The First Step To Affiliate Marketing Success

The one 'BIG AFFILIATE MARKETING TIP' that can make or break your business.

Everyone is looking for the one magical tip that will instantly put their business into six figure profits. Can it be done? I have yet to see it instantly happen. Can you make six figures a year with affiliate marketing? You bet, but you have to follow a basic rule.

And it's quite common to all buildings.

Back in 1995 I had a job in the construction industry. I worked for a company that built the foundation walls on new houses. It was painstaking, back breaking work. We would carry hundred pound, wooden forms on our backs and lay them out in the configuration of the building. Once they were erected, the concrete would be poured in them. The next day we would go back, remove the forms, and presto... a foundation was born.

This foundation gave the house, building, business, or whatever a stable place to build and even expand.

The same principle holds true for affiliate marketing. Build a strong foundation before concentrating on the six figure income. It won't happen any other way.

Your First Step

There is a lot of work in affiliate marketing. I know that the people selling the automated software would like to tell you otherwise, but it takes work.

You don't simply set up a page with some affiliate links on it and expect the big pay day. Even if you are distributing articles around the Internet, don't expect long lasting rewards.

There's only one way to give your affiliate marketing business a stable place from which to grow.

Publish a newsletter or ezine. But, not just any newsletter.

Why an ezine?

A good question, and one that I've heard several times during my one on one affiliate marketing consultations (www.guaranteed-ads.com/affiliatecall.html), is why is an ezine so foundational to an affiliate business?

Two reasons really.

# Advertising Budget

Having an ezine means you're capturing email addresses. This causes you to be able to repeatedly stay in contact with site visitors without having to spend dollars advertising to them again. Once you have a visitor, you don't want to have to keep spending your profits to get them to come back.

An ezine will allow you to actually save money on advertising.

# Longevity

That's the name of the game. Why start a business, spend money advertising, setting up links, optimizing your pages, and the hundred other things that need to be done only to go out of business in a few months? What an ezine will do for you is provide the necessary means for a long lasting affiliate business.

The more subscribers you have the more people want to hear from you and will sustain your business efforts over a long period of time.

How to make your affiliate foundation strong and stable.

I've seen many a foundation under a house that was cracked, leaked water, and was about to crumble in on itself. The same thing can happen with your affiliate marketing foundation if you let it. You need to make it strong right from the start.

# Focus on subscribers

A lot of marketers will only see the commission from a site visitor. They neglect to see the long lasting benefits, and multiplied income, from ezine subscribers. Focus on the email address instead of the commission.

# Offer information

One great way to focus on the subscriber is to offer quality information in the form of free reports, email courses, small ebooks, short videos, and audio. Make these products a reward for subscribing to your newsletter.

By doing so, the subscriber is seeing firsthand the benefits of the information you will be providing.

# Be consistent

This is the one that I've had problems with of late. But, you must remain solid in your commitment to providing your subscriber with information he/she can use. If you publish weekly, make sure it's every week. If monthly, have a new issue ready each month.

# Stay original

This is your ezine, not someone elses. If you're using articles from an article directory, chances are your reader has probably already seen it and will see you as someone out to make a dollar from them.

If you provide real, authentic, original content you are proving to the reader you do know your stuff and they will be more inclined to stay a subscriber and repeatedly visit your site, buying your products.

# Befriend top marketers

This is the most intimidating part for me and realize that a lot of people just aren't comfortable with it. But, for a strong, long lasting ezine making friendships with top internet marketers will strengthen your ezine more than anything else. Why?

Because they will be mentioning you, your ezine, and your business. Likewise you'll be name dropping and building your image as a top professional.

I never go looking for ezines or blogs to subscribe to. I just don't have time to read any more. But, I might check it out if someone who's making millions a year online mentions an ezine they read or someone they are friends with.

Affiliate marketing is hard enough, why make it harder?

Sure, there are shortcuts to quick money. But, if you want to build a successful career, a long lasting business, then there are no shortcuts. Why make it harder on yourself?

The first step to affiliate marketing success is building a large ezine subscriber list and remaining faithfully committed to publishing it.

Once you do that, everything begins to fall into place.

About the Author
Tim is a veteran internet marketer who specializes in creating comprehensive advertising packages, complete with full advertising strategy, for small online businesses and affiliates.