Can I REALLY make money with affiliate programs and MLMs on the Internet?

By Leon Brickey
Posted Thursday, August 12, 2004

To respond with a short answer, YES. ABSOLUTELY!

Here is a brief explanation of how to get started making money in the first 30 days.

The first thing to do is document a simple starting plan on paper. KISS - "Keep it simple sweetheart!" or "Keep it simple stupid!" whichever the case may be. :-)

Yes it's important to study and get some advanced ideas from the so-called experts, but while you are doing this you can start earning money in the meantime. In the excitement of starting a new affiliate program or MLM it's easy to get caught up in the desire to learn everything there is to know about the new program
before you get started, but that's not what these programs pay you to do.

I was once in a very good MLM program several years ago with a good friend named Bob for the sake of this article. Bob was a real student of MLM. He had the presentation down to an "award winning performance." He could motivate you to the point you wanted to run out of the room and find someone to show the program to. He could quote all the great MLM leaders. He was GREAT to work with! But he never made very much money at all. Why? Because he never showed his skills to anyone except the people at the meetings, which were almost always already recruited or in the process of being recruited by someone else.

There is something to be learned from Bob. You MUST get started selling and building YOUR business. The sooner the better.

There is something to be said for I.O.F. (Ignorance on fire.) It's not important that you know everything about everything before you get started recruiting and selling. Excitement and motivation go a long way. Folks can see genuine excitement even in an ad or sales letter and quite often this is more effective
than detailed knowledge!

Spend 25% of your time studying and 75% of your time selling and recruiting.

Now here are some specific points to help you get off to a good start:

- Get your own domain and your own website. This is a must. No matter which affiliate program or MLM you are involved in you need your own domain and website. Forget the freebie websites, which are available by the thousands. There aren't many things the top marketers agree on but most DO agree on this.

- Once you have a website give people a reason to visit it and a reason to come back to revisit it. It's downright foolish to just send folks to someone else's affiliate or MLM website. Get them to YOUR website first! On your website promote your affiliate/MLM programs, your ezine, and most importantly keep lots of
constantly updated free content. Good things to place on your website are articles, e-books, software downloads, advertising resources, etc. Use your imagination and try to be original. Don't just offer the some old "rehashed" freebies everyone else has on their websites.

- Once you get them to your website you want to do what?.CAPTURE THEIR NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS! If you aren't publishing your own newsletter/ezine you have just shot yourself in the foot before
the race ever starts. This is another area that almost every one of the top marketers agree on. 80-85% or more of my sales and recruits come from my ezine. Sure, they use my website as a resource, but they buy and sign up through the ezine more often than not.

So how do you get ezine subscribers Leon? Submitting my own articles to hundreds of publishers, submitting my ezine to ezine directories, and through my website traffic. That's the whole truth. No secrets. Just hard work.

- When starting out only start with ONE program. Whether that one program offers one, two, or three products doesn't matter. Start with one program. Remember to spend 75% of your time promoting
and selling, and 25% of your time studying that program and fine tuning your efforts. As you promote and study you will see first hand what works and what doesn't. Never be afraid to contact your sponsor and ask what they are doing to promote the business. If they don't seem willing to help you don't join anything else
under them. A successful sponsor who is willing to help you get a good start is a BIG asset.

Once you get a good grasp of how the program works and feel like you can handle another program, take on something else. But never join a program you don't have the time or means to promote effectively.

- Don't confuse your visitors!

Limit the choices you offer your website visitors and ezine subscribers.

Never offer more than one web hosting company from the same web page or ezine. Never offer more than one marketing course or book from the same web page or ezine. Never offer more than one auto-submit program from the same web page or ezine. Never offer two brands of the same dietary supplement from the same web page or ezine. Get the idea? You will only confuse your visitors and probably not make a sale. Sell with authority!

- Unfortunately credibility is a really rare online. Oh sure there are VERY credible marketers online and VERY credible companies online, but they are often obscured by the get-rich-quick, fly-by-night scams. Many of these dishonest businesses have learned to exploit the anonymity the Internet offers. Some people hide behind a false name and offer no contact information. Some of these people have no problem taking your money and running with it. They are often nearly impossible to track down. Or at least the cost of tracking them down is more than the amount lost would afford.

Folks there are very few FREE lunches, and the only place "success" comes before "work" is in the dictionary.

Before joining a program I advise folks to go to (http://www.worldwidescam.com/) and make sure it's not found there. If you find your program there...you need a new program. I suppose they aren't 100% fool proof, but they catch a lot of the scams.

My best advice is to stay away from Internet malls in general, these are catching a lot of flack almost everywhere.

I believe the ideas above are good advice for anyone involved in,or starting in, Internet marketing. It's not everything you need to know by any means. But if you implement these ideas you can focus your efforts, decrease the learning curve a little bit, and avoid many pitfalls that I and other successful marketers have
fell into in our past experiences.

Good luck! And remember, NO program works till you do!

Leon Brickey
webmaster@appalachianmarketing.com

About the Author
****************
Leon Brickey is webmaster of Appalachian Online Marketing.
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