How RMRS Generates Income | RMRS Business Partnerships and Affiliate Marketing

No matter how passionate you are you have to eat.

It’s fine to have a great business idea but sooner or later it has to pay the bills.

Unless you’re venture capital backed……and then you better be able to grow fast (although you still have to eventually monetize!)

Today I want to address a recurring question I’m asked:

Antonio, how do you make money with RMRS?

How do you make money online?

Basically people see that:

• I’m collecting emails.
• I have sponsors
• I have a Youtube channel.
• I have a few websites.
• I sell courses.
• I run a custom clothier business.
• I do consultations.

From looking at this a lot of readers can get an idea more or less how I make money and they have a feel for how I do it but they’re not sure about the details.

I’m always more than happy to share what I’ve learned so here is a break down and information on how I run my business operation.

I want to be clear that my goal is to open your minds to the fact that there are more ways to make money than simply trading your time for money.

Click here to watch the video How Real Men Real Style Makes Money on Youtube.

Click here to watch the video How Real Men Real Style Makes Money on Youtube.

A Bit of Background on Antonio (Me!)

My motivation for getting where I am today comes from my background.

Like a lot of you reading this I am from a family where that was all we did: Traded time for dollars.

My mom worked in an animal control office in Midland, Texas and part of her job was actually scraping dead animals off the street and similar responsibilities. It was not a glamorous job but it paid the bills.

My step-dad has worked as a line cook and he’s done all types of odd and ends jobs. I can’t imagine a time he ever enjoyed what he did.

Growing up surrounded by this meant I really believed that the place you find a job is the classified ads though today your chances would probably be better with Craigslist.

Even though I know today that there are many other ways to become successful and earn a living at that time entrepreneurship never even crossed my radar and I don’t want any of my readers to make that mistake.

My goal with this article is to start you gentlemen off on a series of videos and articles in which I’ll share how RMRS operates and how we generate income.

I’m going to break it up into a number of videos and articles which will each deal with a specific part or aspect of the business. The one you’re reading now is an introduction and will also cover my affiliate marketing revenue stream.

My focus here is to make you aware of the opportunities out there so you can get started with your own business (if that’s what you want) or even just to let you know it’s an option that’s open to you from anywhere in the world.

 

1. What Is Affiliate Marketing

In this this first article I want to introduce you to what Affiliate Marketing is, how it ties into RMRS and just how it works in general.

Before we go any further I do want to warn you to do your own research before trying out or acting on anything I say in this article or the ones following it.

Just as in men’s style it pays to be educated and not just follow blindly what other people say.  Some of the more common affiliate programs are:

Amazon
Clickbank
Shareasale
CJ Affiliate by Conversant (Formerly Commission Junction)

These are the companies who run the infrastructure or platforms through which their respective affiliate programs operate and these specific ones are ones I’m familiar with or use myself.

They are corporations that allow you to link to other websites from your own sites and get a commission of any sale that happens when you refer someone to that page, service or product.

How it Works

Let’s say you see an affiliate link: Philips Norelco S9721/87, Shaver 9700 – Frustration Free Package and you click on it and end up buying that product.

What happens then is that the company registers the referral or link came from my site and they pay me a commission that’s anything from 5 to 75% of the purchase price.

That’s one of the ways I make money every single month at RMRS.

The primary affiliate company I work with is Amazon and if you look around on the RMRS site and in some of the articles you’ll see where I link to items on Amazon.

The majority of these are affiliate links and are mostly items I like or that I’ve owned and trust and would like to bring to your attention or perhaps recommend you buy.

With Amazon if you buy something I referred you to, let’s say this Leather Care Conditioner I get paid a commission of 7% to 8%

Since this item is $16.95 I’ll get between $1.18 and $1.36.

Some of you may think that that’s very little but you have to consider the scale and time.

 

It’s All About Scale

RMRS has an ever-expanding membership and while I’m writing this article we’re getting about 20 000 visitors per day.

To illustrate the potential for you: if I get $1 from only 1% (200) of those visitors I earn $200.00 per day just from my affiliate link income.

Now you also have to consider that Amazon is not the only affiliate company I work with and not all the products I refer readers like you to are in that low price range.

 

Passive Income or Revenue

Affiliate marketing is considered a passive income source but in my experience it’s not really as passive as something like investing in the stock market for instance.

You have to do a little bit of work at the beginning but once you have it set up it becomes a pretty relaxed revenue stream.

This system is excellent as far as I’m concerned.

By having this affiliate marketing system in place I can now focus on creating and growing my company and providing excellent content to my readers while this revenue source works for me and helps me pay the bills.

In it’s simplest form affiliate marketing is like getting a sales commission for selling a product for someone.

 

2. Does Affiliate Marketing Affect My Opinion?

I’ll be perfectly honest that affiliate marketing does affect my opinion, but I try and be as objective as possible.

In practice if I find a product that is relevant to my business and it is on Amazon I will link to it in an effort to not only tell you about the product but also potentially generate income from that link or product.

The difference between me and a lot of other affiliate marketers is that I’ll most likely only do this after I’ve tried the product myself to make sure it’s up to my standards.

My family and I are probably one of Amazon’s best customers and we buy everything from Amazon (including toilet paper), it’s to the point where we don’t purchase much in stores anymore.

The main reason is that buying online is simply so convenient.

The fact that I also like to buy the best of things is also very important. I don’t have to be satisfied with the THIRD best camera because that’s what the store has – I can get the BEST camera available and I can see if most of the people who bought it before me were happy with that product.

I also don’t have to drive to wherever I’d need to go. Why would I spend unnecessary time in my car when I can buy something and have it delivered to my door?

Sometimes it is better to buy a product in-store like the washer I recently bought. I went to the store because I wanted to see the machine in person and I wanted to be sure I could buy it with the extended warranty.

 

3. How to Spot Affiliate Links

I always try to be completely transparent if I recommend something where I get paid for or get a commission from.

If you have concerns about following affiliate links the important thing you need to know is how to recognize them.

Hover over this link:

Real Men Real Style

Look at the bottom left-hand corner of your browser and you’ll see where that link will take you if you click on it. If it’s a very short or simple link like this one it’s most likely NOT an affiliate link.

Now look at this link:

Clothes and the Man, by Allan Flusser

If you see a really long link with lots of gibberish and you see a REF somewhere in the link that means it’s a referral link associated with an affiliate referral.

 

4. Are Affiliate Links a Bad Thing?

I don’t believe it’s bad, it encourages people (like me) to go and purchase items at places like Amazon with my own money and then refer those products to you.

Think about how you deal with people you know. When you see a great movie or get exceptional service somewhere you don’t keep it to yourself. Depending on how good it was you tell just your best friend or you tell everyone you know including your dog.

Affiliate marketing at it’s best simply builds on our natural inclination to share good experiences (and products) with the people we know except that they pay you to do it.

 

5. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

As in almost anything there are negative aspects to affiliate marketing you must be aware of.

Clickbank is an affiliate company that sells a lot of information products and where you can make as much as 75% commission from. (Note I’m just using them as an example)

In my opinion this leads to some things being set up to encourage people to game the system.

Affiliate marketers will use underhanded tactics to ensure they rank for certain words.

They will use words like “scam” in product descriptions not because they’re relevant to the product being sold but because it’s a keyword a lot of people search on.

I’ve noticed that this is especially common with dating and nutrition products.

These products often sell for anything from $197 to $500 and are mostly information products.

The affiliate marketer who sells these products is getting a commission of 60% to 75% so his incentive to get you to buy these products is considerable.

My advice with online products, affiliate products and especially pure digital information products is that you should use your own best judgment and only buy from people or through people you trust.

People with an existing brand or business are a lot less likely to try and sell you some kind of scam or dud product because their reputation is on the line.

Just as in style it comes down to you as the consumer becoming educated and making sure you have trust either in the product or the person referring the product.

This is the main reason I only refer products I trust implicitly or use myself – I value your trust too much to violate it for a few dollars.

I realize that most of my readers are pretty smart and you’ll figure it out if I sell out just to make a profit.

 

In Summary:

So up to now we’ve covered the following:

• What affiliate links are
• How they affect my opinion
• How they work
• How you can spot them

 

6. How Much Do You Make?

That brings us to the question a lot of you are most interested in : “How much do you make?”

I mentioned before that commissions vary from 5%(low) to 75%(really high).

Digital information products:
The higher commissions are usually on information products, specifically on digital information products.

The reasons for this are:

• No shipping costs
• No production costs
• Infinitely scalable product (There’s no difference to the seller if he sells 1 or 1 million except his profit)
• Little or no advertising costs (The affiliates do the marketing and advertising)
• Product returns have no real effect on the seller

Simply put pixels really don’t cost anything and after developing the product the seller has no large ongoing expenses.

Physical products:
These are clothing, electronics, jewelry, etc. – basically anything you can buy from Amazon or other retailers that you physically receive or can touch.

For these types of products 6-20% is more the average and even the 20% is more the exception than the rule. 20% Is usually given by some clothing companies to affiliates who send them a lot of business or are really good at getting their name and their product visible.

7-8% Is more the average for physical products and differs depending on the product and the company selling the product. Many companies use a tiered system where affiliates who provide a company with more referrals will be paid a higher percentage.

The reason the commission is lower is basically the reverse of digital information products:

• Shipping costs
• Production costs for each product
• Limited product available at any time
• Support costs
• Costs to the producer for returns
• Ongoing running costs for producer: Salaries, rent, etc.

 

The nice thing about Amazon is that you’re working with a trusted company to build an additional revenue stream. As an affiliate of Amazon you will even find that they actually close a few unrelated sales on your behalf.

If I refer a product on my website and someone follows the link to Amazon and doesn’t buy that product I recommended but buys something else instead I can still get a commission on the second product.

So if I send you over there to look at a brilliant book but you end up buying a television instead, I still get a commission. (which will be much more on a television)

The Cookie Monster – How To Deal With Cookies

The other bad thing about affiliate marketing that I should have talked about before is cookies.

We’re not talking about the edible type you buy from the store but about pieces of code that sits on your computer and that lets websites know where you came from.

Some people are concerned enough about cookies that they regularly clear the cache on their computers and if it’s a concern you have you can do the same.

If you have concerns about cookies, be sure to have a look at this article, Are cookies dangerous? .

Most cookies can last from 24 hrs to a year but as a general rule smaller companies make cookies last longer to be more attractive to affiliates while larger companies like Amazon have more leverage and their cookies may last as little as 24 hrs.

The reason this is important for affiliate marketers is that if I refer you to a product and you only buy a few days later the referral cookie may not be there anymore unless that specific website uses very long-term cookies.

One of the companies I work with is Schott Leather and I use ShareaSale with them. Their cookie lasts 30 – 45 days, they can do this because they have such a specialized product and it’s unlikely that two different affiliate marketers will refer the same person to their site in the same period of time.

So there you have my quick overview and crash course into affiliate marketing, how I use it and how it makes up one of the many income sources for my company.

 

A lot of what I discussed here I teach in My Personal Image Coaching Program (Formerly Business With Style).

With this course I work with some selected gentlemen that are looking to build up businesses similar to what I have.

For those of you that are interested it is usually a ways out and I have a class going on right now so be sure to keep an eye out for my next class.

Hopefully you gentlemen found this useful and it answers some of the questions you may have had about how my business works.

 

Want To Work For Me?  

I’m always looking for great people to work with – Click Here to Discover How 

 

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