Affiliate marketing may be on your path to financial freedom….
IF–
- You’re all fired up about getting started with an Internet-based business.
- You’ve got the essential computer system set up.
- You’ve identified a target market, a niche for your business (a group of people with a need, people who want a specific kind of problem solved and they’re looking for information about the problem, looking for products and/or services to fill the need).
- You’re not ready with your own products or services for your market.
Affiliate Marketing
Afiliate Marketing (or affilitate advertising) is the term used to describe the practice of advertising products and/or services for other internet-based businesses with a web site. Affiliate marketing programs are open to you if you have a web site, an electronic newsletter or any other electronic means of running an ad or providing a text hotlink back to the web site for the products and/or services you are advertising as an affiliate marketer.
You become an affiliate marketer initially by signing up on an affiliate program web page–or by joining an affiliate network. Either way, you will use marketing materials in the form of text and image ads that have been developed by the specific company you sign up to market. Each form of advertisement has a tracking code built in so the company knows which marketer sent the traffic to their web site and to whom to pay commissions.
Commissions are paid by check and mailed to you, or by electronic transfer to your bank account or via a PayPal account. It is usual practice to require that you have a PayPal account and therefore a PayPal email address (an email address you associate with the account when you sign up for a PayPal account. It is also usual practice to require that you sign up with your Social Security number (unless you have established another tax ID associated with your own company.)
Affiliate Ads
When you have signed up as an affiliate and established how you will be identified and paid, you will set up specific campaigns and track your progress. Affiliate marketers typically create a web site or a blog and attract as many visitors as possible to the site. When you have established your site and you’ve got traffic flowing to it, one of the ways you monetize (make money) is by advertising the products and services for which you are an affiliate.
Another way that affiliate marketers make money (and some of them make gobs and gobs of money) is to directly advertise their affiliate products and services by directly advertising on search and content networks like Google.
CAUTION
Millions of dollars have been made and thousands lost (sometimes just in a day). There is an art and science to successful affiliate marketing using ads on networks like Google. Don’t jump into this endeavor without educating yourself first! Learn about affiliate advertising, search marketing, affiliate networks and affiliate programs. Learn how to create campaigns and manage them. Learn how to invest in and grow ad campaigns. (A good book to read, the one this information is taken from, is Affiliate Millions by Anthony Borelli and Greg Holden, available from Amazon and probably your public library.)
Affiliate Marketing as a Secondary Income Stream
Many entrepreneurs use affiliate marketing to generate a secondary income stream. For example, an internet marketer may have a primary business direct selling products and buidling a network marketing business. It is common for these business owners to have their own web site or newsletter focused on delivering information needed by their team members, customers and prospective customers. They often advertise affiliate products or services that are complimentary to their primary product line or the needs of their downline marketing team.
More examples:
A life or business coach may have a primary source of income through fees for services and also advertise products that are complimentary. An executive coach might also market personal planning systems, for instance.
A health professional in private practice (massage therapist, chiropractor, naturopath, nutritionist) may have a web site or blog, offer valuable information for clients and market complimentary products using affilate ads on their web pages.
More About Affiliate Network Marketing
Affiliate Marketing and Internet Marketing are different models for making an income stream, but combined as affiliate network marketing, they work to the advantage of a marketer’s short AND long-term income situation.
Typically, it takes 1-4 years before a network marketer establishes a business that begins to pay the bills and also develops residual income which is the heart and gold of the network marketing compensation system. The job is complex. The network marketer develops a customer base that buys products and the marketer earns the price differential (e.g. the difference between the wholesale price of product and the price it’s sold for to the consumer). Another source of income is bonus income based on volume. Eventually, the network marketer also develops a team and then a team with teams of their own. The role and responsibilities expand to leadership and training. Income increases as the organization grows and new leaders are developed.
Affiliate marketing can be combined with network marketing so that the marketer makes early money which can be put towards the network marketer’s marketing budget. Without pulling out a credit card to pay for phone bills, office expenses, and markerting costs, marketing a complimentary information product or services to the marketer’s list of leads and prospects can help pay the bills–while providing products and services at low cost and high value for the customer. Affiliate marketing compensation is simpler, too. You don’t build a team to do affiliate marketing. You choose products (and maybe a system–see next section). You drive traffic to the product owners web pages and it’s up to the product owner to sell the product. You get paid with a cut of the price of purchased product.
Leverage Someone Else’s System
Many internet marketers get their start by using someone else’s system as well as their products to learn by doing, learning and earning by leveraging the system developed by someone else.
For example, when you purchase a product from Ann Sieg (the Renegade Network Marketer), you are invited to use Ann’s back end systems and training. In addition to marketing Anne’s information products, you have the opportunity to sign up as an affiliate of a number of programs and services through her back office. When people follow you by buying Anne’s products from you and working directly with you, you have access to a system for bringing them onto your list, consulting with them and providing high value services and products to create long term marketing relationships with them.
My association with Ann Sieg began with downloading a free ebook (The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing), purchasing another, working in her back office to sign up as an affiliate and then joining her team with the benefits of free training through interactive web-based seminars and online training, and free coaching from the consultant who offered me what I offer you–an initial one-hour session to get you off to your start in internet marketing.
It is a win-win relationship. I benefit from the training and assistance available to build a viable, profitable home based business and Ann’s valuable products get out to the world via the efforts of marketers like me–and you–all around the globe. There’s income for me–and income for her.
Now What?
I don’t know what the next steps for you might be, whether you’ll start your internet marketing venture with affiliate marketing or add affiliate marketing as a secondary income stream.
My next step has been to create web-based content via a blog and a web site. Affiliate marketing is part of my business model and business growth plan. It is a source of just one additional income stream I have added to monetize my business, providing me with an income stream to put into my marketing budget.
The strategies I use to build my new business focus on social marketing and developing web-based content for my target market, giving information to thirsty small business and home business entrepreneurs that will help them choose, establish and grow their businesses.
Learn more about affiliate marketing and decide what’s best for your business model. When you are ready, add an affiliate marketing income stream to your business to fuel your business growth. Serve your clients and customers well with valuable products that compliment your own products and services.
To your success with affiliate marketing,
Kate Williams
1-888-278-3506
kate@simply-home-business.com
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