Become an affiliate later rather than sooner....

Copyright 2005 Richard Grady

I attended a presentation a couple of weeks ago given by

Internet marketer, Michael Green. Michael runs the 'How To

Corp' and has created numerous information products

covering a wide range of topics.

There were a number of very interesting points that came

out of the presentation but I wanted to 'steal' one of them

as the topic of this newsletter. I am sure Michael won't

mind :-)

The point in question is a simple one but one which is

regularly overlooked by people just starting out in

Internet marketing and that is to get into affiliate

marketing later rather than sooner.

Many people jump at the chance of selling someone else's

product as an affiliate as there are many obvious

advantages:

No need to create a product of your own

No involvement in the delivery or support of the product

Minimal contact with customers

No need to have your own website

At first glance, affiliate marketing can appear to be the

ideal business opportunity and in many ways, it is.

However, if you are new to Internet marketing and have no

website, no email list and no traffic, affiliate marketing

will almost certainly be a lot of hard work.

The key to being a successful affiliate is to be able to

drive reasonable levels of traffic to a sales page that is

relevant to the traffic in question. If you don't have any

existing traffic or a mailing list, the chances are that

you are going to have to pay for this traffic (at least

initially). Whilst this can be very effective, it can

also take time to get right and will be costing money in

the process.

Therefore, to go back to the original statement, getting

involved in affiliate marketing is definitely a good idea

but if you start to work as an affiliate once you have

built up your own website, traffic and mailing list, you

will find that it is far more rewarding.

To illustrate this further, when I first started writing

this newsletter, I would often throw in the odd affiliate

link but they rarely resulted in any sales. The reason for

this was simple - I hardly had any subscribers on the

mailing list! Over the years, as my list has grown and as

subscribers have 'got to know me' and I have gained more

trust, my affiliate sales have increased.

Looking at it from another angle, I find that my most

successful affiliates are those that have an established

website or mailing list. Of course, this makes perfect

sense since there is already existing traffic to sell to

and often no effort is required other than adding a

hyperlink to a web page or giving a product a mention in

mailshot.

Once you have an existing website and

customers/subscribers, you will also start to build

credibility in your chosen field/industry. This means that

your customers are more likely to trust your

recommendations and actually purchase something if you

promote it as being a great product.

In the early days of my Internet marketing career, I would

regularly try and promote products that were about making

money online. I wasn't very successful with these

promotions and one of the main reasons was that I wasn't

personally making much money online. Once I started to

become more successful and my customers/subscribers were

able to see that I did actually know what I was talking

about, they were far more willing to purchase these types

of products from me or on my recommendation.

Therefore, in summary, get your own

website/product/newsletter/whatever up and running first

and then concentrate on adding additional value to your

product range by promoting relevant affiliate products.

If you choose to go down the road of only selling products

as an affiliate, remember that this is perfectly possible

to do but it will take time, hard work and a fair bit of

patience.

Of course, the other benefit in selling your own product is

that you don't have to share the sales proceeds :-)