How to Start Your Own $100K-A-Year Online Business

Is This You?

Most people just getting started buiding an online business begin by becoming an affiliate marketer.

There are a lot of reasons for this and I’ll go into that in a little bit.

I’d like to be able to tell you that you can quickly grow your affiliate marketing business to $100K per year.

Sadly, most successful affiliate marketers stall out between $3,000 and $6,000 per month. Close, but no cigar. $6,000 per month is nothing to sneeze at, it’s not $100K/yr, or as my Dad used to say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

At some point in their internet marketing career, affilate marketers realize that if they want to grow their business, they need to start producing and publishing their own products.

Now, let’s compare being an Affiliate Marketer vs being a Digital Product Creator/Vendor.

Affiliate Marketer:

Advantages:

Low Risk and Low Initial Investment: As an affiliate marketer, you don’t need to create a product or handle inventory, reducing your upfront costs.
Flexibility: Affiliates have the flexibility to choose the products or services they want to promote and can often work from anywhere.
Diverse Income Streams: Affiliates can promote products across various niches, creating multiple income streams.
No Customer Support Responsibilities: Affiliates are not responsible for customer service or dealing with product-related issues.
Global Reach: Affiliates can reach a global audience, promoting products to people around the world.

Challenges:

Dependency on Product Creators: Affiliate marketers rely on product creators for the quality and availability of the products they promote.
Commission-Based Income: Affiliate income is based on commissions, which might fluctuate based on the product and the affiliate program’s terms.
Limited Control: Affiliates have limited control over the product, pricing, or sales process.
Sending Traffic to an Offer: There are a lot of different free and paid traffic sources available. And affiliate marketers try them all with varying degrees of success. But the best traffic source, by far, is your list.
Building a List: Your list of subscribers that know, like and trust you, is the most effective traffic source for affiliates. Unfortunately, building a list is one, if not the hardest thing for an affiliate to do. Building a list takes time and a lot of effort over months or years, or it takes a lot of investment ($100’s or $1,000’s per month for 6 months or more) before you start showing a profit.

Digital Product Creator:

Advantages:

Higher Profit Margins: Digital product creators have the potential for higher profit margins as they control the product creation and pricing.
Build Brand Authority: Creating and selling your own products allows you to build your brand and establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
Control over Marketing and Sales Funnel: Creators have control over the marketing strategies, sales funnels, and customer experience.
Direct Relationship with Customers: Digital product creators can build direct relationships with customers, gaining valuable feedback and building customer loyalty.
Scalability: Once a digital product is created, it can be easily scaled without significant additional costs.
Building a List: Affiliates help the product creator build his list by promoting products to their list and with their other traffic methods. When someone purchases the product, they usually are automatically added the product creator’s list.
Backend Profits: After the initial sale, the product creator can promote additional products, typically higher priced, to the initial buyers. Depending on how this is set-up, the product creator could keep 100% of the sale price, or they may share a smaller percentage with the affiliates.

Challenges:

High Initial Investment: Creating a digital product may require significant upfront investment in terms of time, resources, and sometimes financial investment.
Responsibility for Customer Support: Creators are responsible for customer service, addressing inquiries, and handling product-related issues.
Risk of Product Development: There’s a risk that the product may not resonate with the audience, leading to potential losses.
Competition: Depending on the niche, digital product creators may face competition from other similar products in the market.
Continuous Updates and Maintenance: Digital products sometimes require updates and maintenance to stay relevant, which can be time-consuming. However, if what you produce is “evergreen”, then it will likely stay relevant for years.

Ultimately, the decision on when you make the switch from affiliate marketer to digital product creator depends on your individual preferences, skills, and goals. Some affiliate marketers may may never make the switch to product creation and will continue to struggle towards that elusive $100K per year goal.

Others with a more strategic outlook will make the switch and even after becoming a product creator, continue to promote as an affiliate. By taking advantage of the list building inherent in being a product creator, they substantially increase their affiliate sales and commissions in addition to their vendor profits.

Are You Ready?

I am. So today, I re-read a 102 page paperback book titled “Six FIgures a Year in Info Publishing – How to Start Your Own $100K-A-Year Oline Business“, by Nick James.

Nick is also the founder of the “Serious About Six Figures” training course. This is a year long training course where Nick provides 2 lessons per month to help you build your $100K/Yr business. I am in the middle of the course, and I can tell you that it has certainly helped me to build toward my $100K/Yr business.

There were others before me….

… last year, Nick published another paperback book, “Secrets of Six Figure Earners” where he showcased 12 of his students currently making over $100,000 per year in their online business. I can sometimes see myself being showcased in a future book.