One of the best ways to make some quick up-front cash online is to get into affiliate marketing. The internet is LOADED with digital products and services you can sell online. But is it the best avenue for financial independence?
Don’t you wish online marketing was this easy?
My humble opinion is no.
Why? Because selling online is harder than you think.
First you gotta find a product or service.
Clickbank is a popular site for finding some, but most of what’s there is not very valuable. PLR (private label rights) products are popular, too. (PLR products are usually digital products (info ebooks) created by a person who supposedly knows what they’re doing so that you can “revise/rebrand” it with your info & sell as your own). In both cases, though, do you really want to sell the same products as everyone else on the internet?
If you have unique skills or knowledge, you can create your own product or service to offer to affiliates. The product owner always makes more money than the affiliates, anyway, so that is a better idea.
Then you gotta find customers!
Boy oh boy, does the learning curve rise drastically here! That means driving massive amounts of traffic to your site. It involves SEO (search engine optimization), advertising (free or paid – how much money are you willing to invest just to get traffic?), and just blasting out your message to anyone who has a pulse. Your facebook friends are gonna love you… Not! Or you can do what the pros do and pick a niche market is and target market them by advertising where they’ll be found online (and off). Or you can go the easy route and sell on eBay or Amazon.
Even if you have “massive amounts” of traffic, not everyone is gonna buy.
Remember all that money you just spent on advertising. If your visitors don’t buy, that’s money down the drain. Whether or not they buy depends on your product or service, the prices, and how irresistible your sales copy is (the text on your site) to name only a few variables.
So unless you’re selling an expensive item for which you earn a HUGE commission, you’re not gonna make enough money to support yourself, much less a family for a long time… unless you can manage to sell in astronomically massive quantities.
And once you make a sale, you’ve lost a customer.
I know you know that you gotta build your customer list, but unless you’ve got more products to sell to the same customers, that list is useless and you’ve got to keep finding new customers to buy your products or services.
The best products or services are those that are called “consumable.”
That’s products or services that people use and have to buy repeatedly. Think about the stuff you pay for over and over and over again: groceries, toiletries & cosmetics, clothing & shoes, utilities, pet meds, books & music, etc. Now, once you’ve found a customer, you just might have a repeat customer (depending on customer service, prices, and any unforeseeable damage during shipping). In this case, you just might be able to produce residual income (that means getting paid over and over again for something you did once). Which is what you’re really looking for anyway. This is a way to support yourself (and your family) long-term.
These types of products, though, are more common in the network marketing industry than the affiliate marketing industry. And the products and services you get through a network marketing company are usually (99% of the time) better than what you can get at your local supermarket. That’s because they know they’ve got to be better in order to win you over from your favorite store around the corner. And they almost always have perks that your local store doesn’t offer.
Therefore, network marketing is your best bet if you intend to be successful with your home business – both online and off. It offers better products, better perks, and residual income.
That said, there are good companies and there are bad companies. If you’ve read any of my other articles, you can see that I’ll be the first to admit that. So do your research and interview several people before you decide which one you want to give a try. And go ahead & contact me for a no-strings-attached interview. You can reach me at 678-696-1696 or danni@danniellewood.com.
