A lot of people are getting sucked into the MLM website concept without realizing how little control they will have over marketing. If you’ve found yourself in that trap but still like the product, you’ll want to ask yourself, do I have full control over the meta tags, meta description, html, number of pages, content, etc. on this site?

If not, it may be time to set up a new site you do have control over, or find another idea altogether.

Affiliate and MLM sites have a great potential to provide a residual income without spending a lot of time on them. However, keep in mind that affiliate and MLM sites are quite different than regular sites because you don’t have much control over driving traffic to their sites or controlling the content. Without traffic, you don’t get customers, and without customers . . . well, you see where I’m heading.

For the most part, I’d think of affiliate and MLM sites like a shopping cart . . . linked to your own site that you can optimize and market to set yourself apart. I suggest doing some research on keywords (Go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com, look for words over 10, then search for the phrase at www.google.com and make sure it’s under 3 million) to see which keywords people are searching for most. Then, it’s a good idea to build your own website where you can set up a link to the “site” your affiliate assigned to you. The difference is that you will have complete control over the content of your site, which is important if you want to drive traffic there.

Here are some of the pros and cons of affiliate and MLM sites:

Pros:

• low up keep
• no customer service
• no returns
• no dealing with suppliers
• easy to set up . . . no shopping cart to deal with

Cons:

• takes longer to make money
• profit margins are slim
• MLM affiliates can be difficult to work with
• You may need to change affiliate codes often until you find what makes you the most money.