Here’s something that might surprise you.

Since returning to internet marketing part-time in October 2009 (4 full months at the time of writing this) I’ve made decent month-on-month profits which have continued to grow at a decent rate (that’s right – I’m not claiming to make $100k a month…yet) using very basic affiliate marketing techniques. And in those 4 months I have not purchased a single internet marketing-related information product.

There have been a ton of product launches in the past 4 months, but I’ve stayed away from all of them. Reason being, my profits are far better used being put back into my business, as opposed to buying something that will only serve to distract me from the goals I’ve set myself. Just about all my traffic comes from PPC, and I’m ploughing all the money I make directly back into this to try out new products and offers, new keywords, new targeting etc.

The fact is, you don’t need a ton of ebooks to succeed online. I failed first time round because I took on too much and gave myself too many choices. Too many choices make decisions virtually impossible. I ended up not knowing what to do next and, as a result, lost my focus and changed from one thing to the next pretty much daily.

The truth of the matter is that there are, quite literally, hundreds (possibly thousands) of ways to make money online and your goal with any particular method isn’t to prove to yourself that it works, it’s to prove it doesn’t work.

What I mean is, don’t do something for a couple weeks and give up when you didn’t get the results you expected. Most methods will earn some money when applied the right way. If you don’t make money right off the bat with a particular technique, you owe it to yourself to prove that the method doesn’t earn money period. That means you need to exhaust all possibilites before moving onto the next method. Doing this means you won’t chop and change when you don’t get the results you wanted first time.

For example, if you’re promoting a product via PPC and you don’t get any sales or it runs at a loss, it doesn’t mean the product won’t sell or the ROI is always gonna be negative. Maybe you need to improve your landing page (or build one if direct linking), expand your keyword list (or shrink it…), adjust your bids to make the campaign profitable, use different methods depending of country or region… there are tons of things you can do to prove it doesn’t work.

When you’ve proven to yourself that it definitely won’t turn a profit, ditch it. At least there will be no ‘what ifs’ hanging round your neck. You can move on with your head held high knowing you put in everything you could. And doing this gives you closure – you won’t have that nagging feeling in the back of your mind that maybe, just maybe, you could have done more.

But don’t forget when doing this to use your common sense. I’m not suggesting you blow a few thousand bucks on a $1 CPA ZIP submission offer – I’m suggesting you do small, controlled tests that can be scaled easily. That way if you do manage to prove it definitely won’t work you won’t be out of pocket too much and you’ll easily make it back when do find that winning campaign.

I’m a little late coming in with this, but as I only started affiliate marketing again a couple month ago I think it’s worth while me posting about it.

Here in the UK, Amazon made some quite substantial changes to the Associates Program in June/July this year. They changed, amongst other things, the number of shipped items needed to climb up the monthly commission ladder (it’s risen substantially) and capped pretty much all sales to a maximum commission of just £7 per item shipped. I actually found out the hard way – a customer purchased £1,000 worth of software via Amazon after clicking through one of my links, and instead of getting £50 commission I ended up gettting about £20 commission. It was this short-changed amount which made me look into the commission structure (I haven’t promoted Amazon for about 2 years).

After noticing the previously mentioned changes, I hit the Associates discussion boards. And let me tell you, there are some seriously pissed Associates on there. One guy mentioned how he sends over £1m of business to Amazon every year and they’ve basically ruined his business model.

These changes fire out a number of warnings you need to take note of. Firstly, Amazon are now well and truly established as the leading online department store. They really don’t need Associates any more and really could end the program at any point. It’s unlikely that they would, but it is entirely possible. So if you’ve based your entire business model around them, as one Associate mentioned on the boards (and many others who don’t post there will have done also) then you really are asking for trouble. You’re effectively putting your business in the hands of another over which you have no control.

Secondly, the income you’re earning from any affiliate program could drastically shrink or even disappear, quite literally overnight. This could spell the end of your business if you rely too heavily on one affiliate income source or, even worse, you base your entire business around a single income stream over which you have little-to-no control. It’s a dangerous game to play.

So what of the Amazon Associates program here in the UK? Is it still worth promoting? Well the answer is, quite simply, if it’s profitable for you then yes, keep going with it. Despite my substantially lower commissions than I expected, I still made nearly 5x my advertising costs so I’d be crazy to axe it just because it wasn’t 10x my costs as I was originally expecting. It’s certainly not big money and only pays for a (really good) night out, but it’s money I wouldn’t have otherwise had.

And because of the way I’m rebuilding my affiliate marketing business, should Amazon pull the plug entirely on the Associates program it won’t make much of a difference to me. If you’re into affiliate marketing, I suggest you don’t make the same mistake some Associates have made and you build your affiliate income around multiple income streams so if one fails you’ve still got plenty to fall back on.

I had a follower on Twitter DM me asking where my free report is, which is amazing as there’s only 200 of them.

She’s eager to read it as she used to follow my ramblings when I was originally marketing back in 2006-7 and wants to know where I’ve been. Unfortunately I haven’t finished the editing yet as I’ve been busy growing my Adwords campaigns and getting a couple of sites up the SERPS.

Last month’s profit was a little over $1,000 and I’ve already beaten that this month after just 11 days, which is nice as it proves the system I’m devising works. But it’s taken it toll on my time and, as I refuse to let it consume my out-of-the-office life, the report has been put back a little. There’s more to life than just work!

So, I know it’s late but it’s on its way… soon.

I don’t want to keep harping on about the same thing over and over, so this will be the last post devoted to my current adwords test campaign.

It’s nearly the end of the month — my first month involved again in internet marketing — and I’ve managed 13 sales of the product I’m promoting resulting in just under $1,300 in commissions.

With an Adwords spend of just $217, that’s a healthy ROI of around 490%. Try getting that from a bank!

Suffice to say it’s a winning product, so I’ll continue to expand my keyword list and will also create a landing page to collect leads and build a list of people interested in this product. I can (hopefully) re-sell similar products to the same group of people, as well as become well-known as an expert in this niche.

My plan for next month is to start a new campaign promoting another decent commission product to see how it works out. You tend to find more duds than winners, but the profits from the winners tends to quickly outweight the losses from the duds.

Onwards and upwards!