Wouldn’t it be great if you could create a passive income autopilot system which generates money while you sleep? Around 15 years ago I dreamt of this very idea while working multiple jobs, slogging my guts out trying to fill the endless void that was my overdraft and debt. No matter how hard I worked, the money was never enough. So I looked for a strategy which would work for me, generating autopilot income streams while I slept.
I looked for a passive income autopilot strategy which I could work at from home, using only my laptop and an internet connection.
Passive Income Autopilot
After various misadventures and after attempting various online earning strategies, I eventually found a strategy which offered to give me a passive income. It’s called affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you can sell other people’s products over the internet. What’s passive about that you may ask? The beauty of selling someone else’s product is that you don’t have to physically post anything or even deal with customers.
Affiliates are basically third party referrer’s who recommend various products and services over the internet. When a product gets sold through their efforts, they earn a percentage of the sale.
This process can be automated through websites, advertising, email marketing and other systems and strategies which work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The benefit of using online strategies is that products can be sold around the globe on complete autopilot.
Passive Income Autopilot – What’s The Catch?
The catch is that most affiliate marketers will give up too soon. Initially, affiliate marketing is quite a difficult thing to do successfully. The people who have made a living from it have usually spent some time learning the skills. Beginner affiliates will throw up a website, or run an advert in the hope of selling something. Their website will either fail to attract any one or it will attract the wrong kind of visitors.
I did this too and made loads of mistakes over the years. Here’s an article I wrote on the 23 affiliate mistakes newbie affiliates should avoid. But stick with affiliate marketing and you can be free – both financially and geographically. Think about that benefit for a moment. No more job, no more bosses, never commute again and never have to answer to anyone in an employee/manager relationship. Complete freedom to live anywhere and to earn an uncapped income from your laptop.
This is what I would think about when I was struggling with my affiliate business. I just thought about my “why”! This is how to defeat the hard times, of which you will definitely encounter if you decide to follow this path.
My Best Tips
What I first started learning about affiliate marketing I made a tonne of mistakes. I promoted the wrong kinds of products, used the wrong kinds of marketing and gave up too easily. I got frustrated a lot and gave up several times. But my job juggling was never going to work out and I simply had to make it work. So I just never gave up!
You could save a heap of time by following these tips.
Firstly I was trying to do everything by myself. Back then there was no resource to go to like there is now. I bought loads of courses and spent a heap of time following strategies which didn’t work for me. Eventually I found an online business mentorship program and this turned things around for me. You can check it out here.
There’s a few things I learned from this community:
- To use recurring income affiliate programs – don’t use the products which only pay you once.
- Use high ticket products which pay out much larger commissions than average products
- Choose a product range and earn from sales closed by a built in sales team – making sales on your behalf.
- If you can, use multi-tier affiliate products – these reward you for sales my by your referrals.
- Depending on your product range and return on investment, use paid marketing to build a business mode quickly
Types Of Affiliate Products
To make a passive income from affiliate marketing in the quickest time possible, it’s worth taking a look at the types of products to promote. Many affiliates, myself included, start out with single sale products which pay you only once. But if you choose recurring commission affiliate products, you can start generating a passive income very quickly.
Amazon is typically the kind of place many affiliates start out. There’s a huge range of products to promote and whatever your business, you can promote a related Amazon product from your website to earn commissions. However, the problem with this is that Amazon sells physical products which pay out very little in the way of commissions. Typically they will pay you between 1 and 11% commission on a sale. Plus you only get paid once.
With digital products you can earn up to 50%+ on a sale. Plus with memberships and software products you can earn repeat commissions. A single sale of a membership product can pay out again and again, month in month out. Over time and with multiple sales this can quickly grow into a substantial and uncapped income which requires no work – a passive income.
The Fastest Way To Grow A Passive Income Online
There’s a few ways to use the internet and other people’s products to earn a passive income online. You can create content like this article, or upload videos to YouTube. But this is a long term strategy – creating content and linking content to products. There’s a lot of noise on the internet and millions of people all scrambling for attention.
The fastest way to turn the internet into a passive income source is by choosing a good product range which offers multiple earning strategies and use paid marketing to build it and then scale it up to a global audience. Ideally use subscription products which also offer a high ticket product range, a built in sales team and multi-tier sales. This gives you a huge earning potential and lets you more easily afford to use paid marketing which can be scaled up very quickly.
Of course this is much more costly than using free affiliate products and a high ticket sales funnel will set you back initially depending on the value of products you choose for your “digital store”.
Cheaper Strategies To Grow A Passive Income Online
Alternatively you can grow an online business much more cheaply through content marketing. This article is an example of content marketing. By creating multiple pieces of content such as blog posts, videos and other content, you can build an audience over time to promote your products to.
Most successful affiliate marketers build a list of subscribers to which they promote their products to and build a relationship with. Over time as this list grows into the tens of thousands, it gets easier to make money and gain subscription payments from promoting products to your list and giving value.
But the best thing you can do to gear yourself for success as an affiliate marketer is to align yourself with other successful entrepreneurs who have achieved it already. Model the success of others and join an online community of online business owners. You can access a free video series and learn more here.
