If you’re involved in any way with Internet marketing then you probably get several emails from so-called “Internet marketing gurus” in you in-box everyday promising their latest e-book is the next best thing since sliced bread.

Indeed, these e-mails can be so incredibly annoying that I almost always just hit the delete button. I have purchased these products a few times and have been burnt quite often.

A lot of times there’s been some sort of catch that the guru did not mention in his or her pre-sale video or free ebook. These kinds of catches can require you to spend more money. Or, the guru’s strategies flat out don’t work.

While we’ve all become a bit jaded and are tired of these people flooding our in-boxes with the intention of lining their own pockets I do think there are times when it’s actually wise to purchase their products and listen to what they have to say.

Here’s the thing: Some people out there simply offer good advice. Even if you don’t like their personalities or they come off as greedy or arrogant for some reason whatever advice they give seems to work. These are specifically the kind of people to keep an eye on as they can help you propel your affiliate marketing career to the next level.

Let me give you an example. The other day I got an e-mail from an Internet marketing guru about his latest PPC (AdWords) course. Just before I deleted his e-mail I realized that he was promoting his own product (he often pushes other peoples’ stuff). Given I know he’s a smart guy and he’s been the mentor or my current mentor I went ahead and purchased his course.

While my initial campaign has not produced the results I expected only a few hours after the launch (the guru promised 100′s of visitors and that my server would ‘explode’) I will NOT write him off as a liar and unsubscribe from his e-mail list. What I’ll do is go ahead and launch another campaign based on the methods outlined in his e-book.

Indeed, while I’m cautious about buying peoples’ courses I do make decisions based on trust and peoples’ reputations as these decisions have been profitable decisions for me in the past.

I have been working online from home since mid-2008. Along the way I have had many successes and also many failures. When I first started out I had nobody to teach or guide me. I made one mistake after the other. Fortunately, things have indeed started looking up for me. I have learned many lessons the hard way. Here I’ve summarized the five biggest mistakes you can make in affiliate marketing here. I write them here for your benefit and hope you can move forward with you online campaigns and avoid these pitfalls I’ve encountered.

1. Not Finishing Projects

When you’re new to affiliate marketing every online every niche you look into looks extremely appealing. You start to make your website with utmost enthusiasm. But, at a certain point you see that you’re not making the money you expected or none at all.

Rather than seeing your project through to the end you get seduced by another potential niche and give up your original project that was supposed to make you the big bucks. Jumping from project to project without seeing them to completion can be extremely disastrous and waste you lots of time and money.

2. Not Following Up With Winning Niches

This is one I discovered in the very beginning of my affiliate marketing career and cannot emphasize enough. Out of all the sites you launch most will indeed be failures. Unfortunately, this is the grim reality of a numbers game called Internet marketing. Fortunately,  as time passes your successes should outweigh your failures.

Here’s the thing though: When you notice that one of your sites or niches is working then you have to TAKE ACTION and do more of what’s working for you! So, if you discover a certain niche is making you money you really need to launch more campaigns in that niche. Believe me, if you take action on your successes you’ll end up with much more money in the bank in the long run.

3. Make Sites That Are Thin In Content

This is a big one. If you look at Google’s Webmaster Central you’ll see that they explicitly say they don’t favor site that are thin in content. Basically, you cannot expect to publish sites that just have a few lines of text. It simply won’t work. Your site will get booted off the search engine faster than you can spell affiliate marketing. For any product or service that you’re promoting I’d recommend at least 500 words of original content on your site’s homepage.

4. Spend Too Much On Internet Marketing Products

This is another big one. In any business it’s of utmost importance to spend less than we’re earnings. This is a basic accounting principle and most of us overlook it. In order to come out as a winner in online marketing it’s of utmost importance to have more money coming in than going out. This means being conservative in spending on software programs, eBooks and domain names.

5. Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Courses Good Teachers

If you’re just starting out then you’ll have a TON of stuff to learn including WordPress, keyword/niche research, SEO, linking strategies etc. All this new knowledge can be quite overwhelming. Personally, I would have saved myself tons of time and money had I purchased a decent Internet marketing course and followed a good teacher/mentor earlier on in my online marketing career. Unfortunately, I spent one full year making mistakes while I was avoiding buying an online marketing course. Now, I can proudly say I’ve had a huge improvement in my online earnings because I found a really good affiliate marketing course.

I hope these suggestions have helped you and wish you all the very best of luck in your affiliate marketing career!

When you are just starting out making money online in affiliate marketing you’ll be faced with a ton of choices. At a certain point your mind can go into information over-load because there are just so many affiliate programs, ebooks and software packages out there that all promise to make you thousands of dollars.

If you’re just getting started then one of your best options is to apply to the eBay Partner Network, also called EPN. Besides Amazon, eBay is the No. 1 onlien store in the world and and has an excellent affiliate program. What this means is that when you send traffic to eBay’s site, they’ll pay you a commission for each visitor that you send them.

When researching how to make websites you’ll find that there are many options. While some people like to use various site builder programs that webhosts offer, I personally prefer to build all of my sites using WordPress. WordPress is a free content management program that was originally intended for building blogs. However, it’s extremely easy to use and lends itself wonderfully to people who don’t have a background with website HTLM coding skills.

Basically, WordPress works with themes (more commonly called templates) and plugins, which are pages of code of varying lenght that gives your websites different functionalities.

Back to the eBay Partner Network. Once your application has been accepted it’ll be time to start thinking about building your first eBay affiliate site. What’s great about eBay’s affiliate program is that you can chose any product on their website. So, with hundreds of thousands of different products on both eBay and eBay Motors you’ll have no problem finding a good niche market that can make you lots of money.

One issue you’ll face is how to link to eBay’s website. One great tool that I’ve used to make thousands of dollars on the eBay Partner Network is a plugin called Phpbay Pro. Phpbay Pro is a software script speficially designed for making niche stores that link to eBay. The way it works is you put in a short line of code in your site and you can pull in images and links for literally any item on eBay.

What’s great about Phpbay pro is that you can use it on any WordPress site. This means that you can use it with any WordPress theme, allowing for you to have an extremely unique looking site. This is in contrast to Build a Niche Store (BANS), the other eBay niche store builder that only allows for the building of sites on very similar looking templates.

The key advantages are that you can use the script on an unlimited number of stores and it always pulls in the most relavent products via an RSS feed. On your page you can display as many items as you’d like and also include the items’ price and current number of bids. Phpbay is extremely easy to install and comes with a useful how-to PFD manual. Furthmore, all customers get access to the PHpbay forum where you can chat with other customers, get your questions answered and read helpful posts on improving your online earnings.

Over the past two years Phpbay pro has been one of the only products for making money online which I have continued to use since I purchased it. In fact, I recently just updated my sites and put in a ton of Phpbay eBay links and have seen an dramatic improvement in my daily online income.

Click to learn more about Phpbay eBay affiliate software.