OK, So What’s The Specific Business Model That Can Deliver
All Those Characteristics?
All Those Characteristics?
It’s called Affiliate Marketing.
And it’s PERFECT for beginners.
Especially if you want it to develop into a serious side-income, or even job-quitting income sometime. (And maybe soon.)
Because in addition to all the characteristics I described on the previous page, you don’t have Sell Anything. Ever.
Especially if you want it to develop into a serious side-income, or even job-quitting income sometime. (And maybe soon.)
Seriously. You’ll understand in a moment. (And I get into the dollars, soon.)
Many newcomers are intimidated by the thought of having to sell.
Well, that problem just evaporated.
You don’t have products to sell, you don’t have customers to deal with.
There’s no order taking, no dealing with customer questions, no wrestling with packaging problems, shipping headaches, delivery issues, responding to customer complaints, processing returns, arguing with the credit card companies … and so on.
These are all VERY real issues for a lot of online businesses.
But NOT for Affiliate Marketing.
All those “… you don’t have to …” are a big part of the beauty of this method.
When I first encountered this business model I was stunned.
It seemed like a dream come true.
Not only did I not have to sell … which was an incredible relief.
But what you’ll see in a moment is that it also meant something HUGE.
Because instead of having to be good at a LOT of new skills
… I really only needed to be decent at one.
Naturally, a lot has changed since I first got involved but Affiliate Marketing is STILL by far the most open and accessible route for newcomers to get involved and make money online.
Here’s what it is, and how it works.
There are tens of thousands of businesses online who will pay you a commission if you “send” people to their website, usually to a particular sales page, and one or more of those people BUY a product.
(They can track which visitors came from you, and bought something. They won’t cheat you because they NEED affiliates. You make money for them! Most of them will bend over backwards to help you make money.)
Let’s get some of the language straight.
When you sign up with one of these businesses, you become an Affiliate. You join their Affiliate Program. Then when they pay you, that’s called an Affiliate fee or an Affiliate Commission. And when you send people to their website, it’s called “sending Traffic.” Or “sending visitors.”
Now, think about that: 90% of all the tasks that an Internet Marketer might have to do to make money with different business models all just got erased from your “Have to learn this, have to do this, have to get good at this” task list.
You have just discovered the shortest distance between you and making money online.
You’re left with ONE thing to do. (This is where the training comes in, of course.)
Find people interested in the product that you’re promoting, and cause them or persuade them to visit the merchant’s website (or Amazon page, although that’s not my personal favorite).
Then it’s the job of the vendor’s sales page to do the actual selling. And if you choose wisely, you’ll find and work with those vendors who are REALLY good at selling!
Example: I promote a piece of home gym equipment. It sells for $500 – $2,500. I earn between $50 and $250 if I send someone to their website and they buy something. My commission can be as low as 4%, as high as 10%.
Remember: All I did for my money was send people (interested people, that’s part of the skill-set you’ll develop) to the website.
Now, that’s promoting a physical product. And there are a LOT of opportunities to do just that.
And many Affiliates marketers make good money doing exactly that.
But for a lot of us, the BIG money is in promoting 2 different types of things.
One type is “Digital Products.”
This means, things that can be downloaded, for example software or a Tutorial “How To” course. Or it can mean things that stay “Up in the Cloud” (Online) you can log-in using your Browser and access the product at any time.
These are all things that don’t have to be packaged or shipped. They’re just digital files to be downloaded. So the buyer can have instant access, which of course is very attractive to the buyer. They don’t have to wait for days (Amazon) or weeks (Many suppliers) for delivery of a physical product.
For example, there are a lot of different “How To” courses, using videos and PDF files for example, that teach people how they can profit from making Videos and publishing them on YouTube.
I can choose to promote a “low end” course might sell for $27. Or a pretty advanced course might be selling for $297 to $497.
At the top end, the vendor who sells the $27 product ALSO sells a so-called “High Ticket” product that goes into all sorts of details and covers multiple ways to monetize videos.
This might sell for $997. (Yeah, prices ending in “7” is “the norm” these days.)
Why would the vendor sell a $27 product when they also have a $997 product?
Well, first because they’ll sell a lot more units of the low-end so the dollars can add up.
But more importantly, once people buy the low-end product and see just how good the Vendor is at this method, and how do-able it really is, and just how much money they could make … they are excellent candidates to upgrade to the High-Ticket offer.
Does that make sense?
But here’s the thing: unlike with physical products, my commission on Digital Products — just like your commission will be! — is usually 40% to 75%.
(It can be 100% on some inexpensive stuff but I’ll deal with that in a minute — that’s not always as good as it sounds. It could mean you’ve wandered into a dodgy neighborhood!)
So if we take the 50% number, your commission on a $27 sale would be $13.50. But your commission on $297 and $497 products would be $148.50 and $248.50. On the $997 high-ticket product … your commission would be $498.50.
(Some Courses sell for $1997, or $2497 … I’ll let you do the math to calculate the commissions on those at 40% or 50%.)
Think about that!
The vendor had to have expert knowledge, design and build the course(s), prepare all the sales materials and the delivery mechanisms and customer help desk services and test and tweak them until he knew they were excellent.
Then create a bunch of marketing material for Affiliates to use.
Then find and attract Affiliates willing to promote his/her New Course.
All you did was, send traffic to their sales page and when someone bought the vendor gave you a half of what that customer paid!
Obvious tip: An Affiliate who knows what he or she is doing would look for people who are definitely interested in learning about YouTube marketing, and guide them to the Vendor’s sales page.
(I’ll talk about where and how you find these people in a minute.)
Let’s say you sent interested people to the 3 different products.
Maybe 3 people bought the low-end product, Maybe one bought the $297 product.
Maybe no-one immediately bought the high-ticket product … but one of those who bought the $27 product recognized what a terrific opportunity there is in YouTube, and decided to invest in a more advanced course and went for the $997 product and gaining some familiarity with the Expert, because after exposure to the low-end product they were confident they weren’t wasting their money.
More than that, they were confident they could profit big-time.
Let’s put that into dollars.
That means that by doing NOTHING except DIRECTING some visitors to the sales pages, you earned (3 commissions X $13.50), plus (1 commission X $148.50) plus (1 commission X $498.50). That adds up to $687.50.
Can you imagine … $687.50 earned commissions without selling anything to anyone …without…
OK, OK you remember all those points I made from earlier.
But hey, it’s exciting!
Now: there’s a wide range of possibilities here.
Some people prefer to promote low-end products that provide commissions from $7 to $50.
Money per sale is low but they can make a lot of sales if they know what they are doing.
Others prefer to focus on products that pay commissions of $297 to $2,500 (yep, seriously).
Some like to do both. They like to have routines and systems in place that are constantly promoting the big-ticket items while they like to get busy from time to time with the smaller stuff.
What will be your preference, I wonder? And whatever direction you choose, you can change at any time, of course.
Are you getting a “feel” for the flexibility and the potential you get with Affiliate Marketing?
I mentioned at the beginning that there were 2 types of Digital Products.
One is the 1-time purchases that can range from low-end to high-ticket.
But the other one has a lot of benefits, too.
I’m talking about subscription-based products and services. You promote something where a buyer subscribes and (for example) pays perhaps $47/month to use some specialist email software. Or to be a member of a membership site where valuable new material is added every week or every month.
Your commission might be 25% to 50% … not a lot, on a 1-time basis.
That means for example $20 in the 1st month, when they buy.
But now look again: 20 of those deals (and that’s trivial when you know what you’re doing) and you have $400 a month being deposited into your bank account, without doing anything else after making the sale.
And if you’ve chosen the right products to promote, and been smart about the traffic you sent, that monthly commission can continue for YEARS. That’s close to $5,000 a year, ongoing, from 20 sales you might have made months or years ago!
And all you did was send traffic to the vendor’s sales page!
Can you connect the dots yet?
Can you see how this is something that you could do just a little of, promote just a couple of things, not take it very seriously, and sell a few low-end deals each week?
Or take it seriously, promote several products or else just promote a few but send a LOT of traffic to those?
So you choose your own hours. You don’t have to be anywhere special, at any particular time, to do this! You can be making sales while you’re not at your desk, or even in the country!
No inventory to carry.
Just …choose what to promote.
Send traffic.
Learn how to do that and you need never be short of money again.
OK, time for some catch-up.
First, I promised you earlier that I’d give you some proof that this was legit.
Well, here it is: “Affiliate Programs” are run by some very large companies that you might have heard about … like Walmart. Target. eBay. Oh, and a small but promising up-and-coming company called Amazon! Maybe you’ve heard of them? Amazon has something like 300,000 Affiliates, and maybe twice that number, actively promoting products and being paid commissions.
I think you’d agree, that makes it clear that Affiliate marketing is indeed legit.
Oh, and by the way … none of those examples are on my own list of what I like to promote. I just used them because they are household names, to prove the point.
The companies that pay the type of dollars I like to bank aren’t ones you’d know.
But you WILL be told who they are, and how to find them, and even have the option of working with one (with 4-figure commission potential) if you pursue this.
I realize this has been a long read.
If you’ve stayed this far, you’re finding it valuable information.
But a handful of questions have probably jumped into your brain by now.
If you want to be an Affiliate, where do you go to find products that you can be paid to promote?
(To be paid a commission on sales?)
And how do you apply?
Can anyone be accepted or are some people rejected … and how do you get on the right side of that argument?
And, where do you find the visitors who’ll be interested in buying from the vendor?
How do you get them to actually visit the sales pages where the products are sold?
How do you get them to actually visit the sales pages where the products are sold?
How can you learn how to do this for yourself?
Learn how to tap into this extraordinary business model?
And be dependent on NO-ONE?
I’ll deal with these next.
Along with warning you of a couple of traps to avoid.