1. you don't have to develop your own products because you are marketing for someone else. You use their advertising media, and let them do the shipping, handling and guarantees.

2. You don't have to spend large amounts on manufacturing and storing inventory.

3. You don't have to process, bill or collect on any accounts.

4. The customer is always yours

5. Get paid regularly and from one source.

6. You never have to answer customer e-mails or complainants.

7. They are free to join.

8. You can work part-time with little money.

Sound to good to be true? Well, it is and it isn't. Your job, as an affiliate marketer, is to find prospect's and convert them into customers for someone else. Sounds easy huh? Here is where the tire meets the road. The Internet is all but saturated with affiliate marketers. Everyone wants to get paid for doing next to nothing. It's the old, ?setting on the beach, easy money?, syndrome. But, if it were so easy, everyone would be setting on the beach, basking in the sun while they gazed at their Mercedes setting in the parking lot. The fact is it isn't so easy.

Everything is magnified.

On the Internet everything is magnified. Instead of having ten businesses fighting for the attention of one million potential customers, you have five thousand merchants fighting for the attention of billions of prospective customers. It's the narrowing down of the playing field that gets sticky. You have to make a choice. How many genuine prospects do I want to target and how much competition will I have to endure? If you have the probability of say, fifty thousand customers worldwide, and there are fifty others in the same business, then, what are the odds for success?

The fifty thousand prospects is set but the fifty competitors is not. Your battle is not reaching the fifty thousand because they are there, looking for your product. The big challenge is in out-maneuvering the fifty others in the same business as yours. Here's where it boils down to the same-old same-old. Yep, the marketer with the most money, gets the most customers. Some would say, ?oh that's not true, the Internet is an equal opportunity medium?. BULL, money talks and BS walks! It's the name of the game. Let's look at some facts.

1. The search engines rule ? if you can pay for the right services, the search engines pay attention. They don't give a hoot about you or your family, they are in it for the money.

2. You have to know who's buttons to push. Again, if you can't get Google, Yahoo or MSN's attention, you don't get recognized or rated. If you don't get rated, prospects can't find you and you don't make sales. You might as well have a taco shop on the moon.

3.You're going to have to pay someone. It's a fact. You pay for the website and autoresponder at the very least. Then there is the task of making the search engines happy so you can reach the prospect. The want to be paid in some form or another. It's all about leverage, the more money you spend, the more leverage you apply. The more leverage you apply, the higher you go up in rankings. Isn't the free enterprise system great. Yeah, you're free to spend yourself to wealth.

I know a guy who won the lottery twice. Each time he spent ten thousand dollars and hired people to buy tickets. Sure, he could have lost, but his odds were reduced considerably. Isn't it the same with marketing on the Internet? The more you spend, the better the odds of success. There is nothing new or different about the Internet. It's the law of spend and return.

I worked for a trucking company for fourteen years. We went from gas driven trucks hauling eleven tons to diesel trucks hauling fifteen tons. We had to spend money to make money, I know it doesn't make sense, but the savings on fuel and overhead coupled with four extra tons each load, over road the cost. Plus to stay completive, we had to upgrade the equipment. The Internet is the same, you have to do the math, and expedite measures to stay competitive.

Prospects will always be prospects.

Your game is to out-maneuver the completion. Remember, the prospect will always be the prospect. The competitor on the other hand will cut your throat in a heart beat. How do you go about that? Well it goes back to the search engines. Never mind the prospect, never mind the competition, concentrate, on the search engines. You have to get your name in so many places the search engines can't overlook you when a prospect goes searching. The search engine is working on behalf of the prospect not the marketer. It wants to answer the prospect's call as best as possible. with the most relevant information as possible, sort through billions of bits of information, in the least amount of time as possible.

The relationship is not between the marketer and the search engine. It is between the searcher and the search engine. So, make the search engine happy and it will put you on top of the heap for the prospect to find you. Let's face it, the search engines rule. They decide who will succeed and who will fail. If you don't kiss they won't tell. Learn the search engines, your product is taken care of and your prospect is looking for you and what the heck, if you have to do a little kissing to make the search engine happy, do it.

I'm sorry to say, only a small percentage of affiliates make $500 or less per month. Why?

The biggest percentage of affiliates never even see one single check. Why?

Well I can say it is obvious, they either don't know what they are doing, or their doing nothing it at all.

True there are a small number of affiliate marketers ("super-affiliates") who are making some very serious incomes like, $150,000 or more per year, and there is a minority, about 2-3% who earn lower but respectable livings .

The sad truth is ... by far the vast majority fail to earn hardy anything. Be careful, do your homework, and work, work, work then, maybe, just maybe you will also, be a super affiliate.

Happy Trails