Ginkgo Leaf CapsulesAffiliate Marketing and Nutritional Supplements

Health and nutritional supplements are BIG business. In fact, the latest statistics indicate that $4.7 BILLION dollars were spent on nutritional supplements last year when all marketing channels including Internet sales are totaled. Nutritional health and supplement companies have been using affiliate marketing to distribute their products for many years. Most of these companies market on the Internet and use Independent Reps. to distribute their products. While most of these companies offer legitimate quality products, there are a few things you might want to consider before jumping in with your wallet.

If you do a search for 'Nutritional Supplements' you'll find that there are literally thousands of products that claim to do some rather amazing things. For instance, by taking the varied supplements you can supposedly; live longer, love longer, increase your memory, improve your immune system, cleanse your colon, strengthen your bones, sleep better, see better, decrease your blood pressure, have more energy, get bigger muscles, lose weight fast, become sexier(that one I could use) and countless other health improvements.

While there are indeed some incredible claims made by companies selling these nutritional supplements, trying to evaluate their effectiveness is not always easy to do. Unlike drugs that go through a lengthy FDA approval process, health and nutritional supplements are largely unregulated, and can boast of benefits that are hard to gauge from a scientific standpoint. While the supplement may indeed be beneficial, one needs to keep in mind that these products have not undergone the same scrunity as other health products.

While this may be a concern for those purchasing the products solely for the health benefits, this isn't usually the major focus of those joining a Nutritional company as Independent Reps since the majority of people join the affiliate marketing company to make money. While the products are the integral part of the business, many distributors see the products as incidental to making money. The problem is, making money isn't as easy as the advertising would lead you to believe.

While company advertising often boasts of huge income possibilities, the reality is usually something different. To start off with, most companies require a monthly purchase to receive commissions on all levels. This can be $100 a month or more of product purchase requirements. Then you find that you'll need advertising and marketing materials which can run into a good piece of change on top of the product purchases. Before you know it, you're spending hundreds of dollars a month on products and promotion, and getting a $7 a month commission check in return. Not quite the way you pictured it. Advertising claims notwithstanding, the facts are 95% of us will never make large sums of money in network marketing. The company will usually highlight a few individuals who are making huge sums of money as evidence that they're doing it, and so can you. Yes, you can do it if you are one of the 5% with talent, drive, ambition, persistance and the resources to make it happen.

For this and other reasons, most network marketing companies suffer from chronic attrition. Constant recruiting is a fact of life in this type of business, and even more so for many nutritional based network marketing companies. You've probably heard that network marketing is a 'number's' game. The idea is that by constantly searching for new people, you'll eventually run across others like yourself who will be motivated enough to stick around and make some serious money for you. While this may be true, you'll need to have lots of patience to build your business. You must be prepared to go through lots of weeds to reach the flowers. Understanding this reality will help you from becoming discouraged as people inevitably leave your business.

While affiliate marketing is a legitimate form of doing business, you should be aware that like any other form of business there are pitfalls along the way. Before you invest in this type of business, take some time to analyze if this is a business that you would be comfortable with. Selling 'colon cleaning' tablets may indeed make you money, but use due diligence or you might find it cleaning out something other than your colon.