David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

Ever since I started in affiliate marketing, I have always had one thing in mind: diversification.

Read through the AdSense forums on the web and you'll read the same thing time and time again - "don't rely just on AdSense. the phrase about eggs and one basket comes to mind.
 
The same can be said about affiliate marketing. It's important to not have 100% reliance on affiliate marketing.

Why?

Because it can be unpredictable, fickle and at times, unreliable. Take Rob for example. His link to Dabs did not track twice. Most affiliate marketers expect everything to track as soon as they add the code. They expect every click to track and every sale to be credited. That's how it is supposed to work. But that's not the case. Some affiliate programs require you to do even more work to get the link to track (c/o Kieron) and other programs simply don't track everything properly.

When I talk about diversification, I mean outside of affiliate marketing. Personally, I am working with some affiliate programs that pay per sale and some that pay per click. I'm also working with contextual advertisers which pay per click. I consider this scenario as two streams of income: sales and clicks.

With the launch of Price Tapestry Templates, I feel that I have created a third revenue streams.

But this can be extended further. I like building sites - I like the coding stage as I can get the site to do clever things. I'm always working on new site ideas and new concepts. I don't always build sites for affiliate revenue. I build sites for revenue. The more types of revenue stream I have, the more successful I can be in the future.

For anyone unsure of what types of revenue stream are out there, I've made a short (and by no means definitive) list:

• Affiliate revenue
• Pay Per Click revenue
• Sales (virtual and physical products)
• Subscription based sites

When building sites, look at the bigger picture. What happens if all the affiliate networks closed down tomorrow? Would you survive?