Open Source Affiliate

Why did I start the Open Source Affiliate?

Are you interested in making money online? Have you been learning about affiliate marketing, search engine optimization, building adsense websites, and becoming an ebay powerseller?

I bet you’ve come across many self-proclaimed experts. For affiliate marketing, they probably tell you to do some of the following:

• find a niche
• pick long-tail keywords
• write articles (bum marketing)
• run an adwords campaign (pay-per-click)
• collect an email list
• offer free bonuses
• and so on

Or maybe you’ve been reading about more technical, search-engine oriented methods:

• build a site
• drop links to your site in blog comments and trackbacks
• leave links in forum signatures
• add your site to social bookmarks
• beg for links from other webmasters
• further increase your pagerank with a network of spam blogs
• and so on

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do everything listed above. I’ll teach you how to do everything here, for free. Why? I am tired of internet marketers ripping off other inexperienced marketers. I really, really hate the scam-filled salesmanship people use to make money.

I’m sure you’ve seen those $47 ebooks and other marketing offers promising to teach you how to MAKE $1000 A DAY! 1 SALE WILL PAY FOR THE PRICE! Are these offers real? Can you really make $1000 a day if you follow their methods? Well, yes, but you could also make $1000 folding laundry or selling newspapers, in principle… if you owned a successful laundry or newspaper business! Therefore, I will sell you a book on how to fold laundry! Which is precisely the kind of logic these marketers use.

Most of the information these internet marketers try to sell you is available for free and simply rehashed. What really irks me, though, is how marketers try to manipulate and deceive you. I find their websites and ads to be insulting, insipid, and verging on the immoral. The people buying their services are probably those in most need of money! How can they take advantage of such people? Face it, these people care about making money, not helping you.

I am not saying that money is a bad thing. Of course, I want money as well. However, I believe that it is possible to make money, even more money, by helping people instead of scamming them. This is precisely the type of philosophy at work behind the famous leadership of the Herman Miller company, or the “do no evil” slogan of Google. Make a good product. Help people. And you will make more money.

To counteract offensive internet marketing ploys, I have launched this site. This site serves two purposes:

1) To educate new internet marketers and webmasters about topics such as affiliate marketing, SEO, and making money online, to the extent that they will realize they do NOT need to waste money on so-called “experts” or “gurus” or “secrets”.

2) To prove to myself and others that it is possible to make money in internet marketing while remaining honest and putting the customer, reader, or client first. I actually do not know if I will succeed in this. I will try to be completely open about monetization or profit from this site. Please read my explanation of how this site makes money.