Whatever Happened to Affiliate Blogs?
When I started CostPerNews in October of 2006, the affiliate marketing blogging scene was quite crowded. Between ReveNews, Shawn’s AffiliateTip Blog, Jeff’s ThoughtShapers, Scott Jangro’s blog, Jim Kukral’s blog and smaller blogs like Mark’s 45n5, there was always something to read and always some place to get into an argument about the early days of Twitter.
However, as we approach Affiliate Summit East 2009, it seems that the once-crowded scene has become emptier than a 4pm ASE session on legalese for network executives with no wet bar.
What happened?
1) Jangro’s BUMPzee went away. Scott, save the cheerleader, save the world. Bring the site back and save affiliate blogging. Please.
2) Twitter. Like it or not, Twitter took the place of the town watering hole that affiliate blogs had previously filled. As we all become more comfortable with Twitter, I expect that process to reverse.
3) Affiliate marketing is growing outside of its old wardrobe and it’s become increasingly hard to write as about “affiliate marketing” and stay sane. Trust me. My particular take is to focus more on the tech/geeky side of affiliate marketing. Maybe nichification will bring more folks back to the blogging fold?
4) There’s no money in it. I made decent money by selling CostPerNews (twice), but there really wasn’t much there in terms of monthly revenue (I did have some great sponsors, though). It made for some nice PayPal gadget money, but the time invested there against the money return is/was laughable. I’m not doing this for the money, either. And I suspect that keeps some bright (or non-bright) people from actively blogging when they could be making much more money doing something else. My line is to always remind people that blogging doesn’t give you an ROI directly, but the opportunities, gigs, speaking events, etc that you do get as a result of blogging will more than pay the bills.
5) Attention is short. That’s never going to change.
So, what can we do?
I’m not sure. I’d love to see more affiliate bloggers, though.
[Edit] I should include that there are still a number of great affiliate blogs out there like Tim Jones’ blog, Andrew Wee’s site, TrishaLyn.com, Mike Buechele (nice theme), Daniel Clark and a few more that I’m forgetting. Go read them and support affiliate blogs.
[EDIT 2] I completely forgot Geno Prussakov’s well-written Affiliate Marketing Navigator blog as well. Many apologies.
Looks like this post has helped to remind me that despite my earlier thought, there are still some great affiliate blogs out there. If only we had a place to discover them all (cough BUMPzee cough).
