Passive Income Streams -Grow your Side Hustle

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.

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