In yesterday’s post, I said, “I found myself looking for a way to generate revenue that, in the long run, could give a higher monetary return on time. But why did I settle specifically, on affiliate marketing?  The answer may prove to be as relevant to you as to me.”

It has to do wth needs and responsibilities.  An affiliate marketer is responsible for:

• Selecting quality products and services that will serve customers well.
• Marketing those products and services ethically and effectively to serve customers and sellers welll.

An affiliate marketer needs to:

•  Select products and services that can generate for the marketer sufficient income for their time.
•  Market those products and services effectively to generae sufficient income for the marketer.

An affiliate marketer does not need to, and is not responsible for:

• Developing products or services.
• Selling products or services.
• Delivering products or services.
• Maintaining products or services.
• Customer service.
• Technical support.

Now, there’s work involved in affiliate marketing — at this point I’m just starting, and I already know that.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

But the question is, what kinds of work?  I prefer the kinds of work required for affiliate marketing to the other kinds I listed.

That’s why I settled on affiliate marketing for my new venture.

You may be wondering, by the way, why I’m doing this venture solo, instead of partnering with Terri as we have with WebGrow and Write for Business.  Here it gets painful.  Unfortunately, her health has been declining over the years, and now we have reached a point where we feel I ought to take this new step solo.  Meanwhile she is focusing on our established businesses, and of course also supporting me in this venture as much as she can.

So here I am, at the beginning of a new career as an affiliate marketer, with the am of attaining financial freedom.  Follow along with me, and see how it goes.

I’ll do what I can to help you succeed too.

Still reading my saga?  Thank you!

I left off yesterday with describing the crisis of our (Terri’s and my) existing businesses, WebGrow and Write for Business.  I said, “Then came the dotcom bust, the commoditization of web design and development, and then the Great Recession.  Web design tanked.”

So, what did we do then?  We turned our attention to ‘domaining’ (domain name investing) — purchasing domain names, then reaching out to companies that could benefit from owning them.  We first got involved with domains for our own ventures and those of our clients.  Then, out of the blue, we were approached by someone wanting to buy a domain we owned but weren’t using.

He offered $2,000 for it.  Not bad, considering we’d paid about $10.00 for it.  But I talked him up to $10,000, and was hooked.  There’s gold in them thar hills!

Um, yes.  We soon learned (Surprise!) that domaining, like everything else, has its pros and cons.

Yes, it can be a viable and profitable business.  But it’s time-and-labor intensive — and can also be time extensive, meaning you may have to wait years for results.

First, there are very few gold nuggets lying around for $10, and when one appears, it’s snapped up in a jiffy.  So to get domains to sell, you usually have to pay a good deal more than that.  That only works well if you think you can sell them quickly enough, for a high enough price, to on average make a decent profit per hour and per month.  But the higher the price, the more time and effort it takes to sell them — or the longer you’ll have to wait for a buyer to come to you — and the greater the risk of not selling them at all.

As you can see, there’s time, money, effort, risk and careful calculation involved at both ends, buying and also selling.

And once you do sell a domain, it’s gone and you start all over, to keep your pipeline full.  And the fuller your pipeline, the more you’re paying for annual renewal fees on your inventory, unless you turnover is under a year.  And selling your domains that quickly takes — well, you get the picture?

The picture is of a solid enough business model if you’re a sophisticated enough domainer and work at it, but it’s not a cakewalk.

Actually, I wrote an article series on LinkedIn to educate businesses on what they needed to understand about domaining:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/table-contents-series-what-businesses-need-know-domaining-borden/

Even so, for the reasons I’ve mentioned, I found myself looking for a way to generate revenue that, in the long run, could give a higher monetary return on time.

But why did I settle specifically, on affiliate marketing?  The answer may prove to be as relevant to you as to me.

Tune in tomorrow to find out what it is.

I’m Keith Borden, the ‘affiliate’ in Keith Borden, Affiliate.  I’m asking you to trust me, and to do business with me (or through me, as an affiliate), so I think you have a right to know something about me.

Let’s start at the beginning.  I grew up in exceptionally fortunate circumstances — loving professional parents, affluent middle-class neighborhood in Vancouver, Canada, and from grade 9 onward, excellent education:  The Cambridge School of Weston (in Massachusetts, USA), then Cornell and Stanford.

But in 1972, I turned my back on a PhD program in neuroscience, and walked away from Stanford with just an MS, in order to live in an ashram.  Now, whatever you think about that — and it could be any number of things — it’s probably nothing I haven’t told myself a hundred times.  Anyway, it’s what I did.  I want to point out, though, that this was California, and 1972 was basically still the sixties.

I soon left the ashram, and then knocked about for several years, even working as a teamster, a logger, and planting trees on a torn-up logging slope.

I must jump back for a moment.  One evening at Stanford, I got an unfamiliar brand of candy bar from a vending machine, then joined other students watching TV in the medical student lounge.  The candy bar was in two parts.  I bit into one of them:  Yuck!  Horrible!  But I didn’t want to waste the other half.  So I asked the other students, “Would anyone like half a shitty chocolate bar?”  There were no takers, but one replied, “You should be selling encyclopedias.”

Fast forward.  How prophetic he was!  Among my activities after leaving the ashram, I spent about five years selling encyclopedias.  I was pretty bad at it, selling just enough to keep me poor.

But eventually, I found my way into an entrepreneurial career as a ghostwriter.  My clients included private individuals, medical professionals, and businesses.  At this, I was very good.

In 1989 I met Terri DiCamillo, who had left a graduate program in entrepreneurship at Babson in order to purchase and run a small electronics assembly company.  She’s been my partner ever since.  And in 1995, after she sold her company for more than twice what she’d paid for it, we founded Write for Business, Inc.  We wrote marketing and technical material for companies of all sizes in a wide variety of industries.

Very soon, though, we found ourselves being asked about websites, so in 1997 we founded WebGrow, inc., serving much the same clientele.  Terri worked more on the design side, and myself on development and programming, while both of us assisted our clients with marketing strategy.  We also advised and assisted them with selecting and acquiring domain names.

However, we ourselves got caught in a common trap of small services businesses, a boom-and-bust cycle:

1. We have no projects, so we devote our time to marketing.
2. Our marketing brings us projects.
3. We devote our time to projects, neglecting our marketing.
4. We complete our projects, and don’t have more.
5. Back to step 1.

Then came the dotcom bust, the commoditization of web design and development, and then the Great Recession.  Web design tanked. 

So, what did we do then?  Tune in tomorrow, to find out.

Hi, I’m Keith Borden.

As I write this, the text below is the content of the site’s About page.  However, I expect that to be changing soon as my success progresses, so I’m placing it also here for the record.

In my next post, I’ll tell more of my story, from a more personal angle.

After decades of helping small businesses tell their stories and grow online, I’m stepping into a new venture as an affiliate marketer  —

Keith Borden, Affiliate

How did I get here?

My Journey:

• 1970s–1980s: Ghostwriter (personal, business & technical) in Vancouver, Canada (my hometown) and San Jose, California.
• 1990s–present: Co-Founder of Write for Business, Inc. (writeforbusinessonline.com), crafting marketing and technical content primarily for small businesses.
• 1990s–present: Co-Founder of WebGrow, Inc. (webgrow.com), designing websites, creating web functionality, and also guiding clients through domain name strategy, selection, and acquisition.

(The two companies, Write for Business and WebGrow, were (and are) with my partner, Terri DiCamillo. Unfortunately, her health has been declining to where we felt it was best for me to do this new venture solo.  Meanwhile, she is focusing on our established businesses and supporting me in this as much as she can.)

Our work helping clients with domain names eventually led us into domaining (domain name investing). I even published a well-received article series on LinkedIn to help business owners understand the domaining world:

What Businesses Need to Know About Domaining

Affiliate Marketing:

Now my next chapter begins, affiliate marketing.  Why this transition?

• AI is rapidly taking over copywriting, designing and programming — our major services in Write for Business and WebGrow.
• By contrast, affiliate marketers utilize AI.  I’d rather utilize than be taken over.
• Domaining can be profitable, but is time-and-labor intensive.
• By contrast affiliate marketing offers the opportunity for passive income — almost everyone’s dream.

I’ve been on the front lines of the evolving marketing landscape, from typewriters to AI. I bring to affiliate marketing the insight of a storyteller, the precision of a tech writer, and the perspective of someone who’s been “inside the game” of small business growth for a long time.

Now, I’m applying everything I’ve learned to affiliate marketing to drive high-impact results.

Results for whom?  For myself, of course, but also for you, through the quality products I choose to promote.

With the current economy (which is projected to decline), coupled with the AI job takeover (which is projected to accelerate), I think more and more people will need their own online business.  And I’ll be here to help you find the best products to make that transition, or to grow that dream.

In my blog, I’ll let you know how it’s going — what I’m doing, which tools are working and which not, what products are duds and what’s hot.  Follow me, because if you see me succeeding with this, you just might want to take the same journey too.

So please, take a look around — at my products, my blog.  See what you like — and on the Comments, page, tell me what you’d like to see!

Let’s connect.

As I said above, in my next post, I’ll tell more of my story, from a more personal angle. 

Keith