D.Marze

If you want to make a lot of money with affiliate marketing, then you need to sell more products and more expensive products to your existing customers. That’s because it’s easier to persuade an existing customer to buy something else (as opposed to finding a brand-spanking-new customer and persuading him or her to buy something for the very first time).

Now here’s a ridiculously easy way to make those backend sales:

Promote recurring billing products.

Just as the name suggests, recurring billing (also called “continuity”) are those sales that happen automatically. The customer is charged automatically – typically on a weekly or monthly basis – and the product or service is delivered as long as the customer doesn’t cancel.

It’s easy for the merchant, the customer and the affiliate.

SIDEBAR: You probably have several recurring billing contracts lined up both personally and for business. Common examples include your cell phone contract, your web hosing, your monthly payments for an autoresponder, any monthly membership sites that you’ve joined, etc.

Here’s the beauty of recurring billing products:

All you have to do is find and persuade the customer once… yet you get paid month after month for as long as the customer remains a member.

That’s an easy, passive affiliate income for you!

Here are three ways to find these passive-income opportunities:

1. Go to the ClickBank.com marketplace and look for products that have a value higher than $0 in the “future $” category. Those are your recurring billing products.

1. Search in Google for your niche keywords, a search term like “affiliate program” plus other search terms like “recurring billing,” “membership site,” “passive income” or similar.

1. Seek out known recurring billing opportunities in your niche.

Example: If you’re selling products in the Internet marketing field, then you already know that most mailing list managers, PLR sites, web hosts and similar offer recurring billing. So you can go directly to the main product or service providers in your niche to check for an affiliate program with recurring commissions.

Tip: Read the affiliate TOS (terms of service) and affiliate agreements carefully. While some vendors offer recurring billing to the customers, they may only pay the affiliates a one-time flat fee for the referral. You’re looking for programs that pay month after month for as long as the customer remains a customer. 

Again, it’s all about “numbers”.

Which of these is best…

• Promoting Affiliate Offer A which sells for $24.00 and earns you a 50% commission? Or, all things being equal…
  

• Promoting Affiliate Offer B which sells for $24.00 PER MONTH and earns you a 50% commission PER MONTH for as long as the referred customer remains active?

Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out “B” stands for “Better”!

THE ULTIMATE MIX: And when you find a “sweet” setup that offers both (A one-time offer that backends a recurring offer), that’s a huge neon sign flashing the message “Promote This One!”

EXAMPLES:

YummyPLR.com – PLR site that offers recipes (40% monthly commission).

ReliableWebs.com – Web hosting with free blog installs (20% monthly commission).

It takes about as much effort to find a new customer and persuade them to buy a $10 product as it does to find and persuade a customer to buy a product that’s $100, $500 or even more.

I say “about” because you may find that certain lower-priced products have a higher conversion rate.

Example: Let’s suppose you’ve found various products with 50% commissions. Now consider these figures:

• A $20 product ($10 commission) coverts at 5%. That means that for every 100 people who see the product, five buy… and that puts $50 in your pocket.

• A $100 product ($50 commission) converts at 3%. That means for every 100 targeted visitors who see the product, three buy… and that puts $150 in your pocket.

• A $500 product converts at a scant 1%. For every 100 targeted visitors, one person buys… and you put a fast $250 into your pocket.

See what I mean?

Do you realize the magnitude of this simple change in WHAT you promote?

Example three from above is 500% more profit for you
than example one for the exact same amount of traffic!

That should get you excited!

And it should also get you thinking about WHAT you’re promoting. Is it really your best option?

It may seem exciting to pull in multiple orders per day. But if you look at the “bottom line” figures, you may find that certain products put more money in your pocket with the same number of visitors.

That means you need to look for products with higher commission rates  as well as looking for products with higher ticket prices.

In other words, as a general rule “75% commission” is better than “50% commission” and a product that produces “$250” commission per transaction is better than one that produces “$50” commission per transaction.

And if you can find a high-converting, high-ticket product with a high commission rate, hire an accountant because you’ll soon have more money than you know what to do with! ?

The point is the same: your time investment is constant. The amount of money you make for your effort doesn’t have to be.

Regardless of the sales volume, your activity will remain the same…

• You’ll spend the same amount of time generating traffic.
  

• You’ll spend the same amount of time building lists.
  

• You’ll spend the same amount of time creating presell content.
  

• You’ll spend the same amount of time writing articles, posting blog comments, interacting at forums and all of the “marketing” stuff you do.

You’ll just make more money – on average – promoting affiliate programs that offer higher profit-per-transaction numbers.

Experienced information marketers know that creating the product is only half the process. Learning how to effectively package your content so that it is attractive to buyers is just as important as finding your niche. It doesn’t matter how good your product is if no one wants to buy it. The same pages of information can be packaged in many different ways. Look over the following options and determine which method would be right for your niche and their needs.

• Physical Products
• Ebooks
• Reports
• Membership Sites

-Physical products

Physical products offer you the ability to put something real and tangible in the hands of  your buyers. Physical products are often marketed as “home study courses” which can be set at a higher price point than an eBook or a set of online videos. Although you will have to pay for the production of the book, the videos or the audio CDs, you can more than make up for those costs with your price point. With certain topics, physical products just make more sense.

-eBooks

eBooks can be anywhere from 30 to 200 pages long. They normally offer a more widespread look at a topic than a short report, but they have the potential for covering a lot more topic areas in the niche. The advantage of eBooks is that they can be priced at higher rates than short reports. They are automatically delivered to your customers so they get the instant gratification of having the product immediately. eBooks can be paired with supplemental reports, audios or videos depending on the niche and how many resources you want to offer your customers.

- Reports

Short reports are typically between 5 and 20 pages. They go in depth on a small part of a topic instead of giving a general overview like most large eBooks do. With a short report, you’re normally giving someone an actionable plan that they can use to fix an aspect of their life. “How to Calm a Colicky Baby”, “How to Improve Your Golf Slice” and “How to Lose 5 Lbs this Weekend” are all examples of the narrow focus of short reports. If you have a larger topic, sometimes breaking it down into short reports and offering them separately is a great way to make more money and establish your authority in the niche.

-Membership sites

If you have a lot of information on a niche and feel that you can provide month after month of content, you can create a membership site. The benefit of making a membership site with your content is that you earn money each month from multiple members. Instead of having a one time sale for your content, you can earn from it continuously. Your membership site can take many different forms. You can offer weekly or monthly reports delivered to your members’ inboxes. You can host a forum where members can meet and discuss the niche. You can also offer training through a private blog. The options are endless!

Before you decide on your product delivery system, make sure to research your niche to see what the norm is. Figure out what would be best for your niche and proceed accordingly.

Blogging is a powerful web platform that can be used in a wide variety of ways online. It can help you build a reputation in your niche, build your relationship with your customers and drive traffic to your own product or your affiliate links.

In other words, it can help you make money!

What is it?

Blogs are websites where the freshest content is posted first. Normally, posts are listed in chronological order. There may be some static content in the sidebars or on other pages of the blog, but the homepage is updated when there is a new post. Visitors can post comments on your articles and you have the opportunity to create a real community in your niche.

Blogs are popular because they are very accessible. You don’t have to know much about setting up a website in order to use one. That makes them VERY “beginner friendly”.  Once the initial set  up is complete, they are as easy to use as a word processing program. To top it off, visitors love blogs because they can interact with the content. With a few smart posts and some traffic generation strategy you can quickly have an authority site in your niche.

What are three keys to doing it successfully?

1. Choosing the right blogging platform.

There are several different blogging platforms available to get you started with blogging. Wordpress has a bit of a learning curve but it is by far the best in terms of usability. You can completely customize your Wordpress blog so that it looks totally unique. You can also install several different plugins to make your blog more user friendly. For example, one Wordpress plugin automatically suggests related posts on your blog underneath each post to encourage visitors to explore your website.

2. Creating fresh content Posts.

A successful blog has to be updated at least once a week, at the very minimum. Many successful bloggers add new posts every weekday. You should plan to have new content on your blog at least once every seven days. This can be accomplished easily if you create an editorial calendar. Write down a variety of different topics and plan when you will post them to your blog. With Wordpress you can even write them ahead of time and schedule them to be automatically added to your blog at a certain date and time.

3. Cultivating your blog for profit.

It’s very easy to make money with blogs and you have a few different options to choose from. With your blog, you can make money through contextual advertising with ads that are displayed on your blog. You get paid when someone clicks on the advertising. You can also link to affiliate products or sell your own product from your blog.

Can you give me an example?

You’ve discovered that there is a demand for knowledge on cooking gluten free meals, something you have a lot of experience with. You start a blog about gluten free cooking and post your favorite recipes each week. After several months, you decide to write your own online cookbook and sell it from your blog.

Internet marketing is full of a lot of choices, and your first choice is deciding on which business model you are going to follow. If you don’t make this choice carefully, you’ll find yourself hopping from business model to business model, spending money on programs and “secrets,” and not making any profits at all. Trust me when I say that finding a business model that appeals to you and working with that model will go a long way toward helping you succeed online.

There are a few basic business models to choose from. Each of them have their advantages and disadvantages. By looking over this list and considering your strengths, you should know where you want to focus your business.

- Author.

When you create your own product, you are in complete control of your stream of income. By writing a product, or hiring a ghostwriter to write one, you can set up a website and sell your product over and over again. You can set up an affiliate program so other people are selling the product for you. The only major downside is that you can spend a lot of time and money working on a niche product that may not pan out.

- Affiliate.

Unlike being a product creator, with affiliate marketing you don’t have to spend time and money creating a product. You just need to be good at promoting the product. You’ll earn commissions for sending buyers to the product creator’s website. With the right promotional techniques, you can establish yourself in the niche and make affiliate commissions from several different programs all at once. On the other hand, you are at the whim of the product creator when you use this business model. You never know when a product creator will stop offering the product.

- Administrator.

Starting your own membership site is another option. With affiliate programs and information products, you’ll earn money from a one time sale. When you own a membership site, you’ll have an ongoing stream of income coming from one website. You can provide monthly reports on a niche topic, host a forum or offer coaching for a flat fee each month. You can even use an affiliate program with your membership site so that other people will send new members your way. The downside is that you need to keep providing fresh content each month to keep your members sticking around.

- Auctioner.

eBay is one of the most frequently visited sites on the entire Internet. When you become an eBay seller, you’ll never have to worry about finding traffic for your offering. You can sell a variety of different things on eBay, including information products. Although there have been some recent changes to the way information products are sold on eBay, the amount of traffic and ease of setting up your offering make eBay a strong business model. The downside is that your business relies on a third party site who’s changing rules may negatively effect your business in the future.

As you can see, there are ups and downs to every business model available online. By looking at your own strengths and what you want to get  out of your business, you should be able to find the right model for you.