Affiliate programs are a great way to generate income if you
don't have a product of your own to promote yet.  You know
that already.  But it's NOT, despite what you've heard, just a
simple matter of signing up for this or that affiliate program
and placing free and paid classified ads all over the place to
generate traffic to the website they give you or to get people
to click on your autoresponder link.  There's more to it than
that.  Much more. 

When I started out in this business in May 1999, I signed up
for Cookie Cutter.  Like many of you I thought that I could
simply absorb the information provided and then resell it to
others.  I followed all the advice about advertising in other
people's ezines and all of that.  I looked forward to some very
round numbers.  Well, I got one alright.  A big fat ZERO.  And
that's how it stayed until I realized the truth.  That if I was going to make any money in this business I had to start from scratch.

In saying that, I don't want to take anything away from Cookie Cutter.  It was and is a marvellous product in terms of what it can teach you in a very short period of time if you're starting from ground zero.  (Debate rages about its merits in terms of a business opportunity but that's another story.)

In this article, I tell you what worked for me.  It's nothing earth-shattering or particularly profound.  It's simply reality and common sense.  Here's what you need to do to make any
significant income from promoting other people's products.


YOU NEED A WEBSITE

Sorry, but yes, you do.  A lot of people pushing their affiliate
program will tell you, if you ask the question "Do I need my
own website?", "No, you get this beautiful 25 page website
for free!"  Great.  How are you going to get people to visit it?
And how are you going to get people to visit YOUR YouBeaut.com website in preference to everyone else's
YouBeaut.com website (all 50,000 of them)?

Well, let me tell you, the time, effort and expense you would have to spend would be MUCH better invested in your OWN unique and interesting website that will attract traffic simply because it IS unique and interesting.

That said, you pick your affiliate programs to fit in with and
complement your website.  Not the other way around.  You do
NOT create your website to fit in with and complement your
affiliate programs.  So, start with what you know, what interests you, what you're passionate about.  THAT should be the subject matter of your website.  Then, and only then, should you start researching which affiliate programs out there fit in with the website you have created.  More about that later.


YOU NEED AN EZINE

You should support your website by publishing an ezine at
least on a monthly basis but preferably weekly.  Why?  A few
reasons:

First, it reminds your readers that your site exists (assuming
they signed up at your site in the first place) and hopefully
prompts them to visit again. 

Second, you develop a targeted mailing list of subscribers
interested in the subject matter of your ezine and subscribers
that you can direct mail to (judiciously, of course).

Third, you can accept paid advertising in your ezine once it
hits 1000 subscribers or so and fourth, you can use it to
advertise your affiliate programs.  

In addition, assuming you take your ezine publishing duties
seriously and it's not a mere regurgitation of other people's
articles without any purpose other than to keep your name in
front of an audience (and an ever-decreasing one it will be if that's all you do), you can use it to develop your reputation as an expert in your field by making the original articles you write for your ezine available to a wider audience by submitting them to other ezine publishers.  Believe me, there's no shortage of ezine publishers out there who rely exclusively on other people's work!

Establishing your own website and ezine takes serious time
and work.  You can't build either in a weekend.  It will take you several weeks of effort to get it into good enough shape to take it public (and even then you won't be satisfied but you have to start at some point).  And it will take several more weeks of time and effort publicizing the fact that your website and ezine exist and to start seeing some traffic trickling in.


SELECTING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

Once you have an established website and ezine, you can start using them to promote your affiliate programs in a serious way. You can, of course, start promoting affiliate programs from day one, it's just that you won't see any results until you reach what I think of as the "established" stage.  By this I mean you have a few hundred subscribers to your ezine and maybe a hundred unique daily visitors to your website.  These numbers are on the very low end and your sales will reflect that but you'll at least be on your way by this point.

Once you reach the "established" stage, you need to be very
selective about the affiliate programs you choose because you are only going to select a very few of them and they need to be good performers.  Some internet marketing so-called experts will tell you to pick one or two programs and market them exclusively for big returns.  That's good advice on one level - it keeps you focused, and that's important - but on the other hand you're at the mercy of the owner of the affiliate program.  If they go out of business so do you. 

So, pick a small handful of programs to promote but make sure they complement each other (so that someone who is interested in one program is likely to be equally interested in the others). It should be obvious but it bears stating - don't pick programs that have no relevance to the subject matter of your site!  Your chances of selling to your website visitors are much higher if what you sell is closely related to the subject matter of your site.  It was the subject matter of your site that attracted them in the first place.  They are already a qualified prospect if what you sell from your site is relevant to that subject matter.


COMMISSION STRUCTURES

If you have a mega traffic site, then you can make up for in
volume what a particular program's commission structure
may lack in terms of straight dollars.

But if you have a lower traffic site, then you need to make sure your traffic is very targeted, but go for higher commission programs.

In other words, if you're a mega traffic site, by all means sign
up with Amazon.com and make maybe three bucks a sale.
If you make a hundred sales this week you've got three
hundred bucks you didn't have before.  But if you're a lower
traffic site, focus on making just three sales a week of a
product that pays a hundred bucks a pop and you're even with your mega traffic brethren in the commission stakes.

My current best selling program earns me $90 a sale.  I
don't do anything different to promote that than I do the
program that makes me $20 a sale.  If it takes the same amount of time and effort to make a sale from each program, why wouldn't I focus my energies on the $90 commission product? 

Contrary to what many believe, it is no harder to sell a $247
product than it is to sell a $50 product.  Don't prejudge your
audience.  Make sure you offer programs that are relevant to
their interests (and which you're proud to promote - that should go without saying but just in case ...) and the mere fact that you're bringing targeted buyers and highly relevant products together will do the rest, statistically speaking.  Never, never forget - making money in an online business is a numbers game, pure and simple.  Generate enough traffic and you'll generate sales.  But if you generate traffic that doesn't match your product line, forget about it.

 

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