Affiliate Marketing Insights and What I Learnt from a Date

Not to get too personal here, because I am trying to keep this strictly business, but most of the information gathered for the following post was attained through a guy I met on a "shidduch" date (blind match) this week. 
The conversation turned to on-line business, e-commerce etc.
He is self-employed in some sort of telecommunications business.  He sells people a way to record cellphone voicemails - People buy the service and then are sent a code or pin number via email after checkout.
Cool stuff.  I don't think he even has a degree, but started off doing some sort of consulting work for a company in Israel - it was an outsourced consulting position where he had a few businesses he helped grow.  When leaving the position, he asked the telecommunications company he was consulting for if they would take him on to be a part of the company and they declined.  So, he went off developed his own.  I forgot the name of it.   It's a phenomenal idea because it does not involve ANY INVENTORY!!! It's all digital!!!!!

Here is where new media, affiliate marketing and SEO come in ...
First of all, as with ANY online company you need to work on your online marketing strategies, SEO and keyword search options.  ESSENTIAL.  They will not find your business on the web unless it's up there in google optimized web searches!!!  Here's where it gets sticky!!
1) Firstly, he said he hired someone to work for him to enhance his SEO and even with hiring someone he needs to know as much as he can about it so he can be on top of him and cannot trust to leave it all in his hands.  He said that that is a number one rule in business.  Takes a lot of time and energy out of the business though.
2) Affiliate Marketers: He said that there are people who do not have their own product to sell (like he has) but they are GREAT at SEO and keyword search optimization, on-line marketing etc .. Plus they also have great conversion rates - which means that once a person does finally find their site- the "landing page", they actually follow through to checkout and buy the product!  That is key.  You need a LOT of marketing expertise to do all that!  You can have the best product in the world- and people may never buy it- and the coolest hi-tech website and it can possibly never get found on the web!

So... what do you do if you have a great website or product but not an expert at SEO or high in the google rankings?
You find an affiliate network to belong to, or you hire an affiliate manager.  They connect you with affiliates.  These affiliates do not have a product to sell... they make their money off of commission by selling other people's products.   Awesome idea, no?  They make great websites, with very convincing landing pages, high in google rankings so they get a lot of hits and once the person commits to buying the product and click on the checkout button- they are really buying the product from the original person's site... it gets "redirected" without you even realizing!!!! The affiliates are just great promoters!!! 
And truly, that is where the business lies.

3) Google Adwords - Another bombshell to me.  Even though I paid to have ads put up for this blog on google searches - apparently that is no guarantee for hits of it showing up when people search the keywords I entered. There is a whole science to this it seems.  So the ROI - Return on Investment for my google adwords is very low because there are "tricks" to getting the ads to show up etc... I, of course am not right now interested in learning those "tricks"  but it's good to be clued in and that it's not as easy as it seemed.  That's all I need to know for now. 

Last but not least - Raya- my dear ambitious, thought-out entrepreneurial friend who is always a well-spring of knowledge never-ending.  She recently mentioned to me in an email correspondence that she had given herself ONE WHOLE year to learn about the world of online media.  That is ambitious.  She has a website www.grandgifting.com that she designed completely by herself with some consulting on the side.  Very impressive.
Secondly, regarding Raya, she mentioned to me that she is now involved in some Online B2B job. 
This is very up my alley and I hope to explore it.

With all of my online knowledge I'm amassing hopefully it can help me in my pursuit to work remotely in the world of e-commerce. 

I'm still looking to consult more about my business of connecting SEO and online marketing experts with small businesses, agencies etc to optimize websites and businesses.