How to Make Money Selling Other Peoples Products

In 2009, we were corporate professionals trying to figure out our future. If someone had told us what was about to unfold, we wouldn't have believed them.

You see, we'd been travelling the world on a trip of a lifetime for 3 months.

It was the last day of our holiday and Fiona got a phone call from her boss…

The news was bad.

She'd just been fired, or to put it another way, she was passed her use-by date and had been traded in for a younger model.

What was worse was, it happened over the phone from 6,000 miles away.

On the long flight home to London, we both began to realize we were absolutely fed up with the corporate rat race and badly wanted to escape.

Someone else was pulling our strings

We felt brittle from forever being judged, tired of performing like a puppet, and stressed out from constant interruptions every day.

Maybe the Universe had just given us the kick up the bum we needed!

We desperately wanted to find another source of income so we wouldn't be trapped on the corporate treadmill until retirement.

We wanted to be our own boss and earn what we're worth so we could travel the world and live in the now, rather than wait till we're 67.

The thing is, we were groomed by society only to be employees. We were just career professionals, that was all we knew and didn't aspire to anything else, let alone be entrepreneurial. So, the notion of being our own bosses, earning what we're truly worth, and travelling the world, was a fairy-tale – the kind of thing that happens to other people but not to us.

As if that's not enough…

We'd been under-valued, under-appreciated, and taken for granted for so long, we didn't have much confidence to change things. We felt like failures because we'd invested 25 years and thousands of dollars building our careers, only to have them wiped out in a heartbeat.

The problem was, starting a business was the obvious answer, but we had no genius business idea. We felt destined to be employees forever, which meant we'd waste our entire lives building someone else's dreams.

So, what happened next still surprises us to this day:

Greg was searching on Youtube for inspiration and came across a video about how to make money selling other peoples products. That video made it crystal clear to him that it was possible to earn an income promoting other people’s products online, and our income wouldn't be linked to the number of hours we put in.

We also learned that it's never been easier to start a business because there's no need for premises, stock, employees or any associated overheads. All we needed was a laptop and an internet connection, which we had already.

So, we busily investigated what skills we'd have to learn to know how to make money selling other peoples products. It dawned on us that 25 years in the workforce prepares us to be adaptive as we're learning all the time anyway.

Suddenly, we were full of confidence for the future because we'd discovered the big secret. We didn't need a great business idea to get started simply because we could learn how to be affiliate marketers and earn commissions from selling other peoples stuff.

Let's elaborate…

We planned to promote other peoples products to earn commissions when we made sales. The business model is perfect because we don’t have to deal with the customers because the product owner does all the fulfilment and everything. We simply ‘introduce’ or ‘refer’ a potential customer to the products we promote. We could even do it anonymously if we chose!

Before long, we meet a man selling a master license for a library of self-help DVDs for $10k, which we would reproduce and promote.

So, we created the promotional material by copying what the vendor had done and started to find customers who needed the training contained on the DVDs.

There was just one problem…

That was in 2010 when the world was going digital and everyone was subscribing to Netflix, which meant physical DVD's were on their way out, fast. We also didn't have anyone telling us what to do or how to craft a compelling sales message so we were floundering from the get-go.

The result? We made zero sales and flushed a lot of wasted time, money and effort down the toilet.

But we didn't stop there

A short while later, a friend showed us how to leverage technology to build one-page websites in such a manner that they popped up at the top of Google search results.

We did our research this time and chose to promote other company's diamond jewellery on our websites because of the whopping commissions.

Next, we beavered away for 6 weeks solid to build and launch 300 little one-page jewellery websites. Before long, they started popping up in Google search results and started making sales on autopilot – without us having to lift a finger. We were thrilled with our efforts because we'd almost replaced our corporate salaries by promoting other peoples diamond jewellery as affiliates.

But there was still a problem…

We were setting ourselves up to fail again

Our little one-page websites were cheating Google's system, so would never be a long-term strategy.

Guess what happened?

After 6 months, all 300 of our little websites, and the income we generated from them were de-indexed or sandboxed by Google overnight.

Goodbye, business #2!

We were so frustrated at this point that we decided to go back to basics, keep things simple, and find a mentor – someone successful online who could show us how to make money selling other peoples products online.

You won't believe what we discovered…

We found a guy who told us what we'd been doing was wrong because everyone was doing it wrong.

Even though he was a lot younger than us, we listened intently about an online business model that's proven to be super profitable in multiple markets.

We then built, scaled and evolved a successful business selling other peoples products from what our mentor shared with us. We've been running that business successfully since 2010, so it stands the test of time.

This business model is deceptively simple. It works no matter what the economic or political climate, no matter what crazes or trends occur, and no matter if you're starting from scratch.

We thought if we could create something with unlimited scale, that only requires a quarter of the hours of a corporate job, then we'd be blissfully happy.

Stick with us here, because…

After 18 months of testing and tweaking, we easily replaced our corporate salaries and more, and only work 1/6 of the time we did in the corporate world.

Most people underestimate what they can create in a year, so we started to let other corporate professionals get their hands this training too.

You must be wondering what we've managed to achieve as a result of learning how to make money selling other peoples products :

• Leverage this business model as our primary source of income for the past 8 years
• Prove anyone can repurpose their existing corporate skills to be successful online, and start in and around a current job
• Prove this business model and processes works for most businesses
• Write a best-selling triple-award winning book Living a Laptop Lifestyle even though we didn't think we could write
• Coach and mentor one-to-one nearly 1,100 budding entrepreneurs, so they create massive change in their lives too

Now we’ve successfully learned how to make money selling other peoples products online, we spend up to 9 months each year travelling the world purely because our business and systems only require our laptops and an internet connection. We’ve also stopped connecting time with a salary because a big chunk of our business is automated to make sales when we're not working.

We still pinch ourselves every day for the kind of lifestyle we've created as it seems such a far cry from the inhuman corporate rat race.

In the end, this means we've unlocked our actual ability and worth to feel like we contribute to the world. We've discovered it's much more rewarding to give back rather than take all the time.

Here’s How You Too Can Create Your Dream Lifestyle When You Make Money Selling Other Peoples Products

You don't need to sit there racking your brains to think up some complicated untested business idea. The easiest way to start generating a side income online, or to replace a corporate salary, is to sell someone else’s products for commissions. It’s generally known as an Affiliate Marketing or Referral Marketing.

Here’s how it works… in 5 easy steps:

[1] Get Educated

Its 100% true, Google and Youtube have squirrelled away all the info you need about how affiliate marketing works, BUT it’ll take you weeks, if not months, of research to unearth the key facts you need to know. And you’ll fall down multiple rabbit holes while attempting to piece together the disparate information. You won’t know if the advice you get is up-to-date and still works. And you won’t ever get the full picture of the ins and outs of being an affiliate marketer.

The answer?

Invest in proper, proven training on how to be a successful affiliate marketer. Not only will it save you a ton of time so you can replace your current salary quicker, but it’ll save you the cost of falling for shiny objects and wasting money on ads that’ll never be effective. (speaking from experience here!)

>> Here's our recommended fool-proof affiliate marketing education <<

[2] Become Affiliated

Firstly, decide on a general niche you want to promote products in.

Overall, there are three large niches: Health, Wealth, and Relationships. Within those high-level categories, there are sub-niches to specialise in. Pick ONE that interests you, or in which you have knowledge of already.

We say to pick one sub-niche, and only one, because it’ll require all your focus to gain momentum with it, so it pays to keep it simple for starters, right?

We love the digital information sub-niche in the wealth market because it’s so transformative for people, people place a high value on transformation, and it’s what allowed us to transition from employee to entrepreneur.

We wouldn’t recommend learning how to make money on amazon selling other people's products because Amazon commissions are tiny and will never allow you to replace a corporate salary

Once you have a sub-niche you’re passionate about…

Search Google for “[your sub-niche] affiliate program” to discover what products and vendors are available for you to promote as an affiliate.

Purchase the products which pay good rates of commission, and which appeal to you most. Why purchase them? You need to get that all-important feel for the quality of the product and get to experience it firsthand because it’s easier and more authentic to promote something honestly when you’re fully familiar with the product customer experience. Make sense?

Sign up to become an affiliate for your preferred products which are closely aligned with your personal values. You’ll need to fill out all the normal stuff like name, address, email, and details of the most important bit, where your commissions are to be paid.

Once accepted as an affiliate by the vendor, you’ll be given a unique affiliate ID and access to their promotional materials. It’s in the vendor's interests to provide banners, images, emails, and maybe articles on their product, to ensure affiliates represent them and their products in the manner they’re happy with.

It should be a win-win relationship between you and the vendor.

[3] Target Quality People

Here’s the interesting part…

Most people think that if they build a website, or leverage affiliate web-pages, then prospective customers will naturally find those pages online and automatically buy from them.

But… that couldn’t be further from the truth.

You actually need to drive, attract, or channel targeted visitors to your affiliate offers, and the fastest way to do that is to leverage the large third party pay-per-click platforms like Google Adwords (those little ads you see on the right-hand side of the screen when you search on google), Microsoft Ads (ex Bing), and Facebook.

When you pay to show your ads on those platforms where your targeted customers are hanging out, you must direct those prospective customers to a lead capture page where they enter their email address. That’s so you can stay in touch with them by email because most people don’t buy the first time they see a product – they need warming up, or educating first.

The trick is to insert your affiliate id in the offers in your emails (which are provided by the product owner), and also in your blog post reviews for the affiliate offers you're promoting.

Google and Facebook frown on directing their users straight to a stand-alone affiliate opt-in page/lead capture page, where you ask someone for their email address in exchange for a free gift. Instead, they want businesses to advertise to a full marketing website, where one page on the site is a lead capture page.

Let's clarify…

Google and Facebook need to comply with consumer guidelines set out by The Federal Trades Commission in the US so they expect to see a ton of relevant content on a website to provide an informed experience for their users. Because a stand-alone opt-in page doesn't provide enough content or information, they won't approve ads directing traffic (their users) to domains or URLs where the only page on the site is a lead capture page.

So, before you go down this path, follow the affiliate marketing training you invested in, and carefully read the terms and conditions of the platform you're advertising on. In fact, read them about three times, and keep up to date with them too.

[4] Email Your Prospects

Now you’ve captured the email address of your prospect, the process to get them to click through to the product you’re promoting is simple.

When your prospect buys the product you're promoting, your affiliate id is passed through to the vendor’s site, informing the vendor that the sale was referred by you, so you get paid a commission on the sale.

To put it another way, you’re linking in an email to send visitors through to the vendor's site, with your affiliate id passed along in the process. What’s good for you is you don’t have to do anything after that. The vendor deals with delivering the product to the customer, collecting payment, dealing with customer queries, and paying you on a regular basis – so you just relax.

[5] Build and Scale

In order to grow and scale your online income, as with anything else, you need to work smart. You also want to have a consistent stream of traffic, so you have a constant source of commissions, so be sure you’ve allocated an appropriate marketing budget to ensure this happens.

To scale up quickly, it’s best not to take profits from your affiliate business, but to reinvest your sales commissions into your advertising, so your profits snowball quickly.

Sound good?

>> Here’s where to get started learning how to make money selling other peoples products. <<

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