Finding the Ultimate Money-Making Affiliate Marketing Solutions
By Marcus Yeo
This article inspiration comes from Stone Evans, a washed up restaurant worker turned multi-millionaire from his affiliate marketing business. But his success does not come overnight. In fact Stone Evans takes 8 long years, spending tens of thousands dollars, tested countless of products and systems, failure after failure, before finding the ultimate solutions in the affiliate marketing business.
Why you want to be an Affiliate?
Have you ever have the urge to start your online business but was hinder by not having your own product to sell? Well, you are not alone. When I got online looking for ways to supplement my income, I didn't have my own product(s) to sell. Even if I would have had my own products, I didn't have the know-how to sell them online.
Later I learned that there are companies on the Internet that will provide the products for you to sell and you earn the lion's share of the sale as commission. The companies give you websites and marketing tools to sell them with, follow-up with any prospects you send their way, close the sale, ship the products, handle customer service and complaints, and do virtually all the stuff you would have to do if you were selling your own products.
As an affiliate, saving the unnecessary time providing the product or service, following-up, closing the sale, handling customer satisfaction issues, etc. You only simply focus your effort on the high value task of bringing prospects to the table and letting the company do all the "dirty" work for you. It's a win-win situation.
What can you expect as an Affiliate?
The fact is, as an affiliate, you are creating the highest value task in any sale business. Why would companies adopt affiliates strategy rather than to employ their own sales personnel? Reason is simple. Because companies understand this, finding and pulling in new prospects for the companies are the hardest obstacles they face. Companies employing their own sales personnel are usually getting fixed plus variable paycheck. And the fact that this approach has no guarantee of positive results could mean a liability to them. Which is the reason why companies would rather have affiliate? Affiliates get paid on 100% performance basis at a much higher commission rate. Yes! I mean high commission rate, anything less that 75% commission are not high. Because as an affiliate, you deserve that! Remember... You are creating the highest value task in any sale business; you deserve a lion's share of the profit.
Many companies understand that, many don't. Therefore, it's the affiliate him/herself responsibility to make sure they get paid fairly by selling the "Right" program. There are many companies are willing to pay affiliate more than they earn themselves for making a sale. For example, there is one affiliate program I do very well with called Empowerism.
Through an online traffic generating strategies, I send hundreds of people to that website every day and a bunch of them sign up for an Empowerism membership because they see that Empowerism offers a great service for a good price. Empowerism charges $24.95 to become a member and guess how much I get paid for referring a new member... I get $20.00 per sale. That's an 80% commission!
If you think this what I mean by the Right program through high commission, then you are only half right. The Right program not only pays out a lion's share of the commissions to affiliates, but there is another extremely important factor that determines success or failure as an affiliate marketer. That is whether or not the company pays you one time or pays you residual income for a single sale.
Residual income is basically selling a "subscription service" so that when someone buys the product you get paid a one time membership and then each month when that person's subscription renews with the company, you get paid again, and again, and again... Every month for as long as that person continues using the service.
Empowerism charges $19.95/month to maintain a membership and gain access to all of their proprietary Internet marketing tools and training. As an affiliate for Empowerism, you earn $20 up-front when one of your prospects joins the program and $7 per month for the life of their membership. Now can you see a Right program like Empowerism actually generates passive income for you? That is a huge difference endorsing for a "low commission" program and for a "Residual High Commission" program.
How you can be a Successful Affiliate?
You know the value of an affiliate. You know the right affiliated program to promote. Finally you need a system to put everything together. In another word, you need a place to promote your affiliated product(s). On the Internet, you simply need your own webpage to present your product(s) to your prospects before you can send them the company's sales page.
Many affiliate 'So-Call-Gurus' said, "You don't need your own website to promote affiliated product. All you need is to direct prospects to the standard affiliate website." Well I cannot say it's a wrong strategy. But by just doing so, you actually lost your ground. You lost the advantage edge of holding on to your prospects attention. You have minimum control over the time factor on your prospects.
One of the big reasons people fail as affiliates is because they never invest in getting their own domain name and website setup. Somehow they think this is an unnecessary thing when the fact is, having your own domain name is one of the most necessary things of all to succeed in this business.
If you're promoting affiliate programs right now and you're doing it without having your own domain name and website, you're absolutely shooting yourself in the foot. You might as well be playing ping-pong without a paddle or canoeing without oars. Having your own domain name and website is a required ingredient to succeed as an affiliate.
You have to be able to control your own website. Affiliate links don't let you do this. You need to be able to add your own flair and personality to your site. You need to be able to add and promote other products you believe in. You need to be able to change the color, the type of font, the message, etc. Ultimately, you need to be in full control of your own website.
One of the best ways to promote affiliate products online is to get good free rankings in the search engines. But you simply can't do that with affiliate links. However, if you have your own domain name and hosting account, all you need to do is put up a site with unique content on it, get a few links from other sites and you're on your way to getting lots of natural free listings and traffic from the search engines.
When I first started my affiliate business, I do not have the know-how to choose the right programs, set up my own website, or promote my affiliated product. But I took the advantage of riding on to Stone Evans's 8 years of Internet sales experience & hard work by signing up for Stone Evans Plug-In Profit Site. A 24hr-ready-to-start system that selects the Best Right affiliated programs for me, set up my own domain and website for me. That's a serious shortcut to success.
Selecting the Right affiliated programs and putting them into place on your own website is only the hardware in a successful affiliate business system. And a successful affiliate business system can only be complete with a well-structured marketing strategy to draw, hold, and promote the affiliated products to prospects. The amazing thing about Stone Evans Plug-In Profit Site is that he design a knowledge-based system, creating a learning ground for newbie who sign up for his system, to pick up marketing and advertising skills progressively to build a network of effective "scouts" that draws massive traffic to your website.
