Should you begin your internet business life with affiliate marketing, a content developer who sells advertising, someone who sells their own products such as training courses, e-books or infoproducts?
Very often when you first start out online the prospect of creating your own products to sell online is just too enormous when you are barely able to understand what html stands for, don’t know the first thing about how search engines work and are still trying to figure out how you get paid if you refer someone else’s products for sale.
Granted, the leap from dreaming about a high profit internet business to actually kicking back drinking mai tai’s on the beach is a rather gigantic one.
And yes, affiliate marketing can (and should) play a role in you achieving your end goals.
Any of you who have read any of my previous blog postings or have visited sites like InfoMarketer’sZone or Ultimate Success Package will have long since realized that I believe anyone who is ONLY pitching other people’s products is leaving a ton of opportunity and money on the doorstep – BUT…
I certainly agree there is a benefit to understanding how the giants of affiliate marketing work, why they have been able to exceed everyone else in terms of profits and how affiliate marketing fits in with an overall wealth creation plan for your internet business.
I’ll never forget, when I first started my online business back in 1999 (yikes!!), while I was writing my first training program to be sold as an e-package online I offered two substantial information packages that each paid well over $100/sale and quickly eclipsed my full-time job income at the time.
Wow – that was amazing. At the time, I didn’t even know why it was working so well. It wasn’t until a few years later when I had learned much more about the business and had thousands of affiliate myself selling my e-books that I suddenly understood how to make affiliate marketing work and how to incorporate it into your overall internet business plan.
AFFILIATE MARKETING – THE RIGHT WAY
Earning significant profits from your internet business will not come from haphazardly slapping up a website or placing ads for affiliate products…instead they are manufactured by becoming a major, trusted leader within your marketplace that buyers trust and sellers desire.
So, here are a few steps to building a solid internet business that will make you multiple streams of income from affiliate marketing, selling your own products and more…
1. Choose the right market. The right market means something you will stick with, enjoy researching, perhaps have some existing knowledge or at least a huge desire to learn more about. Becoming a trusted broker between buyers and sellers in your marketplace means you need to capture the attention of buyers and prove to sellers that you are plugged into a desire within your marketplace that makes you a force they cannot ignore.
2. Make your primary purpose to add value to your marketplace. How? Could be through a forum, a blog, a content site, a comparison or review site, by being entertaining, offering ‘inside’ information, interviewing experts, etc… You want to become a critical part in the value chain between those who want things in your marketplace and those who want to sell things to those in your marketplace.
Focus of your value is to gain the trust and respect and curiosity of your marketplace so they just HAVE to be part of your list.
3. Next, through your communication skills you continually discover demand and match that demand with great products through reviews, interviews, detailed explanation, and other valuable ways to introduce products to fulfill the demand of your marketplace.
Too many people begin immediately at step 3 and then wonder why the sales don’t come flooding in. Simple – you don’t have subscribers and the ones you do have don’t yet trust you so they are likely buying from someone else.
My advice to people who are looking to start an internet business by thinking product creator, advertiser or affiliate marketer is to FIRST focus on building a relationship-based brokerage with your marketplace – when you have a list of a few thousand subscribers who you communicate with on a regular basis, who enjoy hearing from you, who find your information valuable you can BET they will buy almost anything from you in the future whether that is your own products or products you recommend as an affiliate marketer.
