Amongst the flurry of tweets and Facebook status updates (and black box or “No SOPA” avatars) gracing my screen, along with links to sites on our side that include Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, Wired, WordPress and others, I can’t help but to feel proud that there’s such outrage over a complete piece of shit bill like SOPA.

You can’t really put a finger on who it hurts the most – business owners who rely on the internet, or internet users who have spent the last fifteen years of their lives using a comfortable online platform.

With the logic of the high school teacher who punishes the whole class because of one idiot jock, the good old US Gov’t considers a bill that will carry the same amount of logic: punish the innocent with the ruse of ending infringement. In the end, it gives Big Business a weapon to shut down their competitors (not as if they needed one, they already dominate SERPs with paid and organic ads).

Sites such as Google’s online petition and this video are making their rounds. Even Occupy Wall Street is protesting SOPA.

Thinking about SOPA makes you think about the details of every website you own. Will one image be seen as infringement, or even “confusingly similar” to something else, warranting your site to be taken down without warning or notice (or appeal?) and you, the webmaster, to be blacklisted? How will you survive when your earnings are cut off after you wake up to see a SOPA takedown notice on your largest affiliate site? These are real fears that come with this bill passing.

While I’m optimistic this day is not only historic and unforgettable but has already sent out a very strong, unified message — I also truly believe this bill will not get passed. At least, not as-is.

If it does get passed, then I truly do believe there is an Illuminati.

Lately, my obsession includes shows like Pawn Stars, Auction Hunters and American Pickers. All of these shows basically take place in the same niche – buying and/or reselling antiques and collectibles. All of them have one major ‘art’ in common: the art of hardcore negotiation.

This is something I don’t have any experience in. I’ve suffered from it every single time I went through a salary negotiation at a new job, a domain name sale, or even a garage sale. However, good negotiation skills can mean the difference between a $500 or $1,000 profit. Or, perhaps, FAR more.

Each of the three shows mentioned show different levels of negotiation tactic. In Pawn Stars, the shop owners notoriously throw out a spirit-crushing low-ball offer for anything that comes through the door. They follow up with cookie-cutter rationales, such as “this is going to sit in my shop for months” or “there’s such a limited market for this item, it will take forever to re-sell.” The purpose of these lines is to attempt to make the seller think their item isn’t worth as much as they thought. Conclusively, the pawn shop negotiators make a beautiful profit by using these tactics to success.

In Auction Hunters, two business partners travel around to various storage unit auctions, take a quick scan of what’s inside a unit, come up with a dollar figure as the absolute most they’d be willing to bid on the unit, and go for it. Afterward, they sort out the storage unit’s contents and sell any unique items found to various collectors or resellers. That’s where the negotiation takes place. Long-time storage unit seeker Allan Haff is by far one of the best negotiators I’ve seen in my life – if you want to know how to negotiate, watch him in action. His tactics are purely psychological. He verbally notes the buyer’s attachment to an item, shoots out facts about the item’s rarity or worth, and exploits all of these aspects to the fullest extent. Finally, all counteroffers are further countered with a drastically higher amount, resulting in fantastic sale amounts.

Lastly, American Pickers features two partners who travel around the country to various “junkers,” which are basically people who accumulate vast collections of vintage items through decades of auctions and garage sales. The guys immediately start by working a personal connection with the junker they’re dealing with – getting to know their interests, how they got started collecting “junk” and what they intend to do with it in the future. They then negotiate by constantly reminding junkers that they are “in retail” and “in the business of selling, not keeping” these items whenever a high-ball offer goes their way. This instills the notion that they aren’t a bunch of upper-echelon collectors looking to add more trinkets to their home, but rather, a couple of average guys trying to make a living. In the end, they wind up selling all items picked for at least double what was originally paid for them.

In all, these are the 4 main points I’ve learned:

1. Psychology is key. Negotiation has everything to do with getting into someone’s head, and convincing them that their end of the bargain isn’t really worth anywhere near what they seem to think it is. In order to make this work, you need adequate knowledge of the product being negotiated.
2. Negotiation works best once you’ve made a human connection with the person you’re negotiating with. Try being more “off topic” with them. Be more human and friendly, and less corporate/stiff/cold.
3. Negotiation is business. There shouldn’t be any hard feelings, or feelings of “guilt” in trying to get what’s best for you. Keep in mind, the other party is looking to get what’s best for them, too.
4. People expect the tradition of a good negotiation. They purposely throw out a high-ball offer, EXPECTING you to low-ball it for an amicable medium in the end.

If you’re in the same boat as me, then this is what you’ve been seeing lately for your affiliate storefront sites:

I’m not sure what’s scarier – the fact that ranking anywhere on Google for a decent organic keyword is becoming nearly impossible to achieve or maintain, or that most of your affiliate marketing income comes from two search engines who have the most uncertain of futures.

Bing is barely hanging on by a thread; and Yahoo, who is being mulled over by both Google and Microsoft — and I think we all know which of the two will be the victor — is now a could of uncertainty. Personally, nobody I know uses Bing nor Yahoo, so, that has to at least be a general representation of internet users. After all, I haven’t heard anyone say “I’m gonna Bing that right now.”

Since Google is nothing more than a scrapbook of paid ads dominated by companies who have $2,000/day AdWords budgets (I worked for one of these), as well as unfair price comparison listings in SERPS that highly favor big brands (let’s face it, when you finally scroll down and find actual search results on page 1, those are all favoring big brands too), the outlook for our own affiliate stores is so dismal that I can’t even imagine what can be done to ever survive the loss of Yahoo…or worse yet, both Yahoo and Bing.

Sometimes I think about what the internet will look like in 2020. My guess is that we’ll be talking about how ‘back in the day, the average person used to be able to run their own websites and make money off of it.’ At least, that’s the future outcome of what will happen with a Google monopoly. Don’t just take my opinion – check out what SEO Book said, too.

The death of Yahoo would be the 2nd devastation for affiliate marketers (the 1st being Google Panda). For years, we’ve been angry at Google’s big brand favoritism and have been saying “well, at least I still have my Yahoo rankings,” since older tactics still work well on that search engine. So, what’s plan B?

Is it time to stop relying on search engines, and start relying on Facebook Pages and community-based advertising? I think so. Looks like a big, bad storm is coming.

Maybe it’s time to rethink being an affiliate marketer altogether – and think about providing a service, or starting a genuine local business. Affiliate marketing is dying – it just is, and search engines like Google are making sure of it. I’m not talking about giving up, I’m talking about growing some legs and evolving to survive.

I really think it’s time to make SEO take the backseat in your overall budgeting of time, and start making offline and social promotions be your fallback. Once Yahoo falls – and it looks like it’s inevitable at this point – there are going to be a lot of affiliate marketers being forced into doing what they absolutely hate: going back to office slavery work.

So, what will be your Yahoo substitution? Better come up with one…real quick.

I started off my college career as a CS (computer science) major back in 1996, hoping to graduate as a coder making mega bucks. While that never worked out due to my hatred of Turbo Pascal and the overall boredom and lack of interest in staring at a blank screen, I now kick myself at the amazing, lucrative opportunities out there for people who can code. Here’s the biggest one of all: tackling niche Content Management Systems.

There are two CMSs I’ve identified that simply don’t exist out there, and I’ve searched for years: 1) a dating website CMS, and 2) an auction site CMS. When I say “don’t exist,” I mean, a valid option that can actually be used for a serious commercial site that both performs and looks great. Regardless, this article is about the latter — auction sites.

Here’s one resounding fact I’ve done in all of my research: one of the most asked for scripts on internet marketing forums, including DigitalPoint (ugh), Warrior Forum et. al., is for auction software, also referred to as “ebay clones.” Google search it, and you’ll see that most if not all of these requests are either left unanswered, or are replied to by some developer from a sketchy country, shilling a link for his own horrible excuse of a script.

Before you submit a comment trying to prove me wrong about there being no such thing as auction software, give me a chance, here! For the record, yes – there are lots of auction software packages out there. And yes, they all suck. All of them…believe me.

Here’s a short list of several factors you have to consider before buying auction software:

1. Can I modify it? If it is a stand-alone CMS, keep in mind that you’re probably going to be at the mercy of the developer while paying for an eternity of fixes, updates and new features, since it will probably be made of compiled code. No thanks. Also, what if the developer is some guy working in his mother’s basement? Is he going to be around in 5+ years from now, still updating his own software? If not, how will you (or a hired freelancer) modify the code?
2. How’s the support? If the development house can’t write or speak English properly, maintain a corporate website that looks like its from the 21st century, or answer posts in their own forum, you might as well discount them as a valid option and save yourself from getting lots of migraines. Many developers are wonderful in the pre-sales stage and turn gemini after you shell over the money. With that being said, the next step is to…
3. Do your due diligence. Don’t ever buy a script before checking reviews for it online, especially at big sites like Hotscripts. Or, just Google “SoftwareName reviews.” Also, be smart enough to notice when a developer gave his own stuff a 5-star rating. Don’t fall for those kinds of jackasses.
4. Beware of anything with the word “clone” after it. That includes “eBay clone” and everything else. Guess what – one genius who created an “eBay clone” got hammered by eBay Inc., as did all of his customers who bought his script, because the CMS was “confusingly similar” in both appearance and features to that of the eBay.com website. Also, the word “clone” is scammy, kind of like the word “torrent,” “serial” or “crack.”
5. “Penny auction” software is a scammy fad. That’s right, it’s kind of like the newest internet craze, just look at sites like SkoreIt and QuiBids. There already are auction software CMSs capitalizing on them. If you didn’t know, “penny auctions” involve users to purchase “credits” in order to bid on auctions, where they can win things like an iPad for only $32. Yet, they spent like $1,100 on auction credits just to get the stupid $32 iPad. It’s a scammy and dishonest system, and undoubtedly a fad we’ll see coming to an end in the near future once the sheep become aware of how generally bad the system is. Stay away from penny auction software.
6. Appearance is everything. Why on earth would you sacrifice having a good looking site for any reason? It’s not only about the fact that impression equals credibility, but also about branding and creating a good looking site that people will remember. Not a piece of crap that was designed by a web developer (all of you web designers out there just laughed when reading that comment…admit it!) I refuse to run an auction site that looks bad.
7. Always view the demo first. It’s all about the demo, it’s the first thing that you, the potential customer, must see before you consider buying anything. If the demo looks like ass, or if it simply doesn’t work or have any example auctions, then you’re probably going to do what I do – click the back button and go back to the SERP.

Without further adieu, here’s what I’ve found when doing a few hours of research for auction software. Keep in mind, most if not all of these contenders has appeared on Google pages 1 and 2 for short-tail terms like “auction software” and “auction cms.” With that in mind, knowing that the following sites are appearing so high up are an indication that there just truly isn’t much of anything out there.

Auction Software that Looks Like Shit

First impressions are everything – that’s where these products fail.

PHP Pro Bid (phpprobid.com): At around $170, it’s one of the most economical options and certainly the most widely known auction software packages out there. You might be impressed with the list of features, but that immediately dissipates when you see the front end demo, which looks like a widescreen nightmare of framed HTML tables and colored heading bars. There was practically no effort in making this software look good or at least modern in any way.

AuctionFlex (auctionflex.com): Costing $1,100 for a single license, you’d expect this to function and look like solid gold…or at least sterling silver. However, it looks like it was one of the first websites you’ve ever visited, back when you were still wearing flannel.

PHP Auction (phpauction.net): It functions well, but design and usability took a back seat. In fact, there’s absolutely no visual appeal to this CMS when I look at it through the eyes of a customer. They give you two options: $379 for a compiled code version, or $946 for an open-source one. Whoever formulated this pricing structure needs to attend Marketing 101.

xcAuction (xcauction.com): Right off the bat, I have a problem with it because it’s ASP. Sorry, I just hate ASP. With that aside, the software design itself looks like it was thrown together in about ten minutes with Dreamweaver. It’s yours for $800.

Auction Software Developers Whose Websites Suck

Sorry if this comes off as immature, but I can’t consider the services of a company who can’t manage a normal looking business website.

Sold II (soldii.com): God almighty, this is the worst website I’ve seen in the past 15 years. Not only does it look worse than some Angelfire personal website from 1995, but it has incomplete sentences and enigmatic navigation. I would be in a state of absolute shock if they even sell one license of their software per year. One fatal flaw: you have to contact a salesman for a software demo — there isn’t even a live demo on the site. What is this, 1996? *looks at website again* – ahh…yes, it is.

Beyond Solutions (beyondsolutions.com): You’re greeted with one of the worst fads of the internet age, which should be burning in hell: the “walk on” video-graphed salesman who starts talking when the site loads. If you can get past that atrocity, as well as the fact that the site template is misaligned, you’ll want to note that the auction software itself is only viewable if you contact a salesman. Good luck with that tactic in the current day. I shake my head at companies like this who are missing so many opportunities because they are acting archaically. From the looks of the screenshots in the header, this is one of the worst looking auction CMS designs I’ve ever seen.

AJ Auction Pro (ajauctionpro.com): I’m going to ignore the fact that this site has horribly written sales copy and many flaws in English grammar, and skip ahead to the actual demo. Wait…what demo? All demos point to dead pages. Fail! From the look of the thumbnail screenshots and the list of features, it appears to actually be a valid package to consider, but if the business owner can’t run a demo page, then I have lost faith in them.

Auctionawy (mewsoft.com): Aside from the terrible product name, the entire site is unpleasant to use and look at. The $175 software itself looks truly dreadful and is completely unusable in a professional setting, unless the look-and-feel is entirely redone from the ground up.

The “I Guess I Have No Choice, So I Might As Well Consider This” Choices

When everything is horrible, you have to pick the best of two evils. Well, here’s what has some promise, but still isn’t worth taking your credit card out for:

Auctionworx (rainworx.com): This is promising, but it’s ASP, which means you can forget about tweaking it. It has a lot of features, but the “look” looks like there was little effort into making it appear pretty in any way. Ironically enough, it’s the least ugly of all other standalone software packages I’ve researched.

ikiAuctions (ikiauctions.com): This software is *almost* there. Lots of great features, a low price of $120, PHP/SQL, and lots of modern features like Google Maps. You may agree, however, that it looks a lot like a circa-2004 link-heavy business directory site. Regardless, chalk this one up as one of the “lesser evils.”

PremiumPress (premiumpress.com): This add-on to WordPress will excite any WordPress fanatic looking to start an auction site. But, don’t get ahead of yourself: the design leaves much to be desired, and there is no way to implement “percentage of final selling price” rule sets, which are so crucial to any auction site webmaster. However, it’s one of the better auction site options, for lack of a better term.

Sitemile (sitemile.com): Yet another package that turns WordPress into an auction site. This one has a superior design to its competitor, PremiumPress, and runs off of a “credit” system that allows you to act as an actual escrow site. In fact, Sitemile’s theme has the best “look and feel” I’ve seen, although you’ll probably want to commission some custom work to make it a truly professional system. Their support is very quick to answer your questions, and does offer freelancing.

What Else Is Available?

I didn’t even bother listing anything that was being marketed as an “eBay clone,” as they’re all either ripoffs or potentially illegal scripts that have infringed on eBay’s site design and trademarks, or have no support, or are sold by someone who is a scam artist.

If none of the choices above are valid, your only option is to hire a freelancer. That topic in itself would require a whole new blog post. Freelancers are not cheap, especially ones you can actually communicate with, or don’t have attitude problems or throw temper tantrums. Also, note that most freelancers who custom develop websites are more than likely terrible web designers, and/or will develop a website that will require you to keep coming back to them for custom fixes and new features, all of which will carry steep hourly rates.

If you truly need a professional auction website for a serious business you’re about to start, the only option is to hire a reputable development team who will recommend AND implement a corporate-caliber CMS, and the total bill between the cost of CMS + labor is going to cost you in the tens of thousands. Unfortunately, it is the most valid route, yet, the impossible one for any at-home entrepreneur who isn’t making six figures.

Why Can’t You Have It All With Today’s Auction Software?

Simply put, web developers make terrible web designers. Every option I’ve researched above will prove this point. Developers and designers both use opposite sides of their brain. They can’t coexist without each other, which is why development firms exist and have both sets of professionals working together.

Also, many of these auction software developers have obviously created software without ever bothering to create a BRD first, and it shows. Nothing about today’s auction software screams “professional.” Either it works great and looks like crap, or it works terribly and looks like crap. Or, it doesn’t have the vital features one would need for a serious auction site.

So, if you’re a developer and can create auction software that can:

• …allow for multiple pricing tiers (% of final selling price based on dollar amount tiers, buy-it-now pricing, other perks as seen on sites like eBay),
• …be effective in terms of marketing, so that the home page can be adorned with seasonal or other changing banners and box ads,
• …actually look beautiful and web 2.0-ish with modern features including geo-targeting and geo-search
• …be integrated with uber-popular platforms like WordPress
• …be able to conduct yourself like an actual business person and offer real support

…then, you’ve got one hell of a niche with a lot of poor competition that you can easily chew up. Just be sure to contact me when you’re done, so that I can buy a license :)

You may have heard chatter about states like North Carolina and Rhode Island, with something about affiliate programs like Amazon pulling out of those states entirely. It’s true, and we should all feel sorry for anyone living in those states who were doing affiliate marketing because their lives were ruined. This is right about the time where you start fearing for yourself.

It’s not over – about 17 more states are at risk to suffer the same fate.

What’s happening here is the nexus law – a new level of government evil bestowed upon one of the most taxed and financially exploited citizens in the free world: American citizens. If the astronomical federal tax, cost of housing, living, health care and lack of pension or retirement savings weren’t bad enough, you now have to fear losing your job as a full-time affiliate marketer with no possibility of it ever coming back, just because you happened to be living in the wrong state.

Nexus, as it applies to affiliate marketing, is an attempt to pass a law so that affiliate programs (Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, Commission Junction publishers et. al.) will be forced to segregate all state-specific transactions sold through an affiliate marketer (that’s you) within that state. They will then be taxed as if they physically reside in the state as a business, even if they don’t. As a result, these affiliate programs themselves are not willing to comply, so they pull out of the state entirely and ban all affiliate marketers who reside in it. It doesn’t matter if you’re making $15,000/month via Amazon, or $50/month off of it. You’re banned. Forever. Unless you physically move yourself and your family out of state and move your LLC along with you. Or, if the state government grows a brain and realizes how damaging it was to put the law in place, and repeals it (fat chance).

Why is this even being considered by any state government? Well, for two reasons: 1) typical government greed, and 2) ignorance. The rationale behind passing the law comes forth when a politician, who doesn’t even know how to turn a computer on, will propose affiliate nexus tax. The immediate thought is “that will automatically provide $XX million in ongoing revenue per month for the state.” However, since these legislators don’t even know what affiliate marketing is, they don’t realize that it also means the immediate beheading of X,XXX – XX,XXX small businesses who were relying on affiliate revenue as a full-time income. It means more businesses closing up, more unemployment paid, and more people leaving the state and becoming the citizen of another state, bringing THAT state more revenue and decreasing their former state’s revenue.

The nexus law works successfully if affiliate programs bow down to it. Some affiliate programs simply complied and didn’t cancel their relationship with the state. However, Amazon doesn’t appear to have that track record. In fact, nexus just passed in New York, making them the third nexus state. Amazon didn’t pull out, but took the state government to court. Why? Because it’s unconstitutional. Maybe they should go after RI and NC while they’re at it.

What happens if Amazon loses? They’ll probably pull out of NY. And wow, what a loss it would be to not do business in that state. Not as much of a loss as the thousands of affiliate marketers who would immediately go out of business, and leave the state or join the already overwhelmed unemployment line.

Colorado passed the nexus law in March 2010, making them the 4th state. Illinois is next up on the cutting block, and the nexus law is under heavy consideration there. There was some good news when California thankfully decided not to pass the nexus law.

What can you do, as an affiliate marketer? Use your skills in social networking – start a Facebook Page for your state, garnering followers who oppose the nexus law. Create a petition. Send it to your state representatives. Educate the governor. Write to President Obama – after all, his latest State of the Union Address was all about putting an end to governmental bullying of small businesses. This should be at the very top of his list.

If your state has already enacted a nexus tax, the best you can do is to get a list of all affiliate programs in your state who comply with the state law, and join their affiliate program.

Or, move to another state.

It all started with a big change in the layout of Google SERPs last week. The 7-pack got pulled apart with the actual map appearing on the right-hand column, which “follows” you as you scroll down, covering up AdWords ads as it moves along. “Pinpoints,” however, still remain where they were in the body area. That was just a part of the new layout, which some are calling the “O-Pack.”

Big directories now get serious Google real estate (rather, far more than they had in the past): just a simple search for service-based keywords is pulling up CitySearch, YellowPages, Super Pages and others (all of which I am a total hater of due to their inaccurate and sometimes very outdated listings…and I have utilized their enterprise services before with regret). The world needs more YellowPages clones, after all (sarcasm).

Generic keyword SERPs have taken on the most dramatic change: Google seems to like to offer top name-brands all the way at the top. Search for “computers” and you’ll see that Dell, Gateway, HP and Apple have a prime top position call-out, followed by Google-suggested stores like BestBuy, NewEgg and Tiger Direct.

Local searches show a newfound favoritism for Google Place Pages. Go ahead – search for a service-based keyword and put your ZIP code or local town after it, and you will most likely see local business listings on the map represented with thumbnail images that were pulled from the Place Page.

While some of these things are helpful for users, one thing is obvious – you have to scroll way below the fold, in most cases, to see organic results. And, I’m not talking about the obligatory Wikipedia page and Yelp/MerchantCircle/Amazon links. Lower organic results plus enhanced favoritism toward big directories and Google Place pages for big-name local businesses mean much less visibility for the little guy, but I didn’t have to tell you that.

Then, there were talks about site-specific algorithmic changes. That means individual sites get ranked for certain measures that might not affect other sites. Some started to debate the point in even bothering to follow Google guidelines and best practices anymore, with newfound feelings of “damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”

Beyond the SERP fiasco (my opinion), there’s the whole issue of Google Keyword Tool showing blatantly wrong and ridiculous results that some apparently believe are part of a Google-led conspiracy to drive more AdWords profits toward alternate keyword terms. While I recently published an article about Google Keyword Tool’s inaccuracies, I’m not the only one concerned about it as seen in this SEO Book article. Here’s another theory that Google nudges the algorithm for the holiday season. Yikes.

On October 31^st, Search Engine Land spoke of yet another high-level drop out in Google Inc., and the increasing migration of high value employees leaving the company and pursuing other avenues. Then, there were the failed projects. Remember Google Wave?

The blend of paranoia and frustration lead some to doubt the future of the SEO industry as a whole. Is Google making SEO obsolete?  If they were, I’d look at it rationally and hope that the change would bring forth more honesty and helpfulness in SERPs, for the good of an internet that favors sites that give value. You know, since we were forced to believe content is king, whereas backlinks always were. Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever spent more time finding what I was really looking for on Google. These days, I frequently hit page 2+ on a SERP, and still don’t find a result of value.

How much further is this going to go? I’m starting to feel the urge to put more emphasis on my Yahoo and Bing strategy. Or, perhaps, start putting the same emphasis I’ve always placed on Google toward Facebook.

It’s hard to even say what’s happening at Google – many of us in internet marketing have been disappointed with clutter: AdWords “yellowbox” ads (which are now purple), 7-packs and other things that keep pushing the real results further down the page (not to mention, garbage MFA and spun-content sites hitting page 1, and the occasional competitor still ranking high for running a link farm), but it looks like one of those “I must accept the things that I cannot change” scenarios.

While Google will do as it pleases with the way it behaves, it’s a factor of “survival of the fittest” for the rest of us trying to maintain that at-home income with our helpful content and legitimate SEO practices.

The starting point to any work-at-home career is to decide how you want to sell your desired product. There’s only a small handful of options available, but it is one tough decision to make. Most start off in affiliate marketing, but the frustration of low profit margins make most people aspire for more. On that note, here’s a comparison of the three different ways you can sell things online:

Affiliate Marketing

In affiliate marketing, you simply join an affiliate program and can place ‘loaded’ links or banners, which contain your account number pre-coded into them, within your website or web page. When someone clicks these links, a cookie drops on their system and you get commission for everything purchased by that user within a time frame that’s specified by the affiliate program. You’ll never have to see or store anything as an affiliate marketer: inventory, shipping, re-stocking and everything else (including customer service) is managed solely by the affiliate program, not by you.

Pros to Affiliate Marketing

It’s the ultimate money-making model for introverts. You’ll never have to deal with customers, or even the representative at service you’re promoting. The obvious strong point is that you won’t have to package or ship anything out, ever, which is known as one of the biggest pains (and overhead costs) for any home business.

Cons to Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing almost always has the most slim profit margin. It really depends on the service you’re with – some are generous and offer 8%+ per item sold, while others will pay you candy money per product sold. It can be extremely frustrating to any internet marketer and SEO’er who has achieved top ranks only to make pittance. Another frustration with affiliate programs is that they tend to not last forever: there will be many times in your affiliate marketing career where your glorious affiliate program will decide to change their domain name or business model, and force you to edit all of your affiliate links by the end of the month, or be cut off from earnings. Absolutely atrocious when you’ve got hundreds of links out there, spread out over many old websites and pages.

Dropshipping

In dropshipping, you form a relationship with a supplier (also known as a wholesaler, sometimes) who receives products direct from a manufacturer. They store these products at their own warehouse or storeroom. Instead of getting affiliate loaded links like you would in an affiliate program, you will be creating a true eCommerce website with a shopping cart system. Customers purchase products on your site using a credit card or other method (you’ll need an Authorize.net account to accept credit cards online), and then it’s up to you to “buy” those products from the dropship supplier and have them shipped to the customers every day. You’ll be buying products at wholesale price (minus a dropshipping fee) and you’re free to mark up the price as you see fit. In the end, you earn the amount left over after the wholesale cost and dropshipping fee.

Pros to Dropshipping

The biggest upside to dropshipping is that you won’t have to package or ship the product, so you’ll be saving on a lot of time…not to mention, the cost of expensive packaging materials.

Cons to Dropshipping

Here’s where it gets a little rougher in comparison to affiliate marketing: in dropshipping, you have the responsibility of manually fulfilling orders on a regular basis, and your concern is for your customers to get their product on time, all the time. If your dropship supplier needs a fire lit under their ass, it’s your responsibility to do it. Anything they do wrong will make you look bad as an eCommerce site webmaster. Many people complain about the profit margin after the dropshipping fee, but some swear by the possibilities of dropshipping as a valid at-home business structure. Lastly, you also have to do customer service when a product didn’t arrive, or arrived late. You’ll take 100% of the heat for it. As for customer service about the product itself – that’s the dropship supplier’s responsibility.

Wholesale

Lastly, wholesale is the final business model, and it’s a close relative of the dropshipping. With wholesale, you actually purchase items in bulk with your own savings. The cost of these products will be at wholesale price. From there, you’ll be setting a retail price as you see fit, and will have to create an eCommerce site with a shopping cart feature, just as you would with dropshipping. People still buy products on your site with a credit card or other payment term, but instead of having to fulfill the orders with a supplier, you’ll have to manually do it yourself by getting each item out of your own inventory storage, package, and ship each one to each customer. The responsibility of customer service is up to you in regard to shipping issues, but not product issues (those will still be the supplier’s responsibility).

Pros to Wholesale

There’s a method to all of the hard work involved with wholesale – you simply will make the most money per item sold with this business model. There’s no markup, no middleman – nothing beyond the wholesale cost of the products you’re buying in bulk.

Cons to Wholesale

Simply put, it’s a lot of grunt work and it has some significant requirements: Having a place in your house to store a lot of items. Daily order fulfillment at home. Constantly buying packaging material. Doing customer service. Wholesale is more livable if you’re not doing it by yourself for these reasons combined. Two or more are recommended.

There’s a breakdown of the three eCommerce models. In all of my extensive research, I’ve actually found dropshipping to be the least desirable in terms of the feedback I’ve heard (although, there are many who beg to differ) and wholesale being the obvious winner.

One thing can be said about any kind of eCom: each one has its set of hardcore fans, and hardcore haters. Affiliate marketers will take affiliate marketing to the grave. Wholesalers were born to do what they do, and they don’t find it tedious, as it’s a better trade-off than working as a corporate slave in a dead-end office job.

Regardless of which one you choose, make sure it’s something you can hack. Most people start off with affiliate marketing, and either stick with it or grow out of it. That’s always the best way to begin!

Here are some facts about companies (especially small to mid-size companies): there’s usually nobody in the office who knows a damn thing about the brand protection elements of internet marketing.  These days, you’ll probably find a graphic designer who does minor website graphics here and there, and maybe an SEM guy who does AdWords, but nobody who really knows what the hell they’re talking about in regard to advanced brand integrity, domaining or anything of that nature.

Good cybersquatters know this. I’m also convinced at this point in time that the best cybersquatters on earth do not exist in the United States, but elsewhere. You’d be a fool to cybersquat in the US, it’s probably the most difficult country to do it and get away with it.

Corporate Weaknesses that Cybersquatters Exploit

Here are two of the biggest vulnerabilities I’ve seen in my career in small to mid-size businesses, in regard to protecting the brand name (more specifically, domain names) online:

1. Nobody’s educated about cybersquatting: That’s right, upper management usually doesn’t understand the point of owning the .com of your brand name. They only thought about the actual company name. They don’t know that cybersquatters go for misspellings, plural versions and other variants to capitalize on type-in traffic. Oh, and they don’t know what type-in traffic means, either. They know so little about the world of cybersquatting that they wouldn’t even know to say “let’s hire a guy who knows about this stuff.”
2. Nobody’s willing to spend thousands to sue someone over a cybersquatting case: What I’m  about to say is so true — companies tend to send cease and desist letters as empty threats that will never be acted upon. I’ve heard corporate counsel say “we’ll send the letter, but I’m not spending $15k to take someone to court over a domain name.” I’ve heard it MANY times, actually. To a bigger extreme, most small-mid size companies don’t own an international trademark and won’t even touch an international cybersquatting case with a ten foot pole.

With that being said, the two things cybersquatters have going for them are 1) misinformation, and 2) the cost and time involved in the court process, which is enough to scare most people away. In essence, cybersquatters are like great Texas Hold ‘Em players – the call the bluff of any cease & desist that comes their way. The occasional squatter sitting in his mother’s basement will cave in to a C&D, but many won’t fall for it.

The best thing any ‘web guru’ (God, I hate that term) working for a company can do is to spend a good day or so typing in domains based on their company’s name, brand names and variants, and buy all of the major .com versions right away so that they’re in the company’s possession. Don’t forget the “CompanyNameSucks.com” version, too.  If your company runs franchises, be sure to start working on an internet policy that restricts franchisees from doing certain things (like registering domains without your approval). If you don’t take these actions, a cybersquatter will.

Carelessness in Domaining Can Hurt

The worst case scenario I’ve ever seen was for a multi-national, $600 million company who didn’t even own the .net domain name to their own one-word company name. It was registered in the earlier half of the 2000’s by a cybersquatter in South Korea, who is still running a parked page on it. Given that the .com site was pulling in about 7,500 uniques per day and is a popular international brand name, there’s no doubt the .net was getting some healthy type-ins.

Here are all of the aforementioned elements coming into play that I mentioned before: 1) nobody knew/cared to do anything about it in time, 2) nobody is willing to pursue this in court, 3) it’s international, so, the Korean legal team would have to go after it, and nobody is even willing to reach out to them and request this.

Cybersquatter 1, Big Corporation 0.

I could rattle off a whole bunch of other scenarios I’ve seen: plural domains, common exact-word misspelling .com’s, .ca’s, etc. – running on parked pages, with or without a “this domain is for sale” link at the top…all of which were careless, stupid and easily avoidable issues, even in the early 2000s. However, the cybersquatters who are still benefiting to this moment are having a field day.

Many other huge corporations still sit back oblivious to their cybersquatted trademarked names, benefiting someone else’s monthly payroll. Which companies are on the ball, and which aren’t? Maybe Rolex is up on these shenanigans, but how about Invicta? Maybe John Deere knows about cybersquatting, but what about Toro?  Cybersquatters do their due diligence, even if these companies don’t.

This is why cybersquatting is still alive. Smart squatters don’t go after god-like organizations like Microsoft, Dell, or Disney; they’re going after the ones who probably have an internal weakness, or no system in place that has enough of a backbone to do anything about it. Just like the way hackers find a weakness to exploit, so do cybersquatters.  With that being said – to be a good cybersquatter, you have to be a good risk-taker. You’d have to know which companies would probably never pursue you in court. You’d be the kind of person who would let a 30 day term on a C&D letter go by, and wait for the next move (if any).

The argument for “we”

If you’re going the we/our route, there’s no doubt that you’ll accomplish two things: you’ll mask the world from knowing that you’re a company of one, for starters. When capturing a potential client’s attention, what do you think would stand out more – a team that would work on their project, or some guy working out of his studio apartment at 11:00 PM? Here, it’s all about credibility.

For instance, if a web developer has a site for their services and they’re using the word “we,” it lets me know that my job will be handled by one of a few people who work together, meaning that it will get done in a reasonable amount of time. Also, the small business was established enough to the point where it has grown. Obviously, they’ve gone places.

The argument for “I”

Borrowing from that last point, it all comes down to one thing: there IS no team. It’s just you. Hopefully, you can handle the workload from a customer public that’s assuming you have several people in your organization. Otherwise, you’ll have a lot of explaining to do when they ask for turnaround time.

The good part about referring to yourself on your small business site is the personal touch that your customers will get. Perhaps you’ve got a style that people will be interested in. Or, you’ve branded yourself and have an online presence, and your audience would know that you’re BS’ing them if you referred to yourself as a “we.”

When you refer to yourself as “I,” you’re getting all of the credit: whether it be good or bad. Some might argue, “well, I’m the business owner – I should get the credit anyway.” Perhaps. But, when you’re single-handedly doing all of the work, it makes a bigger impression in terms of your capabilities in doing the work and serving the customer at the same time. For certain freelancers, especially graphic designers, it’s a must to prove yourself in this way.

I rarely ever see anyone fill their body copy with “I.” The only time I ever do is on web developer or designer sites who have created their own unique plug-in, design template or script. These sites also typically have a blog on them, justifying the need to be honest and tell the public, “I own this project and nobody else helps me.” Note that these people have more pressure on them, as they are directly ridiculed when patches or updates are far and between, and the public sees the project as stale or dying.

To conclude the “I” vs. “we” argument, what you use is entirely up to you and it depends on what you’re doing. If your line of business needs the credibility of a “team,” or if you’ll rarely ever have to provide customer service or have a blaring online presence, refer yourself as “we.” If you’re branding yourself as an individual, trying to prove your own skills, or want to give a personal touch – use “I.”

Regardless if you have a false online sense of multiple personality disorder, it always comes down to the end result you provide for your customers, and how you look after the job is done.

As an LLC of one person, I wanted to simply use TurboTax or H&R Block to get my taxes done on my own. I wound up going with H&R Block Small Business, which wound up being the wrong choice. The Small Business edition is only for LLCs or other entities with more than one person working under them, not for 1-person LLCs (which are taxed similarly to sole proprietorships). Oops, what a waste of an extra $20.

The Rape of Small Business Owners

H&R Block was relatively easy to use. Since I own no property, have no kids and no gambling debt, I breezed through the process relatively quickly. On the upper right hand corner of your screen, your debt to the national and state government is calculated with each page you complete. Finally, once reporting my earnings, I noticed that I nearly owed the government(s) 5-figures. It’s a complete outrage.

It seems like 50% of what you make is taken away. How on earth is a start-up supposed to survive, considering that the “president & CEO” IS the company? How do start-up businesses afford to get an office? Does the government truly expect you to sacrifice (risk) a major part of your personal savings to keep your business going on a regular basis? I think it’s a crime, especially as an affiliate marketer. No matter what kind of affiliate marketer you are, 5-figures torn from your clutches is completely devastating.

Don’t Be Shy to Claim Away!

This April, I’ve learned the value of claiming business expenses, which shaved off a good $4,000 from that final figure. All it really does is alleviate the shock and awe of seeing a horrific number like that – in actuality, it’s money you never made,  but put toward things you needed to buy. Either way, money that doesn’t wind up in your pocket at the end of the day. In my case, it’s in GoDaddy’s pockets, as I own and maintain over 430 domain names which have become rather costly.

I suppose I can see why many start-ups and affiliate marketers either give up in complete frustration, or look toward alternate income methods. Affiliate marketing and multiple website maintenance is hard work [mostly because of stupid link building obligations] and it never ends.

This year, I’m putting a serious effort toward dropshipping. Either that, or I might go with my idea of joining tons of small affiliate programs and stopping them once they reach just under $600 so that I don’t have to report them :)