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Earning Extra Income With Affiliate
Marketing – Having Your Cake and Eating it Too!
By Bill Schnarr
Affiliate marketing is the single
fastest growth industry on the Internet. Yet many people go into
it without a solid recipe for success. Indeed, many look to
earn extra income with affiliate marketing with no real plan,
and that can severely hamper their efforts at becoming successful
at it.
Make no mistake, although affiliate
marketing can be an easy and fun way to earn additional income, it
is work, and just like any other job, requires effort,
perseverance, and above all, a clear line of sight from start to
finish line.
Things like setting up your home
office properly, getting some know-how, setting realistic goals,
making connections, and investing in your business will not only
ensure that you have a leg-up on your competition, but it will
also ensure you are firmly standing head and shoulders above them.
Setting Up Your Home Base
Perhaps the most important first
step you can take to becoming a professional affiliate marketer is
to set up your home base – that little home office you’ve always
dreamed about!
There are many good articles on the
internet about ergonomic design, and with good reason. Anyone who
is going to be spending a large amount of time on their computers
needs a space that promotes good posture, positive environments,
and takes care of safety issues revolving around the office
workspace.
The best place to start might be to
head down to your local Home Depot and touch base with a
professional sales representative. They are trained to show you
how to set up a first-rate ergonomic office while saving you some
serious cash.
Ergonomics is the science behind
preventing office workplace injuries, and office designers now
make tables, chairs, and desktop accessories that reduce stress on
your back, limbs, wrists, and tendons, and reduce stress injuries
such as carpal tunnel syndrome which can occur from long hours of
doing small repetitive tasks.
You’ll want to start with an
ergonomically designed desk that puts everything within easy
reach, a good computer with a screen that won’t hurt your eyes,
non-glaring lamps placed far enough away that your eyes won’t be
soaking in light while you are trying to work on the computer
screen, and a chair that is comfortable and promotes circulation
to your legs and rest of your body.
Of course, having the greatest home
office in the world won’t matter if you don’t take the next step
to becoming a successful affiliate marketer: getting some good,
professional training.
Learning the Trade
Nobody goes onto a worksite cold.
You can’t walk into a restaurant and expect to become the head
chef just because you dressed like one that morning. And no
construction company in the world is going to put you in charge
just because you want the extra money but lack any real training.
The trick, then, is getting some
professional training and learning how to become a professional
affiliate marketer.
The first step in this road to
success is to find a professional affiliate marketer and see what
they can do to help you get on your feet and get moving.
Thankfully, there are a few affiliate marketing pros out there who
supplement their income by fulfilling another dream for many of
them: being able to teach their trade to other enthusiastic
marketers and passing their collective knowledge on to others.
In fact, simply typing “Affiliate
Marketing Training” (in quotation marks) into
www.yahoo.com,
www.google.com
or some other search engine will find dozens and dozens of sites
promoting quality affiliate marketing conferences that you can
attend.
 One
of affiliate marketing’s brightest stars and biggest success
stories is
James
Martell, and chances are pretty good that if you’ve looked
into affiliate marketing at all you’ve seen his name pop up more
than once. His downloadable
home-study course and twice monthly audio newsletter for
students of his program make him the good place to start looking
for a great course and learning the inner workings of affiliate
marketing.
Become a student of the business.
Start by setting some realistic income goals and working to
achieve them.
Setting Reachable Goals
One problem with some affiliate
marketers is that many tend to overshoot both their skills and
their plans by setting unrealistic income goals and becoming
disenchanted when they are unable to attain them.
Certainly a goal of $5,000 a month
is attainable, but the first time affiliate marketer is most
likely not going to make that kind of money when they step into
the ring for the first time.
Make no mistake; $5,000 dollars a
month is a goal that can be achieved through affiliate marketing,
but beginners should look for something more modest. Start small.
Start with, “I’m going to earn an extra $50-$100 a day, by
learning how to create my own great looking websites, that get
free traffic from the search engines, by taking the time to learn
how to do it, from someone who already does the same thing.”
As an income goal, it’s certainly
achievable, and you would be doing yourself a favour by setting
aside the extra time you will need to learn how to do things
right, the first time. Like any skill, it takes time and
experience before you really get good at what you are doing.
Set goals and get used to setting
them often. Set up daily goals for little things. Set up weekly
and monthly goals to work toward even larger goals. Get used to
writing your wants and needs on paper, and then actively working
toward those goals. You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll be amazed
at how much something as simple as a “to do” list can help you
focus your energy and become better at your craft.
There’s a great book out about goal
setting called “Goals: Setting and Achieving Them on Schedule” by
Zig Ziglar. Take a look at it if you feel you could use some extra
help in this department. In fact, set a goal to purchase the book
and read it if you have to!
Another important goal for you to
set: if you are really looking to augment your earnings with
affiliate programs, or plan on becoming a full-time marketer, you
have to get out there and make connections.
Making Connections to Your
Future
By all accounts, the professional
affiliate marketing community is a tight-knit group of people who
are constantly in contact with one another.
There is a large amount of
information sharing, helping one another as a support group, and a
general belief that by pitching in and helping out everyone can be
successful in their new role as an affiliate marketer and learn
from each others mistakes.
It would be extremely shallow to
suggest getting out there and making friends simply to help your
business along, and people tend to not look kindly upon those who
do (and we all know someone like that, don’t we?). Instead, get
out there and introduce yourself. Start by seeing where you can
help others with their business, and in return people will be more
inclined to help you when you need it.
Get out there and enjoy yourself,
and get to know these people personally. You won’t only be better
off from a business standpoint, but your life will be far richer
for making good friends who can relate to the trials and
tribulations of your business woes and successes.
Just being able to relate to
like-minded people will relieve tons of work stress. You will
always be able to discuss your new career and problems you are
facing with people who understand what you’re talking bout and
don’t simply see your job as “foolin’ around on the ‘puter”.
Of course, they’ll have no choice
but to take you a little more seriously when you invest a little
money and a lot of effort in your own affiliate marketing business
and really make your image shine.
Investing in Your Business is
Believing in Yourself!
It’s a well known truism that
states, “It takes money to make money.” These words couldn’t be
truer in the world of affiliate marketing.
Although affiliate marketing is
relatively cheap to set up as a home business, there are still
some costs involved in getting up and running smoothly. Things
like home office accessories (remember that trip to Home Depot?)
Can set you back large sums of money depending on how far you are
willing to go at once.
There are also costs involved
within the industry itself. For example, finding affordable web
space ($8-$15 per month) and registering your own domain names
($10-15 per year) does add up.
You will also need to look at web
site template options if you hope to save time by having your
websites “pre-planned”. Low-cost website templates, such as those
found at
www.affiliate-marketing-templates.com can greatly affect the
way others view your site. Is it professional? Is it clean? A good
web development company selling
low cost
FrontPage website templates will be able to accomplish all of
this and more.
You are also going to want to
invest both time and effort into setting yourself up with quality
content. Writing for the web is a skill that takes practice and
patience, like any other, and must be clean and easy to read while
still fulfilling the needs of your affiliate site.
You can always go out and find
professional writers to do this for you, but remember that they
can be costly and deserve to be well-paid for their services.
After all, they are going to make or break your web site!
Investing in your affiliate
marketing business is more than just covering costs, though. It is
really about you stepping up to the plate and making a commitment
to become a success. It is an investment in your own success, as
well as an investment in your future.
Hopefully, this article has given
you some ideas about the direction you need to take in order to
earn extra income as a successful affiliate marketer. Remember
that it takes time to become succeed at anything. Rome wasn’t
built in a day. You’re affiliate marketing business isn’t going to
be built in a day either.
Just keep at it, and before long
you’ll have people coming to you for advice on how to get started.
For more information, see
www.work-at-home-net-guides.com.
About The Author
Bill Schnarr is a single parent and
freelance writer who works from his home in Calgary, Alberta. As
well as having dozens of online and print publishing credits, you
can also look for him in the upcoming "Chicken Soup for the Single
Parents Soul" due out in February 2005.
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