Now I don’t want people to confuse me with wanting to make money online to a scummy internet marketer or unprofessional spammer who abuse the system while making tons of money. Earning money online has become an important revenue generator for my business and as I'm publishing my name on everything I do, I can't hide, nor do I want to.

I want to be part of the new, honest breed of internet marketers. I don’t want to become someone who spams forums and comments in hopes of exposure and back links to make a couple of sales. Many people starting off with affiliate marketing go down that road.

That was my first big mistake.

It turned out that I was entirely uncomfortable creating crappy back links and adding spam to the online world. So instead of learning more and coming up with a solution, I concluded that making money online was impossible for me.

That was 5 years ago, before I started earning bigger commission checks. Yes I'm an affiliate, just as much as an affiliate manager for my clients. I get to see both sides of the fence and what some sneaky affiliates get up to!

Now imagine how many people actually got started on the wrong path and quit. Is it in the hundreds every month? Is it in the thousands or even more?

I would argue that it can take you 3-4 months on average to start seeing results, especially if you’re trying to rank one of your websites to gain organic traffic. PPC is much quicker, but you need to be skilled in this area or you will lose money quickly and give up.

There is no quick wins in affiliate marketing, just hard work, sure the guru's will tell you the tricks in Google and the like, but they are short lived as the search engines catch up and plug the hole. I've seen my pages and sites being listed on the first page of Google with a couple of tricks, just to have them banned by Google and no doubt Bing and Yahoo! This is not something you want to do, if you intend to create regular income from affiliate marketing.

Wading Through the BS

As a beginner, it’s hard to wade through all the BS because you don’t know any better. You want to believe that you can make money online too, you want to believe all the false promises. You’ve probably fallen victim to one of those “Buy this kit for $10.00 and you could be earning $100,000/month in no time”. Even if you didn’t, a tiny part of you wondered if that could all be true. That type of stuff is downright disgusting. A lot of people have probably fallen victim to similar types of scams and have been burned wrongly so.

But don't worry as you’re in good hands at WA..........or are you?

For certain the material, training, tools and help on offer here is first class and well worth the $97 monthly membership fee. However you still need to be wary of anyone within the WA community asking for payment for a service, tool or promise of riches beyond your wildest dreams! I'm not saying people don't have valid offers, many do, but you’re still on the internet and you need to have your wits about you.

If you want to learn about affiliate marketing, then you need to find the real stuff. It will take hard work (which is why you’re here), determination and patience. I will even argue that it’s not the actual work that is hard but the “research” and learning part (or again, wading through the BS). The people who can teach you the truth about internet marketing aren’t that hard to find once you get past the images of money raining from the sky. Many quality people are very active in the forums here at WA.

In short if the opportunity talks more about the money rather than what will be required or what you will get (WA is a breath of fresh air), then it's no doubt BS! - Just from experience.

Gone are the days where ordinary people were lured into a quick sale. Do you really want to be known for that? Or would you feel better knowing that you helped someone and have gained a repeat customer?  Remember, what goes around, comes around.

So work on your Internet Marketing Skills and live by these 3 rules for long lasting success in this business.

1. We work hard to research what people are seeking and provide value to them.

2. We never put money before people.

3. We are building an actual business, not scamming people out of their hard earned money.