Yet one thing that always bothered me about the 30 Day Challenge was that while it is a great introduction to many of the tools available to online marketers, it created an army of “re-posters” and traffic exchanges. It created a lot of what I see as false traffic that really didn’t go to any product or service. Sure some people made few dollars selling e-books, or selling ad space on a site that had generated a lot of hits. The fact was that there was no substantial customer audience because no one was creating anything, most of the traffic was other 30 Day Challenge participants checking out each others sites, blogs, and now twitter posts. Sorry, I have great friends, but none of them want to buy anything from me.

This is why when I got an email from Ed this morning, bringing this very point to life, I was relieved. Thanks Ed. Here is a excerpt from the email.

And like the first point, I may have had a bit to do with creating
a problem!

I love leverage. “What’s new!”, I hear you say.

The ability to be a gatherer of information and then distribute to
your target market is a powerful weapon indeed. Like all weapons,
pointing it directly at your head is a health hazard.

If all you do in life (or perhaps more importantly from my
perspective, in your market), is be a “re-tweeter” or a
transmitter of other’s information. How do I say this… I believe
the technical term is…

“You’re stuffed”

I’m afraid you’re not going to get anywhere. It is only the people
who create content (or of course, products) that get ahead! Think
about it. It’s all very well being the neighborhood gossip and
passing on information to all and sundry (let’s face it, the
neighborhood gossip has their place) but they are only ever going
to be the gossip and eventually that gets tired and old.

From a financial perspective, “you’re stuffed”.

This should not discourage anyone from checking out the 30 Day Challenge and signing up, but keep in mind if you truly want to make money or simply to get a message out there, don’t get caught up.

I repeat, don’t get caught up in the “socialness” of social networks and social tools. Take a step back and realize that while it is great to have your buddies follow you on twitter, if you are just swapping each other links all day, who is the customer? where is your customer?

Myspace has had its ups and downs, but now with Facebook and other so called “professional” social networks, I really think that Myspace is a waste of time for most affiliate marketers. I think Myspace has its place for celebrities and musicians to promote their brands or their music, but just take a look at the ads that affiliate marketers are purchasing on Myspace. I remember a while back I was asked to read through the advertising contract for placing ads on Myspace. It was a very in-depth document and I think for the price there are many other avenues affiliate marketers can go down. In fact, I recall reviewing the stats from the one ad campaign that we did do, we had thousands and thousands of hits, and never did make a conversion on the offers.

So is my space an out-of-date affiliate revenue source? Lets go there right now and see what ads come up…Singlesnet.com, Taylor Swifts new album promotion, (with video, nice touch), Websinglez.net for Emo Singles – hey wait a minute this looks familiar, have you ever read the Classified section of your neighborhood “Weekly”, “Citylife”, “Thrifty Nickel” newspapers? Thats right, Myspace has turned in to an interactive cheap classified section, promoting singles, music, hooking up with a sexy someone tonight, Man seeking Woman, Woman seeking Man, etc. I wonder if Rolling Stone still has their classified section with their new layout? I hope not, they should save the trees and just use Myspace.

Myspace is a great marketing outlet for large companies that have no problem throwing away millions of dollars just for the sake of saying they have ads on Myspace.