The formula I'm going to give you will take a little time to set up, but it will make you money. The internet isn't the place to turn to if you need to solve your money problems instantly, but it is a wonderful place to do business.

That's it. These 8 steps make the difference between you making a living online or struggling to scrape a couple of dimes out of an affiliate program.

Here are the details for each step.

1 - 2. You can accomplish the first three steps from one web site, Domain Direct. You'll get your own web site up and running for next to nothing.

Registering a domain name that includes domain hosting (25 MB), your own email account, and web site design and building software costs $79.95 for the first year. This is exactly how I started in August 2001.

3. Build a simple website. The only page or pages that you need on your website are the ones with the form for your prospects to sign up to receive your report.

Each form is linked to an autoresponder. The first message in the autoresponder tells your prospect where to go to download the report. The follow up messages in your autoresponder give your prospect useful information, while recommending the product that you're selling.

This is where you make your money, it's in your follow up. Point 8 gives you more detail about this.

If you're not sure what a sign up form looks like, you can see one here: http://www.bpcpublishing.net/report2.htm I recommend you download this report. It covers vital information that you need to write your autoresponder messages and gives you resources that you'll need to run your business.

Here's some useful statistics for you. This chart shows when the majority of your sales take place. Notice that 80% of your sales occur between the 7th - 12th contacts.

1st contact - 2% of your sales are made
2nd contact - 3% of your sales are made
3rd contact - 5% of your sales are made
4th contact -10% of your sales are made
7th - 12th contact - 80% of your sales are made

If you're not following up with your prospects, you're missing out on 98% of your sales. 95% of all affiliates online aren't making any money because they're missing out on 98% of their sales.

If you're sending your prospects directly to an affiliate website, without capturing their contact information, you're making 2% of the sales that you should be making. See point 8 for more details on your follow up.

In the first part of the article, we covered some of the reasons that 95% of affiliates aren't making any money online. In this second part, we're going to look at how you can be one of the 5% that make money.

4. Find a product or service that you like online. This should be a big decision for you. If you choose something that you don't really enjoy, then working online becomes a chore.

Choose something that you like and you'll never feel like you're working.

You also want to choose a quality product or service that you're proud to represent. You'll be surprised how fast you can ruin your reputation online by recommending second rate products.

One of your most important assets online is your reputation, so guard it with your life.

5. Buy, test, use and abuse the product or service. This is an area where most affiliates fail. They don't actually buy and use the products they're selling.

The most successful affiliates are the ones who can personally recommend the product or service that they're selling.

How can you answer your prospective customer's questions about the product or service, if you've never used it?

Instead of just signing up for an affiliate program and doing some promotion, do your homework first. Explore the product and make sure it stands up to your own personal testing.

6. Write a report about your experience with the product or service. This is your secret weapon.

After you've used and experienced the product that you want to represent online, write a report about it. Your report can be a simple who, what, when, where, why and how of your product. It's your personal endorsement of the product, done as a personal recommendation from you.

You could write your report as a review of the product, or go all the way and do some research into the industry and make it a full blown commentary on the industry in general and your product in particular.

Within the report, you sprinkle your affiliate links to the affiliate program that you're promoting. If you're promoting more than one affiliate program, include both programs in the same report. This leverages your promotional activities by allowing you to promote multiple affiliate links from the same report.

Allow others to give your report away for free and watch it go viral. Allow others to co-brand your report and watch it go viral twice as fast.

If you'd like a good example of a report with a lot of content, download the report in step 1.

7. Join the affiliate program. This one is pretty self explanatory.

8. Send all your traffic to your website to download your free report. When your prospect downloads your report, you're going to start making sales in two ways. First, your prospects will click on the links in the report and you'll make sales directly from the report.

Second, you'll make sales directly from your follow up messages.

When your prospect signs up to download your report, their contact details are entered into your autoresponder so they're followed up automatically. Your marketing is virtually done on autopilot. You'll make sales while you're sleeping. This is where you start to experience the real power of the internet.

Writing messages that actually sell your products effectively is a bit tricky, but the report mentioned in point one, gives you the formulas you need to write your own successful messages. If you want to leverage your time, bypass the report and get Turn Your Autoresponder Into A Cash Cow where you get 52 professionally written sales messages to personalize and start selling your products instantly.

When you take control of your business, follow the 8 steps in this outline and add all the marketing clout that you can muster, you're going to make money online. If you've ever dreamed about quitting your J.O.B. (Journey Of the Broke) and starting your own home based business, this is your ticket to freedom.

About The Author
Terry Telford is the author of Turn Your Autoresponder Into A Cash Cow. Discover how to use your autoresponder plus the 52 sales messages included in the package, to make a comfortable living online. Even while you sleep :)