What Is The Internet Marketing Lifestyle And How Affiliate Marketing Helps You Live It

Written by Martin Avis Tuesday, 26 July 2011 05:08

There are many ways to be a successful online marketer and to enjoy what is often called the Internet marketing lifestyle, but in this article we will look at the reasons why affiliate marketing is considered to be the fastest and easiest method of them all.

There are many ways to be a successful online marketer and to enjoy what is often called the Internet marketing lifestyle, but in this article we will look at the reasons why affiliate marketing is considered to be the fastest and easiest method of them all.

In order to make the Internet marketing lifestyle a reality, first you have to understand what it really means. Many marketers claim to live the Internet marketing lifestyle, so what is our definition of this idyllic state?

My definition is simple: it is the ability to live your life on your own terms, secure in the knowledge that your income, from Internet marketing, will more than fund it.

It isn't, for me, about how many or how few hours I work, but how much I enjoy all the hours in my days.

In my case it means eating out a lot, going to the movies a lot and taking days off whenever I want to. But my needs are simple and I love staying at home more than anything. And although I could follow the 4-hour 'work' week, I don't really think of what I do as being work anyway! Doing stuff on my computer is my hobby and most of the time is just a lot of fun.

The normal image of the Internet marketing lifestyle involves fast cars, wild parties and exotic vacations in the world's trendiest resorts - and usually involves someone making money while relaxing in a hammock on a paradise beach somewhere.

Of all the people I know who are wildly successful online and enjoy the freedom to live their lives as they choose, only two fit that jet-set image in any way!

But I do know a lot who could drop everything and live life on their own terms whenever they want to.

The funny thing is that of all the people I know who either do, or could, live the Internet marketing lifestyle, nine out of ten of them are affiliate marketers. They enjoy the rewards from selling other people's wares for a share of the price.

It is often said that to make real money online you have to produce your own products and get affiliates to sell them for you, but I beg to differ on that. Producing products can be very profitable, but it can also be exceedingly hard work. It can take months of serious effort to plan, research and create the product in the first place, can often cost quite a lot in development costs too, especially if it is software based. And as for attracting that army of affiliates, that in itself can be time-consuming and frustrating because even assuming that you have the contacts (or know someone who does) they are busy people who may not be able to fit in to your carefully devised launch schedule.

Making your own products to sell is an excellent strategy for an Internet marketer, but in my opinion it is by far not the easiest road to success.

And, as many big-name marketers have seen this year, you can put in all that work, expense and effort and still have a failure on your hands.

On the other hand, affiliate marketing suffers few of the problems of product creators and enjoys a lot of added benefits.

Affiliate marketing is, for example, a business where you usually put in the work up front and then keep on profiting for months or even years afterwards. Your affiliate websites are like your children - you put in the work building them up while they are young, but then you send them off into the world to fare for themselves - and hopefully they will continue to send money home! You, meanwhile go off and build another affiliate site to set free ... and then another.

Affiliate marketers build 'Multiple Streams of Income' that protect them from many of the ups and downs of the market. If you have ten sites making you money and three of them slow down, the chances are good that some of your other sites will do a little better and balance things out. Or, it is easy enough to build a few more sites to catch whatever wave is current today.

A really big advantage that affiliate marketing has over product creators is that affiliates don't have to get involved with customer support. Keeping customers happy can be a full-time job for product vendors but affiliates avoid all that hassle. Affiliates are effectively agents between the customer and the vendor and once the sale is made can take their commission and hand over all responsibility.

As a result, affiliates are much more free to enjoy the Internet lifestyle because they are not tied to an email inbox or a helpdesk. We can happily go off on snap vacations or find other out of the office ways to enjoy our individual versions of the Internet lifestyle and hardly anyone will notice.

And, as an offshoot of that, affiliate marketing lets you remain largely anonymous if youwish.

I suppose that the closest offline analogue to an affiliate marketer is a commission-only salesman, but the analogy is very poor. For one thing, the offline salesman needs to rely on the force of his or her personality to sell. Salesmanship is the be all and end all. The ability to deal with - and persuade - people is vital. Affiliate marketers are not really sales people at all. They are more like go-betweens who act as a conduit between the people who, by the very fact that they are searching for something online, have a problem they need solving and the sales page that offers them the solution.

I suppose 'introducers' would be a good description.

It is the salespage - which is the responsibility of the vendor, not the affiliate - that does the work of closing the sale. The affiliate's job is merely to make sure the potential buyer sees that sales page.

The Internet lifestyle is very appealing and when you achieve it, very rewarding. The freedom to live your life on your own terms is wonderful and should be the number one aim of anyone who hopes to make a living online. Affiliate marketing is just one way of making money online, but in my opinion it is the easiest and fastest way of making your dreams come true that I've ever come across.

To experience it for yourself demands learning the best strategies from someone who has achieved your dreams already.