Introduction: Mook

March 4th, 2006 by Mook

Hey everyone out there. This is my first time publishing a blog.

For the longest time I’ve wanted to get into blogging, but never really had the drive or time for it. Thanks to Chris (Aspen on SP) we worked something out to join together and further help webmasters out. I have a lot of respect for Chris as a webmaster and a fellow SEO.

Since this is my first post, I really don’t know what to add to it, so bare with me until I get some solid topics down. Most of you will recognize me from the Site Point forums as the creator of a thread labeled “Screenshot: My CJ Stats:”. I’m the guy who pulled in over $100k in one month (well when I took the screenshot it was in the $80k’s) from CJ (commission junction) alone. I’d like to point out that I don’t only rely on CJ, and the reason I posted stats from them is because they pay the highest as far as financial lead advertisers go, and they are also by far the toughest ad network to make bank on.

For the longest time CJ and I didn’t really work well together. In fact, it all started to really come together when I stopped thinking like an affiliate, and started thinking like a consumer. I took a step back and thought to myself “alright, if I were refinancing my mortgage, what type of site would make me want to fill out all of my most personal information to attract lenders?” — It took me a while to come up with a good layout, but thanks to my design team at the time, we were able to draft up a non-intrusive typical layout. The typical layout I’m referring to is a splash page, with some content here and there, and then banner or text ads saying “Click Here”. Sorry guys, that may have worked years ago, but it certainly doesn’t fly these days.

I’ve been stressing for a pretty long time to webmasters like yourself that the affiliate marketing game has changed and evolved into a real business. See, there are so many ways to make money online these days that it needs to be treated as a business, and not as a hobby. Sure, you can make money from your hobby, but people need to change their approach and their layouts to really attract sales, clicks, or leads. You need to be really clever about it, and not in a sneaky way either. Just put some effort into it, and don’t try to churn out a million pages a day either. Sure, taking the easy way out and buying some script that does it for you will always attract the really lazy guys, but if you truly want to make a lot of money, you need to approach it from the CONSUMER’S POINT OF VIEW. Put yourself into their position. Remember that when you’re making a page or a site, and it looks good to you, you’re probably grading it from a webmaster’s point of view, which won’t work as well. Get your friends to tell you what they like and don’t like. Do they trust the page enough to send out their information or buy or click the advertisements? Ask them what would make it more appealing? This is market research, and I’ll cover this topic some other time, as it’s really it’s own animal.

In closing, I hope to really help and inspire webmasters involved in the affiliate and site promotion theaters (kinda like a war theater, because we are at war, just without bombs). As most of you know, I don’t have an ebook (even though people have told me to write one), I don’t share any of my large sites, I keep most of my things private and don’t expect any new business or money in return. All I ask is that you give credit back to me if you decide to use any of my posts on boards or blogs, and that when you are successful yourself you continue to share your knowledge and expertise with fellow webmasters for free. It’s my way of giving back to the community that helped me so much over the years and ultimately helped me get to this position.

No related posts.

Posted in: Generating Revenue »  by: Mook

11 Responses to “Introduction: Mook”

  1. Chromate  Says:
    March 4th, 2006 at 11:44 am

    I’m really glad you’re contributing to the blog!

    It’s a great point to make in your first post. Thinking like a consumer and not so much a webmaster is probably the biggest key to spotting new opportunities amongst other things.

  2. Andrew Johnson  Says:
    March 4th, 2006 at 12:28 pm

    Excellent post, its really great to see you here.

    I’ve been slowly poking my way into affiliate marketing. I have had some experience so far both with affiliate programs and selling my own products and there is a night and day difference here from building websites and relying on advertising for revenue.

    I am looking forward to reading more from you!

  3. Mark  Says:
    March 4th, 2006 at 1:33 pm

    Mook, it’s absolutely brilliant that you’re blogging here with Chris and Shawn.

    Hopefully Chris can pull together a kick-ass web publishing team to blog here. That would … kick ass? Why yes :)

  4. Creation Nation  Says:
    March 4th, 2006 at 1:34 pm

    Welcome Mook! It took a while but I read through the SP thread and was quite inspired. I can’t wait to learn from you and apply the knowledge on my sites. Thanks!

  5. Jon Morrow  Says:
    March 4th, 2006 at 4:58 pm

    I agree. Great to see you here. I’ve heard you mention market research several times. I’d love to see a post about how you do it.

  6. Masetek  Says:
    March 4th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    Excellent into Mook. Looks like we’ve got 3 of the best here. This blog is going to become extremely popular, I will look forward to reading what you guys have to say.

  7. Lord Brar  Says:
    March 4th, 2006 at 8:21 pm

    Good to see that you finally have a blog Jon! :)

  8. Ozgression  Says:
    March 4th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

    Great post Jon. I look forward to reading more from you, Chris and Shawn in future.

  9. Peach  Says:
    March 5th, 2006 at 8:40 am

    Cool that you’re joining too mook. This is going to the most interesting blog ever.

  10. Chris  Says:
    March 6th, 2006 at 12:35 am

    Mook,

    I saw your sitepoint proof of income thread, and I look forward to getting more nuggets out of your cranium.

  11. rento  Says:
    March 6th, 2006 at 9:05 am

    You’re my role model Mook-Jon !!
    Looking forward to read your posts.

    Thanks for inspiring n motivating me.

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