Normally, TV is bad to watch if you are aiming to make money online since it is a leisure activity and addictive. But now there is the http://topaffiliatechallenge.com/ which is where 3 teams of affiliate marketers are competing to make the most money online between daily episodes of the program.

I find it entertaining but not very informative, but you may have a different experience. The problem is that they are challenged to make money fast, but this goal is a major cause of failure with new affiliate marketers. It is hard to make money fast. Most people work for years to become an overnight success i.e. they only got noticed when they made the big bucks.

So, they are pulling favours from friends to drive traffic, utilizing resources such as email lists that they spent months/years developing and paying money for clicks.

I watched 3 episodes so far and learned nothing new. One thing I did get a stronger opinion of though was that these super affiliates are riding a wave, like they are spending a lot of money to make a small percentage profit. So it looks like a bubble about to burst.

For example, the most feared participant drove 200,000 visitors to make $200 but claimed to be cash positive. One of the guys gave a reality check on this about the pathetic conversion ratio. Interestingly, the reality check guy uses a 40,000 member safelist to market to. I was always against the use of spammy safe lists, but what do I know.

In episode 3, one team said they wasted $250 on PPC since the affiliate company was using Direct Track software that failed to track conversions, WTF! This is serious money for a daily spend of an amateur affiliate marketer.

From what I saw so far, the guy (John) that they eliminated on the first episode has the most chance to make money online with affiliate marketing. Why? Because he is great on video! Video is the new way to present yourself online and drive free traffic to your sites via online videos.

This series also shows the true personalities of the Gurus maybe, like Shoemoney seems to be very boring! My apologies if he has stress due to the birth of a new child.

Please add to this conversation…

Tags: TAF

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 by Andy and is filed under Make Money Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.