Going Affiliate full time

When should u do it?

[kaymeis]

How much should you be making per month before you decide to be a full time affiliate?

[maccas]

You living in India or downtown New York?

[kaymeis]

I live in Accra, Ghana

[LifeinAsia]

When you make enough money (steadily) to support the standard of living for yourself and all those dependent upon you, as well as being able to put money away for retirement/emergencies. You should also have a cushion of money in the bank equal to 6 months of bills.

[buckworks]

Affiliate income can fluctuate a lot, so my advice would be to have enough money saved to cover your living expenses for a year before you quit other employment.

Also, do everything you can to pay down debt and minimize monthly obligations. It's easier to ride out the ups and downs if you only spend money when you have it and don't have a lot of bills for past expenses.

[CatLady]

Also, have a back-up plan in place in case your site(s) suddenly tank in the search engines. If it were to happen today, do you have competent enough skills/budget with PPC advertising to make a profit while you ride out the rough times?

Do you have at least several programs (merchants) that are working well for you? If a major merchant you promote suddenly went bankrupt, are you diversified enough so that all of your eggs are not in that one basket?

Do you have a skill that will easily enable you to go back to work for the man temporarily or part time if you have to? Be sure not to burn any bridges on your way out of the corporate world - it never hurts to have sources you can call on for temporary employment if you need to.

How about health insurance - will you have coverage for yourself and your family if you were to leave your job? If not, how will you obtain it and will you be able to afford the monthly premiums?

I not trying to be the messenger of doom and gloom here - just trying to help you put together a realistic checklist. It's really important to have a "Plan B" in place and ready to go in case one of the above situations happens. Then you'll be able to sleep much better at night :)

[QualityNonsense]

Depends on all sorts of factors in your own life:

- Do you have kids?
- Do you have a mortgage?
- Do you have a career or a this'll-pay-the-bills job?
- Could you walk into another job if you needed to?

In my own case, I quit after six months as an affiliate when:

- I had money in the bank for three months comfortable living
- I was earning more from affiliate work than my day job
- I had a substantial amount of commission earned (and due to be paid) from super-reliable merchants/networks.

As soon as I quit my day job, my affiliate projects started to really take off.

Your mileage may vary. In fact, I'd suggest that my benchmarks were a little free and easy with hindsight, but then in my case I was in a difficult position with work and had to leave anyway, so...

Whatever your circumstances, I think the key thing is to have a backup plan worked out (with financial detail) lest the might Google hammer comes down on your projects.