Why Affiliate Marketing is the Easiest Route to An Internet Marketing Lifestyle

It is the dream of many online marketers to be able to live the Internet marketing lifestyle, but few actually manage to achieve it. Although there are many Internet marketing strategies that can lead to the wealth and freedom that is so desired, affiliate marketing is probably the easiest and fastest way to reach the ultimate goal.

In order to make the Internet marketing lifestyle a reality, first you have to understand what it really means. Many marketers claim to live the Internet marketing lifestyle, so what is our definition of this idyllic state?

For myself, the explanation is straightforward: my Internet marketing lifestyle is being able to live life how I want to, beholden to nobody, and confident that my earnings from online marketing will cover it all.

It is not about the number of hours you work so much as the enjoyment you get from all the hours in your life.

In my case it means eating out a lot, going to the movies a lot and taking days off whenever I want to. But my needs are simple and I love staying at home more than anything. And although I could follow the 4-hour ‘work’ week, I don’t really think of what I do as being work anyway! Doing stuff on my computer is my hobby and most of the time is just a lot of fun.

Probably a more general view of the Internet lifestyle is of someone who jets from exotic place to place, works only when absolutely necessary – and from the beach at that – and makes more money from their efforts than they can ever spend.

Of all the people I know who are wildly successful online and enjoy the freedom to live their lives as they choose, only two fit that jet-set image in any way!

The rest of us are content to be able to live as we please without the stresses and strains of hard-working jobs, unreasonable bosses and fixed (and often tight) incomes.

Strangely enough, when I come to think about it, almost all the people I know who are successful enough online to enjoy their own versions of the Internet lifestyle, no matter how they define it, make their money as affiliate marketers. Everything they do is based, in some way, on selling other people’s goods for a commission.

Experts will tell you that you have to create your own products to be really successful, but I’m not so sure. It can indeed be very profitable to create and sell your own work – after all, you get 100% of the sales price and not however much commission the vendor offers you – but it can be very hard work. The planning, research and writing can take months – with no guarantee of success at the end. And you will be very unlikely to make the killing that is promised unless you can attract a good number of top affiliates to get behind your product. That’s a lot easier said than done!

Making your own products to sell is an excellent strategy for an Internet marketer, but in my opinion it is by far not the easiest road to success.

Many people who have come to rely on creating new products on a regular basis have found that the economic downturn has made their business more precarious than they ever thought it could be.

Affiliate marketing, by its nature is much more flexible and can react faster and better to market changes.

For example, it is largely set-and-forget. You build your affiliate site, do all the things you need to do to attract traffic and search engine love, then pat it on the head and leave it to send you money. Then you go on to build another affiliate site, and another.

Building multiple streams of income like this is the affiliate marketer’s big secret and the one that protects us from many of the swings in the world economy and in individual markets. An affiliate marketer who owns twenty sites doesn’t worry too much if five of them slow down because he knows that a different five are just as likely to speed up. And in any case, building new sites is so easy that any newly emerging trend can be capitalized on almost instantly.

One massive advantage that affiliate marketers have over most other online marketers is that there is no customer support to worry about. Product creators often spend hours a day dealing with customers questions and complaints, but when your business is based on affiliate marketing you never have to get involved with that kind of hard work. As affiliates are really just introducers, their responsibility ends when they have earned their commission.

For that reason, affiliates are far less tied to a desk or an email account. They can disappear off, enjoying their version of the Internet lifestyle, for weeks at a time and nobody will notice.

And, as an offshoot of that, affiliate marketing lets you remain largely anonymous if youwish.

It is often stated that affiliate marketing is the same as offline commission-only selling, but there is a really big difference. Commission-only salespeople have to sell things to people. That’s an important point of difference. The have to be expert persuaders who exist only to make a sale. That selling skill is vital to offline commission chasers who have to be totally comfortable dealing face to face with the public. Conversely, in truth, affiliate marketing isn’t about selling at all! The most successful among us are more like trusted friends who make people aware of possibilities and solutions to problems they may want to investigate further. In effect, a good affiliate is an interest raiser. Once the interest of the prospect has been raised the affiliate passes them on to the vendor’s site where the selling is done.

I suppose ‘introducers’ would be a good description.

It is the job of the vendor’s salespage to do the selling job, not the affiliate. Affiliate marketers’ jobs end when they have passed the prospect on.

The Internet lifestyle is very appealing and when you achieve it, very rewarding. The freedom to live your life on your own terms is wonderful and should be the number one aim of anyone who hopes to make a living online. Affiliate marketing is just one way of making money online, but in my opinion it is the easiest and fastest way of making your dreams come true that I’ve ever come across.

To experience it for yourself demands learning the best strategies from someone who has achieved your dreams already.

Fancy taking an exotic vacation every month? My friend who does just that has created a superb step-by-step course that shows you how you can achieve your own Internet lifestyle in record time with super effective affiliate marketing. Read my Unstoppable Affiliate Review now to get started today.