Chapter 04 - Create Affiliate Marketing and Other Business Models in Free Time
PLR products provide one fantastic way to start earning money through internet marketing without needing to know anything about business and without needing to be any kind of tech whizz. In fact, you don’t even need to be a business whizz or even to commit much time to it.
This is the perfect business model for the busy business person that will allow you to employ just a modicum of basic sales knowledge in order to earn money indefinitely from a single product.
But that’s only one example. Another example is potentially even easier and that is what is known as ‘affiliate marketing’.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways there is to make money online as an internet marketer. In fact, when you say ‘internet marketing’ to some people, they will actually assume that you are talking about affiliate marketing in actual fact.
Affiliate marketing basically means that you are marketing products for a commission. The idea is that you promote a product that someone else created and is selling and by doing so, you can earn a profit.
Essentially, you are acting like a door to door salesman, except that you have a door to the entire world…
Often, this will mean promoting a digital product like an ebook or an online course. As we’ve already seen, the great thing about digital products is that they can be sold indefinitely and they come with zero ‘CoGS’ (Cost of Goods Sold). With no overheads, that means that sellers make 100% profit.
And the exciting thing is that there are countless affiliate programs out there that will offer to give away 70% of their earnings or more!
This might strike you as odd. Why would someone who created a product be willing to give away more than they are earning from the product?
The answer is simple: they want to encourage as many affiliates as possible to get out there and help them promote their products. They are probably already selling their product through their own channels.
They are probably making as many sales of their ebook or course as they possibly can and they might well have run their potential marketing dry. All those sales are making them 100% profit.
Thus they have nothing to lose by trying to get additional sales on top of that for only 30% profit.
By offering 70% of their income, they are going to entice the maximum number of marketers possible to help them promote their products and that in turn means they’ll have an army of professional sellers helping them to make even more turnover and revenue.
The more they offer, the more they make.
What this means for you, is that you can start selling an ebook for $50 and make $35 for each sale. And unlike PLR products, there’s no need for you to worry about buying anything up front.
This actually means that you can promote as many affiliate products as you like and scale your business almost endlessly.
How it Works
To get started, all you need to do is to find an affiliate network.
Some of the biggest ones include the likes of JVzoo (www.jvzoo.com), Commission Junction (www.cj.com) and ClickBank (www.clickbank.com).
These act as huge repositories of affiliate products that you can browse in order to find things you want to sell. When you find something you like the looks of, all you then have to do, is to apply and then you’ll get given an ‘affiliate link’.
An affiliate link is a link that directs visitors to store where they can buy the product but normally via a redirect that will store cookies on their computer.
Those cookies then identify them as having been referred by you and each time they buy something, it gets logged on your account. At the end of the month, your sales are tallied up and you can withdraw your cash.
Once again, a good affiliate product will normally provide you with all the materials you need to promote it – such as the sales page, the marketing emails, the banner adverts etc. The product creator wants you to succeed of course because the more you sell, the more money they will make!
You can then upload that sales page to your own site or domain and simply direct traffic there using PPC adverts or other means.
And by doing so, you’ll be able to generate income without even having to own the product yourself or ever deal with one of the customers! It’s a completely ‘hands-off’ way to earn money online.
Other Great Online Business Models You Can Set Up in No Time
But perhaps you don’t want to sell a digital product. Maybe you want to sell a physical product?
No problem! You can actually become an affiliate for physical products through Amazon using their partner program.
You’ll get a much smaller commission (typically around 4-8%) but the good thing is that once you refer a customer to Amazon, you’ll make commission on everything they buy during that session.
So, if you’re promoting a book and someone clicks your link, buys a book and then also buys a flatscreen TV, well then you can make a lot of money!
Or maybe you want to create your own online shop? One way to do this is by becoming a reseller. That might sound like a big undertaking but thanks to the web, it’s a business model that busy professionals can easy manage in the evenings.
All you need to do is to find a wholesaler. A wholesaler is a manufacturer, factory or reseller that will sell you items in bulk at greatly discounted prices.
So, for example, you might be able to buy 100 pairs of jeans for $1,000 dollars but then sell each item for $20. This means you’ll make 100% profit on each sale.
The great thing is that from here, you can then reinvest the profit you make into ordering an even larger batch of jeans next time. You could pocket $250 and then spend $1,750 on your next lot of jeans – or you could buy something more expensive.
Storage will be fairly simple seeing as the products are small and you’re buying low-ish quantities and you can promote them on eBay. Packaging is another expense to factor in but shouldn’t amount to much. In just a few hours of work each evening, you can bring in a very nice side income this way!
Don’t want to deal with physically owning the stock? Then how about you look for a dropshipper? A dropshipper is very similar to an affiliate except that you get to claim the product is your own and your audience never comes into contact with the manufacturer.
All you need to do, is to find a company that offers dropshipping services, sell their products for them and then pass the orders on to them.
They will handle the creation of the product as well as packaging and fulfilment, so you can earn money without having to worry at all about dealing with customers or actually delivering the items/storing them!
You can find both wholesalers and dropshippers at www.alibaba.com.
Or you could go the complete opposite way and set up a business selling a service directly to customers or to other businesses. This is a very straightforward business model that’s easy to set-up online and then to scale depending on whether you want more or fewer customers/clients.
For example, if you are a good writer, then all you need to do is to create a website that promotes your writing skills, post a few adverts in forums and other locations and then wait for the orders to roll in. Of course, this is not a ‘passive’ business model because you need to work for the money.
You can’t go to sleep and allow this kind of business to run itself!
But while that is true, you can nevertheless run this sort of business without having to invest a large amount of time or effort. Perhaps you just write a few thousand words a week in order to make a little side income in the evenings?
You’ll quickly find recurring clients and that way you won’t even need to advertise!
Likewise, you can find work as a web designer, as a photographer, as a designer or – once you’ve finished reading the rest of this book – even as a marketer!
And then there’s the option to run any other kind of service business online. How about offering people personal training online for example? Business consultation? Or solicitor?
If you’re only looking to fill a few hours a week, then you won’t do much marketing and as with any good business, you’ll get repeat clients and word of mouth customers.
Just set aside a few hours in the week to handle the orders and you can once again enjoy the extra income and sense of satisfaction that comes from running your own business on the web!