What Do Horses And Carts Have To Do With Internet Affiliate Marketing, Anyway?

Have you noticed something that all the top Internet business marketers have in common?
Yes, of course they all make a lot of money, and quite a lot of it from affiliate marketing commissions. However, more importantly than that, they have all created their own unique brands and products.
In contrast to the leading marketers, you will find that the great majority of Internet business marketers try to make money exclusively by selling other people’s products. The problem with this approach to Internet marketing, however, is that it puts the cart before the horse. The most successful Internet business entrepreneurs know that it is much better to have the affiliate marketing sales cart driven by the horse of unique products with the owner sat prominently in the driver’s seat for the purposes of personal branding.
You see, the problem with focusing solely on affiliate marketing is that that is what everybody else is doing. You only have two search the web for one or two leading affiliate products to realize  there are far too many Internet marketers out there who think the key to success is selling other people’s info products or business packages. Unfortunately for them, if you want to succeed with internet marketing you have to begin promoting yourself and producing products and services of your own.
It need be no more difficult to produce your own product than it is to write a short report. Anybody who has been working in a particular field any amount of time will have a fund of insights and ideas to offer. Once you have written a report you can turn it into an e-book and promote it as your own product.
Even if you use it as a free incentive to get people to join your list, the very fact that it is a unique product that you have produced yourself with your name on it will give you an advantage over much of the competition. It will help you to brand yourself as an expert in your field.
But you don’t need to stop there. Once you have turned one report into an e-book, begin to plan your next e-book project, or online training course.
The next step could be to make a video version of your e-book. You can post the first video on your website to promote the whole course.
These are just a few ideas for creating your own unique products if you don’t yet have any of your own.
Now that you have something unique to offer, you will find that you have a more solid platform from which to promote affiliate products to generate extra income for your business. That is a much better way to think about making money with affiliate programs. Your primary income should come from your own product (the horse) and your secondary income can then be much more easily generated from affiliate commissions (the cart) generated from follow-up sales, just as a cart
follows a horse.
Remember, it always pays to promote yourself first and other people’s business second. That is why you need to be visibly in the seat as the driver of your Internet marketing “horse and cart”…
Here’s to your whipcrackin’ success in 2010.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
David Hurley