This system I’m going to describe is not a business plan for someone wanting to start a business and grow it into something big over a long period of time.  This is intended for someone like a boomer who has some basic income such as a retirement pension or a Social Security check and wants to supplement that income.

There are  some important differences between starting a business offline with all the expenses and formalities that usually entails and making online income  where your start-up expenses wouldn’t amount to more that $50.00.

If you have the curiosity to explore what is selling on the internet, and you examine the systems some successful affiliates are using, you can do very well making an extra income without having ambitions to grow a big business.

The 4 Layers of an Affiliate Marketing Simple System

You don’t need a ton of expensive memberships or fancy tools with a lengthy learning curve to make money online as an affiliate.  All you need are four basic concepts and systems to pull together.

1.) Ample Affiliate Opportunities

Don’t assume there’s an affiliate program for every niche topic out there. You want abundant opportunities to choose from, not a single half-baked product to promote that doesn’t convert well or barely pays you what your time is worth.

If you go to ClickBank or PayDotCom or a CPA network and find only 1 or 2 things to promote, then it might be wise to pick a different niche OR choose a different path – one that has you creating your own information product since competition is minimal. (see recommended resources)

Conduct this research prior to buying a domain or investing time or money.

2.) A Home on the Web

Every good affiliate needs a hot spot to post their content and links. Everyone will tell you to stick with free web 2.0 sites like Squidoo or Hub Pages, but I’m telling you right now – you want your own domain.

Web 2.0 sites are great for back-links and traffic but when you want to set the rules for yourself and ensure that one day you don’t wake up to find your whole site deleted without warning, then owning a domain is a necessity – not a luxury.

Some people will tell you to only buy dot com domains, but there are different opinions from people who own dot info domains that do just fine in the  search engine results according to their posts in forums.

3.) Authority Content

Your goal as an affiliate who prospers is to get prospects  into your system for repeat sales, not one-time commissions.
To hook your audience for the long-haul, you need to learn how to provide a bit of authority and expertise that keeps them tuned in to what you have to say – even if someone else wrote it and you’re simply the middle man.

You get positioned as the expert without having to create a product and possibly without having to write a single word of content or conduct any research on the topic other than basic keyword volume and competition.(see recommended resources)

4.) A Communication System

Your communication with online customers comes in the form of an automated system that leaves you with a primarily hands-off business to run.

Auto-responders are the method of choice for most marketers because you can queue up over a years’ worth of emails to go out on autopilot and do the dirty work for you. (see recommended resources)

Those 4 elements above are all it’s going to take to build a financially secure affiliate empire. Now how you use these four components is where the difference between success and failure lies.

I will be elaborating on each one in further posts … stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. Internet Marketing: Step-by-Step Approach
2. The Build-and-Move-on System of Affiliate Marketing

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Tags: Boomer, information product, internet marketing, success