by Rick Roberts

A Little Background:

I have been involved in Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing since 1994. I must admit, however, that I am a lazy marketer. Maybe a better word is "sporadic."

By this I mean that, from time to time, I will find a product or service that appeals to me and, for a few days or weeks, I will pursue marketing it. Usually, at first, there is some level of success associated with my efforts -- but not always. Believe me, I have squandered more money on Internet marketing E-books than I have ever made from them.

In my marketing endeavors, I always wanted to find a product or service that could be set on "auto-pilot," or self running, and make an extra few bucks a month. Let me tell you -- that's hard to find.

Mostly because the world of Internet marketing is ever-evolving -- and what sells today may be a non-selling item or service next month. To date, I have found only one that both works like this and stands the test of time sensitivity. You can read more about this from the link in my Bio/Resource box with this article posting.

Affiliate marketing is a waiting game

One thing I've learned through my experiences is that affiliate marketing is a big waiting game for any return on investment. Take, for instance, being an Amazon Associate. With Amazon, you earn an overall 4% - 10% commission off of any referral sale.

Not bad on the surface, but a big drawback is their sales reporting system. It's always a 24-hour lag getting stats from your promotions, which makes pay-per-click advertising a real gamble with Amazon. The biggest catch, though, is the wait-time for any commission earned. It takes 60 days from your first referral sale to get a check or direct deposit from them.

So, again, you really have to be careful with any paid promotions for referrals to Amazon. But, if you have the money or other resources to promote Amazon referral links and can wait 60 days on your return, you can make a fairly good chunk of extra income.

Last month -- March 2007 -- I made $202 in commissions after a $96 investment in PPC advertising.

Clickbank, on the other hand, is still an iffy proposition for affiliate commissions. The plus side of Clickbank is that you get a commsion check every two weeks on the prior two weeks' referrals. So, the inital wait on your first check is about 4 weeks. But there are two main drawbacks to Clickbank.

One is that almost every product you can promote is promoted to death on the Internet, which means you are fighting like cats and dogs over getting sales from your advertising. PPC advertsing is really a gamble with the products there because the good traffic keywords are so expensive to get decent position with.

Expect to pay $1 - $5 per click for good position with Clickbank PPC advertsing.

The real money-making promotions

Of all of the things I've tried to market on the Internet, the biggest money-maker is selling either your own products, such as physical items or E-books you've written, or reselling other E-books that you have master reseller rights to.

Having master reseller rights means that you collect all of the proceeds from the sales and you can advertise the product on your own Website with your own HTML pages.

Another easy money-maker and potential big money-maker is viral marketing.

I know it sounds like an evil thing but it's not. Viral marketing is the process of giving away something that links back to your actual sales pages or affiliate links.

The two most common viral marketing methods are:

* Giving away an E-book that has your links embedded within them to either your sales page or an affiliate link to another sales page. I've found people love free items and will snap them right up with little promotion at all.

* Submitting articles written by you to article directory sites that contain links to your own sales pages or affliliate links.

Summary

To summarize, I would have to list these points:

1. If you're new to Internet or Affiliate Marketing, expect to experience a fairly healthy learning curve in figuring out what to promote and how to efficiently promote the product or service.

2. Expect to invest a sometimes sizable amount of real money in PPC advertsing. In fact, if you're new, I wouldn't recommend this approach to promotion at all. Wait until you've figured out the ropes first before gambling with what money you do have.

3. Look for products you can sell that you have complete control over in both the commsions and sales approach, master reseller rights products.

4. Don't ignore viral marketing. It's the cheapest and most bang for your buck in promoting any product or service. Plus it's enduring. An E-book can float around the Internet for months or years, providing residual on-going income.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I would like to encourage you to check out the link in my Bio/Resouce box for a product that does work on auto-pilot and, best of all, incorporates both master reseller rights and viral marketing into one easy-to-promote package. It won't make you rich, but it will provide you with a residual income for months or even years, possibly.

Rick Roberts is an Internet marketer that manages several Websites across the Internet. Get the greatest viral marketing idea of all time and it's free to download http://www.daelectronics.com/ultimate. You will be amazed at how simple and brilliant this idea is. Plus, it has a surprise twist on the last pages of the E-book.