Are you being paid peanuts?


Passive Income Streams -Grow your Side Hustle
There are literally hundreds of ways to earn a passive income. Two of the internet’s “Big Ideas” are Affiliate Marketing and Drop shipping.
Making a passive income online has quite a few challenges. There are some gems, which can be very successful, but they are few and far between. If you think your Boss is paying you peanuts, you might be in for a shock working for yourself.
For most people time management is the biggest hurdle.
Affiliate Marketing is often touted as the best way to earn an income online. I once had a saying, ” The more quickly you say it, the easier it sounds.” Dropshipping is also touted as a good way to make an income on line. I will deal with that in another post.
I have said it Before you are a sales rep. Let’s have a quick look at the differences between a real world sales rep and an online sales rep. Let us assume you are selling materials, including soap making ingredients for a chemical company.
The company has the product and supplies you with some leads to make sales. You might in your travels, pick up other accounts from hobby and craft suppliers, Cleaning supply companies etc.
Essentially you are selling bulk product at a wholesale price, a single order could be worth a few thousand dollars. You would understand your market, where it is, who it is, and why they buy. This is your Niche.
You might be an employee or a selling agent who has a warehouse to stock product. Each day you spend time-serving customers or looking for new customers. You know who they are and where they are likely to hang out.
Affiliate marketing online only requires you to serve your niche. No inventory, no setting prices, no customer interaction this is all done by the company you are promoting.
But where are the customers? 4 billion people on line, where do you start? 🙁
The Costs of Online Affiliate Marketing.


Affiliate Marketing generally has low start up costs. You will need a web page and have to pay for hosting. Some knowledge of coding is useful, and fairly good marketing and writing skills.
So it is a low risk undertaking. Further, expense costs will come from whatever marketing you decide to do promoting your product.
The hardest part is not so much finding your Niche, but narrowing it down to a particular segment of that niche where you are able to generate some interest from Google searches and then possibly sales.
This work is so very different to going to a store or a depot every day and collecting a pay cheque at the end of the week.
You are essentially on your own, and to make Affiliate marketing work you need to be very serious in your endevours, also patient, as none of this is going to happen overnight.
The failure rate for most internet marketers whether it be Drop shipping or Affiliate marketing or any other type of internet marketing is very high. Figures of 98% is one statistic often quoted.
Often it is not the dollar cost that is the cause of failure, but the cost of time devoted to being consistent and developing your website to a stage where you are able to generate enough interest to earn an income.
If you are careful with your marketing costs they should not be a problem. It might be better said, “Don’t let your marketing costs become a problem”.
The Gurus


Somehow it doesn’t take long, but once you start looking for information on Affiliate Marketing. Google manages to show you pages and pages of Gurus who know everything there is to know about… basically everything I guess.
Many of the offers start with a free giveaway, is that free e-book or cheat sheet worth the effort of downloading?. Often it doesn’t hurt to look if it appears to be relevant to you.
But,if you do take the bait, for a free E-Book or Webinar etc., they have your email address and it is up to you if you decide to buy what ever offers you receive from them at a later date.
The biggest problem with these, is determine what has substance and what does not. I read many of them and most are selling the sizzle not the sausage.
This is also sometimes termed the “Shiny Object Syndrome”, and you need to beware of the costs involved. Some have the potential to lead you the dungeon of financial darkness if you are not careful.
I stick to This One and anything else I have is mainly reading on other blogs or on sites like Medium, Quora, Pocket. I find it a good diversion and often I glean good ideas from it.
The Scams


Like the song “know when to hold them, Know when to fold them” Affiliate marketing is full of traps for the unwary. Scams or business models? Take your pick, the internet is full of business’s trying to drain your wallet and have you working for nothing.
In the section bar at the top of this page you will see ” Physical Creatives”. If you click on it you will see A Link to Hot Soap Making
If you go through that post you will see links to “Get the Complete Guide“. Click on one and see what comes up. You will notice that almost immediately after the page loads a pop up will appear asking for your email address.
Forget about making any sales from affiliate pages that do that.
(A). The product creator will get all the email address’s to market her product. You will not get recognition for any sale resulting from the emails she sends out.
(B). This is a waste of your time. Unless the person looking closes the email pop up, and buys from the sign up form on the page. You make nothing. Believe it or not, most people will give their email address in the hope they will get a better deal. ( remember this ).
Also, as much as possible on any offers you want to promote, make sure you get a cut of any up sells that the product may have. Not all offers are bad, but you need to do your due diligence on all of them.
Another. On the right at the top of this page you should be able to see an Oxygen Spray Pack. If you click on it you will be taken to an online shop. The product you just clicked on will be at the top of the page. Beside it and underneath it, is a whole series of packs of different sizes and prices.
What happens if you buy something other than the product shown at the right of this page? For me not much. In fact Nothing. I have a pretty picture taking up space on my sidebar.
It is a good product and I will change it to something else that gives me the complete range, or run an RSS feed. For the moment it can stay as an example of the things you need to watch out for. Keep things like these in the back of your mind. You don’t want a page full of ads that you receive nothing from.
The Good Things.


You have read this far, maybe I never scared you off the idea enough. Maybe you are one of the ones who would be dedicated enough to make a go of this.
People who do well with Affiliate Marketing include Stay at home Moms, Retirees, Disabled people, and those who really want to change the way they earn a living.
Like most things a high level of determination and resilience is required. For those who have a day job this can be challenging.
Although there is a lot of writing involved, being and affiliate is often not a barrier to those who do not write well.
To go through the Pros of Affiliate Marketing.
(A) It is a relativity low risk business model
(B) It does have the potential for high earnings and residual income.
(C) You require skill sets such as the ability to create ads, drive traffic to a landing page and other marketing skills.
(D). It is not necessary to be a product expert.
(E). No customer support to worry about
(F) After some upfront work, it can be an excellent source of passive income.
The Cons
I have mentioned a couple above. Basically if you are careful with what you are promoting and check them out thoroughly you should not have any problems. Allocating time to learn the art, put what you learn into practice and perseverance is often the hardest part for many.
Until next time, when I look at the pros and cons of drop shipping and Why these are an Evergreen Item.
Michael.
copyright © BarefootAffiliate.com Jan. 2019 All Rights Reserved
Thank You Kenechi. it sure will.
how long? Every one is different Renton. The thing is to follow the learning and put the systems into practice. it takes normally 4 years to complete an apprenticeship or degree. And you are still considered a “Newby” How ever this is different. After 4 years you should be well on the way to financial freedom.
Thank you Seun. it takes dedication. Like a good athlete always striving for improvement.
Thank you for telling your story Gno. Stick with your plan I am sure you will make it happen.
And the “Gurus” make it all seem so easy Cathy, Like next week you will be driving a fully paid for Bentley.
The usual time span for the majority of people is around 18 mths to 30 months to earn a basic income from Affiliate Marketing.
Each of us are different, with different responsibilities. I know of some people who have a “casual” blog and just run Adsense, and, they are happy with the small return that provides.
In the normal course of work. It usually takes 4 years to complete an apprenticeship or a university degree. Then when you have those qualifications you are still years away from earning top dollars.
If it took 4 years to be self sufficient from Affiliate marketing, you are way ahead of the game I think.
I have a blog that monetizes from an affiliate program and it took me about a year before I actually earned my first commission. Honestly, I could have given up because let’s face it, blogging is tough writing. Not to mention learning about the slow process of SEO. But whenever I thought of quitting, I talked to myself “Quit and then do what?”. Other monetization techniques are just as fascinating, but I just don’t have the time and resources for those bigger ideas.
I need to make do with what I have while paying the bills and affiliate marketing was the only option that works. So I stayed and guess what, over the past 1 year, my income is steadily (not sky rocketing yet) increasing and I am starting to understand what’s going on, especially with organic traffic. Next month, I am going to try paid traffic and I feel that I am finally take this passive income stream to the next level.
Hopefully in the next couple of days Tarun.
hi Michael,
really good article. very well written and detailed about affiliate marketing.
Thanks for highlighting the scams out there…people do need to be more careful on the interest in the desire to make a good passive income.
I am more interested in drop shipping. Its the first time i’ve heard or read about it. I know you mentioned you will talk about it in another, when can i expect that?
Your post about Passive Income Streams and mostly about Affiliate Marketing is very useful. You wrote about how to choose a good affiliate program if someone wants to choose to earn an online income. I really liked your section about the Gurus. I tried only one Affiliate program before Wealthy Affiliate. It was useless and I didn’t receive anything for my money. Only the server and the WordPress setup worth the price of the WA program, but if you start to use it you will see that the power of this community, the huge amount of information, lessons and courses worth thousands of dollars.
Congrats for your post! This was a good one.
You have said it all. Affiliates marketing requires so much patience and hard work and that’s most people out there lack. Everybody wants to hit the dollars big but that isn’t how it really goes. Your hard work and patience will finally speak for you by the time you start smiling to the bank. Yea hustle must surely pay off!
Thanks for sharing this informative post, Earning a passive income from online marketing such as affiliate marketing and dropshipping is not really an easy task, alot must be invested in an online business such as quality time, patience and determination, I’m hoping to get this passive income this year and I believe I can because I know I will.
This is a great post! I think affiliate marketing isn’t a great way to makes an honest income online. Like you have already said of you put in the work and do some research as you go along you can’t grow to they point where your online business is running 24/7 Andre can earn your or passive income.
I think that goal is definitely worth it and is dfjjtley achievable. Even if you set up your business in your free time and work during the day you can make it work. It may take you longer to get off the ground but once you do it will be worth the effort.
How long should you give your business before you move on to a new niche idea or do you just stick with it until it works?
Thanks for sharing this information!