Ok, my previous intro was too long and boring so I decided to change it.

Thank God! the Edit button works here ;-)

Where did the smilies disappear?

I'm an affiliate with about 6 months of experience.

I'm used to the job world where one gets paid instantly for the work they do.

In affiliate marketing if you're not careful, you don't get paid no matter how much work you put in.
:-( Well, I guess it takes a very long before any results.

But now, it's extreamly hard with Google being mega tough on affiliate sites.
And, yes I'm an erudite with the SEO stuff but still no use (yet).

I have lost interest in affiliate marketing, but I guess I'll stay in it for fun
(definitely not for profit).

Welcome!!
It sounds like you're having a tough go of it. Have you narrowed down what you want from this whole experience? Do you know how far you're willing to go to get there? Goals and boundaries, I find anyways, are good parametres when getting started. If you need help with anything feel free to contact me. While I am a newbie here on this site I have been in the biz for a little bit and may be able to help you along or at least point you in the right direction.

Light, with your talents and background ... your'e a lot closer than you think you are to conquering this beast.

I'd say don't give up ... don't quit the day job yet either tho.

If you have an AM like Gillian reaching out, go see what she has to help you.

And definatley don't hinge everything on Google.

Besides, if you build honest websites ... Google isn't your enemy ... it's you challenge ... and if you're an SEO webmaster, you'll take the challenge because it's in your blood.

Thanks for your reply.

Hmm... initially, I my goal was to build a deals website and that's what happened.
But not getting any visitors after much hard work on *time-sensetive* coupons was very discouraging.

Then, I realized after 6 months that there are virtually 100s of deal websites, and after studying a few threads here and there on a few forums only 2 deal sites emerged to be popular.

These sites also rank top on Alexa, so it's pretty obvious that they're doing well.

Now my focus has shifted to articles and comparison shopping combined with deals.

I'm inbetween jobs right now, I quit my job about 6 months ago after abou 5 years of being in the programming industry.

So, I definitely can't waste anymore time on affiliate marketing right now.

I'm looking to build my programming skills (since languages change consntantly) and go back and get a job first.

After that may be I'll have some money to spend on PPC advertising like AdWords.

Thanks for offering to help, since I can't take anymore risk of doing work and not getting paid for it I'm putting off affiliate marketing on hold or just doing it on the side as a hobby for fun.

But when I'm serious (that's going to happen after I have a reliable source of income), I'll contact you.

For me time is money and I'm dedicated to learning programming languages to gain a better salary.

Thank you for the encouragement!

Too late, I left my job about 6 mo. ago. But I'm going back to it next year :(

I simply don't like working for others - cuz I can hardly work on something I really like.

Yeah I agree with you 100% about building honest websites. I've created a few articles that Google loves but then about 85% of the rest of the site is supped.

So, it's pretty tough with G, but it's slowly getting better.

After pleasing G I need to please the visitor, and that's another challenge, but getting better.

There are other ways to bring traffic, but I was primarily relying on organic search.

So my sites are not really promotable on newspaper ads or promo materials right now.

But may be later on I'll build such a site that doesn't rely simply on organic search.

Well all the best to you! I will look forward to hearing from you when you resurface :)

Thanks. :0)