Blog of the Unabashedly Inane

It has been brought to my attention that I’ve done a bit of Apple/Mac bashing in this blog, yet I have a dirty little secret. I myself use a Mac… And I love it.

I’d been a hardcore PC guy for ages, and when it came time to replace a dying Toshiba notebook, I assumed I’d be getting another. I shopped around for something cutting edge, with a big display and a ton of bells and whistles. Something I could love for a few years at least. Well the more research I did, the more apparent it became that to get everything I wanted in notebook the bigger and heavier it was going to be. The one model I found was nearly 2 inches thick and about 20 lbs!

I decided to at least take a look at the Macs and found everything I liked in the PCs in a Macbook Pro, at less than 5 lbs and less than an inch thick. The only problem I saw was changing operating systems since all of my software and experience was PC based. I solved that by picking up Parallels and installing Windows XP with it. Now I can bounce back and forth from Mac to Windows whenever I need to.

So I know I’ve bashed their marketing in the past, but they really do make a kick-ass product.

I’ve been so caught up in the building and running of Subatomic Media that I’ve been totally neglecting my affiliate marketing efforts.  I used to really enjoy it and was pocketing several thousand dollars a month doing it, but building a real, scalable business takes a lot of energy and focus!  Not to mention the fact that we seem to be reaching a point on saturation in PPC for promoting products from Clickbank of CJ- there are just too many damn affiliates out there to simply dabble in it and make the same kind of money I used to.

I could raise my game.  I could start employing all the advanced tactics I’ve been developing as well as learning from others, but I’m not sure I’m interested anymore.  To make good money as an affiliate these days, you need to constantly be building web sites, building mailing lists, writing copy, writing code, and on and on.  With all the work required, what’s the advantage of being an affiliate?

I’ve started ratcheting down my affiliate campaigns and focusing more on bringing in new business for my agency.  At least with Subatomic, all the copy is written, the page built, the tools purchased.  All I really need is to keep leads for new business coming in, and keep my clients happy.  If you ask me, that’s a lot less work than the affiliate game is becoming.

What are your thoughts?  Is affiliate marketing becoming more trouble than it’s worth?  Are the hobbyists looking to make a few extra bucks being pushed out of the market by each other, the “super affiliates”, or both?  Is being an affiliate better than a business owner?

Weigh in with your comments below.

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