Diary of an Affiliate Marketer
I’ve been reading some of the affiliate marketing reviews that have been written over the years and it made some interesting reading especially as the over hyped products seem to have disappeared altogether.
The actual process of affiliate marketing is quite simple. You have a website based on a particular topic or theme, you attract visitors to your website whether through Pay Per Click or search engine optimization (seo), you send your visitors to your affiliate merchant’s websites where the visitor buys the product or service and you get paid a commission on the sale.
Therefore you could simplify your business model even further by saying that:
Traffic x Conversions = Profit
The business model is simple but the execution takes work and time. That is why when you get into the affiliate marketing industry you discover that the big earners didn’t make it overnight. They have been developing their skills over a period of time.
Affiliate marketing reviews will often imply that there are turnkey operations, magic solutions that will make you wealthy if you buy the products or offer. Such overnight success is rarely the case and I personally don’t know of an affiliate marketing program that you can buy that will give you instant success.
I’ve said before that in order for you to succeed you need to know The System, how you set up your business from the fundamentals and basics to outsourcing and running your business full time when the money really starts to roll in.
What the affiliate marketing reviews fail to explain is the complete system you need to set up to succeed:
Choosing the right market
Building a website the right way
Getting traffic
Converting the traffic
Continuous testing of all aspects of your sales funnel such as landing page, Google Adwords etc.
All of this may take place before you start making a profit!
The reviews are too busy trying to sell you a product when you really need to understand the system so that you know what it is you need for your business and what you can afford to buy for your business at this time of its development.
For instance, you can buy Ken McCarthy’s System Secrets which covers all business models on the internet, or, James Martell’s Affiliate Marketing Handbook if you know that is the business model you are going into and armed with the knowledge from either book you now know what it is you have to do to succeed.
The knowledge gained from these books allows you to make the right choices when you see affiliate marketing reviews of products and services. Now you can understand the strengths and weaknesses of what is on offer because you know what you need.
Armed with just these 2 books you are able to see marketing and affiliate marketing for what it really is, a process!
Once you understand that selling is a process you begin to break it down into little steps and realize that you can build a successful business selling anything for which there is a hungry market.
As you learn the process you want the best people available on the internet to show you how each step can be achieved and the best way to achieve it.
These people become your “virtual board of directors” and you draw on their knowledge and expertise when required. Many of my “directors” below provide plenty of education free of charge which is a pretty cheap way to get started!
My “virtual board of directs” consists of:
Perry Marshall – Pay Per Click (PPC) – When I need to buy traffic or test an advert or landing page Perry is my main man.
Glenn Livingston – Marketing – Probably the most savvy marketing expert on the internet and my go to guy when I need to find out what my target market wants so I can supply it to them.
Ken McCarthy – The guy who put the whole system together and is my advisor to my whole business model.
James Martell – SEO and Affiliate Marketing – James helps me get free traffic that converts to buy affiliate marketing products from the merchants he has helped me set up
Ben Jesson & Karl Blanks – Conversion experts who with the use of plenty of free tools show me what people do on my web pages and better understand my visitors to get more conversions.
Affiliate marketing reviews really tell you that to have real worthwhile success online you need to find out what it is you need to know and the people who can help you achieve it, your “virtual board of directors”!
