Just like regular jobs, running an online business can be full-time job. It can also require your frequent upkeep even after being uber successful. If you constantly need to be maintaining your business to keep it paying you out, are you free from it or imprisoned by it? I think the question is, how automatic, ever-lasting, and easy to maintain can you set up your business to be and still be successful? Well, if you’re an affiliate, like me, you have a chance. If you build a website and sell it to a major company, you also have a chance. But I won’t focus on that, I’ll focus on doing it as an affiliate. Many affiliate marketers develop products and make this business their lives, making millions in the process. Is that the goal? I don’t know. But I do know I don’t want to still have a million calls and emails a day to keep my online reputation and business going. I personally would rather do something that is a little more sustainable; that is, find a system that works WITHOUT building you business into a situation of writing many emails (personal or mass), needing to write more blogs for traffic, needing to conduct webinars, needing to train, needing to make phone calls, or needing to write articles incessantly. So what to do?
There are people on the internet who have constructed elaborate money making systems. Some work, some don’t. I have been lucky enough to find a couple that work. I have listed a few of them in this blog post. But whether they work or not is not the point. The point is, how simple is the system and what does it require you to do? The Renegade System, for example is an amazing system put together by Ann Sieg based on her book, The Renegade Network Marketer. One of the biggest advantages of this system but also one of my biggest obstacles is that when you sell a book and get a lead, you get all their contact information (email, phone, address) and are expected to use that info to bring them into your business (or for selling them another product, I suppose). Those prospects frequently figure out how to do the system themselves, which helps you, and it does have the potential to bring people into Send Out Cards automatically, as well as sell other products for you automatically – but that isn’t the sole purpose of the program. The amount of products you sell via the system or people you bring into SOC is dependent on how much “follow up” you do. It does give you the added choice of suggesting information to your prospects that you believe can help them specifically instead of just giving them whatever the system provides. It’s not incomplete, it’s just for people who want this information to follow up with their prospects in the way they choose. It does its job brilliantly and I’ve made a lot of money from it but it doesn’t give me the form of freedom I desire since I still need to follow up and train almost endlessly.
I recently moved Tissa Godavitarne’s affiliate program to the top spot on my Top 10 Affiliate Programs. The reason I did it is because it’s the most brilliant program I’ve seen since the Renegade. What I love is that ultimately, after you do the proper signing up, which takes a couple hours, all you have to do is drive traffic to one link and the system literally makes the signups for you. I know because it literally signed me up automatically. At the end I was like, “holy shit, it really got me to do everything.” A significant reason that it kicks ass so much is that it provides you 2 links from 2 niches that will ultimately build 7 solid income streams. 1 of those income streams is a simple domain hosting network marketing company that can eventually pay you unlimited levels (Global Domains International – it doesn’t make sense to supply the link because if you become a member, it should definitely be through this Tissa’s affiliate program). The conversion rates are high because it costs nothing to sign up. It costs something to stay in the program but by that time, people realize how well it’s going to work and they stay in because it’s worth it. All you have to do is drive the traffic. And if you can get that automated, then the hardest parts in the process become stat checking and check cashing. Fortunately or unfortunately, due to its easy-to-duplicate nature, this program is spreading like wildfire and when you sign up, you’ll realize why.
There are some marketing methods that I’ve found that are low maintenance – that is the key. Easy and simple also helps. For example, writing a sales letter for a solo ad is not easy or simple. Buying traffic from a pre-determined demographic is easy and simple. If you can figure out PPC, it can sustain itself without maintenance for a while usually but is neither easy nor simple. Posting on forums is free, simple, and easy but also tedious. Usually, the less you pay, the more effort you will need to trade off. So if you want to put in less effort, which is the idea behind the automating, then you can pay for it. You just need to make sure that your cost per conversion is still making you money. So if you find a simple, easy, low maintenance traffic source that will feed links to an affiliate program that automatically feeds you income, then you are free. When buying traffic, checking stats, and setting up commission payments is your job, then you are free.
FYI, Guaranteed Website Visitors is a traffic source that I like to use for either one of these affiliate programs. It sends 74-76% unique visitors who are looking for “business opportunities.”
