My Plan For New Affiliates

Most people who come into this business START with affiliate marketing.

Here's something I want you to understand:

The purpose of promoting my products as a beginning affiliate is to learn some basic skills and make some money.

The people who make the big payouts are those who have lists. The BEST way to develop a list is to have your OWN products and OWN affiliate program. I'll tell you that straight up.

I highly recommend that as soon as you can, you develop your own product to sell. Then, you can use affiliate products as ADDITIONAL sales to your existing customers. Frankly, I recommend you do that sooner rather than later.

Having said that, I realize as a beginner you probably won't follow that recommendation. The advantage of promoting my products as an affiliate is it gives you an opportunity to gain experience with some basic skills like setting up a blog, writing articles, learning a little web design, figuring out the basics of hosting accounts, creating forums, learning how to use an html editor, and so forth.

There are two schools of thought in marketing:

1. Do NOT create and sell your own products. Promote affiliate products because you won't have to worry about customer service, you don't have to pay affiliates and so on.

That's not the school I come from. But I agree there are some people who make large incomes doing so. For the most part, I'm not sure they "reveal their secrets" until those secrets are no longer working well.

2. Create and sell your own products.

This is the school I come from and endorse. I really believe in being a product creator. What does THAT have to do with YOU as an affiliate of mine?

a. It's your ultimate objective or goal — You can promote affiliate products in the meantime as you're going through the learning curve of acquiring skills. And, you can make a little money in the process. The only thing that concerns me about this path is I see some people get STUCK on this step. You know, they don't make much money in six months, so they get discouraged and drop out.

They never get around to the good part — creating and selling your own products and services. If you follow this path, it needs to be a stepping stone, NOT a stopping point. If you go in with the expectation you're going to make a killing promoting affiliate products and you're going to drop out if it doesn't work for you, I think you're making a big mistake.

I hear a lot of affiliates say, "I just need to make some money. I just need to see this "work" to believe in it. Well, that's all fine and dandy. But you need to keep your objectives in mind. As an affiliate, you're trying to build your skills base. That's your objective.

The money comes when you create and sell your OWN products.

The guys at Nitro Marketing (Kevin and Matt) used to be my top affiliates. Now look at them! They have their own highly successful products, business and coaching programs. Ewen Chia used to be my top affiliate. Now look at him! He has his own highly successful line of products.

b. You can create and sell low dollar products to start with.

I've seen a number of people having success promoting 7 dollar products, low-priced reports and so forth. That way, you build a list of your own.

Then, you can promote carefully chosen affiliate products to those buyers.

This is a path I recommend to beginners. Start out with simple products you create and sell. Things that don't take months to make or create. Get some experience under your belt and slowly build your skills.

Marlon Sanders

Marlon Sanders is author of "The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy" and many
other Internet marketing products and software programs. His blog is at:
http://www.marlonsblog.com