How to Build a Profitable Affiliate Business

This is the first part of a series I did in the forum called ‘Building a profitable affiliate business'

Part 1 – Can you be a long term affiliate?

Some people think that affiliate marketing is a get in and get out type of thing. Jump on the hot niche, ride the latest hot traffic source, etc. I don't want to say this isn't a viable business strategy because some affiliates make a ton of money doing this. However, more affiliates end up just chasing the successful affiliates and don't hit it big by doing this. Affiliates who build their business this way can have long term success; you just need to keep in mind that each lucrative period you have, it is not always going to be sustainable.

So what about using different traffic sources, niches, etc. to diversify? Yes this works well, and will be more stable but there is a downside. The downside is that you are working on so many different things that it becomes difficult to really scale and ramp up one traffic source or niche. Even worse, you end up jumping around from one thing to another because it can be difficult to manage multiple campaigns across multiple traffic sources.

“Ok great so you’re telling us it's not the best to just do the hottest thing, but it's not good to diversify too much either?”

Jeez! Hang on…let me continue…

When I first started I focused on one thing at a time and once it became profitable, I figured out how to outsource it and start diversifying. My advice is that you first get proficient at one thing, it doesn't matter what it is. Don't get fooled into thinking PPV is the best, or that POF doesn't convert, or whatever. People are making money with all these traffic sources and if someone tells you it doesn't work, its B.S.

Pick one traffic source that you enjoy working with. Not one you think everyone is making a killing on, pick one that you see potential in and you know people are having success with and something you know people are making money at. Don't go hunting for some obscure traffic source or anything though. Don't try to build your business by mastering 7Search. I mean you can if you want, but you need to pick something with some volume and decent traffic.

Now, I know sometimes because of budget you can't keep going with a paid traffic source. If you are going to do paid traffic, you need to have some cash. I talk to a lot of people who want to turn their $200 they have for advertising into enough to make a full time income. You can start with a minimal amount of cash yes, and I have known people who have done this, but you also have to plan for what happens when you run out of capital.

Just a side note – consider yourself very lucky to be able to start an affiliate/internet marketing business. By any standards the amount of money required to start is very low compared to other types of businesses. A lot of people want to build an affiliate business but don't even want to spend $1k on advertising (let alone $2k, $3k, etc.). Do you have any idea how much $$ you would have to sink into a brick and mortar business to get that going? So when you get scared about spending money, just keep that in mind.

If you feel you really don't have money to spend on paid advertising, think about this;

* You can use coupons to pay for some advertising costs
* You can go through your garage and Ebay or Craigslist some stuff (most people have at least a few hundred worth sitting around they wouldn't miss)
* You can freelance and earn money to pay for advertising costs. Do you have any writing skills? Web design skills? Bid on some Elance jobs or post your qualifications here http://www.ppvplaybook.com/forum/for…Buy-Sell-Trade
* Don't have any skills? No problem! People need all kinds of button pushing grunt work. It”s out there if you want to do it.
* Get some clients on Elance. I know people who became very successful affiliates after getting to ‘play' with clients money and campaigns for a while.

People are lazy. They don't want to work. They want an endless pool of money sitting in their bank account to be able to test traffic with. Great if that's the situation but I hope my above points make it very clear that there is no reason you can't have money for testing. I am always pretty baffled by people who ‘want' to make money online, build a business, etc. but look at me like I've just said the craziest thing when I suggest they sell some stuff on Ebay or do some grunt article writing to get some capital. In case you’re wondering – yes this conversation happens regularly.

If you still feel you don't have any money for testing then you need to focus on free traffic sources like SEO, Youtube, article marketing, etc. Yes, I know it can suck but if you really don't have money to spend (even after reading everything above) then this is what you need to focus on. I guarantee you could make money doing this…I have. Yes it will be boring, yes it will suck, and yes it's probably not something you are going to make $100k a month from, but it is something you can do to make decent, steady money with very little cost.

Ok are we out of excuses on all fronts now?

Now what to do when you decide to focus on one traffic source.

Say you decide to focus on POF. You would work on learning POF traffic inside and out. Figure out what offers work, what types of landing pages work, what type of targeting works, what countries work, etc, etc. This isn't something that is going to take you years or anything; you can learn a ton in a short period of time by really focusing like this. Where a lot of people will fail is when they aren't making money on a traffic source after a while, they will just jump to the next thing. This is exactly what you don't want to do. This happened to me when I started doing PPC way back in olden times. I just honestly couldn't get it working well at first. What kept me going was that I knew people were making money doing it, and I knew if I moved onto something else I would just be back at square one again. So, I pushed through and eventually ‘got it'.

Once you start to feel some stability in one traffic source (or technique as in the data feed sites) you can move on. What does ‘stability’ mean? I would say being able to know what works and how to consistently make money from a traffic source. It certainly doesn’t mean every campaign will be a winner. It does mean that you know enough of what to do that it becomes more a matter of just testing enough campaigns rather than wondering what to do or if something is ever going to work.

At this point you will have a good understanding of running offers on a particular traffic source. You will also know a lot about split testing, tracking, and selecting offers. All of this knowledge will make the next traffic source you decide to work with easier to master. Many of the techniques and tips you learn will just need minor tweaks to make profitable campaigns on other traffic sources.