I base many of my articles and newsletters on my own day to day experiences in the world of Internet marketing. Things that have happened to me. Emails I have received. Interactions I have had with customers, subscribers and other Internet marketers.

The more I work online, the more it becomes apparent to me that some people just don't 'get it'. What don't they get? Well in my experience, many things but the 'thing' that someone didn't 'get' this week was the benefit of marketing an affiliate product which has a recurring income element to it.....

One of my membership websites, SimplyWholesale, has an affiliate program which allows anyone to link to the site and earn 50% of any sales generated by their visitors. Nothing special here - millions of websites offer a similar deal. In addition, because one of the payment options offered by SimplyWholesale is a monthly subscription, my affiliates can also earn 50% of future monthly subscription payments made by a member who they introduce to the site. Again, nothing special here - many membership websites have the same arrangement.

So what's the story?

Well, last week I received an email from an affiliate 'complaining' that he wasn't earning enough money from his customers who were only signing up for the monthly subscription option. (A monthly membership is £4.99 so his earnings would have been £2.50 on each one). Now, this individual had been referring, on average, one new member to the site per day and the vast majority were opting for the monthly membership. The odd one here and there was paying for a yearly membership which generated a higher commission but the majority, as I say, were paying monthly.

So everyday for the past couple of weeks, this guy has earned £2.50 from having a single banner on his website. Assuming this continues for the next two weeks, he will have earned at least £77.50 for the month. Actually it will be more than this due to the annual subscriptions but let's keep things simple :-)

Ok, £77.50 isn't a life-changing sum of money but let's move things forward a month or two (and this is the bit that the guy clearly hadn't thought of when he emailed me with his 'complaint').....

Month two, assuming the level of sales continues, he will earn another £77.50 BUT he will also see an income from the second monthly subscription payments made by the members he referred to the site in month one. It is fair to assume that some members may cancel their subscriptions but to date we have a pretty low cancellation rate. Let's work on the worse case scenario and say that 20% of his members cancel in month two - he will still earn over £60 from the renewals. Add that to the £77.50 from the new members and month two earnings are getting on for £140.