Internet Marketing is a Strange Bird Indeed – Some Affiliate Marketing Info

How’s everyone doing?

Hopefully you are learning a little. So far I have went over various ‘mechanics’ of doing Internet marketing. Some may be a little contrary to what you have been led to believe. Today we are getting into the really strange parts of Internet marketing.

The really strange part is that one of the items I was going to go over was a recent topic of intense discussion on the Warrior Forum.

The discussion was so intense that several people got into heated discussions. I will explain as I go on here the discussion and topic.

The topic and discussion was about affiliate marketing and if it was a ‘sustainable’ business model. Now, to not make the same mistakes that some have made let’s get our definitions correct first shall we? OK, affiliate marketing everyone has heard of, it is what all the gurus profess to make you rich overnight and what people are doing to make money from home.

This is the topic that everyone looks up and want to learn how to do. Affiliate marketing in a nutshell is you, the affiliate, advertises your affiliate link. This link is a special link that if someone buys from this link, you make a commission.

Now most people who do affiliate marketing build their list of customers to market their affiliate links through email. They also usually have more than one product they use. They also use SEO techniques to get higher search engine rank (mostly Google) to get people to there mini-websites to click their affiliate links. They have link cloakers to keep other affiliates from stealing their sales and get slapped by Google when Google makes changes that reduce the way their SEO works to bring them traffic.

99% of the stuff you will buy online to make money from home will have to do with affiliate marketing. Right now affiliate marketing is a big business in the ‘make money from home’ niche. There are people who make thousands per day with affiliate marketing and hundreds of thousands per year.

I know a lot of people who do affiliate marketing and do well with it. What started the all the fuss was that people failed to understand definitions which only mean something to those needing a definition.

Now as an affiliate you are hopefully supplied maybe some ads and sales materials which usually includes the website for your affiliate link to go to. You as the affiliate must supply the traffic to your link, any website you will use to presell the offer, an autoresponder, and all risks associated with any and all of this.

You also need to realize that once you get a sale and make some money that depending on what affiliate organization you are part of if the customer asks for a refund, you lose the commission and it must be repaid. You need to know how the company handles the refunds and how long before a refund offer expires.

Technically you have no product, you supply no support as the product maker does that, you have no stake in the company itself and you cannot control refunds. If you do it right though you can build a list from your activities. The bad thing is that one single bad product that you promote to your list will probably cause irreparable damage to most of your list and then you will be back to square one. This is why many affiliates use more than one product, but one bad one can still cause you trouble.

So the question about if this is a sustainable business is based on if this is actually a business. Technically by definition it is not. You are a traffic conduit if you will. Some take it to a more in depth level, but you cannot even be considered a sales rep as they have more control than you do of your chosen product. You incur all the cost of generating the traffic and sales for a product..period.

Now if it is not a business, why is it sold to everyone as a business? That you will have to ask the gurus. You will still have to do a 1099 for the tax man every year, but that doesn’t mean it was a ‘business’ in the definition of business.

But I take office supplies off my taxes like a business – so you are a liar. So do any self-employed people who are smart. Electricians, plumbers, doctors, sales people, lawyers, and affiliate marketers will all be able to take the same deductions. These others are businesses also… well technically not really either.

The strictest definition of a business is an entity that will not stop once the person running it stops and has a product or service that is sold and provides end user support. Most of the professions listed above and other are a “one-person” operation and when they stop – the operation does to. So you are a self-employed professional in traffic generation and marketing.

This is no way means that you don’t make any money at affiliate marketing, it is just not defined as a ‘business’ in the sense of the definition. The other part if it is sustainable is a matter of great conjecture as most that really become successful switch to product creation and get their own affiliates to sell for them.

There is also the product. Many affiliate marketers doing this for years have had to use several products to keep going. A small percentage of products will continue to sell where most will not, so you will need to find new products. There will always be someone needing a affiliate to sell for them for free – until a newer method is devised.

So affiliate marketing is not considered a business by definition and who knows if it will be sustainable in the future as no one knows the future. The only thing you can count on is change. The hot affiliate stuff today will not even sell tomorrow. As an affiliate you will need to keep up with the trends to get into the best niches and score the best keywords.

When you do this first, you will have it made. You will constantly be looking for new customers and/or building your email list. The only control you have on a product is not to pick a bad one. The only way you can do this is to actually be a customer. If it is a crap product with crap customer service, you will have refunds. If it is a good product with good customer service, you will have less refunds.

Will any of this help you make money at home? Possibly, you really need to know what you are getting into. Just because a guru says so don’t make it true. 95% of you will continue to purchase the stuff from the gurus and never do anything with it like you have been. This is OK as it keeps them in business. This is why they are still in business as you need someone to “feed the hungry crowd” and they do that well.

As with anything you need to use some common sense and look at things without the ‘rose colored glasses’ and don’t drink the Kool-Aid or you may be caught up in things that will leave you worse off than you are now.

Well, time to go. We will pick up this discussion later as I untangle the other strangeness in the Internet Marketing world. I am hoping to help you, the reader, have a better grasp of what some things REALLY are and what they have to offer. There are many ways to make money on the Internet just as off the Internet – the difference is that you don’t have to have employees or a building or office.

This is also where a lot of the strangeness comes into play as you really don’t know anyone from just their website, picture, Facebook page, etc. as they could be as phony as a 3 dollar bill.

Until next time!

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