Working like crazy behind the scenes

July 13, 2009 by JD
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Dilbeck Marketing, Internet Marketing, Murphy NC 28906, Murphy North Carolina, Products at Amazon, Site Build It

If you look at the home page of this blog or read the RSS feed, it looks like I’ve been a lazy boy for the last month or so.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

I’ve been working behind the scenes to fix a major problem, update a large site, and bring a new site online.

My goal of bringing the new site online by July 1 was delayed about a week, but I’m making progress with it, again.

Dumped by Amazon

In the last week of June 2009, I received a notice from Amazon.com that they were terminating my affiliation with their associates program.

To say that I was surprised would be a huge understatement.

To top it off, it had nothing to do with me. I was dumped because I live in North Carolina and Amazon.com dumped all their associates in the entire state in one fell swoop.

This was done in anticipation of changes in the NC tax laws that had not been passed nor gone into effect!

I’ve been a proud associate of Amazon.com for about 13 years, but, after this, I’ll never recommend them to anyone and I won’t buy from them. I’m done with Amazon.com.

Rebuilding a large site

As a result of being dumped by Amazon.com, I have started to remove all links to their site. This is going to take me months to accomplish. I have links to their products on just about every page of most of my sites, and some of them have over 1,000 pages.

It’s a second-level priority, right behind building a new site, because I don’t want to send them any customers with no possibility of receiving a commission for my work.

I’ve removed links from most of my blogs, but modifying my static sites will take much longer.

Over the last couple of weeks, I completely rebuilt JohnDilbeck.com. This is one of my oldest and largest sites. In the process, I deleted several hundred pages that were out of date or no longer relevant.

Rebuilding the site was something that I’ve planned to do for a while, but being dumped by Amazon.com was the catalyst that motivated me to take action as quickly as I could.

My affiliate marketing business has taken a hit

After the world economic downturn last September, my marketing business has been hit hard by a big reduction in income.

This was not entirely unexpected, but the suddenness came as a surprise.

Since December, I’ve been making new plans to shift a part of my marketing efforts from affiliate marketing to helping locally-owned small businesses in Murphy, NC attract new customers and enticing existing customers to come back, again.

Murphy Gold is live

To do this, I worked for six months to plan how to accomplish these goals and started planning a new site.

Although there is still construction debris all around and parts of it still need a fresh coat of paint, Murphy Gold is now live.

I still have a lot to do on that site, but I’ve been working at it diligently. I’ve researched over 2,000 keyword phrase combinations and have been doing the initial traffic building work.

I’m not ready for a grand opening announcement, but I’m hoping that one will be forthcoming in a couple of weeks.

Back to my cave…

In the meantime, I’m going back to my cave in the mountains of western North Carolina and I’ll be working all hours of the day and night to get everything on my to-do list done as soon as possible.

One of these days, I’ll be able to write on this blog more frequently than I’ve been doing over the last several months.

Act on your dream!

Tags: Murphy Gold

Comments

8 Comments on Working like crazy behind the scenes

Mitch on Fri, 17th Jul 2009 11:07 pm

You just keep plowing along, John, and I’m sure you’ll be back up in no time. You didn’t mention it, but you also had to deal with being sick, then your mother’s passing, so it’s not like you were sitting around doing nothing without reason.

I know you’ll get your affiliate marketing up to snuff again, then talk about it so we can learn from your example. I’m pulling for you.
.-= Mitch´s last blog ..Removed Whydowork Adsense Plugin =-.

JD on Sat, 18th Jul 2009 4:37 am

Good morning, Mitch.

Thank you for the kind words of support.

It’s been a rough few months, but I would rather concentrate on my to-do list instead of looking back. While I acknowledge those things, I have to keep moving on.

I’m not sure my affiliate marketing business will ever recover to what it once was.

Things are still unclear about whether the NC legislature will pass the new tax law. They voted themselves another two week extension, so they aren’t required to have a budget until July 31, although the new fiscal year went into effect on July 1.

That’s the second two-week extension they’ve voted for themselves.

If the new law does go into effect, and there’s no indication that it won’t, then I’m sure I’ll be dropped by other affiliate programs.

I’m also in the process of removing all links through CJ, Linkshare, and other affiliate aggregators. I’ve earned so little through them over the last two years that it isn’t worth updating everything on a regular basis. Even though I sent many thousands of clicks to merchants through CJ, they dropped me because of lack of sales. (sigh)

So, my affiliate business will live or die based on a few private affiliate programs. I just hope nothing will affect my relationship with Sitesell. It’s the only part of my affiliate marketing business that is still growing, and — as I’m sure you know by now — I’m a huge fan of their flagship product, Site Build It.

It’s a good thing I started transitioning part of my effort into promoting local brick and mortar businesses in Murphy, NC six months ago. Otherwise, I really don’t know what I would have done.

It’s been rough, but it’s been rough on a lot of people, and I’m doing okay.

I live in an area I love, close to friends and family, and that is more important.

I really appreciate your friendship and support, Mitch. Thanks for the comment.

Act on your dream!

Mitch on Sat, 18th Jul 2009 8:49 am

As you know, I went through my big round of affiliate dropping me when New York enacted its tax law first last year. It’s dropped way off since then, with only one company dropping me this year for the New York reason. There are still many other things out there that will work for you. I have SiteSell as one of my CJ affiliate programs also, and they haven’t dropped me, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.
.-= Mitch´s last blog ..Nameboy =-.

JD on Sat, 18th Jul 2009 7:44 pm

Good evening, Mitch.

It’s good to hear that things are doing better for you regarding affiliate marketing in New York. That’s encouraging.

I didn’t know that you could sign up as an affiliate for Sitesell through CJ. They have their own private affiliate program and that’s all I knew about.

Do you have access to all their training and the Sitesell forums on sitesell.com?

I’ve been a really busy fellow this week and haven’t had time to get over to your blog this week. I’m looking forward to catching up on what you’ve been writing — hopefully tomorrow.

We’ll keep plugging away until we find something that works well, won’t we?

Act on your dream!

Mitch on Sat, 18th Jul 2009 10:58 pm

No, when you’re an affiliate for any of the folks through CJ, you just market them without any of the benefits.
.-= Mitch´s last blog ..Reviewing Visitors =-.

JD on Sun, 19th Jul 2009 7:56 am

Good morning, Mitch.

In that case, what you’re seeing is just a pale imitation of the real Sitesell affiliate program.

You’re missing out on lifetime customers, residual income from renewals and future purchases, the (usually) weekly affiliate newsletter, lots of marketing tools, read and write access to the Sitesell affiliate forums, read-only access to the Site Build It forums, and much more.

Do yourself a favor. If you’re interested in promoting Site Build It! sign up directly.

Of course, you don’t have to, if you’re comfortable with using CJ.

The decision is yours.

You can learn more and sign up directly at the bottom of the Sitesell website.

Act on your dream!

Mitch on Sun, 19th Jul 2009 8:29 am

At this time, John, I just don’t have the time, though that’s a terrible excuse. You know I build my own websites, but don’t have the time to build a lot of them, so they come when they come.

I’m doing so much writing these days, working on earning my real living, so to speak, that, unless I’m doing it for a blog post, I just don’t have a lot of other time to extend in another direction.

That’s why I’m glad I can come here to read about SiteSell instead.
.-= Mitch´s last blog ..Social Media Webinar Now For Sale =-.

JD on Sun, 19th Jul 2009 9:13 am

Good morning, Mitch.

I know what you mean. I don’t think not having the time is a poor excuse at all. Time management is an essential part of achieving success in anything.

For everything we do, we frequently have to say no to a dozen other things, some of which may be quite enticing.

I’m sure you’ll read about Sitesell quite often when you come here.