Experiments in Passive Income | Oooo Affiliates!

So lately I have been asking myself the question “why don’t I make more passive income“ and the answer always comes back “because you haven’t really tried”. Call it being scared, call it whatever but I have taken massive action within the realm of normal business yet have shied away from attempting to make passive income a large part of my regular “salary”. Today changes all that, I got an awesome email the other day from an affiliate that I truly believe in: Internet Business Mastery, I guess someone had read through Start Up School bought the IBMA program which gave me a lovely comission of $174. That is almost 200 bones and I did absolutely nothing, needless to say, I was intrigued.

So I thought about how I can make more of that luscious, little work required passive income and I researched through the archives of my moleskins for ideas.

Here’s how I am going to try a few experiments in passive income, you can try with me if you like

IBMA affiliate program- This is one of those affiliates you can truly believe in, which is an awesome way to make money and have a good conscience! I can get behind internet business mastery and promote the heck out of it because I myself got started online through their program, so naturally I stand behind it.

What is doubly good about this model is that I can buy adwords that are relevant to IBMA and then direct the link to the sales page they have already made for affiliates OR I can build my own sales page, tell my own story and explain how I just cleared $10k in a month mostly because of the tactics I learned on IBMA. If you have an affiliate like this it is a good option to explore, because not only will you already have a success story but the fact that you can passionately vouch for it will help people hit the ‘buy’ button.

Another “bonus” I am going to offer on my sales page for IBMA is going to be that not only can you buy a membership in their academy and learn a ton about internet business & interact in a community but you can later use the same ‘affiliate’ tactic as I am to recoup the money you spent, create your own success story and more!

Tweeterpreneur - This is a business I started in October and pretty much haven’t paid much attention to lately because I have been focusing on ‘bigger fish’ in the social media marketing realm. This may, or may not have been a good idea, since the great part about a Tweeterpreneur membership is that it is 100% profit for me (since I built it) and totally automated to run after the first month, and it costs $97 which is a pretty penny. My plan with marketing tweeterpreneur is to buy adwords that relate to what I think people who are the best ‘targets’ would search for by using Google’s tool then banking on the 100-200 click thru’s equal one sale which usually carries a 3 month life span which equals $291 per customer who buys. If I spend $50 or even $100 getting this customer technically I win. But I will try to spend FAR less, also I’ll have to see if Tweeterpreneur’s services are priced right for the market.

Powerseller Princess’ e-Products - My very first site was PowersellerPrincess.com a site I am now trying to sell or heck give away to someone who can do it right (i’m just too busy) but that doesn’t mean its two amazing products have to lay dormant. So instead of building an entire community via the blog to sell the eBook and wholesale guide why not just use the pre existing sales pages and buy ads for relevant keywords? This will be tricky since eBay is a HOT keyword and very expensive so I’ll have to do some research via Google’s External Keyword tool and find some cheaper long tail words. But if this works the sales pages are already up, the products done and it may just be a constant stream of income if I can justify the cost of the ad campaigns with the profits made.

3rd Party Affiliates - If you notice on the bottom right hand area of the blog something has changed, alas, I’ve added an affiliate foursome box. This is not NEARLY as spammy as google ads and is far more profitable if someone buys. I also can feel good about them sitting there since people who read my blog are ALWAYS asking what tools I use, now I have a way to highlight the tools I personally rely on and maybe make some money of it if someone decides to try them out.

I’ll keep you posted with this experiment in passive income and let you know how well it pays if at all, I have a feeling it will do well especially as my blog grows and I get more internet marketing savvy. I know by reading Pat Flynn’s income reports and IncomeDiary.com that two of the people I look up to make at least half of their income through straight affiliate sales models and they aren’t spammy. So hopefully I can learn to strike that same balance. You should join me and we can track our experiments together then compare notes in a month or so!

Action Jackson (actionable items, obviously!)

• Go to Paydot.com or Clickbank.com and sign up then browse all the items that are open for affiliates to sell, see if any resonate with you and then sketch up some sales page models and get an idea of how you’d sell them.
• On an unrelated note: Email directly, via the contact form, each blogger who you read and like. I do this regularly and then I save their responses in a file marked ‘Blogger networking’ this gives me a list of 30-60 people who I can later contact and ‘network’ with who are also great mentors, friends and partners as you grow your blog.