Martin Lee Affiliate Marketing

Jeremy Palmer is a professional affiliate marketer who makes well over a million dollars every year from his affiliate marketing business and is someone I look up to. He managed to achieve his results working alone from his basement by creating well over 100 websites in different niches. I have reproduced this article from one of his newsletter which I thought would be useful for any aspiring affiliate marketer.

“In early February we moved into a new office space. I managed to run the business by myself for three years (mostly out of my basement), but late last year I had to recruit some help.

I probably could have managed the affiliate business by myself, but after launching Quit Your Day Job in 2006, I realized I stretched myself too thin.

When I started my affiliate business I made a conscience decision to ramp-up slowly. I didn’t quit my day job until I had built up my savings account, and was earning a consistent and predictable income as an affiliate.

I played conservatively because of the hindsight I had from a previous business failure. Long before I made a seven-figure income as an affiliate, I was a floundering entrepreneur trying to keep a web consulting business afloat.

When I started my first business I quit my day job prematurely, counting on revenue from just a few clients. When one of those clients unexpectedly pulled the plug on their website I was in a world of hurt. I was relying on that contract to pay the rent and keep the lights on at the office. When that company collapsed, it didn’t take long for my own business to fail.

I launched that business in January of 2001, and by November of thatsame year I was looking for another day job. I made several mistakesthat led up to the implosion of that business, but sometimes you have to fail before you can succeed.

I believe that in every failure there is an opportunity to learn. While I was licking my wounds I carefully reflected on my previous experience. I was convinced that I could still be successful as an entrepreneur, but knew that I would need to build my next business on a stronger foundation.

One of the things that lured me into affiliate marketing is that I could work on it part-time and keep my day job. This gave me more flexibility, allowed me to take risks, and helped me reinvest my affiliate earnings back into my business.

During my first six months as an affiliate, before I quit my job, I worked on my affiliate campaigns 2-4 hours a night (sometimes more). This often meant I would be working on affiliate sites into the early morning hours. I also had to sacrifice free time on the weekend to work on the business.

It’s also worth mentioning that I didn’t try to live off of my affiliate income while I still had my day job. I continued to use my regular paycheck to cover living expenses and reinvested all the profits from my affiliate business, which helped me to quit my job even sooner.

It was hard managing a full-time job, family, and my new affiliate business at the same time, but I knew that if I put in the hard work it would pay off.

I’m writing this because I’ve received hundreds of e-mails from new and prospective affiliates wanting to know what it takes to be a successful affiliate. There have been several myths spread by Internet Marketing “gurus” claiming that “if you can copy and paste, you have what it takes to be an Internet millionaire” or “build an Internet fortune by working just a few hours week”.

I know a lot of Internet millionaires, and none of them built their empires on auto-pilot, by copying and pasting, or working a few hours a week. Sure you might be able to earn some pocket change by putting in such a minimal effort, but if you’re serious about quitting your day job and earning a substantial income it’s going to take work.

Once you’ve achieved success with an affiliate business, you can put in less time and effort, but you don’t go from $0 to sipping margaritas on the beach by not putting in a big effort up front.

There is no software, e-book, or magic formula that generates income by itself. Many of these programs contain good ideas, but none of them will help you make money “automatically”.

The number one factor that will determine your success is - you ;) I encourage you to learn as much as you can from your training materials, but remember that the most useful knowledge comes from doing.”

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