Strength: My day job is a web designer. I make pretty things. I can write html and css, and read and edit most programming. I feel like I have all the skills and knowledge I need to make money in affiliate marketing.

Weakness:  For some reason, every time I go to put a campaign together, I get stuck. It’s easy to say “Just do it,” and it’s another thing entirely to actually, well, do it.

So why do I get stuck? I’m not sure really. Even just picking the campaign I want to run becomes a stumbling block. It seems like there’s only so many offers that every network has, and so in my mind, I get stuck thinking there’s only a few major markets that do cpa, for instance: financial, dating, ringtones, education, diet, insurance. So if there’s only a few major markets, don’t all the offers already have serious competition? It feels like I want to make a new soda company, but how do I break in when Pepsi and Coke already own everything?

Tell me if I’m being small minded. I guess this is a pretty major weakness I’m going to need to get over, stat.

People working in the ppc, seo, and affiliate fields are notoriously secret, and for good reason. Give anyone any information about your niche, and suddenly it’s not yours anymore. As tip #2 for “5 super affiliate strategies to boost profits” from UberAffiliate says, “Don’t Talk About Your Page…to ANYONE.” 

Is it going to be possible to set up campaigns while giving details on the affiliate offer I’ve chosen, the keywords I’ve used, and the adgroups I’ve created, and somehow still succeed? 

What could go wrong? Like I said, I’m new, but there’s several bad scenarios I can imagine already. If people reading this blog do exactly what I’m doing, well, we’re all screwed. I think. I won’t even be able to test out an offer legitimately if I immediately have competition that wasn’t there two minutes ago.

My hope is that through this blog, everyone sees my mistakes and my successes. And hopefully that’s enough for people to learn from, including myself, and venture out on our own.

So here I go… Am I going to learn a harsh lesson? We’ll find out.