This post is part of “August - Make Money Online Month.”

In my experience as an online affiliate marketer I’ve learned that playing favorites can really hurt your business in the long run. There are those times when you will hit a gold mine but those are very rare and far in between, especially when you’re new to the field. I talked about Succeeding with Niche Affiliate Sites previously - today it’s my turn to take on the age old lesson of not playing favorites with anything or anybody online.

Every successful blogger will tell you that you need to diversify to expand your online money portfolio. What they don’t tell you is that it probably will not work for you as much as it has worked for them.

I’ve thought about it myself, hmm…maybe I should make a humongous list of online money making resources and make my fortune by all the affiliates I sign up. But you see I’m not about the money, I’m about the living. So you won’t get any e-book from me and no affiliate link whoring. Not to mention the fact that only 10% {or less} of anybody I sign up will actually make a difference to my long term income.

The People Factor

Every persons success relies on the sum of everyone around them. Meaning one guy will be worth as much as everyone else surrounding him. It works the same way in the online money world. There will always be a few at the top who continue to push their efforts in surrounding themselves with as many people as possible to generate income for them.

So you need to decide if you want to play favorites with any one particular individual/s or form your own persona. Of course you still need to learn, but while learning try do so from as many sources as possible. Don’t play favorites, remember your success will also rely on someone else working for you - apart from your own hard work.

The Money Factor

Everyone needs some cash in their hands that’s how the world is. No money, no honey. I started one of my affiliate sites last year in April just before shifting to Europe and it had a good start. In May I sold over $2,500+ worth of commissionable goods. From then on things just spiraled down. To this day I have no idea why I could not beat that target for the next couple of months.

At the time I was only sticking with one parent affiliate site - so basically my niche site mirrored almost everything they had. It worked for the beginning, but then subsequently any repeat visitors I got did not convert as I could only update as often as the main site did. Sales were dropping but yet my traffic was increasing. It was the most bizarre moment in my life.

I then started to add similar products from a few other parent affiliate sites and that’s when sales started picking up again. I should have done this earlier instead of waiting over 4 months to do so! Maybe if I had mixed the same products from a few sites, instead of just one, from the beginning I would have seen a steady increase instead of decrease in sales.

Bottom Line

Playing favorites with any single person, tactic or resource online is a definite no-no. With the immense volume of information available only a fool would adopt one single methodology. The days of “Follow my method and I’ll make you rich” are gone.  But then again you also don’t want to fail and make the wrong decisions.

Let me tell you something. Sometimes making a wrong decision can be the best decision you will ever make. You’ll get it right the next time.

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About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.