Success in Direct Sales Affiliate Programs

By Bram Smith

Making big cash on the Internet is all about conversions!

If you're personally great selling, that's wonderful, but it's even better when you have a system that's great at selling.

Otherwise, the amount of money you can make is limited by the amount of time and energy you have to put into your marketing.

People marketing home business programs have a tendency to jump into programs that they see everybody else flocking to. This is not usually a great idea, unless you have a marketing advantage over everybody else.

There's one little thing that so many people forget about when a hot new program launches. That one thing is competition.

If you can do better than most of the other affiliates promoting the same program, then you might do very well since a lot of prospects might be searching for information on the business, since it's "hot".

However, many of these programs use highly automated marketing systems that take over a lot of the sales process. So the competition is not necessarily for who's the best seller, it's a competition over who is the best at branding themselves and driving good quality traffic.

Sometimes finding a program that converts well, but does not have so much competition can be highly profitable. It takes a little experience in the industry to really be able to see something and know that it's going to convert well.

The first step I take is to opt-in as a prospect myself, and really analyze the entire sales process from the point of my opt-in to the point where a system or a person attempts to close the sale.

Now, I know that I'm a little better than most at avoiding the temptation of jumping to a new program without thinking it over very carefully, so if I'm fairly convinced that a program is going to do well at converting prospects into money then it's something I'll take an even closer look at.

I usually talk to some people who are in the program. I get their honest opinions about the product itself, and I'll normally try to get in contact with the Principals of the company also. If they're impossible to reach, that might be a bad sign. I want to know that I'll be working with people that I can get in contact with if I need to.

One of the key reasons people decide to market products on the Internet is that they can use leverage to increase the value of their time and energy, and whatever money they have to invest into building a business.

So look at how a program does at leveraging those things. If it leverages your time by saving you time, or allows you to do more with less time -- or if it leverages your energy by incorporating automation to handle some of the sales processes, it might be worth taking a closer look at.

Many programs these days, especially direct sales programs, are getting better and better at closing sales without your involvement after you've initially driven traffic to your web site. These are the kind of programs I look for, because I know that they can be mainly passive income, and the majority of my efforts can be focused on driving traffic.

The traffic can be driven either by spending time on doing it, for example -- me writing this article and putting it out there for YOU to find -- or, it can be driven with money if you have advertising dollars to invest and have gained enough knowledge about Internet advertising for it to be cost-effective for you.

Obviously, if you have a good ROI on your paid advertising, that's the best choice, because your amount of time available has very little impact on how many leads you can drive.

I hope this article has given you some good ideas, and you might look at some of these programs a little differently before you decide on one. Good luck!

------------------------ Bram Smith is a home business mentor who has helped MANY reach a six-figure per year income level, and a leader of one of the fastest growing and highest earning teams in home biz. http://www.InnerCircleMentors.com Visit Bram's web site for excellent Internet marketing, advertising and sales mentoring: http://www.BramSmith.com You may reproduce this article in your own newsletter or on your web site provided you leave this resource box intact. ------------------------