Comments on: Why Your Amazon Affiliate Site Is Failing Miserably

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:01:55 +0000

If you paid with a credit card, whether you went through PayPal or not, call the card issuer. Chargeback protection saved me a trip to Small Claims Court, and it can save you one as well.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:00:41 +0000

Hi Rebecca,

The biggest problem I see is that you’re not offering any original content. If all people want to do is shop, they’ll quickly realize that “your store” is Amazon and that it’s more convenient to go straight to Amazon.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:51:40 +0000

I haven’t read a success story as such from OHN, just people saying that you never know unless you try and if you think everything is a scam, you’re going to lose out on alot. I was a little bit sceptical about OHN, but they are fast talkers and even though I said I’d try their basic package simply because I could not afford any others, he said he’d go ahead and forward me my first x-amount of dollars for referrals and upgrade me to the next package…kind of embarrassed to say what I paid them to be honest…thinking I should see about getting my money back.
They’ve sworn that I will make money within my first 90 days or I get my money back, but I’m sure there is a catch there too.
Hmm…seems maybe I’ve been caught in a scam-web?

By: El Plumber (admin)

El Plumber (admin) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:42:12 +0000

Rebecca, we have heard from a great many people who have lost money with OHN, and not a single person who has made money using their service. If you know of someone or have read a review from someone who is successful with OHN, we’d love to hear about it. How much have you paid them so far?

Take a good hard look at the site you paid for. If you clicked on a link and ended up there, what would you do? Would you bother to click on one of the many random disjointed ads or would you hit the back button on your browser as fast as you could? I know what I would do.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:41:42 +0000

I’ve just signed on with OnlineHostingNetwork, and have been busy setting up my site. I’d like to know first impressions, ideas, hints…anything. I have read multiple reports of OnlineHostingNetwork being a scam, and have read some that say otherwise…so I’m not sure.

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:28:31 +0000

Signed yesterday,now feeling worried.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:26:30 +0000

The problem is that research and writing aren’t the only kinds of work involved. I’d have to convert my heavily-customized layout to whatever format Wordpress takes, and then I’d have to spend time finding specialty directories to submit myself to and forums to announce myself on. Plus, most of what I write is best suited to longer articles that take a lot more than two hours to research, draft and edit (although I do split them up into multiple parts when I can).

As for just blogging whatever I find and like on other sites: If I do that, what will I be able to offer that the competition (which, as you yourself point out, includes such giants as Gizmodo) doesn’t?

Having said that, if you’re as sure as you say you are that I can write a blog that will make money, then I’d be interested in a staff writing position that paid per hour, per post or per word.

By: El Plumber (admin)

El Plumber (admin) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:52:33 +0000

Chris,
The only thing you actually need for a successful money making site is time! Time in the sense that you need to spend time to write stuff AND site age. The longer your site exists, the more traffic you can get from search engines and links. The minimum you should post is twice a week on average, around 100 posts a year. If a good post takes around 2 hours to research and write, that’s 4 hours a week. Find it.

You don’t have to write about tech. Write about something you know and like. What are you studying at university? What do you do in your free time? Movies, video games, books, drinking, whatever you like can be a good subject.

Don’t worry about expertise or actual products to review either! Look at any popular gadget site like Gizmodo or Engadget. They only have their hands on products for 1 out of 20 posts, probably less! The rest are simple rehashes of things found on other sites or rumors. For example, here are the five posts on Gizmodo right now:
Something they found on GadgetMix and reposted: http://gizmodo.com/5437479/ex+google-china-president-says-apple-tablet-is-a-101+inch-iphone-with-webcam
Something they found on Digg and reposted: http://gizmodo.com/5437199/apparently-lithium-batteries-cure-constipation
Something they found on CNN and reposted: http://gizmodo.com/5437455/britains-newest-knight+to+be-captain-jean-luc-picard
Something they found on CoolHunting and reposted: http://gizmodo.com/5437176/a-day-in-a-photographers-life
Something they found on Fark and reposted: http://gizmodo.com/5437088/cop-tasers-unconscious-diabetic-11-times

Seriously, there isn’t a single original story on there! Yet by most accounts Gizmodo rakes in well over $1 million in revenue a month.

For site hosting, you need $8 a month for Hostgator, which is our favorite host. They have a one click install for Wordpress that will get you started. Skip one pizza this month and next, and in 3 months you’ll be covering the hosting costs and then some from Adsense. In a year, you could be making a couple hundred bucks a month or more, in two to three years over a thousand a month and up from there. It’s the best part time job any college student could ask for!

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:25:37 +0000

Thanks for highlighting my blog Life User (any publicity is good publicity). I agree that my lack of a single fixed topic is a weakness, but I don’t think your advice is as relevant to me as to the average blogger, because I’m a university student. I don’t have the expertise to write about tech regularly (except product reviews, which would require that I spend hundreds of dollars every week buying a new gadget to review) or the free time to listen to and review new music regularly. So if I followed your suggestion, my two blogs would probably each get only one or two posts per month. Is that enough to be worth shelling out for domain names and paid hosting? (Hosting through my school isn’t an option on its own, since it doesn’t allow server-side scripting or custom domain names.)

By: El Plumber (admin)

El Plumber (admin) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 23:04:11 +0000

Brian,
Read everything above about dwlanes.com. Your site is complete and utter junk, it’s a cookie cutter copy site from the Online Hosting Network that’s just filled with links to Amazon and Drugstore.com. I’ll be absolutely and completely shocked if you make more than $100 a year off that site.

Seriously, try to get your money back at all costs.