What is autopilot affiliate marketing and can an online business be completely automated? The so called ‘autopilot’ part of affiliate marketing can be said to be the ‘systems’ which run by themselves. Affiliate marketing is a clever business model. It can allow anyone to build multiple systems and strategies which enable the selling of other people’s products on the internet.
But exactly how much of this process is automated? How much work is involved and what does it take to become successful at ‘autopilot’ affiliate marketing?
Autopilot Affiliate Marketing
First of all affiliate marketing is a business model. Like any business it requires work to get it going and making a profit. Because affiliate marketing offers the opportunity to use automated systems and strategies, large parts of the business model can be automated.
That’s not to say it’s easy to start generating money from affiliate marketing. It most definitely is not. But once you have set up systems and strategies which are working, it’s much easier to scale an affiliate business for a couple of main reasons:
- Affiliate marketing offers a model of selling products globally to anyone, anywhere and at any time
- You can automate the sales and delivery of products
Affiliate Marketing – Global Reach
The global reach of affiliate marketing makes it one of the most scalable business models available. Most affiliate companies ship products worldwide. In the case of digital products, anyone can access products directly over the internet. There’s no shipping needed for digital products!
This means there’s less cost involved and the savings can be passed to the affiliate marketers who can earn up to 50% of the cost of an item; simply by referring a customer.
Autopilot Affiliate Marketing – Automation
By using automated landing pages, email marketing systems and instant access sales pages, multiple sales can be made instantaneously over the internet.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is another tool in the arsenal of an affiliate marketer. With email marketing, multiple emails can be automated and sent out to a growing list of potential customers.
Direct Response Marketing Platforms
Marketing platforms such as Google’s Adwords, YouTube, Facebook, Bing and so on, can also be automated and scaled up to reach an ever growing number of well targeted audiences.
Autopilot Affiliate Marketing – Why People Fail
But despite the benefits and ‘autopilot’ affiliate marketing mechanics, many still fail when attempting to build an affiliate marketing business. Why is this? Perhaps, in part, it is because they see affiliate marketing as an easy path to riches.
False Expectations
The very title of this article “autopilot affiliate marketing” suggests that it is easy to generate money on autopilot with affiliate marketing. Having a false expectation of what affiliate marketing can do for you, is probably one of the main causes of people giving up. It certainly has been one of the main causes of frustration for me over the years.
Barriers To Entry Are Very Low
Remember also that affiliate marketing is a business which anyone can ‘have a go’ at. For this reason too, there’s a lot of people who can start affiliate marketing with the intention of “seeing how it goes”. This is a mistake. Affiliate marketing should be treated as a serious business if you intend to make some serious money out of it. Having a cavalier attitude towards affiliate marketing won’t help you.
The barriers to entry for affiliate marketing are incredibly low; much lower than a traditional business, for example. Anyone with a laptop and internet connection can sign up for an affiliate account with Amazon and paste some code on their website. Hey presto – you’re an affiliate marketer!
Choosing The Wrong Business Model/Strategy
There’s another reason why people fail at affiliate marketing too. Not having the right knowledge can set you back years in affiliate marketing. I started out trying many strategies which simply failed. I didn’t know the best business models to use or which strategies worked. See Digital Profit Course Review.
So I tried everything and failed at most of them. Only through trial and error did I realise where I was going wrong. This journey can be considerably shortened if you get the right training and education from the very start. Learn which are the best products for affiliate marketing and you’ll make much faster progress.
Marketing Strategies – Autopilot Affiliate Marketing
The best marketing strategy is paid marketing simply because it can be turned on immediately and automated. Focusing on content marketing takes time and, although it is cheaper than paid marketing, it can’t be scaled up in the same way.
Whether you can use paid strategies or not depends both on your situation financially and your affiliate business model. If you’re choosing to sell low cost products for $100 or so, you’ll probably need to use content marketing in order to make a profit.
Business Models
If your business model has back-end sales, subscriptions and high ticket products, you can more easily recoup advertising costs later through your customers. High payout affiliate programs offer better strategies in order to make profit from your customers:
- High ticket products let you earn larger commissions on single sales
- Subscription products allow you to earn ongoing commissions from each customer
- Up-sells allow you to earn from later sales made to your existing customers – closed by an in-house sales team.
- Multi-tier products let you earn commissions based on sales your referrals make.
Marketing Strategy & Mindset
Having a business model like this means you can more easily earn ongoing commissions from previous sales. If you have a affiliate business model which is ‘geared’ like this, you’ve got a much greater chance of success.
Once you start breaking even, and then making a profit in your business, you can start using your income for advertising. Reinvesting your profits back into your business growth is an important part of building an “autopilot” affiliate marketing business.
Once you are in the position to do this, you’re no longer using your own money to finance your online business. This is a great position to get yourself in.
This takes time though and you’ll need to have worked on your business for some time before you start to see regular income. But once you do, re-investing this back into your business growth is key to building a long term and sustainable internet business.
What are your thoughts on autopilot affiliate marketing? Let me know in the comments!