Copyright 2006 Andrew Saari
So, you’ve had some success with Internet marketing, and you’re looking to take it to the next level. Or, are you new to it and still searching for the ultimate product? A residual income program may be just what you’re looking for.
What is residual income? Let’s start with a brick and mortar example: Say you’re a car salesman. You sell a car. You get a commission, right? Nice, but to get another commission, you have to sell another car. Sounds like a job to me, doesn’t it? Now, that car you sold needs to have insurance, right? The insurance agent sells the same customer insurance. The agent gets a commission check, too. But, the difference is every time another insurance payment is due, the insurance agent gets another commission check. Nice, huh? Make one sale, get commissions forever! This is what is known as residual income. Now, the insurance agent can concentrate on making another sale, which will give him even more and more residual income, year after year. The car salesman has to sell another car to get another check. Which sounds better to you? Before you rush out and become an insurance agent, let’s see how to apply this principle to online marketing.
Now, let’s say you have a product that you’re selling. It sells for $50. Your marketing efforts cost you $25. That leaves $25 for you. Nice. Now, Imagine you found a product that has a residual income of $50 a month. It costs you the same $25 to market and make one sale. After 1 year, the total income is $600, of which $575 is pure profit from one sale! Keep making sales, and the profits would keep compounding. Making just one sale a day for 3 months, your monthly income could be over $3750! After a year, your montly income could become quite staggering-even if you quit advertising.
Ok, now the big question. How do I find a residual income program for me? There are a few options here. Create your own. Some ideas include: Start a newsletter. Getting paid subscribers to a newsletter you write on your area of expertise is one. Web hosting is an option. Starting a web hosting business where you collect a monthly fee would be another excellent idea.
Maybe you don’t want to go through the hassles of creating your own newsletter week after week, or whatever your time frame would be. Perhaps you don’t have the ability to write the sales letter to sell it yourself. Or, you don’t have the technical knowledge required for web hosting. Then, an affiliate program may be what you are looking for. This means you get a commission off of someone else’s existing product. You may even use their marketing materials. All you do is promote the product and send visitors to their site using your ID.Then, you get a piece of the profit. Sounds even better, huh? There are hundreds of these opportunities to be found online. Take a little time, and find the one that’s right for you.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
Your product should provide a value to your customers. People buy because they feel they’re going to recieve something of value. You get what you want by helping people get what they want. Offer an inferior product, and customers will not buy, or they’ll cancel their monthly subscription and take your profit with them.
Use the product yourself. If you’re trying to sell your customers a product they don’t believe in, they will sense it, and not buy from you. If you don’t believe in your product, who will?
Some affiliate programs pay on more than one level. Much like MLM, you can get paid on other people’s sales, too. Getting any ideas yet? Do a search on residual income affiliate programs. Find one that appeals to you.
Now, you’ve found your product. How do you promote it? Use the same techniques that have proven effective for other online products. We’ll go through the basics:
PPC-or pay per click. Probably the fastest way to get a new product in front of the customers who are searching for it. All the major search engines have their version. Visit their advertising center and check out your optiions. You may need to play around with keywords and bids, as well as advertising copy, to find which converts best.
ezines-There are thousands of ezine publications online. Practically every niche has dozens (or more). Find one that accepts advertising, or maybe even start your own! Find one that your product would appeal to.
Your own opt-in mail list. If you’ve been successfully building your business and have built up an opt-in list, send your offer to your list. If they’ve already bought from you, they likely will again, if what you’re offering is similar.
Other people’s opt-in mailing lists. Some lists accept advertisements for a fee or a cut of the commission. Warning: Never send spam or bulk email to anyone who has not opted in to a list. This can get you in trouble with the law, as well as alienate the customers you’re trying to reach.
Write an article such as this one. Make it informative, not a sales letter. You’re allowed to put a tag line at the end with a link to your url. There are dozens of services to submit them to, and web publishers who are constantly looking for new content use them. They publish them on their websites, and you get links to your site, which send you free traffic. Everybody wins and it’s very effective. (And cheap!) If you don’t have the knowledge, or the time to write an article yourself, hire a ghostwriter to do it for you.
By now you should have gotten some great ideas on what you would like to promote, and how to do it. All that’s left is to go out and do it! Find the right one, and you may just become the next Internet millionaire.
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