Despite all the "dot-com" busts a few years ago, the Internet still represents the ultimate opportunity for some people to turn their initiative, a good idea, and a few bucks into a legitimate, profitable business.
One such person, Rosalind Gardner, took her interest in online dating services and turned it into a business that generated almost half a million dollars in revenue last year and should do even better this year.
The fact that she created this business without spending one dime on product development makes her story even more amazing.
Rosalind Gardner used to make her living as an air traffic controller, a job most people consider quite stressful.
After getting tired of swing-shift work, and though she had no product of her own to sell and needed to make money relatively quickly, Gardner decided to try her hand at selling on the Internet.
What she did next might seem simple, but it started an online venture that would make every dot-com refugee from 1999 drool with envy.
Commonly called "affiliate programs," this setup enables entrepreneurs to create a business promoting other people's businesses and bypass the entire product development and product testing phases.
In short, by selling through other people's affiliate programs, virtually anyone can set up a business online promoting almost any type of product or service.
Gardner created a website (101date.com), her storefront on the Internet.
Though she created her own website pages, she suggests that an effective way to get started even faster is to go to dollartemplates.com or 4templates.com, buy a website template for between $10-$30, and modify it to meet your needs.
"Instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on website design," Gardner advises, "purchase an inexpensive website template for much less than the cost of dinner and a movie!"
Gardner also kept the content for her website simple, direct and effective. Though she wanted to appeal to the widest possible audience, she kept focused on her narrow "niche" of online dating.
She wrote a review of the dating service so her visitors could quickly understand the main benefits, pitfalls, special features, and other information to see if the service met their needs. If it did, and they clicked through her affiliate link to sign up, Gardner made a commission.
To drive traffic to her site, Gardner buys targeted, keyword-specific ads from google.com and overture.com
which get displayed on the Web's most popular sites, including Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN.
This type of advertising means she only spends money when interested people actively searching for dating information go to her website.
Gardner also offers a newsletter from her dating website in order to update her visitors when new dating services and products come available.
The side benefits of publishing the newsletter are many, including the fact that she can build trust with her subscribers by sending them valuable articles and information on a regular basis.
Instead of just referring them over to the merchant's site and losing them forever, Gardner captures them and makes them her customer first... and then hands them off to the merchant.
So what's the secret of her success?
Gardner's system works because:
~ she keeps it simple;
~ she doesn't get slowed down by creating the product herself;
~ she adds her own unique value to the process with her reviews and newsletter;
~ she only invests in performance-based advertising.
Further, her added step of going the extra mile to offer free updates, articles and tips to her growing list helps her business grow MUCH faster than affiliates who just hand-off to the merchant website.
By building her list, she can bring visitors back to her site or send them to other sites through her affiliate link without having to pay for them again.
So if the system is so simple, why don't more people do it this way?
My only guess is that maybe it's too simple! Often people want something complicated in order to feel like a "system" will work, but often the opposite proves true.
Simple = Powerful = It keeps working!
For more information about Gardner and the step-by-step process detailed in her new ebook, "The Super Affiliate Handbook - How I Made $436,797 Last Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online" log on to
http://www.Affiliate-Handbook.com
Jim writes a syndicated newspaper column helping “non-technical” people use the Internet for both fun and massive profits!
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