There are many skills associated with running your own internet business but thankfully new systems, tools and technology means that a lot of the work previous internet business owners had to do is largely done already. Only around 10 years ago building a website was only the domain of the coder who would build a website in code from scratch. Now there are programs available to make push button websites in only a few clicks which are pre-populated with affiliate links. More on this later.
Communication has also been made much easier with autoresponders which can send thousands of emails at once at the click of your mouse. So if internet businesses have got easier and so much of the hard work is now already done, what do internet marketers and affiliate marketers actually do with their time?
Affiliate Marketing
A quick overview of affiliate marketing: affiliate marketing is basically the advertising of other people’s products and services. This can be done through an online platform, advertisement or website like this one. Thousands of products and services offer affiliate programs to enable anyone to link to them and earn commissions on referring a sale. This is how affiliate marketing works. A link on a website is tracked back to the owner who receives a commission on the sale of a product which has been made through their link.
Building content
Since the products and services that affiliates promote are already selling, marketable and successful, the main job of an affiliate is to drive visitors and customers to those pages which sell the affiliate products. The links are tracked by the owners of the affiliate product/s so the affiliate can be credited with the sale. Content can be created through articles like this one, videos, banners, links and advertisements. Offering value and connecting with potential customers is a good way to create content. Many affiliates offer product reviews and then link to the products they are reviewing. They get their content found either through the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo), social media, sharing their content, advertising links or from their own list of subscribers.
The power is in the list
Building your own list is definitely the best way to approach an internet business. You can do this by having a subscribe option on your website. (I have on on the right>>>). Once you have a list you can let your subscribers know about your content by emailing them. Having a list of subscribers is a great way to control your traffic without having to rely on the constantly changing algorithms of the search engines. See more about list building here.
Giving value
Driving an internet business by giving value is much more important these days than it was 10 years ago. Now there are millions of websites on the internet all trying to grab your attention. Giving value, and continuing to do so is the best way to build a long term sustainable income from the internet. Just promoting products continually will likely put many of your subscribers off and they will unsubscribe unless you have something of value to offer them.
The work that has been done
Learning affiliate marketing was quite difficult only a few years ago when there was much less information available on it. Now you can join a community of support, get access to tools, systems and training which can make the whole process much easier. You don’t have to go it alone anymore and you can have a pre-populated, push button, website up and running with only a few steps to complete. Learn how to access this here.
What you need to do
As an affiliate marketer you need to create content that links customers to sales pages – many of which have already been created. You can do this as mentioned by creating content such as articles and videos which will help visitors make more informed decisions about the item you are promoting. You can offer your own training, advice and expertise into the package to help build trust between you and your visitors.
To get started with your own internet business check out this video where Stuart Ross will explain more. Check out the video below which shows how I embed links and create landing pages to the SFM.