(This is the first in a series of blogposts describing one of many methods of establishing a business in Affiliate Marketing.  Consider this an instructional foray into an example that hopes to deliver value no matter what approach you may take with your own Affiliate Marketing business.)

So you think you can be successful in Affiliate Marketing?  You think you can make a living at it?  Some side cash?  A little extra cushion each month?  Well, yes you can…  IF

The big IF is if you can organize yourself, work hard, work smart, not confuse twittering with work, etc.  Lots of people (a whole lot of people) make a good living at Affiliate Marketing.  And there’s no reason you can’t IF you can take care of the big IF.  This is the first of a series that hopes to give you some actionable information and tools so that you can get rid of IF and take Action.

The first thing you need to do is understand the economics of affiliate marketing and the dynamics of the Web.  A website that makes $100,000/yr is rare.  Very, very, on the endangered species list rare.  If you think your going to just jump in and make 100 large well, I have an e-book I’d like to sell you…  Because if you think that then you need some serious education in Affiliate Marketing.

How about we get realistic?  What if we set an attainable goal..  $30,000/yr.  Lets see if theres a way to make (after expenses) $30,000/yr with a little work and alot of smarts.  And lets not put all your eggs in a single basket either.  There are alot of niches out there.  Let’s spread the risk in ways that will let you research niches by trying them out.  Successful ones you scale up, unsuccessful ones you replace with successful ones.  Let’s do it all with minisites that are focused at local markets!

Now, how many minisites will this take?  That depends on how much your minisites can be expected to make.  So lets do a little math.  $30,000/yr / 12 = 2500/month.  And lets just say we can build a minisite that will make $100/month after expenses.  Then you’ll need 25 minisites (everything is averaged here, one sites gonna tank, another will do more, less, etc).  in order to reach your goals at this rate.

25 minisites X $100/month = $2500/month

Cost to host + domain registration = $500/month = Gross Revenue Required $3,000/month

Now, do you think you can build a minisite that will earn $3.00 per day?  If you find a niche that you can go local with and it proves to bring in a minimum of $3.00/day do you think you can replicate that minisite for another local target (city)?  25 times?  Well, yes you can.  With planning, organization, and good recordkeeping a single individual can easy keep track of about 100 minisites.  (btw.  100 minisites x $3.00/day = $300/day x 365 days = $109,000.00/yr).

Here’s how we’re going to do this.  We’re going to hit a functional area every day til you’ve got a resource you can use.  We’re going to cover discovering niches, finding offers, necessary tools, elements of minisite design, tracking performance, testing for success, and replicating success.  We’re going to cover it all.

Today’s Lesson…  25 sites for $3,000/month is realistic.  We’ll continue tomorrow.

Across the State Road that I live on are a few cornfields.  Pretty big ones, actually.  This year has been very different in that they’ve been hybridizing for seed.  If you’ve never seen this before once the corn reaches full height special wagons are towed through the field with ros of corn being either detassled, or with their tassles covered with a bag.

This preserves the genetics of the particular strain of corn they’ve planted.  Then, either various rows of corn are left with their tassles (to pollinate all the rest of the corn) or they use blowers and corn pollen of the chosen variety is dusted over all the tassles.

What does this have to do with Affiliate Marketing?  EVERYTHING!  You see, most of us affiliate marketing types have more than one website.  In more than a few niches.  And we’ve created a mess for ourselves if we havn’t been careful.  The mess being that we arn’t harnessing the strength of all of our sites working together.

Let’s say you have three sites…  T-Shirts (CafePress Store), Stickers (Zazzle Store), and a coupon site.  And they’ve proven to do pretty well.  And the principles of cross-pollination can take these three sites and turn them into a powerhouse for you.

Let’s say you take your t-shirt art on CafePress and reuse the designs (that work) for stickers on Zazzle.  You’ve now cross-pollinated those two sites with your product.  Then you take it a step further and create adverts that point between your CafePress and Zazzle sites.  Now you’ve enabled the hybrid to grow.  And how about you add in coupons to your coupon site and wrap it all up in a pretty bow by building out a blog where you feature items from the three sites.  Now your building a powerhouse set of web “genetics”.

Don’t tell me you havn’t thought of it.  You may have even taken a few minor steps in that direction.  Now how about we take this even further.  You see, your CafePress and Zazzle sites are your designs, your products.  Add some Esty into the mix?  Go set up that ShareASale account, AffiliatePLY for video creatives, Webgains, buy.at, etc…  And now your mixing affiliate marketing with your own creative products and with only four sites (CafePress, Zazzle, Coupon, and Blog) your exposing site visitors to your other sites and to affiliate products that you don’t build yourself (but you’ve chosen because it fits with your sites).

No, it’s not easy.  If it were easy everyone would be doing it.  And many that do this do it poorly because they just throw a bunch of stuff out there thinking it won’t be work.  No, this is real work.  You have to choose the affiliate products as carefully as you do when you decide that one of your pieces of artwork will make a good t-shirt or sticker.  But if you are consistant.  Choose affiliate products with care.  Be smart about your cross-pollination.  And keep up with the extra work it will take.

Image by kmakice via Flickr

We think a big reward will be in the offing for you.