Affiliate Marketing e-Course

Former Carpenter Builds His Own Money House

GotDot.com profiles Paul Nelson who for 14 years worked as a carpenter, before discovering affiliate marketing. Now Paul, a former C+ student, a high school graduate, earns almost as much as his girlfriend with an Ivy League MBA, who’s tethered to the corporate grind, while Paul on the other hand, has complete freedom and financial independence.

Saying goodbye to the hammer and nails didn’t happen over night, nor did financial independence. Paul worked hard, applying the same discipline he learned from years of building houses.

As a carpenter, Paul hit the income ceiling. Not wanting to start his own carpentry business, Paul explored career options on the Internet under, making money with your computer. For starters, he read the book, Give Me My Money Now, by Marlon Sanders, which described how to put an e-book together and sell it online.

Paul applied many of Sanders’ teachings in his own e-book. In fact, with an extra two weeks between carpentry assignments Paul wrote an e-book on how to lose weight, which sold approximately 1300 books, but more importantly it cemented an interest in selling products online, opening up a whole new career path, a precursor to Paul’s successful forays into affiliate marketing.

In this endeavour, Paul purchased Michael Campbell’s book, Nothing But Net, further fuelling his fascination with selling products on the Internet. At the same time, Paul’s friend Chuck got excited about affiliate marketing. The two friends began jointly building websites, counting the incoming checks, and ultimately realizing what a winning financial opportunity, they discovered with affiliate marketing.

Background on affiliate marketing

An affiliate marketing program is a business relationship involving a merchant who pays you (the "affiliate") for links from your website to their site. You are paid only when an actual sale happens. This purchase occurs as a direct result of your link.

Another way to think about affiliate programs is to consider it as a form of advertising. That’s essentially what you are doing when you have the merchants’ links on your website. This form of advertising is also known as Pay Per Action (PPA), since affiliates are paid only when a visitor performs a certain action i.e. visits, fills out a form, or buys product.

Affiliate Advantage vs. Traditional Business

When starting most businesses you have inventory and overhead. Instead of investing in product development, hiring programmers to create e-commerce functions, dealing with payroll, getting a bank for financing and credit card processing, and contracting with a warehouse for shipping; join an affiliate program and let someone else take care of the "hard work."

Got Dot: What was it like getting started?

Paul says, “In the beginning I found lots of misinformation and confusing theories. It was real frustrating. I wanted real answers on how to market the search engines and make some serious cash.”

In this endeavour Paul went to school for technical certification, which in Paul’s words, “gave him perspective on the inner workings of the Internet”, clearing up as Paul mentions, some misunderstanding regarding things like IPS, DNS, and web servers, turning those and countless other computer terms into words that represented things in concrete terms.

This same approach to learning is what prompted Paul to read both, Give Me My Money Now, and Nothing But Net, and led Paul to eventually becoming an affiliate marketing money house.

As Paul says, “The key that took me from being knowledgeable about the net to really understanding how to make money with affiliate marketing is James Martell’s Affiliate Marketers Handbook . It’s a real operating manual. “Reading James’s step by step system for building websites,” Paul says, “Things just clicked. James’ book gave me the confidence, with six months in savings, to give affiliate marketing a chance, full time.”

What Paul is describing, is the James Martell Affiliate Marketers Handbook, a downloadable easy to use training manual on affiliate marketing. In 8 simple lessons you can learn how to work at home on your computer building simple low cost websites that you’ll be proud of and earn great money by offering brand name products and services for major companies seeking online affiliates. The handbook  teaches you how to get up and running with a successful web based affiliate marketing business, includes real world examples, and information on how to:

1.   Put together an affiliate marketing plan
2.   Build keyword focused websites
3.   Get listed on the top search engine positions
4.   Find search terms, words, and phrases
5.   Sell merchants' products and let them take the orders and ship products
6.   Find thousands of merchants
7.   Have earnings direct deposited to your bank account
8.   Advice and step-by-step instructions

Got Dot: What’s your income like?

When Paul first started in February 2003, he made $180. By March, it ramped up to $340, and by April it reached $900. During the summer it jumped to $4000. After reaching that income milestone, Paul started experimenting with different locations for placing the affiliate links. It paid off; by July Paul earned $30,000.

Paul’s successful websites cover a wide range of products from cell phone accessories to musical instruments. Each site encompasses the teachings of the Affiliate Marketers Handbook

Got Dot: Are there other resources you’re using to help your affiliate marketing business?

Paul says, “The Affiliate Buzz  (twice monthly audio newsletter) does a great job of sharing all sorts of little details that make you stand out as an affiliate marketer. For example, when you are looking for reciprocal link partners, choose websites with a Google page ranking of four and partners with 30 links or less.”

Paul adds, “Just the other day I listened to the Affiliate Buzz and heard all about Commission Junction University seminar in September. I can’t wait to meet with the merchants’, and network with other affiliates, and find out all sorts of secrets for achieving success.”

Got Dot: What’s a typical day like?

Most days Paul gets up early in the morning and goes to the gym, works from 10-5, then visits his girlfriend. Sometimes he’ll spend the whole day tinkering with his Buick Grand National or the Porsche 951, never touching the computer. Other days are just for golf.

Got Dot: What tips do you have for someone starting out?

1.   Continue the learning process and enrol in computer classes like Dream Weaver or FrontPage.
2.   When picking keywords, don’t go for the big keywords, choose the smaller ones. Paul says, “I’ve built five sites that didn’t go for the big ticket keywords. That’s one of the biggest mistakes most people make. People choose keywords like cell phones or ink jet printers, but there’s no way they’ll be able to compete.”
3.   Buy James Affiliate Marketers Handbook .
4.   Sit in front of the computer no matter how hard it is.
5.   Just do it, the money’s there.

Paul says, “The great thing about making money with your computer is that once the web sites are done, the money doesn’t stop, it just keeps on growing. In carpentry, when I built a house that was it, no more pay check. With affiliate marketing, I’m always building more money houses.”

Visit www.work-at-home-net-guides.com to learn more.