Internet Business In A Nutshell Part 3: Affiliate Marketing
Even though I don’t do much of it anymore, I owe a great debt to affiliate marketing. Prior to making my first sales as an affiliate, I had no idea that that the kind of freedom or self reliance of being able to make an income from anywhere… at any time, just by doing the right things on the Internet, could even be possible. I would never have believed it if someone had told me. In fact, I think someone did tell me and I didn’t believe it. But lucky for me (and probably for you too if you’re reading this), I was curious enough that I started looking into it.
At first I was only casually interested in any of it and I didn’t really want to start a business. I just wanted to make some extra money online, maybe even working for someone else… some kind of “work from home” employment maybe… that was, if it was possible without having to spend too much time money or energy doing any of it. Some of you can probably relate to that.
But, that, I later learned, is the worst attitude with which to approach discovering how to make money online because at first all I found were things that attracted me by what I thought I wanted; something easy that made sense to me at the time. (Back then I thought any “business opportunity” was a scam having been raised around that whole “poor people” mentality and I was really looking for some job, some form of employment that I could work from home or totally online.)
Well, I quickly exhausted my searches at the main job search websites, getting little more than offers for business opportunities disguised as listed jobs. And then I even tried everything from SMC (I fell for Mr. C, Tom Bosley, because I used to watch “Happy Days” as a kid.) to SFI (one step away from a pyramid scheme) and nothing worked for me even after following all the steps and everything. After months of earnestly trying everything I could find I began feeling like I was getting ripped off right and left by bogus opportunities like that paid surveys racket or people that thought I’d make a good mystery shopper if I paid them for some list of places to apply, or even multi-level marketing moms, if you can imagine that. Those marketing pyramids never worked out and I’m still waiting around for those free plane tickets I was promised by those survey people.
Just as I was about to announce that it was all a joke and every “make money online’ product was a total sham and end my quest for Internet riches for good… a dear friend (one who had a “Rich Dad”, to use Robert Kiyosaki’s term) did me a favor in pointing out my biggest misconception about the world.
“Look Mark,” he said, “Those things are a scam and a waste of time for most people… not because there’s not some legitimate opportunity, however buried it may be, in there somewhere for someone to keep it seeming legal, but because most people don’t even look at the opportunities in the correct light in the first place. Any stay at home Mom, or Dad for that matter, that thinks it’s a good idea to give up even more of their already scarce time filling out surveys online for peanuts and change, just doesn’t have the right mindset to ever do very well with money in the first place.”
I began to listen to him explain how much more awesome it is having your own online business, instead of just making a quick buck somewhere or by working for someone else. To make a long story short, suddenly a whole new world opened up before my eyes, the clouds parted and the radiant light of inspiration shot out of the sky and shone on me and I’ve never the same since.
He also pointed out to me a truth that still blows my mind every time I think of how misguided I had been before that realization: that trading your time, “the one thing there will never be enough of in your life”, for money, is the worst deal you can make in this world.
“Now, don’t get me wrong.”, he continued, “Unless you’re starting out with considerable seed money, enough to pay other people or other companies to do all the actual work for you, you’re going to have to put in a lot of time and sweat equity to get the ball rolling. Plus, there’s a lot to learn and it can take awhile to get your business legs. But, the potential gains and future freedom of a small Internet business far outweigh the relatively miniscule investments required to give it a shot. So why not try it?”
“Sounds good to me,” I said, “but how do I get started? I don’t know jack about business or even the Internet right now.”
Well, my friend was more of a “brick and mortar” type back then and was just getting started online too… But, he had a really good suggestion: that I look into something called affiliate marketing or becoming a partner or reseller of some company I liked and try my hand marketing other people’s products while I learned my way around the business world and the Internet.
Needless to say, it worked. I started out doing nothing more than promoting Clickbank products through Adwords without a website or anything and within a few months I was able to quit my job. I came to realize on my journey that you can earn money, really good money, before you know much of anything… and while you learn if you’re an Affiliate! Another amazing thing is these days you can get started for pretty close to free! Back when I started out with Adwords you had to be prepared to risk quite a bit of money on your ability to write decent ad “haikus”, but that’s another story.
For better or worse, the days of just throwing up an Adwords campaign without a website and watching the profit roll in without doing much more than occasionally adding some keywords or writing a new ad, are over. (It still is, in rare cases, possible for someone to just put up some ads and use their affiliate link directly and still make lots of money, [or just test something out] at least for a little while.) I still manage a few long time clients’ Adwords accounts and I highly recommend everyone try it at some point. But, I don’t recommend it to people who are just starting out because of the huge risks and pitfalls I encountered along the way, and these days it’s even harder and there’s more competition, not to mention the click prices are through the roof lately as huge companies come in with the intention of dominating certain areas even if they have to operate at a loss.
If you’re just starting out, it’s not a bad idea to find yourself a little “niche” at first, that your comfortable with and where you can earn while you learn… in a target market that’s either you ( because you’re part of it already ) or one you’ve thoroughly researched (See Part 2) and find promising or just some area of interest of yours, a hobby maybe… by starting a website right out of the gate. Yeah, you heard me right. Just start a website. It has never been easier.
“But, what kind of website?” you ask. Well, that’s the kind of question held me up for a long time when I first realized I needed websites. What kind? How should they be organized? How should they look? How in the world do I write all this code myself? Well, I ended up spending years learning HTML, CSS and PHP, but I have good news for you. You don’t have to learn any of that. All you need is Wordpress and it’s free.
How to blog for profit is a big enough subject to fill several e-books so I’ll get more into the actual mechanics of blogging and promoting products in another series of posts.
However, just as affiliate marketing is a great way to get a crash course in, and also earn while you learn about, Internet business and marketing… Wordpress is a great way to get set up with a website instantly and easily even if you don’t know anything about code or computer languages or servers or any of that. If you know absolutely nothing, the hardest thing you’ll do is set up your database in Cpanel and that’s not hard at all.
In a nutshell, a blog is a great way to build yourself a sort of marketing platform, if you will, where you can inform and educate your target market, giving them the knowledge they seek to make informed purchases, while trying out many different merchants to see which ones work best with your audience and which products are really the best. At this level of marketing you’re free to just be yourself and have a good time and get to know your customers. I’d say it’s definitely the easiest way that just about anyone can get started. Just start blogging.
To get started right now, head over to Wordpress.org and download the free software. If you need a domain name, any registrar will do, I use Godaddy.com myself. But, never get hosting from them or anywhere you get your domains. Get a separate hosting provider. Any shared hosting package will do when you’re just starting out. I do have two suggestions about hosting however: 1. Don’t host with anyone that doesn’t have larger plans you can easily “grow into” if your site suddenly takes off. And, 2. Don’t get a Windows server, make sure the hosting provider has up to date versions of Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Cpanel.
P.S. Did you know? You can also use a blog to debut your own products when you have product ideas of your own, much like I plan on doing with this blog here. That’s actually why I haven’t posted in a few days. I’ve been working night and day on a program that I use to run my online sales and paid subscription websites. I’ve been getting requests since last year to release my system, so I’m finally touching up my scripts, polishing my code and making video tutorials to get ready to launch this baby into the stratosphere. I just know everyone is going to go all ga-ga over this one and I’m excited to say the least.
I’ll explain more in part 4 and 5 of this series where I’ll get into product creation and web development and how best to start selling your own products or services online.
