This post is written by Mattaw of Moneybites.com. Moneybites shares tips and tricks about how to earn online. If you have a second check out the Moneybites RSS feed as well.

As an affiliate there is the potential to make a lot of money. After you’re making that money, you may try to make more by blogging, or you may get into blogging just to share knowledge. What I want to ponder with you, is, is affiliate blogging just shooting yourself in the foot, or is it something more people should do? I want to lay out some pros and cons for you to help you make up your mind:

The Pros

One big pro is referral income. Affiliate companies almost always have a referral program. Being an affiliate blogger can give you lots of sway with a crowd that has the potential to generate you a ton of passive income. Think about it! If you can refer even one successful affiliate to a CPA company, you’ll be making some decent passive income for zero work (they’ll be doing the work, and you’ll be reaping a %).

Even if you’re just writing for profit, you’re going to help people. By sharing tips and tricks about the affiliate industry you’re helping others and that makes a lot of people feel good.

You’re also going to make some cold hard cash off your blog. If you have any kind of audience, you can probably sell ad space to those companies dying to get at the affiliate market. What companies am I talking about? Well the ones that make affiliate products, CPA networks that are trying to reach out, or general companies trying to get new affiliates to push your product. The money is definitely there to be had!

Finally, you build a loyal following. By building a blog, you’re making other projects outside of the affiliate industry whether you’re a super affiliate or just a new affiliate blogging, is your blog hurting your revenue? I know what you’re thinking, how can blogging about affiliate marketing be hurting my revenue? Well the fact is you can argue it could!

The Cons

One way it can hurt your revenue is by simply letting people know about the industry. Let’s be honest, right now the industry is still small(er). By letting others know about it, they make create more competition for your campaigns and profit margins may shrink. Think of it like putting more potential hazards on a driving course. You’re increasing the chance that you’ll slip up and crash your car (or campaigns).

Another way it can hurt your revenue is someone that reads your blog might actually be running in the same niche as you. By helping them you may actually be arming your competition more effectively to steal away some of your leads and/or sales.

Finally it can hurt your cash flow because people will be looking for your campaigns. You will be better known so people will think you’re banking it in, and will therefore look to copy you. You’ll have to hide your work better. While you may have made lots from the shadows before, a blog increases the need for secrecy.

These cons can be looked at as selfish or unfounded fears but they should be considered. I may be 100% wrong here, but each person to his/her own.

Your reputation can also be a problem with the blog. People can form an opinion of you as a person. The same way as it can be a positive it can be a negative. People and companies may take a bad view of you if your blog takes a bad light to it.

Wrap-Up

So, there are some facts for you on the table. I’m not going to say for a fact having an affiliate blog is a good thing or a bad one. I purely want to open your eyes a bit and come to your own conclusions.

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Hey guys, I’m taking some questions again!  You can ask anything you want and I’ll try to answer it to the best of my ability.  I’ll most likely be answering the questions in the form of a video post.  If I feel that there are getting to be too many questions I may close the comments form once it reaches a certain number…not sure yet…

Anyways…GO!

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Living a healthy affiliate lifestyle can be extremely difficult.  In fact, this is something up until recently I’ve really struggled with!  In high school, I was always very athletic and played numerous sports including football and weight lifting.  If you knew me then, you would of said I was a pretty fit guy that was very athletic…

The problem started around 10th grade for me, I started smoking.  I was around 16 years old at the time and had made a friend who smoked (also around age 16) and he convinced me to start smoking as well.  This was the first choice I made that would have a huge impact on my health and how healthy I would be in the coming years.

Even though I had started smoking, I was still very much an active person.  I ran all the time, played sports, etc.  When I graduated high school in 2003, I weighed 175 - 180 pounds and despite smoking was in pretty good health.

This is where the second problem developed.  After I got out of high school I slowly became less and less active.  I quit playing as many sports as I did during high school, I was however working a job that did keep me pretty active which helped to keep the weight off, however, after a couple of years, I slowly gained about 25 pounds and was sitting at 200 pounds…which for a person who is 6′1″ isn’t really that bad in my opinion.

The real problem with my weight began when I got laid off from the steel mill I was working at and started working full time from home doing affiliate marketing.  I gained another 50 pounds putting me at 252 pounds.  It was at this point that I realized I had to change my lifestyle or I would be able to continue living the life I loved much longer.

When I stepped onto that scale and it read 252 pounds, I was shocked!  It seemed like just the other day I was a ripped young man weighing 180 pounds with a six pack.  Now, because of my laziness I had a 2 liter.  It was as if a light bulb turned on and I realized suddenly that I needed to fix this problem.

I had worked hard the last two years to build an income to support my family and allow us to live a life where money was never an issue any longer.  It was a great feeling when I reached that goal, however, I now felt like I wasn’t going to be able to fully enjoy it because I was smoking (always out of breath) and overweight (always out of breath, plus I ached standing for long periods of time or walking long distances).

So what did I do?

I decided to quit smoking and on the same day that I quit smoking I also started on a diet and strict exercise schedule!  In fact, it has now been 1 month since I’ve made the decision to change my lifestyle (I made the decision on July 18th 2008).  I haven’t smoked in a month, neither have I strayed from my diet or exercise schedule.

In the month that I’ve been doing these three things, I’ve lost 10 pounds, can breath after walking a mile :P  and also have tons of more energy.  I feel like I did in high school again in terms of my energy level.

So how does this apply to Affiliate Marketing?

Well, as I said, you can work as hard as you want to create an income that allows you to travel the world, own nice things, etc. but unless you are healthy enough to enjoy it will it matter?

Also, if you can push yourself to quit smoking, or stick to a diet, or exercise regularly, think of the willpower you can build and you’ll be able to use it to help yourself succeed in your business the next time you don’t feel like working because you’re too tired!

Conclusion:

If you currently are a smoker, I encourage you to try to quit, I have tried over 2 dozen times before I’ve finally succeeded.  If you are overweight (even slightly) I encourage you to get on a diet and start exercising.  If there is something in your life that is keeping you from being as healthy as you can, I encourage you to change it!  You only have one life and one body so treat it right!  You’ll be glad you did!

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The 20/80 Rule isn’t really a rule, but actually a truth that most new affiliates don’t even realize exists.  By understanding this “rule” you’ll be able to know what to get rid of and what to keep!  It will help you with that overwhelming feeling you get when you have 800 adgroups that you’re trying to split test.

So what exactly am I talking about?

80% of your affiliate income will come from 20% of your work.  This means 80% of your work will in essence be no good.  80% of your keywords will not need to be focused on which allows you to focus on the 20% that will bring in the majority of your income.

Let’s say you launch a campaign with 10,000 keywords.  Once you split up your keywords into your adgroups, you’ll then upload them into either Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or Microsoft Adcenter.  Within a week or two of running a campaign, I would have ~8,000 of those keywords gone!

This is how super affiliates quickly get their CTR up and keep it up and also how they are able to manage campaigns easily.  You can’t be afraid to get rid of keywords that aren’t converting or are but producing too low of a CTR.

I’ve counseled numerous affiliates on this matter!  Too many affiliates are afraid that if they delete keywords or adgroups from their campaign then they may miss out on sales or conversions, when in fact, the truth is they most likely are losing out on tons of conversions and leads because they aren’t deleting these “bad” keywords.

By keeping keywords that aren’t performing great in your campaign you risk the chance of it having an effect on your entire campaign.  Keywords that receive tons of impressions but hardly any clicks ends up lowering your overall CTR which can effect your super performing keywords and stop you from receiving the twice as many leads from them.

Keywords that are receiving tons of clicks but aren’t converting are again going to effect your bottom line and your ROI.  This is why it is imperative that you are tracking at the keyword level and making sure you are getting rid of keywords that are no good instead of trying to hang on to them.

Conclusion:

I know this isn’t the best post on this blog, and it’s defintely not the best written, I’ve reread it now about 10 times as it’s been sitting in my drafts, but the bottom line is, it’s very important not to try to hang on to keywords that can and WILL sabatoge your entire campaign!  While this might not be the best written post I’ve done, it’s a very important subject that you need to remember when tuning your campaigns!

If you have anything to add to this, I’d love to hear it in the comments below.

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Hey guys, as anyone that has visited in the last 24 hours has seen, Click Consultants went down, as well as 90% of my sites including all of my affiliate sites.  I own 4 dedicated servers, 3 of them are with Spry, and 1 is with LiquidWeb.  Needless to say, the 3 hosted with Spry all went down yesterday at about 3 - 4 PM EST.

So let’s start from the beginning…

About 3 weeks ago, I received an email stating my bill from last month hadn’t been paid and the bill for this month was due.  So, I went to log into my account to see what was up and why I didn’t pay last months bill and I was unable to log in to the billing part.  I was however able to log in to the support part of the site.  So I did what anyone would do.  I called their support number!

I spoke with someone (always get names!) who’s name I didn’t get, that said they would get the login fixed for me and shoot me an email letting me know when it was good to go.

Three days after that phone call (yesterday) my servers would all be terminated due to non-payment… So, I called back in, told the story above and they got everything back up asap and apologized.

So, am I ticked?  I was ticked when I found out the sites were first down…however, I really think it’s both my fault as well as my hosting companies.

I shouldn’t of waited 3 days to hear back from the guy, I should of called back in after 24 hours of not hearing from him, however, he should of did his job and got back to me.  Also, I could of paid via the telephone or something I’m sure, so again I don’t really have an excuse as I (you) should always do whatever to protect your investments/business.

So, I got over it, anyone that has been a member here for any amount of time knows this isn’t normal.  This is the first downtime we’ve had in about 1 year!!!  So I apologize for the downtime, and hopefully it will be another year before we have anymore downtime!

NOTE:  Also, I just wanted to note that all advertisers will receive a day extension on their ad(s).  Thanks.

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