What’s this all about?
When I started looking into making money online, I gave my email address to just about anyone willing to accept it. Have a video to share? Here! A report to give away? Please take it! An ebook with all the answers? I beg you to accept it! My email address no longer feels special. It was passed around more than… well… insert crude saying here.
The result? I get A LOT of emails. On average at least 50 a day. Some of them are very handy and contain helpful info, free info. The rest, are sales pitches. Thousands of sales pitches! Yes… thousands! This blog was started to share those emails. The good, the bad, the downright stupid. If you want to find out what all the “internet marketers” are promoting but don’t want to give your email out. Then you’ve come to the right place!
But who am I?
Honestly? No one. I’m certainly not one of the big Guru’s, oh no no. I give my email to those guru’s. I take their courses, buy their ebooks and reports. I’m nothing more than a nobody wanting to be somebody and to start claiming my share of this so called lucrative market that is making money online.
My name is Melani and I’m a stay at home mother of a 2 year old that brings me more laughs and joy than anything else ever has. If you are reading this prior to July 2010, I am also pregnant with child #2. Yipee! Prior to the life altering arrival of my daughter, I was a full time child care worker – both in centers as well as the private in home sector. Hardly an internet guru right?
I did know a thing or two about making money online however. I’m an avid PC gamer and at the time I owned and ran a community forum based around the biggest game at the time. I used to… I’ve since sold that. Nice right? I never would have thought you could actually sell a website. That’s how much of a novice I was.
The sale did something however, other than slightly increase our savings account… It got me interested in others ways to make money online. Working on my website was one of the most enjoyable things I had done to date, so if I could make money off doing something I enjoyed, then why not right?
And the adventure began…
Back in January of 2009, after what felt like a brain exploding amount of reading on the different ways to make money online, I thought my prayers had been answered. I can’t even remember how I came to learn about it, but there was this so called ‘guru’ about to open his classroom to learn pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. Why did I think this was my ticket to the big times?
- They were going to teach me everything, I didn’t have to know a thing! (Sweet!)
- Complete newbies were not only welcomed, but encouraged. (The penny dropped for me later on that factor)
- The head honcho started with only $200 and now makes millions!! (You had me at hello…)
- And it was FREE for the first 30 days. (Who says no to free?)
I actually woke myself up at 4am my time as I was so worried they would close the doors before I could get in. Yes, 4am. I was that excited. The sales pitch (and in hindsight, that’s all it was) got me hook, line and sinker. So much so that I jumped at the chance to give them $97 for a years worth of recorded seminars and a further $20 each month for the current ‘hot niches’ to give me a leg up over any competition out there.
This ‘free’ goodness ended up costing me over $5,000 in the end as I quickly (but not quick enough) learnt that PPC is not as easy as it’s claimed, especially not for someone just entering. I followed their steps to the letter, did everything they told me would work. It didn’t. I had a couple of nibbles here and there, which of course resulted in me funneling more and more money at it thinking I had finally hit that winner they repeatedly told me always happens. “You just have to keep at it” they told me. “You need on average 20 attempts to find the winner” statement was my driving force.
In the end, I stopped the $97 a month membership fee that started after the first free days, put a stop to all my PPC campaigns and told myself I would take the time to really read and learn how to do it all properly before I started throwing my money away again.
Hi, would you like my email address?
I began googling just about every phrase you can think of related to making money from home. I went back over all the notes and instructions given to me in training and compared it to what I was discovering on my own. Every now and then I’d come across an interesting site offering some sort of report, guide or information package… for free. All they needed was an email address to send it to. Pssht here, I have one purposely for that!
My daily unread email count started to grow. 5… 10…. 20. In the beginning I actually made it through most of them, at the expense of actually learning anything. All my time was spent reading sales pitches and then continuing onto the product they were promoting to read their sales page. A lot of reading, not a lot of learning. A whole lot of “that’ll be really handy to get when I start making money!”
The people who I had already signed up to would send me out emails for their “friends” that were now giving something away for, you guess it, just an email address. Some I thought sounded good, some I passed on. But the snowball was already gathering speed. The avalanche that would soon consume me was already on it’s way.
As I write this, my unread email count sits at 2644 (2793 now I’m proof reading 48 hours later). Hardly huge, but when you consider I try to go through as many a day as possible, that it’s only the unread count and I’ve done quite a few culls each week when one of the ‘big’ products gets promoted and I can delete a good 50 – 100 emails in one hit, it’s still quite a large number.
So? What’s this got to do with the blog?
As I go through my emails each day, I see a lot of interesting things. The really good sales pitches that lead to really good products. The good sales pitches that lead to really bad products. Free ebooks, reports and scripts. Free information (which is my favourite kind of email), tips and all sorts of other goodies.
I figure that there’s probably a person or two out there, newbie or expert, that might benefit from the plethora of words that pass my inbox each day. I’m sure there’s a lot not willing to give their email address out to just anybody. So instead, they can come here and see what I’ve received, find out if it might be something they could use or are interested in, and then, get a copy for themselves.
Note: If it’s free and gives authorisation to pass along freely, I will be doing just that!
I failed miserably at PPC. I tried writing up sales letters for clickbank products and realised I am no good at it. Which was funny (and frustrating) as I love to write. Then, it hit me. I’m a blogger, not a salesman. My gaming blogs always took off fairly well. Why? Because of the type of writing blogging encourages. I’m never going to make a good car salesman, I can’t spin a pitch. But I can babble, comment and give my thoughts on things.
So, I figured why not combine the two? Why not continue my research into making the millions online other’s seem to be able to do, while blogging what I find so that it might help others! I’m not here to bash any so called ‘gurus’, or the no named guys, not at all. I’m also not here to sell you anything.
This blog is nothing more than my thoughts and feelings on the tons upon tons of emails I get each and every day, most of which are affiliates trying to sell me something. Hence the name “Affiliate Spam”. Don’t get me wrong, I ask for this spam. I’m the one that’s loose with my email address, but I’m calling it spam because I get so much of it, some of which is utter junk. Yes the correct definition of ’spam’ is unsolicited email, but I figured “Affiliate emails I get way too many of” was too long a blog name. 
What do you get out it?
As mentioned already, you’ll get to find out what people are pushing without them pushing it to your inbox. I’ll be pointing out the products that I personally think aren’t what they are being pitched as and why (see my first example to get an idea of what I mean) and I’ll mention any products that I think you should take a look at so you don’t miss any potential goodies in the sea of crap. And of course freebies! Either links to freebies, or I’ll personally send them out to you myself!
I’m really hoping that I’ll be able to spend most of my blogging going “hrm, that looks interesting”, but not everything will be sugar-coated goodness. In fact, the thought behind this blog started because of an email that pushed the most unbelievable (in my eyes) product out there. I will be calling a spade a spade and most likely, upset a few people out there. If you are one of those people I upset, then don’t take it personally, take it as a lesson on how to improve so I can instead sing your praises. 
And of course, if any of you wonderful readers out there come across something that you think I should check out, by all means email (or twitter) me and let me know! I hand my email out like it’s a band flyer, but that doesn’t mean I’m signed up to absolutely everybody just yet…
Disclaimer: Please note that if there are products I think are worth your time looking, they may contain an affiliate link which, if purchased, will earn me a commission.
