Complete Rubbish About Affiliate Marketing

I was reading and article about affiliate marketing by Josh on the Career Ramblings blog and there were some comments that made me chuckle:

Have you heard about something called “affiliate marketing”? It’s the latest innovation on the internet, and it is single-handily revolutionizing the way that business is done online.

The ability to generate a stream of revenue automatically is one that anyone can accomplish with affiliate marketing- all it takes is time, a bit of hard work, and a lot of patience.

There were two words that stood out for me: Latest and automatically. I've been involved in affiliate marketing, one way or another since 2000. So for me it's 6 1/2 years old. Amazon and another company (US CD's) started at least 3 years before that - so you really can't call it latest.

Then "automatically". I wish affiliate marketing allowed you to earn "automatically". I'd just sit here and spend the day watching crap on TV then get round to do a bit of "automatic" work. I wouldn't have to research keywords; review competitor sites; refine my seo and ppc knowledge; build pages; research industries; build relationships; review stats; refine pages; communicate with merchants, networks and other affiliates - piece of piss really!

When you read his third point I'm sure you'd break out and laugh also:

3. Open playing field. Affiliate marketing is still new enough that it’s still anyone’s game. There is no one person or company that is dominating the market (a la Microsoft), and anyone can come along and make their mark. With the sheer amount of money that can be made with affiliate marketing right now you are actually losing money the longer that you delay.

Any of us that have been around a bit have noticed the landscape change massively. There are loads of new affiliates and many new ways of promoting merchants. Many of the easy ways have been closed by networks and merchants are a lot more "on the ball" than they used to. More merchants are disallowing brand bidding and where it is allowed it's often in closed groups.

Money used to be very easily earned. Now you do have to put your back into, put the hours in and roll up your sleeves.

Then:

6. There are no “bosses”. When you start affiliate marketing, you run the show. You call the shots, and there is no one standing behind you waiting for the opportunity to pounce.

More rubbish. You can't fart in this industry without someone knowing. Other affiliates are always quick to notify merchants and networks if you're not doing what you should be doing. I've felt in the last couple of years that we're being watched a lot more closely. Transparency is good, but uneducated affiliate managers are always watching what you're doing for the wrong reasons - they don't understand what you are doing.

Tripe alert:

8. It’s easy. There’s no magical secret to becoming a successful affiliate marker. It comes down to method, repetition, and strategy. If it’s winter, launching websites about summer may not be a good idea. However, launching your websites about snowboarding might be a great idea a week before the skiing seasons begins.

Easy? Bollocks is it! If it's winter it's the perfect time to be launching websites about summer. It isn't easy and it takes time for sites to bed in. Numpty!

I'm fed up of misinformation in this industry. Has Josh ever worked through the night launching a new site or reviewing his ppc bids whilst on holiday or getting calls from networks to say that a website you've been promoting has just found out their tracking isn't working?

I wouldn't dare write an article on mechanical engineering because I wouldn't have a clue. Please don't patronise affiliates with this nonsense.