Lessons for Affiliate Marketing

It’s catch up day in my office. With all the craziness of the past week, I had a very full inbox this morning and several projects on my to do list.

So I decided before I started a new project, I needed to finish a few old ones. Done for now!

That’s great because I want to get started in my new course.

Yes, I did … I signed up for a new challenge. Same mentor, Maria and Art, so I know what the quality of stuff I’m going to be learning.

In early December, they offered us in their 90 day challenge an entire year of mentoring about affiliate marketing. Since that’s the route I’m taking in building my business, I opted to learn from the best.

One step at a time .. one week at a time.

And of course, the timing was such that I got the email about Week 1′s lesson on Dec 15.  I glanced at the email but never even looked at the lesson.

The next lesson came Dec 22. I never even looked at the email. I wasn’t on the computer much last week.

This morning as I plowed through my email inbox, I realized I should be getting lesson 3 any time so I’d better find the time to go back to lesson one.

That’s where I’m off to now. I have some fresh coffee, a clear desk, and some time before Tina’s webinar of social media this evening. I’m going to open Lesson One and find out how much homework Art is giving us.

Maybe I’ve already learned the basics through this challenge. I almost hope so as I really want to be caught up on all the lessons before the next one hits my Inbox.

Lemonade Stands

My mind is in brain over load.

I’ve been studying this whole thing called affiliate marketing.  I understand the concept – you decide to refer people to someones product or program and you get a “referral fee” or commission any time someone buys via your link or referral.

It’s like networking – except online.  I’ve been networking since the ’80s so I really do understand the concept.

It’s the online execution of the concept that I’m struggling with.  I think I recognized this morning that the real issue is that I need to learn how to get traffic to my sites.  That’s really the where it’s at.

Getting into affiliate marketing is simple.  Just apply to get an ID either from an author directly (like we all did in the Cash Now training class)  or go to Clickbank or Commission Junction and get a free account set up there and then choose from the millions of products ready to promote.

So I’ve done that.  I have my ID’s.  I know a bit about the product and it’s well written and so I feel it’s worthy of my recommendation.

Guess that makes me an affiliate marketer!   I’m ready to see things happen in my Paypal account (oh yeah, you need one of those too so you can get paid your cut or commissions!)

I’m waiting….

While I’m sitting here waiting for action, I’m reminded of that lemonade stand from childhood.  The table is up and the sign is up; the lemons are squeezed, well actually in the 70′s we only used frozen concentrate as we couldn’t afford the price of real lemons way up here in Alberta; and the lemonade is ready.

Every child’s first store.  The dreams of profit …   and sometimes it works and then sometimes it doesn’t.

As a child I never considered that putting up a lemonade stand on a road that only saw one or two cars a day (and one would be my dad coming home from work) would not translate into much or any profit.  I do remember drinking a lot of lemonade though.

I’m a little older now and a little more experienced.  I understand that just having up my lemonade stand or affiliate website will not mean profits UNLESS I figure out a way to get some traffic to the site.

Guess I better think about that some more.

First Assignment is Research