The Secret of Her Success

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.

Gardner logged on to OneAndOnly.com, an online dating
service, and signed up as an associate or "affiliate".
She said they were paying "healthy" commissions to any
webmaster who wanted to refer paying customers to them.

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