket items to promote and become less authentic.

I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times over the twenty years that I’ve been blogging.

Some people start off with money as their main goal and the arts of persuasion and manipulation as their tools, but the vast majority start out with a passion for writing and sharing their stories and opinions, and eventually slowly lose their way when money gets involved.

Here’s a good article on how you can stay happy and guilt-free while growing your blog and making money. It’s packed with tips that I fully agree with, so I thought I’d just link to it rather than repeat the same things over in this blog post.

You might think that it’s counterintuitive to not keep pushing for more and more income from a blog, but there’s a balance that few people consider until they’ve been through the whole experience.

Here’s how it goes.

When you start blogging, it’s probably just a few friends and family who will venture to your blog. However, you keep putting in the hours because it’s a passion-driven project.

Soon enough, your content gets linked to or ranks in Google and a few like-minded people start to subscribe to your newsletter or comment on the top content.

This feels amazing. Your work is finally being validated, people are interested in what you have to say, and you might even learn a thing or two from the people who comment and give feedback on your articles.

This goes on for a while as your traffic grows and grows, until one day the first commission comes in, and it feels incredible.

Now, you not only have a loyal flock of like-minded people, but you are even being compensated for your work. A few months pass by and the income now pays for your expenses, or if you’re lucky even for you to blog full-time and stop any other job you were doing before.

You decide to take this thing very seriously and start getting into SEO, reading about affiliate marketing, and possibly learning some basic coding.

You realize that there are other bloggers out there who claim they are making $50,000 a month or even more, and driven by your success so far, you see no obstacles to getting there if you just keep doing what you’re doing and follow their courses and secrets.

This is usually where things get nasty. Your expectations are now really high. You’re no longer happy with a day where you earn $100 in commissions, or a month with a $5000 payout. That’s just normal for you, you’re a successful blogger and you want more and more.

At this perilous point, a lot of bloggers turn into full-on affiliate marketers. This is where you see that genuine food blogger suddenly start making more money with her courses teaching you how to start a food blog or how to find a perfect web host. The whole act becomes more and more about money and less about the original topic of the blog.

This is where the blogger unwittingly deviates from his real passion (food, technology, etc etc) and starts to focus exclusively on finding and promoting high-ticket items. They might even write ebooks and launch courses that promise others how to achieve the dream of the dot com lifestyle.

What happens here is that yes, most likely the blogger makes a good chunk of money, but they become less happy and work many more hours, as they start losing the benefits of their narrow niche and start competing with aggressive affiliate marketers for hot generic keywords. This road leads to anxiety and burnout.

On the other hand, the blog starts to lose its loyal readers, who are disgruntled by the way things have turned out, and no longer feel that sense of camaraderie and connection with the author of the blog. They are instead replaced by an army of (unfortunately) gullible and lesser educated people who are looking for a get-rich-quick scheme and are not ready or capable of putting in the years of learning all the skills needed to make money online.

These are the same people that get drawn into pyramid schemes and MLMs and go to self-help seminars, spending thousands of dollars and getting nowhere closer to their dreams. They usually end up worse off in fact. It’s sad but it’s the truth.

Going back to the blogger, your only option to keep growing is now to focus even more on the arts of manipulation, as this is the kind of target audience your blog is now aimed at. Going back to the good old days is almost impossible now, so it’s either keep focusing on the money or shut up shop altogether and go into something new.

I’ve met a ton of bloggers and affiliate marketers and felt the allures described above myself. Years back, when I was building my early successful blogs, I got close to the tipping point, but the extra anxiety and my family background helped me ask the right questions and realize what the choices ahead were.

I decided to keep doing what I really love, because doing something you love is more important than making more money, especially if you’re already doing well enough to get by.

My choice was to keep blogging about whatever interests I have at that point in time, and use the skills I had learned along the way to build products. In that way, I could build products that I could stand behind 100% and I also had the skills needed to promote them via blogging and other forms of content. It was a win-win scenario.

My aim is not to tell you what you should do as a blogger, but to at least shed some light on the usual course of things and share the fact that there are always options, you should never have to compromise on your morals or your true calling in favor of more money.

In case you’re wondering whether all the claims of monthly income by affiliate marketers are even true to begin with, then I can tell you that I know many of them and the vast majority of them really make what they claim they do. However, a lot of them made choices that I wouldn’t be comfortable doing and I don’t envy their lifestyles. I feel that in most cases, instead of their blogs providing them with freedom and the ability to help others and share their passions, they turned into huge money-making machines that they are chained to in order to keep going and keep up their big level of monthly earnings.

Now you know the story, it’s time to reflect and make your choices.

Making Money in the Second Wave

Last updated: September 21, 20221 Comment

Over the years I’ve come to realize that my best investments happen during the second wave of the product or industry lifecycle.

The idea is loosely based on the Gartner Hype Cycle curve, the No products found. concept, the Hero’s Journey and the theory of Diffusion of Innovations. Let’s take an abbreviated at these models that have inspired my strategy.

This style of investing is also driven by the fact that by nature I love being somewhat of a contrarian, and am quite unlikely to invest in something when it’s in hype mode and everybody is getting in on it.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. — Robert Frost

So let’s take a closer look at the concepts and models that have (mostly at a subconscious level – I rarely feel I’m being very methodical with my strategies) been framing my investment decisions over the past few years.

Gartner Hype Cycle

The Gartner Hype Cycle aims to visualize the typical path that most new technologies go true until they reach mass adoption.

In the Gartner Hype Cycle, we find 5 main stages for a new technology:

Emergence: “The Technology Trigger”
Excessive enthusiasm: “The Peak of Inflated Expectations”
Excessive disappointment: “The Trough of Disillusionment”
Gradual adoption: “The Slope of Enlightenment”
Mainstream adoption: “The Plateau of Productivity”

I’m most interested in the 3rd and 4th phases. Let’s see how they’re defined by Gartner:

Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.
Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.

Now let’s take Bitcoin as an example. Perhaps it is a bad example as the whole cycle has not yet played out, but it’s the best example I have right now. After the 2017-2018 peak that crypto went through, there was a bit drop in both asset prices as well as media coverage and public opinion. Clearly we hit the “trough of disillusionment” at that point. In the meantime, nothing changed for the builders in the Bitcoin space, and that was an amazing time to get interested in the technology and educate yourself as well as get invested.

Investing in Amazon after the dot com bubble is another example of second-wave investing in the trough of disillusionment.

Hero’s Journey

This monomyth is not typically used in relation to new technology lifecycles, however, I think it also fits in quite well, especially as I consider my own personal journey with new technologies.

Humans react to great story-telling because we are programmed to respond to an elemental story arc. The Book of Jonah, The Odyssey, Rocky or Star Wars: the details don’t matter because although the contexts are different, the story is the same. They appeal to the masses because of our deep desire to progress from the mundane, fight through challenges and then achieve a great victory.

Taking Bitcoin again as my example, it started its “call to adventure” as a result of the financial crisis of 2007-2008. It then went through its own challenges and temptations, with the scaling wars that lasted a couple of years, as well as the Abyss of 2020 (huge drop in price) and the rebirth and fast adoption by both public corporations, institutional funds and even countries.

The Chasm

The “crossing the chasm” model is based on the theory of diffusion of innovations. This is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. It was Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, who popularized the theory in his book “Diffusion of Innovations”. He argues that diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated over time among the participants in a social system.

In most product adoption curves, there’s a point that can make or break the success of the product. It’s called the chasm. It’s the point between the early adopter stage and the early majority stage.

As the chart above represents, crossing the chasm means breaking into the mainstream market.

Again, with Bitcoin, I believe that as of 2021 we are just beyond the chasm, or possibly on the way to crossing it the final part of it. I’ve long held the belief that in order for Bitcoin to be successful, it would need to be properly regulated and also adopted by big institutions and possibly even countries.

Over the past few years, we’ve simultaneously seen governments and regulators all around the world take strong and detailed positions on the crypto space, as well as huge investments by public companies and even countries (El Salvador is the first).

We’ve also seen a tremendous amount of innovation in the crypto space, with the resurgence of the Ethereum VS Bitcoin debate as well as a ton of DeFi projects, NFTs, and most recently DAOs.

Having looked at those models and theories, I will come back to my simplified way of describing when I’m most likely to be interested in investing in a product or technology.

Let’s take a look at the first wave first and why I’m rarely that early.

The First Wave

In the very early stages the stakeholders and investors tend to be a mix of the following:

builders of the technology
rich people with money to burn on new things (e.g. venture capital and angels)
those who happen to be in the right place at the right time, or have friends deeply immersed in the technology

If you don’t possess one or more of those characteristics it is very hard to get in on something very early. Chances are you won’t even know the product or niche exists until the first wave has already passed. If you do happen to catch an early glimpse at the new technology, I feel that it will be an extremely time-intensive process to decide whether to invest at that stage, and even then, it would be a very risky investment.

Therefore, at the first stage, the risk-reward-work ratio is not worthwhile for me. To take an example with the internet, this first wave would be the 90s decade. Typical big risks, even though the technology would be wonderful, include:

not gathering enough traction, or being too early to market
regulation risks
scams
ridiculous valuations

Many products never make it beyond the first wave and there is a very real risk of your investment going to zero. Think ICOs in 2017, and Kozmo.com, Garden.com, Pets.com, Flooz.com, Webvan.com during the Dot Com boom and bust years.

Typically, during the first wave, a subset of people become immensely rich in very short periods, and they make the

The Second Wave

Almost every new product or technology that gathers enough traction to become well-known then experiences a period of hype, and it is usually during this period (typically earlier rather than later since I read a lot) that my interest is piqued. However, rather than rushing in to invest along with the rest, I tend to go deep and isolate myself from the news and hype to truly understand the tech, the main players and ideas behind the technology.

By the time I have developed a decent understanding, the hype is usually gone, prices have plummeted and the technology is bordering scam or trash status in popular opinion. On the other hand, because I would have invested a lot of time into the subject, provided that I was convinced about the future of the technology, I would be pretty bullish myself.

That means that when there is the next growth phase (growth is much slower and almost imperceptible at first), I am able to go all in and take a sizeable position that looks like madness to most others who didn’t do their homework properly.

While some technologies or products fit this idea perfectly, others share similar properties but are not that easy to explain. For example, I feel that I entered the WordPress space back in 2006 at an excellent time. Rather than the product itself having been through an early hype cycle, however, it was the overall theme of self-publishing, blogs and website creation that had gone through it.

WordPress was the phoenix that emerged from the flames produced by the downfall of highly centralized products like Movable Type and the closed-source CMS solutions of the time. I had been creating websites and blogging for a few years already and I remember there being a peak of excitement about the “power to the people” idea of giving a voice to anyone to create a space online and publish their thoughts, closely followed by a deep sense of frustration with the expensive or inadequate tools available at the time.

When WordPress came along it ticked all the boxes for me and I immediately left everything I was doing at the time to focus on building things within that space, which proved to be a winning move over time.

What’s your take on the above? Let me know in the comments section below.

How to Make Money Online as a Blogger

Last updated: September 21, 20226 Comments

First, some personal history for context…

At present day, after about 20 years of working online and never having a 9-5 job, I am in the privileged position of being able to live a comfortable life while working less than four hours a week.

That’s all great, but let’s see how I got here…

When I first started out designing websites, doing affiliate marketing, and myriad other little enterprises one can do online, I was overjoyed to see some money pouring in. Soon enough, instead of just pocket money, I was making a full-time living from my online work, and I was euphoric about the whole thing.

Coming from a tiny island where working online was unheard of at the time (and thus a very risky thing for me to try out) I was so happy to have my ideas and dreams validated.

Prior to embarking on my online journey, I had followed the path that all parents in my country want their children to follow; study hard and obtain a university degree. In fact, I had obtained not only one but 3 University degrees by the age of 23. At that point, however, after having spent thousands of dollars on my education, I flew off on a tangent and instead of getting a job at a local company, I decided that I’d rather do my own thing.

For a long time, my parents and friends thought I was crazy for doing so. In the end, however, it all paid off and I am where I am today only because I had the courage to take that decision back then.

Is it so easy to make money online?

As soon as I started seeing some success with my online ventures, the basic human instinct of sharing knowledge made me start trying to persuade everyone around me to do the same thing that I was doing. I couldn’t believe why my friends complained about their low salaries, terrible bosses, etc, but then wouldn’t even consider putting in some effort to try and earn some money online with the hope of leaving that dreaded job they complained so much about. Heck, they didn’t even seem one bit interested in how I made money online.

This doomed exercise of evangelization continued for several years. I thought that everyone could make money online, that it’s simple and so much better than working a 9-5 job for someone else.

In retrospect though, and after having met many other successful online workers and entrepreneurs, I’ve realized that making money online is not for everyone. It’s just as difficult (if not more so) than getting any other skilled job. It is one of the most accessible ways to generate money, as it doesn’t matter where you are, who you know, etc. All you need is your own knowledge and an internet connection. While it is definitely a very accessible path, it is not easier than the alternatives.

There are so many factors that come into play and affect whether you are successful or not in making money online. I estimate that more than 90% of those who actually try to make a living through any type of online venture actually fail. Of those who do manage to earn some money, only a fraction eventually get to the point that they can earn enough to justify doing that full-time instead of having a 9-5 job.

You see, as I came to realize, the vast majority of successful online workers, far from being the average Joe, are highly talented people. Building an online business requires an entrepreneurial spirit, lots of patience, an incredible amount of motivation, support from the people closest to you, and a fair amount of luck to boot. That’s only mentioning the few first factors that come to mind. There are many more.

Most people don’t and won’t ever have the right combination that enables them to go down this route in life. Clearly, for many people, their job is their vocation, and although they complain about their workplace, salary or colleagues, in the end, that’s what they are most suitable for and that’s how they can best give service to the rest of society.

So I’ve stopped trying to persuade everyone and their dog to start an online business and live the life of their dreams. Of course, if someone I know is really motivated to do so and asks me for help and advice, I’d more than gladly share all I know about it, but it’s not for everyone.

At the start of this post, I said that I am lucky enough to have to work very little to make a living. I am by no means rich and don’t own any real estate, but I can live anywhere I want in the world and have the liberty of doing what I want with my time while having enough income to support myself and my family from month to month.

The truth however is that I work way more than 4 hours a week. I do that because I love what I do, I don’t consider it to be work but play.

Think about your typical kid, what would he like to do on a perfect day. Play video games, or soccer with friends?

That’s the way I feel about working online most days. I wake up with a lot of energy to chase a new idea, or fine-tune an existing business. And all the successful online workers I know have that same feeling about the work they do. They’re definitely not lazing about on a beach for the rest of their lives while their websites deposit money into their accounts as they sleep.

So that doubt in me remains, are these Internet marketing blogs promoting a big lie? Are they making a ton of money off people who can never really make a living online? Are we online workers really being truthful when we say that anyone can earn money on the web? Is it time for a more mature breed of Internet marketing blog, targeted at people who already have established online businesses? What do you think?

Here are some blogs that speak the truth about making money online and don’t try to sell dreams:

A Reality Check about Blogging for Money – Problogger.net
Is Blogging a Good Way to Make Money? – ChrisG.com
The Truth About Making Money While You Sleep – Copyblogger.com
Reality check: You’re not going to make money from your blog – PenelopeTrunk.com
The History of My First Online Business – SmartPassiveIncome.com

What any serious online marketer or blogger will tell you, is that it takes a lot of work and commitment to succeed online. No one can give you a shortcut to earning thousands or millions without any knowledge, simply because there is no shortcut to online success.

Online success = Hard work and commitment + Constant learning + Right timing + Networking

That success is the result of hard work and commitment is probably common knowledge, but I also like to add in the other three less-mentioned factors. Dedicating a lot of hours to something does not equal success unless you know what you are doing, are doing it at the right time and you’re making the effort to network with your peers.

Podcasting – A Wonderful Medium for Learning and Spreading a Message

Last updated: March 09, 2022Leave a Comment

Mastermind.fm is my first foray into podcasting, and it’s been a great ride for a number of years now.

I think podcasting is as popular as blogging now if not more so.

Podcasts have become one of my favorite ways to consume new information and keep updated on my chosen subjects. While I still love reading and will always treasure books, podcasts make it possible for me to make even better use of my time.

Before the advent of podcasts, my time at the gym and walking/traveling around was mostly dead time. Now, I just have to pop in a pair of headphones and continue consuming the best podcasts (and even audiobook versions of my favorite books).

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