What Should I Ask About Affiliate Marketing?
3 Important Questions
So you've decided to get into affiliate marketing.
Because you're sick and tired of working a 9 to 5 JOB (Just Over Broke) in order to make somewhen else rich.
Because you want to be able to work where you want and when you want.
Because you want to be able to treat yourself and your family to some of life's luxuries. A new car, an overseas holiday, a good education for your kids and a mortgage-free home in a great neighborhood.
And... you want your income to (eventually) be independent of the hours you work.
You want your income to be passive, so that it continues to flow into your account even while you are asleep.
Well, congratulations.
All this and more is achievable through affiliate marketing.
I've tried to answer all of your affiliate marketing questions in Affiliate Marketing: Your Questions Answered but here are just 3 that you need to ask straight away.
1. Is Affiliate Marketing for Me?
Affiliate Marketing is not for you if you think that all you have to do is find the "Magic Money Button" and press it.
You need to understand that you are creating a business and that creating any business takes time and effort.
The good news is that creating an affiliate marketing business requires less time and less effort than almost any other.
And yes, you can do it too.
Here are the 5 technical steps required to set up your business as an affiliate marketer:
- Choose your niche. This is simply what your business will be all about. Some examples of niches are
health and fitness
weight loss
make money online and...
you get the idea. - Register a domain name relevant to your niche. For example, if your niche was coffee, your domain name could be something like makeyouridealcoffee.com. Sometimes it may seem like all the best domain names are already taken, but with a little imagination, you can find one that's just right for you. Hmm... just right? How about goldilockscoffee.com? You can register a domain name with 100% security at Namecheap.
- Join a webhost. This is where your affiliate marketing website will be stored (hosted). Your webhost needs to be one that provides fast, reliable service with great support. There are two that I recommend. Wealthy Affiliate has the best training on how to become an affiliate marketer and also hosts your websites (up to ten of them) at no extra charge. I have several websites hosted there. And also at SiteGround, which is a great choice if all you need is fast, reliable hosting at a reasonable price.
- Build your website. Clearly, this is the most difficult step for starters and the one that most wanna-be affiliate marketers stumble on. Fortunately, I've got your back, with an unbeatable offer to do it for you. Find out more at Your $49 Website.
- Join affiliate programs. It's really, really important to find vendors in your niche that have affiliate programs that you can join. These can be portals, such as ClickBank, Commission Junction or Amazon Associates, that have several vendors that you can choose from or they can be specific vendors with their own affiliate programs. You can find these by searching for your niche's name + affiliate, e.g., weight loss affiliate.
2. How Much Work to be an Affiliate Marketing Success?
This is a great question.
Because if you think the answer is "None" or even "Not Much" I suggest you stop reading now and understand that online business isn't for you. You will be better off working for someone else who will keep paying you as long as you show up and don't screw up things too badly.
Harsh? Maybe, but realistic too.
But... the big difference is cutting the tie between hours worked and money received.
Imagine owning a café.
Working IN the Business
Quite aside from the fact that you may have spent up to $100,000 acquiring or establishing the business, you also spend many hours a day IN the business.
You may be the barista who spends most of your time on the coffee machine, or you may divide your time between working on the register, greeting customers or out back in the kitchen.
As well as managing staff, including the lawsuit for wrongful dismissal that you're going to settle out of court because who's got time for that sort of nonsense?
Not to mention setting up in the morning, taking down in the evening, counting the takings, doing the banking, reconciling the credit cards and ordering supplies for the next day.
Over and Over Again
Going home for a few hours sleep and doing it all again tomorrow.
By contrast, when you own an online affiliate marketing business, you spend your time ON the business not IN the business.
What do I mean by that?
Let's look at an example.
Working ON the Business
If you had an affiliate marketing business in the health and fitness niche, you could create a small book on getting fit at home with these 5 simple exercises (don't worry, you didn't have to write it; you bought it as a PLR (Private Label Rights) for a bit over $7 and put your name on it as the author) and give it away in exchange for the visitor's name and email address. They are automatically added to your list and your autoresponder has been contacting them with diet and other health related offers ever since. Sometimes they buy the product and sometimes not.
But the point is, you only did the initial work ONCE.
After that, sales were totally automated.
This is the difference between working ON your business and working IN your business.
Also known as passive income.
3. Can You Cash Out Your Affiliate Marketing Business?
One of the ways that entrepreneurs in the offline world become multi-millionaires is to create a business, make it profitable, sell it and then do it again.
Is there a parallel in the online world?
Absolutely.
A Minor Success
Say you're an affiliate marketer selling a product for $100 that you make a $50 affiliate commission on. (I have one product that sells for $69 that I make $120 affiliate commission on, because the vendor places a high value on getting a new customer) so a $50 commission on $100 product is totally feasible.
Your business isn't wildly successful but on average makes a couple of sales a day.
So in one year, you make $36,500 in affiliate commission.
It's handy, but not income replacing.
Could You Do Better?
With all you've learned, you could probably do better with a different niche. Maybe three different niches, if you could outsource some of the work (and, believe me, that's easy and cheap to do).
But what about the existing business?
Sell Your Existing Business
You'll be able to sell it for around 3 times its yearly income.
Or approximately $110,000!
There are specialist sites that do that all the time. For a fee, of course, but well worth it and they have procedures in place to protect both you and the buyer and to ensure that you get paid.
And Get Rich
You pocket a nice lump sum and simply do it again.
That's how affiliate marketers get rich!
