So I heard back from someone at WordPress about my blog.  Turns out WordPress does not allow any affiliate links on blogs they host, period.  It wasn't the mysterious code that caused problems, just the numerous affiliate links.  Fair enough.  Anyone know if Blogger still accepts affiliate links?

I get the feeling that Internet marketing is going to get harder for people in certain ways.  You can't just slap on a few affiliate links onto a free blog and just wait for the sales to be made.  I've tended to think of affiliate marketing as a passive sort of thing.  Maybe if you already have a high traffic web site because you are a well known talk show host or you've already made it in business somewhere else.  All you do is put a few affiliate banner ads on your site and you'll make a bit of extra profit from those sales.

Those of us who aren't in that position have to definitely be proactive about promoting our affiliate products. 

The other added challenge is going to be this business I keep hearing about an FTC affiliate advertising disclosure.  So you can't just provide product reviews anymore without disclosing that you take money from the sale of the products you promote.  That's probably not a bad idea as far as it goes.  When I've come to these landing pages in the past it always was obvious to me that it was a sales pitch.  Not sure what's so hard to figure out about that.  I think it may be "them" cracking down.  After all, "they" think the only ones who should make tons of money on the Internet or anywhere else are the favored big corporations.

Oops, let out a bit of my conspiracy theorist side.  No matter.  These things can be worked around.  Part of me wishes I'd gotten started in this business back in 2001.  The other part is up for the challenge.  There's still a lot of room to move and lots of niches and money to be had.  Right?

I'm getting some traffic to my affiliate merchants based on the MyLinker analysis, but it's way less than 100 total.  I think I need to be patient with myself, allow myself to really learn.  I got some great feedback on my landing pages (sorry I have your picture in my mind but can't remember your name), which I need to implement.  And I think I'm going to have to figure out the whole mailing list, opt-in, keeping in touch with customers type of thing.  So much to learn.  I want to start making some money now, but I still have much to learn.

Someone posted about how the high membership price is causing new WA membership to fall.  My two cents on that is that as long as the training/action plan is forced to take 12 weeks (because the next class won't open up until a certain amount of time has passed), then the price for new members should include a three month teaser rate.  They pay less while they are in training.  Then the price goes up but by then they should have all the tools and skills they need to make boatloads of money off the Internet to where $97 a month is but a drop in the bucket.

Anyway, my musings and ramblings for the weekend.  I hope to have a few hours to spend tomorrow on further training, more article writing, and maybe getting up close and personal with Aweber.