About 92% of Internet Marketers out there fail to make enough money selling affiliate products. When I say “enough” money, I mean they fail to generate enough to quit their day job. The other 8% however, make it real big!
What are the secrets of these successful Internet Affiliate Marketers?
I offer you another good tip here.
There are 2 ways to promote Affiliate products:
1. Non-Subscribers Based Approach
These Affiliate Marketers send all the traffic directly to the Affiliate product’s sales page and let the product owner do the selling for them, in which there will be 2 outcomes:
A. The visitor buys the product and they get a commission
B. The visitor exit without buying and will probably never step in again
This direct traffic method is the most common approach and requires almost no work from the Affiliate Marketers’ side. This is what I call a hit-and-run strategy in which the marketer basically targets a large number of visitors perpetually and hoping that some will convert to sales. And it will, by simple mathematical statistics.
But this is practically a numbers’ game as compared with the other approach. You cannot expect repeat visitors nor repeat sales to be made. A lot of diligence and discipline are required to get this method to generate good income for the Affiliate Marketer. The biggest challenge is this: the process to direct traffic to an Affiliate’s sale page can get so mechanical and monotonous it usually wears out the marketer after a while. Shortly after, you will notice another star falling from the sky, signifying the death of another Affiliate Marketer.
This is not a wrong approach, just not the best in my opinion.
2. Subscribers Based Approach
Most successful Affiliate Marketers I know would adopt this approach. This requires a personal sales page to be set up with an opt-in form. Usually, some good freebies are given away (no charge of course, as the word freebies suggest) as a goodwill Thank You gesture for the visitor to opt-in. I personally offer a good EBook and free videos for my visitors.
After the visitors opt-in, they may (or may not) get directed to the sales page of the Affiliate product that the marketer is promoting. Why?
Most of these Marketers seek to offer more value for the opt-in subscribers by giving them more information, more tips and more good offers. There are of course some bad hats out there, but generally, these Affiliate Marketers are not hit-and-run Marketers. They themselves learned through a series of bad experiences and because of that, sincerely did not want others to follow their footsteps.
If you have been in the market long enough, I am sure you would have acquired some real good products that you have purchased from genuine Affiliate Marketers. The reason is simple, they are in for the long haul. They ride on an Airbus 380 and not a 330.
However, to succeed in this approach requires more hard work in the initial set up, with some minor investment cost. Then again in the long haul, it pays back many folds over compared to the first approach if you do it right.
Death of Traditional Autoship in Network Marketing Companies If you have been operating a network marketing business for more than 3 months, I do not have to tell you that there is a thing called autoship.
Most traditional network marketing companies require their distributors to sign up for it. This means that in order for you to be in a position to earn money marketing that company’s products, the distributor must purchase a set minimum dollar amount of the company’s products each month.
In return for participating in autoship, you usually gain some advantage. It may be reduced pricing on the products that you buy. Network marketing is not the only business model that uses automatic shipping or automatic purchasing of products. Any recurring bill is a form of autoship. Cellular service, auto insurance or any other product or service you regularly receive and pay for can be considered autoship.
It is a double edged sword within the network marketing framework. The theory is that you are purchasing products that you are getting good value from. However, in some cases you end up paying a very high price for something that you could get for a much lower price. For instance, MonaVie requires their distributor to purchase a quantity of bottles of juice that retail for about $40.00 but depending on how much you buy, the price could drop. However even with the volume discounts, Men’s Health did a study of Mona Vie and found that their juice did not provide any more nutritional value than a bottle of Welch’s grape juice. Hardly a good value.
How does all of this shape up for a person running a network marketing company? In essence their challenge is to create enough cash flow to break even on any start up costs and cover their monthly expenses which would include their required monthly product purchase. This can easily extend into hundreds of dollars each and every month before any income is realized. There are new companies cropping up whose business model does not eliminate autoship, but it structures the compensation in a way that allows what amounts to the same thing, to be paid from earned income.
One such company is call MPB Today. A simplified explanation of their compensation and autoship model is such that you are required to make 2 sales and help each of them make two sales. At that point you would cycle. What happens then is you receive $500.00. This is $125.00 from each person on your second line. The company will then pay you $300.00 and take $200.00 toward the purchase of your next product. If you do not cycle, you are not required to make a purchase to stay in the game.
There is no pain involved with this. You will not find yourself going into debt, or using your savings to maintain your business autoship.
Another company that is approaching autoship from a different direction is Infinity Downline. This company offers access to a library of audio and video training resources for popular software titles as well as general network marketing. There is a traditional monthly product purchase involved but it is only $25.00 and the business owner breaks even on their first sale because there are no admin fees ever. All sales are paid directly to the business owner by the consumer. This puts you in profit by your third sale. This is because there is a 2 up feature wherein the system automatically pays your 2nd and 4th sales to your sponsor. All subsequent sales are paid directly from consumer to sponsor.
As more people become disillusioned with autoship, which is a major reason why the average network marketer only lasts about 65 days. Two monthly recurring orders without any monthly income signals that it is time to quit.
The market place always has a strong influence of the direction of business. As more people tune in to network marketing only to find that they do not like having an additional monthly expense in addition to the other costs of doing business, more companies like these will begin popping up.
I believe this is signaling the death of traditional autoship in network marketing companies.
Of course the second most obvious reason for failure in the industry is lack of marketing skills. Anyone involved or considering getting involved in this industry should seek marketing training first then decide on a company or product. After all, network marketing is a marketing business and friends and family will not be enough to support your business.
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You could say that all the many excellent directories on the internet make it a lot easier to find websites that tie into subjects that you are interested in learning about. Of course, there is also further value to these directories than just leisure reading. They will look towards these directories as an excellent means of promoting an internet marketing venture. Or, perhaps, they could use such a directory to learn more about a particular program that might have an interest in. Those that wish to explore opportunities in affiliate marketing, affiliate directories may prove to be an excellent resource for a great deal of excellent information.
So, what exactly is an affiliate directory? It would be an online resource where links are placed that direct the person browsing the directory to the host website of the affiliate program. Actually, it would not be completely accurate to say that the links exclusively direct those browsing to an affiliate program’s website. Sites that review such websites or blogs covering the subject of affiliate marketing could also be included in such directories. In many ways, an affiliate directory can be considered a complete, total, and comprehensive resource covering all facets of affiliate marketing.
How can you use an affiliate directory to succeed with affiliate marketing? Honestly, the answer to this question could be one that goes on for quite some time. There are multitudes of ways in which you can use an affiliate marketing program to boost your success potential. One way would involve simply using the directory as a resource to look for the top affiliate programs that are available. You could visit as many websites as you wish. After which, you could make a selection as to which affiliate marketing program to work with depending upon where you land.
If you have already selecting an affiliate marketing program to work with and have your own supporting website, you could submit links to your site into the affiliate directory. This would lead to a potentially significant amount of direct traffic to the site as those frequenting the directory might discover your link.
Also, in addition to the direct traffic from the affiliate directory, you would experience increased organic search engine traffic as well. Why is this? Mainly, the robots of the search engine would eventually index the links found within the directory. This will have the obvious impact of increasing search engine rankings. All links count and those placed in affiliate marketing directories will definitely help deliver positive SEO results.
Increasing the odds of success will frequently hinge on how many affiliate directories you submit links to. Placing links in one affiliate directory is certainly not going to yield the same impact as placing links in dozens of directories. As the old saying goes, it is a numbers game and the more directories you submit to, the greater the odds of success. Don’t pay much attention to naysayers that put down the smaller or newer affiliate directories. They do have value.
Multilevel Marketing or MLM companies have been around for a long time. They often go by different names: direct sales, network marketing, home-based business, working from home, and most recently internet marketing. There are a wide number of products and services that can been sold through the system of direct contact with a consumer. And then getting the consumer to begin to market the item or service for themselves. Usually the person above benefits directly from the sale… creating a downline or chain.
But That Sounds Like a Pyramid. I Thought Those Were Illegal!
It’s funny how people gravitate to what is perceived as ‘truth’ without first properly understanding or discovering what the actual truth is. Neanderthal understanding of what MLM is by those less informed, gives it less credibility. As long as there is a product or service to market, and not the compensation plan itself for money, the MLM company is legal. If money is taken to buy a place in the downline and no product or service is exchanged, the plan is an “illegal pyramid”. That is it. Period.
Now that we’ve established the technicalities of MLM, we can move onto more important topics…
What Are the Advantages of MLM?
Most of the money from the sales price of store bought items on a product goes to overhead… things like: salaries and wages, rent, maintenance, and other operating expenses. This takes a huge portion out of the profit, which is usually made up by increasing the ticketed price on sales.
The owner makes the most money because of his or her responsibility and position to the organization; lower wages are distributed to the employees, managerial staff, etc., depending on their responsibilities.
There are no “overhead” expenses in the business of Multi-Level Marketing because the operation of a home-based business, i.e. salaries and wages, rent, maintenance, and other operating expenses, do not exist! Not in the typical manner anyway.
There are many advantages in working from the home: tax write-offs, no overhead, small or no inventory, no commuting, and the freedom to work on your own time… the biggest advantage, of course, being that there is not limit on your wage or on how much money you make! Each person has the same opportunity to make as much money as he or she wants.
So what is Network Marketing anyway?
Network marketing is about one thing… and one thing only: helping others to be successful. This is because the only way that you can be successful in Network Marketing is if you help other be successful! Brilliant isn’t it! As you bring others to join your team to sell the product, their sales add to your income. Compensations do not come from the downline sales but from the parent organization. Therefore, it is to your advantage to train and support those in your downline. It becomes a community effort where everyone wins!