Just how realistic is it to build an automated income system? And, if it is possible, why isn’t everyone doing doing it? First of all, it is now entirely possible to build a business model which works ‘like’ an automated income system. With the right knowledge and business model, you can build such a system.
Products can be bought and download instantly through a website or an email, which is what makes this a possibility. But it is the ‘how’ which stands in the way for most people in doing this, despite the many offers promising such a system.
Automated Income System – The Overview
The know how to do this takes a lot of time and energy. Otherwise, everyone would have an automated income system already. In principle you can simply send someone to a landing page, collect their email address, and send them products and services to buy. Affiliate links enable anyone to sell through email. Since email is a cheap and incredibly convenient form of communication, this is the best method of selling online. It can also be automated.
You can of course sell someone something directly through a website. However, the chance of  a visitor buying directly from a website they don’t know is very small. Email gives you the chance to sell again and again through a series of emails. It also enables you to speak directly to a growing number of subscribers on autopilot. This, and with the ability to sell through a link, makes the possibility of an automated income system very real.
Nothing To Sell?
So you have nothing to sell? Not a problem. Today anyone can ‘piggy back’ off someone else’s products online and earn a commission. This is affiliate marketing. See what is affiliate marketing. By joining an affiliate company anyone can create links directing people to those products. From a sale you can earn a commission, in some cases 50% of the price. You can become an affiliate for millions of products online which are sold all over the world. What is great about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to fulfill on customers needs yourself. The company selling the item deals with all sales whether it be a physical product or a digital product. All you do is refer the sale through your affiliate link. You can do this through a website, email or advertising campaign.
What’s The Catch?
The catch is you need to send qualified leads to those products through your link. That’s how you make sales. To automate that process you need to connect hungry buyers to those products. You can do this in a number of different ways. The fastest method is paid advertising. Simply set up a paid for advert which targets likely customers for those products. When you start making sales you can alter your advertising budget. By testing and measuring advertising parameters, you can find a method which consistently gets you sales. Once you are in the position of making a profit from your advertising spend, you can scale up.
Paid Advertising
Let’s say you spend $4 and make $8. Now you can turn up your advertising to $40 and make $80. In this scenario, you have yourself an automated income system. Given the right size of your audience, and all other things being equal, you could scale up to $400 and make $800, $4000 and make $8000. Although it might take a lot of testing and measuring to get to this point, all you need to do now is scale up. Some affiliates spend thousands every day on their advertising. However, they have tested their advertising first with much smaller budgets.
Of course you could find yourself in the position of spending $4 and making $2. In this case you need to go back to your advertising campaign and adjust elements of your advert, landing pages, emails or even your product/s. These are all elements of your campaign which are in your control to change. It’s important to know from the start that your products are already selling elsewhere. Otherwise your products could be at fault.
The Right Products
Many affiliate products pay affiliates handsomely because they know the customer will be theirs once they buy. If a company has many more products to sell, their long term return on investment is secured. All they have to do is pay the affiliate once, and the customer is theirs for life. They are building their business using the affiliate as a marketing resource. If you choose an affiliate program like this, beware that your sales are often limited to the initial sale. If you only make a commission on the initial sale, you will have to make many sales in order to make your business work.
A better way to make money is by choosing products which offer:
- Monthly commissions – Such as membership products. Selling membership products means you keep earning month after month for each sale – assuming your customer continues their membership.
- Back end sales – You get paid for later sales closed by the company due to your initial referral.
- Built in sales team – A built in sales team closes sales and back end sales on your behalf.
- High ticket items – High ticket items let you earn more for a sale, offset advertising costs and scale your business much more quickly and easily. A $1000 item can earn you $400-$500 for a single sale. Compare that to a $100 item which only gives you $40-$50 in commission.
Where’s The Automation?
You might be thinking your automated income system is looking a little more involved by now! As you can see, it’s not a ‘push button’ system by any means. However, once you have your business running, much of it can run on autopilot. Your main job then is simply sending traffic to your sales funnel. A sales funnel starts with a landing page which collects a subscribers email. They are then sent a series of emails which give value and useful information. You can also promote products and services through these emails.
This whole process can be automated. You then send traffic to your sales system.
Traffic Generation – The Key To Your Automated Income System
Once you have all the key elements in place for your online business, you can simply send traffic to your landing pages and website. You can do this in a couple of ways:
- Paid Advertising
- ‘Free’ Advertising
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is the fastest way to start generating traffic to your online business. If you have set up your business to take advantage of the elements mentioned above, your return on investment (ROI) will be much higher. Having back end sales, built in sales team and high ticket products means you can recoup your advertising costs as people move through your sales funnel and purchase your products. This can happen much later down the line too, and may not happen immediately. By knowing your ROI you can more confidently spend money on advertising, too. Paid advertising should be thoroughly tested and measured before throwing more money at it. Start small and build slowly. . Paid advertising should always be sent to a landing page where you can collect the visitors email address. Not doing so can easily burn your advertising budget by sending people to a website. Create a compelling offer to give away in exchange for your visitors email address. Get my ebook “The Ultimate Guide To Online Marketing” for more on paid advertising.
‘Free’ Advertising
I say ‘free’ in ‘quotes’ because if you value your time, this isn’t the best option. It will take much longer to build your online business if you use these methods alone. However, free advertising can send qualified traffic to your landing pages and website. If you don’t have an advertising budget to start with then these are the things you can do. Free advertising includes things like blogging, creating video and link generation. You can also use social media to get your message in front of the right audience for your products.
Free advertising takes time to generate a good amount of traffic. It’s harder to target qualified traffic with free advertising and you can’t control how many people see your content. If you content goes viral though you can suddenly earn a lot more views and things can take off. However, you’re not completely in charge of this. The best thing you can do is create great content which people will want to share. Share it and don’t expect Google to rank it either. Read my ebook “Niche Blogging For Profit” for your best chance of ranking your articles on Google.
Automated Income System
So you now have the overview to start your own automated income system. To get started you will need to build and develop your knowledge as you go along. When you don’t know the pitfalls of an online business it’s easy to fall into them. When I started out I made a lot of mistakes simply because I didn’t fully understand what was involved in building a long term sustainable income from the internet. Learn and develop yourself first, as you build your internet business. Keep learning and never stop! Access this online community and education platform.
