The Affiliate Lifestyle Blog

What does it take to make money at this? I’d assume that this market is saturated and it takes some special skill or knowledge to make it pay. There are some products I believe in that I’d be happy to sell as an affiliate, it’s just hard for me to believe I could make money at it.

I think the key is to enjoy what you are doing, and to be able to come to your computer each day and continue to enjoy it. If your work becomes a chore, and you work for yourself doing internet marketing, then you aren’t going to be successful.

The second thing is you need to have a willingness and drive to succeed. Just yesterday, I was reading an internet marketing forum where a top marketer was saying 3 out of every 4 affiliate offers he launches is a failure! (I’d have to concur as well).

So if you are easily discouraged, then this business isn’t for you.

The third key is that you need to be technologically inclined. I don’t like to be discouraging, but from my experience it’s much harder for someone who knows nothing about the internet to be successful doing internet/affiliate marketing.

You don’t really even need to know complicated HTML/PHP or any coding. You can hire people for that. But you should be fairly quick on the computer, know how search engines work, and expect to spend a solid year learning about the business.

Do you use mostly ppc ads like google adwords, or do you maintain websites that get traffic and suck people in that way?

In the past, I’ve used PPC to drive 95% of the traffic to my affiliate offers. But lately, PPC advertising is becoming increasingly competitive, and I’m now looking at other avenues of marketing (Youtube, Social Services, SEO, etc) to drive traffic to my websites.

Is it a matter of choosing the right products, writing brilliant ads, choosing where to run the ads, or what?

You need to find your playground, meaning, you need to find your niche. What you love. Write down all the things you know about on a piece of paper. Then write down all the things you love. Figure out what you know and what you love. Then go to Google and type “myniche forum” and start reading the forums and see what the common problems are of people in your niche. Then figure out a solution and sell them the solution.

Remember, you’re running a business. So make sure that your niche market is big enough to supply you with income.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 11:20 am and is filed under Q and A. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.