Am I just wasting time?

How much advice do you guys give?

[eWhisper]

I received yet another email from someone who has a less than $50 affiliate site (pretty much paid a company $x to have a clone of the main site for them to promote) wanting me to advertise it and wanted to know how much it would cost them to make money.

They did go on for almost a page (kinda like my posts :) ) about how they thought the internet was the next big thing to occur (isn't it already here?), and they wanted to jump on board and start making money.

It was obvious they didn't know anything about affiliate advertising, and how common it is, and how hard it can be to make money, and how easy it is to lose money.

So I wrote them a nice mail back detailing my costs, but also including random info about affiliate advertising and some pitfalls, etc. I'm sure this person won't be a client (more because I won't let someone spend money that recklessly as I like to see people succeed), and then including a referral to this board and info pages on my site on how to advertise.

Am I just wasting time? Or do other people try to educate others to the pitfalls and experience needed to succeed in such areas?

[edit_g]

Am I just wasting time? Or do other people try to educate others to the pitfalls and experience needed to succeed in such areas?

I don't often get requests for aff. advice but I do get it for AdWords advice. It depends on how I'm feeling on the day. I always send off my costs and sometimes I will actually site there and write the person a page's worth of advice.

They won't become a client then (they're just starting out and need to find their feet) but a year down the line they might come back to you. I've gained at least one very good client this way.

Thinking about it now, for the amount of advice I've given over email and phone for free to people who have never become customers - the conversion rate isn't one that I'd let any of my clients suffer...

[258cib]

On Adwords, it's educational for me to see what people will spend, what kind of keywords work for them and such. I walk "clients" thru the sign up and get them to do a search on their primary keywords and then suggest they do a trial. I've done this for four people, so it's not a big deal.

[Kirby]

Since you dont know much about this person dont write them off too fast. You never know who you are dealing with. Im sure there are a few people in Arkansas who pumped gas for an older guy in an old pickup truck that never would have guessed he was Sam Walton, the richest guy in the world at one point in time.

I had one client where the business relationship started out with a business deal hardly worth my time. He still got my best effort, though, and as a result that one deal turned into twelve more worth seven figures within 6 months.

[eWhisper]

Well, I've written this one off, after my nice long reply, I received a terse email that pretty much said, "your prices are what?, are you insane? i'm not giving you my money! forget that".

Maybe I should have sent them the link to How to ease the blow on Price quotes [webmasterworld.com].

Although, I agree, you should never write someone off, everyone you don't know is a potential contact.

Good analogy, I went to high school in AR, many people there knew that old pickup, but point well taken.