A Beginners Guide: Nuts and Bolts

So, its down to brass tacks (ENOUGH! with the cliches! ) Seriously, I'm glad you have stuck around this long, it demonstrates conviction. What we are going to discuss and take apart here is:

1. Your Affiliate Business Types

2. Time, Energy, and Costs

3. The Right Fit

Its All in the Type

Just like some people are better suited to be architects than policemen or interior decorators over accountants, every affiliate business will not suit you. In fact, you may even try something before its readily obvious its not for you. Sometimes that's part of the learning curve.

A good example is a Niche Content Site with a PLR (Private Label Rights) as the principle content vehicle. The theory behind this affiliate is you identify a niche (say its about weight loss), set up a blog or other web presence, and then either wright or have written 500 to 700 word articles that are posted, say, one per week. The goal is to become an authority site where more and more people come to read your blog for advice and information. Its fairly straightforward. You monetize (how you make money) your site by Adsense, link advertising, banner advertising or a combination there of.

As you might already notice, there is going to be some serious writing for this site, and as it becomes more mature, more writing. If you don't like writing (I have learned to like it) you may wish to strongly consider this route before attempting it. Whats more, people who go down the Niche Content site road usually run more than one site. Its not unusual to have a successful marketer run 20 or more (would you believe 100) sites. That's twenty articles a week or eighty a month for twenty sites. Can you do that? What those who are successful doing this affiliate end up doing is to outsource all this writing, but not before they spent allot of time doing it themselves. Not for everybody!

The type favored by many marketers is the Product Promoter. This is a bare bones concept that can easily be scaled up to fit your expertise and inclination. It can be done with or without your own website, although in time you will want the flexibility of your own "VRE" (remember VRE? ). The number of variations to this affiliate is probably too broad to list. Still, somethings you can do are practice this type of affiliate by by joining an organization like Wealthy Affiliate. They provide you training, web development, hosting, and forums all on their site for a very reasonable price. With the Product Promoter you can make money by sales of the product plus you can make make secondary income by hosting other peoples advertisements (as long as they do not take away from your product). With the Product promoter, you are not likely to become an authority site but then there is less writing too.

When you have become an authority site or have been promoting multiple sites and products for some time, you begin to gain a certain market savvy, a definite understanding of whats fluff, whats useful, and what is needed but nowhere to be found. If you are the creative type or if you have just paid attention to who is who and who does what, you can perhaps identify and make/have made that missing product. This is the Product Developer and its usually how people go from being an affiliate marketer to being known as a Super Affiliate.

When you design, manufacture, produce and market your own product, its considered to be the ultimate in affiliate marketing. To get to this point you must be a successful affiliate marketer, but when you have your own product picked up by the legion of affiliate marketers out there and then see the shear muscle of this organization lift you to even greater financial heights, you know you have joined the elite club of the Super Affiliate!

The Cost is Time, Energy, and Cash

So as not to overly frighten anyone, successful affiliate marketing does not take hundreds of dollars a month to work. Neither does it take half your day to get it done. And if you can sit awake in a chair, well, you'll have enough energy to make money. But if you want to make 100 thousand dollars a year you WILL have to work for it. What does that mean? It means you will have to start from nothing, learning how to pick products, how to successfully promote them, all the while keeping a tight fist over your wallet and your dreams alive and well.

You must learn about the industry. You must learn about its tools, its idiosyncrasies, its myths and realities. For instance, how many of you are still holding on to the cherished notion that somewhere out there in cyberland is the one scheme, the one product, that's going to make you rich overnight? How many of you would be surprised if I told you less than 1% of the industry made their fortune that way? Likewise would you be shocked to learn that 80% of the wanna be affiliates failed to make 1000 dollars free and clear? Forget about getting rich and concentrate on being successful. This is a much easier thing to achieve. And you know what? You are the source, arbitrator, and designer of that success.

You must start gradually and cheaply. You must read, examine, and take apart product. You must invest in other peoples knowledge, such as joining free affiliate forums like Warrior Forum or fee for service programs like "The Insider Secrets to Marketing your Business on the Internet." Rating: You start small by educating your self, maybe between 25-50 dollars a month to learn the ropes from those who know. When you learn about what works and what doesn't, you move on to setting up your business and weening yourself from some sources and keeping close contact with others (like Warrior Forum).

Naturally, the more involved the business and you become, the more you will pay on all fronts (time, energy, and cash), but as its an incremental process, that you can scale up or down according to the needs of your life, there is no real worry about over taxing yourself, family, or resources. A mother of two can still find time in her busy day to do part time research and marketing her product(s). That's how it begins. And believe me, where it can go is amazing! I know of serious markets who spend 16,000 dollars over the course of an evening just executing Adwords ads. But yeah, he's making tens of thousands on top of what he spends. Given the proper investment of time, energy, and cash, you can get there too

If it fits…

I think the one thing to take away from this guide is this: Don't latch on to the first thing you see; don't be impulsive; and don't let anyone force you down a road that doesn't seem like you. Believe me, like any business, there are good and bad people. There are plenty of "snake oil" salesmen out there who are more than happy to take your money. But don't let that cloud your judgment; if you go to far down the path of suspicion it will blind you to all the good merchants and all the excellent product that people will willingly pay (YOU) good money. Find what fits your personality, stay with it, develop it, become and expert and MAKE MONEY!

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