How To Make Easy Money From Affiliate Programs

Opportunities run rife when one decides to commence a home based business marketing affiliate programs/products. There are so many to choose from but they all have one thing in common; you promote the product or service and you will be paid a fee or commission on any sales generated as a result of sending visitors to the site hosting the affiliate program. It sounds so easy, the supplier provides the product, the website, banners to use for promotional purposes and even a few prewritten ads you can use, and they will even deliver the product for you. All you have to do is promote their site (which is identified with your unique i.d.) and sit back and collect the commissions as people take up their offer. So what type of products do you promote? If you are looking to build a business with increasing cash flow I would suggest that you take on products that pay a residual income. That is you sell it once but you continually get paid a commission for as long as the customer uses that product. This is far more beneficial than being paid once and then having to make another sale before you get paid again. You can expand your earning capacity by leveraging your efforts. That is if any of your customers decide to promote the same affiliate program you will get an over riding commission on their sales. This is referred to as a two tiered commission payment. The commissions paid can also be generated from several levels dependent on the number of people you have in your down line and this is referred to as multilevel marketing or MLM. Now all this may sound good but have you ever wondered why most people that take this approach make very little or at worst finish up broke and subsequently bail out. First of all everybody associated with the host company is promoting the same product using the same website, banners, prewritten ads etc. They have nothing unique, nothing distinguishes their business from every body else's. Further, in many cases they are relying on a single product or products from the one supplier. You need to differentiate yourself from the rest. After all why should they buy from you? Offer something that nobody else is offering i.e. a free e-book, report (preferably one that is relative to the product on offer) or some useful software. This will give you an edge over your competitor and a reason for people to deal with you. Don't lock yourself into just one product or supplier; expand your product range and the number of suppliers. Continue to look for those that offer residual and leveraged income. The usual problem with is approach however is that you finish up with a multitude of websites to promote and are bound by the limitations of their site. Again you will be competing with everybody out there offering the same products through the same suppliers. As stated above, to be successful you need to differentiate yourself from "the crowd". It therefore becomes necessary for you to have control over what you are offering. Preferably you need to modify the website you are promoting by including additional benefits and resources. Make it reflect your personality and then you have something unique even though the actual products may be the same. Separate yourself from "the crowd", be different, offer more than the others and people will buy from you. The problem is that you cannot modify the host's website so you need to have your own, with your own domain name, hosted with a hosting company of your choice such as that available at ... http://www.Host4Profit.com/cgi-bin/home.cgi?48371 With your very own website not only can you promote the same affiliate programs but you can add others. Keep all products and services related, some will complement others whilst others will provide a choice. Delete the less profitable ones and concentrate on those that are producing the income. You no longer have "all your eggs in the one basket" and you have leveraged your profit potential. Assuming you now have a viable website it is time to look at the marketing of your site. You will need an auto responder such as that available at ... http://www.GetResponse.com/index/67040 which is free. A comprehensive email campaign is required to follow up your prospects and customers. You might like to check out the 199 pre written e-mails at ... http://www.affiliatedoubler.com/?mgs1941 Alternatively you could write your own but this would be very time consuming. A marketing guide is also preferable to keep you on track and to guide you through a comprehensive approach to marketing your site. Other tools and resources such as pop ups or pop unders, facilities to capture your subscriber's details, together with search engine submission software to promote your site are just some of the other resources required for successfully marketing your site.