About

Affiliate Sledgehammer: Fresh, Effective Strategies to Revolutionize Your Affiliate Marketing…

Hi!

My name is David McKee, Principle Engineer at Celtic Cross Engineering, and creator of Affiliate Sledgehammer.

Affiliate Sledgehammer brings a Fresh new perspective on doing Affiliate Marketing by providing the sort of things a Day Trader or Stock Broker would have: Effective Tools, Strategies, and Data.

Affiliate Sledgehammer brings together a community of equal minded individuals through blogs, forums, and product offerings. Here you have a place where you can get your “Business Batteries” recharged, gather new ideas, and examine and analyze up-to-date data on the products and services you offer in your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Anyone who has been an affiliate marketer long enough to have launched a few campaigns, and maybe even make some money knows that…

“Affiliate Marketing is Simple…”

…it can be summarized in a single sentence:

Affiliate Marketing is a marketing system where an affiliate makes a sale of a merchant’s product or service and in so doing, collects a commission against that sale.

But, the devil is in the details!…that is where the complications, distractions, and disasters occur.

Perhaps you are one of those frustrated marketers who see and hear everyday about so-called Super Affiliates who have made millions of dollars with this stuff, and you keep asking “why not me?”

That is a Good Question to ask! Why not you? What do these “Super Affiliates” have that you don’t?

The answer? They know the Fundamentals…Intimately!

Before you can go off and try new ideas and methods to bring converting traffic to your websites, you have to have such a firm grasp of the fundamentals that they are an automatic part of your everyday routine – so much so, that you almost don’t have to think about them.

Then, and only then, you can do the other things that put you in the stratosphere, that rarefied atmosphere where there are only a few of the very best.

You see…the super affiliates learned long ago that most people are not willing to do the rather mundane things that are the fundamentals, so they really don’t have much competition.

I don’t understand this personally. With just the fundamentals you can make an amazing amount of money. Then, if you go the next step and really polish your marketing effort, putting forth new ideas based firmly on the foundation of the fundamentals, you can go to incredible levels of success…

…Even Millions of dollars!

So, using the analogy of a sledgehammer, lets try to understand what it is we really need to do to make it in the world of affiliate marketing.

Consider the sledgehammer – it is a simple tool. It is useful for many things, but if you try to use it for brain surgery, well, not so much.

If, on the other hand, you want to break rocks, pound wedges, split wood, drive large spikes, set posts in the ground, etc. it works perfectly as long as you use it properly.

A sledgehammer is a tool that focuses great force into a small area in order to make great impact – in the same way this website and its accompanying tools will give your affiliate marketing efforts great impact – focused like a laser beam, to your ultimate target.

The fundamentals of affiliate marketing are simple, you sell other peoples products or services, and they give you a commission based on the sale. On top of that, Affiliate Marketing offers the greatest monetary rewards with almost no barriers to entry.

So, what are those fundamentals that trip up so many “would be” affiliate marketers?

Here is my shortlist:

Persistence
Hard Smart Work
Tenacity
Practice
Reward

Persistence: Willing to stay at a task and see it through, not give up, not give in, not stop unless and until you know (not as another excuse) it will not work and that any further effort is a waste.

Hard Smart Work: Sometimes, to get what you want, you will have to burn the midnight oil. You will have to put off some pleasant things now, so you can gain what you really want in the future. You must work hard AND you must work smart! Working Smart means that you continue to make sure your hard work is moving you towards your goal – hard work aimed at nothing will get you nowhere!

Tenacity: Tenacity is much like persistence, but this is the fundamental that carries you through the hardships. This is that force that pushes you to creative solutions when everything looks bleak. This is that trait that can listen to a well wishing friend who tells you that what you are doing is a “pointless waste of time!” but you continue to do it anyway because you know it will work.

Practice: Self explanatory, but the fact is if you are not “doing the stuff” on a regular basis, then you will not be able to make these fundamentals an automatic part of yourself. Simple as that.

Reward: This fundamental is the outcome of the others. You simply cannot fail to get to this point if you consistently and honestly do the other four. That is how our universe is wired.

These fundamentals depend on your personal honesty with yourself and those with whom you work.

Let’s look at some examples of these five fundamentals in Affiliate Marketing:

Example 1: “The Duped Noob”

D. Noob has just discovered Online Affiliate Marketing…

He can see how “easy” it is to sell other peoples products through an affiliate link and make a commission…

So he creates a web page, throws on some copy, buys some Pay Per Click ads and sits back and waits for the money to come rolling in…

And when it does not, he scratches his head and tries to find out why it did not work. He goes to some forums, signs up for some newsletters, gets on some mailing lists, etc.

And then with great excitement he starts to buy all of the shiny new products that promise him a fortune, or promise to answer his questions (because their copy is so much better than his own).

He does not realize that the hunter has become the hunted, and that he is the one shelling out the cash instead of raking it in.

“You gotta spend money to make money!”.

But he never makes any.

After awhile he starts spending more time in the forums or on face-book complaining about why this business is just another “scam”. Soon, disillusioned, he quits online marketing for good, goes back to his gray, soulless cubicle, and gives up on the dream.

Here is the rub: Affiliate marketing, while being simple, is perhaps the hardest marketing business to become successful because it requires so much knowledge of products, traffic, salesmanship, and a whole host of other things – and it takes a lot of work (refer to fundamental 2 above).

That is why so many Affiliate Marketers fail and quit before they ever come into the dawn of their success.

That gives me shivers! How hard should one work for their dream in this single gift of life our creator has given us? There is nothing wrong with a steady job to provide the income needed for life and family, but to let a dream die when it was so unnecessary…

Lets look at a more uplifting example.

Example 2: “The Apprentice”

A. P. Rentice, like D. Noob above, has just discovered Online Affiliate Marketing…

Rentice decides that the very first thing she had better do is learn everything she can about Affiliate Marketing so she at least knows where the dangers are and where the opportunities lie.
(Working Smart)

She allocates a couple hours a night after her family duties are performed to read and study material that will inform her about this new opportunity and she talks to people both on and off the internet about Affiliate Marketing. She learns about affiliate networks, and the various types of sign-ups, advertising, promotion, and product availability data that she will need to build a successful system. She also learns what to expect and what to avoid when building her business.
(Working Hard, Working Smart)

She sets up her first web pages by asking for help from some friends who are in the web page business. She looks at a few professional web pages and decides on a design. She works very hard to build her sight, and learns how to promote it, day after day. She performs tests, she upgrades and tweaks.
(Persistence)

Rentice finds out that one of the super affiliates she trusts is putting on a conference and decides to attend. She knows from extensive research he is legitimate. She wants to go to this conference in order to learn first hand what she needs to do to succeed in this marketplace. When she learns these things, she does them. She continues to practice and hone her skills.
(Practice, Persistence)

When some of Rentices friends hear about her “online business” they laugh and tell her she should just get a “normal” job and stop wasting so much time, but she smiles and changes the subject. What those friends of hers don’t know is that she just put a very large check into her bank account.
(Tenacity)

Fast forward five years. A. P. Rentice is now guest speaker at the very same conference she first attended to to learn how to be an affiliate marketer. Now she is in the Super Affiliate Circle.
(Reward)

Affiliate Sledgehammer has the real tools and the data to help you break through the wall to affiliate marketing success. You still have a lot of hard work to do, but anything you can do to reduce, simplify, and automate your tasks will return great dividends.

Remember, Work Hard AND Smart. That is what this site is all about.

To your success in affiliate marketing!

David T. McKee