What about My Affiliate Store?

Bliss · #1 (**permalink**) 07-31-2007, 05:38 PM

Hi! I have recently joined a company called My Affiliate Store (www.my-affiliate-store.com) with the idea to create some affiliate sites. I paid $497 (included the first monthly membership). Then it costs $97 every month for the first site and $25 for every other site I'll build. The point is that this sistem is newly created, and I see that they are more concentrated into get money from the clients that to give a real clients support. You can just submit a question by email and to hope for the answer. They have just a person working as client support. Besides, they own the site in case that a member will conclude the membership. Being a real beginner, I thought that this could be a good opportunity, but right now I'm in doubt. I haven't totally built my first site yet and I'm wondering if concluding my membership, due also to the fact that I don't really feel to be their affiliate to undo the monthly cost not being satisfied by myself about the service. I wonder if SBI can be a better opportunity now even if I have paid already $497 to start with My Affilaite Store. I liked the idea to easy dowload the products by the vendors network that they listed on the admin page. Is it possible to download products easily with SBI too? I hope that someone more expert than me can give me a real advice. Really grateful for that!Wishing the best!

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 07-31-2007, 07:49 PM

Hi Bliss

I don't know anything about my-affiliate-store.com, I only know about Site Build It because I use it and make money from it. $500 AND recurring commissions sounds EXTREMELY expensive for one site. What all do they provide? Are they going to create sites for you?

My theory has always been that any company offers to create a site for you AND charges you recurring commissions... RUN FAST! The key to success with affiliate sites is creating sites on topics YOU have a passion for, not letting someone else create your own content. How do you know this content is unique? Search engines penalize for duplicate content and I wonder if they're using the same info for every site. How are they going to help you get traffic to your site?

Site Build It! does not give you any shortcuts. You do all the work, they simply provide the tools and guidance to help you succeed and encourage you to choose your own topic. Companies like my-affiliate-store play on people's lack of knowledge about the Net and they make you think they've done the hard part by creating your site but in fact they are doing you a huge disservice from what I can see. So they provide this store for you but they don't tell you how to get traffic to that store and what it takes to get listed in Google.

That's the difference between them and SBI as far as I can see.

With Site Build It! there are no products to download. Everything you need is provided online at their "Site Central" login page. That's where you build your pages, learn how to promote your site, etc.

max · #3 (**permalink**) 07-31-2007, 08:57 PM

I know 2 people that signed up with my-affiliate-store and haven't made a cent. I hate those companies that prey on newbies by making them think that all they need is a pre-made site or store and the money will come in. As Lisa said, do they teach you how to get traffic to your site? Are they just giving you a store to sell products and sending you on your way? What are they giving you every month that justifies a monthly fee? Sounds like a scam to me.

lisa · #4 (**permalink**) 07-31-2007, 11:56 PM

Also I realized I misunderstood something in your post about downloading products. What exactly are you downloading products for?

Bliss · #5 (**permalink**) 08-01-2007, 03:02 AM

Hi Lisa and Max!
Thanks for your quickly reply. I joined My Affiliate Store because it was recommended by Joel Christopher in his newsletter, the Masterlister Builder and having read about him because my interest in Joe Vitale's writing, I believed in his reputation. And then I had the wish to begin somewhere and they told that even a child could build a site with their sistem!

About downloading the products, I mean that they have created an huge list of vendors in the admin panel. So, if I'm interested to be affiliate to a vendor, I have first to apply with for example CJ. Then, I can directly download the pictures of the products that I wish to show from the admin panel. They have created an huge list of vendors giving the possibility to download millions of products, but the sistem of searching isn't working properly. As I see, they sold their product before to be really ready with that. On the product page, I also get the keywords and the description of the product. I have just to copy them in the proper field. I thought it was good for me because english isn't my mother tongue, but I see that the description aren't so well and now I also understand that is important to make my own texts to get results with the search engines. The big point is that there isn't any real office to call My Affiliate Site to have support. You can just send an email and right now they aren't answering having just one person working as technical support. No, they don't do the site at all. I have to do all the work, finding a niche looking in the vendors list, registering a domain name and making my own contents on the site, using my own creativity of course. And they "own" the site giving the template, the sistem and the hosting for that money I already told you. It means that I can't never tranfer the site to another hosting company. I hope that my simple way to write is clear enough to make you to understand :-) I do wish to learn to make profits on the net and I'm considering to begin a course as webdesign to learn a little more about all this. Interesting to know if other people made some money with My Affiliate Store! On My Affiliate Store site, there is a forum in the members area where to submit questions to others and I have seen just few people having created sites and I wonder...They also tell that the sites are created in a way to be well optimized. Does SBI sistem give the possibility to easy download pictures of products or just links and banners? Do you have something to advice me to read to learn more about all this? I see that SBI costs $299 a year. Is this price for every site you create or does it cost less for every new site that you create? I really consider to finish my membership with My Affiliate Store and save the money to start again, taking this experience as a way to have learned something!

I don't see a concrete structure behind all this and seeing how they support the clients I can understand that others will do the same. I sent an email and because my server had a problem for a day and I couldn't get any email, one of the owner wrote a very unkind email to me because they got the message that the email couldn't be delivered! I was shocked! This turned all my patience. Honestly, I wish to collaborate and give my credit card to more nice people!

Actually you get the personal numbers of the owners, but you don't really feel to can call "home to them" seeing even what a character they have! I do wish a company having a real structure and telephone number that you can call and ask in case I need! So I realized that this people work from their own home...and were more kind at the beginning, now not really at the same way

Thanks again for taking your precious time to answer to me. Wishing you the best!

lisa · #6 (**permalink**) 08-01-2007, 09:21 AM

Hey Bliss

SBI! is $299 per year per site. But here's the problem I have with my-affiliate-store for someone who is very new to this. It's very difficult to start your first site by selling products because it's very difficult to get traffic to a store via the search engines.

Search engines look for sites that have an abundance of content on a specific theme so that's why SBI! teaches you how to build a site on a topic you love, write tons of content and THEN add a products/store if you wish.

An example SBI! site is my site www.flat-stomach-exercises.com. I don't sell any products from this site but it earns anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 per month just from the Google ads and a couple of affiliate programs.

I chose that topic because it was something I had experienced and I was passionate about it. SBI! helped me narrow my topic down to something that was in demand based on the # of searches done in Google, etc. and from there I just started building my content.

It's ranked #1 in Google for the keywords flat stomach, ab crunches and many more fitness related keywords and that's how I get a lot of my traffic. My problem with my-affiliate-store is how are you going to get traffic?

A lot of times people get it backwards. You can't start selling products until you learn how to optimize your traffic for traffic. No traffic = no money. That's why SBI! has gotten so much attention because the customers build sites that get tons of traffic because SBI! teaches you how to do it right.

So let's say with my-affiliate-store you've got this beautiful site with all these products to sell. What keywords are you trying to rank high for in Google? How are they going to help you get people to your site to buy these products?

SBI! does not provide products for you to sell but they give you links to other companies that allow you to sell products. But they don't even recommend you even TRY to sell anything from your site until you have at least 30 pages of solid content and are already getting visitors.

It's much harder to promote a store than it is to promote a content site because the search engines look for content on a theme. Once you start getting traffic THEN you should be looking for products to sell, but not the other way around.

Hope that helps!

angie · #7 (**permalink**) 08-01-2007, 10:52 AM

Hi,

I'm very new to all this too Bliss but I just want to say be careful of those systems that make it seem like they build everything for you. I actually didn't buy sbi because I thought it was too much work. I wanted someone else to build my site and add my products, sort of like my-affiliate-store.

But I quickly learned why Site Build It! works and the others don't. Well I'm not saying people aren't making money with my-affiliate-store but you have to know what you're doing. You can't just put up a store and sell products and expect people to just stumble upon your site and buy your products. You have to someone create your own credibility and you do that by creating good content in a topic you like.

Someone explained it to me like this once and it helped me out. Think about it like this....

When most people shop online, they have their favorite stores they always go to... Amazon.com, Overstock.com, or the online version of their favorite retailer (BestBuy.com, Target.com, etc.) They buy from these places because they have the credibility of their brand name.

Now, I don't know what kinds of products you are trying to sell from your affiliate store but in order to rank high for the searches of that product you are going to have to beat out the competitors. Have you defined what products you want to sell?

In order to do that you need to build CONTENT around those products you are trying to sell. If you just launch a store with a bunch of products and no content, how are people going to find you? How are you going to get your store to rank higher than all the pro's?

That's why Lisa was saying you have to build a content site on a topic first and then add a store and try to sell products.

Let's say you want to sell nike shoes. Rather than putting up a store with a bunch of nike shoes, it would be better to create a content site on how to choose the best nike shoes first so Google and all the others can rank you and then once you have traffic THEN you try to get these people to buy.

But Google is not interested in ranking plain stores. If they did there would be gazillions of affiliate stores clogging up their engine, all owned by people just trying to make money. Google is interested in good content that helps people, which is why you have to start with that first. Take it from someone who has wasted hundreds of dollars on "systems" for making you money.

Lisa's site www.flat-stomach-exercises.com is a great example and so is the sbi creator's daughter's site www.anguilla-beaches.com Notice it's all about content. THEN you try to sell the products.

Good luck.

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