A Convoluted Journey Takes a Twist

Some days I get the feeling I just wasted eight months of existence. Every time I turn around, a cascade of new information tells me what I'm doing wrong, and a trickle arrives to inform me about how to do it right. Oh well, 50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong, right?

So Some Smart Person Said...

If you ever watched a Charlie Brown cartoon, you may remember how the adults sound. 'Ywa Ywa Ywa Ywa' Unintelligible and impossible to translate into kid text. That's what a lot of affiliate marketing advice has sounded like to my ears. It's been difficult to resist falling back to the Smile and Nod mode, trying to act like I have a clue what they're talking about.

I'm a trusting soul. Sometimes too trusting for my own good. So I have to be extra wary at times, to make sure that I don't let every con artist take my shirt. A girl only has so many shirts to go around, after all.

But yet another pattern has emerged. I am seeing an indelicate truth which may tick off a few people who are trying to prey on the weak via email solicitations.

If I ask for advice, I get very nice responses. If someone offers me advice, I feel like they want me to give them something (like my Visa card). Now, I am sure that there are thousands of very nice people who will freely offer advice to new affiliate marketers such as myself (and yes, I'm still feeling very new at this). But I am also very sure that, for each nice person out there, there are ten waiting in the wings with snake oil in hand.

So I asked for some advice. And this very nice person said 'well, why don't you just open up your site and see how it goes, before spending money on all those trick things?'

So that's what I'm doing. The blog is in place, the store is in place, and the forum is in place. Wish me luck.

Differentiation

I am deeply indebted to Brooks Schaaf for a long IM session in which he gave me a wealth of information I desperately needed.

AMs: don't ignore resources that show up inadvertently. I am learning, from painful experience, that the gurus of this field are sometimes the most silent.