Have you been in the affiliate marketing game for a while now and are just flailing around without any real success to speak of? Perhaps some traffic to your site or a sale here and there, but not the kind of envious profits that the gurus advertise on their products? Well, here’s an admission you probably won’t see too much in the marketing world – so have we!

[We should probably clarify though. Our main venture, gadget blog Gizmos for Geeks, has been profitable almost since day one, with income coming in mainly via affiliate sales and advertising. However, we haven't turned a profit from straight up Internet marketing, the kind where you're pushing either your own product (usually of the electronic variety) or someone else's via SEO, word of mouth, e-mail marketing, PPC or other advertising.]

Well this post isn’t about to say that we’re about to throw in the towel. Actually, just the opposite! We still have hope that success can be had in this biz. One of us has come up with an idea that will hopefully push us to get over what we think is that initial barrier. And that brilliant idea is … a friendly competition! And we aim to be as transparent about our methods and results as we can be.

Here are the ground rules:

  • We each get $250 to start off with to do with as we please. We picked that amount because we thought it was a fair amount that a newbie could afford to invest. Any less, and you should re-consider whether you want to be in business, any business really.
  • Contest would run for 2 weeks starting in earnest on Mon 22 March 2010.
  • We can reinvest the money if we want during the 2 week period.
  • We have a week (starting Mon 15 March 2010) to do some prep work – reading/education, basic research, pick the offers that we’re going to promote, do a little promo of this venture
  • No blackhat stuff
  • Blog our results right here on Untethered Dreams at least every 2 days if not more often.
  • We’re not out to ruthlessly crush each other. After all we *are* business partners. So that means that if one of us discovers some kick-ass way to advance our  campaign, we’re going to share it with the other during the contest.

Winner is the one who makes the larger profit. We both lose if neither one of us turns a profit.

What’s the prize?

  • Straight up cred!
  • Loser buys the winner a copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book “Crush It!”. BTW, we had a chance to meet with Gary a while back at a conference and were floored to meet a super successful guy who took the time to speak with a couple of peons, and was 100% genuine in his desire to see us succeed. If everyone had a Gary giving us a pep talk daily, we’d all be gazillionaires in no time.
  • Knowledge. Experience. We’ll know a lot more this business after this laser-focused experiment, and whether or not we want to continue, or retire and look elsewhere for our Internet millions.

- Doug & Khalid