Affiliate marketing is an online business model in which anyone can sell other people’s products and services for a commission. It’s also one of the best models where people are making money on autopilot.

For a while though, I struggled with affiliate marketing. I wrote articles and became a blogger. But no amount of work seemed to make me any sales, or income.

Making Money On Autopilot

My first online sale came after writing a review of some software I had bought to help me build websites. XSite pro it was called and I made $40 on a $100 sale. Not bad for a bit of writing! I was convinced that this was the start of many more sales, but alas it wasn’t happening!

Despite writing many more articles, I wasn’t making the sales. I jumped from one online course to another, desperate to start earning a serious income online.

After purchasing a course by a guy called Peter Lexis, I learned how to run paid advertising and send online visitors to a landing page. From there, they entered their details and I followed up with an email marketing campaign, which was automated. Here’s an example of a landing page. It’s just a webpage with only 2 options for a visitor: sign up or leave.

Making Money On Autopilot

After running an advertising campaign on Google Adwords for several days, I started making sales of Peter’s online course. Again it was a $100 course and I earned 40% commission. Because it was an online course, I could sell it to anyone who was online, globally!

After a run of sales I got a little excited. All I had to do now was increase my marketing budget and I would be making hundreds of sales every day. Since I was already in profit, it made total sense. Unfortunately Google didn’t agree and they shut down my Adwords account due to some non compliance issue. I was devastated! Back then, and this was around 2010, if you got shut down you couldn’t get your account back.

Despite this setback, I was determined to make an income online. I knew people were already making money on autopilot – Peter Lexis was only one of them!

I bought yet another course and this time it was using a different strategy – keyword research and organic marketing. Since my paid marketing account had been shut down, it seemed like a logical move.

Making Money On Autopilot – Organically

Making money on autopilot using the organic search results on Google isn’t a walk in the park! It takes time and a lot of effort. I joined a company called The Keyword Academy which isn’t running anymore. They taught me about keyword research to find content titles which could rank on the search engines to get free traffic. The monetisation strategy was through using Google Adsense.

I could simply place advertising on my websites with Adsense and they would pay me for each click my visitors made on the adverts. However, the key was to find content ideas which would not only be easy to rank for, but which also paid enough to make it worth your while. Very competitive niches tended to pay more for their advertising, while uncompetitive ones paid very little! Perhaps this is why the keyword academy no longer exists.

I spend several months following their advice but made next to nothing from my Adsense account.

Google Sniper – Money On Autopilot

Another course I purchased was called Google Sniper. A guy called George Brown had developed Google Sniper and his strategy was again organic niche websites. This was a similar concept to the keyword academy and involved building niche websites in uncompetitive niches.

I did get a number of websites ranking using this strategy and still use it today. This website is based on what I learned from George’s course. You can ready about how this site was built in the article “create free website and make money“.

I liked the idea of creating a website which would float to the top of the search engines and make money on autopilot! Although this technique is pretty difficult for competitive niches such as the “make money” niche or affiliate marketing, it works really well for locally based businesses.

A simple strategy is to put your main keywords in your domain name, including your local town. I’ve used this strategy for my own Kung Fu school and for clients who wanted more business for free from Google.

Making Money On Autopilot – Recurring Commissions

After a lot of time wastage on many free marketing strategies I found a company called SFM Mentors. They taught a different business model and a variety of marketing strategies. One of the main things I learned was to use products which offered affiliate recurring commissions. With recurring commissions, you get paid over and over for sales you have made previously. In addition to offering a business model which has recurring commissions, the SFM also offered a business model containing:

1. High ticket digital products – digital products typically offer the best commission rates for affiliates (see what is high ticket affiliate marketing)
2. A built in sales team – closing sales automatically
3. Multi-tier commissions – available at the top tier level
4. A product range – products you can offer to existing customers and still earn from

See also The SFM Digital Business system.

The Six Figure Sales Funnel

The six figure sales funnel contains a product range as described above. Affiliate marketers can use this kind of product inventory to make sales on autopilot. With high ticket items, multi-tier sales and recurring commissions within a product range, the affiliate has multiple earning strategies within a digital business system.

This can also be marketed globally which means it’s very scalable. In fact some affiliates spend tens of thousands of dollars every single month driving traffic into a sales system because they know they will earn more than they spend.

Marketing A Digital Funnel

Unless you have money to burn though, you should start out small when it comes to learning how to sell digital products online. Many a marketer has come a cropper when they spend money to make money like this. Ideally though, you would test and measure your sales funnel with small amount which you can easily afford.

Over time, and when you see a consistent profit from your marketing budget, you can slowly scale up. Marketers who spend $20k+ a month didn’t start out like that. They started out spending $10 a day and learned as they went!

This sales system is automated, using email marketing, paid marketing strategies and online sales platforms which run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Because of all this, the affiliate marketer can focus only on their marketing. When you put $10 in and get $20 out, you know you can safely scale up. If you put in $10 and only get $5 out, or nothing, you know you need to work at your marketing somewhere!

If you’re serious about making money on autopilot, join an online training and mentorship program which will show you the ropes! You can access a free video series below to learn more.

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