Gadooney.com

You’ve decided what your first site will be about, registered a domain name, and signed up for a Web hosting package. You’ve got a good handle on the basics of writing good content, you’re not freaking out about SEO, and you want to make some money.

You’ve created a few pages of content and have your basic site up and running, but quickly find yourself pressed against this invisible barrier of sorts. You understand the theory of how all this works, as far as making money, but you haven’t quite bought in to the idea, not completely. You look around the Internet at all of the existing sites and all of the people making tons of money today and you can’t help but feel you’re impossibly behind the curve, that the train left the station long ago without you on it.

There’s also that tiny voice in the back of your head that keeps suggesting that you have no business doing this, that you’re not a good enough writer, that you’re not interesting enough, that you just don’t have the time to make it work, yada yada yada…

Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit…

In many ways, the train hasn’t even yet reached the station, as far as the potential of affiliate marketing. Ever heard of a little country called China? What about India? What do you think might happen over the next decade or two when literally billions of people are able to access the Internet tubes and use them to buy things for the first time?

Yes, indeed, it’s much easier to make money if you have a popular website that was founded back in the 90s and has a ridiculous amount of traffic and incoming links. Just like it’s easier to make money if you inherit $297 kajillion dollars from some rich uncle to start out with. But each and every day people start out on a path with nothing, absolutely nothing, and turn it into something huge, often in just a few years.

So you’ve got no excuse, as far as being late to the affiliate party. It’s just getting started. Hell, invitations haven’t even been sent out yet. Get to work.

As far as not being “interesting” enough or not a “good” enough writer, well, that’s just silly. People are endlessly fascinating. Be yourself. If you’re a crazy kook, be a crazy kook. If you’re the most boring humanoid in the existence of humanoids, that’s okay, just write about something interesting. If you’re boring and writing about something uninteresting, even that’s okay if you’re writing about something that surfers are interested in.

Yes, in a perfect world we would always entertain, engage, and educate our audience, simultaneously, with much vigor. But the simple truth is that you can make money as an affiliate marketer by simply doing any one of those, as long as you do it well.

Let’s look at some random examples of sites that I’d wager are making some pretty good cash, covering a huge spectrum as far as style, content, implementation, you name it:

The SuperStar Squirrel: Words fail me. I’m scared to keep scrolling down, yet I do, despite myself. But it’s got tons of incoming links, gets linked all the times in blogs, and sells merchandise that I imagine has a pretty nice profit margin, and is unique to the content of the site.

Broke Ass Student: Pretty simple site in format and content, but a good example of a straightforward approach that can pay off. If you’re a broke-ass student trying to learn financial lessons to get ahead, blog about it. And tightly integrate Adsense ads into your content and make some money from it.

IamFacingForeclosure: I’m about 95% convinced now that this is entirely concocted to make money via affiliate programs and is not a real story, but either way it’s pretty damn successful, from an affiliate point of view. Push people’s buttons and you’ll get tons of traffic and links. It’s not really about debt or foreclosure at all, if you look past the surface content, but about hammering on hot topics that people instantly respond to (laziness, debt, dishonesty) and building up a huge amount of traffic in a short amount of time.

OrigamiBoulder: Simplest idea in the world, and the product sold probably has a profit margin close to infinity. Notice how the owner also uses the relative crappiness of the site design as an actual selling point, especially with the persona used as the voice of the site.

Million Dollar Homepage: This bastard made $1,000,000 selling freaking pixels on a freaking website that was essentially one page and had no point other than to sell pixels on it. No, really.

 And you can play that game endlessly, as far as site after site that’s found a way to get traffic and monetize it. New sites launch every single day that will go on to make many thousands of dollars for the creator. Another one just went alive, as I’m typing this. And another. And another.

Don’t feel intimidated when you’re starting out, as if you have to find the perfect topic and the perfect voice, or that you’re too late to the party and will never see the success that other have. You can adopt an infinite number of voices, writing about an infinite number of things, in an infinite number of ways, and find a way to make money with any of them.