Affiliate Marketing: The Best Way to Achieve Your 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.

What is the Internet marketing lifestyle? We hear about it all the time, and some of us even claim to live it – but what is it really?

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.

The normal image of the Internet marketing lifestyle involves fast cars, wild parties and exotic vacations in the world’s trendiest resorts – and usually involves someone making money while relaxing in a hammock on a paradise beach somewhere.

I know a lot of full-time Internet marketers, many of whom make really big money, but I’ve only known two people who fit the jetset image in any way at all!

But I do know a lot who could drop everything and live life on their own terms whenever they want to.

Oddly, of all the people I know with that ‘lifestyle freedom’, almost all – probably 90% of them – are affiliate marketers. Their entire business model is based on selling other people’s products 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.

A lot of big-time Internet marketers have found out to their costs this year that a downturn in the economy can have very negative effects on your precious launch strategy.

Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, has many advantages without many of the problems.

Affiliate marketing is, for example, a business where you usually put in the work up front and then keep on profiting for months or even years afterwards. Your affiliate websites are like your children – you put in the work building them up while they are young, but then you send them off into the world to fare for themselves – and hopefully they will continue to send money home! You, meanwhile go off and build another affiliate site to set free … and then another.

It is called multiple streams of income and is a very powerful protection against the many inevitable ups and downs of business. An affiliate marketer with ten sites (most will have a lot more) who sees three of them suffer a downturn is unlikely to be too worried because another three are just as likely to be seeing an upsurge. And if not, it is a simple thing to build a few more sites to jump on a new trend or hot product.

Another big advantage that affiliate marketing has over selling your own products is that you very rarely have to do any customer support. As an affiliate you are the middle man who introduces a buyer to a seller, so if there are problems along the way, or questions to be answered, that’s the job of the vendor, not the affiliate.

For this reason, those who practice affiliate marketing are much freer to enjoy their Internet marketing lifestyle than most other online marketers because they don’t have to be available to provide help and support at the drop of a hat. We, and I’m happy to include myself in this, are able to leave our desks – whether to disappear off on snap vacations or just to goof off with the kids for the day – pretty much anytime we like and nobody will care.

That also means that it is far easier for affiliate marketers to remain anonymous and ‘fly under the radar’ if they want to.

I suppose that the closest offline analogue to an affiliate marketer is a commission-only salesman, but the analogy is very poor. For one thing, the offline salesman needs to rely on the force of his or her personality to sell. Salesmanship is the be all and end all. The ability to deal with – and persuade – people is vital. Affiliate marketers are not really sales people at all. They are more like go-betweens who act as a conduit between the people who, by the very fact that they are searching for something online, have a problem they need solving and the sales page that offers them the solution.

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 do that you need to find the best teacher – one who already walks the walk.

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 Review of Unstoppable Affiliate now to get started today.