Making Money While Others Do the Work

Over the weekend I made close to $1000 more than my normal level of earnings without doing anything different at all.

In fact I didn’t intend to make the money and for 24 hours or so I didn’t even know anything abnormal was happening.

How can this be so? Let me explain….

12 or so months ago I discovered an e-book that related to one of the niches that I blog in (I’m not going to name it as I don’t have the author’s permission to talk about their strategy). The e-book was a quality product and was quite relevant to my blog’s topic and so after buying it myself and reading it I began to promote it on my blog. I used a variety of strategies including a review of the book, linking to it prominently from my blog and by working with the author of the e-book to promote it with some articles that they wrote for me.

The results of this were that over time I referred significant traffic to the sales page of this e-book.

Some of those who I referred purchased the e-book (and earned me a commission each time) while others (the majority) just signed up for free taster products and free email newsletters that the author provided. The key was that the author of the e-book captured (with permission through an opt-in program) the email details of many of my referrals.

In the early days I didn’t earn a lot from this program (probably around $25 per week) but it was a nice little bonus.

Over the last 12 months the author of the e-book has produced a number of other e-products ranging from free tasters through to more expensive membership programs. He’s really grown in reputation in the niche and instead of branching out into numerous different topics he’s going deep into the one he started with – producing an array of products that all relate to one another.

The great thing for me as one of his affiliates is that each person I’ve referred to him over the last 12 months earns me an income on any purchase that they make not only the first time they purchase something but ANYtime they purchase something for as long as he continues to produce products.

Last Friday the author released a new product to his email list. The product paid a commission of around $30 per sale to the person who referred the customer (me). Over the weekend 33 people made the purchase (and more have signed up since). I’ve not had to do any work at all since sending this traffic to the sales page of the e-book – the author has done all the work since this time by building his reputation as a quality producer of content.

Heres hoping he’ll continue releasing more products because I’ll continue to refer traffic for as long as he does.

Take Home Lessons:

• Find quality affiliate products that have high relevancy to your blog’s topic
• Seek to build a relationship with the developer of the product (they will often offer you resources to help you promote it)
• Be patient with these types of affiliate programs (in the early days I was a little disillusioned with this affiliate program because most of the traffic I sent didn’t make a purchase but just signed up for the free stuff. While there is little short term gain in this the long term impact can be quite lucrative if the program is developing quality new products). Please note that not all affiliate programs are like this – most have a limit to how long after the referral is made that you earn a commission. Finding affiliate programs with long or indefinate time limits and you can make significant money over time.
• Going deep into a niche (like this author has done) is a very powerful thing – particularly if you’re going a route of developing e-products for sale.

One last thought:

While I’m doing pretty well out of this affiliate program the actual owner of it must be making some serious cash. For every dollar I make he makes one from the same sale. Keep in mind that I’m just one of his many affiliates and so over time (and as he collects more and more members of his online community at many different levels) he grows the potential earnings of each new product in his range.

The model that this person is using is one that I’m seeing more and more bloggers getting into both as affiliates but also as producers of e-products.

I suspect that in the year ahead we’ll see this area grow further as bloggers work out that their expertise in their niches can not only be monetized via advertising and affiliate programs but by directly selling their expertise to readers.