Today, we'll cover another set of benefits to selling Big Ticket items. BUT? this time we'll specifically focus on the benefits of selling Big Ticket items as an AFFILIATE.

First, we had better define both Big Ticket Item and Affiliate.

A Big Ticket Item is any product or service that sells for more than $500 or $1000.

An Affiliate is someone who sells other people's products.

Or, at least, those are my definitions. I'm sure there are other possible definitions but for this article, let's stick with the simple descriptions I've given, ok?

Now, let's take a close look at the BIG Benefits to selling Big Ticket Items As An Affiliate.


Benefit #1: Make MORE Money On Every Sale

As an affiliate selling Big Ticket Items you are going to make more from every sale. Typically, you receive some percentage of the sale as your reward from the product owner. This might range from 25%, 30%, 50% or maybe even 75% of the sale price.

An example should make this crystal clear. Say you're an affiliate for a product marketer who sells both E-books and Home Study Systems. The E-Book sells for $37 and the Home Study System sells for $1497. If your share of the sale as an affiliate is 50% then you make:

$37 * 0.50 = $18.50
$1497 * 0.50 = $748.50

I don't know about you but I'd much rather make $750 instead of $19!! Big Ticket means bigger commissions for you.

Benefit #2: You Can Make Money WITHOUT Having Your Own Product

That's right! You don't have to create your own product. If you currently don't have a product of your own, or even if you don't have a Big Ticket product of your own, you can still make money selling other people's products.

This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer. Costs such as time to create the product, paying for expertise in areas outside your own, audio or video recording and editing, etc.

It also gives you more time to plan and think about a product or products that you want to create while making money selling other people's products.

However, you should ONLY choose affiliate products that you believe in and know are of high quality. And ones that the product creator will support fully. Make sure that the product creator has an excellent reputation as you are putting your own reputation on the line by selling their products.

Benefit #3: You Can Make Money WITHOUT Having Your Own Website or Sales Copy

If you plan to sell on the web today, you must have a website. If you have expertise in or like to learn about website design then you can do this yourself. Otherwise, you will hire someone to do this for you.

But as an affiliate, you don't have to worry about this! The website for the product will be hosted by the product owner. They will be responsible for the sales copy on the site, the shopping cart system that takes the order and most other aspects of the sales process.

You are only responsible for referring people to them. If that person buys the product, you get paid!

Good product owners try to make it very easy for their affiliates to give them referrals by providing sample email copy, sample banner, ezine and magazine ads and other promotional materials. As the affiliate, you simply use the provided materials to help promote the product in ways that you feel will maximize sales opportunities.

So having the product owner responsible for all the sales copy and promotional materials makes your life as an affiliate much easier. And especially for Big Ticket Items, it reduces your costs immensely.

Why?

Because Big Ticket Items need longer sales copy to sell effectively due to their larger price tag. All possible objections must be countered. Every conceivable benefit to the customer needs to be listed. And the sales copy must be compelling.

Writing an excellent sales letter is time consuming and requires specific expertise. In fact, it is not unusual to pay a professional copywriter anywhere from $7,000 - $15,000 plus a percentage of the sales for a killer sales letter!

As an affiliate, someone else pays for that.

And this is true even if the sales letter is not on a website but is sent as part of a direct marketing campaign instead.

Benefit #4: You Don't Have To Come Up With Bonuses As Incentives To Buy The Product

Today, product marketers often bundle bonuses with their products to increase the value of the overall offer. These products typically don't cost very much but add a lot of value to the product. In many cases, the perceived value of the bonuses will be higher than the price of the product itself.

But this means that the product owners are constantly on the lookout for other products to use as bonuses. Or they have to create them to sell as part of the package.

As an affiliate, you don't have this headache. The bonuses are the product owners responsibility.

Of course, if you think that you can provide a bonus that will make people buy the product from you as an affiliate you should definitely throw it in! This is one way you can differentiate your offer from any other offers on the same product by other affiliates.

Benefit #5: No Inventory and No Shipping Hassles

As an affiliate, you don't have to have stacks of paper, shipping boxes, reams of stamps, Jewel Cases, CDs, Binding Materials or any of the raw materials typically needed to create and ship Big Ticket products. And you don't have to stock any of the product, period!

All the packaging and shipping of orders is handled by the product owner or their fulfillment center. So you don't have to worry about trying to find your car under an avalanche of product and materials :-)

Benefit #6: Affiliate Selling is the Easiest Way To Start Making Money With Big Ticket Items

I hope by now, after reading the first 5 benefits, you can see how easy it really is to sell Big Ticket items and make money. This is a HUGE benefit and so it's worth calling out as a separate benefit of its own.

Most affiliate programs are super easy to join (after all the product owner wants to encourage people to sell their product and help them make money). You get an affiliate id of some sort and a way to use that id to refer customers to the product. As I mentioned before, you are often given all the copy for ads and emails you can use. Plus the website is done and ready to convert all prospective customers. All the shipping and filling of orders is handled by the product owner as well.

Your startup costs to become an affiliate are very low (almost zero) and your main job is to get more prospective customer "eyeballs" on the offer. This could be traffic to the product website or a postal mail direct marketing campaign.

You can start making big money with Big Ticket items almost immediately!

Copyright (C) 2005 Chuck Daniel, Like Magic Marketing, LLC -- All Rights Reserved.

Chuck is a former Microsoft software designer and program manager who spent more than a decade happily working on Email and CRM. Admittedly a seminar, workshop and information addict, Chuck left Microsoft to pursue his interests in personal development, internet, direct and information marketing and to promote and work for charitable causes.

Chuck Daniel.