Affiliate Marketing – Know What You’re Getting Into
Affiliate Marketing can be a good way to make money online, as long as you really understand exactly what you’re getting into. This is not a way to make easy money and get rich quick, no matter what anyone says. It’s a full time job and more, and you need to understand how to do it right.
As an Affiliate Marketer, you promote and sell other people’s products online, and get paid a commission when they sell through your efforts. Affiliate Marketing, though, is kind of like being a real estate agent. Real estate agents have to pay for the signs they put on the lawn of the houses they’re trying to sell. They have to pay for the classified ads they run in the newspapers. They have to spend time on the phone talking to prospective buyers. They have to spend time showing people the house. They have to buy the coffee and donuts they put out during weekend open houses.
They have to invest all that time and money before they get paid, and hope they make the sale so that they can cover their expense and turn a profit.
You do basically the same thing when you are an Affiliate Marketer; you just do it in different ways online. For example, you need to build web pages that promote the product you’re affiliated with. You need to create blogs, build email lists, make videos for YouTube, answer questions from prospective customers, pay for Pay Per Click ad campaigns…much like a real estate agent. It’s just a different set of tools.
The greatest similarity is that you have to do all that work and spend that advertising money before you get paid, again just like a real estate agent.
Most people who decide to try Affiliate Marketing don’t realize how much work it really is. Affiliate Marketing, when done right, is a full time job and more. It’s also a bit of an art form. The best Affiliate Marketers are natural salespeople. If you’ve always been someone who is comfortable with people, can talk a good game, feels comfortable in a sales position and knows how to write really well, then you could be a good Affiliate Marketer.
Here are some things you’ll want to think about if you want to try Affiliate Marketing:
Know what kind of product to be an affiliate for
Lots of companies have Affiliate Programs you can join. You can be an Affiliate Marketer for information products, physical products, and many other things. If you want to make money at it, though, you have to go where the commissions are the best. That means you need to be an information marketer.
Information products are not physical products, which means they don’t have anywhere near as much overhead cost. That means that the company providing the information product can afford to pay you a better commission. Smart Affiliate Marketers choose information products over physical products every time.
Stay away from Lead Generators
There are a large number of so-called affiliate ‘gurus’ out there who try to lead you to Affiliate Marketing networking sites, where you can find lots of Affiliate Marketing ‘opportunities’. These sites advertise literally thousands of Affiliate programs you can become connected with and make commissions on, but none of those products sell for more than $100. You get a commission of somewhere in the 25% to 40% range on products you find on sites like that. This sounds okay, until you figure out what those cheap info products really are.
They are called Lead Generators. The vast majority of the time, the info they contain is outdated, useless, or pure junk. However, their marketing material is often really compelling, and makes them sound very valuable at a low price. When you become an Affiliate for one of those products, you end up unwittingly selling junk products to people. As an Affiliate Marketer, your reputation is everything to you, and if you end up with a rep for selling junk products, you might as well just quit right then. Nobody will every buy from you again.
The worst part of a Lead Generator, though, is that it’s real purpose is to get the names, email addresses, phone numbers and credit card numbers of the customers you send them as their Affiliate. Then, they contact those customers directly, cutting you out of the loop, and begin selling them thousands of dollars worth of other junk info product. You never see a dime of commission from those really large sales.
Any time you’re considering becoming an Affiliate for an information product, always check them out first. The best way to do that is to type the name of the product into Google, and add the word ‘scam’. If there’s bad press out there about the product, you’ll see it, and you’ll need to stay away from it.
This is a full time career
I’ve mentored a great number of people in business, and many times I’ve come across people who say “I want to sell products on my own web site, do some Affiliate Marketing, maybe sell an info product, do some sales on eBay…” and so on. What I have to help these people understand is that most of those things are full time jobs in themselves, and that’s especially true of Affiliate Marketing.
When you’re an Affiliate for a product, you need to learn that product inside and out. You have to be able to come up with sales angles and ad copy that even the creators of the product haven’t thought of yet. You have to make yourself known as an expert in the product’s field, through social marketing. In effect, you are going to have to become a complete “advertising agency” for the product itself. Making real money as an Affiliate means that this is going to take up all of your online work time and more.
Affiliate Programs will help you sell their products
The larger Affiliate Programs have Affiliate Managers, who are there to help you become a profitable Affiliate. They’ll provide you with sample ad copy, sample web pages, special promotions, videos and other things you can use to build your Affiliate promotions for their products.
Don’t just rely on the Affiliate Program’s materials, though. A really profitable Affiliate is someone who takes it beyond what’s already provided, and generates their own unique sales materials.
Both the bad and the good Affiliate Programs have Affiliate managers who will help you, so don’t be fooled into a Lead Generator just because they appear to have a helpful Affiliate Manager.
So, if you consider yourself a good salesperson, you could be a good Affiliate Marketer. You just need to be sure you know what you’re getting into, and guard your reputation with your life; a reputation means everything to an Affiliate Marketer.
Chris Malta has been an Entrepreneur for 35 years. He’s the Founder and CEO of Worldwide Brands, Inc., an EBiz Radio Talk Show Host, a published EBiz Author, Contributing Editor to eBay Radio, and the creator of dozens of instructional EBiz videos and free EBooks.
Worldwide Brands is recognized as the best company in EBiz Product Sourcing by businesses including eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Intuit, UPS and many others.
Chris Malta personally Trains and Mentors new EBiz owners through his Personal EBiz Workshops at http://www.ChrisMalta.com/Workshops
Chris is a well-known crusader against internet business scams. Save yourself a tremendous amount of money in your online business – get Chris Malta’s FREE EBiz Scam Report now at http://www.ChrisMalta.com
(c) Copyright Chris Malta 2009, all rights reserved worldwide
Author: Chris Malta
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