Title: Building An Income With Affiliate Programs Word Count: 1474 Summary: Affiliate Program Options (“Building An Income With Affiliate Programs”) Type in the words “Affiliate Programs” into any search engine and your results will display thousands upon thousands of pages that offer work at home affiliate programs. How on earth is anyone supposed to understand what to do with that? Of course just like anything else it is possible to narrow down your searches for affiliate programs so that you only have about three thousand pages of results to... Keywords: Article Body: Affiliate Program Options (“Building An Income With Affiliate Programs”) Type in the words “Affiliate Programs” into any search engine and your results will display thousands upon thousands of pages that offer work at home affiliate programs. How on earth is anyone supposed to understand what to do with that? Of course just like anything else it is possible to narrow down your searches for affiliate programs so that you only have about three thousand pages of results to meander through. Some people go with the basic principle that if they are on top then it must be a good company. This is not entirely true. It may be a good company. It may be a great company or even the best company. They may very well also be a terrible company or an affiliate scam. Anyone with enough money to pay for the top slot will get the top slot. There is no integrity test to determine who is entitled to the top spots. They are purchased. Affiliate marketing has experienced a tremendous market boom in the last few years, and affiliate marketing is making very wealthy individuals all over the world from the benefits of their programs. Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative for those who find the right program, understand what’s involved, and have the wherewithal to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick plan. Get rich quick plans seldom work. I would say never, but occasionally someone with the absolute perfect concept hits the market as the absolute perfect time and they do become overnight financial tycoons. However, relying on a get rich quick plan almost always gets people further into the poorhouse with nearly nothing to show for their efforts. Fortunately, affiliate programs are not get rich quick plans. A get rich quick plan requires a lot of luck. In fact, a get rich quick plan is mostly luck. Affiliate marketing requires knowledge, the application of that knowledge, and of course, a persistent and dedicated effort. While get rich quick plans may seem like more fun, they don’t work, and affiliate marketing does. (“Building An Income With Affiliate Programs”) Nearly every form of business website offers an affiliate program. If they are selling something, they like to sell more without paying for advertising costs, so they lease out their name and their products and they call you an affiliate. The word affiliate is different from associate, and the difference it makes in business is significant. An associate is someone who you do business with, and while they may enhance your paycheck in some fashion, your paycheck and their business are not necessarily interconnected. An affiliate is someone who does part of your business for you, and therefore your paycheck is directly affected by their efforts. Affiliate programs are basically packages that allow you to become a “subcontractor” of marketing and advertising for that business and they in turn will pay you a commission for your efforts. The Affiliate Business Plan (“Building An Income With Affiliate Programs”) (“Building An Income With Affiliate Programs”) Whether you already understand the basic concepts of internet marketing or you are just now learning them, joining an affiliate program requires an affiliate business plan. An effective affiliate business plan consists of numerous aspects, some which can only be determined by you and the business you have chosen. Some aspects of an effective affiliate business plan are somewhat universal. A chosen method or methods of advertising is essential, and it is typically best to know what has worked for others and why. An effective affiliate business plan includes room for learning, typically through a mentor or an online service provided through your affiliate program of choice. Many affiliate programs will lay out an affiliate business plan for you. Only you can determine if this is an affiliate business plan that works for you or not. An appropriate affiliate business plan needs to be practical. Donating ¾ of your monthly income to advertising in hopes that you will have tons of traffic to your website and you will quadruple your investment is not very practical. Appropriating a percentage of your weekly or bi-weekly income to dedicate it to your affiliate business plan is more practical. Remember this is not a get rich plan, it is a business plan. (“Building An Income With Affiliate Programs”) An affiliate business plan requires constant education. Building online businesses is not something that everyone can do with just the knowledge they were born with, most people need a little guidance along the way. Most affiliate programs include mentors, but often it is necessary to go in search of your own education, as mentors are people just like you who are trying to build an affiliate business. This is good, because you are all motivated, but often their learning curve becomes your learning curve. It is possible to become smarter than your mentor. One of the most comprehensive affiliate marketing websites on the internet today is theaffiliatepit. This is the place to land if you are looking to outperform your mentor, and his mentor, and of course their mentor as well. The best laid affiliate marketing plan needs to be subsidized heavily with self education. Self education can mean something as simple as reading the well researched articles that appear on affiliatepit or finding what separates one affiliate business from another. Regardless of which area of internet affiliate marketing you need to educate yourself about, stop by affiliatepit for the information that can set you far ahead of the pack. The final main ingredients to a successful affiliate business plan are integrity, patience, endurance, creativity, and longevity. Since we have already established that we are not dealing with a get rich quick plan, but we are building an online income from an affiliate business plan, success is not going to strike overnight. A little patience and persistence can change your life faster than you think. In fact, a little patience and persistence can change your life in a matter of months, if you are consistent. People in general are not very patient creatures. It is not uncommon to develop a solid affiliate business plan and set it into motion and go two or three weeks and begin to doubt your eventual success. Because it can take a few weeks to really get a good affiliate business plan rolling, in that time it can easy to become distracted with three other businesses and decide that really this one over here looks much better anyway. If you never pick something and dedicate yourself to making it successful, you will never be successful. That is why we develop affiliate business plans that are practical. If we make our affiliate business plan something we can follow, we are less likely to get frustrated or distracted and move on to the next big plan. If you give up on the first one so easily, what prevents you from giving up on all of them so easily? You have to leave behind the “get rich quick plan” mentality and focus on the small steps that will add up to your success. The “get rich quick plan” mentality keeps a person flitting about from one great plan to another, but never investing themselves in any one given plan for more than a week or two in hopes of overnight riches. You want long term income, not a quick burst of cash that you can blow through a little over a month of frivolous spending. Long term and solid effort that follows a long term and solid affiliate business plan creates the income and the freedom that you are so desperately in search of. These things simply do not happen by themselves with no dedicated effort or without true commitment. Otherwise, everyone in the world would have a successful affiliate marketing business and we could shut down welfare programs and state assistance and college loan programs. They take effort, and dedication, and the number on killer of well thought out affiliate business plans is the ability to become distracted. Affiliate Market Research (“Building An Income With Affiliate Programs”) Remember that affiliate businesses are really the borrowing of someone else’s name and product, and often even their affiliate business plan. Most of these companies have done quite a bit of affiliate market research on their own in an effort to discern the hottest programs and the best products. This shouldn’t deter you from doing your own affiliate market research. This of course can be easier said than done, as the search engine positions can be purchased. However, affiliate market research consists of more than just typing in a few words in a search engine. Look deeper into the companies and the products available, as well as their payment plans and schedules.