New Page 1

Cyber Skill #20
Earning money as an affiliate

Introduction
Earning e-money (passive revenue) IS a cyber skill. Knowing how to earn money on the web is as important as knowing how to back up your computer. And, if you don't think this lesson applies to you, please read the Top 10 List at the end of this lesson.

Please let me give you a quickie primer.
Please note: This Certified Cyber lesson is about how to become an affiliate for others. In another lesson, I'll show you how to set up your own affiliate program so that others can become affiliates of whatever YOU have created and are selling.

Point 1
There are tens of thousands of opportunities to be an affiliate.
People and companies who have written ebooks, or offer trainings or memberships, or have created e-systems, will pay you to market their offerings. Amazon.com was the first large company to popularize this.   If someone visits your website or follows a link at the bottom of your email or at your website to the Amazon.com site (and you've made your self an affiliate beforehand), Amazon will pay you 5-15% of whatever that person buys when they are there (that one time).

Point 2
Being an Amazon affiliate is a difficult way to make much e-money.
This, because the payouts are so small. But, there ARE many other vendors paying anything from 20 cents for a click-through to $1000 per registrant for a local training. You get this as a commission and the only thing you have to do is to sign up with this company as an affiliate and add a special URL to your website or email signature that contains your affiliate code. Then, when someone clicks through from your link and buys something at the sponsor's site, you get paid.

Most affiliate programs are set up to pay you if the visitor buys within 90 days or a year after they first visit the site from yours. In other words, the visitor doesn't have to buy the first time they visit. The vendor's system inserts a "cookie" that remembers the visitor the next time they come by. Cookies can be set to 'expire' after a set period of time. Some affiliate programs use cookies that never expire so if a person buys something 5 years from now, you still get paid (in theory, anyway).

Point 3
There are central websites with tons of affiliate opportunities
I recommend CommissionJunction.com. They have thousands of listings. And it's fairly easy to get paid. Simply go there and join (free) and start looking at the listings of products and services that you would like to include at your website, in your email signature and/or in your ezine.

Point 4
Example of An Affiliate Program: The CoachVille Affiliate Program
(CoachVille is the coach training company that sponsors Certified Cyber). Full details on this affiliate program are at http://www.coachville.com/affiliates/default.html.

CoachVille pays the affiliate $39.50 per person who joins CoachVille via an affiliate For the past quarter, affiliates have generated 48% of our new memberships.
* Please note, as of January 1, 2002, the CoachVille affiliate program includes more than 10 items, with affiliate credit averaging $20 per referral.

Most affiliate programs provide you with:

1. A URL containing your special affiliate code number to insert at your website or in your ezine/email.   (A URL is a web address.)
Your affiliate URL would look something like this:
http://www.thomasleonard.com/coachville/default.lasso?id=123456
Your unique affiliate code would be something like 123456

2. Some banner ads (to attract attention)
Like these...

You would insert one of these ads in your website/email and link these ads to your URL in #1 above so that anyone clicking on the ad is taken to the vendor's website and you get credit if they buy something.

3. Additional selling tools
These would include sales letters, powerful phrases, and text ads like this:

>>>> LEARN HOW TO BE A COACH, ONLINE <<<<
Online membership only $79 -- lifetime!
Coaching skills, RealAudio, Checklists, Forms, Guides,
Certification, Community, Referral Service and more.
Free info and samples
http://www.thomasleonard.com/coachville/default.lasso?id=123456
(insert your six digit affiliate number to replace the six x's)
>>>> LEARN HOW TO BE A COACH, ONLINE <<<<

Point 5
Example of an Ezine with Affiliate Ads imbedded
http://www.coachingscoop.com
We usually run 10-15 mini banner ads per issue. Most are paid advertisers but 25% are for products or services for which we are affiliates (and that we believe in!). Some products examples include:

Again, WHY does this affiliate thing matter? Why is this included as a CyberSkill?
It matters a lot. Let me explain why.

Top 10 Things To Understand About Affiliate Programs and Passive e-Revenue.

1. Over the next 5 years, coaches (and others) will be developing networks ranging in size from 1,000 to 1,000,000 and more. Coaches will be developing these networks as they grow their coaching practices, start/expand their ezines, offer e-coaching automatically to thousands, create Courses-by-email like this Certified Cyber Course and more.

2. The larger your network (mostly of subscribers, emailing lists, web visitors and e-clients), the more it makes perfect sense to offer products/services (that you believe in) that you are compensated for as an affiliate.

3. When you are in the affiliate biz, you are in the solution business. The more solutions you can provide to people, the larger your network will grow, thus increasing your revenue.

4. The affiliate thing is not MLM or network marketing. You aren't selling others to downline for you. Rather, you are a single-level sales rep, just like a field rep for a candy company. It's just that you're doing it online vs driving around the tri-state area 3 days a week.

5. Becoming an affiliate is a simple, and effective, first step into the world of e-commerce. No programming, no creating products. Just offering some already-existing items.

6. When you have your first 'sale,' you'll be hooked. It's THAT fun. I know that when folks have become CoachVille affiliates and had their first referral sale, they get it about emarketing and ecommerce. It all makes sense.

7. And when you've had your first experience, you'll now have a compelling reason to learn how about emarketing, ecommerce and creating eproducts and services yourself. It's a big world out there, and people WANT to buy products and services whether you've created them yourself or you're rep'ing for others.

8. Remember that this is all automated. It just takes a couple of minutes to add a banner ad to your website, email signature or ezine. From that point on, the revenue stream is totally automated 24/7/365.

9. By experimenting with the affiliate thing, you may get inspired to come up with lots of new products/services that you can offer outside of what you're doing now as a coach, or whatever. The #1 value of this affiliate program idea for me has been that I've been busy generating tons of eservices and eproducts that folks can buy in perpetuity, and it's 100% passive revenue.

10. Finally, you may or may not make a lot of money at first by being an affiliate for others, but it will get you started into this world of e-commerce and that's where the future of money is located.

Enjoy!

Was something not clear? Was there a typo or other error?
While we aren't able to provide 1-1 tech support,  please email confusion-questions-corrections-improvements to reply@coachbrian.com.  Again, we won't reply to your email but it will be read and this course will be improved as a direct result of your assistance.