So it's my first column for the new year and what better way to start off a new year than by encouraging you to think about what you're going to be doing to make money in the new year. It's certainly been something that has been exercising my mind over these last few weeks.

Of course the tough economic times are going to continue ... all that gloom and doom isn't going to magically disappear and even if those tough economic times were to disappear life may not become much easier for anyone doing affiliate marketing here or over in mainstream.

While I know that it's not the sort of thing you might want to hear or even think about I have to tell you that I'm beginning to think that the days of being able to make a decent living as a small-time affiliate marketer are fast drawing to a close. These days you have to hit the ground running and grow fast ... or else

Over the last five years or so we have seen the growth ... especially in mainstream ... of the big affiliate marketers. These aren't people like you and me who work from home or even work from a small office and churn out a few sites and galleries every week.

These are the guys with plenty of automation and big staffs who are building out huge sites that attract so much traffic and generate so many sales that they can negotiate special deals with sponsors and merchants. These are the guys who can offer discounts to buyers that small-time affiliates have no hope of offering because they can put pressure on the big merchants and sponsors. These are the guys that are now making the money that we once did and these are the guys that we now have to compete with.

So how are you going to compete? How are you going to survive and grow in the coming year? Have you even had the courage to stop and think about it or have simply put your head in the sand and hoped that all those big guys would just go away and leave you alone?

Sadly they won't do either of those things ... but they will take your traffic if they can and they will definitely go on taking your sales. So it's time to plan for 2012 and here are a few suggestions you might like to think about.

Become agile
One problem for anything big that is moving along at a steady pace is changing direction. Our highways are littered every day with the wreckage of large trucks that have suddenly had to change direction and simply couldn't do it and it's the same with a large business.

If you're small you need to be agile and ready to change as the marketplace changes. You need to be alert and ready to give the marketplace what it wants as soon as it wants it because you will only have a small window of opportunity to do that before the big affiliates have dragged their businesses around to give consumers what they want.

So you need to be looking and thinking ahead ... you need to be out there on the cutting edge taking advantage of what is attracting people right now rather than somewhere back there in the herd trying to make money from what worked last week but isn't working so well anymore.

So what are you going to do in 2012 to get your business out of the herd and out there on the edge where the money is to be made?

Become branded
One of the things that I've been suggesting for years ... and one of the things that many people in this industry have said small affiliates should never do ... is to brand yourself. Have a logo ... have a brand ... that people can recognise and hopefully trust.

The more you become branded ... the more you stand out from the crowd ... the better chance you have of being trusted by people who want to buy what you're selling. There's no trust in anonymity and when no one trusts you there's less chance of making a sale.

There's also little or no word-of-mouth marketing in anonymity so no one is going to recommend you to their friends simply because they have nothing to point their friends to. Sure they may have loved what they got when they signed up at one of your free sites but what have they got to point their friends to.

Where's the name ... where's the brand they can point people to and tell them what a great deal they got when they did business with you? If you have no brand then people don't remember you when they're looking for more of the same ... they think of the link lists and the TGPs that sent them to your site and that's where they go to get more of what they want because those are the sites that have a brand.

Wouldn't it be better if they came directly to you when they want more of the same?

Build your own retail business
If people are rushing to buy things online ... whether it be porn, furniture or blue widgets ... why settle for a small commission for each sale you send to someone else when you could possibly be collecting all the proceeds of a sale because you run the retail outlet.

Obviously hardcore paysites and online shops are not for everyone. They take time and money to set up and run but why sell someone else's goods for a few bucks when you could be pocketing all the cash from the sale?

Of course you're going to need a unique selling point if you do want to set up your own sales site but if you're creative enough to be a successful affiliate marketer then you're creative enough to find something that will make your online shop or membership site stand out from the crowd.

And maybe that's what you will need to do if you want to survive 2012.

02/20/2012 - Tales from the Street

01/23/2012 - Getting Inside Their Heads

01/17/2012 - Planning to Survive

01/09/2012 - Headlines and Creeping Jobs

01/02/2012 - What Are You Planning for 2012?

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