This month the Site of the month is a really useful Entrecard (read more about Entrecard here) related site I visit (almost) daily: Powerdropping.com. The site is simply just a list of Entrecard blogs sorted by loading time with the fastest loading site at the top.

So what’s so special about a site with just links to other sites? If you like me are trying to earn as many Entrecard credits per day as possible while you have a lot of other things to do, then you can’t spend 1 or 2 hours dropping Entrecards . The solution is simply to visit Powerdropping.com where you got 250-280 of the fastest loading Entrecard sites with the widget at the top of the site. This way you can drop 250 Entrecards in just 20 minutes instead of spending hours. I even got a few minutes to spare so I have time to find new exciting blogs to add to my RSS reader.

If you’re an Entrecard member, but haven’t checked out Powerdropping.com yet: Check it out now!

If you’re a blogger, but haven’t joined Entrecard yet: Do it! Visit Entrecard.com here.

Site of the month sites
Do you know of a good quality web site or blog that should be mentioned as Site of the month in this blog? Contact me and we’ll see if I also think the site is useful

This week we’re running the same contest as last week: write a recommendation for this blog at Entrecard and get 50 EC. You’ll also be included in the random draw next Friday (the 29th) for another 100 EC to one lucky winner.

The winner

In last weeks contest Yimto Affiliate Marketing Blog won 100 EC for writing a recommendation. Congratulations!

A big thanks to random.org for helping in the random draw

More contests

Don’t forget that you still have a chance of winning 700 Entrecard credits by writing about CreateBanner.com in your blog. See this page for more information about this contest.

You can also still win $50 by writing about our affiliate program. See this page for more information.

For those of you who have tried affiliate marketing you may well have found it to be difficult to make ANY money, but with so many people trying to introduce new income streams why are so many people failing? Why are the top 10% of the industry snatching more than 90% of ALL affiliate income?

There are a number of reasons why it is proving so difficult for many people to make a success of affiliate marketing (even with sufficient internet traffic), but among the main reasons are :-

Focus

Too many people think it is easy to make money from affiliate marketing, whether you are planting a one page sales site, adding links to your current site or using the mailing list option.  You really need to ensure that the items which you are trying to sell actually fit the profile of your visitors.  Do you actually know your visitors?

There is no point trying to sell cars to a teenage market, just like there is no point trying to sell the latest children’s gadgets to the over 30s.  Sell what your market will buy, not what you want them to buy – there is a big difference.

Sales Strategy

If your sale strategy does not work do not give up, just try a different strategy or even a different affiliate program.  Do you really think the top affiliate marketers of today made their money over night? Do you not think that they also had some set backs and failures along the way?

You will learn a lot by your mistakes, but more importantly you will learn to appreciate your market and what makes them tick.  If you do not learn by your mistakes and move on then you are dead in the water and you will never succeed.

Determination

Are you the kind of person who wants success on a plate? Are you prepared to do your home work, learn off your mistakes and wade through a mass of reading material? If you are not prepared to be patient and work at your goal then affiliate marketing is probably not for you, because as much as the headlines point to $1 million incomes, it can take some time to set up, and you will not earn money from day one.

Affiliate marketing is not a short cut to the top, it requires work, it requires a steep learning curve and it requires you to know when you are wrong and move onto another sales strategy.  Take each set back as another step on the ladder to the top, a ladder where jumping ahead to quickly can cause you to slip and push you back down to the bottom!