There are hundreds of legitimate ways to earn an income as an affiliate but there are various reasons why certain ways are not manageable for some people because they lack experience, don’t have the financial capacity or just don’t have the confidence to let their creative juices flow.

Here is a 3 step viral marketing formula you can start working on or perhaps tailor it to your comfort level:

STEP 1

This would probably work best for an affiliate product or service that pays recurring commissions. Getting paid monthly after just one sale is the ideal way to earn a long-term affiliate income without having to spend on the overhead and administrative efforts of owning your own product or service.

Usually when you make a sale that person will also have the opportunity to earn money and if they do you will make a commission off their sales so the best way to motivate your team is by showing them step by step how to make those sales. The simplest way to do that is by creating a report and have it passed on to their team and have their team do the same and so on.

STEP 2

For this to work you would have to make sure you get the right tools in place to ensure the person who referred you is getting credit for the sale. An excellent way is to create a PDF report which everyone has free access to these days and invest in a PDF brander.

Depending on how much you want to spend you can always set up a mini-site but that could be way above your means so keep it inexpensive. Do your research because there is always something available to make your marketing a lot easier. The key is to find unique ways to promote and help others do the same.

STEP 3

Making sales is obviously the end result we all want but the best way to succeed is building a list of subscribers that either will help you grow your affiliate income or buy products from you. Promoting without capturing, at a minimum, names and email addresses is going to hurt you in the long run.

Investing in a quality autoresponder service will set you back less than twenty dollars a month but if you think of the big picture the earlier sales will pay that cost multiple times over. So create a lead capture page offering the report for free and you will be building a list of subscribers and increasing your chances of making sales dramatically.

Jeff Dedrick who has been an entrepreneur and self employed for over 20 years has a great membership site where you can brand e-books with your affiliate links, give them away and profit while building your list.  He also has an array of affiliate tools to ensure you earn money and the best part of all this is the membership is free to join.

Viral E-book Explosion now gives people the opportunity to have some quality e-books in their marketing arsenal to give away and start building their Internet business making it a huge time saver for those who just don’t have the skill or time to write e-books themselves.  You will also find e-books at VEE written by some high-powered and very successful Internet marketers to give to others at no cost to your or the recipient.

Although I highly recommend you learn to write your own e-books or at a minimum write mini-reports because you want to brand yourself and not continue to grow other people’s business but VEE allows you the opportunity to get a much faster start because it gives you the education, the tools to grow your list and a great chance to make some money.  You can also get a first-hand look at what you can do to get your own e-book marketed when you decided to do one yourself.

Now here is a solid tip about giving away these free e-books with your affiliate links in them.  Not only do you give them away to ensure you build your list, but also encourage your subscribers to give them away too, so that it becomes viral.  This is where catching a virus is a good thing and you want people to pass it on as far as it can go to increase your chances of monetizing your Internet business.