Critique the Technique

Hi all,

I don't normally take criticism very well. One of the reasons I've avoided blogs and forums in the past is the fear of being verbally castrated by persons with strongly opposing views. But, in this particular case, I welcome all of your criticisms with open arms! Please, no inhibitions. When it comes to business, I only want to get better.

I've been tinkering with different marketing techniques over the past couple of weeks. But before I implement any of them into a working strategy, I would like some feedback from my fellow Warriors. Some background: one of the biggest challenges that I've faced early on in the learning phase is how to promote my affiliate products through my website or blog. Putting all of this work into building professional, content-rich websites is a remarkable feat. But once I have this great website staring me in the face, how do I make money with it? I've yet to find a satisfactory fleshing-out on this subject. Therefore, I'm looking to find my own way through the feedback and suggestions of others (that means you). So here is one of the ideas that I've been playing with...

Someone comes to my webpage--how they got there is irrelevant at the moment--looking for information on how to make great Belgium waffles. They find an extensive textual entry containing general information on how to make these great waffles. At the close of my entry, I have affiliate links (related to Belgium waffles) placed directly beneath it. I might have some text directly above the links saying something like "Here are some products that may help you to make great Belgium waffles".

I wish I could make a template to better illustrate this approach, but I'll have to work with what I have.

I like this approach for a couple of reasons: (1) I am not directly promoting ANY of the products that might be related to the article's content. The sales pitch is merely implicit. (2) I've avoided making my webpages into an over sized sales letter. This prevents the visitor from getting the impression that I am nothing more than a merchant. (Whether I am nothing more than a merchant is a matter of philosophical debate.) :-)

Again, this is just a rough draft for a POTENTIAL marketing technique. Maybe (through a "destroy and rebuild" approach) we can actually turn this into something with enormous profit-potential. And, as I said before, do not pull your punches or mince words. This is about getting better, and if that means ripping my idea to shreds in order to piece it into something better, then I'm all for it.