A Missing Piece of the Profit Puzzle: Applying Leverage in Your Affiliate Business

We all want fatter commission checks. What affiliate doesn’t, right? If you’re like the average affiliate marketer – let’s say you’d class your experience at the “intermediate level” — then you’re probably wondering how move up the next rung of the ladder, and really start skyrocketing your income to super-affiliate levels. I’ve got one word for you: LEVERAGE.

Forget all the latest ’sure thing’ tactics for a moment. They’re not what you really need. This isn’t to say they won’t be useful additions to your arsenal, but its not a new bag of tricks you need at this level. What you need is leverage, and the type of leverage we’re talking about here is financial leverage. It is time to start re-investing your profits. If you’re already doing this, I commend you.

If not, then read on. Its really important that you appreciate the power of this concept. Think for a moment about how you got to where you are today. If you’re likemost affiliates at this level, you started on shoe-string budget, and have worked your way up to about $1,000-$3,000 in commissions per month, max. You’re no doubt supplementing your regular income quite nicely, but probably haven’t quit your day job on this income unless you’re single and have very little in the way of debt. For a lot of affiliates, this is the point where apathy (or even fear) comes into play. Its so rewarding to finally have this kind of extra income, you’re tempted to spend most of it on yourself or start squirreling it away for a rainy day. After all, everything is running fine just the way you have it set up. Now, hear this: This is exactly what’s stopping you from earning more money!

You’ve settled on the advertising budget that’s working to bring in a few grand. Maybe you do re-invest some of your profit, so that advertising is essentially free now. But what if, by spending a bit more, you could earn twice or even three times as much? Well, you CAN, and here’s how: Starting this month, commit to leveraging 50% of your affiliate income towards the following two areas:

1. Paid advertising.
2. Getting your own product created

Here’s what to do with your paid advertising. First, pull out all the performance data you have for current advertising programs. Determine which campaigns would benefit from an extra investment of cash. This is not limited just to the top performers. You’ve probably got at least one campaign that’s promising, but could use a little boost. Some of the areas you might look at include: *Increasing the overall daily budget in your pay-per-click campaigns

*Text or banner link advertising on a new site
*Running some solo ads in e-zines you haven’t advertised in before

The key here is to devote some cash to both the old and the new. Inject some life into your current advertising, but also try out a new venue or a new method (like offline advertising). Finally, its time for you to invest in getting your own product created. Choose just one of your current niche products, and have someone create a related, complementary product for you. Why? Because its going to help you boost your sales by improving your offers. Once you’ve got your own product, you can leverage it as ‘bait’ to persuade prospects to take you up on the affiliate product offer. You’ve probably seen this tactic employed in the past. Marketer X sends out the promo email to his list, and says, “If you buy product x through me, I’m going to sweeten the deal by giving you all these additional bonus products of mine for free….”

This is really powerful. Before, all you had to rely on was the combined power of your copy writing skills and the copy on the merchant’s site; but, with your own product tossed into the mix, you’re able to create an even better offer. This is the beauty of leverage.

You needn’t worry about parting with some extra money. You’ll probably feel a little bit uneasy about it at first, and that’s only natural.

However, once you see the results of using leverage, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start using it sooner!