No More Compromise

Today we are speaking with Alan LeSturgeon from Affiliate Confession.

Q) Hi Alan. First off, can you tell me a little bit about how you got started? What were you doing before you went full time and how did you go from that to an affiliate marketer?

A) I was a graphic artist working for AT&T when I first got interested in marketing on the internet and I also was involved in an mlm business where I was making about $4,000 per month. I produced my own retail and recruiting leads in that business and began to see the potential of the web. Producing leads was the catalyst I used to start my first travel related site where I, what else, produced leads earning $1 each and I had my first affiliate income stream.

Q) At the point of going fulltime online, what income streams did you have in place? Did it feel like a risk at the time or just a natural progression?

A) The main reason I started working for myself was because of the mlm business and my wife and I were flipping houses when the real estate market was way up, but everyone knows what happened to that. I also parted ways with the mlm company because they didn’t like what I was doing on the web and didn’t want me using their material to promote my business. That’s why I no longer would recommend getting into mlm, you don’t really own your own business.

Fortunately, our first real estate deal gave us a fairly large cushion and I had my travel site that was producing leads and had just stared to use Adsense on that site and a couple of others I was messing around with. In my second full month using Adsense I earned about $650 and was pretty impressed with where that might go.

Q) And have you ever regretted the timing of your decision? Looking back, would you rather have made that choice earlier or later in time?

A) I can’t say that I’ve regretted the decision, but there were days when money was very tight. When real estate went south we ended up getting stuck with a house for 2 years and I was only making $1,500 to $2,000 per month online, so it was pretty tough.

Looking back on the whole thing, it may have been a good choice to wait and see where the real estate market was going, but I just couldn’t handle working in a cubicle any longer. Things were very tough for a year or more, but I had my freedom.

Q) Looking at your latest income report, it seems you had a great month and managed to top $3,000 online. How much work does it take each week for you to generate that figure?

A) That’s a good question, because my wife thinks I never stop working. You could probably earn this kind of income in 30 to 40 hours worth of work per week, but I’m always looking at new opportunities and reading about what other people are doing and that takes a considerable amount of time. Now that I have a lot of things in place however, I’m hoping to drop my affiliate marketing hours to around 20 per week and spend some time helping my wife transform our yard into a mini farm.

Q) How many different websites do you have online contributing to that sum? You mention on your blog that a sufficient amount of income is generated from just 1 travel site of yours what sort of percentage of the overall is that?

A) I just put my 40th money making site online a few days ago and I earn a little income from every one, however, I make about 25% of my total income from just that one travel site.

Q) I also notice a reasonable amount of Clickbank sales in your breakdown which is something plenty of other affiliates are interested in. Any tips for success with Clickbank?

A) There’s a lot of stuff on Clickbank that’s hardly worth it if you could get it for free. I try to stay away from overly hyped products and look for stuff that will genuinely help people do something worthwhile, such as make more money with Build A Niche Store, lose weight with proper exercise and nutrition, garden more efficiently and so forth. Just ask yourself if you would buy the product you are promoting and you probably have your answer to how to succeed with Clickbank.

Q) Would it be right to say that the majority of your online income comes from content sites? Ever try PPC, site flipping, domain speculating or any of the other myriad of business models out there? If not, why not? If so, what happened?

A) Yes, good content sites are really the way to go for the long term because the major search engines (Google) are getting better at weeding out things that don’t add real value to the web. I have tried PPC and have had some minor success, but if you aren’t careful, you can lose a lot of money very quickly.

Learn from the experts in PPC and read, read, read what they do before you start throwing money at this model. I’ve been studying PPC quite a bit lately because it’s something I need to add to my business on a regular basis. If done right, you can make good money buying traffic.

I also have a few domains that I’m holding for possible future sale, but that’s not something I’ve really looked at too closely. I’ve probably stayed away from speculating in this area because it seems like you need more money to get going than what I’ve felt comfortable risking at this point.

Q) So what are the main methods you use to generate traffic to your sites?

A) Good content based around keywords in your niche is the foundation for eventually getting traffic to your site. Once your pages are ranked you will get a nice stream of traffic for a long time to come. I’ve also written hundreds of articles and submitted them to directories over the years to get incoming links.

Your articles can get picked up and used by others on their site, giving you even more links. Participating in forums related to your niche also helps you brand your site and bring targeted traffic, just don’t go slapping your sig on forum posts everywhere without adding value. We call those people sig pimps. Don’t be one.

Q) Build A Niche Store has been a big feature on your site for some time when you posted that fantastic series on how to make the most of the software. When did you first start using it, and how many sites do you have to generate the $900 or so bucks that those sites pulled last month?

A) I’ve been using Build A Niche Store for a little over a year now and I have 12 BANS stores online right now of which 10 have earned me some income.

Q) So if someone was new to online marketing but wanted to earn a fulltime income as quickly as possible, realistically, and based on your own experience, what do you think would be the quickest route to success?

A) I can say enough good about the eBay affiliate program. You can start earning money fairly quickly with eBay because they cover nearly every niche imaginable with all the products sold on the site. So almost any kind of site you have is a good fit for something on eBay. And when you add BANS to the mix, the potential with eBay is incredible.

In saying all that, if I were to start over today from scratch, I’d start a few BANS stores and a couple of travel sites where I could use Adsense. In my book, that’s probably the quickest way to earn a good income online.

Q) Virtually now there Alan! But bearing in mind the subject of this blog, can you tell me how working for yourself online has affected your lifestyle?

A) It’s funny you ask that because just this morning before sitting down to answer these questions I was telling my wife I didn’t feel all that well, but I don’t have to worry about calling the boss and letting them know I’m not coming in. I also went out of town this past weekend with my wife and we left early on Friday. We can make decisions like that and not have to base them around a job. It really is nice being your own boss.

Q) OK, Alan, then pretty much ties everything up. I’d really like to thank you for your time, and wish you all the best for the future. I’ll still be popping over to your blog on a regular basis so keep up all the good work there. You can check out Alans blog at Affiliate Confession. Just before we go though Alan, any final words of wisdom for anyone looking to get to where you are now?

A) Intelligent, hard work is the key to being successful online. There really aren’t any shortcuts because you have to put in your time to see what works and doesn’t work for you. Of course you can shorten that time by reading my blog and others like it, but to put the puzzle together, you have to take the time to locate all the pieces and do the work.