Affiliate Marketing BasicsI started marketing affiliate products nearly eight years ago. For the first three years, I spent 10-12 hours per day following the latest and greatest online marketing advice which resembles today's "Authority Site" or blogging approach. I worked hard for my $25 Amazon checks - paid quarterly. Of course, affiliate marketing wasn't the only thing I did. I'd have starved long ago. But, I was determined in spite of the evidence. And, yes, I had my doubts that anybody really made any money. Serious doubts - and the dot-com bust didn't bolster my own confidence any (does anyone remember Cash Fiesta!) And, so, I swallowed my pride and started searching the classified ads for a J - O - B. I realized I had some things to learn. Fortunately, the job of "affiliate manager" fell into my lap. I was able to see, firsthand, that people really did make money selling affiliate products (and a few made A LOT). Lucky me, I got to see how they did it. It wasn't at all like I thought. What I had been shown to do - and what I spent countless hours doing, was ALL wrong. Well, mostly wrong. Here and there I started implementing these new ideas and . . . here and there I started making some money. Ambitiously, in January 2003, I set a goal of $500 per month income by that June and $2000 per month by June of 2004. I believed I MIGHT be able to reach the first goal - the second seemed like a real longshot. The great thing about affiliate marketing - if you do your work right, and I'll give you the information you need to do that, is that once you've done the work it usually continues to grow. I have sites that I rarely touch - that I rarely look at now, that produce a check every month and they have been for years now. By that June I was close to my goal of $500 per month - not quite. By the following June, 2004, I had doubled my goal - I was making twice what I'd set my "sites" to. And now? Multiple six-figure income - from affiliate marketing alone, which is no longer the focus of my business. |
