David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

My last post assumes that you are looking to create a website with affiliate advertisements.

For me, affiliate programs have always been exciting yet never successful until recently. I had always had them in the back of my mind but never really exploited them as best I should have done.

I was having a think about other ways I could make some money, besides affiliate marketing.
 
Ebooks have always been reportedly a good seller. However, from my experience, people who write ebooks offer poor quality information. They promise the world and deliver, well, a pdf file full of worthless information.

A lot of ebook sellers claiming to make millions of pounds / dollars are doing so by selling their ebook. Whilst the title may be something like “Make a Million on the Net”, it will invariably cover how to make some cash from Google AdSense, make some cash from selling other people’s ebooks via ClickBank and how to make some cash from affiliate programmes.

However, when you add these up, there is something missing – i.e. you cannot make a million until you successfully sell hundreds of copies of an overpriced ebook about how to make millions.

Perhaps when Compare Sat Nav is completed, I will sell an ebook about how it makes me x pounds each year.

Dropshipping is something I have tried. I have found a great company that will package and ship products to customers on my behalf. It was great until my payment processor decided to withdraw their support. It would have costs several hundred pounds to fix and coincidentally at that time, there was a bug on the site so I chose to redevelop it. It still dropships products but the trade is no longer there. I have had thousands of visitors pass through it’s doors and not one customer since it’s reincarnation.

I have always been looking for a killer deal on dropshipping but I have yet to find one. A lot of dropshippers charge more for things than I can pay in Tesco. What’s the point of that?

Ebay is also another money making stream I have tackled in the past. I made a grand in two months from it. The only problem is finding decent goods to sell on it in the first place. Best sellers are decent MP3 players and the latest electronics such as the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3 (yet to be released) and the Nintendo DS Lite. But where does the average Joe get his hands on a dozen of these babies? I imagine a profit margin of £50 to £100 on each Playstation 3 sold for the next few months. That’s a healthy margin.

Google AdSense is a great money maker if you play ball with Google. Cross the line and they will close your account instantly. Bizarrely, there have been rumours of people who have generated too much revenue from Google AdSense and have had their accounts frozen. These may just be rumours but essentially, Google. has the power to stop Google AdSense today, tomorrow or any time. As with anything, do not put 100% reliance into just one revenue stream. Mind you, in terms of contextual advertising, Google AdSense is by far the best.

Online surveys and sites that reward you for shopping are great in theory but an extra £10 per year is not that much.

The final stream I can think of (legal and excluding gambling) is selling your own products. Being a very enterprising man, I would love to sell something but I just don’t know what. My autograph?!

I can draw but not to the degree that I can be the next Scott Adams with the next Dilbert. I like music but would not know how to get hold of new CD’s at a price to compete with Amazon. Same for DVD’s.

Besides, if I did find something to sell, I would need a large quantity of it which means purchasing a lot outright which is risky.

Ultimately, I am questioning whether it is really possible for someone to earn their living solely on the Internet, and if so, where does the cash come from and is it a bare minimum sum or an extravagant sum?

Comments welcome.