In this edition of the Affiliate Buzz, host and Instructor of the Affiliate Marketers BootCamp, James Martell, is joined by his wife Arlene Martell. This week they are discussing the possibilities for your lifestyle if you start an affiliate marketing home business.

This is something which is really close to the hearts of James and Arlene. Both of them have realized that you can be in control of your lifestyle by running your own home business. This improved lifestyle has allowed them to have the benefits of a stay at home parent while also being able to earn a good income from home.

Arlene has particularly valued the ability to raise their children from home.

Before they were running an affiliate marketing business, James and Arlene were running a telecoms business. The business was doing well and there was a lot of work. However, the money wasn’t good, certainly not enough for what they were doing.

Arlene was also suffering with balancing her work with home life. Unlike many families nowadays, where the average family has two or three children, Arlene and James had four children. Therefore home life was very hectic.

There were also the health concerns with Adam their eldest son, which made it difficult for Arlene to leave the house on some days.

During this time, James and Arlene had very little money. They had no credit card, their car was old and the planned holidays were camping and visiting family.

Then in 1999, James and Arlene decided to make the jump to create an affiliate marketing home business. It was during the fall that the first cheques started to arrive. As they stumbled their way through the dot com crash, their income picked up and so did their time with the children.

This is one of the main reasons why both men and women want to run their own home business. A good example of this would be Chris Molnar. His goal was exactly this, to earn money while staying at home to be with the children.

During the podcast James and Arlene discuss the following:

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• How going to work can cost a family significant amounts.
  
• How a parent’s time can disappear after returning home from work and at the weekends.
  
• Why affiliate marketing is one of the easiest businesses to run from home.
  
• What other benefits parents can have by running an affiliate marketing home business.
  
• How the children benefit from having stay at home parents.
  
• What the motivations are for running a business from home.
  

James also talks about a previous podcast where he and Robert Kottke discussed how home business owners can save money on their taxes. James also mentioned a few other well known stay at home personalities including Matt Frary and Don Campbell.

One of the important aspects of working from home is the need to focus. That doesn’t just mean working hard. There is a common problem, as James explains, of affiliate marketers broadening their audience too quickly.

This problem was highlighted with new clients of James and Arlene. Both individuals loved the health sector and wanted to set up a website, blog and podcast talking about various health topics and selling supplements online.

The issue was that talking about different health problems might have alienated their audience. For instance, those who tuned in to listen to their podcast on cancer one week might have been disappointed if the next week they are talking about how to quit smoking.

Therefore the pair were advised to focus their topic. So they decided, due to personal and work reasons, to focus on diabetes. Now these two are planning to run a 12 week course every so often to earn significant amounts.

James explains this is the same for everything, whether it is a sales letter or newsletter. You need to focus your efforts on one target audience.

James and Arlene also discuss GoDaddy who James believes is one of the best web hosting providers out there. They offer 24/7 on the phone support for any technical issues. James can testify to this useful function as he recently benefited from their expertise when he had a technical issue.

Another service they discuss is Clickbank. It used to be a service with a bad name, but not now the FTC has cleaned up some of the bad behavior in the industry. The company now has some really great products together which can really benefit anyone running an affiliate marketing business from home.

Mentioned in this Episode:

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• Chris Molnar
  
• Clickbank
  
• GoDaddy
  
• Robert Kottke
  
• Matt Frary
  
• Don Campbell