Are you currently seeking employment? Looking for a new profession?
Considering a career change? Then a job in the field of Search Engine
Marketing should be at the top of your list. Here are 11 reasons why:

1) The Search Industry is HOT

The first dot-com bubble may have burst 6 years ago, but the current bubble
is getting bigger and stronger every day. One of the main reasons for
the current dot-com boom is the skyrocketing growth of the search
engine industry. No longer the territory of geekdom, search has
exploded into the mainstream over the past few years and businesses are
falling over themselves to get seen by online searchers. And they’ll
pay big bucks to search engines for the privilege.

Have you noticed that Google shares recently hit USD 500 EACH? It’s not a
coincidence. Search giants like Google, Yahoo and AOL can’t fail to
make money because everybody wants a bit of the search action. There’s
no denying, search is HOT, HOT, HOT.

2) It’s Considered one of Four Jobs on the Cutting Edge

According to a recent article on MSN Careers, the position of  Search Engine Optimizer is considered one of four jobs on the cutting edge right now. Who gave it this title?
A representative from the world’s largest specialized recruitment firm
- Robert Half International Inc.

Search Engine Optimization is considered a sub-set of Search Engine Marketing.
If you’re unsure what a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO) does, below is a
definition provided by MSN Careers:

“Search engine optimizers (SEOs) increase a firm’s Web site traffic by
improving its search-engine page rankings. This is an especially
important task in today’s Internet-driven world, where many customers
first learn of an organization and its products or services through the
Web. Because of a shortage of experts in this relatively new area, many
top SEOs receive multiple job offers. SEOs typically supplement their
knowledge of how various search engines operate and determine page
rankings with strong marketing skills, as well as the ability to
communicate effectively and program using HTML.”

Wikipedia also defines Search Engine Optimizers here.

3) The Pay is Fantastic

A job in the search industry can be unbelievably lucrative. As noted recently by Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide, “There are quite literally more jobs than there are skilled marketers and salaries can skyrocket to almost embarrassing levels.”

Have
you seen the type of salaries that search engine marketing and search
engine optimization consultants are currently commanding in the US?
Clearly, the search industry is making some people rich. Here are some
typical salaries in USD:

Entry level SEO/SEM position = $30-45K

Three to five years experience / online account managers = $50-75K

Five + years / organic SEO specialists = $75-90K

Senior management level = $70-120K

SEM Director = $95-150K

VP Level = $100-315K

Additional Salary links:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=10543

4) You Don’t Need a College Degree

Because
the search industry is relatively young, there are only a handful of
online courses and certifications offered in the field of Search Engine
Marketing with Search Engine College being one such training provider.

Most search engine marketing practitioners are self-taught, learning the
trade by experimenting with their own sites, researching trends,
attending conferences and participating in discussion forums and so
employers don’t generally require SEO / SEM certification or a tertiary
qualification as a pre-requisite for a position in the industry.

However,candidates who hold a marketing degree or specific industry
certification in Search Engine Marketing may well have an edge over
their fellow applicants when it comes to interview selection.

5) You Can Learn it all Online

Everything you need to know to become a Search Engine Marketer, you can learn
online. All the information is out there, you just have to find it. To
become an expert in SEO / SEM, you need to do research, research and
more research. Read everything you can get your hands on relating to
search on a daily basis, including articles, forums, ebooks, blogs and
newsfeeds. Then you need to put this knowledge into practice by
experimenting with your own sites, or finding guinea pig sites to
practice on such as those of friends, family or charity sites until you
find the methods that give you the best results. Programming knowledge
is not a pre-requisite for SEO / SEM jobs, but it does help to learn
basic HTML. There are plenty of free HTML tutorials online.

If you don’t fancy years of research or are in a hurry to jump-start your
career in search, consider taking an online Certification course in one
of the many Search Engine Marketing disciplines such as the Certification Pathways provided by Search Engine College. These type of courses are usually
tutor-led and designed to fast-track your training and ensure you gain
the right type of skills to make you immediately employable within the
search industry.

6) You Can Be Your Own Boss

Because most of the work you’ll be doing is online, Search Engine Optimizers
and Search Engine Marketers often have the freedom of choice to work
for an employer, work from home and/or freelance. Many SEO / SEM
freelancers end up hiring workers and starting their own company due to
the massive demand. This gives search engine marketing experts the work
from home lifestyle that others can only dream of.

7) Search Marketing Has the WOW Factor

Once they know what they’re doing, it’s very easy for a Search Engine
Marketer to wow their clients. The difference that a successful SEO or
PPC campaign can make to a client’s bottom line is substantial. I’ve
seen online conversion rates for a client zoom from 1% to a massive 5%
after just two small tweaks to their web site. And although rankings
are not as important as actual conversions, clients still get very
excited to see their site listed in the top 10 search results for
certain keywords. It’s the WOW factor in action.

The Demand is Strong and Growing

As mentioned in relation to search engine salaries, there are literally
many more jobs than there are skilled marketers to fill them. This
extreme demand means Search Engine Marketers can pick and choose their
jobs and/or clients. The more skilled marketers are head-hunted
regularly. For Search Engine Optimization firms, there are more than
enough clients to go around and rarely a need to advertise for new
business. That’s why you often find SEOs turning away clients or
recommending their competitors during extremely busy periods.

Experts in select specialties such as Pay Per Click Advertising (a sub-set of
Search Engine Marketing) are currently enjoying even higher demand than
usual, as advertisers out-bid each other to have their site shown for
popular keyword searches on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Another indicator
of high demand is the sheer number of search-related job postings seen
on employment sites such as those listed here.

9) The Industry is Hip and Groovy

There’s something very trendy about people in search that I can’t quite put my
finger on. There’s a constant buzz around them. If you’ve ever been to
a search engine conference or to Google’s headquarters you’ll know what
I mean. Maybe it’s the fact that they’ve come from so many different
professions. Or that the age range of search marketers varies from
teens to Baby Boomers. Or their whacky dress sense. Maybe it’s the
smell of money and happiness that they give off. Maybe it’s the fact
that they are constantly in the media. I don’t know. All I know is that
it’s no longer uncool to be a geek. In fact it’s downright hip to be
square.

10) The Skills Are Portable and Global

Skills in search engine marketing are portable and global. You don’t need to
be at a desk, in an office or on the phone all day. You don’t even need
to meet your clients. Of all my clients, I’ve probably only met 20
percent of them and spoken to half of them on the phone or via chat.
You can be on vacation for six months out of the year in various
locations and still conduct business. You literally only need a
computer and an Internet connection. The Internet is the universal
equalizer. You can service clients in any country in the world, in many
different languages. You can compete with one man operations and
Fortune 500 companies on the same level playing field.  The flexibility
of the search industry is a huge advantage over other career options.
Have laptop, will travel!

11) Job Satisfaction is High

Search is a fascinating industry. With all the hype, daily gossip, corporate
take-overs, start-ups and geek toys, I can guarantee that you won’t get
bored. This combined with the flexible work hours, low start-up costs,
ability to be your own boss and the excellent income keeps job
satisfaction high for Search Engine Marketers. So what are you waiting
for? Go get a job in search!

Okay, so here is the situation. There affiliate marketers who make bank. Big money. But this post is not about them. This is about why a lot of affiliate marketers suck. See where you fall.

Affiliate Marketing Issues

I told you in the last post that if you email me too much with your offers, I will unsubscribe. Period. It’s annoying and truthfully, it’s the easiest way to lose affiliate money. You DO NOT want that to happen.

It’s all about striking a balance. You need to find a happy medium in your affiliate business. Now, back to why affiliate marketers suck.

Let me clarify here…affiliate marketers who lie, cheat, spam and annoy suck. I can tell you from personal experience, probably 85% of affiliate marketing falls into this category. Why? Simple. People want an easy way out. Well, no legit, profitable business is easy to build.

You need to pore your blood sweat and tears into the business, build it, run it….then sit back and prosper. All of which is totally possible with affiliate marketing. I mean, other people have already done the hard work and created the products…all you have to do is promote them.

How you go about that determines whether you suck or not. If you promote scam products, you suck. If you claim to make $58,000 in one hour, you suck. How about emailing your list 10x a day? SUCK!

Here’s the thing folks, always be honest and have integrity in your online ventures. Your word is your brand. Your brand will fail miserably if you make a few sales and it’s crap. Or if you don’t deliver the goods you promise. If you tell me I can make $58,000 in one hour…by God, I better be able to do it.

If I can’t do it, you are a liar and you SUCK. Period. Any questions?

If you’re here with me for quite sometime, you would definitely notice that I am talking affiliate marketing mostly from the paid search and advertising point of view. Just alone by reading the noobs guide, you’d find out that the affiliate model we are running with here in AffiliateHat is CPA to paid traffic model.

It surprises me though on how affiliate marketing is so diversified. I mean as shoemoney stated there are six figure affiliates who haven’t heard of performance-based networks like AzoogleAds, Copeac, Neverblue and etc. That alone sums up that within affiliate marketing alone, there are several income streams all with very good potential.

Anyways, I was recently pinged by Zac Johnson about his free eBook on affiliate marketing. It’s not really an affiliate marketing guide like the ones we have here in our newsletter but its more of an affiliate monetization way from the blogging side. Just in case you don’t know, Zac Johnson is a self-proclaimed super affiliate slash spiderman fan slash blogger. He was really used to get criticisms a lot from the paid search industry for being fake or what not but I guess that’s a thing of the past as he was able to carve out a powerful brand around himself by now.

The eBook that he had is entitled Six Figure Affiliate Blogging. The free product tackles some fundamental topics like finding a niche, doing keyword research, getting some nice and hardcore blog designs. That is the basic part of it. However, there are some pretty nice writeup on the book on how he, himself turned the blog into an affiliate income earner machine so if you’re already a tech savvy, you may want to skip the fundamental part and jump straight into the advanced chapters.

Even though I am pretty allergic with eBooks, I liked reading it in the end. Zac is probably one of the best bloggers in terms of making so much money turning his readers into affiliate commissions and as far as what I’m observing right now that seems to be an untapped source of blog income. People are so “advertising” obsessive that they dont really leverage their traffic by doing much more.

So definitely if you’re interested into this, you may want to check out his six figure affiliate blogging product. And besides its free so if you dont want it, just delete in from your hard drive and make a blog post that it sucks.

Ok, the last post was September 25. The blog obviously was kinda on a hiatus, doing nothing, having planned nothing and going nowhere. I don’t want to make any excuses. It’s my fault because I’m lame and lazy.

Second, if I am about to promise anything again here don’t believe me. During mid 2009 when this blog had it going, I promised that I would provide free high quality articles and that never happened. So consider me a liar.

Anyways enough on talking. This year we would try to back this site up, provide occasional good tips for affiliate marketing and web news and many more. As you may now this blog was purchased by Melvin and no offense but ever since then its a downward spiral. Melvin is a very busy person, a student and an entrepreneur.

He hired 3 writers and one of them is me, the other two had written couple articles here before and just vanished. So altogether it was all our fault too.

This year, I (or we) will try my best to resuscitate this blog by posting more. As what this blog is about, I would hand out several affiliate marketing tips for newcomers and hopefully get them started and see how it goes then.

The blog would also showcase some case studies to really increase the value of the content that it would hand out to you, readers.

If there’s still a reader of this blog, see you then.

Affiliate Marketing can really require a big startup advertising cost. Although there are free ways to get started with affiliate marketing, its not arguable that by actually having the startup cost, you can make more.

In an online world, it’s all about utilizing coupons and vouchers. Most people shopping online usually look at bargain deals, coupons with huge discounts and so. Affiliate Marketing is no different.

Whether you are advertising using Pay-Per Click, social media, and other stuffs, there are always coupons where you can get started with. Problem is that it runs out very easy so one has really need to jump as quick as he can before the certain offer runs out. The good thing though is that there are tons of blogs providing coupon codes so it all boils down to being quick enough to find it before it gets saturated.

The tip here is, try subscribing to those websites that provide coupons and also try following famous internet marketing blogs for they usually issue those types of coupons. What do you think?

It seems that the saying is really true. Affiliate Marketers post sporadically on their blogs (if they even have one) and in most cases it’s giving your readers a reason not to follow you.

Anyway after working with some of my websites and promoting some really nice offers at Copeac, I think it’s nice to be back again here. I know I haven’t given any value for some 20 readers a day here but in the future I have some really great stuff to throw away at you guys. Part of it are walkthroughs, some basic affiliate marketing tips, some blackhat stuffs that I do, giveaways and so. So stay tuned.

Also I would personally like to congratulate Mr.Cuntest (really your name?) for winning my $100 prize in The Melvin Blog’s contest. He’s actually had been spamming me for three and 1/2 days and I just noticed his emails earlier this day.

Hope you guys to stay tuned and let’s see what I can just offer on the next few days/weeks.

Let’s face it. Everyone of us started as a newbie. Everyone of us came from a rough and hard road before we become what we are right now. Now the thing that varies is how we work our way up (or down). Since we have different strategies, ideas and morals we end up differently.

So most people who are getting started with affiliate marketing normally knows the risk and the high income potential of it. Because of this, they are really skeptic to jump into it. Now while it’s true, what is not true is that you need to have some money to get started with affiliate marketing. In fact its the most stupid thing I have ever heard! So how do you get started with literally nothing? Actually one thing, you have to keep in mind is time and money. If you don’t have the money, then you have to pay time to get started and vice versa. So without money, you’ll have to do what I call “sweat work” to get started. And the progress depends on how dedicated you are with what you’re doing.

In my next posts, I’ll show some ways on how you can start w/o paying anything except for your food, so standby…

-theaffiliate™-

When you search Google for the terms “Affiliate Marketing tips”, you can find over 600,000 results. That’s just enormous, isn’t it? Well it’s just sad to think that while there are humongous number of people providing tips, giving nice writeups, and so, the truth is most people cannot just produce anything with affiliate marketing. It’s kind of a sad state to think about when all these “great bloggers” pretend to be “someone” in giving affiliate advice but can’t even surpass $100 mark every month in affiliate marketing.

Maybe affiliate marketing is really hard, no not at all! Maybe it is just because of their wrong mentality towards running a campaign or putting keywords together or maybe altogether they’re wrong! Oh, maybe I’m just getting way ahead of myself. I’m not ranting, or scolding or whatever, I just wonder. If most people can produce in affiliate marketing, then affiliate managers would be pumped up, affiliate networks would be satisfied and rich, and maybe we would have a wealthy and better internet marketing world to live in. Peace!

-theaffiliate™-