Affiliate Marketing - 9 Steps to Building an Effective Home-Based Online Marketing Business

Building a new business from scratch can be complex. This is true of any money making endeavor including internet and affiliate marketing. As ecommerce continues to grow, many households are attempting to establish home-based businesses through affiliate marketing. This article provides a look at a nine-step problem-solving model can be an effective tool for evaluating business opportunities and fine tuning them once they are up and running. It is a formula any business owner can follow in order to grow their enterprise. If you wish to build an effective affiliate marketing business, the nine-step plan will be an excellent guide for you as well.

Step 1: Take out a notebook and describe in as much detail as possible the current condition of your business.

Take out a pen and paper and thoroughly describe your current situation. Be brutally honest about your business and the circumstances contributing to the present state of affairs.

For instance, Sammy is struggling to make money with his home-based affiliate marketing business. He has subscribed to the bum marketing system and has written 20 articles about a certain product which he has posted on EzineArticles. He has written a review of the product that he has posted on a well-known blog carrier. His click-through-rate (CTR) to the review has been fairly steady. Yet, he has not made any sales. Sammy's wife is growing impatient with his new venture because he is working overtime on the internet marketing, neglecting his family to add a little extra income. The current economic conditions have contributed to the need for another income stream.

Step 2: Write a broadly stated problem statement that will lend to a wide variety of possible solutions.

After you have thoroughly described your situation, boil it down to pinpoint the most glaring problem or problems. Then, frame the problem in broad terms in order that it might lead to many possible solutions.

Write a problem statement that does not include a solution within it. The statement should answer the questions: (a) what do you aspire for your business and (b) what is the major challenge you face that must be overcome to accomplish your purpose.

For instance, Sammy will increase profitability as an affiliate marketing agent by becoming more effective and efficient in his affiliate work thereby adding extra cash to the family coffers while returning balance to the various parts of his life.

Step 3: Describe your "end-state" goals.

In this third part, the business owner or affiliate defines what he wants the business to look like when it has attained its ultimate end. Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, calls this part seeing the end from the beginning.

In Sammy's case, he might write something like: Sammy's home-based affiliate marketing business exists to take advantage of online opportunities by putting into practice efficient and effective affiliate techniques thereby (a) establishing a viable source of extra income while (b) maintaining a fair balance of time with the family.

Step 4: Identify the possible alternatives relevant to your problem statement and end-state goals.

In this section, the would-be entrepreneur will want to go to the internet to research companies or individuals who have experienced similar problems as he or she has. This is called benchmarking which basically means finding the best practices of others within your business or of those in other businesses. Once the business owner has identified many possible solutions to his problem then he can list them out and summarize them.

For example, Sammy might write:

Issue: Sammy is not getting potential buyers to click through the blog review to purchase the product he represents.

Opportunity: Sammy has the opportunity to improve his click through rate by improving his review article posted his blog.

Alternative solution: Sammy will improve his click through rate by rewriting his review article.

Benchmarking: Affiliate marketing expert Travis Sago, owner of Bum Marketing, improved his click through rate by fine tuning review pages.

This process may take much time but it will pay off for those who sincerely work through it.

Step 5: Evaluate the possible alternatives

After identifying a wide variety of alternatives, the next step is to evaluate those alternatives. When assessing the various possibilities, a business owner or affiliate marketer will want to compare each alternative with his or her end-state goals. By this evaluation procedure, the person will want to decide which three or four alternatives present the best-case solutions. One way to do an evaluation is to use a weighted point system that helps identify which of all possible solutions comes closest to meeting the vision of the enterprise.

Step 6: Identify and Assess Risks

The sixth step is to identify and assess risks of each alternative. For an internet marketer like Sammy the risks are generally seen in opportunity costs, which basically means time or money spent on one alternative that might have been better spent on another.

For Sammy, one risk could be weaker relationships with his wife or children due to an inordinate amount of time spent on developing his affiliate marketing business.

Step 7: Make the Decision

After identifying the best two or three of the possible alternatives and assessing the possible risks, the business owner must make a decision. There is a time to research and evaluate possibilities but some day a decision has to be made. In making the decision, the entrepreneur will ask such questions as:

What are the most reasonable choices to consider?

What are the pros and cons?

Given the facts, which is the best decision?

The alternative that is most relevant to the problem and the defined end-state goals will be the most appropriate choice. This will be so unless the apparent risks are beyond the affiliate marketer's ability to bear. It is wise not to spend the family's milk money on endeavors that pose a large amount of risk.

Step 8: Develop a Plan to Implement the Solution

The next step in the problem-solving model is to design an implementation plan. A solution is only as good as its implementation.

For Sammy, he may decide that he has to write more than 20 articles to get a fair rate of interest in his product. He may then develop a plan by which to write the extra amount of articles deemed necessary to get the overall response he needs to make his marketing campaign effective and profitable. In the implementation plan, there will be metrics (short -term objectives) and target dates defining what is to be accomplished during any given time period.

Effective affiliate marketing agents will not only define a problem and research solutions; they will make a decision and develop a plan to implement that solution.

Step 9: Review the Results

The final step is to review the results of the decision and implementation. In this step, the business owner will compare what happened with what he wanted to happen. He will judge the results against the end-state goals and then make adjustments as necessary.

This article has attempted to apply the nine-step problem-solving model to affiliate marketing. It is an effective tool for evaluating a business's current status and developing an appropriate scheme to take it to the next level. Any would-be entrepreneur wishing to develop a home-based business into a money-making venture would do well if he or she followed this planning model.

Eric Coggins - Are you having a hard time making ends meet? Affiliate marketing is a growing industry that continues to expand every day. As more companies go online to sell their products and services, so there will be more opportunities for affiliate marketing agents. In fact, even as the economy is going down affiliate marketers are revving up. Wealthy Affiliate is an organization of affiliates that wants to help you be successful in your own affiliate marketing enterprise. To learn more about Wealthy Affiliate, read the following review: http://andrphilip.wordpress.com/my-review-of-wealthy-affiliate-university/

Beyond affiliate marketing, if you need general encouragement for your life log onto http://www.thebestyou.org/ - where you can find encouraging articles and videos as well as helpful tips on how to live a better life.

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Become Thirty Percent More Effective in Selecting People

Success starts with the right people in the right jobs. Particularly in leadership positions. But if that's really the belief of most organizations, why is it that so many selections fail at their jobs - or - even worse, just hang on and take up space?

Based on feedback from any number of studies, candidates hired for leadership or emerging leadership positions are successful about a third of the time, with success being defined as meeting or exceeding the expectations of the organization. About a third fail, with failure defined as not meeting the expectations of the organization, and about a third survive, with survival being defined as getting close enough to meeting expectations to avoid being let go.

Often the rationalization for this level of performance is that the best hitters in baseball only get a hit about 1 out of three times at bat - and they're considered stars. The difference is that once the batter ends an at bat - it's over.

But when a failure to get a hit in selection occurs, the problems are just beginning. Low morale, increased turnover, missed goals, reduced profit, possible lawsuits and lowered standards of performance are all part of a poor selection decision. And those problems just get worse as the decision on what to do gets put off - no one likes admitting to a mistake. And the biggest cost - the opportunity cost - the cost of not having the right person in the right job - is by far the biggest cost of a poor selection decision.

And yet, many organizations that are constantly striving and working toward improvements in quality, customer service, sales, and profits appear satisfied with the status quo in selection. While they are convinced that standing still in so many areas is actually losing competitive advantage, they don't see the same thing happening in selecting the right people for the right jobs. To the extent they stand still on improving in this most vital of areas, theyre losing competitive advantage.

It doesn't have to be that way. In fact, every organization striving to improve their selection batting average can become at least 30% more effective.

How can you add 30% effectiveness to your people selection processes - selection including hiring, transfer, promotion and team membership?

Here's how:

1 - Start with a critical position that has been hard to fill - where turnover and failure to perform have been a problem. Or a critical position where fit with the existing organization is essential to success.

2 - Look for biases that have no bearing on the job that may have limited the applicant pool. I don't mean the mandated of race, sex, ethnicity, religion - those should have been dealt with long ago. I'm talking about ensuring your pool of applicants/candidates isn't being restricted by biases and assumptions and cultural differences that have no real basis from a organizational standpoint.

3 - Create the key accountabilities for the job using the key stakeholders.. Prepare to be amazed at how different one key stakeholder sees them from another. Get agreement on the top three to five - even if that means having to really negotiate to agreement. This is key at the beginning of the process - agreement here will go a long way to ensuring the people involved in the selection are all on the same page. And the recruiting is targeted.

4 - Have the stakeholders identify the education, experience, industry experience, and other hard data elements. These are the quantifiable data points that every candidate must have for further consideration.

5 - Identify the behaviors, motivators and personal skills that have been successful in the job. Get them from the people who have been successful in the job, from the people with close contact and interdependence with the job, with the people who manage the job. If assessments of behaviors, attitudes and skills are currently being used, use the results of past assessments to help create the profile. If they are not in use, or the assessments in use don't lend themselves to this process, get ones that do.

6 - Have the stakeholders meet to review the findings and to use them to arrive at a profile of the ideal candidate and to prioritize must haves, want to haves and nice to haves. Use assessments to help the stakeholders in this vital step. The process is benchmarking- creating the benchmark against which all candidates will be measured. No more letting the candidate pool set the standards for success.

7 - With this information in hand, train and develop an interview team to use it in creating a coordinated interview process. And have the candidates that pass the education, experience and other hard data elements take the same assessments. Review the assessment reports of the candidates against the behavior, motivators and personal skills profile created by the stakeholders in the organization.

8 - Use what was learned in this first benchmarking project and apply it to other high value positions. The process has value at all levels - but it does take an investment of time and effort, and the early efforts should be directed at the highest potential gain positions.

Organizations that have followed this process have seen major improvements in selecting the right person for the right job. Organizations have seen their comfort level and support for newly selected people jump because there is a firm foundation for the selection decision. And the profile completed by the stakeholders provides the blueprint for development and success of the person selected. Success and retention rates have increased well beyond the 30% level in many organizations.

Examine your own process. See what tools you are currently using. Don't be satisfied measuring activity - when evaluating your current process measure results in the success of the selections. Don't confuse survival with success. Survival is a roadblock to increasing the level of excellence in the talent level of the organization. Real improvement comes with the right person in the right job. Use this process for your own success.

Andy Cox is President of Cox Consulting Group. The focus of his work is on helping organizations and their people increase their success in the hiring, developing and enhancing the performance of leaders and emerging leaders. Cox Consulting Group was started in 1995, and has worked with a wide range of organizations, managers and leaders - helping them define success, achieve success and make the ability to change a competitive advantage. He can be reached at coxconsulting@msn.com or through his blog http://multiplysuccess.blogspot.com

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