All by itself affiliate marketing can be profitable. However, in order to be truly successful as an affiliate marketer, setting up a business website with multiple streams of income is essential.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest mistakes that affiliate marketers make when adding new streams of income, is competing with themselves.  It is very common for affiliate marketers to make additional profits by selling on ebay, dropshipping, creating their own products, becoming a PPC publisher and much more.  The key to doing this successfully is making sure that the products are complimentary       and do not directly compete with the affiliate offer. Here is a quick look at different ways of setting up a business website with multiple streams of income that can benefit or hurt your affiliate sales.

For these examples, let’s assume that your affiliate offer is for a vitamin supplement.

Sell on Ebay

Selling items on Ebay and Dropshipping tend to affect your affiliate products the same way because they both involve shipping physical products and never include services.

Using Ebay and dropshipping services is an excellent way to add a revenue stream to your website, however they can also hinder your bottom line.  If you are promoting Ebay items that are in competition with the vitamin supplement that you are selling, there is a high likelihood that some visitors will choose the Ebay product instead of your affiliate offer.  While you will still make some money, you would have made more if they had chosen your offer.  Instead, try promoting Ebay items related to fitness programs.  Many people taking vitamin supplements will probably be looking for a new fitness program as well.  This way you make sales instead of one.

Creating Products of Your Own

If you want to increase your affiliate profits, create your own product.  The easiest thing to do is create some free ebooks that advertise or subtly promote the vitamin supplement that you are promoting.  You can also create an ebook or video series and sell it independently from you affiliate offer.  If you make $20 in recurring income from your affiliate offer, then it is much more profitable than a stand-alone ebook.

One way to compliment your affiliate offer is to offer your ebook as a free bonus for anyone who purchases your affiliate offer.  This way they can purchase your ebook without the affiliate offer, so you still make a little money, or get it for free as a bonus, which means that you making even more money in residual income.  The only thing that you should not do is write an ebook that has an underlying philosophy that contradicts your affiliate offer.

Affiliate marketing on the Internet can be very rewarding but if you want to increase your profits, setting up a business website with multiple income streams will prove to be more profitable than setting up one with just a single income stream. Just remember not to compete with yourself. Pay attention to the streams you are adding to ensure that they are complimentary products and that they do not detract from your affiliate sales.

When you develop your business plan you should plan for the long term. You are not planning for a business that will make money for a few months. By the same token when you design your website you should have in mind long term success.

Unfortunately, affiliate marketers fall into the trap of designing a website that generates short term bursts of income. With a little more effort, it is easy to set up a business website that will generate long term profits. Here are 3 strategies you can use to create a website that is both sustainable and profitable.

1. Choosing a Domain Name

Choosing a domain name that includes a product name is likely to be ranked quickly and generate organic traffic.  However, this has a serious trade off with longevity.  Once this product is no longer popular or marketable, the website loses all of its value. Conversely, if you choose a domain name based upon the niche that the product is in, it will be more flexible down the road.  This means that when you need to switch offers that you are promoting, you can simply plug in a new offer that also relates to the niche.

2. The Content Should be Ageless

It is critical that you write articles that are timeless. While it is important to always be sharing new content with visitors, many webmasters will only create content that is relevant for a few months. By creating articles that are timeless you can build links to that type of content and visitors will always want to read it.  If you only create content that is product-specific or only relevant for a short time, you will end up constantly having to add more content and build more links.

3. Make It Easy To Change

If you are setting up a website for long term success, it must be easy to change. One of the biggest problems that affiliate websites have is that when an offer is no longer available, one of two things will happen.  First, the affiliate marketer will simply leave in dead links, which will hurt their Search Engine Results and irritate readers.  Second, they will need to manually change all of their links, which is time consuming and tedious.  In order to avoid this, it is important to plan ahead and create ways that links can be automatically updated.

There are a number of different ways to do this utilizing commercial plugins, addons, or software.  Many affiliate marketers argue that one of the easiest ways to do this is by cloaking your affiliate links.  Then when a product needs to be changed, they can simply upload a new landing page to replace the outdated offer.

For example, you may promote an offer with the following link –  HYPERLINK “http://offer1.com/affiliateID=1”.  Once you cloak the link and add it to your domain, it may look like this “http://yourdomain.com/greatdeal”. This is called a hyperlink.  When you decide to no longer promote this product, you can then simply take a new offer, cloak your affiliate link, and point it to:   “http://yourdomain.com/greatoffer”.  By doing this you do not have to change any links on your website to change offers.

As you can see, with a little forethought and planning in the beginning, you can build an internet home business website for long term success that will require minimal maintenance once it is set up.