I wrote a post awhile back titled “If You Never Ask You’ll Never Know”. Today I want to follow up it up with another post(the one you’re reading now). It never hurts to send an email to a colleague or company asking something. As outlined in the other post, the worst answer you can get back should be a polite, “no”.

Expanding your options

When going into one field of the internet such as SEO, Affiliate marketing or web design, you should never stick with the first company you meet. Take a trip, “around the pond”, test out many different companies and find which one is best for you.

I would relate this to shopping. When you go out shopping, do you buy the first thing that you see, that matches your description? No, you comparison shop to see if there is anything better out there and if the same item is somewhere else for a better price. If worst comes to worst you can always go back to the place where you saw the first product you wanted and pick it up from there.

The same concept applies to the internet. Let me give you a personal example. Back in the day, when I was starting to get into the interwebs, I wanted to have a website designed for my first jab into making money online.

I looked around and ultimately only asked one person for a quote. That person was the quote I went with. At the time it seemed reasonable, so I took him up on it. I wasn’t “ripped off”, on this offer, but I could have had the same level of work done for much less if I had only shopped around and seen who else was available.

A fast How to:

You can’t really break down step by step how to shop around, but I can give another example that will hopefully illustrate my point.

I’m an affiliate, looking for offers on home security. I want to find the best offer with an attractive landing page, and the best rate.

If I go to company A, and they have an offer that has a good landing page at $13.50/lead (just the completion of the form), I’ll think, “hey this is really good”. I may think it is so good that I decide to launch the offer. This is a big no-no.

Before I launch the offer what I should do is go to all the other reputable affiliate programs I can find and look to see if they have a better offer, or the same offer at a higher rate.

That’s not the only factors I should consider in this offer. Many companies in all sorts of fields offer bonuses or other incentives for your business. Affiliate companies are no different. If a couple companies have the same offer for the same rate, the tie breaker for me is their bonus program. What do I get extra if the offer does well?

Analysis

As you can see from the above example, shopping around is crucial. This being said I don’t want this being taken the wrong way. I place a high emphasis on loyalty, but I consider shopping around not being “disloyal” but instead you are just being an informed “consumer” (or what ever other label you put on yourself). Shopping around can not only help you get the best rate or find the best product, but it will also help you make a few extra bucks to!