.org10 Questions for Affiliate Confession’s Alan LeStourgeon
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When you’re trying to make enough money online to quit your day job, few things are as helpful as spending some time talking with someone who’s done it. Alan LeStourgeon from Affiliate Confession is one of those guys — and one of the good ones. He was kind enough to take some time right in the middle of packing for his vacation to let me interview him about his success.
You haven’t had a “day job” for more than 3 years now. How did you make that transition?
I actually made the jump when I was doing quite well in an mlm business, however, I don’t recommend anyone get into that line of business any longer after my last experience. Fortunately, I had started a couple of websites before I quit my job and was earning a decent income through AdSense. That managed to keep things going until I started to earn more revenue through several travel related programs.
What are the skills that have helped you be successful so far?
Probably graphic arts and the ability to be able to build my own websites. I’m not the most skilled at building sites, but it has saved me a lot of money and I can at least put together something that looks decent. There are a lot of horrid looking affiliate sites out there and I think may affiliate business suffer because sites that don’t at least look good will immediately chase off a potential customer before they even have the chance to see what you’re offering.
Also, when I was doing mlm I produced my own leads for both retailing products and for recruiting other distributors. That has translated easily into producing all kinds of other leads as an affiliate marketer.
What one skill do you not have that you think would make a dramatic difference in your success?
That would be scripting and programming. I know just enough PHP to destroy a WordPress template. There are lots of affiliates who are doing some pretty neat things with these skills and if I do anything involving programming I just grab someone else’s script and plug it in somewhere without most of the time knowing the how behind it.
It looks like about 2/3 of your revenue comes from affiliate programs. Who’s your favorite affiliate network these days?
That easy, the eBay affiliate program all the way! It is its own network.
Why is that?
eBay US features some 30,000 categories and with the ability to combine several at once with the many mash-up type scripts like Build A Niche Store and the tools available directly from eBay, there isn’t a niche that exists that doesn’t have some presence on eBay. Besides, people not only love to shop on eBay they buy, buy, buy on eBay. It doesn’t get any better than that.
I noticed you’ve been a part of PPC Coach for a few days now. How well is that working out for you so far?
For the people that are at the point to spend $50 a month on a coaching program it is more than worth the money. Probably by the time this interview gets published I’ll have 1 year of PPC Coach paid for from the techniques I’ve learn there so far. In just a week or so, I’ve learned an incredible amount about pay per click and have made some nice money to boot. It has opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
You have one BANS site doing much better than all the others. Could you ramp that up even more by spending some time building out the content, or is there an inherent limit to how much revenue a BANS site can generate?
I could probably double or triple my earnings from that one store by getting more involved in the niche, writing for other sites in that niche, putting up more content and doing more article marketing. It’s a very lucrative niche that I’m barely scraping the surface of.
Have you ever thought about picking just 1 or 2 of your 40+ sites and focusing on really growing those?
Yes I have. I’m not a very focused person and that’s been a hindrance to growing my business. We’re going on vacation the day after this interview and I’m going to spend some serious time evaluating how I’m working my business and what can be done to focus more towards the things that are making money and spend less time on the things that aren’t.
What’s the best advice you can give to someone who has just made the leap into making money online and is beginning to learn their way around?
Add value to the web and it will reward you. The net is filled with heaps of worthless money making schemes and sites just trying to squeeze cash out of people. If you take the time to figure out what people really want, and then give it to them, there’s a long future in that.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Keep reading, studying and building your online business. The more experience you get, the more opportunity you will see. The web is still in its infancy and there’s a lot more money to be made in the years to come. Are you going to be a part of it?
If you’re looking for a good, honest look at what it takes to make it online, I highly recommend Alan’s blog. Here are a few of my favorite posts of his:
Affiliate Confession
September 24, 2008 at
10:07 am
Hey Shane,
Thanks for the opportunity to share a bit of my world with your readers.
Cheers,
Alan