PPC Affiliate Marketing: A Short Term Business?

I just read a blog post by Anik Singal. He mentioned in his blog:

Alright, today we’re going to talk about building an opt-in list. If you’re an affiliate and you are NOT already building an opt-in list, you’re killing your business.

What you’re building is a SHORT-TERM business that goes bankrupt the day you stop advertising.

I have been thinking a lot about my PPC campaigns and I must admit there isn’t much "leverage" to my money making efforts. Once my PPC ads are down or if they are not ranked high enough, I will have no business. If Google decides to change the rules for affiliates to make it harder for us, that only means a harder life for me.

Building an opt-in list is something I MUST do in order to get ahead and stay ahead. I just installed a new newsletter script to handle all my current lists and future list at 1 domain. Previously I thought of installing the WebInsta mailing list script on each domain. But after doing that for 2 domains, I realised its not scalable at all. Its takes too much effort to install it because it isn’t for people with no PHP experience. I had to tweak the code a little to make it work the way I want. Furthermore it doesn’t have autoresponders.

Here are some of the skills I need to acquire to take my affiliate business to the next level:

1. Drive targeted traffic to my web sites without paying a dime.
2. Write articles or autoresponders that sell or hire someone to do it.
3. Build opt-in lists for each mini affiliate site I build and collect their email addresses BEFORE sending them to the merchant site.
4. Use autoresponders to follow up with my subscribers of my mini sites lists and pre-sell them on the affiliate products.

Maybe I should start doing this by converting my landing pages to collect my visitor’s email address and send them to my affiliate program merchant site AFTER they sign up. Now I am sending my visitors directly to the merchant site. I can’t contact them to sell them anything else.