Rob Merlino Dot Com

Blogger, Entrepreneur, Raconteur

affiliate marketing

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Zoey the Awesome Dog

ZoeyIf you like dogs, you want to have an awesome dog. Of course if you have a dog, you already think it’s awesome. They all are in their own way. I’ve had three dogs in my lifetime and my current dog, Zoey, is the most awesome dog I’ve ever had.

She’s a 70 pound American Bulldog. Some people are intimidated by her appearance, but she’s the biggest creampuff you’ll ever meet. She loves riding in the car, going to the beach or dog park, destroying stuffed animals and cuddling.

Most Awesome Dog Ever

What makes Zoey awesome is she has a great personality. She’s a big goofball, but she’s smart. She loves all people and dogs, but if anyone ever tried to mess with someone in our family, she’d take them down.

Dog people stop on the street to pet her. We took her to Saint Augustine at Christmastime a couple of years ago. We couldn’t go ten feet without someone asking to pet her and fawning over her. She takes it in stride and just soaks up the love.

I am going to get a stuffed animal of her. While doing updates to my Shark Tank Blog, I came across a company called Budsies. They make custom plush toys from any drawing or photo. Back in 2018, they started Petsies which will make a custom stuffed animal from a pet photo! It’s going to be a present for my wife’s birthday in June.

New Instagram

My daughter is so excited about Petsies, she started an Instagram page about our awesome dog. It’s @CRAZoeydog on Instagram. I also made her a website: www.CRAZoeydog.com. We’re going to post pictures and videos of Zoey being Zoey and use it to help sell pet products. We plan on doing a regular segment called “Can Zoey Destroy It?” In those segments, we’ll give her an item and see how long it takes her to destroy it. We’ve only found two things she can’t (stay tuned).

It’s going to take some time to build the Instagram page, but we’ll get there. If you want to follow our goofy dog, head on over and click follow. Have an awesome day.

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Business Around a Lifestyle

People talk about “lifestyle businesses,” I prefer to call it business around a lifestyle. For me, my online business endeavors have always been more about the lifestyle than the money. I have friends who work in their own businesses or have regular jobs who may make a lot of money, but they don’t have a good lifestyle. I do.

Back in 2012, right before I started Shark Tank Blog, I was interviewed for a book called Business Around a Lifestyle. It was written by a friend and early mentor of mine called Jim Kukral. A few weeks after the interview, I got involved with The Shark Tank Blog – something that changed my life forever. You can read the book for free HERE.

I realize, looking back at those times, is that I have been blessed to discover and learn the world of Affiliate Marketing. It allowed me to coach my kids’ teams, to go to their games and concerts and all the things kids do. I was able to have a front row seat to their childhood – a thing not many parents, especially dads, get to do. I always say “time is the most precious commodity,” and it’s true. All the millions of dollars in the world can’t buy that time I spent with my kids. Once they’re grown and gone (4 of my 5 are), those days are gone forever.

Building a Business Around a Lifestyle

I believe Affiliate Marketing is the quickest and easiest way to create life changing income from home. For me, it was always more about the lifestyle than the money. My vision of what my lifestyle looks like has changed. It used to be focusing on my children, now it’s more about my wife and I. When you learn affiliate marketing, you most likely won’t get rich overnight – I didn’t. But if you stick with it, work a plan and get down to doing the actual work (yes there is work involved) you can and will. I did.

What I do

Like I said, my lifestyle has changed. Here’s what a typical weekday looks like for me: up at 5 am to go fishing at the pier, back home by 9 am to work on my business. At 12 noon, I have lunch and walk the dog. Work again until 3:30 or so, then deal with emails, social media etc. until 4:45. At 5 pm I pour myself a drink and watch the news until my wife gets home at 6. We chat and have another drink then go out to dinner. On any given day, with a little bit of planning, I can NOT work if there’s something cool to do.

On weekends, my wife and I hang out with friends and family. We go boating, snorkeling, skeet shooting and tons of other fun stuff. While I touch the business on weekends – usually just checking emails – weekends are a no work deal. When we want to take a vacation, we go. Both my wife and I can work virtually, so we can really extend a vacation if we want to.  THAT is a business around a lifestyle.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the things that got me to this point. I never recommend or endorse programs or products I haven’t used personally. If you want to live the awesome life, come on this journey with me and you too can have a business around a lifestyle. Would you take two years to make a million dollars? I did. Click HERE for more information.

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Make Money Online with the Hotdogman

I love Google. I do. I really do. Why? Because I have made tens of thousands of dollars using Google to make blogs, web sites, serve advertisements and make money online. This site gets thousands of visitors every month, and it’s only one of the many I own and operate.

About five years ago, I took the winter off from my Hot Dog Truck and remodeled my kitchen. The next winter, I spent a lot of time on the computer.  I’d spend a few hours a night online, doing nothing in particular until one night my wife said “why don’t you do something productive online?”

I took her advice and started a blog. I learned how to monetize it, have it make money and then I repeated those steps. Now, I actually earn a full time income with my various blogs and websites!

I am not going to sit here and tell you you can make $153,917.82 per day with two clicks of a mouse and two hours work. That’s bullshit. You know it and I know it.

What I DO know is that you can make money with blogs and websites and you can start out with little or no money. You don’t even need to be a computer genius (I am not).

Most people who want to make money online get frustrated fast. They want to believe the BS claims that they can make unlimited income and when they don’t, they give up.

I can guarantee a few things:

You CAN make money online, how much is up to you and what you put into it. If you can put two hours a day in, you’ll see results faster than the person who puts in two hours a week, but slower than the person who puts in 4 hours a day.

You CAN start for little or no money. There are plenty of free resources out there-many of the paid ones are very inexpensive too. I started my blog with EIGHT BUCKS for a domain name. That’s it. I don’t know of many businesses you can start for EIGHT BUCKS.

You CAN earn a FULL TIME INCOME using blogs and websites to sell advertising, products, services-heck just about anything.

You CAN’T expect to make ridiculous amounts of money right off the bat. All those stupid claims you see are complete BS. What you need is straightforward information that teaches you how to make REAL MONEY.

You don’t need to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on courses, ebooks, seminars, boot camps or any other nonsense. Everything you need is “out there” somewhere, you just need help finding it and implementing it.

SO HOW CAN YOU DO IT?

It’s easy. I have developed a newsletter that can teach anyone, step by step, how to get started making money online. I tell you in plain English WHAT to do and HOW to do it. When something is beyond my expertise, I point you to FREE RESOURCES that will teach you what you need to know.

Forget the “gurus” and the quick buck artists out there. All they want is your money. The reason I am doing this is to create some awareness for folks who were in my position. I had no help when I started-unless I was willing to pay for it.

I want to help people get going online because if you have some success, you’ll be able to help me with a link or two from your site to mine (I’ll explain that in the Search Engine Optimization Issue). I want to build a community of website owners and bloggers who are willing to help each other out, not rip each other off with stupid offers and ridiculous claims.

So why not get started? You can have your first of many FREE lessons on how to get started making money online delivered right to your email starting NOW.

I Promise you I will NEVER send you an email trying to sell you some dumb “get rich quick” product. I will provide you with free information on how to get started and how to be successful. If you do need to buy something (like a domain name or a web hosting package or other similar tool), I’ll make sure you get the very best deal!

So if you’re serious, you need to do two things. The first is make the decision that you are going to actually work toward earning an online income. The second is to fill in the form below and start getting The Blogger’s Tool Box. You will not be sorry.

Very truly yours,
The Hotdogman

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Email Marketing

Without going into too much detail, affiliate marketing is when a website owner sells another’s product and earns a percentage of the sale. The most recognizable company that does this is probably Amazon.com. There are also  many other places to find products to sell via affiliate marketing: Clickbank, Commission Junction, shareasale.com, and many others. There are even people who run individual affiliate programs for their own products. Google “affiliate marketing” and you’ll have more options than you know what to do with!
I am not going into how to sign up for individual affiliate programs. Find something you want to promote and sign up for the appropriate program. If you’ve ever filled out an online form and can read directions, you can find an affiliate program and be promoting products on your site in a matter of minutes.
Anyone can slap banner ads on a website and hope someone will buy. There’s more to it than that, you might actually have to do some SELLING if you want to make real money.


All the online marketing “gurus” will tell you “the money is in the list.” They mean your email list.

Don’t have one? If you are trying to sell a product, it is far more effective to sell to people who have bought from you before or people who have expressed an interest in your product (but might need a little nudging to buy). When I was in corporate sales, all the trainers would say it takes AT LEAST SEVEN exposures to your offer before a prospect buys. You can’t just sit around and hope a potential buyer looks at your affiliate banners and clicks on them seven times. Granted, some will impulse buy (we’ve all done it), but most will take that wait and see attitude.

Another advantage to building a list is when you promote a different product, you can send your offer to your list. People who have bought from you before will most likely do it again.

You need to expose your prospect to your offer a few times and the best way to do it is via email. In order to build a list, you need a service that will organize everything for you. Doing it manually would be a logistical nightmare. As you could probably guess, there are a multitude of providers of this kind of service- most of them cost money. Since I like doing things for free, I sought out a service that would allow me to start for free and I found a good one: Mailchimp.

Mailchimp allows me to use their services for free until my list has over 1,000 2000 subscribers. After that, I have to pay. Of course once you have 1,000 2000 subscribers to your email list, YOU WILL BE MAKING MONEY. Mailchimp has what is effectively an “email marketing school” on their site. They walk you through everything. It’s fairly intuitive and easy to set up. I highly recommend Mailchimp for the beginner. Free is always good too!

Stay tuned for part two of this post where I’ll give some ideas that worked for me and point you to some tutorials to help get you started.

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Make Money Online Easily – The Hot Dog Principle!

Here’s a nifty article explaining how people earn money online while comparing it to something I know a lot about: Selling Hot Dogs

Make Money Online Easily – The Hot Dog Principle!

Author: Jason Middleton

As little as a quarter of a century ago there was no internet to speak of, and if you wanted to have your own home business  you were limited to make up, plastic kitchenware, or kooky little gadgets sold in catalogues through peoples doors. The Idea of network marketing was strong, but rarely heard of, and only people with vision or money, successfully created their own business. The internet age created a new type of entrepreneur, and allowed the almost penniless to become millionaires at an unheard of rate! Network and affiliate marketing took on a life all of its own!

So what’s all this got to do with Hotdogs?

People making money all use what I like to term the hotdog principle!  The hotdog principle is simple – Sell more Dogs in less time to earn more money! Let’s start with the concept. This translates simply and easily to every business, including yours when you start on the Internet! Ok let’s call our guy Joe. Joe has decided that he wants to make money, and he see’s that there are no Hotdog Vendors in his area.  So Joe goes out and buys a small wagon to sell his hotdogs from, he paints his wagon, and logo’s it, this is the base of his business – his little bit of advertising, the thing that will make it appealing to his customers. The next thing Joe does is approach his local council for permission to put his Wagon on a street corner.

He pays rent for his little piece of the world. Joe then buys himself a uniform to look nice for his customers, and act as an extra little bit of advertising, finally Joe finds a distributor where he buys his dogs, sauces and rolls! Joe sets up his hot dog stall and starts to make an income from selling Hot dogs to people passing by!

A couple of months pass and Joe has by now noticed that there is traffic on the corner of the next block, people that never walk down his street, but surely some of them will buy Hotdogs. There is an opportunity for Joe to become wealthy, he knows his dogs sell really well, but he can’t be in two places at once. He needs a partner.

What Joe doesn’t want to do is have an employee, because then Joe has to pay for everything again, plus pay a wage to an employee. He needs reliability, and someone with a will to succeed. So Joe places an advert in his local Newspaper – he’s looking for someone with vision, determination and motivation, and someone who’s willing to pay to earn money! Eventually Joe settles on Jim. Jim pays Joe to provide him with a logo’d wagon; a logo’d uniform, and supplies to make dogs. Jim keeps 75% of all the profit he makes, and pays Joe the Rest.

Jim has a great view of the park from where he works, and he can see thousands of people that never come to his stand, but why should Jim tell Joe?  Because Joe is now getting clever, and tells Jim; “If you can see any spots, and bring in more people to the business, for everyone you bring in I’ll give you a finders fee, and a portion of the profits, and for everyone they bring in to set up profitable hot dog stalls, I’ll give you another portion of the profits.”

Within a couple of years there is a whole network of Joe’s Hotdogs, on every street corner, and everyone’s earning money.  In fact each stall owner is now looking for new cities to make a killing in, because each of them knows they will get a percentage off anyone they bring in. It’s called Franchise Network Marketing, or Multi Level Marketing, in its simplest form. Joes always going to be the man that earns the most money, he owns the company, but Jim is also making millions, and the person that Jim bought in has that opportunity, and so on all the way down the line.

Now Joe has sold his stall, and is living on the profits from all the others, he doesn’t have the hassle of searching for new sites, paying councils or zoning, all he has to worry about is how nice the wagons and uniforms look. He works Less and Earns More!

Now this should translate literally to any web business, the mistakes that most people make are: They can’t decide which hotdog to sell! (Program hoppers!) They expect Joe to give them all the tools for free! (it isn’t ever going to happen) They treat selling hotdogs as part time game! (It’s a business not a hobby!) They don’t like people knowing they sell Hotdogs! (I make Money as an affiliate!)

 The fact is the 3% that succeed are earning off the 97% that fail, and why because they’re the guys telling the rest that they make money selling hotdogs, and we all want a share of their money, but we don’t seriously want to sell hotdogs! If you can wake up tomorrow, give yourself permission to make money, understand that you will have to pay for your tools, and tell everyone you know, I can guarantee success.

You see we are all affected by optimism, and success breeds success. This is called attraction marketing! Have a look at what you need – you need to pay for Zoning  (Hosting), you need to pay for your hot dog wagon (domain, website and online business), you need to pay for your uniform (advertising), and you need to tell people how great it would be if they ate your hot dogs (marketing system and Autoresponder.) Sell More Dogs, Have More Fun! Jason Middleton Professional Affiliate Marketer

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About the Author:
Born in Nottingham England, but raised in Zambia, Africa.
Joined the Armed Forces at age 16 and visited more than 15 countries around the world. Then worked for a blue chip restaurant chain leaving in 2007 as a Regional Manager, and Franchise Consultant!
Currently actively involved in Online Network Marketing, and marketing systems. http://www.newlifeproducts.co.uk