By: Dezmon Landers

Most of us are under the impression that in order to earn a sizable income, we must work HARD. We put in very long hours and follow the same paths of those that came before us because it’s the “right” thing to do.  What if I told you that by slightly changing your mindset and opening yourself up to other ways of thinking about how to sustain your life and prosper, there may be a ton of monthly income that you are clearly missing out on? Now I know this sounds like a sales pitch off an infomercial but I can’t tell you how serious this really is and if you do it correctly, how well off you can actually become.

So I’m sure your very interested in this “secret” money making “scheme”, well the funny thing is that it’s actually not a secret at all and it’s legal and very popular but unfortunately our community hasn’t caught on to it yet.

Affiliate Marketing

Is a revenue sharing arrangement between a person (you) and an online merchant. The affiliate (you) places advertisements around the internet to either help sell the merchant’s products or send potential customers to the merchant’s website, all in exchange for a share of the profits.

There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:

Pay Per Click - Every time a potential customer clicks on the affiliate link leading to the merchant’s website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate’s account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.

Pay Per Lead - Every time a potential client registers at the merchant’s website as a result of the affiliate’s advertisement, a previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

Pay Per Sale - Every time a sale is made as a result of affiliate’s advertising, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

This Is Pretty Old

Affiliate marketing is nothing more than a company inspiring people to promote their products for performance based financial compensation. Basically, you’re a salesperson that gets paid on commissions. All of us have either done something like this before or know someone who participates in this type of business model. Some examples of popular offline affiliate programs are below:

Avon - Got its start in 1886 as the California Perfume Company based in New York. Avon sells women’s cosmetic and perfume products and grossed 6.2 Billion in sales last year. Avon’s entire business was built on individual representatives (affiliates) marketing their products and Avon has a little short of 100,000 of these representatives worldwide.

Pre-Paid Legal - Started in 1969 because the founder was involved in a head on collision and didn’t have proper legal coverage to cover the legal bills accumulating from his accident. They provide monthly legal expense plans and have thousands of independent associates (affiliates) nationwide promoting their services.

Amazon - Started their “associate” program back in 1996 to entice website owners to promote their inventory on Amazon’s behalf. Amazon spent next to no money on marketing in this area and it worked out pretty well as they are the internet’s largest seller of books and other goods, thanks in large part to their affiliates.

While there are a ton of extremely successful examples at these offline companies, there are a lot more who are less successful. It is the same way (to a smaller degree) online, so you may be asking “Why is online different than offline?” I have one word for you…

Scale

In affiliate marketing this is the ability to acquire prospects quickly while keeping any and all expenses constant and low. There are billions of people online all over the world and it is much easier than you may imagine, capturing them to market to later.

No Product, No Money, No Problem

Most income producing activities are called businesses and most businesses have expenses. The majority of most businesses expenses (other than personnel) are marketing. The cool thing about the internet is that there is a ton of FREE ways to get to masses of people looking to buy the product or service you may promote. These customers have demonstrated…

Demand

Is the act of displaying a need for something. Online there are tons of places where people are demonstrating a natural demand for some product or service. A great example of this is Craigslist. Take a look at the “Real Estate for Sale” section in any city. You’ll notice that everyone posting under this category has demonstrated demand for wanting to sell their properties. A smart affiliate looks at this and says “What product or service that is already created, can help these people achieve their goal faster?” Maybe it’s an information product, maybe it’s connecting them with a real estate agent in their city. There are tons of ways to provide value as long as you get paid for it!

The Product / Service

There are an abundance of companies online that would be happy to have you promote their product to your market. You can setup agreements with companies ranging from travel agencies to banks! There are even other affiliate marketers online that have created quality information reports that they normally sell. Some will give these to you for free or at a small fee so that you can redistribute them and keep all the profits, this is called buying the Master Resale Rights (MRR).

The List

Arguably the most important component to raking in the cash is building lists of people who have already demonstrated demand or have previously purchased something similar. Once you have the list, you can recommend products or solutions to these people and as long as it solves their problem. They will BUY from YOU.