OPC

While I cannot go so far as to say I am a new affiliate, I am definitely new to being an "affiliate," so to speak. Upon the passing of UIGEA, I mailed it in and only recently returned to the online world. When I "returned," I hadn't the slightest clue that I had no clue what the hell I was doing. I made several mistakes in the two short months I've been back. I do not feel that I am alone in making these mistakes and I wanted to share some of these errors in thinking and execution with the masses in hopes of helping others to not repeat my mistakes, as well as perhaps assisting someone in "righting the ship."

I decided to get into the affiliate game after my business was lost a few months back. Without drifting into details of that whole other story, I weighed my options and decided that I had some success as a poker affiliate, I figured I could easily get back into the game and make a whole lot of money really quick. I hopped onto the computer, purchased a domain and went to work. I failed to consider that I didn't know how to build or code a website. Additionally, while I had heard of SEO, I did not know what it was, nor how to get it... I figured I'd write it, and I'd rank - sounds easy.

I gave myself a crash course in website design, and threw something together quite quickly. I will credit myself with being a fast learner, so I was able to grasp many of the design concepts rather quickly. I am far from a master in design or programming, but I now understand it... slightly.

My website's look and feel was lacking severely. I was never truly happy with it, so I kept playing with the look, changing the menu bar, changing the color. Additionally, I wasn't getting the hits I felt I deserved, so I would "wordsmith" everything. I'd make adjustments to the wording of my content while I was learning about different search marketing concepts. As a result, my pages were anything but reader friendly. It was quite a mess.

I found myself a lost soul. I didn't really have a target market. Additionally, I offered very little that drove people to my site. When I was in the business before, I had a regular following on my poker blog, and would hold some free tournaments on my main affiliate site. At least then I had something to offer, giving people reason to visit my site. At the moment, I failed to come up with one reason to visit my site - other than to see what I was doing. And really, I'd been gone from the business for too long that most people would not even bother to notice me, let alone care enough to drop by.

What did I do? I kept tweaking content in hopes the search engines would show me some love - still didn't happen. I then came up with four or five ideas that would drive people to my site. These ideas, unfortunately, either involved something complex (over my head in my current level of comprehension) and time consuming, or were things everyone else was doing - many of them doing it quite well. For some reason, I decided that it was going to take a full service website to get traffic - I had to do it all. And again, I had to do it myself.

I spent countless hours trying to figure out how to write a program to do certain things, or how to go about doing this, that, everything. I was scatterbrained, a mess, and ridiculously unorganized - all while not having even 1 "purpose" in my website's existence.

Randy Ray started a thread in this forum that got me thinking - "May Goals." I really had no specific goals - other than "doing it all" myself. Truth be told, it won't ever happen. This thread forced me to take an objective look at myself, my strengths, and reality. I examined my skill sets, as well as my weaknesses. I determined I had become so consumed in trying to be everything that I was unable to be anything at all. That's a tough pill to swallow.

I made up my mind that I was going to make three lists. The first list being "things I can do and do well," while the second was "things I can't do." This really helped me focus my abilities. From there, I made a third list. This list contained items that I could not do myself, but I could farm out or "ask for help" in a sense.

There's no need for me to reinvent the wheel. An example of something appearing on this list was my desire to offer a feed of just guaranteed prize pool poker tournaments. I was trying to figure out how to compile and offer my own feed. I had known for a while someone else had such a feed they offered to other affiliates, but I wanted to do it myself. Why not offer theirs? They provide it as a service (with conditions attached of course), but hell, why not farm that out so I can both focus on things I can do, and accomplish my goal of offering this to my site's visitors - and finally at least have 1 purpose for my site?

Instead of spending 15 hours a day, seven days a week researching how to do stuff, and making my sub-par site worse than it already was; by adopting this overall strategy, I can now free up an abundance of time to focus on my strengths. Being spread to thin, I was unable to do anything well.

My site is still not where I want it to be, but it is now at least on its way. By accepting that I cannot be and do everything, I can take my 15 hour work day and better utilize my time. I am a writer. I can spend time writing quality, human friendly content of interest for myself - and also break into providing content for others. I can finally focus on providing something... something of quality to my site's visitors - which will in turn drive the bottom line.

My advice to newer affiliates, or even those who are struggling (myself included) is to do some soul searching. Figure out what you can do well, and that which you cannot. If its something you can't do - either lose it or farm it out. Ask for help in areas you're deficient in. Offer your services where you show strength and expertise. Scratch someone else's back in exchange for them scratching yours. It is not a crime to subscribe to someone else's service, or to buy content, pay for SEO, or to hire someone to build links.

You don't have to "be everything." I don't have to be everything. We just have to be and do something (not everything) - and be or do it well in order to succeed. Finding a sense of direction and analyzing one's strengths and shortcomings is a great way to do that. Doing so really helped me to focus, as well as prioritize. I'm not "there yet," but at least now I have somewhat of a road map, and am beginning my journey with far less a load on my back.

I apologize for the length of this rambling session, especially being my first blog post here in the forum. I hold out hope that this post helps at least one person.