Entrepreneur.com - Affiliate marketing: The absolute laziest way to make money

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nachoninja

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5 Perfect 'Spare-Time' Online Businesses - Entrepreneur.com

3. Affiliate marketing: This may possibly be the absolute laziest way to make money because it doesn't require you to have a product, make a sale or ever have any interaction with customers.
This is essentially a "referral" business, or as one of my book contributors likes to call it, "passionate recommendations." Basically, you can get paid a referral commission just for sending people to sites (or vendors) that are set up to pay affiliate fees once a sale is made. The vendor does all the selling, fulfills the purchase and handles any customer service issues--and you just collect your check….not bad!
Some people choose affiliates based on who or what is paying the highest commissions, and that certainly is a viable option. Most people opt to choose products or goods they are passionate about so that the process is much more fun and engaging.
Insurance and credit card companies pay high commissions for referrals that convert to customers ($40 to $150 and up), but the competition is fierce. It may pay well, but is this something you'll enjoy doing for the long haul?
Alternatively, you could take a look at your hobbies and other things you enjoy and see which affiliate programs are a good match. As always, do your research to verify the viability of your market. A good place to look for ideas (and downloadable products just waiting for an affiliate) is ClickBank.com.

Discuss
 


With the exception of "This may possibly be the absolute laziest way to make money" ... what does he say that's not true?

I think the part that makes it discreditable is this line:

"The vendor does all the selling, fulfills the purchase and handles any customer service issues--and you just collect your check..."

Too bad that's not all there is to running a business (let alone to AM). AM provides another piece called "marketing." Sales-focused people and organizations always downplay the role of marketing, but then you show them some search engine love and they become like crack addicts.

Yep, online marketing is like snapping your fingers and collecting checks. It's not like anyone ever had to invest money to drive online sales, they just happen.

(BTW, sarcastic tone not directed at you, but at the piece)
 
That really pisses me off. How is spending 12 hours a day researching, brainstorming, building, and maintaining... lazy?? I'm sure he thinks the 9-5 worker that works in a job s/he hates, putting in 70% (if the company is lucky) and running home at 5 oclock is the real over achiever here. ( I know it's Entrepreneur, but still it's that kind of traditional sheepel thinking)

Idiot.
 
What he calls lazy, I call smart. Lets do the math:

---------------------------------------------------

Spend Less Time
+
Have Less Overhead
+
Make More Money
===============
Smart Business

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The guy might be a douch - never heard of him before - but he isn't stupid. It appears he's made some bucks online and the format of the article makes it apparent. It's regurgitated info. In a list. But he makes it sound exciting by saying things like, "the laziest way to make money online."

It's linkbait... and obviously people are biting.
 
If affiliate marketing is the laziest way to make money, and is so easy then why don't the advertisers do it themselves?

..ohhhhhhhhhhhh
 
Well, if any of you are involved in the Insurance and credit card niches, take a month off because the sheeple are jumping on the bandwagon after reading this and will drive the PPC costs through the roof...until they are broke, tired, depressed and drunk - and you're back in the game.
 
Oh great,

The next flood of stupid ass people saying "I read this article that it is easy to make all the money I'll ever need on the internet just by telling people about a product" is going to arrive because of this article.

Time to go back to the underground for awhile.
 
Oh great,

The next flood of stupid ass people saying "I read this article that it is easy to make all the money I'll ever need on the internet just by telling people about a product" is going to arrive because of this article.

Time to go back to the underground for awhile.

Get wickedfire banned from the SERPS so that nobody can find it. Problem solved.
 
haha or instead of loosing the forums rankings they could always close down open registration for the next couple months, that would make a bit more sense.

Yeah, could work.

Or a bit less extreme plan would be to get banned from MSN Live Search and Yahoo search, eliminating a percentage of the dumbasses who actually still use those search engines.
 
That really pisses me off. How is spending 12 hours a day researching, brainstorming, building, and maintaining... lazy?? I'm sure he thinks the 9-5 worker that works in a job s/he hates, putting in 70% (if the company is lucky) and running home at 5 oclock is the real over achiever here. ( I know it's Entrepreneur, but still it's that kind of traditional sheepel thinking)

Idiot.

lol. You can't blame a guy who makes money and also enjoys his life. You don't have to spend these fucking hours in front of the screen. And why the fuck is every affiliate outside the wickedfire hated here? Have you ever read Yanik's blog ? Hes doing less work and has better results and has time to do whatever he wants to do. Did you know that he has been on the Necker Island and met Richard Branson?
 
lol. You can't blame a guy who makes money and also enjoys his life. You don't have to spend these fucking hours in front of the screen. And why the fuck is every affiliate outside the wickedfire hated here? Have you ever read Yanik's blog ? Hes doing less work and has better results and has time to do whatever he wants to do. Did you know that he has been on the Necker Island and met Richard Branson?

hahahahahahahahaha

Come on now noob if you've been around WickedFire for any amount of time you'll quickly realize we don't hate affiliates outside of WickedFire, we just hate everyone outside of WickedFire including the ocasional member like yourself.

Its a mutual thing we do like me telling you to go fuck yourself, research that term on wickedfire I bet you'll get about 10,000 posts where someone in the thread told the guy to go fuck himself.

Now I'm in a kind mood after saying Fuck You so I'll even let you in on why most of us appear to hate everyone, especially newcomers to WickedFire, its because if you can't handle a little name calling there is no way in fucking hell you'll ever last in business, its that simple.

Oh and of course some people actual do just hate other non-wickedfire affiliate, but not me I just hate everyone equally.
 
With the exception of "This may possibly be the absolute laziest way to make money" ... what does he say that's not true?

Actually I believe this is partly true.

To start making money from affiliate programs, we need to do research etc and then use different ways to send traffic + drive conversions.

Once we found for example the best ad etc (from split testing) for ppc for which value of vistor > cost per click we could pretty much automate it from there. Same with using SEO traffic. It takes time but once we got that sorted, affiliate program income can be automated.
 
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