Affiliate Marketing is the Common Man's Best Business Opportunity
Franklin Banker
December 03, 2006
I love affiliate marketing. I believe it is really the common man's best business opportunity today, and the internet makes it possible. Affiliate programs are almost always free, so all a marketer has to do is pay for internet access and for web space.
I keep seeing a lot of whining in forums about not making any money after 3 or 4 weeks in an affiliate program, and the facts differ a lot, but basically it is just whining. I waited when I first started for quite a long time for my first check. People must understand that this business takes some degree of patience overall.
A lot of times I blame the webmasters and promoters of programs that actively recruit new affiliates online. Some of the copy I read is outlandish, leading a new desktop entrepreneur to believe he or she will make a fortune doing this, and it will come immediately. Never happens. It takes time and patience to be successful in affiliate marketing.
Please, if you are a brand new affiliate, you must understand that this business takes time to get established in, and you must invest the time before the rewards come in. I also realize that in my website copy that I have not devoted enough time to this aspect of affiliate marketing. I will change that when I can. Every project takes time. There are not shortcuts to real quality.
Build content over time, and keep linking with other sites that are in the same niche or market, and keep promoting in an ethical way. In time, you will make money if you don't jump ship. On the internet, your credibility is established by the length of time and the amount of useful content, as they both go together.
On the internet there is a thing called the "long tail", and it is really the sum total of content over time from day one until now, that you have placed online. Your long tail can be a real asset to you in the business of affiliate marketing.
Sometimes a new publisher gets lucky, builds a new sales page just right, and it gets indexed well and he makes money. Don't expect that to happen each and every time. It is a fluke if it happened early. Once you have an established presense, that kind of top listing will happen more often. In fact, at this point if I don't get top billing from my organic SEO sites, I know I have done something wrong and I work on it until it is on top.
I never stop being in awe of this wonderful business! As you diversify, and get more and more new informational pages out there, any one of them could hit the search engines perfectly, get a top billing organically, and make a ton of money. I know if you are new to affiliate marketing, this seems unlikely, but if you have patience and allow time, this can and does happen every once in awhile. I have had several big hitters out there in the past, and even though it has been some time since the last one, I know it will happen again.
I had one several years ago that made over $5000 over a 2 year period, and it was a single page about a then famous toy site. This thing seemed to rank at the top or near the top for over 100 keywords, and it was truly a miracle for me at the time. Later, the toy store changed affiliate programs, dropped the lines I was featuring and the page lost it's rankings, but it took a little over 2 years for this to happen. If only every affiliate site I created could do this, I could retire a rich and happy man. Alas, it is not the norm. I usually settle for modest sales from each new site I create, but another fact is that if you can make enough of them, well you get the picture.
It's all about making money online, and I mean without paying for pay-per-click terms that may or may not be profitable after sales are calculated. I love organic affiliate marketing, and of course, it fits my budget perfectly!
Affiliate Marekting is truly the common man's modern business opportunity, and you can run it on a shoestring. That's the real beauty of it, and you can develop multiple streams of income in the process.
I keep seeing a lot of whining in forums about not making any money after 3 or 4 weeks in an affiliate program, and the facts differ a lot, but basically it is just whining. I waited when I first started for quite a long time for my first check. People must understand that this business takes some degree of patience overall.
A lot of times I blame the webmasters and promoters of programs that actively recruit new affiliates online. Some of the copy I read is outlandish, leading a new desktop entrepreneur to believe he or she will make a fortune doing this, and it will come immediately. Never happens. It takes time and patience to be successful in affiliate marketing.
Please, if you are a brand new affiliate, you must understand that this business takes time to get established in, and you must invest the time before the rewards come in. I also realize that in my website copy that I have not devoted enough time to this aspect of affiliate marketing. I will change that when I can. Every project takes time. There are not shortcuts to real quality.
Build content over time, and keep linking with other sites that are in the same niche or market, and keep promoting in an ethical way. In time, you will make money if you don't jump ship. On the internet, your credibility is established by the length of time and the amount of useful content, as they both go together.
On the internet there is a thing called the "long tail", and it is really the sum total of content over time from day one until now, that you have placed online. Your long tail can be a real asset to you in the business of affiliate marketing.
Sometimes a new publisher gets lucky, builds a new sales page just right, and it gets indexed well and he makes money. Don't expect that to happen each and every time. It is a fluke if it happened early. Once you have an established presense, that kind of top listing will happen more often. In fact, at this point if I don't get top billing from my organic SEO sites, I know I have done something wrong and I work on it until it is on top.
I never stop being in awe of this wonderful business! As you diversify, and get more and more new informational pages out there, any one of them could hit the search engines perfectly, get a top billing organically, and make a ton of money. I know if you are new to affiliate marketing, this seems unlikely, but if you have patience and allow time, this can and does happen every once in awhile. I have had several big hitters out there in the past, and even though it has been some time since the last one, I know it will happen again.
I had one several years ago that made over $5000 over a 2 year period, and it was a single page about a then famous toy site. This thing seemed to rank at the top or near the top for over 100 keywords, and it was truly a miracle for me at the time. Later, the toy store changed affiliate programs, dropped the lines I was featuring and the page lost it's rankings, but it took a little over 2 years for this to happen. If only every affiliate site I created could do this, I could retire a rich and happy man. Alas, it is not the norm. I usually settle for modest sales from each new site I create, but another fact is that if you can make enough of them, well you get the picture.
It's all about making money online, and I mean without paying for pay-per-click terms that may or may not be profitable after sales are calculated. I love organic affiliate marketing, and of course, it fits my budget perfectly!
Affiliate Marekting is truly the common man's modern business opportunity, and you can run it on a shoestring. That's the real beauty of it, and you can develop multiple streams of income in the process.
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