I’m quite excited to know that affiliate marketing is making its ground in the Philippines. A lot of people now are into affiliate marketing. Bloggers beginning to discover this income potential and there are a lot of opportunities for people who wants to work at home. But aside from all its benefits, there are still things you need to know and be wary of. Things that stole 2 years of learning from me because of this tough industry.

When I started learning affiliate marketing, you will always see the top A list bloggers telling you want to do. Giving you tips in earning money with affiliate marketing. When you read them, it makes sense and answers all your questions. Most of the time, they are complicated and you need to do a little more reading. While you think that you are learning a lot. The most important thing that you forget most of the time is to make it simple. The key in everything is to make it simple. I’m a web designer and making things simple is a lot harder to make things complicated and feature packed.

This industry is like a jungle. A business model with a lot of loop holes. With many people claiming to be experts in the field but can’t put their money where their mouth is. You should be wary. There are lots of people out there. How many blog have you read entitled “How to make money online from a newbie internet marketer/blogger” or something like that. A lot right? That is why, I created my blog after I learned affiliate marketing. I didn’t create it before I began to make money. The thing is, I don’t want people to fail if I fail. I want them to learn.

This is what makes this industry tough. Knowing who to listen to is hard. Knowing who the real person are is hard. Just because a blogger has 25,000 RSS reader doesn’t mean you should listen to him. The more you should be wary. As the real ones out there that treat this like a business is quietly making money and doesn’t need to be politically correct all the times or be a goody two shoes / nice guy to every comment they replied on. Always remember that in any business, its a dog-eat-dog world. A nice person has no place in it. He will be eaten alive. The only one he should be nice to is his customer. REMEMBER THAT!

If you think that a blogger is nice to you. Do you know what it means? You are his customer. You make money for him. I am not claiming ALL BLOGGERS do this. I only meant specifically to make money online niche bloggers. Don’t believe me? How many product reviews has this blogger posted on his site with affiliate links? How many products do you think he really tried and bought? I bet he doesn’t even try most of the products he is promoting. Which means, he doesn’t care if you fail. Again, I’m not saying this for all bloggers out there. That is why I want you to be wary and think before you believe this guy.

The more you learn affiliate marketing, the more you’ll realize who is real and who is fake. If you know someone doing affiliate marketing for full time, you’ll know that they don’t follow those a list bloggers like Rowse or Chow. You don’t need to listen to them to succeed as these people make money from other sites that is not totally related to blogging or make money online. Do you get it now? Why do you need to listen to them how to make money online through blogging when they don’t make money out of their make money online blogs?

If you want to learn affiliate marketing, search this site and follow only a few people who do this for a living.

Learn seo and google’s algorithm with Matt Cutts (google’s software engineer) himself. Learn adsense from adsense’ blog.

Affiliate marketing is an idea. It’s just an idea of making money out of your visitors. The most important thing to learn is SEO, SEM and other promotion methods such as media buying, PPC and PPV. You don’t need to read other bullshit blogs that can waste your time. Though, you may feel intelligent reading those blogs because you learned a lot. What matters is still how can you pay the bills next month.

Till next time. Ciaosuuu~

P.S. in any case, if you know how to write. You can pretend to know what you’re talking about and sell products to your visitors. That’s how A list bloggers and make money online bloggers do it. You can too!

I’m no guru. I don’t have any talent at teaching. I sometimes don’t know how to explain things that are too simple. I walk around town in my tsinelas worth Php15.00 and my favorite shirt na bigay lang lahat. My cellphone is a nokia 3210 and I seldom use it. To make things short, I’m the guy that you might think that’s a bum (tambay) when you see me. But I actually run an online business. I love to say my job is an assassin for hire. That is when a person asks and I immediately know that they won’t understand the meaning of online business even if you explain it to them. So I just play around.

Yesterday, I received 3 cheques from affiliate marketing commissions and 1 check from adsense. Then earlier today, I went to the bank to have it deposited to my account. While I was talking to the teller, a guy adjacent to me peeked at the cheques while the teller was messing around with the watermark on the google check. “Astig daw ung watermark, itapat lang daw sa ilaw” lol. This guy was amazed about how google pays me. He only knew that google was only a search engine.

When I was about to go out of the bank he yelled “May online business ka?”. I humbly replied “yes”. He seems to be interested in making money online. But he only heard about people making money with google adsense but to meet one personally must be exciting for him. He knows about the A list bloggers. Here and abroad. But you know me. I don’t listen to A list bloggers to make money online. Bloggers don’t make money online. Internet marketers do. If he were a cute girl, I might have asked her out for a coffee at the nearby mall and tell her what I know about internet marketing. But no, he was a guy. So I was immediately thinking of way to escape any “ambush interview” and “teach me how tos”.

He began asking “Do you know, (this guy) or (that guy) because I went to his seminar”. I said to him immediately that I don’t believe what they are teaching. Especially if one is claiming to be a blogger and earns a living for it. To my book, and my experience, it just doesn’t work. I’m an internet marketer and I don’t know how bloggers earn money (if they earn). I stick to what I know.

I love businesses. Big or small. Passive or active. White hat or black hat. If it will make money, I’m all ears. Just when I thought that all of those questions about how I do business online was just about to suck some “trade secrets” from me. I realized, when he gave me a business card, he’s a real estate investor. That’s a rare occasion. So I immediately flip the script and I’m the one asking questions now.

For weeks now, I’ve been thinking of venturing to another field. Real estate and trading. I never imagine that thinking about it constantly will lead me to actually knowing someone who does it for a living. What’s funny about is that we are of the same age.

We’ll, I’ll leave it at that for now.

When it comes to making money online, there are lots of people that can tell you how and why. But most of the time, people who says that “this is the real way” is most of the time just bragging, wanted to be noticed or just a link bait or selling you something. How you perceive a genuine knowledge of a person is up to you. I am not a psychiatrist.

If you are a beginner, I’m sure you have read a lot of blogs that tells you this niche is good or this way of making money is good and its a no brainer. Maybe, having a brain is just what you need to succeed. You don’t need someone to tell you that its a no brainer because, you have a brain.

There is nothing out there that can help you make your first buck online. You only need yourself and common sense.

Number 1 RULE: Do What You Like Best

In choosing a niche to make money on, always consider what you want, like or interest. Don’t be influenced by other people because you think its hot right now. I say these things because, I know myself for being lazy… And if I create a site or a niche that I don’t like, I’m sure that the site will die in just a week and I’ll be lazy to post more articles or promote this site to keep it making money.

I’m sure you’ve felt that feeling that if you don’t like something, it feels like hell. Something like going to work early in the morning that you don’t really like. Not a good feeling right?

Even if your site topic is about “snails having sex” and not much buzz around it, keep it going… As long as you like the topic, do not stop… There will be time that your efforts will pay off.

Fine Line Between Doing What You Like & Learning To Improve

There is a fine line between doing just the thing you want and nothing else. Allot a time to “LEARN” things that will supplement what you are doing.

Do Not Listen To Anyone

Do not listen to anyone who says to do this things or that thing to make more money. In fact, don’t listen to what is written in this site. Test your ideas first before going for others’ opinion. Opinions are worth crap. Opinions doesn’t run businesses.

Find Time To Improve Your Skill Set

Many people I know becomes successful, they work and work and improve their quality of work in terms of time finishing the job. But the free time they have, they allot to less important things like playing. I mean, if you have a free time from work, wouldn’t it be beneficial to learn something new that can help you finish your work in lesser time? I’m sure you’ll be playing after work anyway… Or learn something related that will help you earn more.

Money and time is sometimes proportional. If you’re a web designer, wouldn’t it be great if you could learn more things relating to web design like coding html 5, jquery or ajax? You can leave php behind because its for developers but it wouldn’t hurt to learn that as well. The next thing you know, you know everything. That even if you lose all your possessions right now, you’ll still be able to earn money with just what you know.

Strong Mind & Emotion

Being an affiliate marketer is a business in itself. You mess up, its yours to blame. You lost money, no one will sympathize with you or give you a fucking hug. You made a mistake, get up and move on. That’s what I like in having a business, it separates a man from boy. At work, you might get the help of your colleagues to work things out, if you fail, its your employers time and money that is at risk. You’ll still gonna get paid at the end of the month.

In having a business, I was surprised by the emotional rollercoaster. One day you’re earning very good and you wanted the whole world to know. It’s like Megan Fox just stripped naked in front of you. And some days, you feel like shit because you’re losing too much money like Manny Pacquiao just punched you in the groin. Either way, its a fun journey. Just be prepared for the ups and downs. Especially the downs.