Affiliate marketing does NOT work well when you do this....

This is absolutely correct tal, that's why it's best to promote an offer that has deep offers on the funnel. Preferably with membership to maximize your earnings.

Also promoting evergreen offers and high ticket offers is a must on your backend.

This only applies to make money online niches

I agree. But the situation is far more complex.

You're an affiliate marketer? Okay.

This is what you need:

"Consistent Income."

You go on vacation? Heaven forbid, you get sick? Whatever the reason, the income must keep flowing.

How, then, do you keep the income flowing. Well, talfighel rightly points out 2 ways of doing so:

1. On-Going Commissions.
2. Re-marketing.

I did mention things are more complex, though. Now let me tell you why.

Let's take the market for mainstream dating as an example. We're not talking hookups. Nor are we talking brides. We're talking men and women looking for that elusive thing of the heart. L. O. V. E. What do these folks do? Well, one thing they do is join mainstream dating sites. And that's where an affiliate marketer might come in. If you, that particular affiliate marketer, promote such taking sites, you generally have 3 commission options:

1. PPL (Pay per lead)
2. PPS (Pay per signup)
3. Rev-share

Now, according to the generally accepted theory (proposed above and supported - generally - by me), you'd choose rev-share. Know what? You'd be making a mistake.

Here's why:

1. If a person joins a GOOD dating site, they find love.
2. If a person joins a BAD dating site, they don't find love.

In the case of 1? No reason to keep paying for memberships. They've found love. Case of 2? They - yet again - have no reason to continue rebilling. They go hunting for another dating site.

In this scenario, then, what is the affiliate to do? Answer: depends on the dating site. Some of these sites are actually setup to only build lists. In those cases, the affiliate should promote PPL. But what of the better dating sites? Obviously - PPS.

This one example highlights just some of the complexity involved.

So let's return to my previous list of ways for an affiliate to keep income flowing with regularity.

To recap:

1. On-Going Commissions.
2. Re-marketing.

The above is good. Solid. Inarguable. However!

It's incomplete.

The complete list:

1. On-Going Commissions.
2. Re-Marketing.
3. Stable Traffic.

Now it's complete.

I could talk all day on "stable traffic," and bore you rigid in the process, so just let me give you some thoughts on how to attain traffic stability. I should point out, however, that "stability" is a bit of a misnomer. In this business - anything can happen. I've seen true industry giants, some of them friends, lose literally everything due to one thing or another. I use the word stability because - well - it's basically me playing the odds. The chances are, if you're clever, if you employ stability systems for your traffic, you're pretty much safe. Pretty much.

So!

How do we make traffic stable?

Tons of ways. These are 3:

1. Diversity. You spread your risk across multiple traffic streams by promoting a plethora of different offers through different networks and on different hosts.

2. Outsourcing. Whether you have in-house staff, VAs, or a system whereby you regularly hire freelancers, outsourcing is essential to keep the traffic flowing and growing.

3. Traffic platforms. Long gone are the days when we used to build sites for Google or even grow traffic through link exchanging. In those days, it was all about ranking and encouraging bookmarking. No more. Now? Now you need traffic platforms. Big ones. A diverse array of them. FB groups and pages, G+ groups and communities, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, and so on and so on. And let's not forget LISTs, either.

It's a complex system and I haven't even scratched the surface. But it's taken my mind off this evening meal of salad that my wife kindly heaved at me 10 minutes ago, and maybe it's also given you some - wait for it - food for thought.

Let's just hope that food isn't salad. Ick.

Tom

It's a solid business model, but recurring commissions don't increase your chances of succeeding that much, if at all.

If you can't succeed with affiliate marketing with one time commissions, you won't be able to with recurring. They do compound each month, but you have to consider the lifetime value and average rebill rate. The majority of continuity offers are only going to have 1.5 - 3 month average span. You'll always need a steady stream of new sales to maintain your income.

I've been with it for years, and I mainly promote one time commissions(Diet pill trials). It makes sense for me, because the conversions are extremely high, and I can easily see 150% roi on a daily basis. One of the main reasons for this, is that I make on average, $45 per sale, and the customer only has to pay $3.99 shipping. It's much easier to get sales on that type of model.

I'm not advocating against recurring, as I've done that as well. The firm I'm a partner at, created our own diet pill offer when we first opened. We ran that for about 8 months. We were thinking along the same lines - Recurring commissions, long term goals ect. It took a ton of money to get off the ground, because we were still paying $15-$20 per sale(Drove our own traffic), while only making 3.99 off the shipping. We had to wait for the rebills to start. Not to mention always finding new mids to process the payments(Since they put a monthly cap). The banks holding back 25% since there's a high refund rate - Anyways, It was a giant headache, and in the end, we all went back to being affiliates.

It just depends on the person and the business model you want to pursue.

The largest, most successful companies in the world, sell physical products. No residual earnings, no ability to re-engage them down the road, etc. Most of them only make a few dollars per sale. To suggest that this model doesn't work, or that the only way to be successful selling something is if you're getting an ongoing residual, is kind of silly.

Your only limits as a marketer are your knowledge, time, and operating capital. That's it. The type of product or what you're making from it aren't the issue. If you can reach an audience of buyers, it doesn't matter what you're selling.

Frankly, I think there's a huge flaw with hedging your bets on recurring models; they don't always last. Products come and go. What happens when you've based your business (and personal income) on the fact that you're getting an ongoing tail, and then the producer of that product goes out of business, changes the terms, or stops producing that product and transitions the customer base to something else? This happens all the time.

If your model is based on reaching new buyers, you'll never have that problem.

Hello talfighel


I agree with everything in full!!

Thank you....this is very helpful

Of course...

The potential to make 4 sales VS 1 sale on an offer is a pretty straight forward choice.

It's more about finding the offer that has 4 sales (or X+1) that converts well.

More food for thought (and no salad in sight) . . .

1. Content Upgrades.

You're looking for the money trail online? Then you're hunting for "content upgrades." Give you an example (and this is all intended for newcomers). You write a blog post about teaching a parrot to talk. At the end of the article? You give away your free e-book - How to Teach Your Parrot to Talk - when readers opt-in to your newsletter. Now think about how you can scale content upgrades. Think about articles, videos, groups, communities, pages. Think about everything. It's all about finely targeting a problem (how do I teach my parrot to talk?) and providing a free solution. But not only free (free is freaking DEAD when it comes to IM). Providing an ON-TARGET solution at the exact moment that the prospect wants it.

Now consider this. Consider how stable your traffic would be if you scaled this system and worked hard at it for the next 12 months.

2. Multiple Actions

Question: the last time you went and did the grocery shopping, did you buy just one item? If you did - can you please give lessons of restraint to my wife? (Sorry, honey.) Point is: when it comes to IM, there's a believe that we have to be laser-targeted and provide ONE solution at a time. It's only half right. Listen - if I'm hungry, then I don't walk into Dunkin Donuts and order ONE donut. Hell with that. I want a drink, I want donuts. If I'm really hungry - be sure to keep your hands away from biting distance.

Same applies to IM. Disagree? Oh, okay...

You arrive at a page I might have put together. That page tells you how to earn money by filling in surveys. Paid survey sites. Now this isn't a debate about whether these sites suck or not. (I happen to believe the honest sites are actually fantastic for moms or students, and know plenty of both who use them, but this is all beside the point). Point is! You arrive at my page. Maybe I ask you to opt-in? Maybe. One thing's for sure, though..

I offer this:

More than ONE survey site.

If I can earn $2.50 from one survey site PPL, why would I not offer 5 and earn $12.50? I mean, it makes sense from the survey-takers POV and my own. I earn more and the mom or student? They receive more survey opportunities. The thing about these sites is the free surveys (where you're not having to enter credit details for a trial) are finite on each site. Solution? More sites!

I could go on. Point is: sometimes a solution requires multiple purchases. More food, if you're hungry!

(Can anyone tell I'm on a diet?)

Tom

Tal that's why i prefer the ebook creation/product owner route. With affiliate marketing, if you don't access to the customer's name and info... then how will you make recurring income from them? So when folks ask me about affiliate marketing, they instantly think Clickbank ebook - while i'm thinking: webhosting, porn, membership site, etc.

Agreed with @talfighel

This is a good reason why people build lists, funnels , etc

This seems like a fantasy world of people who are bound and determined to pay out money over and over for online muny maker schemes and maybe weight loss and muscles

I think anyone who offers money programs should show what they made

I find it weir that people who have failed over and over plan to make money finally by starting their own program

You have a point. I think it's best to send people through a funnel that has upsells. You give yourself an opportunity to make more on the backend. Just have to make sure the funnel is setup correctly.

Agreed. But if you are building email list before selling anything to your visitors then you can sell them any related product later, whenever you want. If you have a good responsive list of people who have already bought something from you in the past, then you can sell new stuff easily to them.

Maybe for a start, a newbie will be satisfy with a one-time commission. But you are spot on by saying that if you stop marketing, your income stops. Then recurring bills products and membership comes into the picture.. this will last you for a few months but not forever.. Regardless of what, there is a minimum amount of work required to be done in order to sustain the income level, useless you like to hire someone to do for you while you sit back and relax. Even if you build a list, you still need to promote to the list, right?

This is how I look at it. It takes the same amount of energy to sell a product for $100 compared to a product for a $1,000. The hard part is getting your prospect to trust you enough to pull out their credit card and buy something from you. The money will always be in the backend. Even if you break-even on the front end it doesn't matter as long as you get BUYERS on your list (customer acquisition is the name of the game). The real money is the money you make from your customers long term (the backend). Just my two cents...

Yes, of course, your goal should be to promote as many products as you can
of course, no too much but a good number of products that can help your customer!

I dont think the old strategies work quite as well now as they did back in the day.