Is Affiliate Marketing A Viable Business Model For Success?

Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 7:08 PM by Robert Barry

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Many of the popular “how to” courses, bootcamps and seminars are built around affiliate marketing as a business model for success. If you perform a search on the internet, you’ll find literally thousands of e-books, home study courses, and affiliate marketing products for sale.

Is it really possible to build a business around selling other people’s products?
Yes. And no.

The truth of the matter is, there is a specific formula that can lead to success if you decide to base your business around selling affiliate products. However, if you do it wrong, you may never make more than enough to cover your internet connection and telephone expenses each month.

Why is it then that there is such a huge disparity between the really successful affiliate marketers (those who make several thousand dollars each and every month) and those who barely eke out a living? Like 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:
1. Start with one product.
2. Do your research.
3. Find a market with a product that people want and are buying.
4. Set up a system for promoting that product. (Think articlewriting, whitepapers, case studies, product reviews, e-books, workbooks, etc.)
5. Find additional and complimentary products or services that you can sell after you’ve started making a profit from the first one.
6. Create a squeeze page where you can collect names of people who want to find out more about the affiliate product or niche market.
7. Drive traffic to your squeeze page and offer them valuable information in exchange for their contact information.
8. Create ways to keep in touch with the people on your list, and continue to promote the additional products to them over time. Make sure that you are offering good solid information to them as well, to help build credibility and loyalty.

After you get your first affiliate product selling well, it’s time to start cross-selling and upselling. This can take from a few weeks to several months – just like any other business, it’s important that you are willing to spend the time and money which is necessary to build your affiliate business. Once you have the first product operating at a profit, you can expand. For example, you could go into another complimentary niche. Or, if you want to try something more advanced (this one is a trick used by some of the internet marketing gurus in many different niches), go into competition with yourself. I realize it sounds a little crazy, but think of it this way: by competing against yourself – especially if you’re able to grab onto two of the top five positions – you’re really just giving yourself a bigger share of the pie!

If you’re the type of person who gets bored easily, or always looking for new challenges, you might want to go into a totally new niche. Try to find something that doesn’t have anything to do with your first niche. 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.

Once you get that down, you can just “lather, rinse and repeat” to your heart’s content. You’ll be able to watch your bank balance grow too!