Can you build a successful business built on Affiliate Marketing? Many popular "how to" courses, bootcamps and seminars are built around affiliate marketing as a business model for success. If you do a search on the Internet, you'll find literally thousands of eBooks, Homestudy courses, and affiliate marketing products for sale.
But can you really build a business around earning commissions through selling other people's products?
Yes. And no.
The truth is, there is a specific formula that can lead to success if you decide to base your business around selling affiliate products.
But if you do it wrong, you may never make more than enough to cover your Internet connection and telephone costs each month.
Why is there such a huge disparity between the really successful affiliate marketers, those who make several thousand dollars month after month, and those who are barely covering their expenses?
As with any business, it all comes down to creating solid systems that are scalable and can be duplicated to bring income from as many different sources as possible.
Here are some things to keep in mind when getting started:
Start with one product and do your research. Find a market with a product that people want and are buying.
Set up a system for promoting that product. Consider article writing, white papers, case studies, product reviews, e-books, workbooks, etc.
Find additional complimentary or related products or services that you can sell after you've started making a profit with the first one.
Create a squeeze page where you can collect names of people who have an interest in the affiliate product or niche market.
Drive traffic to your Squeeze Page and offer them valuable information in exchange for their contact information.
Create ways to keep in touch with the people on your list, and continue to promote the additional products to them over time – but make sure that you're offering good solid information to them as well, to help build your credibility and their loyalty.
Once you've got your first affiliate product selling well, it's time to start cross selling and upselling. This may take you from a few weeks to several months – but like any other business, it's important that you are willing to spend the time and money necessary to build your affiliate business.
As soon as you've got the first product and cross sells operating at a profit, you can expand. For example, you could go into another complimentary niche. Or, if you want to try something a little more advance - and this one is a trick used by some of the Internet Marketing gurus in many different niches - go into competition with yourself.
That may sound a little crazy – but think of it this way: by competing against yourself – especially if you're able to grab onto the two of the top five positions – you're really just giving yourself a bigger piece of the pie!
If you get bored easily or you are looking for a new challenge, you might want to go into a totally new niche. Find something that doesn't have anything to do with your first niche.
But whatever you decide to do, just make sure that you're following the proven formula for success. Build each product or niche until it becomes profitable before moving on to the next one.
After that, you can just "lather, rinse and repeat" to your heart's content – and watch your bank balance grow!
