You might be wondering by now why in the world I described my blog as “Internet Network Marketing 101 – Internet Network Marketing and Affiliate Marketing Resource for Beginners – With A Twist”! In this post, I will try my best to explain it. By now, I hope I have convinced you, my fellow Network Marketers, who are still doing the traditional Network Marketing about the power of the Internet to grow your Network Marketing business. You can read my past articles on this topic: Why Should You Want to Market Your Network Marketing Business using the Internet and I’m in the Network Marketing Biz! What’s Wrong with That? What’s with the Renegade Network Marketing?.
Why the “Resource for Beginners” in my blog description? Because this blog is geared towards those of you my fellow Network Marketers, who still do the traditional Network Marketing prospecting and marketing and now are thinking about utilizing the Internet to do the same, but not quite sure how and where to start. Why the “Affiliate Marketing” in my blog description? Because affiliate marketing is the type of marketing that would enable you, Network Marketers, to make money while you’re marketing your business at the same time.
An affiliate marketer is someone who promotes a product owned by other companies online (may not be Network Marketing company) and gets a commission for selling that product. So, affiliate marketing is marketing and selling other people’s products. The commission varies among different marketers. The range is usually between 20%-75%, depending on the products and the affiliate marketing companies. Most of the time, people who start out with Internet Marketing usually start out with affiliate marketing.
What does affiliate marketing have anything to do with the Internet Network Marketing? A lot! To illustrate this, let’s say I’m a Network Marketer who’s promoting a health and wellness products, perhaps an acai berry based juice that’s rich of antioxidant. I have a blog or website about this juice and provide all sorts of valuable information about it: its health benefits, what fruits it’s made out of, how it differs from similar juice in the market, where to get it etc. My target market are people who are health conscious, want to live a healthy life, may have been suffering from chronic diseases such as regular joint pains etc. Basically, they care deeply about becoming and staying healthy. So, in addition to just promoting my acai berry juice (my company product), I can promote other health related products as well! The more related the affiliate marketing products to my network marketing products is the better. And trust me…there are tons of health related products out there! If my website visitors buy any of these products that I’m promoting from my website, I will get some commissions. As a starting point, there are couple websites that have numerous merchants who are eager to find affiliates to sell their products: Clickbank.com and CJ.com. In addition to this, there are tons of merchant online who are also eager to have affiliates to sell their products. All you need to do is search on Google using the terms consisting of whatever Network Marketing products you’re promoting + the word “affiliate”. Let’s go back to my example. Since I’m promoting the acai berry juice, I’ll be looking for merchants online using the term “acai berry affiliate“. Below are the results:
As you can see, there are 5-6 different websites that also sell acai berry based products. By being their affiliates, you can start selling their products on your website.
You can see an example of a website that has the Network Marketing product and affiliate products. To be specific, this website is targeting acai berry products. As a disclaimer, the website below is not my website 
I clicked on some links in this website, and here’s the page that it took me to:
Now, it looks like this website is selling Monavie juice. Monavie is an acai berry based juice product. The owner of the acai berry website in the 1st figure, is obviously also selling other acai berry based products through affiliate marketing (through the affiliate banners) and Google Adwords (another marketing monetization method, in addition to the affiliate marketing).
Now, you might be wondering about the difference between Network Marketing and Affiliate Marketing since you get commissions from both business models if people buy their products from your website. One of the big differences is the compensation plan. Network marketing compensation plan is multitiered. Affiliate marketing is not. Though, there are some affiliate marketing merchants who offer 2 to 3 levels compensation plans.
Both business models are very important and you must understand the way it works in order to make the most money out of it.
Let’s talk about multi tiered paid structure first.
Network Marketing is a method of receiving compensation through different tiers of overriding commissions. The advantage of using multi tier compensation is that you get to leverage on thousands and thousands of downlines. Your direct downlines will be taking good care of the rest of the network if you play your cards right. But of course, it isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Building a structure like this takes a lot of time.
On the other hand, affiliate marketing and joint venture promotions are very straight forward and you can get paid a huge commission – about 25% to 80% if you were to give sales to someone else. A ‘super affiliate’ is able to generate thousands of commissions by himself. You can build a list of thousands of subscribers and with a single email blast; you can get the word out to all these people and make thousands of dollars in a couple of days.
Let’s look at the disadvantages of each structure now.
The problem with the multi level structure is that if all the downlines are not generating sales, you will be the one doing all the work – you might even need to do extra work and give ‘spillover’ for your downlines. On the other side of the coin, you do not get to leverage on your own team of affiliates if you are in affiliate marketing.
So the best way to get the best of both worlds is to combine the two models and create the ultimate Internet Network Marketing synergy!
First, you can promote your online Network Marketing program. People still get the benefits of making money from a multi tiered structure. But when you (as an upline) start training your affiliates to build a mailing list, everyone will be your Joint Venture or JV partner. When one releases a product, everyone else will come running and they will promote your product as an affiliate! And because everybody are in the same network, the loyalty is stronger as everyone is more willing to help one another because they are in the same company.
Second, you can also sell products from other merchants online as their affiliate, using your Network Marketing website/blog, creating multi streams of income. This way, you won’t be entirely dependent upon your Network Marketing company as your income provider. After all, the very reason you want to be in the business is so that you can be independent right? Independent of the 8-5 rut and the office politics, independent of being scared of getting laid off, independent of the uncertainty of whether your Network Marketing business will last or not (this is especially true with the start-up Network Marketing companies). Ann Sieg, a Network Marketing veteran, illustrates the importance of being a truly independent Network Marketing business owner in her infamous ebook, the Renegade Network Marketer, with these personal stories:
Years ago I had a friend who was building an organization in what was one of the largest and most promising MLMs in the industry at the time. He was doing quite well and he planned his whole future around this company. He sold his real estate business so he could focus all his time on it, moved into a bigger house and bought a new SUV. A couple years later I found out that company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I was shocked because this wasn’t one of those hundreds of little start ups we’re all warned about, this was a company that had been around for well over 10 years and who everyone thought was here to stay.
In one of my previous companies, a good friend and upline mentor of mine finally achieved his lifelong dream of being able to move his family down to Fiji with him to become a full time missionary, thanks to the residual income he’d built up… only to have his entire organization yanked from him shortly after moving down there because he was friends with someone the owner of the company didn’t like.
We’ll delve more into affiliate marketing in my later posts. In the meantime, what do you think? I’d love to hear from you!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Tons of useful info here – will grab your feed!